He was different from you and me

Just got home from my writing class. I’m tired. Class was okay. There’s a mongolidic (is that the word, mongolidic? It sounds better than mongoloidic or mongoloidian. Perhaps mongolidian? Anyway) dipshit in the class who never shuts up and it’s kind of irritating. His speech is like a nervous tic. He can’t stop talking and it’s kind of a drag, but it’s kind of fascinating. Like, you know how sometimes you start to watch a movie, and it’s so just nauseating that there’s nothing about it you’d ever enjoy (Spanglish, perhaps) but for whatever reason, you keep watching? THEN, once you’ve gotten through the whole thing, you’ve kind of been vaccinated against it or something…so next time your friends are all over and you’re all getting high on the couch and you see that Spanglish is on, you make everyone sit through it, and even though it still sucks just as bad, it’s kind of not that bad for you, and all you’re doing is sitting there enjoying how much your friends are hating it/you?
That’s kind of what it’s like when this Henri dipshit talks. Yeah, his name is Henri. That’s pronounced ahn-REE, by the way. He’s such a nerd and a time gobbler that to talk about him here is simply to somehow feed his dark powers, so I’ll keep it brief. Lemme tell you though, dude’s a real sack of crap. Oh, and he’s not funny and his writing stinks. So there’s that.
I’m off to Florida in the morning. It’s gonna be a whirlwind of a trip. We get in tomorrow and the five of us are all staying in a single hotel room in the official hotel of this Festival. SO, that means no space, no sleep, no rest, no voices when we play our show. Also, there’s gonna be roving herds of drunks everywhere. This thing is pretty hilarious. It’s thousands of bearded punks from all over the world converging on a small college town in Florida to drink all its pabst, eat all its pizza and sleep in every last bit of its shrubbery.
I’m already so sore and tired and I’m still home. Fuck.
I’m missing my baby’s first Halloween. This is a HUGE bummer for me. He’s going as a tiger, and his grandma is accompanying him on his daycare’s Halloween parade. The whole thing sounds so cute that it makes me want to barf. I honestly don’t think I would have booked these shows if I had realized that I was missing this. That being said, it’s nice to get away for a while, and I’m looking forward to seeing some friends, acquaintances, frenimies (are you listening Heidi?) and of course douchebag punishers and assorted fools. This afternoon, (Oh, I went to bed, and I’m finishing this in the morning) I’ll be spending some time in the Atlanta airport. That’s usually a good time. They’ve got the best strip club of any airport. I love it when they touch the ground.
The best part about this whole thing, and I’m not even kidding when I say this, is that I don’t have to go to my crappy job. The idea that I’m not punching in this morning, and that I won’t have to ask anyone what kind of cheese they want on that or if they want a lemon or a lime or “did you say Ciroc or Syrah?” just makes my day. AND I don’t work tomorrow, or Sunday. Nope, instead, I’ll be sitting on the other side of the bar. Or, who knows, maybe I’ll take in Gainesville’s local culture instead…hmmm.
A few years ago I was in Gainesville and some buddies and I all decided to get tattoos of drunk pelicans hanging themselves. When I went to the ATM to pay dude (uh…Polish Dave, I believe, and he’s great if you’re looking for some tattoos in north central florida [god, what if that’s not his name…eh, whatever]) I had 22 bucks in there. This would have been fine if I wasn’t you know, a grown man with a finished tattoo already on me that cost well above 22 bucks. Fuck, the tip should have been 22 bucks. Okay, so anyway, long story short, cuz I gotta go to the airport, I sucked his dick and it was all cool. Strangely, my friend Jason, who also has the tattoo, had money, but opted to pay for it with a blowjob too. What’s that say?
Okay turds! See you Monday. Pray for my soul.

did you see the toe on that camel?

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I got ants in my pants. I'm jumpy.

Last night I was going back through the old posts on this blog to try and figure out when my baby started sleeping through the night. Turns out it was about the second week of August. Anyway, I was struck by the notion that perhaps this thing is just getting shittier and shittier with each passing day. Now, this is one of the most patently ridiculous things to worry about as A) this is a blog…so who cares B) A lot like point A, this thing is supposed to be a reflection of my thoughts, which means it can really only be measured empirically, and C) Are you fucking crazy? This shit’s better than ever, yo!
BUT, this moment of panic on my quest for self actualization, or whatever you want to call it, really highlights something that I think is important in the world of making shit, call it ‘art’ if you must (though I hardly think dick jokes and entreaties to not be such pussies about what you drink at the bar could ever qualify as art…maybe in the south). Namely, the fear that everything you’re making is subpar. This is a funny thing, because usually, you start off a project (for this example, we’ll use a blog, but this could just as easily be a book, a band, a screenplay a series of paintings or an interracial gangbang video serial…really anything that taps into your creative mind) and there are no expectations, so the first blog entry (in this case, a little number I did back in July 08 entitled ‘hello blogosphere’) isn’t burdened with having to really do anything. If, by the creator’s standards, it succeeds then a second one follows. If it sucks, then it’s abandoned and well, no one’s any wiser or worse either way. BUT, if it’s successful, and continues to be, then there’s a moment where you, as a creative heavy lifter, start to look back to those carefree days when there were no expectations and wish you could recapture that magic. Why? Because the stakes are higher now, you’re ostensibly better at what you do, and so you’ve got all sorts of new expectations to deal with, and as such the freedom to just kind of let shit roar (which is usually when the best shit is made) becomes compromised. So, what do you do? Oh, what do you do?
Usually, between these moments, the moment of initial conception, when, let’s say, the band gets together and writes that first song or you first film that first Japanese girl taking a dump on that other girl, you get a period where you’re still unburdened, but you’re heady with the success of kind of effortlessly succeeding. This is absolutely the best place to be creatively. The, “man, these people are gonna be fucking amazed when they see the shit I’m pulling off next!” mentality definitely makes for the most effortless and therefore highest caliber output.
But whatever, I’m talking about what happens once you’ve crested that and you’re just sitting there in your underpants looking at your computer going “fuck. Can I still do this shit? I don’t even remember why I liked interracial gangbangs in the first place.” What do you do? Well, you take comfort in the fact that your creative mind is jolting you with fear as a method of inspiration, for one thing. One thing you should never ever do though, is look to your own output from the past as inspiration. That’s the artistic (just for lack of a better word) equivalent of eating your own shit for nutrition. It kind of works, but it doesn’t work nearly as well as eating the stuff that the shit was made from.
Man, so, in my first entry I laid out what this thing was gonna be about, a bit of a mission statement, and I said it was gonna be self reflexive (dude…check.) and advice oriented (seems like I solved everyone’s problems, because I haven’t got any good advice queries in a while…except for the guy who wants to know how to get his old lady to wax her asshole and beav…Okay, here’s what you do. You wait until things are relaxed and you’re just kind of having a good, fun conversation. Maybe you’re drinking wine and sitting on the porch or maybe you’re watching tv in bed or maybe you’re driving somewhere…get the idea, somewhere conversational. Anyway, casually bring up something you’ve seen regarding waxing, like say, that scene in the forty year old virgin. You mention how funny that shit is, or how disturbing it is, and as every conversation about waxing has ever done, it will eventually turn to how much pain the waxee feels during the process. At this point you say something like “yeah, for sure, but I gotta tell you, I think that girls that are all waxed look super hot.” Then, you see what the reaction is. If it’s something like ‘WHAT? REALLY? EW!” then it doesn’t seem to me like you’re with a girl who’s ever gonna drip hot wax onto her asshole and pull out the hairs…sorry. Pretty much any other reaction, and you’ve planted the seed. And really, that’s the most you can do, because talking to people about their grooming habits is like talking to people about their kids…they get defensive real fast, and if you want someone to do what you want, the last mindframe you want them in is defensive. SO, then you change the subject and wait for your birthday.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so we’ve got self reflexive, advice oriented, and finally celeb and pop culture driven, so, like when I say that I can’t believe that LC and Heidi are talking again, I fulfill this part of the mission statement. Good. Done. Hmmmm….I don’t know though. I used to do lots of lists. I haven’t done a good list in a while. How about this? Here’s a list of things that if you’re holding when someone walks by you on the street, you’re guaranteed to get a strange, judgmental look.
A baby that’s absolutely freaking out.
Your penis.
A large pizza (the ‘you’re already fat’ category)
A hypodermic syringe
Lotto tickets and a welfare check
A bucket full of gasoline
A bucket full of chicken heads
A map of the town you’re in
A swastika flag
An autographed picture of OJ
A balloon (the ‘you already look like a pedophile’ category)
A kid on a leash
-this one really pisses me off. Kids learn to walk before they learn to comprehend things like how it feels to get hit by a car or what it’s gonna take to find mommy in this gigantic parking lot, and yet assholes just blithely comment on this like it’s their right. “Don’t put that kid on a leash. He’s not a dog!” Hey, guess what asshole? He’s not a dog, but I’ve got kind of a lot to keep track of over here, firstly, and secondly, go fuck yourself. You know what’s dangerous? Coming up to strangers and telling them how to raise their kids, ESPECIALLY if they’re just doing something harmless that protects said kid. You know what? You should maybe get that tubby wife of yours to put YOU on a leash so you don’t wind up getting punched in the face for sticking your nose in other people’s business. Anyway, my kid can’t even walk, and as such, he’s never been on a leash, so this isn’t a gripe from personal experience. It’s just one of those things I’ve seen happen and it’s fucking infuriating. That person is a parent, their life is over and they’re trying to navigate this drunk midget with no grasp of English or the physical world through the fucking Macy’s. give ‘em a fucking break, man. Christ.
Back to the list:
Anything that implies that you’re a hippy (you’re dressed like a stupid hippy category)
This includes:
-a flower
-a cup for change
-keys to an SUV
-a lid of grass
-some Quaaludes
(At this juncture, I’d like to point out that there’s absolutely nothing judgmental about hating hippies. It’s perfectly natural)
A large dildo
A small dildo
Any sort of double dildo
Sheep carcass

Okay, that’s pretty good. I have a friend who sometimes eats his mcdonalds cheeseburgers on the toilet while he takes dumps. He says something about evening out the amount of food inside you or something like that. It’s gross. But he also shits for half an hour at a time and gets really sweaty, so maybe he needs the snack. I bring this up only because my baby is currently eating and attempting to poo at the same time. Today it’s peas. I just tried em. They’re actually not bad. Off to the farmers market. Last chance of the harvest season, people. I gots to get my fuji apples and deer steaks before winter sets in.
xoxoxo

Up next, the Octopus man!

Welcome to Monday. The longest possible time before you get work off again. This week I’m going to Florida. It’s going to be a gas. Interestingly, I farted right as I wrote the word ‘gas’ back there. It was a sublime moment that I’m sure doesn’t translate well to print, but just know that somewhere out there a man is smiling at the way the universe comes together sometimes, and sitting in the putrescent yellow fog of his farts.
I don’t have anything good to say this morning. I’m aggravated. I have band practice in a few minutes and we’re going to have to figure out how to get our stupid t shirts and shit down to stupid Florida. Yay!
My baby and I spent the weekend alone and it was fun. It was a little like Weekend at Bernies, with the baby playing Bernie. Not that he’s dead, but more because he just kind of sits there with a smug look on his face all the time, and if you want him to wave, you pretty much have to do it for him. I guess the metaphor really falls apart after that, except for that I’m pretty much the spitting image of what Andrew McCarthy and Johnathan Silverman’s baby would look like, just to take it all the way through the looking glass.

Last night these two old chicks came into the bar. They were pretty hot and they’d just been to the Madonna show and they were starving for wangs. The one girl came in, looked down the bar at the four guys sitting there and said “Hey! You boys want some Patron shots?!” It was great. More women need to be upfront like that. Dudes do that kind of crap all the time. It’s really not odd to think of, say, James Gandolfini coming into a bar and seeing four chicks sitting together and just buying them all shots. Ladies, the ball’s in your court now. You want the schlongs? Buy the next round.

Okay, so what’s really going on today? No…I don’t know. I’m just distracted. I was going to tell the story of this guy I used to play hockey with who sold mushrooms out of the locker room, but it just kind of fell flat as I was re-telling it to myself. Fuck, I pretty much just told you guys the whole thing right there, except for that one time, he mistakenly thought one of the members of Poison was a hot chick. Honest mistake, although, we still mocked his gayness. It was a hockey locker room, people.
Drug dealers in general are funny. I like the idea of a black market economy. It’s kind of the same reason that I like graffiti. Illegal art? How cool is that? Fuck, I should move to China. I hear all sorts of art is illegal there. Good one. Anyway, you know what I mean? There’s something great about a whole infrastructure of economy that operates in the shadows. That’s why people like ninjas right? They’re super organized and disciplined but it’s all shrouded in mystery. Okay, so I think, as per the laws of ninth grade geometry, I’ve proved the theorem that drug dealers=ninjas. Nice.
At the risk of sounding like I’m coked up or something (since I seem to be switching topics every two sentences) I’m gonna go ahead and throw this out there. Ninjas aren’t real. Man, does this ever piss people off. Mostly because they want ninjas to be real so fucking bad. I know, I know, I watch Sasuke as often as you do, and yes, there are some very compelling films out there. But seriously? Man, back in ancient times it had to be fucking EXPENSIVE to make a throwing star. I mean, they cost like nineteen bucks these days. There’s no way those fuckers just tossed those things out, never to be seen again while they hopped from roof to roof. The whole thing just doesn’t add up to me. All the vanishing and the masks and silence and all that. It’s cool, don’t get me wrong. But you’re telling me that people actually did that shit? Nope. Don’t buy it. ALSO, it seems a little odd to me that ninjas are kind of new in the west. I mean, my dad probably knew what a samurai was when he was a kid, but he sure as hell wasn’t playing ninja. That’s shit from my generation. Why’s that? The existence of ninjas only recently got declassified? All the Japanese people in the world kept ninjas under wraps until the seventies when they got together and decided “man, we’ve been keeping this ninja shit to ourselves for a while now. Those white people could probably make some pretty cool movies and toys and plastic crap. Let’s let ‘em in on it.” Okay, whatever. I don’t need to convince you people. They’re all a marketing scheme. That’s the end of it. Oh, look. You’re all pissed off and googling and shit. Seriously, it’s the best. I don’t know why that makes people so angry. Ninjas are fake! They’re like Santa and Jesus! They’re not real. They’re not real. Haahahahahahahaha. Nerds.
In Chicago, there’s this thing where you’re not supposed to put ketchup on a hotdog. The whole idea of ketchup on a hotdog is so frowned upon in Chicago, you’d be better off smearing bloody dog shit on your hotdog than ketchup. You’d get less snide comments and offended looks. Why is this? Who knows. I will say though, it’s probably in some small way connected to the same part of the brain that gets pissed about ninjas not existing. It all kind of seems the same to me. Yikes. Whatever. I’m out.

You know what to do, so I won't say please -or- Welcome to my lovely new color scheme.

So yeah, I spruced the place up a bit. I kind of figured that this page is like a virtual rec room, you know, where you go to hear your crass uncle expound on how shitty his job/kids/wives/friends are while he pounds a high life or two before heading to work. So, I used the colors that to me most represent a basment in the 70’s. There’s beer in the fridge. Oh, that? That’s a picture of me backstage at Subterranean last week. The old lady actually took it. Yeah, I think it turned out pretty good down here.
Funnily enough, as I’ve learned bartending, playing music, being a husband, being a dad, doing a limited amount of design and illustration work, that old maxim ‘no one is ever satisfied’ is truly, truly always fulfilled. People love to bitch. People hate the taste of Coke, it changes, they hate the new taste and demand the original that they hated in the first place. It’s like a wife. You hate her guts and you talk shit and write songs about how she should die and you undermine her confidence with shitty remarks about her ass in that dress and all that, but the second she blows her tennis pro, you’re all weepy. Everyone hated Russia, then we got the Taliban, now everyone seems to want Russia back. Everyone hates the old colors, everyone hates the new ones. No one will be truly satisfied until their own crappy tastes get justified by a graphic designer/chef/production crew/five star general and they can sit back there and languish in the stench of their own turds.
Don’t believe me? Everyone loves the smell of their own farts. My friend Mike scoops his farts from his ass right to his nose. It’s gross. He also chews up one Triscuit, spits it onto another and eats it like some sort of gnarly appetizer, so there’s that. Maybe he’s just a little nasty. Nonetheless.
Fuck, man. My baby is crying, my dogs are barking at a helium balloon, my wife is trying to pack and get me to help her do laundry as she’s going to Texas in a few hours for a wedding. Our house looks like someone got chased through it by a huge rapist (in that shit’s all scattered everywhere, it’s not like it’s all covered in Vaseline or blood…do rapists carry Vaseline? I guess the conscientious ones do) and I’m about to go to my shitty job and hang out with the rainy-Friday crowd, which means just enough douchebags blabbing at me that I can’t relax, but not enough to make money.
Tonight my friend Chris is picking my boy up from daycare and putting him down (a parental parlance that means put to bed), since my wife is gonna be eating jerky and shooting at satellites down in the Great Republic of Texas, and I’m gonna be stuck late at work. It’s going to be funny. I picture a rather charming little montage set to a tune by Alan Thicke (dad from Growing Pains. He also wrote and performed [get ready to have your minds blown] the Diff’rent Strokes theme song [“Now the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum…”] Yeah, for real. That’s him. He’s also dad of pop sensation Robin Thicke, and he’s Canadian. AND once when I was about 8 and in an airport, I saw, in that part of the airport newsstand where they have the porn [a classy move, by the way, reading Juggs or Shaved Snizz right there on the plane] an issue of Playgirl with Alan Thicke on the cover. The bumper headline, or whatever it’s called, said “Alan Thicke’s Growing Pains” and I was forced to picture his penis, and it grossed me out so completely that I’m still a little queasy, not from the memory, but actually from that moment. It’s lasted twenty four years. No shit)…okay, that was quite an aside. Back to Chris and the baby, I picture a charming little montage in which baby powder poofs thickly into Chris’s surprised face, the baby giggles while Chris gets tangled in the coat hangers in his closet…it’s gonna be like three men and a baby with only one man and a baby. Where are my Hollywood friends when I need them?
“Okay, it’s like Three Men and a Baby”
“okay, good. So far me likey”
“except for with ONE man.”
“Kelly, you’ve done it again! Have some money!”
Don’t steal that shit, okay? You can’t copyright ideas. I found that out the hard way when I told the wrong person about how I wanted to get, like Barbies, but dress them up as whores and sell ‘em to little girls. They’re doing that now, and I’m not in on it. ALSO, the Pussycat Dolls? That was my idea. I was like “yo, you know what we need? Some sluts singing about getting fucked. Here’s the beauty! They don’t even have to be good looking OR talented. We’re not selling the steak, we’re selling the snizzle!”
Fucked, right?
What else have I created, only to be thwarted by conniving dicks? Oh, you know when you say something and then you say NOT! At the end of it, and it like, totally negates it? I made that up. It was also me who first said that I didn’t want to be told what to do by anyone smarter than me. I also called for lax regulation regarding property appraisals and encouraged irresponsible lending in hopes that everyone could someday afford to own valuable homes. AND, I was like the first, maybe second guy to say that John Kerry was no hero. OH, and I coined the term “nibble on my dick like a rat does cheese” before the 2 Live Crew was even a fucking thought.
So, as you may have guessed, I’m pretty pissed. I’m gonna sit here and stew in my baby tears, barking dogs, piles of laundry, absentia wives, messy home, new barf colored blog and general malaise that comes every Friday morning and just kind of think about all the fucking money I should be counting right now. And Alan Thicke’s gross penis. That’s still just burned in there.

There's no crying in baseball!

I just read the following (and this is a paraphrase) “Tom Hanks’s Blog! Find out how the world’s coolest actor spent his summer vacation.”
Dude. Seriously. Tom. Hanks.
Okay, so he was in Bosom Buddies, sure. He did Joe vs. The Volcano and Bachelor Party and more recently (but still, like ten years ago) he made a movie with a beachball and grew some dreads. I personally think white guys with dreads are, um, what’s the word I’m looking for…I don’t know. Is there a word for when you go out of your way to do something that makes you look stupid/blissfully unaware of who you are/annoying/gross/ pathetic and greasy all at once? Damn this limited vocabulary! I mean, having dreads is one of those things that you can use as the ONLY description of a person and it usually suffices:
“Okay, so we’re at the theater, all ready to leave and all of a sudden Melanie is talking to this absolute douchebag and I’m like ‘lets go!’ and she actually decided to stay and go to some bar with him.”
“What was the guy like?”
“Oh, you know. He was one of those white guys with dreadlocks.”
“WHAT?!!! Seriously?!”
See? It’s a bad scene. But whatever, man. Some people think that’s cool, I guess. (Actually, I’m personally not too impressed by the whole ‘physical transformation to play the role’ school of hardcore method acting or whatever it’s called either, speaking of old ‘Castaway’. Wow. You got fat. Wow. You got skinny. You got TEN MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS to do it. Give me thirty grand and I’ll pack on a hundred pounds quicker than you can say ‘Oprah’ and I won’t even go around to talk shows talking about my bravery in the name of my craft…sheesh. Actors, what a bunch of self important dongs.) Okay, so back on track here. Tom Hanks is not the coolest actor alive. I don’t know who is, but I know who ain’t. Here’s a quick summary of some actors who aren’t the coolest actors alive, no matter what their publicists tell you.

Tom Hanks- Not to belabor the point, but no, dude. The Terminal is the last movie I can even think of that he was in. That was what? A serious take on Borat but confined to an airport? Wow. Good idea, studio executive! It appeals to everyone who went to Borat for the love story, but got a little unnerved by the rampant dick flailing/gay sex. Tom’s New Englander accent in ‘catch me if you can’ was so embarrassing that Leonardo Decaprio’s Irish brogue from Gangs of New York was laughing at him, and that’s saying something, cuz leo’s no fucking master of accents.

Robin Williams- God, I’m so sick of this guy and his bullshit. He’s the classic example of someone who lost it, and then rather than looking forward for inspiration he turned to his old work. When he does his “Robin Williams thing” he’s essentially eating his twenty year old poo and shitting an even less nutrient rich version of the poo back out for us to kind of try to enjoy in that ‘oh-I-used-to-like-something-kind-of-like-this-years-ago’ sort of way. And god help you if he’s not doing his ‘every-reference-under-the-sun-coked-out-just-kidding” thing…then he’s doing something so laughably heartfelt and contrived that it verges on being funnier than his crappy stand up….ugh. It’s enough to…

Okay, I can’t do this. I don’t care about old actors who desperately cling to their faded glory days…Sometimes I can laugh at or along with the morality play/cautionary tale that is Hollywood and sometimes it just bums me out. That place is seriously like a work camp where we send our most desperately insecure and untalented individuals to fuck and suck their way through the smartest/slimiest/grossest/most conniving human beings on the planet, and as a reward, we go through their trash, examine every aspect of their lives, feel smugly superior as we worship them, and then give them a few million to blow on coke before they either get dragged, kicking and screaming into obscurity or they die, or, in the rare case, they just take the money and run.
I never understood why more people didn’t pick this last option. I tell you what man, if I got ten million dollars for a job, I don’t care if it’s putting out a record, selling tons of books, painting a picture, acting in a movie, whatever…that’s fucking it, man. I’m done. You won’t be seeing me again. I’m moving somewhere nice and I’m gonna kick it. No more fighting all these assholes to stay relevant. What’s relevant about being a multi millionaire? NOTHING! As SOON as you’re that rich, you’re no longer someone who easily relates to anything approaching real life.
Oh, sure, Deniro and Billy Joe Armstrong still do great work, and good for them. They’re talented. I’m not saying they shoudn’t work. I’m saying, imagine how hard it is for them to put aside the fact that they can’t even take a dump in the airport without someone poking their head under the stall door and asking for an autograph, putting aside that they have their own chefs in their homes, putting aside that it’s been so long since they even hung out in public anywhere without being harassed, and putting themselves into the mindset of making something that dirty plebes like us find to be relatable? That’s some nigh-impossible shit right there.
Fuck man, I barely remember what it’s like to not be married, and that was only five years ago. I barely remember what it’s like to not be a dad, and this little dude is only six months old. We’re talking about being so desperate that you completely deconstruct yourself just to somehow figure out how to make yet another album/film/statement, because all the accolades and accomplishments you have suddenly seem not that shiny, not that important. For fucks sakes! It’s been fifteen years since ‘Dookie’ came out! No fucking thanks. That’s too much work. Give me my millions, and I’ll be out of your way. Thanks.

Life is crazy, candy baby.

Babies throw up. That’s what they have in common with old drunks and rock stars. Also, they’re blissfully unaware of themselves, usually they’re kind of lacking in muscle tone (except that baby Hercules thing, and iggy pop, respectively) and pissing their pants isn’t so much out of the question as it’s a given that it’s gonna happen.
My baby likes to barf. This morning, he had already barfed on my chest twice by six thirty. He’s previously barfed on my face and into my mouth. It’s one of the more shocking things, in that it instantly makes you wide awake, but it’s not as gross as it sounds. Okay, if it’s your baby. I don’t want YOUR baby barfing into my mouth. That’s just fucking disgusting. No offense to your baby.
I have tons of dumb shit to do today. I have to take my dog to get his nails cut. I have to get some printer ink. I have to vacate the house for three hours while it gets cleaned (fucking A right, everyone) and I have to teach my friend Chris the basics of picking my baby up from daycare and putting him to bed. Not that it’s difficult.
My wife’s gonna be out of town this weekend. It’s serious Mister Mom action, Friday to Sunday. I’m home on Saturday, but otherwise, I work, so it’s gonna be a somewhat grueling weekend. Well, actually, I plan on doing a lot of writing and reading and getting some sleep. Bedtime for BK? Seven thirty, Friday and Saturday. Nice.
Next weekend (Halloween) I’m going to Gainesville to play a few rock shows. It should be cool, and quite the opposite of my baby weekend. That’s also when Daylight Savings Time shuts off, so the baby will suddenly be waking up between 430 and 530, which is a bit of a drag. BUT HEY! I’m gonna be in Florida. That’s really more my wife’s problem. I’ll have my own issues to contend with in Florida. That’s for sure. Like where the fuck I’m gonna sleep, or how I’m going to get a bunch of hooded sweatshirts down there. God. The business of rock and roll is so boring. It’s all shipping and invoices and contracts and negotiating and stupid fucking truce arrangements that involve doing favors for some shady asshole so he’ll fuck someone over on your behalf later on. I mean, if all I had to do was crack a beer and go on stage, I’d be pretty happy, but unfortunately, I deal with all this other bullshit too. It’s dumb. Oh! That reminds me. I also have to go to the bank. Good thing I put that in there right? That’s interesting. Jesus Christ.
I can tell you all, without a doubt, what the most insane day of my life was. Is that strange? Do most people know off the tops of their heads the day that stands out the most as the craziest one they ever lived? I mean, for me, it’s not even a contest. Some day I’ll tell you guys about it. I don’t have the energy today, but let me just say that it heavily features my toothless German dwarf friend from most of my good stories.
People, if you ask them, will probably usually say the day they saw their kids get born is the most insane day of their lives. Actually, you know what? No. they say that’s the happiest day of their lives, which to me is fucking crazy. I mean, there is a lot of joy at a birth, but it’s also SCARY AS SHIT, MAN! For every iota of joy I was feeling on my dude’s birthday, there was a contemporaneous iota of terror, uncertainty and newfound unknowable responsibility, each. I think that the happiest day of your life would probably be one where there’s no pressure, right? Like, that day you woke up, got a blowjob, had a bloody mary, saw some friends, maybe another blowjob, and a great dinner. That’s like a perfect day. I understand it doesn’t have the dizzying highs of birth, but it also doesn’t have that terror factor, which, if you see the pictures taken of me on the day of my kid’s birth, was clearly in play, at least for me. Sure, it becomes less scary, but that first day, boy. Woo-hoo. Talk about having to use some expensive equipment without having a manual. You know how much a baby goes for out there? Me either, but I’m pretty sure this dude on my lap is worth more than my iPod.
Honestly, and this is so cheesy that I hesitate to write it, but I think my wedding day was the happiest day of my life. All my friends and family at a party that I had at least some say in making sure was cool…I knew I was going to Mexico for a week right afterwards. I was pretty confident in my spouse choice. Yeah, that was a great day. We also rolled through the Taco Bell drive through at 1 am and ordered 60 bean burritos. That was a nice capper.
Nah, but I’m not talking about happy days, or exciting days, I’m talking about insane days. Days where you maybe (in my case for sure) pray a little bit and say “hey god, I know we don’t really get along, but if you get me out of here alive to tell this story, I promise I won’t embellish it or anything, and I’ll never, ever, ever let a war photographer talk me into driving sixty miles and walking two miles into a French forest in a snowstorm again. So what if it’s the only place where I’ve ever seen someone ask cops for heroin, or seen a camper on fire. Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. Today, office max and the dog groomers. That’s pretty exciting too, right? Stay tuned! Today may just usurp that day in France as the most insane day of my life. I kind of hope not though, I’ve got a weekend of parenting and bartending ahead of me, and I need my rest.

Everything, turn, turn, turn

My friend Chris is scared of birds. He attributes this to an early life viewing of Hitchcock’s “the Birds” which is, I’d say, about as good a reason as there is to be scared of birds. Birds can be scary. They say that birds are the closest living descendent of the dinosaurs, and they’re even rethinking whether or not the T Rexes and shit may not have actually been feathered rather than scaly. That’s a fucked up thought. It’s kind of like every idea I ever had about dinosaurs just got flamboyantly cross dressed. And as someone who’s grown up around it my entire life, I’ll tell you right now, that huge tranny in the feather boa is the best fighter in the room. Every time. So, yeah. I think that dinosaurs with feathers are even more terrifying. I’m just so used to the idea of dinosaurs as lizards, that I’ve traditionally had a lot of trouble getting this bird thing straight in my head. That is, until about five years ago, when I saw some birds that actually kind of looked like dinosaurs. And they were WAY fucking scarier than anything in ‘The Birds”,
Okay, so I’m in Frankfurt, Germany with my friend the bald toothless dwarf with barbed wire tattooed around his neck. Well, he’s not actually a dwarf, but he’s not that tall. He’s a pretty amazing guy, particularly to look at. He looks a lot like if a garden gnome snapped one day and said ‘fuck it’ and just kind of went all Travis Bickle or something. And he’s German. So there’s that whole tote bag of connotations too. Just sayin.
Anyway, he suggested we stop by this tattoo parlor to see his buddy. His buddy owned the tattoo shop. He was also (and this is the first of many things in this little anecdote that are, I swear, not made up) at the time, and perhaps he still is, the number one ranked Thai kickboxer in all of Europe. Needless to say, he was a hulk. He was happy to see my buddy and suggested we crash at his house. This sounded okay. I don’t exactly recall the details of what happened next, but it was generally that we got Thuringers in the Frankfurt Christmas market (which is one of the great Christmas markets in Germany), we made fun of a guy who was wearing leather pants and a designer jacket and had frosted hair who was panhandling (I believe we said, ‘uh, sell your pants’) then met up with the kickboxer when the tattoo shop closed. OH! We also checked out some brothels (which are legal in Germany) and saw a guy shooting heroin into his dick in a phone booth. So, yeah. Good times.
Well, we get back to this guy’s house, and I don’t even know where to begin explaining what was going on there. His bathroom was set up for an extremely geriatric person, (who would occasionally emerge from one door, go into the bathroom and then float back…no idea who he was, I think someone’s dad, maybe) he had a bunch of boxing dummies and punching bags and shit, and some mats for you know, casual grappling and he had a girlfriend who not only looked like she could be in some very high end porn, but she was kind of dressed like she was currently in some very high end porn.
Now, this dude, as I said, was (perhaps still is) an internationally ranked athlete, and as such, he’s got some pretty serious fans. One of his fans is the king of Morocco, who had sent him some hash as a sign of appreciation. This hash was minted in the size and shape of a large Hershey bar, it bore the seal of the king, and it varied in color (depending on the bar) from a light forest green to white. If you’re not familiar with hash, it’s usually brown, black or dark, dark green. White hash is like the Chinese girl with green eyes from Big Trouble in Little China. “Woah.” One might say. “That’s unusual.”
Okay, so everyone begins to relax and smoke a little, when all of a sudden, shit starts getting really freaky. Why? Oh, well, firstly, everyone is way too high, because the Moroccan king apparently doesn’t fuck around and secondly, and I don’t believe I haven’t mentioned this up until now, this dude had 250 IRANIAN FIGHTING COCKS in VARIOUS PENS AND CAGES ALL OVER HIS LIVING ROOM!
These things were about two and a half feet high and they were fucking nasty looking. They had black feathers (kind of like the white hash, or the green eyes, it’s a real denotation of strange shit being afoot) and huge beaks and fucking talons…jesus. They were insane. There was a little incubation table where the new ones were hatching and then there were all these fucking crazy chickens, roosters, hell birds, whatever, just FUCKING EVERYWHERE. So, put yourself in my shoes. Not a regular ingester of cannabis, in a room with a bald toothless dwarf, the number one ranked thai kickboxer, his porno girlfriend some ghostly old man and a quarter of a thousand fighting cocks from Iran. Oh, and a big mean looking dog, who was actually very sweet.
Apparently, dude had smuggled the eggs into Germany and he was selling the birds (who looked like real asskickers) to various cockfighting circuits. I think the cockfighting may have been legal, but the Iranian birds were definitely not. Anyway, whatever. YOU tell the number one Thai kickboxer you disapprove of his hobby. See how that goes. Well, so he busted out the mats and showed us how to twist peoples heads off and shit by demonstrating on us. He was very insistent, ‘brazilliian jujitsu! It’s the best martial art in the world. No one can combat it.’ I believe it. He practically ripped my arm off with no effort at all.
Well, long story short, we watched some video channel all night that only played about five videos over and over again. One was a german rapper who wore a golden skull mask at all times and one was that “my neck, my back my pussy and my crack” song by that chick that makes the contestants of Flavor Of Love seem cosmopolitan. Ew. We slept in that room with all the birds. It was scary. Then he made us breakfast and told us about the murder/ suicide that his ex girlfriend’s dad just pulled on her mom at the grocery store. We didn’t believe him so he showed us the local paper. It had happened the week before. Oh, wait, he didn’t kill her, he blew off her legs and killed himself, sorry. It’s been five years.
SO…yeah, it was pretty strange. Birds, man. They’re fucking scary. Beliedat.

Lay me on down.

Hey hey! Thanks for coming out to the Subterranean, for those of you who did. Good times. I’m a little exhausted, so I’m keeping this short. It’s Monday, and my boy has to go get some shots today. You wouldn’t think that a baby would have the “dude, seriously?’ look so dialed in, but after he behaves for one or two shots, that third one produces the ‘dude, seriously?’ look so amazingly that I’ve come to believe that we (humans) are genetically coded to be disappointed in others. There’s no other explanation.
On Monday, the baby is in daycare, and I’m home alone. It’s like a little field trip that I take, back to a simpler time, when I had no job and no baby and I just kind of fucked around all day. It’s eleven and I’m only wearing shorts. I don’t even believe that every day used to be this easy. I had it fucking made! What the fuck, man? I mean, I’m currently tired, but fuck, this is about as close to being asleep as you can get and still do something that passes as productive. Oh, I wrote in my blog today, that’s something. It wasn’t a total waste! Hmmm…
I should have slept more, but I have a crazy CRAZY problem sleeping. If I wake up, I have to get up, no matter how tired/hungover/sick I am. I feel insane amounts of guilt when I lay in bed. It’s not logical at all, and right now I’m not really doing anything, except wishing I’d slept more, but it doesn’t matter. I’m up, so that’s how I’ll stay. Awake.
I fell into a microphone last night and hurt my back, so I can’t even exercise or anything. It’s nothing serious, mom. Jesus, relax.
Moms…they just call and call, right? And then, you give em an inch and they take a mile. I swear, the guy who constructed this maxim was talking about moms. Just answer the phone once, because you know, you’re feeling guilty that your poor old mom keeps calling and calling, and then BOOM she’s right into the story about the daughter of the neighbors that you don’t even know and how her husband is thinking about switching jobs and maybe they’ll have to move to Kansas City and it’s like FUCK MAN! I don’t think it would be humanly possible to find a story out there that I care about less…But here’s the thing, she’s your mom. She was wiping your ass and picking your nose when you were the most insufferable little shit on the earth. She still thinks you’re cool, even when you’ve most obviously turned out to be nothing of the sort. AND (and this is the ultimate dick punch) now, I’m a parent and so I feel this renewed sense of empathy to my parents and this already sickening clinginess to my child. OF COURSE I’m gonna call and blab about crap. My life is done. I’m nothing more than a conduit through which the best possible life for this little guy flows. I don’t have time to do worthwhile shit that would make a good story. I’m busy being a dad. AND once it finally gets to that point where he’s off on his own and I’m no longer taking up all my time with making sure he doesn’t become a pervert/asshole/religious nutjob/guido/swishy fashion hipster/condescending prick/fat guy/creep/date rapist/hick/elitist/buffoon/racist/overly nice guy/pussy/judgmental douchebag, I’m going to have been out of the loop for so long that I’m not gonna be able to go out and get into good trouble if I want to. Fuck, so the neighbor’s kid did what now? Her husband’s going where? Hmmm… That’s all our futures, get used to it.
Yeah, okay. I’m going to lunch. I gotta find some pants.

Are you trying to tempt me because I come from the land of plenty?

Wow, so it’s Friday, tonight it’s just me and the kid, which is cool (he’s a good sleeper, so really it’s just me and the ladies of the internet and the men of the Kentucky hills.) I’m missing a lot of my friends who are in town for one night only, but whatever. I’m a parent, you know? It’s not like I haven’t seen their sweaty asses a billion times. Anyway, this is a chance for me to actually relax and read something or work on some writing or any number of things that hang out under the large umbrella of ‘things to do when you’re alone after you’ve perused the internet porn and had a cocktail.’ Tomorrow, I’ve got a show at the Subterranean on North avenue. Today, I’ve got to work. I’m a little bummed, but it’s not so bad. My friends have a good band called Dead To Me and I just heard a new song that I like a lot. That’s always a good feeling, getting some new music from one of your favorite bands. You can check it here: http://s3.fatwreck.com/sync/audio_track/the_audio_file/234/03_Little_Brother.mp3

Yeah, I don’t link. I’m a caveman on this thing. Whatever, cut and paste you fucking lazy shits! You know, not long ago, if you wanted new content to read and listen to, not only would it cost money, but you’d also have to stand up, put on pants and leave the house to get it. We’re getting soft, world.
So yeah. There’s some sort of contest thing going on and I’m a bit of the prize, in that the winner gets to hang out with me (not for long, you guys creep me out). It sounds lame, I know, but it involves free beer, which I’m a huge fan of, so go over to NationalUnderground.org to check it out. If you’re the type of person who is going to be in Gainesville for the fest (Halloween weekend), has an inquisitive mind and reads this crap every day, this might be the contest for you. Of course, if you’re the kind of person who is going to be in Gainesville for the Fest and has an inquisitive mind and reads this crap every day, you can probably pretty easily end up drinking a beer with me at any given moment without even entering any contests. I’m nothing if not a man of the people, after all.
Fuck. This is real ad space today, huh? The funny thing is, I don’t stand to gain anything by posting any of this shit. This is the story of the life of a marginally talented individual really putting it out there with the zeal of someone who just barely gives a shit but who gets terribly flustered if things don’t just immediately turn out awesome, you know?
It’s a rough life. I gotta tell you.
This reminds me of something I really don’t like. Complainers. Fuck, man. I work with this bitch who just complains from the second she walks in the door to the second she leaves. In fact, the only day I work with her is today. She’ll come in around three and just set in with, ‘I’m so tired, I really don’t want to be here, I work a double tomorrow, my roommate is a cunt, I hate table 72, they don’t know how to tip, I’m bored, I’m tired, man, when I lived in LA I used to hang out with Spencer Pratt” and all I can say is “oh yeah, well, I work with this horribly self obsessed complainer who insists on telling me things about her life that I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT. Beat that.”
I’ve got this friend who is such a complainer that it’s been taken to the next level and it’s gone from irritating to amazing. He complains about things that no one in the world should ever complain about. I’m not making this next part up, and it’s so amazing that I’m going to surround it with spaces so it sinks in:

This guy once complained to me that two models sucked his dick beside a rooftop pool in a hotel in Sydney.

He complained about it.

“Oh, then next thing I know she’s giving me a blowjob too and I’m like…what are you even doing? Right here? Really?…whatever.”
Only in America or in this case, Australia. Out there somewhere, there’s a kid who has no parents who’s had sex with a grown man against his will, who lives in a dusty hellscape where he’s seen severed arms just laying around getting picked at by vultures. This kid eats dirt by the handful just to keep the hunger pains from making him double over and he’s probably got a pinwheel or a scrap of cloth or something that’s his only friend and he cries at night on his bed made of burlap sacks in his shack made of milk cartons and he looks at his pinwheel and says “Jobobu, my only friend, someday, I will get us out of here.”
Meanwhile, my buddy’s bitching about getting head from two models beside a rooftop pool in a luxury hotel. Oh, you know what? If memory serves, it was actually in the stairwell that leads to the pool. Now, I guess that WOULD suck. So awkward.
Anyway. I’m going to work. Go to these shows Saturday and Sunday at the Subterranean, or go to both. The Falcon (the band I’m in) doesn’t play that much. Good times to be had!

Man, fuck McCain, I'm voting for that plumber!

Work work work work work work work work work. Yup. It’s one of those days people. Cutting limes, wiping up sticky spills, washing glasses, breaking the shitty, cheap cocktail glasses as I attempt to stack them, listening to the same bullshit over and over on my ipod. Oh work! You’re so exciting. If only there was some way to get dumb, overblown, self important dipshits to sit down and talk endlessly at me while I performed these tasks. That would be divine.
Last night was a big night for television, right? I mean, this contest has been heating up for a while and now, this is the last big showdown. Who’s gonna come out on top? The black chick, the chick who’s never used shampoo or the hipster bitch who looks like her vagina smells like rotten refried beans (actually, they all look like their vaginas smell like rotten refried beans. More on that later). What? Was there something else on TV last night? Cuz I was watching homos and aging hags hand judgment down with the fury of a vengeful (and sassy) old testament lord on Project Runway’s season finale.
Oh yeah, that’s right. The debates! And it was cool because the old man was unable to get the black guy to go all ‘angry black guy’ on television. “Angry black guy” is a guy that America is NOT ready for. It’s true. I’d love to think more highly of our country, but I think that it’s pretty much in the pledge of allegiance:
‘and to the republic, for which it stands, except for angry black guys, cuz they scare the shit out of us, one nation, indivisible, under, um…something, pigs?” I don’t remember. Second grade was kind of a drunken blur.
Yeah, so the old man looked cranky and the black guy was unflappable. That’s nice. Maybe, once he wins, Obama can put McCain in charge of, you know, if Canada hits their baseball onto our roof, or tosses its Frisbee into our yard, or if Mexico drives by us too fast or plays its music too loud. McCain can come out in his slippers and shake his fist, keep the baseball and threaten to tell Spain. Good times.
So, back to the show about hideous women dressing anorexic disgusting barf smelling sticks up for the amusement of snarkily revolting gay men. Did you tivo it? The chick with the safety goggles and the shirt made out of butcher paper won. You don’t need to watch it now. Heh.
I’ve realized something. I don’t feed my brain anymore. I only read yahoo news and I only watch pornography. There’s nothing nutritional going in. I don’t watch movies or tv shows (project runway season finale was kind of a happenstance thing. That’s not a regular occurrence for sure). I don’t read books or anything these days. I don’t even listen to music, except the shit that’s already on my ipod when I’m at work. My brain is dying. I’m getting less intelligent by the moment. Well, I’ve got some great ideas about how college parties sometimes get out of hand and wind up in gangbangs, and I’m somewhat confident that I could tell you the basics of what’s going on on Wall Street (we’re fucked. Time to panic…WAIT, no! Don’t panic. uh…it’s cool.) but other than that, I got nothing.
I blame the baby. There’s no time for that kind of leisure anymore. It’s either ‘go out and see your friends cuz who knows when you’ll get another chance,’ or ‘sleep’. Those are the choices. SO, that being said, I don’t know where I’m even coming up with this stuff to ramble about here. I’m perhaps just eating my own brain, a sort of mental anorexia. Perhaps I can put my brain on the next season of that show. That’s an idea. Jesus, there I go, regurgitating again.
Fuck, people ask me all the time, what records I like, or what good movies I’ve seen, or even (and this is a rich one) what plays or comedy troupes around Chicago I’d recommend.
Uh, I don’t have any preferences anymore. I don’t even want recommendations. I file those away right next to advice from assholes who tell me how to bartend or what my band should do next.
Hmmm…so, what’s the moral?
The shackles of work and offspring will suck the creative soul out of you by way of cutting you off from what is actually current and going on. And you won’t even care, because you’ll be too tired. Huh. Pretty good. Sounds depressing, but it’s not. In fact, I don’t even care.
My friend is going to see Norm McDonald this weekend and she wanted me to come up with an attention grabbing opening line that would show her she was interested, but not slutty, pique his interest and ultimately lead him to marry her.
My suggestion:
“Hey norm, my vagina is a lot like Machu Picchu. It’ll take you a while to get there, but once you finally do, you’ll be amazed by the craftsmanship.”
I think it’s pretty good.
I mean, it would work on me.
Off to work.

forgive me, life is cruel.

It’s a baby themed day here at BSC world HQ. My friend’s wife just gave birth to a baby boy earlier today. I’ve been hanging out with a different baby boy all morning…fuck, all week. He’s currently crying in his bedroom. He’s got this really great new trick where he flips over onto his stomach and then he can’t flip back so he blows a gasket. It’s great. I know he’s tired, man, but he just won’t sleep. Whatever. I’m tired too, and lord knows I’m not laying down, that’s a fucking death trap. Every time I lay down for a nap the garbage trucks come and back up all over my fucking alley, BEEEPing my ass awake. Not today trash hogs, not today.
I have a new class starting tonight. It’s writing again, and I’m apprehensive simply because I’m coming to realize that in this sequence (there are six altogether and I’m starting the fourth) I’ve been dissatisfied with every instructor for some reason. Most recently, my teacher just didn’t like me, and while he was funny as shit, and gave great direction to everyone, he was kind of a dick to me, and it made it hard to fully immerse myself in the lesson, you know? I don’t know why he didn’t like me…different personalities I guess. I liked him just fine though, so huh, maybe I’m an abrasive wiseass or something. Who knew?
I’ve never really been in a fight. I’ve been punched in the face a few times in my life, only once that was serious. I broke my nose (8 places) and had to go to the hospital and get a face cast and all that. Funny thing, they stuffed one of my nostrils (my left, if memory serves) with gauze and when they took it out, like, 2 months later, it was the greatest feeling ever, so for the next few years my buddies and I would stuff tons of toilet paper up our noses and let it just kind of hang out for a while to try to recapture this amazing feeling of relief when we finally removed the blockage. It was okay. Not like the real deal, but pretty good. We also did these things called gong-bongs, which involve squatting and breathing real deep for a while then standing up and holding your breath. It’s kind of an asphyxiation high thing, and I’d be lying if I said that it wasn’t pretty awesome for the time, given the tools we had to work with to get high. Heh. It’s great, the things people do to get high when drugs aren’t around. Smoking banana peels, gong bongs, uh, what else? Jogging. Dude, meth is the most perfect example of misused genius in the hands of a bored person without access to real drugs that there probably is, and also a great argument for the legalization of said drugs.
Some guy, bored and unable to get his hands on real drugs, figured out that if you combine all the shit under your bathroom sink with some batteries and some Sudafed, you can create a product that gets you so fucked up that you won’t even be bothered by ingesting the ingredients you just used to make it. Fuck, man. How do you even figure that shit out? “man, I got some drano, some ammonia, a duracel 9 volt, some Sudafed and a big kettle. I bet there’s a high in there somewhere.” That’s really smart. It’s gross, don’t get me wrong, but it’s remarkably resourceful. In a slightly different world, those guys would be heralded as great thinkers.
Also funny, that drug is so gross, so dangerous and creates such FUCKED UP people, couldn’t we have just given everyone some weed and some coke and been done with it? It’s like disease. You stomp out one, the new one is just gonna be more devastating. It’s like Eddie Murphy said about the ever more dangerous world of STD’s, “What’s next? You just stick your dick in and explode.”
To sort of blend the world of STD’s and meth for a moment (not that they’re not already like hippos and sandpipers in terms of their symbiosis) I remember a time when a friend of mine tried to get this other group of guys to rent a transvestite hooker. His plan was, he’d tell these dudes that he was renting the hooker as a gag for my friends and I, you know, because presumably we’d all be fine with fucking this hooker, we’d be excited that someone else was picking up the tab, and we wouldn’t realize it had a dick until the panties came down and ‘WOAH! This chick has a dick!!!!’ Sure, it had its logical flaws, not the least of which was, you know, how the joke would play for more than one of us after the first guy’s um, surprise registered, but you get the general idea.
Anyway, this guy and the other group of guys would get a big laugh. BUT! His plan was actually much more involved. In fact, what he really wanted to do was, after he got the money from the other group of dudes, he’d rent the tranny hooker, and HE would fuck him/her HIMSELF. He proposed that I videotape the whole thing and then sell it as a DVD.
He was excited about this plan. Really excited.
Needless to say, me, not so much.
So, he’s sitting there with me and my friends trying to get us psyched up about this “brilliant idea” and he looks at me (keep in mind, my other friends are looking at me with a ‘uh, you gotta say no to this, ya know’ sort of look of desperation) and says “well, Beex, what do you think?” And I said “uh, man, well…we don’t have a, uh, video camera.”
And he says “Fuck! That’s the least of our worries.”
No shit dude.
Um…so, in what I hope is a completely ‘needless to say’ moment, we didn’t do it.
That’s what meth will do to you, kids. That guy got help and he’s better now, presumably making gentle, sober love to trannies somewhere, you know, for free, or at least without supporting the European Transvestite Hooker Consortium (yeah, this all happened in Europe [on another note, I’m not sure if the ETHC is still the main organization for tranny hookers over there, just going with old info, so yeah, apologies and all that. Don’t cite this for wikipedia or anything]). But man. To recycle a previous idea, that’s a whole other level of genius. In another, slightly different world, that guy would be heralded as a great thinker.

just jackalackin' around

Yo, so yeah, I missed a day on the blog, huh? How did everyone survive their respective Mondays? I had band practice. I have another band, called the Falcon that’s playing up at Subterranean on North ave in Chicago this Saturday and Sunday. It’s gonna be a gas. The Sunday performance, especially will be a hoot, as it will feature some real surprises. That’s really neither here nor there though, is it? It’s not plug time, it’s reflection time.
This weekend we played HOB and it was awesome. I had a really great time, even though there were some early evening clerical errors and we went half the show with no backstage room. Whatever, right? That’s when, as the singer of a band, it’s my job to throw a fit, chuck a lamp at a wall and ask loudly if people have forgotten exactly who the fuck I am. So, yeah, I did that and it was great. Then I boned a few groupies, did some lines off Neil’s balls and played a hell of a show. It’s crazy. The adrenaline gets so strong right before a show that the whole thing just whizzes by. It’s almost like it didn’t even happen, or more to the point, that it was happening, but I was just kind of there watching it go down. It’s indescribable, the feeling. It’s kind of like being drunk but more in control and with tunnel vision, but not in a bad way. I dunno. Who am I, a doctor? Thanks to everyone who came out. That shit was fun. Come see my other band this weekend. That’ s gonna be a good time too.
It’s funny, I spent a lot of time looking forward to that show and now it’s over and the crushing realization that I’m a drone at a shitty job has um, well…crushed me I guess. It’s like that in life, right? Like if you’re going to, oh say, Iceland, and you’re all excited for it for months, then all of a sudden, the trip’s over, you’re home and that’s it. Back to shoveling someone else’s shit. It sucks. The lesson here? Never do anything.
So, I got asked a question in an interview recently which was the following: How has becoming a father changed you as a musician? This is an interesting one, right? The fact is, there’s nothing rock and roll about being a parent. It’s quite literally the opposite of rock and roll. Rock and roll is about defying conventions and pissing off or terrifying parents or something like that. I mean, that’s my understanding. So all of a sudden, to be a parent, and have that inform your music, well, guess what? You suck now. It’s true. People go putting their babies on the covers of their records as though that’s got any sort of relevance to anyone but them. That’s just self indulgent, baby picture showing, dad behavior. It doesn’t matter if the kid’s got a beer, or he’s smoking a cigarette or he’s in front of a plate of cut out lines, it’s lame. It’s cutesy, and that’s just not cool. It’s not. People write songs for their kids too, which is almost always a bad idea. Talk about schmaltzy. Fuck! There’s that Will Smith song called “Just the two of us” where he’s rapping about how he’s always gonna make sure his kid brushes his teeth and does his algebra homework, and how he’ll whup his butt if he misbehaves and all that. Lame. What kid wants to hear a rap that their parents could conceivably have written as a morality lesson to them? Also, there’s the great line in that song “Things didn’t work out between me and your mom” which, man, if the kid wasn’t already embarrassed enough by the whole fucking thing, has to be the line that makes him get into gay porn or whatever it is you do to get back at your dork-ass rapping dad for doing one of the most mortifying songs in the history of the world. Yeah, it’s Will Smith, I know. He stinks anyway, but the point is the same.
There are a few good tunes about kids, like “Loving you is easy cuz you’re beautiful” by Minnie Ripperton about her daughter Maya Rudolph who’s now on SNL, or was recently, I don’t know. That’s a good song, but it’s hardly a rocker. I think Eminem gets the prize for the only person I’ve ever heard invoke parenting in a song and not making it sound dorky, but it’s essentially because he totally recapitulates the whole thing so that he and his daughter are essentially the kids ganging up to kill the mom. That’s a nice take, but it’s not really my style. End result? How has becoming a dad changed me as a musician? Oh, fuck. I don’t know, but it can’t be good.
Nah, those are two different things. Being a dad is something I do just you know, because I like this kid, and because if I didn’t, well, parent at him, he’d grow up to be another one of these lame dipshits that I deal with all day at my bar. Being a musician is something else entirely. I don’t want to get into using dumb lines like ‘it’s just in my blood, man’ cuz really, it’s not. I mean, I love it, but I’m not like waking up and playing riffs that came to me in my sleep or anything. That’s for people like Keith Richards to do between hits.
I don’t know what’s going on here. The other day I was talking to someone and I mentioned some crazy story that I had been involved in and I was thinking it would be great to write about here, but for the life of me I can’t remember what the fuck it was. It wasn’t the time I did Karaoke in Athens with the runner up of Greek Idol. It wasn’t the time that I stayed in the squat with the methadone clinic in it in Slovenia that had shit logs pierced with hypodermic needles scattered everywhere, it wasn’t the time I hitchhiked into the Mexican desert with my friend so he could get weed from a farmer or the time I got arrested for urinating in a public square in upstate New York and got placed on suicide watch for some strange reason. It wasn’t the time that I got locked in the stairwell in Canberra and gave myself claustrophobia, or earlier that week in Sydney where me and my friend Chris got kicked out of ten bars in one night. Fuck, man…I can’t remember what it was. It was actually wild, not like these stories, which are essentially tame, but involving wild locales. No, this was one of those stories that, every time I tell it I’m like “woah, I don’t believe that happened.”
It wasn’t when I stayed at the house in Nottingham with the dude who was debilitated with Gulf War Syndrome where you needed to actually swipe a credit card to get the shower to go on…Hmmm, it wasn’t the time where my friend Pete and I got stuck behind the bar of an English pub, pouring drinks and getting loaded while a guy who claimed he had a sterling silver Tiffany’s butt plug up his ass tried to convince us to go to a party with him on Christmas day. Man, whatever. I don’t know. I guess this will go down as just another dull entry.

Cobra commanding.

dude, not being at work is awesome. It's tempered slightly by the fact that I have a whole different job to do tonight. I walked my baby to his daycare and it's one of those days where it's kind of cold, but you sweat anyway, because even your light jacket is a little too hot, but your skin's kind of chilly so you don't realize you're overheating...anyway, I got to the daycare and I was sweating like a junkie. Embarrassing. Okay, so I'm getting ready to walk my dogs and head to the House of Blues for our show. Our shit is on a truck and isn't really supposed to get delivered to our guitar player's mom's house until after we go on stage, so it's now up to our guitar player to hunt the truck down, 'most dangerous game' style, and get that shit. Our drummer and sound guy are loading up our gear, and I'm about to be walking dogs. Our tour (uh, one off show?) manager and I are supposed to go to the venue together. does he want to get some breakfast first? Only jesus knows for sure. Anyway, that's the long and short of what's going on right now. I look forward to seeing everyone tonight. please throw your drugs and panties on the stage (and label the drugs people, I can't stress this enough). Sheeit. Okay, on the real, though, I'm done with this bullshit for today. If you want a real epic tale of excitement, go back and read yesterday's entry. Or go to the second blog I ever did. It's a little series of tips on how to get a beej. I'm going to walk some dogs. do you think in those asian places where they cook dogs that they wok dogs? Like, they say 'hey ma, you want me to wok the dog?' Heh. That's funny. Unless you're a dog in Korea. Then it's scary. Also, I don't know if they use woks in korea. Is this racist? Hmm...I don't think it is. I mean, people eat dogs right? Fuck, whatever. My friend Skylar eats horse. Take that. I just eat balls and my own words on occasion. Oh, man, that reminds me, my friend Lupe told me that the Mexican slang for the taint, or the choad, or grundel, depending on your regional dialect, is the cobra. How cool is that?

Trimspa baby!

So, as one of my astute readers/commenters pointed out yesterday, I DID forget a big one, a major instance of rubbing elbows with a celebrity. In fact, it’s so big I can’t believe I fucking forgot it. It beats the crap out of shaking Shaq’s hand. It wipes its ass with Little Richard giving me a book about god. It totally buttfucks me buttfucking DJ AM and Travis Barker in some of the hottest below the waist, watch melting action you’ve ever fucking seen…okay, tasteless. Yeah, but whatever, they’re alive. Tell it to Jon Benet’s hairdresser. She’ll spin you a tale of woe, boy.
Anyway, so a few years ago, my band played the Roxy in LA with our friends in Hot Water Music (great band, by the way). The Roxy is this famous club that is known for, well, I don’t know, coke and hookers (and dudes who would someday go on to star in a reality show about coked out hookers competing for his gross dong) hanging out there. I guess it’s some sort of legendary bacchanal. Whatever. It’s a lame joint. There’s no room for gear, and the stage is small leaving no room to backline (that’s industry jargon for ‘leaving your shit on stage all night’). They told my band that we had to leave all our amps and instruments and stuff in an alley until we went on stage. This was fucked for a few reasons. First, it was raining and there was no protection from the elements. Secondly, it’s LA and there are all sorts of hobos and junkies and creeps everywhere and they weren’t gonna post any security in the alley. They were telling us to leave all our instruments and amps and equipment-essentially everything we need to play a show/make a living, unattended on the streets of LA in the rain. Shitty, right? Well, that aside, the show was actually great, and afterwards, our roadie had these friends who were bartending Anna Nicole Smith’s private birthday party right across the street. I had finagled my way on the guest list, so I headed over with my other friend Chris (who used to tour manage Snoop…he’s got way better stories than I do. Maybe he has a blog. I’ll check and get back to you) to check it out. Well, I WAS on the list, and I headed to the bar and got a complimentary cosmo. Then another. Then another.
I’d never been to (and have never been back to) a celebrity-who-is-shooting-a-reality-show at-the-time’s birthday party. It’s crazy. Okay, so it’s basically set up like the solar system. In the center, the sun, if you will, there’s Anna Nicole and that creepy lawyer guy and a few other people. Immediately surrounding them, in a super tight, impenetrable circle, are camera crews. Right on the immediate outskirts of the camera crews are desperate famewhores attempting to do whatever it takes to get into the shots, attract the attention of the principals, whatever. Ringing these pathetic dildos are the people with their own video cameras…I don’t know if they won attendance to this event at a lotto at Knotts Berry Farm or something, but it was strange. They were regular dudes out there with their camcorders just a-filmin’ away like it was the most normal thing in the world to bring your video camera into a bar and just kind of record everything (and no, these weren’t paparazzi guys. I know those dudes by their telltale vertical stripe beards. These were joe sixpacks like you and me and their fat wives). Then, right outside this second ring of cameras were the people who were presumably there with anyone caught up in this tightly wound, highly chaotic nucleus. On the outskirts, near Pluto’s orbit, to return briefly to the solar system metaphor, leaning against the walls were the people like me who were there to drink free drinks and stay out of the way. I was sort of by the bar and sort of by the back wall in a place that, despite what this description would lead you to believe, was somehow right between Anna Nicole and the door she would eventually leave from.
Okay, so I know what the big question here is, and let me tell you. No. She wasn’t the gigantic fat mess that we were hoping for when I started this tale. In fact, I later found out that this birthday party was a crossover event to introduce her new fabulous body and miracle-product-turned-death-dealer Trimspa to the world all while pimping out her show. Genius. So, yeah, she was thin and I have to tell you, she was absolutely gorgeous. Oh, I know. Nothing would make me happier than to tell you that she had gross skin or a huge bobble head or something, but there’s a reason she’s famous, and it’s not her talent (do you guys remember those Trimspa commercials when she’s so strung out and she’s like ‘want some money?’ and just kind of flings money at the camera in this “I’m-so-stoned-I’m-barely-able-to-control-my-arm” sort of way? I think she also asked if anyone wanted a Viper while we were supposed to believe that there’s a company in this world that would insure a commercial film crew filming Anna Nicole Smith actually driving a car. Heh).
Okay, so yeah, she’s not a good actress. And, I’m just gonna go ahead and throw out there that I don’t think it was her business acumen that propelled her into the stratosphere of celebrity. She was beautiful, and this night, at least, she was done up, she was in shape and there was no denying it. She was a bombshell. BUT, I was pretty loose, so take it how you will.
Anyway, I’m standing at the wall and the creepy lawyer is trying to get her to leave, so she’s saying good-bye to everyone, hugs all around and shit, but here’s the weird thing, she’s looking at ME the entire time. Kissing that girl on the cheek? Looking at me. Shaking that old man’s hand? Looking at me. It was the kind of thing that was so odd that I decided it was my own paranoia and likened it to some kind of illusion, or figment of my own imagination, like the Mona Lisa’s gaze that kind of follows you around the room wherever you are. Well, as she gets towards the door, it becomes apparent that I’m not just a paranoid guy and she’s no Mona Lisa, because, to creepy lawyer guy’s great chagrin, she’s walking right up to me. So she comes up to where I’m standing and puts her arm around me and before I even really can figure out what’s going on, we’re in kind of a slow dance sort of position, where her arms are around my neck and my hands are around her waist. (This sounds more strange than it is. Next time you’re at a bar, just kind of go up to one of your friends and see if unexpectedly making for the slowdance position doesn’t just work. I know. I know. Just trust me. I was, one second standing there with my thumb up my ass, the next second, in slowdance position. I wish I could say I had engineered it somehow, or even been aware, but alas).
Okay, so all of a sudden, I’m face to face, eye to eye with a woman who’s famous. I used to have a playboy with her in it when I was twelve, for fucks sake, so my mind is attempting to race. She’s about my height, and not to belabor the point, just stunning to look at. Everything was so colorful. Her eyes were so blue and her lips were so red and her skin was so white, she was like what Uncle Sam should have looked like if they really wanted people signing up to die. So, I’m standing there, in complete shock. I’m confused, a little excited, but WAY more confused, and also kind of stunned by her appearance, honestly. I mean, I had been expecting to see the big fat Anna Nicole. Anyhow, her face is maybe an inch from mine and she’s looking me, deeply in the eyes and she says:

“Are you here with Steve?”

And I had no fucking idea what she was talking about. So I said:

“Yes. Yes, I’m here with Steve.”

And then she leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. Not with tongue or anything, but not in a way you’d kiss your mom either. Then she says: “Don’t you ever hurt him. If you ever hurt him, I’ll fucking kill you.” And I say “I promise you, I will never hurt Steve.”
Then she kissed me again, same way, and then creepy lawyer came and whisked her away.
I turned to Chris and said “dude, did that just happen?” and he said “Yeah man, I think so.” I’m actually still kind of struck dumb with the notion of what happened there. I’m pretty positive she thought I was some gay dude’s better half. Makes sense. I was in my assless chaps and leather daddy hat at the time. Regardless, it was wild. I called my wife immediately and told her the story and for the next two years every time she had any symptoms of any cold or anything she blamed it on me bringing Anna Nicole’s skank diseases into our home. Whatever. It was awesome. Now she’s dead. Anna Nicole, that is. So, for all the bullshit celeb meetings of my post yesterday, I left out the very, VERY best one. I should really write it all down sometime, you know. I don’t know if I’m always gonna be able to retrieve these memories. Someday, my grand kids will be like ‘grandpa, tell us the story of when you got a rimjob from the Jonas Brothers’, and I’ll be sitting there, eating my curds and playing internet chess with a nine year old girl in Helsinki, and I’ll say “I don’t have the foggiest idea what you kids are talking about.’ And that will be sad. Cuz that’s a real good story too.

I'm gonna live forever!

Wowzers. Six came early today and I was beat. I’m still beat. My baby went down for a nap at 830 and I did too, except that happens to be the exact forty minutes when the garbage trucks are repeatedly backing up outside my house for some ungodly reason. So I just had to lay there with the equivalent of an alarm clock going off, knowing that the next chance I’d have to sleep was not going to be for some time. It’s like when you’re in a hotel and there’s no one in the next room, but the clock radio alarm goes off at six anyway. So you call the desk to bitch, but it takes them like fifteen minutes to get someone up there. Then you’re awake, and pissed and there’s not even really anyone to yell at.
That’s how I feel right now. I’m so fucking tired. My wife says she’s getting sick. I really don’t need to add sick to the list of things I’m going to be this week. I’m already dad, husband, bartender, son, guy in rock band, organizational wizard, blog overlord and fart champion. Sick too? No thank you.
Our practice went well yesterday. We’re all ready for our show at the House of Blues on Friday, oct. 10 (get your tickets while they’re available through ticketmaster) and my baby is being remarkably cool about chilling in his swing while I do this. The only problem that I can really see is that I’m too groggy to write about anything interesting. What are some interesting topics? Sex. Violence. Drugs. Politics(maybe), fame, falls from grace…Huh? That’s like Elvis Presley’s life. Nice. Uh…the baby is getting frustrated. I’m starting to panic. Um, I once new a guy who…no, that’s no good. Oh, this one time I got my dick stuck in…no, man! My mom reads this shit. Come on. Okay, here are some funny things people have said to me. No particular order and every one of these is obviously paraphrased:

“Yeah, I boned her without a rubber, cuz I figured, hey, she’s way more likely to get something from me than the other way around.”

“this is going to sound really racist, because, well, it is”

“You kind of look like that Backstreet boy with the mustache”

(to Shaquile O’neil [really, truly…me and the guy who said this were talking to Shaq]): “How’s it going, big man?”

Okay, I’m realizing something here. Context is key. So, for example, the first one, that’s only funny if you know that the statement is a) being made about a chick my friend picked up in a Georgia Roadhouse and b) probably, somehow still true. For the second one, that’s funny because prefacing racist comments is such turd polish. It’s not really gonna do much, and I appreciate that this person realized it halfway through the statement. It’s also funny because it was said by a super sweet girl who you really wouldn’t expect to say such things. The third one was said to me by my friend Mike when I was cultivating what I thought, erroneously it turns out, was a Burt Reynolds type of thing. I shaved the mustache that day. The last one involves Shaq Fu himself and was said in such a condescending manner by (this hardly needs to be pointed out) someone much, much smaller than Shaq.
Meeting shaq was cool. Him and little Richard are two celebrities who have waved aside their security detail so I could drunkenly stumble up and pretend I actually gave a shit about their respective careers.
Who else have I met who’s famous? Good question Bobby! I went to highschool with Jeremy Sisto, the guy who’s almost good looking enough to have a career in film, but instead got shit out onto the crime procedural show crapheap after playing Elton in Clueless and something on Six Feet Under. I also went to highschool with Jon Duda, who is most famous for his role in Flatliners (the creepy kid, Billy Mahoney) and his role in Prancer (he played the gay elf that was in to piss fetish stuff). Different highschools, just so you know. I didn’t go to the low rent version of FAME academy or anything.
I also went to gradeschool and highschool with the sister from home alone- the “Kevin, you’re such a disease” chick. Um, who else? Little Richard, like I said. He tried to get me into Jesus. I met dead black mayor of Chicago Harold Washington once, and I met Pete Wentz and even got my picture with him! That’s actually true, by the way. Um…fuck. I feel like I’m forgetting someone big. Matthew McConahay was at one of our shows when my band toured Australia, apparently. I didn’t meet him, or even notice he was there, which is weird, since he probably wasn’t wearing a shirt.
I met Gwen Stefani when my old band played with No Doubt as a pregame to a riot in Denver, but she wasn’t famous at the time. I totally banged her too.
Who else? I’m only counting people I’ve actually met here, not just seen. So yeah, McConahay shouldn’t be in there, but that’s just funny right? MATEO! Sheesh, what a dork. Okay, back to the list: Um, Matt Pinfield from 120 minutes. I’ve partied with that guy a bit. I’ve also met uh…those tubby mormon twins from Good Charlotte. Oh, and I met the guy from Sum 41, the drummer. This was good. My friend introduced us and because he’s famous and on TV and shit, I was like “man, we’ve met somewhere before” and he was looking at me like “oh really?” and then I realized who he was and I was like ‘ah, fuck! I’m that dumbass that mistook someone I see on TV as a person I know from my daily doldrums of life. Then I remembered that I HAD met him before. He was trying to bang a friend of mine! SO the day was saved and I looked like a slightly less dipped-in-shit type guy than I would have.
Let’s see, that’s about as low on the totem pole of band guys as I’ll go and still consider a worthwhile story about meeting or knowing someone famous. They gotta be on TV or in the tabloids or something. That guy in Sum 41 is at least the drummer for the guy who’s banging Avril Lavigne (who, actually, I’ve also met. I met her in LA and we talked briefly before she blew me up against the bar in the back of the club, and actually that’s almost the exact same story that I have with Matt Pinfield)
Well, I know all the guys from that Nofx Backstage Passport show. Great show. Kent, man. One time Kent and I saved our friend Jordan from a predatory hooker who wouldn’t take no for an answer at 430 am in a bar in Atlantic City. Jordan was so shaken that he was almost in tears.
Oh, I know those My Chemical Romance dudes just a little bit. Mutual friends, so I don’t REALLY know them, but I think with a little explaining, they wouldn’t call the cops if they caught me on their lawn at night. Also, that guy from New Found Glory. Is he still famous? Nah…never mind.
I still feel like I’m missing someone big. I met David Johansen from the New York Dolls. Neat. He’s real skinny. I fucked him too.
Okay, one more good one and I’m done. For having nothing to write about, this has been a real act of memory calisthenics. Let’s see…I stood next to Bill Maher and Larry David at a bar once, but I didn’t say anything to them. Lemmy was also there. I also saw B Real that night. Uh, fuck, man. Jesus, this is getting hard. Oh shit! Billy Joe from Green Day hugged me once. Then later that night we (and by ‘we’ I mean he and the other guys in Greenday while I stood around, observed from a distance and later added myself into the story, actually) took pictures off the wall in a hotel room, drew dicks on the wall and then put the pictures back up over the dicks. It’s a trick I’ve been doing ever since. Also, I set the alarm for six when I leave. Nah..that sucks. I can’t even joke about that. Sleep’s too important.

"I'm out of control, like Sonny Bono on skis. Kind of like Magic but without the disease."

Just a quick precursor to this post: The above is the opening line of a rap that my friends and I wrote while driving around New York about ten or eleven years ago. It was based on the fact that my driving was really out of control. That was based on the fact that we were in a crappy van in Manhattan during the late afternoon, when everything is crazy. Also, I'm a bad driver. To this day, I think it's one of the all time great opening lines that any of us have ever written. With all apologies to the Johnson and Bono families. Anyway, on to the post:

Every night when I lie in bed, attempting to sleep, I get these ideas for what I’m going to write in this thing the next day. It’s usually something that involves a bizarre dynamic or some sort of list or just some observation that I think is incredibly clever. But I’m in bed and I think ‘oh, that’s so good…I’ll just remember it.’ I never do. Consequently, in the morning, I’m stuck with no ideas, but the irritating knowledge that JUST beneath the bubbling surface of my conscious mind, something greater lurks. That’s why I’m going to get hypnotized. Or, maybe I’ll get a lobotomy. Or no, I mean trepanation. Trepanation is definitely what this I need. When I was particularly young I used to be in a ska band and we played with a band called Trepan Nation a bunch of times. Looking back, if they’d been as good as their name, they would have been unstoppable. Instead they were kind of uneven. Heh. What do I know? I was in a ska band.
Anyway, today is an exciting day. The baby and I will be going to the grocery store where we’re going to pick up some big tubs of ammonia and all the Sudafed in the place and then, after we throw a little homemade meth mix together, we’ll clean the house and I’ll work on various creative (ultimately doomed) projects until the baby’s mother gets home. THEN, once the lights go down in the city and the perverts come slinking out, I’m off to band practice, where I’m going to get as drunk as I possibly can and pass out, then wake up and try to go through the set we’re playing on Friday at Chicago’s House Of Blues. That’s right. I’m taking this practice shit seriously. I’m doing a dress rehearsal. Fully drunk, in my codpiece and assless chaps. I’m writing all the banter between songs this afternoon and I’m gonna practice it tonight. I’m thinking “this next song’s about getting your dick sucked” between every song. What do you guys think?
Nah…we don’t do that kind of shit. This is what I was talking about before. This is, if everything goes well, gonna be our last practice before the show, and we’re going to let the shit just kind of roar. We’re pros, after all. I mean fuck, I’m constantly entertaining the youth these days, what with the baby and all. He likes it when I get drunk and pee on the guy standing in front of him (that guy is usually me). The crowd at HOB will like it too. I’m positive.

So, I remember a friend of mine telling me once when he went to visit a college (which college, I can’t recall) back when he was just graduating highschool, that he got kind of drunk at some bar or party, I don’t remember the details, but whatever, this isn’t the good part, and this girl took him back to her place. They were getting all set to bone, and she asked if he was into kinky shit. He, being probably 18 at the time was like “um, yeah, of course…Anything at all is what I’m into!” and that’s when she broke out the knotted rope.
According to the lore, she spread out some sort of tarp, then she stuffed the rope (a smooth, sailor style nylon type rope, I believe, or at least that’s what I picture) up his ass, and then blew him and at the moment of truth, she yanked the rope out of his ass with a “Geronimo!” like zeal that apparently made (and I quote) ‘shit go everywhere’.
I don’t know why I’m reminded of this story right now. I remember that my buddy said it was incredible, but as I recall it now, I’m almost positive that this story is bullshit. What kind of eighteen year old kid is adventurous enough and confident enough to let a girl he doesn’t know stuff a rope full of knots up his ass? What kind of college girl has a ‘shit catching tarp’ in her house that she just pulls out every time someone wants the old ‘parachute pull’? Why was the rope already knotted? Is it washed and reused, or does she do that in the morning like prepwork at a resturaunt? OR did they just stop everything and cut a new length of rope off the big spool in her living room and knot it together right then? Kind of stops the momentum, huh? Yeah, it’s got to be bullshit, but man, when I was 18 or whatever, that story awakened in my mind the amazing possibilities of college and knot tying all in one brief tale.
My dog is licking my feet right now and it’s a nice change of pace from showering. Well, I suppose technically, it makes showering even more important, but you know what I mean. Ah, that little guy is awake. Time for a little tummy time and some peas. He, like his mother, hates peas, apparently. I don’t hate peas, and like any good parent, I’m hellbent on making sure he does something he hates just because of some vague notion about character or something. I only work one day this week. Thursday. Hah. Take that recession! I don’t need your stupid play money! I got rock and roll.
Okay, tummy time! Bye.

No coke, Pepsi

So, Monday morning, huh? Anything happening out there? The baby is at baby school, the economy is still in the dumps and I woke up after only five hours of sleep because I thought (wrongly) we were going to have band practice. The real kick in the balls is that I had already made and consumed my first cup of coffee by the time I realized that I was entitled to go back to bed. Now I’m in the seventh level of hell, attempting to organize a rock show, write a blog entry, peruse some pornography, edit a movie script, contact my mother about picking up her grandchild, deal with travel plans, attempt to get food into my system and somehow work in a little bit of the perfect pushups. It’s one in the fucking afternoon! I’m stuck on a treadmill of precrastination. That’s like the build up before you start procrastinating, you know? Look it up, boorish masses.
I don’t even know where to begin. I want a cheeseburger. This summer started off and I was eating a cheeseburger for lunch and a steak for dinner every single day. It started to get gross and I was worried that I was gonna get gout, so I stopped and went back to my usual diet of chicken and fish and veggies, supplemented with fried shit and pizza whenever I’m drunk/hungover/busy/bored which is like eighty nine percent of the time. Anyway. It’s fall. I want a cheeseburger. Last time I had one it made me really ill. That was, you all may recall, my birthday. Fuck.
Look, I don’t need to explain myself to you people. I want a cheeseburger. It goes like this: Double cheese…no matter what you do, if you get the one patty or two, you MUST get two slices of cheese. It improves the whole thing so vastly. Not doing the double cheese is just half assing it. It’s like if OJ had left Ron Goldman alive and bleeding, or if Reagan had just talked a big game, but never actually built the strategic missile defense network of lasers that now protect us from Rogue regimes and their unlawfully acquired nukes. Right? Get the double cheese, people. It’s just good sense.
You know what I love? Those ads for old people that feature Wilford Brimley where he says DiaBEETus, and talks in a folksy no nonsense kind of way that grandpas can understand. It’s funny. Also sad. Cuz, you know, imminent death and all that.

When you’re a baby, you kind of like anything. My son gets super jazzed if I lift him up, put him down, hand him an orange peel, sing, rap, cover him with a blanket, whatever. It’s all fun. You get older and people get pissy and tell you not to be enthusiastic about things and call you names if you are. Calling someone a poser, ninety percent of the time is just the shittiest fucking thing you can do. You’re calling someone out for being enthusiastic about something that’s new to them, for embracing something. That’s so crappy. Anyhow, so, people call you poser and/or things wind up being less fun than you thought they’d be (God! Every day I’m burying a new hooker in this crawlspace! It’s really lost some of the luster, you know?) or other people keep improving and you stagnate and get frustrated and quit(like me with my passion for polo). By the time you’re old, almost everything has been ruined. The only thing left is the old Brimley/McCain style ‘straight talk express.’ Sitting around and vaguely reprimanding young people for not being prudent because you (the old person) suck at everything you don’t hate and hate everything you don’t suck at.
It’s a beautiful thing. I think that now, at thirty two, I’ve kind of crested the wave and maybe more things bug me than excite me. One of the few exceptions to this is enthusiasm. A kid who’s just getting excited about something new is really cool, be it dinosaurs, rock and roll, stand up comedy, basketball, textile manufacturing, whatever, is awesome and I love the vibe that comes with discovery, and genuine enthusiasm for learning/hearing stories. The jaded ‘I been there and seen that shit’ attitude bums me out quicker than almost anything. I can’t stand when I’m bullshitting with some bar patron and they, for example, mention that they love the Red Sox. (this very thing happens more than you’d expect) So I’ll say something like:
‘man, my friend is groundskeeper at Fenway and one time I was lucky enough to get this awesome tour of the park. I stood on the mound! I was in the batters box! I saw the clubhouse and sat in the bullpen and I even saw where ted Williams signed the inside of the scoreboard! It was awesome’ and they’ll look at me with this dismissive air and go ‘oh, right on, whatever.’
Dude! Fuck off. You JUST told me you like the redsox. Why is the fact that I’ve had this experience bumming you out? Because I don’t deserve it? Because it’s just not that interesting? Bullshit man, it’s because you’re a bitter, jaded dipshit who thinks that acting like an aloof douche somehow translates to ‘unflappable and confident.’ Well, here’s a fucking newsflash! Nothing in this world takes more confidence than being excited about something you’re not terribly familiar with. You know why? Because people are going to constantly piss down your throat for it as though it’s their god given right to do so simply because their own experience has left them bitter, pathetic fucks with nothing better to do than re-emphasize the exact same shitty hierarchical attitude that turned them into the cock trainers that they’ve become. Ugh. The worst (and most prevalent in my life) of these people are the ‘real punks’ who have ‘been there since the beginning’ and think that everyone owes them something just cuz they continue showing up. They hate the kids, they hate the new bands and they try to bond with me over this. “dude, what’s up with all these stupid kids and their crappy bands?” Um dude, I’ll tell you. They’re dancing and keeping this whole thing going by buying records and thanking us for coming to this town and starting projects that they think are cool simply because they have the energy and desire to do so. You’re pissing on that why? All you do is drink beer and attempt to get free shit, and smell like farts. I’d rather talk to someone with no idea and a ton of enthusiasm than anyone who feels like they run shit just cuz they showed up.

With that, I’m off to get a cheeseburger. Peace.