Saturday, May 11, 2019
CHAPTER 675: IN WHICH I FIX ENDGAME WITH SOME STINGERS
< SPOILERS AHEAD >
Credits roll. People stick around because, like Pavlov's dogs, they're conditioned to wait at the end of Marvel movies now. Lo and Behold, here's your stinger:
As the funeral ends, a group gathers at the shore and watches Tony's flowers drift away.
The camera pans around to reveal that the crowd consists of Bucky, Vanessa from Deadpool, Elektra, Frank Castle, two regular Gwen Staceys, Gwenpool, Spider-Gwen, an old guy with a name tag that says Uncle Ben, Red Skull, 2014 Gamora, Colossus, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Madeline Pryor, Stan Lee, Groot, Elvis and Grand Moff Tarkin for some reason.
BUCKY: So, what do we give him? Three years, tops?
Everybody laughs for an awkwardly long time.
........
Star wipe to the revolving doors in front of Stark Tower. Mistress Death and Deadpool are hanging out next to the door.
DEATH: Wait for it....
DEADPOOL: Are we being too obvious here?
Cue Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper".
DEATH: What ever would make you say that?
Wolverine comes through the door holding a bag of money and contract with mouse ears on it.
DEADPOOL: Oooh! A hidden Mickey!
WOLVERINE: What's up Spider-man?
DEADPOOL: Close enough.
Death, Deadpool and Wolverine skip off through Manhattan, pausing to look at the Latverian embassy.
DEATH: Now we're being too obvious.
......
Cut to the Sanctum Solarium. Wong and Dr. Strange are eating sandwiches on the front steps.
WONG: So, in all those millions of possible outcomes, how many ended with us actually getting sandwiches?
DR. STRANGE: Only one. Actually, most outcomes ended with everyone surviving and Thanos just tripling the amount of resoruces in the universe instead of killing everyone, but I hate Tony Stark.
Both men laugh.
.........
Death, Deadpool and Wolverine continue skipping through a cemetery, pausing to dance a circle around Jack Kirby's headstone.
They run into Rhodey Rhodes, who looks a little depressed.
WOLVERINE: Why the long face, bub?
RHODEY: I put up with Tony Stark's bullshit for over a decade, you guys. And all I have to show for it is that I didn't die a horrible trope.
DEATH and DEADPOOL: Like Nat, Vanessa and Thor's mom!
RHODEY: I mean, that fucking raccoon got his space family and tree friend back. Thor got Absolved of responsibilities and can be the pudgy space Lewbowski he apparently always wanted to be. Hulk is having to invent new forms of birth control for himself now that he has discovered adjectives. Antman and the serial killer got their families back. Nebula got her sister back. Valkyrie is now Queen of Asgard. Pretty sure Wong got that sandwich he wanted...
Death snaps her fingers. Rhodes's clothes transform into Buck Swope's red western apparel, and Stan Bush's "You've Got the Touch" plays. She Hulk rides by on roller skates motioning him to follow her.
RHODES: Wow! Thanks death!
......
Magneto, Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel are sitting on a nearby park bench.
MAGNETO: My dear daughter who I have not seen in a very long time and could not assist due to complicated legal issues, please explain to me why the Wakandans coudln't just fix him now that the stone is removed, baring in mind that he is an android?
WANDA: Apparently because I don't have a white or green penis.
CAPTAIN MARVEL: Oh snap!
Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch high five, then sigh and glare at the camera.
MAGNETO: Doesn't Vision have a green....
VISION: I sure do!
CAPTAIN MARVEL: I didn't need to know that!
VISION: And I brought Captain Marve a Cookie Puss!
CAPTAIN MARVEL: Wow! My life is now complete!
......
Black Widow and 2018 Gamora are just standing around on Voromir, looking annoyed.
GAMORA They're still making a solo movie about you, right?
BLACK WIDOW: Yes...?
Monday, February 4, 2019
Yes, Virginia...
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam needs to take responsibility, own up to his failure to address his racist past until it was exposed, and set an example by stepping down. Yes, people can change and his heart may be in the right place now, but he needs to see the bigger context - that this is a symptom of a bigger societal problem.
I’ve seen a number of people ask if they should be taken to task for things they did in their youth that could be construed as racist later in life. The answer is yes, you should at least acknowledge it, do some soul searching and confront yourself over what led you to assume that was an okay thing to do. If you can’t do that, you’re either an emotionally stunted jackoff or just okay with being a racist asshole. And yes, before anyone brings it up, I am pretty embarrassed by and ashamed of being paraded around in a paper bag vest and headdress while holding an oatmeal tom-tom in kindergarten. Well-meaning or not, it is something that I understand to be hurtful to my friends who are Native American.
With that in mind, Ralph Northam was 24 when the offending photo was attached to the page dedicated to him in his medical school yearbook. That’s about fifteen years beyond any possible too-young-to-know-any-better mark, if you want to open that can of worms.
The photo isn’t of a little kid in well intentioned but ill-advised blackface doing an in-character oral report on the accomplishments of George Washington Carver. It shows an adult man in full minstrel show attire leaning in to an adult klansman. This is a joke to those two men - mocking and terrorizing the descendants of slaves. There is no context in which this could have occurred that this could ever be innocent in the mid 80s. What the photo depicts are two white, southern, racist douchebags reveling in being white, racist, southern douchebags.
This kind of shit still goes on all the time on college campuses. I guarantee you, some stupid frat somewhere started taking notes the moment the news broke and we will see recreations of the photo. There needs to be consequences, otherwise the message to those assholes is going to be that one can be a racist shitbird in college and remain in office when exposed.
Oh, but Ralph now claims that he isn’t even in the photo. He thought it was a different one of him in blackface as Michael Jackson until he saw it just the other day. That still isn’t excusable at 24, and shows that he was still totally okay with the afore mentioned white, racist, southern douchebagggery being associated with his academic career for 35 years. Also, that same yearbook also refers to a nickname of his that I will not repeat here.
Ralph says he wants to turn this into a learning moment. He has only been in politics since 2007 and it wasn’t okay then. If he wanted a learning moment, he should have addressed a problematic history when he first entered the fray twelve years ago.
But hey, Ralph, let's have a learning moment. Virginia is the state that hanged John Brown for the abolitionist uprising at Harper's Ferry a year and a half prior to the Civil War. Brown was a traitor in his time, but he was also a rebel underdog who died fighting for the liberty and freedom of others. The Virginia General Assembly doesn’t acknowledge Brown, but they did make national news for celebrating the legacy of Robert E. Lee while Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax - an African American - sat out alone in protest just two fucking weeks ago. Lee was a traitor to our republic who fought to preserve a status quo that relied on and celebrated the kidnapping, rape, dehumanization and enslavement of others to attain that “gentler way of life” that the Cracker Barrel set like to talk about when pressed on the matter. If you didn't call for a learning moment then, don't call for one now.
I’ve seen a number of people ask if they should be taken to task for things they did in their youth that could be construed as racist later in life. The answer is yes, you should at least acknowledge it, do some soul searching and confront yourself over what led you to assume that was an okay thing to do. If you can’t do that, you’re either an emotionally stunted jackoff or just okay with being a racist asshole. And yes, before anyone brings it up, I am pretty embarrassed by and ashamed of being paraded around in a paper bag vest and headdress while holding an oatmeal tom-tom in kindergarten. Well-meaning or not, it is something that I understand to be hurtful to my friends who are Native American.
With that in mind, Ralph Northam was 24 when the offending photo was attached to the page dedicated to him in his medical school yearbook. That’s about fifteen years beyond any possible too-young-to-know-any-better mark, if you want to open that can of worms.
The photo isn’t of a little kid in well intentioned but ill-advised blackface doing an in-character oral report on the accomplishments of George Washington Carver. It shows an adult man in full minstrel show attire leaning in to an adult klansman. This is a joke to those two men - mocking and terrorizing the descendants of slaves. There is no context in which this could have occurred that this could ever be innocent in the mid 80s. What the photo depicts are two white, southern, racist douchebags reveling in being white, racist, southern douchebags.
This kind of shit still goes on all the time on college campuses. I guarantee you, some stupid frat somewhere started taking notes the moment the news broke and we will see recreations of the photo. There needs to be consequences, otherwise the message to those assholes is going to be that one can be a racist shitbird in college and remain in office when exposed.
Oh, but Ralph now claims that he isn’t even in the photo. He thought it was a different one of him in blackface as Michael Jackson until he saw it just the other day. That still isn’t excusable at 24, and shows that he was still totally okay with the afore mentioned white, racist, southern douchebagggery being associated with his academic career for 35 years. Also, that same yearbook also refers to a nickname of his that I will not repeat here.
Ralph says he wants to turn this into a learning moment. He has only been in politics since 2007 and it wasn’t okay then. If he wanted a learning moment, he should have addressed a problematic history when he first entered the fray twelve years ago.
But hey, Ralph, let's have a learning moment. Virginia is the state that hanged John Brown for the abolitionist uprising at Harper's Ferry a year and a half prior to the Civil War. Brown was a traitor in his time, but he was also a rebel underdog who died fighting for the liberty and freedom of others. The Virginia General Assembly doesn’t acknowledge Brown, but they did make national news for celebrating the legacy of Robert E. Lee while Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax - an African American - sat out alone in protest just two fucking weeks ago. Lee was a traitor to our republic who fought to preserve a status quo that relied on and celebrated the kidnapping, rape, dehumanization and enslavement of others to attain that “gentler way of life” that the Cracker Barrel set like to talk about when pressed on the matter. If you didn't call for a learning moment then, don't call for one now.
Monday, January 14, 2019
Blogness 1/14/19
1/14/19
Sunday morning, I swung by Bull Moose in Scarborough while getting new wipers and shoe laces in the area.
Two years later, it still feels a little weird going in there. I have to stop myself from organizing and being nitpicky when I'm in there, which is why I do most of my shopping at the Mill Creek store now. It's not my job anymore, I respect the current management, and understand possibly better than anyone the challenges they face.
While there, I ordered the new Flesh Eaters album, "I Used to be Pretty", which comes out on Friday.
The Flesh Eaters are an old LA punk band that features members of X (John Doe, DJ Bonebreak) and the Blasters (Dave Alvin, Bill Bateman) and frequently played with X, The Gun Club and the Cramps. I guess you could call them a supergroup, though the band formed with this line up in the late 70s around singer Chris D., before any of the other bands were especially big. In terms of sound, think a mix of Fear's aggressive vocal abrasiveness, The Gun Club's poetry and The Violent Femme's creative percussion. Their album Forever Came Today is one of my favorite forgotten gems of the old-school LA punk scene and their song "My Life To Live" in particular is one of my all-time favorite punk songs.
*****
I've been meaning to post a Best of 2018 list, but I've been busy and get stuck writing up blurbs about the music. The TLDR version (wghich may be all you get) is:
New Stuff:
Death Valley Girls - Darkness Rains
Sleep - the Sciences
Turbonegro - Rocknroll Machine
Dog Party - Hit and Run
Zeke - Hellbender
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
Joe Strummer - Joe Strummer 101
Tiger Army - Dark Paradise EP
Distillers - Blood in Gutters/Man vs. Magnet single
Old Stuff:
Hawkwind - In Search of Space, Space Ritual, Doremi Laso fatido, Warrior at the Edge of Time (AKA - the Lemmy stuff)
Massive Attack - Protection, Mezzanine
Tricky - Maxinquaye
Joe Strumner - Earthquake Weather
Big Audio Dynamite - Big Audio Dynamite, 10 Upping Street
Looking forward to:
Flesh Eaters - I Used To be Pretty (Jan. 18th)
Giuda - E.V.A. (april 2019)
Distillers - new album (in studio now - title, date TBD)
Sunday morning, I swung by Bull Moose in Scarborough while getting new wipers and shoe laces in the area.
Two years later, it still feels a little weird going in there. I have to stop myself from organizing and being nitpicky when I'm in there, which is why I do most of my shopping at the Mill Creek store now. It's not my job anymore, I respect the current management, and understand possibly better than anyone the challenges they face.
While there, I ordered the new Flesh Eaters album, "I Used to be Pretty", which comes out on Friday.
The Flesh Eaters are an old LA punk band that features members of X (John Doe, DJ Bonebreak) and the Blasters (Dave Alvin, Bill Bateman) and frequently played with X, The Gun Club and the Cramps. I guess you could call them a supergroup, though the band formed with this line up in the late 70s around singer Chris D., before any of the other bands were especially big. In terms of sound, think a mix of Fear's aggressive vocal abrasiveness, The Gun Club's poetry and The Violent Femme's creative percussion. Their album Forever Came Today is one of my favorite forgotten gems of the old-school LA punk scene and their song "My Life To Live" in particular is one of my all-time favorite punk songs.
*****
I've been meaning to post a Best of 2018 list, but I've been busy and get stuck writing up blurbs about the music. The TLDR version (wghich may be all you get) is:
New Stuff:
Death Valley Girls - Darkness Rains
Sleep - the Sciences
Turbonegro - Rocknroll Machine
Dog Party - Hit and Run
Zeke - Hellbender
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
Joe Strummer - Joe Strummer 101
Tiger Army - Dark Paradise EP
Distillers - Blood in Gutters/Man vs. Magnet single
Old Stuff:
Hawkwind - In Search of Space, Space Ritual, Doremi Laso fatido, Warrior at the Edge of Time (AKA - the Lemmy stuff)
Massive Attack - Protection, Mezzanine
Tricky - Maxinquaye
Joe Strumner - Earthquake Weather
Big Audio Dynamite - Big Audio Dynamite, 10 Upping Street
Looking forward to:
Flesh Eaters - I Used To be Pretty (Jan. 18th)
Giuda - E.V.A. (april 2019)
Distillers - new album (in studio now - title, date TBD)
Thursday, February 16, 2017
CHAPTER 2-16-17: 30 PRACTICE QUESTIONS TO GET YOU IN THE RIGHT MINDSET FOR ANY JOB INTERVIEW
What follows are the thirty most effective practice interview
questions ever put to paper. If you spend at least two hours a day
reading over these questions and practicing your answers in front of a
picture of Julie Andrews, you are all but guaranteed* to ace your job
interviews like I always do.
1. Tell me about a time in which someone working with you needed you to hold their hair while they vomited.
What, if anything did you learn from this experience?
2. Suppose that you are a basket of tepid, fried clam strips.
3. Tell me about an experience you have had in which you had to hide unexpected arousal from a politician, member of the clergy or former children's game show host while on the clock.
What did you take away from this experience?
4. How would you go about explaining a Jackson Pollack painting to a blind person while high as balls on mix of bath salts and peyote?
Would you make noises? If so, please perform them now.
Now perform them as Disney's Goofy character.
5. Suppose your supervisor hands you a Leggs pantyhose egg, a straight razor, plastic sheets, and a chloroform soaked rag, points at Loraine, the office gossip, and says "You know what you must do". What do you do with the pantyhose?
6. Tell me about a time in which you had to determine which of your co-workers was a grody hosebeast.
7. Suppose legendary Irish author and artist Christy Brown (of My Left Foot fame) challenged you to leg wrestling match. Would you humor him, and if so, would you go all out, or would you go easy on him?
If you chose to go easy on him, would you be comfortable telling him that you handicapped the match?
8. Would you be willing to move to the Deep South, remove several teeth and gain seventy pounds?
9. Envision a world without consonants. Please, in the English Language of this hypothetical world, explain what a pangolin is to me.
10. Have you ever had to determine which of your co-workers will be stoned to death?
Was it the one you deemed a grody hosebeast?
11. Suppose you found out that Christopher, one of your co-workers, was Philadelphia's notorious Swiss Cheese Pervert. Now, suppose that your elderly, naive, overly-sensitive, and deaf supervisor, Jill, chose to pass you over for a promotion in favor of Christopher. Would you tell Jill about Chris's past behavior?
What, specifically, would you tell Jill?
Now, please repeat that to me while doing an impression of Mister Rogers.
12. Can you kick yourself in the genitals?
That was a demand, not a question.
How did that make you feel?
13. Using only 1930s gangster slang, please explain to me what software packages you may be familiar with.
14. Tell me about a time in which your parents were horribly disappointed in you, not because you had failed at one particular task, but because your entire life up to that moment had been a long, depressing string of mediocrity and awkwardness.
15. Have you ever been in a situation in which you suspected that one of your supervisors was regularly taking part in three-way sex acts with your recently-divorced father and his new, significantly younger girlfriend, Tippi? I KNOW my supervisor is regularly taking part in three-way sex acts with my recently-divorced father and his new, significantly younger girlfriend, Tippi. Please tell me how you would go about confronting Tippi and telling her that she is not welcome at Thanksgiving this year.
16. Please explain to me what you envision a typical work day is like, speaking only in Bad Brains lyrics.
17. Suppose that Diane, one of your co-workers, begins removing her press-on nails at the cafeteria table. More alarmingly, by the time she leaves, there are eleven press-on nails left on the table. How would you go about confronting Diane, and would you even bother mentioning the elevnth nail?
18. Tell me about a time in which you had to explain to a customer that they were actually a mop with googly eyes attached to it.
19. Are you still supposing that you are a basket of tepid, fried clam strips?
20. Can you follow complex instructions after huffing flypaper glue?
21. Randal, your cubicle mate, insists on eating an entire rotisserie chicken with his bare hands between calls. Does that make him more or less repugnant than Diane from question 17.
If you answered that Randal is more repugnant than Diane, would you allow Diane to rub Preparation H on your tummy while singing One Week by Barenaked Ladies to you?
22. Tell me about a time when you had to make a split second decision, and it ended with a co-worker having an abortion.
23. What words can you spell on a calculator?
24. Tell me about a time when a grown man shat himself in front of you at the self-checkout lane at the grocery store.
Would you be comfortable being that man?
25. If your co-worker Jeff had really good abs, but a fucked up pair of saggy man boobs, would you consider letting him fart on your forehead twice a day if it meant that we would provide you with a dental plan?
26. While pinching the tip of your tongue between your right thumb and index finger, please describe how talking to someone with a cleft lip and no eyelids makes you feel.
27. Our company firmly believes in being a non-judgemental environment for people who have had their lower jaws removed in order to better perform mock sex acts on mannequins during board meetings. How would you go about explaining this policy to a group of tween Fundamentalist Christian day camp counselors?
28. Our company is actually extremely judgemental of people who have their lower jaws removed in order to better perform mock sex acts on mannequins during board meetings. Suppose that you found out that both Jeff and Diane were engaging in this activity, and that Jeff was also your supervisor. Would you consider bypassing Jeff in the chain of command in order to report this activity, knowing that it was equally probable that doing so will either result in your immediate termination or a promotion?
29. After undergoing massive restructuring and re-branding, our company has decided to keep you at your current pay grade with full health care for you and your family because one of your children is sick with a horrible disease that causes their body to slowly and agonizingly reject their skeleton. The only catch is that you are now required to cold-call random people, trying to sell them a brand of lavender scented litter and pie tins for people with a crippling fear of water to use in lieu of the toilet. Please explain to me how you go about pitching the people litter and pie tins to someone who is deperate for any human interaction after being lost at sea for a year.
30. Suppose that the person who last sat in the chair you are currently sitting in had a huge, disgusting, prolapsed anus hanging out of the back of their pants. They were also incredibly qualified for the job and were planning on using their entire annual salary for the first seven years to fund research that would be able to eliminate the possibility of anyone ever developing spina bifida again. We, however, have decided to hire you because of the huge, disgusting, prolapsed anus hanging out of the back of their pants. Please come up with a compelling argument to convince me to hire the person with the prolapsed anus without mentioning the spina bifida research, as that would indicate that you were aware of what their salary is.
*the phrase "all but guaranteed" does not actually guarantee anything. I do, however, think these are kinds of valid, if earthy, practice questions for job interviews.
1. Tell me about a time in which someone working with you needed you to hold their hair while they vomited.
What, if anything did you learn from this experience?
2. Suppose that you are a basket of tepid, fried clam strips.
3. Tell me about an experience you have had in which you had to hide unexpected arousal from a politician, member of the clergy or former children's game show host while on the clock.
What did you take away from this experience?
4. How would you go about explaining a Jackson Pollack painting to a blind person while high as balls on mix of bath salts and peyote?
Would you make noises? If so, please perform them now.
Now perform them as Disney's Goofy character.
5. Suppose your supervisor hands you a Leggs pantyhose egg, a straight razor, plastic sheets, and a chloroform soaked rag, points at Loraine, the office gossip, and says "You know what you must do". What do you do with the pantyhose?
6. Tell me about a time in which you had to determine which of your co-workers was a grody hosebeast.
7. Suppose legendary Irish author and artist Christy Brown (of My Left Foot fame) challenged you to leg wrestling match. Would you humor him, and if so, would you go all out, or would you go easy on him?
If you chose to go easy on him, would you be comfortable telling him that you handicapped the match?
8. Would you be willing to move to the Deep South, remove several teeth and gain seventy pounds?
9. Envision a world without consonants. Please, in the English Language of this hypothetical world, explain what a pangolin is to me.
10. Have you ever had to determine which of your co-workers will be stoned to death?
Was it the one you deemed a grody hosebeast?
11. Suppose you found out that Christopher, one of your co-workers, was Philadelphia's notorious Swiss Cheese Pervert. Now, suppose that your elderly, naive, overly-sensitive, and deaf supervisor, Jill, chose to pass you over for a promotion in favor of Christopher. Would you tell Jill about Chris's past behavior?
What, specifically, would you tell Jill?
Now, please repeat that to me while doing an impression of Mister Rogers.
12. Can you kick yourself in the genitals?
That was a demand, not a question.
How did that make you feel?
13. Using only 1930s gangster slang, please explain to me what software packages you may be familiar with.
14. Tell me about a time in which your parents were horribly disappointed in you, not because you had failed at one particular task, but because your entire life up to that moment had been a long, depressing string of mediocrity and awkwardness.
15. Have you ever been in a situation in which you suspected that one of your supervisors was regularly taking part in three-way sex acts with your recently-divorced father and his new, significantly younger girlfriend, Tippi? I KNOW my supervisor is regularly taking part in three-way sex acts with my recently-divorced father and his new, significantly younger girlfriend, Tippi. Please tell me how you would go about confronting Tippi and telling her that she is not welcome at Thanksgiving this year.
16. Please explain to me what you envision a typical work day is like, speaking only in Bad Brains lyrics.
17. Suppose that Diane, one of your co-workers, begins removing her press-on nails at the cafeteria table. More alarmingly, by the time she leaves, there are eleven press-on nails left on the table. How would you go about confronting Diane, and would you even bother mentioning the elevnth nail?
18. Tell me about a time in which you had to explain to a customer that they were actually a mop with googly eyes attached to it.
19. Are you still supposing that you are a basket of tepid, fried clam strips?
20. Can you follow complex instructions after huffing flypaper glue?
21. Randal, your cubicle mate, insists on eating an entire rotisserie chicken with his bare hands between calls. Does that make him more or less repugnant than Diane from question 17.
If you answered that Randal is more repugnant than Diane, would you allow Diane to rub Preparation H on your tummy while singing One Week by Barenaked Ladies to you?
22. Tell me about a time when you had to make a split second decision, and it ended with a co-worker having an abortion.
23. What words can you spell on a calculator?
24. Tell me about a time when a grown man shat himself in front of you at the self-checkout lane at the grocery store.
Would you be comfortable being that man?
25. If your co-worker Jeff had really good abs, but a fucked up pair of saggy man boobs, would you consider letting him fart on your forehead twice a day if it meant that we would provide you with a dental plan?
26. While pinching the tip of your tongue between your right thumb and index finger, please describe how talking to someone with a cleft lip and no eyelids makes you feel.
27. Our company firmly believes in being a non-judgemental environment for people who have had their lower jaws removed in order to better perform mock sex acts on mannequins during board meetings. How would you go about explaining this policy to a group of tween Fundamentalist Christian day camp counselors?
28. Our company is actually extremely judgemental of people who have their lower jaws removed in order to better perform mock sex acts on mannequins during board meetings. Suppose that you found out that both Jeff and Diane were engaging in this activity, and that Jeff was also your supervisor. Would you consider bypassing Jeff in the chain of command in order to report this activity, knowing that it was equally probable that doing so will either result in your immediate termination or a promotion?
29. After undergoing massive restructuring and re-branding, our company has decided to keep you at your current pay grade with full health care for you and your family because one of your children is sick with a horrible disease that causes their body to slowly and agonizingly reject their skeleton. The only catch is that you are now required to cold-call random people, trying to sell them a brand of lavender scented litter and pie tins for people with a crippling fear of water to use in lieu of the toilet. Please explain to me how you go about pitching the people litter and pie tins to someone who is deperate for any human interaction after being lost at sea for a year.
30. Suppose that the person who last sat in the chair you are currently sitting in had a huge, disgusting, prolapsed anus hanging out of the back of their pants. They were also incredibly qualified for the job and were planning on using their entire annual salary for the first seven years to fund research that would be able to eliminate the possibility of anyone ever developing spina bifida again. We, however, have decided to hire you because of the huge, disgusting, prolapsed anus hanging out of the back of their pants. Please come up with a compelling argument to convince me to hire the person with the prolapsed anus without mentioning the spina bifida research, as that would indicate that you were aware of what their salary is.
*the phrase "all but guaranteed" does not actually guarantee anything. I do, however, think these are kinds of valid, if earthy, practice questions for job interviews.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Let's Build a Wall... Said Donnie One Day
"LET'S BUILD A WALL..." SAID DONNIE ONE DAY
Alright. Let's talk about the wall, for a moment.
It's a wall!
It's a wall!
Even if it is surrounded by landmines, topped with razor wire and staffed with well-paid half-man-half-honey-badger red bull blooded cyborgs that are all heterosexual Christian crackers where it counts - even if Il Douche doesn't find a way to auction off construction to the
lowest bidder and actually pays someone in full for their work - it's still a stationary object. It can and will be bypassed.
Don't believe me? Look at the security situations in Baghdad and Kabul over the last sixteen years and tell me that you actually have faith in the ability of the U.S. Government to actually seal off 1900 miles of border in seven years time. Look at the corruption and waste that went into our recent war efforts. Now look at Trump's long history of bullfuckery. Do you really think that this fucking guy can be trusted with the construction of anything at this point?
Don't be a schmuck. Reality doesn't work that way.
Also, no desperate person has ever said "Well, fuck, guys. It's a wall. I guess we better go back and let the cartels and/or paramilitary death squads murder us, or just settle for the crushing poverty at home in Central America."
Don't believe me? Look at the security situations in Baghdad and Kabul over the last sixteen years and tell me that you actually have faith in the ability of the U.S. Government to actually seal off 1900 miles of border in seven years time. Look at the corruption and waste that went into our recent war efforts. Now look at Trump's long history of bullfuckery. Do you really think that this fucking guy can be trusted with the construction of anything at this point?
Don't be a schmuck. Reality doesn't work that way.
Also, no desperate person has ever said "Well, fuck, guys. It's a wall. I guess we better go back and let the cartels and/or paramilitary death squads murder us, or just settle for the crushing poverty at home in Central America."
No smuggling operation has ever seen a wall and said "Oh raspberries, my bosom chums! They built a wall! The jig is up! We'll just have to find some other use for all this cocaine!"
American drug users aren't going to be flocking to rehab because President Debate Sniffles decided to build a wall.
American drug users aren't going to be flocking to rehab because President Debate Sniffles decided to build a wall.
Unethical business owners aren't going to start offering an ethical wage for unpleasant jobs because the guy who refused to pay the undocumented Polish workers who helped build the tower named for him decided to build a wall.
War, exploitation and human misery in Central and South America aren't going wither away because of a fucking wall.
And, despite what Il Douche says, no, Mexico is not going to pay for the fucking thing. We are.
But hey, we will have a big token gesture to show the world that we love throwing money at stupid bullshit instead of actually addressing the underlying problems that cause illegal immigration. And, in four to eight years, when the pendulum swings back into the realm of rational thought and/or disenchantment, we'll have a another half-finished, half-assed monument to our impulsive, shortsighted stupidity.
Yaaaaaay.
Yaaaaaay.
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
The Hateful Man's Election Special
Alright! Alright! Alright!
The Hateful Man has heard your pleas to comment on the current state of presidential politics in the United States.
So, how should a Truly Hateful Man vote?
Well, Wendy, like every election year, you have a choice between several rich honkies, two of whom have a somewhat viable chance of winning, and several of whom exist for the sole purpose of keeping their tingle-pants going for another six weeks.
(That's not true. I'm just bitchy when I've been huffing varnish. Hell, I'm not even real. I'm a character like Bob Dylan.)
The Hateful Neophyte may be tempted to vote for Trump. I mean, the guy just kind of screams Hateful Man, right?
Wrong. You're dead wrong, Wendy. And you're stupid and you have a dumb haircut that reminds me of John Denver for some weird fucking reason that might be some kind of strange, uncomfortable turn on for me that I don't want to address right now. But back to Trump.
Actually, never use the phrase "but back to Trump". He's old, and pretty clearly a fucking pig and might think you said "butt, back to Trump" and take it as an opening for inappropriate sexual advances.
Now, going back to the topic of Trump. No, Trump is not a good choice for the Truly Hateful for many, many reasons, not the least of which is that Trump is either a complete mouth breather, or just assumes that everyone else is and addresses us all as such. He speaks to us like Derek Zoolander, and speaks for people who see people who speak like Derek Zoolander as a good choice for leading the motherfucking free world.
His hate is not aimed at the obnoxious, insipid shit we as Hateful Men have to contend with everyday. In fact, his brand of hate only further enables the banality we stand against.
He would turn away immigrants who could improve the cultural make up of our country in order to ensure the ignorant unfettered, intellectually unchallenged access to the Wonder Bread aisle. He invokes the boogeyman of terror while allowing Russia to run roughshod over the human rights of the citizens of Aleppo, creating another generation of foreign terrorists and just straight up giving warm fuzzies to actual domestic terrorists at his rallies.
He disregards science and the intelligence community, insults our allies, and doesn't see or at least doesn't bother to call out the failings of the idea of racist ideology when it is espoused by his supporters.
His public persona doesn't understand why we shouldn't use nuclear weapons or even joke about doing so. I honestly don't know if the man is legitimately that fucking stupid or is just trying to seem macho to people who are.
And therein actually lies the thing that bothers me most about Trump. Yes, all politicians have a public persona. But Trump's public persona is straight-up kayfabe. The things he says, the claims he make are fucking ludicrous when you look at his past words and actions. His ads present us with this Hulk Hogan character, but the reality we've all endured for forty-plus years is unsettling Terry Bollea sex tapes and audio. Hell, the man has even told us that he has a huuuuge dong while standing at a podium. In reality, he's proven himself to be the epitome of yuppie scum, working against the interest of the common people, fucking over friend, foe and complete strangers just to (sort of) make a fucking buck. But even in that regard, he has a long track record of being a shitty businessman who is better at self-promotion than at maintaining an empire.
So what about Hillary? Surely she's just as bad?
No. Hillary represents the status quo. Electing Hillary will probably just ensure a continuation of the political climate of the last eight years. Think a center-left George H.W. Bush. Congress will act as a buffer against any truly radical change because Congress hasn't done jack shit for the last eight with someone more progressive than her in office.
Those who know me know that I am also surprisingly strong supporter of the Second Amendment. Despite what the NRA and the right would have you believe, she's not a threat to your right to bare arms. The most she might do is curtail your ability to hang trucknuts off your vintage Bushmaster, but I kind of doubt even that will happen. I actually kind of suspect she's in bed with the industry.
But what of Benghazi? Why is this one event suddenly a lightning rod of Republican soul-searching on foreign policies, when these same people kiss a picture of Ronald Reagan before bed every night? Why does a party that complains about big government and waste love nothing more than spending years and countless dollars investigating one public figure when nine years ago, their leadership blatantly lied in order to start a war that has killed 20,000+ Americans and their allies and wasted trillions of dollars?
But what about her massive corruption? She's in bed with the Saudis!!! She's a corporate shill who spoke to Wall Street! Her charitable organization took foreign money!!
You do remember that she's running against Donald Fucking Trump, right? Like, there's run-of-the-mill money in politics crap, and then there's this fucking guy.
I'm not telling you to vote for her. I'm just saying I don't mind Hillary in comparison to Trump. That's not to say that she's the bees knees, but given the binary candidates, she's the least insulting one.
So, seriously though, what about third party candidates?
I'd almost endorse Gary Johnson if I didn't completely disagree with most of his platform. I don't believe in non-interventionism, reducing taxes and gutting medicare and social security. I can get behind his faking a heart attack, indicating he'd recently smoked the Devil's Lettuce during a debate policy, though. Look, again, he's running against that fucking guy. Go vote for him if you agree with him.
Speaking honestly and not in character here - Jill Stein is too liberal for me. I'm not saying don't vote for her, though. She seems like a good person. Again, as with Johnson, I just don't agree with her foreign and defense policies. But, yeah, vote for her if you want. It's better than a vote for Trump.
Well then, am I endorsing anyone or anything?
Wendy, if there is one thing that I can get behind in this world, it's that the worst kind of vote is a not him vote. But fuck me, one candidate is so unbelievably shitty that I have to endorse NOT HIM.
The Hateful Man has heard your pleas to comment on the current state of presidential politics in the United States.
So, how should a Truly Hateful Man vote?
Well, Wendy, like every election year, you have a choice between several rich honkies, two of whom have a somewhat viable chance of winning, and several of whom exist for the sole purpose of keeping their tingle-pants going for another six weeks.
(That's not true. I'm just bitchy when I've been huffing varnish. Hell, I'm not even real. I'm a character like Bob Dylan.)
The Hateful Neophyte may be tempted to vote for Trump. I mean, the guy just kind of screams Hateful Man, right?
Wrong. You're dead wrong, Wendy. And you're stupid and you have a dumb haircut that reminds me of John Denver for some weird fucking reason that might be some kind of strange, uncomfortable turn on for me that I don't want to address right now. But back to Trump.
Actually, never use the phrase "but back to Trump". He's old, and pretty clearly a fucking pig and might think you said "butt, back to Trump" and take it as an opening for inappropriate sexual advances.
Now, going back to the topic of Trump. No, Trump is not a good choice for the Truly Hateful for many, many reasons, not the least of which is that Trump is either a complete mouth breather, or just assumes that everyone else is and addresses us all as such. He speaks to us like Derek Zoolander, and speaks for people who see people who speak like Derek Zoolander as a good choice for leading the motherfucking free world.
His hate is not aimed at the obnoxious, insipid shit we as Hateful Men have to contend with everyday. In fact, his brand of hate only further enables the banality we stand against.
He would turn away immigrants who could improve the cultural make up of our country in order to ensure the ignorant unfettered, intellectually unchallenged access to the Wonder Bread aisle. He invokes the boogeyman of terror while allowing Russia to run roughshod over the human rights of the citizens of Aleppo, creating another generation of foreign terrorists and just straight up giving warm fuzzies to actual domestic terrorists at his rallies.
He disregards science and the intelligence community, insults our allies, and doesn't see or at least doesn't bother to call out the failings of the idea of racist ideology when it is espoused by his supporters.
His public persona doesn't understand why we shouldn't use nuclear weapons or even joke about doing so. I honestly don't know if the man is legitimately that fucking stupid or is just trying to seem macho to people who are.
And therein actually lies the thing that bothers me most about Trump. Yes, all politicians have a public persona. But Trump's public persona is straight-up kayfabe. The things he says, the claims he make are fucking ludicrous when you look at his past words and actions. His ads present us with this Hulk Hogan character, but the reality we've all endured for forty-plus years is unsettling Terry Bollea sex tapes and audio. Hell, the man has even told us that he has a huuuuge dong while standing at a podium. In reality, he's proven himself to be the epitome of yuppie scum, working against the interest of the common people, fucking over friend, foe and complete strangers just to (sort of) make a fucking buck. But even in that regard, he has a long track record of being a shitty businessman who is better at self-promotion than at maintaining an empire.
So what about Hillary? Surely she's just as bad?
No. Hillary represents the status quo. Electing Hillary will probably just ensure a continuation of the political climate of the last eight years. Think a center-left George H.W. Bush. Congress will act as a buffer against any truly radical change because Congress hasn't done jack shit for the last eight with someone more progressive than her in office.
Those who know me know that I am also surprisingly strong supporter of the Second Amendment. Despite what the NRA and the right would have you believe, she's not a threat to your right to bare arms. The most she might do is curtail your ability to hang trucknuts off your vintage Bushmaster, but I kind of doubt even that will happen. I actually kind of suspect she's in bed with the industry.
But what of Benghazi? Why is this one event suddenly a lightning rod of Republican soul-searching on foreign policies, when these same people kiss a picture of Ronald Reagan before bed every night? Why does a party that complains about big government and waste love nothing more than spending years and countless dollars investigating one public figure when nine years ago, their leadership blatantly lied in order to start a war that has killed 20,000+ Americans and their allies and wasted trillions of dollars?
But what about her massive corruption? She's in bed with the Saudis!!! She's a corporate shill who spoke to Wall Street! Her charitable organization took foreign money!!
You do remember that she's running against Donald Fucking Trump, right? Like, there's run-of-the-mill money in politics crap, and then there's this fucking guy.
I'm not telling you to vote for her. I'm just saying I don't mind Hillary in comparison to Trump. That's not to say that she's the bees knees, but given the binary candidates, she's the least insulting one.
So, seriously though, what about third party candidates?
I'd almost endorse Gary Johnson if I didn't completely disagree with most of his platform. I don't believe in non-interventionism, reducing taxes and gutting medicare and social security. I can get behind his faking a heart attack, indicating he'd recently smoked the Devil's Lettuce during a debate policy, though. Look, again, he's running against that fucking guy. Go vote for him if you agree with him.
Speaking honestly and not in character here - Jill Stein is too liberal for me. I'm not saying don't vote for her, though. She seems like a good person. Again, as with Johnson, I just don't agree with her foreign and defense policies. But, yeah, vote for her if you want. It's better than a vote for Trump.
Well then, am I endorsing anyone or anything?
Wendy, if there is one thing that I can get behind in this world, it's that the worst kind of vote is a not him vote. But fuck me, one candidate is so unbelievably shitty that I have to endorse NOT HIM.
Friday, April 10, 2015
Damage Case #5: Bikini Kill and KISS
First off, in honor of today being officially proclaimed Riot Grrl Day in Boston, I'm going to discuss Bikini Kill for a moment.
I first heard Bikini Kill immediately after hearing Minor Threat for the first time while on a road trip with my friend Shaun when I was in eighth grade. Something that struck me immediately about them was that they were a contemporary band, aggressively and directly confronting contemporary issues. It's easier to yell anti-Nazi, anti-Reagan, and anti-drug slogans in a room full of like-minded white boys than it is to confront and challenge an entire gender. That was and is the definition of hardcore to me. If you do not listen to, appreciate, respect and support what they did as a band and what they continue to do as individuals and musicians, you are not hardcore.
Bikini Kill helped directly inform my worldview as a humanist. If nothing else, they helped me to understand that as a white, middle class male in the United States, I need to acknowledge that I have had some really shitty attitudes toward women, minorities, gay and trans people ingrained into me and that I can do better. Thank you for calling me out on my shit, Bikini Kill. You helped me develop critical thinking skills in a way that no school ever could.
And now, on the opposite end of the spectrum, let's talk about KISS, which is what I originally set out to write about here.
I recently started listening to the first few Kiss albums after my autistic son, Frankie, began singing "Rock and Roll All Nite" and hearing my friend Gina defend them.
I never especially liked them when I was younger.
My first memory of them involves staring at a picture of the original lineup in the back of what I believe was the third issue of Muppet Magazine (I did my homework here. Muppet Magazine came out in 1983. The picture was of the band in make up. Kiss stopped wearing make up on September 18th, 1983, when Lick It Up was released. Ere go, it was issue 3, which also had a Star Wars inspired cover, making it extremely likely to have been the issue in question). My mother told me that they were evil or something and I'm pretty sure my sister told me that they were lame, so that was the end of it.
I'm pretty sure the first time that I actually heard their music was while watching Dazed and Confused in '94. I remember liking the idea of Kiss at that point, but this was tinged with the knowledge that they had been performing without makeup for over a decade and had devolved into a forgettable buttrock band.
Their reunion and return to wearing makeup in 1996 didn't do much for me. By that time, I was pretty much only listening to East bay punk and just saw it as a cash grab.
And then they just didn't go away and have continued releasing albums, touring and bragging about how many women they had slept with for another twenty years.
But really, now having actively listened to Kiss, Hotter than Hell, Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over and Love Gun, I get it. Kiss were all kinds of awesome in the '70s.
Yes, every song is about fucking or having at least one penis. There's an element of misogyny to the music that is hard not to cringe at, but there's far worse examples out there. But if you can get past that, and just listen to the songs as examples of '70s glam rock, they're pretty fucking awesome in all their ridiculous stupidity. The majority of their lyrics amount to "Euphemism for sex / Same euphemism for sex / Something that rhymes with Venus / let's get undressed / I have a penis / AIDS doesn't exist yet". Their first album has a fucking instrumental track called "Love Theme from Kiss" that is literally an instrumental track for fucking. Yes, their shit is that stupid.
Of course, if their ode to statutory rape, "Christine Sixteen", doesn't make you throw up in your mouth at least a little, there's something wrong with you. But then again, Thee Headcoatees' "My Boyfriend is Learning Karate", Agnostic Front's "Public Assistance" and The Long Tall Texans' cover of "Get Back Wetback" piss me off, too. It's a document of a moment in time when our culture was still pretty gross. I prefer to confront such material, let it get to me for a moment and move on.
Ultimately, though, Kiss are a lot of fun. I just prefer to think that their tour bus exploded in 1978 just after they finished filming Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, thus preventing the next thirty six years of suck.
I first heard Bikini Kill immediately after hearing Minor Threat for the first time while on a road trip with my friend Shaun when I was in eighth grade. Something that struck me immediately about them was that they were a contemporary band, aggressively and directly confronting contemporary issues. It's easier to yell anti-Nazi, anti-Reagan, and anti-drug slogans in a room full of like-minded white boys than it is to confront and challenge an entire gender. That was and is the definition of hardcore to me. If you do not listen to, appreciate, respect and support what they did as a band and what they continue to do as individuals and musicians, you are not hardcore.
Bikini Kill helped directly inform my worldview as a humanist. If nothing else, they helped me to understand that as a white, middle class male in the United States, I need to acknowledge that I have had some really shitty attitudes toward women, minorities, gay and trans people ingrained into me and that I can do better. Thank you for calling me out on my shit, Bikini Kill. You helped me develop critical thinking skills in a way that no school ever could.
And now, on the opposite end of the spectrum, let's talk about KISS, which is what I originally set out to write about here.
I recently started listening to the first few Kiss albums after my autistic son, Frankie, began singing "Rock and Roll All Nite" and hearing my friend Gina defend them.
I never especially liked them when I was younger.
My first memory of them involves staring at a picture of the original lineup in the back of what I believe was the third issue of Muppet Magazine (I did my homework here. Muppet Magazine came out in 1983. The picture was of the band in make up. Kiss stopped wearing make up on September 18th, 1983, when Lick It Up was released. Ere go, it was issue 3, which also had a Star Wars inspired cover, making it extremely likely to have been the issue in question). My mother told me that they were evil or something and I'm pretty sure my sister told me that they were lame, so that was the end of it.
I'm pretty sure the first time that I actually heard their music was while watching Dazed and Confused in '94. I remember liking the idea of Kiss at that point, but this was tinged with the knowledge that they had been performing without makeup for over a decade and had devolved into a forgettable buttrock band.
Their reunion and return to wearing makeup in 1996 didn't do much for me. By that time, I was pretty much only listening to East bay punk and just saw it as a cash grab.
And then they just didn't go away and have continued releasing albums, touring and bragging about how many women they had slept with for another twenty years.
But really, now having actively listened to Kiss, Hotter than Hell, Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over and Love Gun, I get it. Kiss were all kinds of awesome in the '70s.
Yes, every song is about fucking or having at least one penis. There's an element of misogyny to the music that is hard not to cringe at, but there's far worse examples out there. But if you can get past that, and just listen to the songs as examples of '70s glam rock, they're pretty fucking awesome in all their ridiculous stupidity. The majority of their lyrics amount to "Euphemism for sex / Same euphemism for sex / Something that rhymes with Venus / let's get undressed / I have a penis / AIDS doesn't exist yet". Their first album has a fucking instrumental track called "Love Theme from Kiss" that is literally an instrumental track for fucking. Yes, their shit is that stupid.
Of course, if their ode to statutory rape, "Christine Sixteen", doesn't make you throw up in your mouth at least a little, there's something wrong with you. But then again, Thee Headcoatees' "My Boyfriend is Learning Karate", Agnostic Front's "Public Assistance" and The Long Tall Texans' cover of "Get Back Wetback" piss me off, too. It's a document of a moment in time when our culture was still pretty gross. I prefer to confront such material, let it get to me for a moment and move on.
Ultimately, though, Kiss are a lot of fun. I just prefer to think that their tour bus exploded in 1978 just after they finished filming Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, thus preventing the next thirty six years of suck.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Seduction (NSFW)
Ah, Valentines Day! That most dramatic of days when the emotionally insecure either throw meaningless tokens of affection at their romantic partner in an act our modern parlance calls "pitching woo" or blubber about their lack of a woo pitching target.
As you no doubt know or at least moderately suspected, before getting married, I was widely regarded in some circles as one of the great gentleman masters of seduction.
Several months ago, a certain women's magazine that tends to dabble in bad romantic advice asked me to write an article for other men regarding the act of seduction.
Initially, I declined. After all, I am out of the seduction business and a true master of woo does not simply pass on his techniques in widely circulated publications, lest he ruin manhood for all other manly men.
But then, I thought about... the ladies.
Hello,... ladies. You probably cannot see it,... ladies, unless you have installed a hidden camera in my bedroom to catch glimpses of my urethra, but when I said "...ladies" (and I always say, ladies out loud when I type), I paused, cocked my head just slightly, and raised one of my eyebrows... seductively. And you, no doubt, are in the early stages of being in heat.
You're welcome, gents of ...ladies who read this.
As a gentleman master of the act that a Tijuana Bible I found stuffed in a mattress in the basement of a creepy abandoned building in Auburn referred to as "El Seducto", I have learned that the first thing I always must do is think about... the ladies.
(Seriously, gents, you now owe me like two dozen hi-fives here because her buttocks are probably inflamed like a mandrill's face with passion after just those four paragraphs.)
So, ...ladies, if you wish to leave your gentleman lover some pointers about reducing you to some kind of quivering wad of desire that is simultaneously arousing and repugnant, read on. But be warned that this advice is not in any way safe for work, not only because it is filthy, but also because YOU MAY VERY WELL LOOSE ALL SELF CONTROL AND START LIKE TOTALLY MAKING OUT WITH THE NEAREST TALL OBJECT LIKE A MOP OR ARTIFICIAL PLANT!!! In fact, it was deemed so unsafe for work that the publication attempted to have it suppressed.
TWENTY TIPS FOR IDEAL SEDUCTION WHICH ARE GUARANTEED TO LEAD TO SOME FORM OF INTERCOURSE*
1. Leave clusters of your unwashed pubic hair between the pages of her books. Every single woman that has ever been or ever will be alive loves male pubic hair - especially the scraggly ones on the testicles that stick up like Larry Fine's coiffure. The sight of your strange, jaggedly angular ball bush peeking from her copy of "Sisterhood of Sappho" is sure to get her wanting wanton slathered in your greasy duck sauce.
2. As demonstrated in that last tip, find your own word to euphemistically use to refer to her genitals. Or just flat out refer to them as genitals. For example, the phrase "I want to make your genitals foam with scrubbing lust bubbles" can could be construed as downright dashing under some circumstances. Meanwhile, just call your penis your ding dong. Ding-dong has been scientifically proven to be the most erotic word for penis is English and Esperanto.
3. Send pictures of her cat's anus to her cell phone and tell her it's yours.
4. Show her how you like to masturbate. I'm not referring to the actual stroke technique you use, mind you. I'm talking about the shameful, depraved, sad-sack guy shit that you do while masturbating, like making laser noises, talking dirty and aggressively to pictures, and depositing your load in yesterdays socks.
5. Keep an entire dessert cart next to the bed. Women like options and won't find the fact that you actually own a fucking dessert cart in the first place at all disconcerting.
6. Role playing can add some sizzle to ant sexual encounter. A few of my personal favorite scenarios ars "Raffi Backstage", "Feeding Time At the Vulture Orphanage" and "I Had Too Much Pasta, Baby!"
7. Show her that you are confident in your own masculinity, but also willing to get a little freaky by trying on some of her sexier undergarments. Yeah. She'll definitely appreciate that, especially the next time she tries to wear them and discovers that they are all stretched out and covered in your hair.
8. Take a bath in front of her. Make eye contact with her the entire time, especially when you wince while washing your swampy asshole.
9. Save the condom from the first time you consummated your love in a champagne glass filled with vinegar and keep it next to your bed. It's little, sentimental things like that keep them coming back for more.
10. Send her text messages throughout the day reminding her that you really think that it's about time you two try anal. Those in the know call that sexting.
11. Bring a sense of adventure to your sex life by bringing your sex life out of the bed room and into the great outdoors! Places where geese are abundant, feral dogs rummage through your pants to find those small slivers of uneaten jerky you keep in your pockets and the air smells strongly of horse shit and burning tires are sure to set her genitals ablaze with hot, burning pre-sex urine.
12. Write a rap about your lover's body. Work the words Carolina, heinous and mirthing mavity into every other line, then try to get Ja Rule to do a verse. I'm sure his schedules open.
13. Watch pornography together. See what interests her. When that ultimately fails, masturbate alone and sob.
14. Be open and honest with your feelings, especially when you feel like she doesn't have sex with you often enough. She'll find your childish lack of empathy towards her own needs refreshing and will definitely tell you exactly what you can do with your needy peen.
15. Doubtless, every woman fantasizes about having sex with a giant, anthropomorphic penis! With that in mind, construct a giant penis costume out of scraps of flesh-colored nylon and cotton batting, and then thrash about in it on your bed like an epileptic worm.
16. Some foods are natural aphrodisiacs. A floppy six inch lettuce, bologna and cheese sandwich from Subway, for example, will no doubt conjure thoughts of your droopy penis in her subconscious, making her moderately hungry for mediocre, unsatisfying sex. Or, if you want to spice things up but also show that you are passionate about animal rights (and animal rites, har har), slice open the casing for a soy chorizo and dump it's oily, musky contents out onto your chest and plead for her to "feed your mutual needs".
17. All women want their lover to be a true gentleman! With that in mind, start dressing in white suits with powder blue ascots, fanning yourself with a horse racing brochure and refer to her erogenous zones in solely clinical terms. No woman can resist being told that the mere thought of her pubis is giving you the vapors.
18. Arts and crafts time may not sound like a great gateway to debauched sexy times, but that's because you're stupid, Stupid. Trust me, it can be very sexy. Smear glitter glue on your happy trail, leading down to an emerald banana hammock you fashioned out of pipe cleaner. Boom. Yeah. I just blew your mind. Now get ready to craft some sex.
19. They say that the brain is the woman's biggest erogenous zone. While that may be true, your biggest erogenous zone is your penis. Remind her of that by placing subtle reminders that you have a penis on your clothing. Just to clarify, though, do not place things that remind her of the time you actually had a penis that was on your clothing, as that was weird and uncomfortable for both of you. When she sees your reminder and recalls that, yes, beneath your man jeggings and Pat Buchanan man-thong, you do, in fact, have a penis, she will immediately think about your penis and all things she associates with it. Hopefully, one of those things might be limp, sauteed mushrooms.
20. If all else fails and you get desperate, remember that women are human beings, even if you barely are, and that if they actual find you sexually attractive, you probably shouldn't listen to anyone's ideas about seduction besides hers. Above all else, do not ask your parents for advice.
*Sexual intercourse is not the only guaranteed form of intercourse. Intercourse in this instance could be defined as anything from a look of mild revulsion to holding her hair while she projectile vomits the surprisingly inexpensive and indigestible meal you bought her at your nearest Steakhouse Steakhouse Restaurant.
As you no doubt know or at least moderately suspected, before getting married, I was widely regarded in some circles as one of the great gentleman masters of seduction.
Several months ago, a certain women's magazine that tends to dabble in bad romantic advice asked me to write an article for other men regarding the act of seduction.
Initially, I declined. After all, I am out of the seduction business and a true master of woo does not simply pass on his techniques in widely circulated publications, lest he ruin manhood for all other manly men.
But then, I thought about... the ladies.
Hello,... ladies. You probably cannot see it,... ladies, unless you have installed a hidden camera in my bedroom to catch glimpses of my urethra, but when I said "...ladies" (and I always say, ladies out loud when I type), I paused, cocked my head just slightly, and raised one of my eyebrows... seductively. And you, no doubt, are in the early stages of being in heat.
You're welcome, gents of ...ladies who read this.
As a gentleman master of the act that a Tijuana Bible I found stuffed in a mattress in the basement of a creepy abandoned building in Auburn referred to as "El Seducto", I have learned that the first thing I always must do is think about... the ladies.
(Seriously, gents, you now owe me like two dozen hi-fives here because her buttocks are probably inflamed like a mandrill's face with passion after just those four paragraphs.)
So, ...ladies, if you wish to leave your gentleman lover some pointers about reducing you to some kind of quivering wad of desire that is simultaneously arousing and repugnant, read on. But be warned that this advice is not in any way safe for work, not only because it is filthy, but also because YOU MAY VERY WELL LOOSE ALL SELF CONTROL AND START LIKE TOTALLY MAKING OUT WITH THE NEAREST TALL OBJECT LIKE A MOP OR ARTIFICIAL PLANT!!! In fact, it was deemed so unsafe for work that the publication attempted to have it suppressed.
TWENTY TIPS FOR IDEAL SEDUCTION WHICH ARE GUARANTEED TO LEAD TO SOME FORM OF INTERCOURSE*
1. Leave clusters of your unwashed pubic hair between the pages of her books. Every single woman that has ever been or ever will be alive loves male pubic hair - especially the scraggly ones on the testicles that stick up like Larry Fine's coiffure. The sight of your strange, jaggedly angular ball bush peeking from her copy of "Sisterhood of Sappho" is sure to get her wanting wanton slathered in your greasy duck sauce.
2. As demonstrated in that last tip, find your own word to euphemistically use to refer to her genitals. Or just flat out refer to them as genitals. For example, the phrase "I want to make your genitals foam with scrubbing lust bubbles" can could be construed as downright dashing under some circumstances. Meanwhile, just call your penis your ding dong. Ding-dong has been scientifically proven to be the most erotic word for penis is English and Esperanto.
3. Send pictures of her cat's anus to her cell phone and tell her it's yours.
4. Show her how you like to masturbate. I'm not referring to the actual stroke technique you use, mind you. I'm talking about the shameful, depraved, sad-sack guy shit that you do while masturbating, like making laser noises, talking dirty and aggressively to pictures, and depositing your load in yesterdays socks.
5. Keep an entire dessert cart next to the bed. Women like options and won't find the fact that you actually own a fucking dessert cart in the first place at all disconcerting.
6. Role playing can add some sizzle to ant sexual encounter. A few of my personal favorite scenarios ars "Raffi Backstage", "Feeding Time At the Vulture Orphanage" and "I Had Too Much Pasta, Baby!"
7. Show her that you are confident in your own masculinity, but also willing to get a little freaky by trying on some of her sexier undergarments. Yeah. She'll definitely appreciate that, especially the next time she tries to wear them and discovers that they are all stretched out and covered in your hair.
8. Take a bath in front of her. Make eye contact with her the entire time, especially when you wince while washing your swampy asshole.
9. Save the condom from the first time you consummated your love in a champagne glass filled with vinegar and keep it next to your bed. It's little, sentimental things like that keep them coming back for more.
10. Send her text messages throughout the day reminding her that you really think that it's about time you two try anal. Those in the know call that sexting.
11. Bring a sense of adventure to your sex life by bringing your sex life out of the bed room and into the great outdoors! Places where geese are abundant, feral dogs rummage through your pants to find those small slivers of uneaten jerky you keep in your pockets and the air smells strongly of horse shit and burning tires are sure to set her genitals ablaze with hot, burning pre-sex urine.
12. Write a rap about your lover's body. Work the words Carolina, heinous and mirthing mavity into every other line, then try to get Ja Rule to do a verse. I'm sure his schedules open.
13. Watch pornography together. See what interests her. When that ultimately fails, masturbate alone and sob.
14. Be open and honest with your feelings, especially when you feel like she doesn't have sex with you often enough. She'll find your childish lack of empathy towards her own needs refreshing and will definitely tell you exactly what you can do with your needy peen.
15. Doubtless, every woman fantasizes about having sex with a giant, anthropomorphic penis! With that in mind, construct a giant penis costume out of scraps of flesh-colored nylon and cotton batting, and then thrash about in it on your bed like an epileptic worm.
16. Some foods are natural aphrodisiacs. A floppy six inch lettuce, bologna and cheese sandwich from Subway, for example, will no doubt conjure thoughts of your droopy penis in her subconscious, making her moderately hungry for mediocre, unsatisfying sex. Or, if you want to spice things up but also show that you are passionate about animal rights (and animal rites, har har), slice open the casing for a soy chorizo and dump it's oily, musky contents out onto your chest and plead for her to "feed your mutual needs".
17. All women want their lover to be a true gentleman! With that in mind, start dressing in white suits with powder blue ascots, fanning yourself with a horse racing brochure and refer to her erogenous zones in solely clinical terms. No woman can resist being told that the mere thought of her pubis is giving you the vapors.
18. Arts and crafts time may not sound like a great gateway to debauched sexy times, but that's because you're stupid, Stupid. Trust me, it can be very sexy. Smear glitter glue on your happy trail, leading down to an emerald banana hammock you fashioned out of pipe cleaner. Boom. Yeah. I just blew your mind. Now get ready to craft some sex.
19. They say that the brain is the woman's biggest erogenous zone. While that may be true, your biggest erogenous zone is your penis. Remind her of that by placing subtle reminders that you have a penis on your clothing. Just to clarify, though, do not place things that remind her of the time you actually had a penis that was on your clothing, as that was weird and uncomfortable for both of you. When she sees your reminder and recalls that, yes, beneath your man jeggings and Pat Buchanan man-thong, you do, in fact, have a penis, she will immediately think about your penis and all things she associates with it. Hopefully, one of those things might be limp, sauteed mushrooms.
20. If all else fails and you get desperate, remember that women are human beings, even if you barely are, and that if they actual find you sexually attractive, you probably shouldn't listen to anyone's ideas about seduction besides hers. Above all else, do not ask your parents for advice.
*Sexual intercourse is not the only guaranteed form of intercourse. Intercourse in this instance could be defined as anything from a look of mild revulsion to holding her hair while she projectile vomits the surprisingly inexpensive and indigestible meal you bought her at your nearest Steakhouse Steakhouse Restaurant.
Friday, January 30, 2015
The Duel
Driving in Portsmouth, New Hampshire presents a distinct set of challenges, even on a good day in a compact car. The city's narrow, one way streets and overabundance of uppity, traffic-oblivious gentry require you to be on constant look out for pedestrians and you need to know the route you are taking like the back of your hand. You also have to be on the lookout for those drivers that have become so hopelessly lost in the maze of one-way streets and back alleys that they have stopped even giving an iota of a crap about common sense and traffic laws, and will do anything to get back to the turnpike. Wednesday afternoon, I encountered one such person.
Portsmouth had been battered pretty heavily by Tuesday's blizzard, though their cleanup efforts had been mores successful than those of my beloved Portland's. The main roads were clear and salted, and they even had cleared off the commercial loading zone we use. After visiting my destination, I made my way back to the van, thinking that wasn't so bad.
I was about to turn left onto Porter Street, when a car came zipping by, going the wrong direction. Porter is a one-way street, little more than a back alley, barely wide enough for the van. Apparently, there is an obscure clause in New Hampshire's weird, Libertarian laws, nestled somewhere towards the end of the "living free" portion, right on the cusp of the "or dying" section that apparently negates the meaning of one way street signs on days following blizzards for the elderly and feeble of mind. I say this because a minute later, as I was well past the point of being able to do anything besides move forward, I came face-to-face with a minivan, driven by an Orville Redenbacher looking chap, again headed the wrong way.
I stopped, and waited for the other driver to start backing up. He didn't. Instead, he looked sheepishly at me, clearly aware of the fact that he'd been caught doing something incredibly stupid, but unwilling to do anything to rectify the matter because New Hampshire.
No, I did not flash the Old Hoss at him. Were I in my own vehicle, I would have, but I try to remain professional when on the road. Instead, I gave him the universal pointy speak sign for "Sir, you are going the wrong way down a snowy, one way street and have a much larger vehicle coming towards you." You know the one. You stretch your arms out to your sides with your palms up like they are weighing something while swinging your head back and forth like a king cobra to signify "I am deeply exasperated with you. What is your intention?!".
He continued staring at me, now with sad, puppy dog eyes.
I pointed to the one way street sign behind me, then pointed at him and motioned for him to move back.
Nothing.
More gesticulating followed. I tried to indicate that I was on an incline, in the snow in a much larger vehicle and there was no possible way for me to safely back up, which can be translated as "slope-hand car backwards-slash-too big-narrow alley-you clod."
Nothing.
I repeated the gestures, this time more frantically.
Finally, the light bulb turned on. He started rolling forward again, edging towards the entrance to the parking garage to my immediate left, until he couldn't get proceed any further.
I slammed my head down against the wheel, screamed some Spanish obscenities about his mother's occupation, then decided to cut my losses and push on through. While I did not actually collide with his vehicle, I came within less than an inch of it and got stuck in a snow drift.
I backed out, and looked at him for a moment, hoping he got the picture, but he no longer felt like making eye contact. After two more attempts, I managed to get up on the sidewalk and roll past without crushing him.
I didn't look back, but I think it's safe to assume that he drove down a man hole.
Portsmouth had been battered pretty heavily by Tuesday's blizzard, though their cleanup efforts had been mores successful than those of my beloved Portland's. The main roads were clear and salted, and they even had cleared off the commercial loading zone we use. After visiting my destination, I made my way back to the van, thinking that wasn't so bad.
I was about to turn left onto Porter Street, when a car came zipping by, going the wrong direction. Porter is a one-way street, little more than a back alley, barely wide enough for the van. Apparently, there is an obscure clause in New Hampshire's weird, Libertarian laws, nestled somewhere towards the end of the "living free" portion, right on the cusp of the "or dying" section that apparently negates the meaning of one way street signs on days following blizzards for the elderly and feeble of mind. I say this because a minute later, as I was well past the point of being able to do anything besides move forward, I came face-to-face with a minivan, driven by an Orville Redenbacher looking chap, again headed the wrong way.
I stopped, and waited for the other driver to start backing up. He didn't. Instead, he looked sheepishly at me, clearly aware of the fact that he'd been caught doing something incredibly stupid, but unwilling to do anything to rectify the matter because New Hampshire.
No, I did not flash the Old Hoss at him. Were I in my own vehicle, I would have, but I try to remain professional when on the road. Instead, I gave him the universal pointy speak sign for "Sir, you are going the wrong way down a snowy, one way street and have a much larger vehicle coming towards you." You know the one. You stretch your arms out to your sides with your palms up like they are weighing something while swinging your head back and forth like a king cobra to signify "I am deeply exasperated with you. What is your intention?!".
He continued staring at me, now with sad, puppy dog eyes.
I pointed to the one way street sign behind me, then pointed at him and motioned for him to move back.
Nothing.
More gesticulating followed. I tried to indicate that I was on an incline, in the snow in a much larger vehicle and there was no possible way for me to safely back up, which can be translated as "slope-hand car backwards-slash-too big-narrow alley-you clod."
Nothing.
I repeated the gestures, this time more frantically.
Finally, the light bulb turned on. He started rolling forward again, edging towards the entrance to the parking garage to my immediate left, until he couldn't get proceed any further.
I slammed my head down against the wheel, screamed some Spanish obscenities about his mother's occupation, then decided to cut my losses and push on through. While I did not actually collide with his vehicle, I came within less than an inch of it and got stuck in a snow drift.
I backed out, and looked at him for a moment, hoping he got the picture, but he no longer felt like making eye contact. After two more attempts, I managed to get up on the sidewalk and roll past without crushing him.
I didn't look back, but I think it's safe to assume that he drove down a man hole.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
January 27th, 2015
I guess this would constitute and actual blog post.
...
There's an honest-to-god blizzard raging outside. We're getting somewhere around 2 inches of snow an hour with 15-50mph wind gusts. Earlier this morning, I bundled up in my ordinarily ludicrously impractical collection of cold weather gear (that occasionally doubles as a wasp fighting costume), and wandered out into the squall. I looked like a 6'3", M81 woodland camouflage Jawa in jeans, traipsing through blowing snow.
Shortly after I came back in from my stroll, the wind managed to blow open one of the windows in our kitchen, causing snow to explode out through the plastic seal.
As I was in the middle of shoveling up the mess with a spatula, my phone rang. it was Matty (one of the District Managers), calling to tell me that the company had decided not to open at all today. There was some talk that we might have been attempting to open at noon yesterday, but it was never a sure thing.
I called all the scheduled staff and let them know that we weren't opening. The sheer disappointment in their voices could have easily been misconstrued as tired confusion by a lesser man, but my keen understanding of the human condition told me otherwise.
....
So, it's been a few years since I posted much of anything directly related to my actual life. Here's a quick update for those of you with brain veins itching for an shot of that sweet, syrupy black tar Cargile:
__ Katie and I have been married for five years now. We're living in a rented house in Westbrook, ME near the Gorham town line.
__ Our son, Frankie is four years old. About a year ago, he was diagnosed as falling somewhere low on the Autism spectrum. We're still working our way through the labyrinth of DHHS to try to get him the help he needs. Things were pretty dark for a while, but we're starting to adapt.
__ I'm still working as the warehouse manager for a local record store chain. Due to staff shortages, I've been doubling as a delivery driver one day a week since October. For what it's worth, I really enjoy driving, especially the North run up to Bangor and back. It just makes for some really long days.
__ I don't have much of a social life anymore, outside of work. Frankie's condition makes it difficult for him to cope with change and requires a fairly lockstep schedule, one in which my role in tucking him in at night is pretty crucial. By the time that is over, I have about an hour and a half before I need to be in bed to get a full nights rest before working another 10+ hour day.
__ My musical taste remains in roughly the same trajectory. I listen to a lot of punk, country, blues, psychobilly and old R&B stuff with a bit of doom metal and stoner rock mixed in.
Current Playlist:
__ Kepi Ghoulie -Kepi Goes Country (entire album)
__ Nick Curran and the Nitelifes - Doctor Velvet (entire album)
__ Dog Party - Lost Control (entire album)
__ The Cramps - Look Mom, No Head (entire album)
I guess this would constitute and actual blog post.
...
There's an honest-to-god blizzard raging outside. We're getting somewhere around 2 inches of snow an hour with 15-50mph wind gusts. Earlier this morning, I bundled up in my ordinarily ludicrously impractical collection of cold weather gear (that occasionally doubles as a wasp fighting costume), and wandered out into the squall. I looked like a 6'3", M81 woodland camouflage Jawa in jeans, traipsing through blowing snow.
Shortly after I came back in from my stroll, the wind managed to blow open one of the windows in our kitchen, causing snow to explode out through the plastic seal.
As I was in the middle of shoveling up the mess with a spatula, my phone rang. it was Matty (one of the District Managers), calling to tell me that the company had decided not to open at all today. There was some talk that we might have been attempting to open at noon yesterday, but it was never a sure thing.
I called all the scheduled staff and let them know that we weren't opening. The sheer disappointment in their voices could have easily been misconstrued as tired confusion by a lesser man, but my keen understanding of the human condition told me otherwise.
....
So, it's been a few years since I posted much of anything directly related to my actual life. Here's a quick update for those of you with brain veins itching for an shot of that sweet, syrupy black tar Cargile:
__ Katie and I have been married for five years now. We're living in a rented house in Westbrook, ME near the Gorham town line.
__ Our son, Frankie is four years old. About a year ago, he was diagnosed as falling somewhere low on the Autism spectrum. We're still working our way through the labyrinth of DHHS to try to get him the help he needs. Things were pretty dark for a while, but we're starting to adapt.
__ I'm still working as the warehouse manager for a local record store chain. Due to staff shortages, I've been doubling as a delivery driver one day a week since October. For what it's worth, I really enjoy driving, especially the North run up to Bangor and back. It just makes for some really long days.
__ I don't have much of a social life anymore, outside of work. Frankie's condition makes it difficult for him to cope with change and requires a fairly lockstep schedule, one in which my role in tucking him in at night is pretty crucial. By the time that is over, I have about an hour and a half before I need to be in bed to get a full nights rest before working another 10+ hour day.
__ My musical taste remains in roughly the same trajectory. I listen to a lot of punk, country, blues, psychobilly and old R&B stuff with a bit of doom metal and stoner rock mixed in.
Current Playlist:
__ Kepi Ghoulie -Kepi Goes Country (entire album)
__ Nick Curran and the Nitelifes - Doctor Velvet (entire album)
__ Dog Party - Lost Control (entire album)
__ The Cramps - Look Mom, No Head (entire album)
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Damage Case #4: God Dammit, John Denver!
The only musician my mother listened to when I was a child that really made enough of an impression on me to vividly remember was John Denver.
I have vague memories of drives through the brown, grassy hills of California, bound for my aunt's house in Walnut Creek, staring at one of his cassette's liner notes and thinking he looked like an androgynous church organist or Roy Orbison's foreskin as my family sang along to Annie's Song.
But man, we loved that guy at that moment in time. I mean, Jesus, everybody did when I was kid. He was wholesome. He fucking loved nature, was in Oh God, regularly hung out with the muppets, performed on PBS and just, gosh, represented everything great about America. I've seen footage of motherfucking astronauts singing Take Me Home, Country Roads while in mother fucking space.
Eventually, however, everything changed. My family stopped listening to him in the car, and his cassettes began gathering dust in my mother's cassette drawer.
At some point, I asked my mom if he had any new albums after noticing that he had been absent from our lives for a long time. I don't remember what she said, exactly, but it was dark. Something about his wife and that he was kind of a bad person.
As I sat down to write this entry, I actually started to get curious about why I have such an aversion to the guy based on some forgotten statement that my mother said in the mid '80s It was a quick, passing comment, almost trivial, but it totally shut the door on him. Like, just seeing his smiling, non-threatening face and strangely phallic haircut makes me uncomfortable.
A quick check of his biography on Wikipedia jogged my memory:
Denver and Annie Martell divorced in 1982 and the ensuing property settlement caused Denver to become so enraged he nearly choked his ex-wife, then used a chainsaw to cut the marital bed in half.
Wow.
Upon relating that tidbit to my wife, she looked very confused and horrified, then un-ironically yelled "Goddammit John Denver!"
So, yeah. I'm just going to stop writing about this topic now.
God dammit John Denver indeed.
I have vague memories of drives through the brown, grassy hills of California, bound for my aunt's house in Walnut Creek, staring at one of his cassette's liner notes and thinking he looked like an androgynous church organist or Roy Orbison's foreskin as my family sang along to Annie's Song.
But man, we loved that guy at that moment in time. I mean, Jesus, everybody did when I was kid. He was wholesome. He fucking loved nature, was in Oh God, regularly hung out with the muppets, performed on PBS and just, gosh, represented everything great about America. I've seen footage of motherfucking astronauts singing Take Me Home, Country Roads while in mother fucking space.
Eventually, however, everything changed. My family stopped listening to him in the car, and his cassettes began gathering dust in my mother's cassette drawer.
At some point, I asked my mom if he had any new albums after noticing that he had been absent from our lives for a long time. I don't remember what she said, exactly, but it was dark. Something about his wife and that he was kind of a bad person.
As I sat down to write this entry, I actually started to get curious about why I have such an aversion to the guy based on some forgotten statement that my mother said in the mid '80s It was a quick, passing comment, almost trivial, but it totally shut the door on him. Like, just seeing his smiling, non-threatening face and strangely phallic haircut makes me uncomfortable.
A quick check of his biography on Wikipedia jogged my memory:
Denver and Annie Martell divorced in 1982 and the ensuing property settlement caused Denver to become so enraged he nearly choked his ex-wife, then used a chainsaw to cut the marital bed in half.
Wow.
Upon relating that tidbit to my wife, she looked very confused and horrified, then un-ironically yelled "Goddammit John Denver!"
So, yeah. I'm just going to stop writing about this topic now.
God dammit John Denver indeed.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Damage Case #3: Nirvana
First of all , I have a confession - I do not have any Nirvana albums on my hard drive to listen to while I type this. Instead, i am listening to Mudhoney's "Superfuzz Bigmuff", which I regard as superior to anything Nirvana put out.
If presented with a choice between having to listen to Nirvana's In Utero or the entire Ace of Base catalog, I'd probably go with Ace of Base. That's not a joke. I find In Utero insufferable. More on that later.
Starting back at the beginning, I first heard Nirvana on my thirteenth birthday while riding in the car with my older sister, a few days before my first day of seventh grade. The song was "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and it was just starting to get a little airplay on the local college radio station. If I remember correctly, I initially disliked the song because the melody of the "with the lights out / it's less dangerous / here we are now / entertain us " was catchy, but I couldn't yet make out the words. It's usually a good sign when something like that bothers me, and as the days went on and I started hearing the song more often, it grew on me.
I was sitting at a lunch table packed with former Pettengill Elementry students one day towards the end of the first week of school. We were discussing music, and I mentioned "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Most of the other people at the table hadn't heard it, and the one who claimed to have called me a fag for liking them. Coincidentally, that person later turned out to be gay.
I actually liked "Come As You Are" better than "Teen Spirit", and to this day, it remains one of the few songs actually written by Nirvana that I genuinely love. I remember having an awkward conversation with a friend about the video and how I really liked the melody. She told me that she really didn't like Nirvana because they had a song called lithium.
I didn't end up getting "Nevermind" until much later, but I did have a cd single of "Teen Spirit" that I got in a trade along with a copy of Final Fantasy II for the SNES in exchange for Final Fight. I feel like I got the better part of that deal, even if the liner notes to the single smelled like skunk weed and patchouli.
About a year later, "Incesticide" came out, and I got it for Christmas, along with Minor Threat's complete discography.
(I just switched up, and am listening to Azam Ali's "From Night to the Edge of Day" because it's getting late and I want to unwind.)
"Incesticide" is a compilation of unreleased and older material from early singles, EPs and mix tapes. The best three tracks on the album, in my opinion, are a cover of Devo's "Turnaround" and a pair of Vaselines covers. Those two Vaselines covers, "Molly's Lips" and "Son of a Gun" are actually my favorite Nirvana recordings, which is why Incesticide is the only Nirvana album I still own. In case you're wondering, I sold my copies of "Nevermind" and "In Utero" at a garage sale about 18 years ago.
"In Utero" came out a few weeks into my freshman year of high school. I didn't like it. Maybe I am alone in this sentiment, but when I was severely depressed, suffering from insomnia because I couldn't get the image of my mother's brain pulsing through a crack in her skull and the tinny gurgle of blood choking her airways out of my head, just trying to make it through my day without losing it, listening to some rich junkie who has the world in the motherfucking palm of his hand whine and wallow in his own misery just didn't hold that much appeal for me.
For what it's worth, the MTV unplugged recording is pretty great, but its always bugged me that the strongest songs on the album are the covers. Plus, I hate the way Kurt sings the word "birds".
Hindsight plays a role in my generally negative appraisal of Nirvana, and especially In Utero. Once it stopped being shocking, Kurt Cobain's suicide really just pissed me off. Not just the media attention or his posthumous rise to iconic status, though that fucking droopy dog looking image that wound up plastered on shirts sold at Spencers and Hot Topic still pisses me off. I mean that the act itself really just pissed me off. I know that he was mentally ill and suffering from drug addiction and Crohn's disease, so his judgement was fucked, but he had a wife and kid and countless other people who gave a shit about him. Instead of getting help, he ate a fucking gun.
Even before he offed himself though, my interest was shifting away from mainstream music and more towards punk and hardcore. As I mentioned in my last post, I was listening to the Sex Pistols a lot, along with Crass, punk and hip hop era Beastie Boys and the Dead Kennedys, and my sister had just introduced me to Green Day and the Bouncing Souls. A few months later, I'd run across Rancid, who had a much bigger impact on me.
....
Five years later, on the anniversary of his death, I was running a punk, oi! and hardcore radio show on WRBC. These kids kept calling in, asking me to play Nirvana and sobbing when I would refuse. It almost would have been funny, if they weren't so persistent and whiny.
If presented with a choice between having to listen to Nirvana's In Utero or the entire Ace of Base catalog, I'd probably go with Ace of Base. That's not a joke. I find In Utero insufferable. More on that later.
Starting back at the beginning, I first heard Nirvana on my thirteenth birthday while riding in the car with my older sister, a few days before my first day of seventh grade. The song was "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and it was just starting to get a little airplay on the local college radio station. If I remember correctly, I initially disliked the song because the melody of the "with the lights out / it's less dangerous / here we are now / entertain us " was catchy, but I couldn't yet make out the words. It's usually a good sign when something like that bothers me, and as the days went on and I started hearing the song more often, it grew on me.
I was sitting at a lunch table packed with former Pettengill Elementry students one day towards the end of the first week of school. We were discussing music, and I mentioned "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Most of the other people at the table hadn't heard it, and the one who claimed to have called me a fag for liking them. Coincidentally, that person later turned out to be gay.
I actually liked "Come As You Are" better than "Teen Spirit", and to this day, it remains one of the few songs actually written by Nirvana that I genuinely love. I remember having an awkward conversation with a friend about the video and how I really liked the melody. She told me that she really didn't like Nirvana because they had a song called lithium.
I didn't end up getting "Nevermind" until much later, but I did have a cd single of "Teen Spirit" that I got in a trade along with a copy of Final Fantasy II for the SNES in exchange for Final Fight. I feel like I got the better part of that deal, even if the liner notes to the single smelled like skunk weed and patchouli.
About a year later, "Incesticide" came out, and I got it for Christmas, along with Minor Threat's complete discography.
(I just switched up, and am listening to Azam Ali's "From Night to the Edge of Day" because it's getting late and I want to unwind.)
"Incesticide" is a compilation of unreleased and older material from early singles, EPs and mix tapes. The best three tracks on the album, in my opinion, are a cover of Devo's "Turnaround" and a pair of Vaselines covers. Those two Vaselines covers, "Molly's Lips" and "Son of a Gun" are actually my favorite Nirvana recordings, which is why Incesticide is the only Nirvana album I still own. In case you're wondering, I sold my copies of "Nevermind" and "In Utero" at a garage sale about 18 years ago.
"In Utero" came out a few weeks into my freshman year of high school. I didn't like it. Maybe I am alone in this sentiment, but when I was severely depressed, suffering from insomnia because I couldn't get the image of my mother's brain pulsing through a crack in her skull and the tinny gurgle of blood choking her airways out of my head, just trying to make it through my day without losing it, listening to some rich junkie who has the world in the motherfucking palm of his hand whine and wallow in his own misery just didn't hold that much appeal for me.
For what it's worth, the MTV unplugged recording is pretty great, but its always bugged me that the strongest songs on the album are the covers. Plus, I hate the way Kurt sings the word "birds".
Hindsight plays a role in my generally negative appraisal of Nirvana, and especially In Utero. Once it stopped being shocking, Kurt Cobain's suicide really just pissed me off. Not just the media attention or his posthumous rise to iconic status, though that fucking droopy dog looking image that wound up plastered on shirts sold at Spencers and Hot Topic still pisses me off. I mean that the act itself really just pissed me off. I know that he was mentally ill and suffering from drug addiction and Crohn's disease, so his judgement was fucked, but he had a wife and kid and countless other people who gave a shit about him. Instead of getting help, he ate a fucking gun.
Even before he offed himself though, my interest was shifting away from mainstream music and more towards punk and hardcore. As I mentioned in my last post, I was listening to the Sex Pistols a lot, along with Crass, punk and hip hop era Beastie Boys and the Dead Kennedys, and my sister had just introduced me to Green Day and the Bouncing Souls. A few months later, I'd run across Rancid, who had a much bigger impact on me.
....
Five years later, on the anniversary of his death, I was running a punk, oi! and hardcore radio show on WRBC. These kids kept calling in, asking me to play Nirvana and sobbing when I would refuse. It almost would have been funny, if they weren't so persistent and whiny.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Damage Case #2: Never Mind the Bollucks, Here's The Sex Pistols
Let's talk about the Sex Pistols for a moment, shall we?
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols is, in my opinion, the single best example of punk rock ever recorded. Sure, there are plenty of faults with the band, their formation, talent, originality, convictions and image. They were a punk-themed boy band manufactured by a guy who had previously managed the New York Dolls and failed to coax Cock Sparrer into the role he wanted. I don't think any of that is up for debate at this point.
The thing is, once you get past all the hype and Sid & Nancy bullshit, you have this timeless, genuinely awesome album. It's abrasive, brash, offensive, ballsy and angry. It delves into subject matter like abortion and the holocaust that are still taboo nearly 40 years later. In fact, it's such a solid album that it's kind of the punk equivalent of Dick & Jane. It's often the first punk album people explore and, frequently, that leads to people who have been fans of the genre for a while to start taking it for granted. I was totally guilty of that.
....
My first encounter with the Sex Pistols came one summer night when I was ten years old. My older sister, Kate, and her pen pal from Bangor were watching Sid & Nancy in the living room, and invited me to watch it with them. I was still very sheltered and the drug use in the movie made me really uncomfortable. I eventually walked out, not quite sure why anyone would want to watch people shoot up.
A few months later, however, I saw Return of the Living Dead at a Halloween party at my family's very liberal church, and decided that I wanted to be a punk after all. I asked Kate if she had any of the music from the ROTLD soundtrack. She didn't, but she gave me a tape with the Great Rock N Roll Swindle on one side and Ministry's "The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste" on the other.
I never made it past the weird Malcolm McLaren opening on Swindle, and just skipped over to the Ministry side because it was the loudest, hardest and fastest thing I had ever heard. Dumb decision, maybe. Whatever. I later played the Ministry side during my 6th Grade Christmas party after my teacher proclaimed her hatred for the New Kids on the Block Christmas album and asked if anyone else had music. I think that makes my misstep forgivable.
Over the next few years, I'd hear the "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen" pretty frequently on mix tapes, WRBC's Hardcore Happy Hour or while hanging out with my sister and her friends, but they weren't really that interesting to me.
Then I turned fifteen.
Fifteen was an ugly year for me. The summer of my fifteenth birthday opened with me finding my mother convulsing in a pool of blood after she had a seizure and split her head open. Meanwhile, my father's PTSD stemming from Vietnam had gotten to the point that he had to spend most of the Summer at the Togus VA hospital. No one really happened to notice that I was pretty severely traumatized by the whole experience because my family was just struggling to get by.
On top of all that wonderfulness, my parents had enrolled me at a private school that had claimed to be better equipped to handle my attention deficit disorder than Lewiston High School. So on top of suffering from severe insomnia, depression and a complete lack of self-worth, I was suddenly having to adjust to a new school that, among other things, was full of wealthy, waspy pricks.
Suddenly, the Sex Pistols music made a lot of sense to me. Beyond everything else, they were a symbol that I could hide behind when I wanted the entire world to just fuck off and leave me alone. But they also had some pretty great songs. I could relate to "No Feelings" and "Pretty Vacant", that desire to kick people in the head, mocking people's joy, ridiculing how hollow the beautiful, happy people around me seemed.
One of the worst parts about the school was that the bus ride in and out took nearly an hour. I'd have to get up at five and wouldn't get home until nearly six thirty most days. I spent the bulk of those rides slumped up against a window near the back of the bus, drowning out the world with my walkman. "Never Mind the Bollucks" was one of my albums of choice for those rides.
...
Eventually, I stopped listening to them. Maybe I burned out on them, or maybe I just scratched the CD too much for it to play in my stereo. Whatever the reason, I don't remember listening to them very often between the ages of seventeen and thirty-two.
One day, while cleaning out my apartment during my move from 77 to 48 Congress Street, I was listening to the Casualties station on Pandora, when "No Feelings" came on. Suddenly I was hearing the song with an adult set of years that had been actively listening to and learning about music for a good fifteen years, dissecting and interpreting its meaning and appreciating how influential it had been for so many bands I'd fallen in love with since. It was like a revelation. I dug out my damaged copy of "Never Mind the Bollucks" and attempted to burn it onto my computer. I managed to copy most of the songs, and downloaded the remainder. It held up. Hell, I liked it better. It's been on a pretty steady rotation ever since.
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols is, in my opinion, the single best example of punk rock ever recorded. Sure, there are plenty of faults with the band, their formation, talent, originality, convictions and image. They were a punk-themed boy band manufactured by a guy who had previously managed the New York Dolls and failed to coax Cock Sparrer into the role he wanted. I don't think any of that is up for debate at this point.
The thing is, once you get past all the hype and Sid & Nancy bullshit, you have this timeless, genuinely awesome album. It's abrasive, brash, offensive, ballsy and angry. It delves into subject matter like abortion and the holocaust that are still taboo nearly 40 years later. In fact, it's such a solid album that it's kind of the punk equivalent of Dick & Jane. It's often the first punk album people explore and, frequently, that leads to people who have been fans of the genre for a while to start taking it for granted. I was totally guilty of that.
....
My first encounter with the Sex Pistols came one summer night when I was ten years old. My older sister, Kate, and her pen pal from Bangor were watching Sid & Nancy in the living room, and invited me to watch it with them. I was still very sheltered and the drug use in the movie made me really uncomfortable. I eventually walked out, not quite sure why anyone would want to watch people shoot up.
A few months later, however, I saw Return of the Living Dead at a Halloween party at my family's very liberal church, and decided that I wanted to be a punk after all. I asked Kate if she had any of the music from the ROTLD soundtrack. She didn't, but she gave me a tape with the Great Rock N Roll Swindle on one side and Ministry's "The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste" on the other.
I never made it past the weird Malcolm McLaren opening on Swindle, and just skipped over to the Ministry side because it was the loudest, hardest and fastest thing I had ever heard. Dumb decision, maybe. Whatever. I later played the Ministry side during my 6th Grade Christmas party after my teacher proclaimed her hatred for the New Kids on the Block Christmas album and asked if anyone else had music. I think that makes my misstep forgivable.
Over the next few years, I'd hear the "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen" pretty frequently on mix tapes, WRBC's Hardcore Happy Hour or while hanging out with my sister and her friends, but they weren't really that interesting to me.
Then I turned fifteen.
Fifteen was an ugly year for me. The summer of my fifteenth birthday opened with me finding my mother convulsing in a pool of blood after she had a seizure and split her head open. Meanwhile, my father's PTSD stemming from Vietnam had gotten to the point that he had to spend most of the Summer at the Togus VA hospital. No one really happened to notice that I was pretty severely traumatized by the whole experience because my family was just struggling to get by.
On top of all that wonderfulness, my parents had enrolled me at a private school that had claimed to be better equipped to handle my attention deficit disorder than Lewiston High School. So on top of suffering from severe insomnia, depression and a complete lack of self-worth, I was suddenly having to adjust to a new school that, among other things, was full of wealthy, waspy pricks.
Suddenly, the Sex Pistols music made a lot of sense to me. Beyond everything else, they were a symbol that I could hide behind when I wanted the entire world to just fuck off and leave me alone. But they also had some pretty great songs. I could relate to "No Feelings" and "Pretty Vacant", that desire to kick people in the head, mocking people's joy, ridiculing how hollow the beautiful, happy people around me seemed.
One of the worst parts about the school was that the bus ride in and out took nearly an hour. I'd have to get up at five and wouldn't get home until nearly six thirty most days. I spent the bulk of those rides slumped up against a window near the back of the bus, drowning out the world with my walkman. "Never Mind the Bollucks" was one of my albums of choice for those rides.
...
Eventually, I stopped listening to them. Maybe I burned out on them, or maybe I just scratched the CD too much for it to play in my stereo. Whatever the reason, I don't remember listening to them very often between the ages of seventeen and thirty-two.
One day, while cleaning out my apartment during my move from 77 to 48 Congress Street, I was listening to the Casualties station on Pandora, when "No Feelings" came on. Suddenly I was hearing the song with an adult set of years that had been actively listening to and learning about music for a good fifteen years, dissecting and interpreting its meaning and appreciating how influential it had been for so many bands I'd fallen in love with since. It was like a revelation. I dug out my damaged copy of "Never Mind the Bollucks" and attempted to burn it onto my computer. I managed to copy most of the songs, and downloaded the remainder. It held up. Hell, I liked it better. It's been on a pretty steady rotation ever since.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Damage Case #1: Rancid
I've decided to just start listening to my favorite bands/albums and just write about my experiences relating to them. I'm not sure where it will take me, but I'm just hoping to get the creative juices flowing with it.
....
Two years ago, my wife came back from the local market up the street, looking perplexed. When I asked her what was up, she explained that this kid at the store had seen our two year old son's D.I.Y. Rancid shirt and felt the need to tell her that he had liked their first album, but felt that they had subsequently sold out. She was really confused as to why this fucking kid felt the need to talk shit about my kids shirt. I explained to her that he was an elitist, hipster fuck.
Rancid are, hands down, my favorite band of all time. They're the band that made me fall in love with guitars and the band that my friends and I bonded over in high school. They've consistently put out great punk albums for the last twenty years. They've done more to support the worldwide punk, oi!, ska and psychobilly scenes than any other band I can think of. They've employed friends of mine and given smaller bands chances to open for them.
But of course, Rancid committed the cardinal sin of being slightly successful in the mid '90s. Therefore, idiot kids who were still shitting their diapers when that happened who feel the need to score street cred spew canned put downs when you mention that you like them. Its a fucking bullshit attitude that runs deep through the punk community, this double standard not applied to the Clash, the Cramps or any of the older bands by people hoping to count coup.
....
I purchased Rancid's "Let's Go!" at the Strawberries in Auburn on the Friday of the first week of my sophomore year of high school. My friend Erin worked there, and I'd gone in hoping to see her. It was a random purchase. I didn't realize the Op Ivy connection, and just picked it up because of the picture of the band on the back of the cover looked badass.
I will never forget hearing the opening feedback of "Nihilism" through my headphones for the first time. It was like a sucker punch to the gut. I immediately fell in love. They were singing about their lives, their friends, their neighborhoods, feeling poor and alienated. It was the first time I really ever felt a personal connection to music. It changed my fucking life. I work in a record store today because I want to facilitate that experience to other fucked up kids.
....
It was late in the afternoon. The North Hamptom Fairgrounds were hot and dusty. I'd fought my way to the front of the crowd to see Rancid's set at Warped Tour '98. They were going on late and would only be playing a short set. The rumor I'd heard was that The Cherry Poppin' Daddies had been little bitches when it was raining during their scheduled performance time because they didn't want to damage their zoot suits. This, in turn, had cut into the time allotted for Dropkick Murphy's set. Now, this was Dropkick's only show in the Boston area that summer, and the New England punk and skinhead scene was there in full force to see them. Rancid had supposedly volunteered to give up some of their set time so that DKM could play a full set.
It was over 100 degrees, and water cost an arm, a leg and a decent view of the stage. I opted for dehydration and claustrophobia, and clutched the guard rail to see my favorite band. I honestly don't remember all that much of the actual performance because I was so uncomfortable. But at the end of the set, I found myself directly in front of Lars as he was unplugging his guitar. He had a bottle of water at his feet. Slightly starstruck, I summoned up some courage and asked him if I could have what was left of his water. He smiled and passed it over to me. It was like the kid getting the football players towel.
....
About eleven or twelve years ago, I was looking through the rockabilly vinyl at Amoeba Records on the Sunset Strip while visiting my cousin in LA. I noticed this guy on the other side of the bin dressed in a floppy hat and a loose fitting white shirt had a 101ers tattoo on his neck. After a moment of disbelief, I realized that it was, in fact, Tim Armstrong. We made eye contact and exchanged nods, then went back to browsing. Two music nerds being nerdy in Music Nerd Mecca. It was this amazing, quiet moment, something I will always treasure.
....
Two years ago, my wife came back from the local market up the street, looking perplexed. When I asked her what was up, she explained that this kid at the store had seen our two year old son's D.I.Y. Rancid shirt and felt the need to tell her that he had liked their first album, but felt that they had subsequently sold out. She was really confused as to why this fucking kid felt the need to talk shit about my kids shirt. I explained to her that he was an elitist, hipster fuck.
Rancid are, hands down, my favorite band of all time. They're the band that made me fall in love with guitars and the band that my friends and I bonded over in high school. They've consistently put out great punk albums for the last twenty years. They've done more to support the worldwide punk, oi!, ska and psychobilly scenes than any other band I can think of. They've employed friends of mine and given smaller bands chances to open for them.
But of course, Rancid committed the cardinal sin of being slightly successful in the mid '90s. Therefore, idiot kids who were still shitting their diapers when that happened who feel the need to score street cred spew canned put downs when you mention that you like them. Its a fucking bullshit attitude that runs deep through the punk community, this double standard not applied to the Clash, the Cramps or any of the older bands by people hoping to count coup.
....
I purchased Rancid's "Let's Go!" at the Strawberries in Auburn on the Friday of the first week of my sophomore year of high school. My friend Erin worked there, and I'd gone in hoping to see her. It was a random purchase. I didn't realize the Op Ivy connection, and just picked it up because of the picture of the band on the back of the cover looked badass.
I will never forget hearing the opening feedback of "Nihilism" through my headphones for the first time. It was like a sucker punch to the gut. I immediately fell in love. They were singing about their lives, their friends, their neighborhoods, feeling poor and alienated. It was the first time I really ever felt a personal connection to music. It changed my fucking life. I work in a record store today because I want to facilitate that experience to other fucked up kids.
....
It was late in the afternoon. The North Hamptom Fairgrounds were hot and dusty. I'd fought my way to the front of the crowd to see Rancid's set at Warped Tour '98. They were going on late and would only be playing a short set. The rumor I'd heard was that The Cherry Poppin' Daddies had been little bitches when it was raining during their scheduled performance time because they didn't want to damage their zoot suits. This, in turn, had cut into the time allotted for Dropkick Murphy's set. Now, this was Dropkick's only show in the Boston area that summer, and the New England punk and skinhead scene was there in full force to see them. Rancid had supposedly volunteered to give up some of their set time so that DKM could play a full set.
It was over 100 degrees, and water cost an arm, a leg and a decent view of the stage. I opted for dehydration and claustrophobia, and clutched the guard rail to see my favorite band. I honestly don't remember all that much of the actual performance because I was so uncomfortable. But at the end of the set, I found myself directly in front of Lars as he was unplugging his guitar. He had a bottle of water at his feet. Slightly starstruck, I summoned up some courage and asked him if I could have what was left of his water. He smiled and passed it over to me. It was like the kid getting the football players towel.
....
About eleven or twelve years ago, I was looking through the rockabilly vinyl at Amoeba Records on the Sunset Strip while visiting my cousin in LA. I noticed this guy on the other side of the bin dressed in a floppy hat and a loose fitting white shirt had a 101ers tattoo on his neck. After a moment of disbelief, I realized that it was, in fact, Tim Armstrong. We made eye contact and exchanged nods, then went back to browsing. Two music nerds being nerdy in Music Nerd Mecca. It was this amazing, quiet moment, something I will always treasure.
Friday, September 19, 2014
LOCAL MAN CALLS TIM McGRAW ON HIS GEOGRAPHIC IGNORANCE
Westbrook, ME
Local drooler Darrel Wadsworth briefly saw that someone was talking about Tim McGraw's new song "Portland, Maine"on facebook on Wednesday and had some choice words for the musician.
"It's just dumb as all shit." said Wadsworth to anyone willing to listen. "I mean, I don't understand what he doesn't get. It's in Maine, so it's in the Northeast, and then it has the word port in it's name, so it's coastal. Northeast and coastal. It's not fucking hard."
"Look," added Wadsworth, "I barely graduated from high school. The last book I read was Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry in sixth grade. I occasionally install car stereos, but mostly get by selling plasma and shitty skunk weed. I'm not allowed to come within two hundred feet of Payless Shoes and Jokers Pizza. I think Gettysburg is in the South. I use the terms homo and philanthropist interchangeably. My mother had to talk me down from devoting all my time and energy to a hip hop career after she pointed out that I was oblivious to the fact that un-ironically calling myself D-Wad wasn't exactly winning the people over. But Jesus Christ, even I can find Portland on a fucking map."
Local drooler Darrel Wadsworth briefly saw that someone was talking about Tim McGraw's new song "Portland, Maine"on facebook on Wednesday and had some choice words for the musician.
"It's just dumb as all shit." said Wadsworth to anyone willing to listen. "I mean, I don't understand what he doesn't get. It's in Maine, so it's in the Northeast, and then it has the word port in it's name, so it's coastal. Northeast and coastal. It's not fucking hard."
"Look," added Wadsworth, "I barely graduated from high school. The last book I read was Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry in sixth grade. I occasionally install car stereos, but mostly get by selling plasma and shitty skunk weed. I'm not allowed to come within two hundred feet of Payless Shoes and Jokers Pizza. I think Gettysburg is in the South. I use the terms homo and philanthropist interchangeably. My mother had to talk me down from devoting all my time and energy to a hip hop career after she pointed out that I was oblivious to the fact that un-ironically calling myself D-Wad wasn't exactly winning the people over. But Jesus Christ, even I can find Portland on a fucking map."
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
TEN HONEST STATEMENTS ABOUT ROBIN WILLIAMS
Robin Williams' career existed almost entirely in the span of my lifetime. For a long time, he was a significant, but awkward figure for me, because he did a lot of stuff that just wasn't funny. However, I think he merits a eulogy of sorts. So here goes:
1. I watched a lot of "Mork & Mindy" when I was a child. I'm not lying when I say that the episode where their geriatric child played by Jonathan Winters hatched from an egg helped shape my understanding of actual human childbirth, because it forced me to ask my parents a lot of weird questions.
2. I saw Mrs. Doubtfire too many times in 1994. At the time, I quickly came to resent the non-threatening bowl haircuts and overabundance of Aerosmith, but in hindsight, it's a pretty good depiction of the time. Also, any movie that includes a cameo by Buster the Ape is fine by me.
3. Robin Williams made some awesome movies, including "The Fischer King", "The World According to Garp", "Good Morning Vietnam", "The Birdcage" and "Good Will Hunting". He also made "Bicentennial Man, "Jack", "RV" and "Robots". I never saw any of those latter movies, but I judged his career for them.
4. The first time I saw Aladdin, I thought it was hilarious. The hilarity tapered off after subsequent viewings. There were a lot of subsequent viewings. Now, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Aladdin is I hate that fucking movie, even though I haven't seen it in nearly 20 years.
5. I have often said that I found Robin Williams funniest when he was on cocaine. That really is a horrible thing to say. I think a better way to put it would be, I thought he was funnier when I was a kid. Which, coincidentally was at the peak of his cocaine use. BUT it's not like I was watching a shit ton of his stand up material at that time.
6. Robin Williams had black guy and gay guy voices. He did. You know he did and I know he did. We all know it. You could argue, okay, maybe they weren't really racially charged or homophobic. In an ideal world, maybe that could be just, like, a deep voiced guy and an effeminate guy. But, ultimately, they still were black guy and gay guy voices, and anything I say to defend them is an excuse. However, I also think it also says something about my own awkward relationship with race as a white dude that it makes me uncomfortable, because in a truly colorblind world, it wouldn't matter at all.
7. I like the idea of liking "Dead Poets Society", but the last time I saw it, I was nineteen and actually found it kind of cheesy, ham-fisted and unforgivably affluent.
8. Robin Williams is also partially responsible for my well-documented hatred of Sting. You see, "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" is one of my favorite movies of all time. It was the first film where I remember being keenly aware of just how amazingly shot it was. Sting is in the film for approximately half a second. Robin Williams has a substantially larger role. Sting appears pretty early on in the closing credits. Robim Williams seemingly doesn't appear at all. For a long time, I thought that was a complete crock of shit. It has since come to my attention that Robin Williams is credited instead as Ray D. Tutto. But still, fuck Sting, man.
9. The episode of Happy Days where Robin Williams first donned the Mork from Ork persona still kind of scares the shit of me. Specifically, it's his slow motion finger gun. Even as an adult, the idea of a Robin Williams alien being able to exert that much control over other people by pointing and making a simple, obnoxious noise makes me very uncomfortable. Like, the ability clearly is not temporal in nature, so he's just fucking up Fonzie's neurological functions, and seriously, nobody should be able to fuck with Arthur Fonzerelli. Ever.
10. Robin Williams was one of those people whose face alone could make me deeply uncomfortable. It could convey a lot of emotion, but it also always seemed like a mask mugging for the camera, like it somehow existed in the Uncanny Valley despite being attached to a human being.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
RANGER GROOVY
It was a sunny morning in Santa Rosa, California in the Spring of 1985. I was six years old and had rosy cheeks. I had the requisite bad haircut, my mother still dressed me for the most part and I still thought that scientists built Frankensteins and giant robots. My world was still very small, happy and relatively care free.
My kindergarten teacher, Ms. Lewis was a seven-foot-tall puppet monster made of scouring pads, a green Captain Cody Elementary School soccer jacket and dry, dead skin who hated children with every fiber of her being (1). That morning, she announced that she had a surprise field trip for us. You'll notice that I did not call it a fun surprise field trip. Ms. Lewis did not do fun.
At 11am, this husk of a formerly passionate teacher ushered the class out of the olive drab double-wide that served as our classroom, along the metal staging that ran in front of building, down the steps and out to the grass in front of the school. A painted, decommissioned short bus was parked on the lawn, and folding tables had been set up all around it. As we approached the bus, Ms. Lewis introduced us to an individual that I'm going to call "Ranger Groovy".
Ranger Groovy was tall and skinny. The combination of his high-cut, brown, official-looking shorts and grimy Birkenstock sandals made his hairy legs look impossibly long, and an unwashed ponytail dangled out from under the ranger hat he wore on his head to the small of his back. I'm pretty sure that he was wearing a tie-dye shirt under a poorly buttoned boy scout shirt. He had come to teach us all about pollution using his menagerie of taxidermied animals who were killed by litter.
Ranger Groovy first walked us past a dead raccoon propped up on a log in a surprisingly lifelike pose. The poor little critter had a six pack ring draped around it's neck. Nearby, there was a rattlesnake on a square of astroturf with a bag of nacho cheese Doritos jammed in it's gaping maw. There was a trout with a six pack ring around it's neck and a family of chipmunks that had apparently become so distraught by the election that they also decided to commit mass suicide by six pack ring. An incredibly stupid beaver who had decided to chew on a can of Old Milwaukee instead of a log, and then died when he attempted to floss it out with a six pack ring sat in a kiddy pool full of crisp, white foam cups.
Lesson learned, Ranger Groovy. Six pack rings are the most efficient killing machines ever devised by man.
After we completed our stroll through his museum of crappy natural history, Ranger Groovy gave a speech about the responsibility each and every one of us has to make the world a better place. While his entire message genuinely had a profound impact on me, there was one phrase he used that has stuck with me for twenty nine years for all the wrong reasons. At the very end of the speech, he pointed at me and said "Remember, we're all captains here on Starship Earth."
Upon hearing the term "Starship Earth", I became skeptical of the horrors that Ranger Groovy had on display. It was possibly the dumbest combination of words that I had ever heard.
Don't get me wrong. People who litter are fucking douche bags and litter definitely harms and kills animals. I'm not in any way disputing this fact.
All that I am saying is that, given some of the other characters (2) that lurked around my school, I am not convinced that Ranger Groovy wasn't just some dude who lived in a bus behind Ms. Lewis's decrepit swamp shack (3) and did the poor old broad a favor by mildly traumatizing her students once a year by flinging the contents of an old Alpha Beta (4) bag from the back of his bus on a bunch of stolen taxidermy that he couldn't pawn for drug money.
(1) Okay, yes, that is probably a grossly inaccurate portrayal of the woman, but she did tell me and my classmates that we were the worst students that she had ever had (a statement she had notoriously repeated to at least the last five classes she had taught).
(2) My music teacher, Mr. Hadlock for example, was clearly just a creepy drifter with an acoustic guitar. I say this because he had a photo of a topless hula dancer inside his guitar case and the only time I saw him outside of school, he was buying a rack of beer and snarled "Scram, kid." at me. Ere go, scary drifter.
(3) There's no way that she didn't live in a swamp shack.
(4) Alpha Beta was a California-based chain of liquor stores. I don't know if they are still a thing. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere near the Alpha Beta up the road from my house as a kid.
My kindergarten teacher, Ms. Lewis was a seven-foot-tall puppet monster made of scouring pads, a green Captain Cody Elementary School soccer jacket and dry, dead skin who hated children with every fiber of her being (1). That morning, she announced that she had a surprise field trip for us. You'll notice that I did not call it a fun surprise field trip. Ms. Lewis did not do fun.
At 11am, this husk of a formerly passionate teacher ushered the class out of the olive drab double-wide that served as our classroom, along the metal staging that ran in front of building, down the steps and out to the grass in front of the school. A painted, decommissioned short bus was parked on the lawn, and folding tables had been set up all around it. As we approached the bus, Ms. Lewis introduced us to an individual that I'm going to call "Ranger Groovy".
Ranger Groovy was tall and skinny. The combination of his high-cut, brown, official-looking shorts and grimy Birkenstock sandals made his hairy legs look impossibly long, and an unwashed ponytail dangled out from under the ranger hat he wore on his head to the small of his back. I'm pretty sure that he was wearing a tie-dye shirt under a poorly buttoned boy scout shirt. He had come to teach us all about pollution using his menagerie of taxidermied animals who were killed by litter.
Ranger Groovy first walked us past a dead raccoon propped up on a log in a surprisingly lifelike pose. The poor little critter had a six pack ring draped around it's neck. Nearby, there was a rattlesnake on a square of astroturf with a bag of nacho cheese Doritos jammed in it's gaping maw. There was a trout with a six pack ring around it's neck and a family of chipmunks that had apparently become so distraught by the election that they also decided to commit mass suicide by six pack ring. An incredibly stupid beaver who had decided to chew on a can of Old Milwaukee instead of a log, and then died when he attempted to floss it out with a six pack ring sat in a kiddy pool full of crisp, white foam cups.
Lesson learned, Ranger Groovy. Six pack rings are the most efficient killing machines ever devised by man.
After we completed our stroll through his museum of crappy natural history, Ranger Groovy gave a speech about the responsibility each and every one of us has to make the world a better place. While his entire message genuinely had a profound impact on me, there was one phrase he used that has stuck with me for twenty nine years for all the wrong reasons. At the very end of the speech, he pointed at me and said "Remember, we're all captains here on Starship Earth."
Upon hearing the term "Starship Earth", I became skeptical of the horrors that Ranger Groovy had on display. It was possibly the dumbest combination of words that I had ever heard.
Don't get me wrong. People who litter are fucking douche bags and litter definitely harms and kills animals. I'm not in any way disputing this fact.
All that I am saying is that, given some of the other characters (2) that lurked around my school, I am not convinced that Ranger Groovy wasn't just some dude who lived in a bus behind Ms. Lewis's decrepit swamp shack (3) and did the poor old broad a favor by mildly traumatizing her students once a year by flinging the contents of an old Alpha Beta (4) bag from the back of his bus on a bunch of stolen taxidermy that he couldn't pawn for drug money.
(1) Okay, yes, that is probably a grossly inaccurate portrayal of the woman, but she did tell me and my classmates that we were the worst students that she had ever had (a statement she had notoriously repeated to at least the last five classes she had taught).
(2) My music teacher, Mr. Hadlock for example, was clearly just a creepy drifter with an acoustic guitar. I say this because he had a photo of a topless hula dancer inside his guitar case and the only time I saw him outside of school, he was buying a rack of beer and snarled "Scram, kid." at me. Ere go, scary drifter.
(3) There's no way that she didn't live in a swamp shack.
(4) Alpha Beta was a California-based chain of liquor stores. I don't know if they are still a thing. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere near the Alpha Beta up the road from my house as a kid.
CHAPTER 183: UNTITLED DIALOGUE #12
AUTHOR'S NOTE: What follows is the result of a writing exercise where I attempted to create an original, funny idea for a superhero movie parody. It went horribly, horribly wrong, and in the end, I had to turn it into a conversation between two screenwriters.
...........
"How's the new Hulk project coming along, Steve?"
"Ugh. Why is it so hard to make a movie about a guy who gets mad, turns green and throws cars at an old man in a tank and maybe a monster or something?"
"Did you read my script?"
"Banner: Rise of the Incredible Hulk?"
"That's the one!"
"Yes. I did."
"Aaaaaand?"
"It... well it's... just... horrible."
"It forces you to confront your prejudice against people exposed to gamma rays. Is the metaphor lost on you?"
"No."
"But it affected you?"
"Yes, it profoundly affected me. It made me want to travel back in time and abort you with a coat hanger."
"Look, someone needs to change the dynamic of the summer blockbuster. Turn it on its head before everything goes stale and we're left with Paranormal Activity clones and Melissa McCarthy road movies as the tent poles. I'm juxtaposing heroism with the stark reality of life. This could be the Citizen Kane of superhero movies."
"Yeah, no. Not so much."
"Why not?"
"Because it's wrong."
"No. You're just closed minded. The Hulk can be a vehicle for drama. There was an episode of the old TV show where Banner was on a plane that was about to crash and he had to change into the Hulk to pull it out of a nose dive. It was amazing!"
"INTERIOR. DAYTIME. BRUCE BANNER OPENS THE FIRE DOOR OF HIS FLOOR OF STARK TOWER, pulling off his baseball cap, revealing green splotches. He hurries down the hall, passing HAWKEYE, pretending to scratch an itch in order to hide his condition from his teammate.
This is literally a script for Philadelphia that you pulled off of newsgroups. You just replaced the Tom Hanks character with Bruce Banner! Your climax has Bruce Banner losing a court battle against Tony Stark and Captain America, then Hulking out and brutally assaulting an already hospitalized MODOC. Having read that out loud, I am going to throw up on behalf of all humanity!"
"What if it were Wolverine, instead?"
"Now you're talking!"
...........
"How's the new Hulk project coming along, Steve?"
"Ugh. Why is it so hard to make a movie about a guy who gets mad, turns green and throws cars at an old man in a tank and maybe a monster or something?"
"Did you read my script?"
"Banner: Rise of the Incredible Hulk?"
"That's the one!"
"Yes. I did."
"Aaaaaand?"
"It... well it's... just... horrible."
"It forces you to confront your prejudice against people exposed to gamma rays. Is the metaphor lost on you?"
"No."
"But it affected you?"
"Yes, it profoundly affected me. It made me want to travel back in time and abort you with a coat hanger."
"Look, someone needs to change the dynamic of the summer blockbuster. Turn it on its head before everything goes stale and we're left with Paranormal Activity clones and Melissa McCarthy road movies as the tent poles. I'm juxtaposing heroism with the stark reality of life. This could be the Citizen Kane of superhero movies."
"Yeah, no. Not so much."
"Why not?"
"Because it's wrong."
"No. You're just closed minded. The Hulk can be a vehicle for drama. There was an episode of the old TV show where Banner was on a plane that was about to crash and he had to change into the Hulk to pull it out of a nose dive. It was amazing!"
"INTERIOR. DAYTIME. BRUCE BANNER OPENS THE FIRE DOOR OF HIS FLOOR OF STARK TOWER, pulling off his baseball cap, revealing green splotches. He hurries down the hall, passing HAWKEYE, pretending to scratch an itch in order to hide his condition from his teammate.
This is literally a script for Philadelphia that you pulled off of newsgroups. You just replaced the Tom Hanks character with Bruce Banner! Your climax has Bruce Banner losing a court battle against Tony Stark and Captain America, then Hulking out and brutally assaulting an already hospitalized MODOC. Having read that out loud, I am going to throw up on behalf of all humanity!"
"What if it were Wolverine, instead?"
"Now you're talking!"
Saturday, April 26, 2014
That's Edutainment?
As a person born in California in the late '70s, every form of media that I was exposed to for the first few years of my life was at least moderately psychedelic. Regardless of whether it was a McDonald's ad or a Disney movie, The Electric Company or a Public Service Announcement, everything was just slightly groovy. Even the filmstrips about the pilgrims we were forced to watch had weird Moog soundtracks and Yellow Submarine character designs.
Things took a drastic change around 1984, when Nancy Reagan decided that she wanted to keep me off drugs. The conflicting environmental messages and survival tips (don't litter, but if you get lost in the woods, use one of the many discarded trash bags you find as a poncho) edutainment and public service messages suddenly shifted to very special episodes. Secondary characters on Webster became addicted to nonspecific drugs and wound up working as unpaid, one-handed meat packers. Margot on Punky Brewster was so wracked with guilt after the refrigerator incident that she cut off all her hair, crashed her mother's car and started her own infanticide club. Skippy never recovered from his experiences in El Salvador, and Screech became a nun. Mostly, it was about drugs though. And once people started warning me about the effects of drugs on the human brain, I put two and two together and it became obvious to me that anyone who had ever tried to simultaneously entertain and teach me anything had probably done a shit ton of acid.
Suppressed by the cold, hard reality of the '80s, my memories of "Free To Be... You And Me", "The Point" and "H.R. Puffinstuff" were crammed into the dark recesses of my brain, where they have festered for thirty years, occasionally bubbling to the surface and leaving me wondering if they were real or imagined. They are stored in a nether region of my subconscious, even more distant than that well-guarded utopian playground where I suspect "Shamelessly Happy Matt" skips and dances about. Here, in an abandoned, day-glo rock-n-roll church in a field of swirling sunflowers beneath a purple paisley sky, a faceless projectionist in massive, flower-print bell bottoms and a brown, fringed leather vest is playing a perpetual loop of rambling, senseless edutainment shorts, cobbled together from half-memories and engrams scarred into my psyche by well-meaning adults.
These shorts depict a rainbow colored Brooklyn and a technicolor alphabet hyphenation forest where Doctor John mercilessly torments and mocks your inability to find your way out. Crude proto-muppets representing babies tell me about the differences between their respective genitalia as Michael Jackson sings about self-acceptance. Six-Million Dollar Man Big Foot and Leonard Nimoy encourage me to go for nature walks and to seek out new age powers, but not to venture into construction sites. Papa John and Mackenzie Phillips sing songs about the importance of family, accompanied by sexually aggressive mimes and then Witchy-Poo suddenly segues in and tells a knock-knock joke.
Only it's never a funny joke.
Wendy Carlos music starts up and two teenagers in earth tone pants and blood red turtlenecks head into a locker room to have an awkward discussion about the changes their bodies have been going through. Next up, Wayland Flowers and Madame explain that your parents probably still love you, even if they are getting divorced while a lifeless Charlie McCarthy puppet sits in a corner collecting cobwebs. The Solid Gold dancers spill in, and Bootsy Collins tells a kid who can't play the sitar to never give up before a star wipe brings us more Witchy-Poo.
Oh, look! It's Alan Alda and a group of kids sitting inside a geodesic dome! And they're discussing aspirations. And they all want to be astronauts. Luckily, according to all the latest data, we'll all be living on the moon by 1991! Mamma Cass wants a pet alligator, but Meadowlark Lemon shows up on his flying phantom fire hydrant to tell her that it's a lot of responsibility. John Lennon dishes some parenting advice to Eric Clapton in an over sized nursery, then Robert Blake talks about resolving conflict with a parrot. Orson Welles stares at the camera for several minutes without blinking, breathing heavily while the Mummenschanz perform their infamous clay face genital routine. Finally, the camera fades to black, with only the continuing sound of Orson's breathing for another two minutes.
Now let us never speak of this part of my brain again.
Things took a drastic change around 1984, when Nancy Reagan decided that she wanted to keep me off drugs. The conflicting environmental messages and survival tips (don't litter, but if you get lost in the woods, use one of the many discarded trash bags you find as a poncho) edutainment and public service messages suddenly shifted to very special episodes. Secondary characters on Webster became addicted to nonspecific drugs and wound up working as unpaid, one-handed meat packers. Margot on Punky Brewster was so wracked with guilt after the refrigerator incident that she cut off all her hair, crashed her mother's car and started her own infanticide club. Skippy never recovered from his experiences in El Salvador, and Screech became a nun. Mostly, it was about drugs though. And once people started warning me about the effects of drugs on the human brain, I put two and two together and it became obvious to me that anyone who had ever tried to simultaneously entertain and teach me anything had probably done a shit ton of acid.
Suppressed by the cold, hard reality of the '80s, my memories of "Free To Be... You And Me", "The Point" and "H.R. Puffinstuff" were crammed into the dark recesses of my brain, where they have festered for thirty years, occasionally bubbling to the surface and leaving me wondering if they were real or imagined. They are stored in a nether region of my subconscious, even more distant than that well-guarded utopian playground where I suspect "Shamelessly Happy Matt" skips and dances about. Here, in an abandoned, day-glo rock-n-roll church in a field of swirling sunflowers beneath a purple paisley sky, a faceless projectionist in massive, flower-print bell bottoms and a brown, fringed leather vest is playing a perpetual loop of rambling, senseless edutainment shorts, cobbled together from half-memories and engrams scarred into my psyche by well-meaning adults.
These shorts depict a rainbow colored Brooklyn and a technicolor alphabet hyphenation forest where Doctor John mercilessly torments and mocks your inability to find your way out. Crude proto-muppets representing babies tell me about the differences between their respective genitalia as Michael Jackson sings about self-acceptance. Six-Million Dollar Man Big Foot and Leonard Nimoy encourage me to go for nature walks and to seek out new age powers, but not to venture into construction sites. Papa John and Mackenzie Phillips sing songs about the importance of family, accompanied by sexually aggressive mimes and then Witchy-Poo suddenly segues in and tells a knock-knock joke.
Only it's never a funny joke.
WITCHY-POO
Hey Kids! Knock-knock!
KIDS CHORUS
Who's there, Witchy-Poo?
WITCHY-POO
Butter!
KID'S CHORUS
Butter who?
WITCHY-POO
Butter not get in a car with a stranger or they'll find your waterlogged, severed head floating in a canal!
Wendy Carlos music starts up and two teenagers in earth tone pants and blood red turtlenecks head into a locker room to have an awkward discussion about the changes their bodies have been going through. Next up, Wayland Flowers and Madame explain that your parents probably still love you, even if they are getting divorced while a lifeless Charlie McCarthy puppet sits in a corner collecting cobwebs. The Solid Gold dancers spill in, and Bootsy Collins tells a kid who can't play the sitar to never give up before a star wipe brings us more Witchy-Poo.
WITCHY-POO
Hey Kids! Knock-knock!
KIDS CHORUS
Who's there, Witchy-Poo?
WITCHY-POO
Cha-cha!
KIDS CHORUS
Cha-cha who?
WITCHY-POO
Cha-ch-cha-challenger explosion!! Deal with it.
Oh, look! It's Alan Alda and a group of kids sitting inside a geodesic dome! And they're discussing aspirations. And they all want to be astronauts. Luckily, according to all the latest data, we'll all be living on the moon by 1991! Mamma Cass wants a pet alligator, but Meadowlark Lemon shows up on his flying phantom fire hydrant to tell her that it's a lot of responsibility. John Lennon dishes some parenting advice to Eric Clapton in an over sized nursery, then Robert Blake talks about resolving conflict with a parrot. Orson Welles stares at the camera for several minutes without blinking, breathing heavily while the Mummenschanz perform their infamous clay face genital routine. Finally, the camera fades to black, with only the continuing sound of Orson's breathing for another two minutes.
Now let us never speak of this part of my brain again.
THE BROWN PAPER BAG
The following story is complete bullshit.
There were differing stories regarding the origins of the brown paper bag. My friend Jackson and my next door neighbor Randy both laid claim to it's contents - a half-full bottle of Mad Dog and an issue of Lesbian Fire.
It was June 1990 - the first week of Summer Vacation. Jackson and I had just completed fifth grade and Randy was going on to middle school. All three of us were at various stages of being eleven years old. As you can imagine, a half full bottle of fortified wine and a spank mag made for an epic discovery.
"I bought them at the Big Apple yesterday!" exclaimed Randy. "They must have fallen out of my backpack while I was riding home."
"Why would they sell you porn and wine?" asked Jackson.
"Because I'm cool."
That was a good argument. Randy was pretty cool. He was a year ahead of us, after all, and he had his own table saw. One thing bothered me though.
"So let me get this straight." I said. "They'll sell you anything you want, so you went with Lesbian Fire?"
Randy paused and looked at the two harsh looking women on the cover. They looked angry at each other and even angrier at us. This was some seriously gonzo shit, mind you, more of a Tijuana bible than a magazine. I distinctly remember thinking the two women resembled Markie Post and Amanda Bearce (Marcy from Married With Children) after nervous breakdowns and several years of hard drug use. It depicted what heterosexual idiots in 1990 assumed big-haired lesbians did with cool whip, sailor hats and riding crops.
"Lesbians are cool."
Atticus Finch couldn't have argued with that one, either.
Jackson's version of events was a little more down to Earth.
"Remember when I told you I had to mow the lawn before I came over this morning?"
"Yeah."
"Well, as I was mowing, a Trans Am pulled up next to me."
"What color was it?" Randy snarled, skeptically.
"Yellow. The guy rolled down his window, and spat. When I looked over at him, he yelled 'Eat Pussy!' and threw the bag at me. He then peeled out and sped off."
Randy proceeded to tear Jackson's case to shreds. "No one who is smart enough to drive a Trans Am would just throw away a bag full of porn and booze. That's insane."
"That's what happened!"
"Pfft. Bullshit."
The argument over the hobo wine and porn quickly escalated into a small scale civil war that engulfed the preteen male population of Vallejo Drive, Franklin and Pierce Street and several outlying neighborhoods.
Kyle Logan and Dewey LaChance, eighth graders we all normally regarded as bottom-feeding scumfucks, allied themselves with Randy and spent the next few days menacing Jackson. They eventually got bored with it and decided to huff gas, instead. Randy just spent a lot of time by himself building dead falls and Punji sticks in the woods like Rambo. He'd occasionally emerge from the woods, daring us to chase after him.
Jackson, Spencer Garnier from Pierce Street and Sasha Doak from up on Burton Ridge began making regular BMX patrols of the neighborhood. My younger brother and his friends Frank and Dwight Osajima and Scott Seltzer formed their own little clique that switched sides like Afghan warlords. I mostly tried to remain neutral, though at one point I nearly got into a bat fight with Kyle and Dewey because they wouldn't get off my lawn.
In the end, Jackson and Randy reached a truce when a new kid moved into the neighborhood and started stealing stupid shit like bike pumps, dodge balls and old hammers from people's garages. After we all threatened to beat the fuck out of the new kid if he stepped off his lawn, it was time to divvy up the spoils or war. Jackson got the booze, and Randy got the porn. Both precious relics had sat in a tree house in the woods behind my house for nearly two weeks.
The Mad Dog had spilled in the bag, and what was left had bugs floating in it. Jackson proudly downed the remaining swig, describing the taste as a mix of victory, cold medicine and orange crush vomit. We smashed the bottle on the train tracks running alongside Main Street later that afternoon.
Lesbian Fire had gotten wet from what I really hope was condensation. The last time I saw it, Randy had cut the magazine up and placed choice pages in a 3 ring binder with other bits of porn, which he referred to it as "The Dossier". I have no idea why he felt the need to show "The Dossier" to me, but he seemed genuinely proud of it.
Eleven year old boys are fucking weird, man.
There were differing stories regarding the origins of the brown paper bag. My friend Jackson and my next door neighbor Randy both laid claim to it's contents - a half-full bottle of Mad Dog and an issue of Lesbian Fire.
It was June 1990 - the first week of Summer Vacation. Jackson and I had just completed fifth grade and Randy was going on to middle school. All three of us were at various stages of being eleven years old. As you can imagine, a half full bottle of fortified wine and a spank mag made for an epic discovery.
"I bought them at the Big Apple yesterday!" exclaimed Randy. "They must have fallen out of my backpack while I was riding home."
"Why would they sell you porn and wine?" asked Jackson.
"Because I'm cool."
That was a good argument. Randy was pretty cool. He was a year ahead of us, after all, and he had his own table saw. One thing bothered me though.
"So let me get this straight." I said. "They'll sell you anything you want, so you went with Lesbian Fire?"
Randy paused and looked at the two harsh looking women on the cover. They looked angry at each other and even angrier at us. This was some seriously gonzo shit, mind you, more of a Tijuana bible than a magazine. I distinctly remember thinking the two women resembled Markie Post and Amanda Bearce (Marcy from Married With Children) after nervous breakdowns and several years of hard drug use. It depicted what heterosexual idiots in 1990 assumed big-haired lesbians did with cool whip, sailor hats and riding crops.
"Lesbians are cool."
Atticus Finch couldn't have argued with that one, either.
Jackson's version of events was a little more down to Earth.
"Remember when I told you I had to mow the lawn before I came over this morning?"
"Yeah."
"Well, as I was mowing, a Trans Am pulled up next to me."
"What color was it?" Randy snarled, skeptically.
"Yellow. The guy rolled down his window, and spat. When I looked over at him, he yelled 'Eat Pussy!' and threw the bag at me. He then peeled out and sped off."
Randy proceeded to tear Jackson's case to shreds. "No one who is smart enough to drive a Trans Am would just throw away a bag full of porn and booze. That's insane."
"That's what happened!"
"Pfft. Bullshit."
The argument over the hobo wine and porn quickly escalated into a small scale civil war that engulfed the preteen male population of Vallejo Drive, Franklin and Pierce Street and several outlying neighborhoods.
Kyle Logan and Dewey LaChance, eighth graders we all normally regarded as bottom-feeding scumfucks, allied themselves with Randy and spent the next few days menacing Jackson. They eventually got bored with it and decided to huff gas, instead. Randy just spent a lot of time by himself building dead falls and Punji sticks in the woods like Rambo. He'd occasionally emerge from the woods, daring us to chase after him.
Jackson, Spencer Garnier from Pierce Street and Sasha Doak from up on Burton Ridge began making regular BMX patrols of the neighborhood. My younger brother and his friends Frank and Dwight Osajima and Scott Seltzer formed their own little clique that switched sides like Afghan warlords. I mostly tried to remain neutral, though at one point I nearly got into a bat fight with Kyle and Dewey because they wouldn't get off my lawn.
In the end, Jackson and Randy reached a truce when a new kid moved into the neighborhood and started stealing stupid shit like bike pumps, dodge balls and old hammers from people's garages. After we all threatened to beat the fuck out of the new kid if he stepped off his lawn, it was time to divvy up the spoils or war. Jackson got the booze, and Randy got the porn. Both precious relics had sat in a tree house in the woods behind my house for nearly two weeks.
The Mad Dog had spilled in the bag, and what was left had bugs floating in it. Jackson proudly downed the remaining swig, describing the taste as a mix of victory, cold medicine and orange crush vomit. We smashed the bottle on the train tracks running alongside Main Street later that afternoon.
Lesbian Fire had gotten wet from what I really hope was condensation. The last time I saw it, Randy had cut the magazine up and placed choice pages in a 3 ring binder with other bits of porn, which he referred to it as "The Dossier". I have no idea why he felt the need to show "The Dossier" to me, but he seemed genuinely proud of it.
Eleven year old boys are fucking weird, man.
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