Friday, January 30, 2009

last day of this bullshit for a week! Here's your advice, you depraved fucks!

Okay, not much time and lots of advice, I want to get to all the good shit today, because tomorrow I go to Mexico for a week. So, without further ado:


Q:
This is question that my mates and I have been debating for a while, i think there is a simple answer, but it seems impossible to reach a consensus.
Wha would you rather?

A Brutally, Savage unepected, hell on earth for the next three hours Raping

OR

Aides

GIVEN...theres always a chance the person who rapes you, might give you aides?

A:
Aides? Aides? How cute. This guy is from Australia, and of course he’s referring to the Aussie version of AIDS. You’d think, since we all speak English, that a disease based on a medical acronym would be the same in both places…but that’s the funny thing…it’s a whole different disease. AIDS is caused by infected blood, usually due to using needles or penises recklessly. “Aides” is a feisty little bugger caused by sneaking too many sugar crisps right before nighty night. So, yeah…I guess aides. Unless I’ve got this all wrong and you’re referring to study aides…then I’d pick the raping, because I hated college.

Q:
so recently I've started sucking at drinking, I blackout or just skip drunk and go straight to wasted. The problem is my alcohol tolerance is so high, that I kind of have to drink a ridiculous amount. What can I do to avoid all the memory loss and terrible hangovers?

A:
Get younger. Or quit drinking so much.

Q:
I was in college and my roommate was a really reserved type of guy During our sophmore year he started dating this really wild girl and I assumed it would go nowhere. Anyway on New Year's Eve they made this video. She was pretty wild in it and he was utterly embarrassing. I mean he was spouting off about how much he loved her while she was rubbing up on him like Baloo with an itch. I stumbled upon the tape a few weeks later and naturally dubbed it onto the end credits of "The Last Temptation of Christ"__Over the next few years I proceeded to show this tape to EVERYONE I could with the assumption they would eventually break up. Well they got married and I was the best man. Roughly 73% of their wedding guests had seen them engage in the physical act of love because of me.__Flash forward to last weekend when I get a call from a buddy saying that after a few beers he may have told my ex-roommate about "The Last Temptation of Christ". I still get together with my ex-roommate a few times a year so I can't completely cut him off but I'm kinda wary about giving him a call now. What do I do?

A:
Great question…See people, this is a GOOD advice letter. All the trappings, sex, betrayal, real, honest question. You all could learn a thing or two from this dude.
Okay, down to it: What do you do? Why do you care? You obviously have no respect for this guy. I mean, you can shine up a fistful of shit and put it in a tie and sit it next to Angelina Jolie at the SAG awards, but it’s still a fistful of shit. And no matter what your excuses are, no matter what your justifications, this is a totally unacceptable move. You snuck through his shit, found a tape of him and his old lady having sex and then copied it for yourself and THEN showed it to people??? Any one of those things by themselves is totally fucked up, dude. Fuck yeah the guy’s gonna be pissed. I’d fucking KILL you if I was him. Just chalk it up to this, you’re an asshole, and if that guy ever comes up and punches you in the face, no matter what the situation is, he’s right and you’re wrong.

On a side note, when he was about fourteen, my little brother unwittingly came into possession of a tape of his friend’s PARENTS having sex. He just thought he was stealing a studio made porn from his friends dad’s stash…Nope. He got the mother (and father) load. The mom spends a great deal of time with a dildo up her ass. I’ve seen it. It’s great.

Q
im a home brewer and wanted to make a brendan kelly signature brew in recognition of just how great a person you are.. what style of beer would be most appropriate. we could even give it a great name like " mr. kellys' felched squirl ale". i know this isn't as urgent as asking advice on how to get my girlfriend to engage in a super hot night of bukkakkee with the water polo team, but any adice would be great. and you'd get free booze so really it's a win win

A
Not really a question, but I like your style. I like light lagers and ales and pilsners…anything light, really. I’m talking flavor, here, people, not calories. Nothing with squirrels please, but yes, thank you, I’d love a beer. The water polo team are a bunch of queers and unless your girlfriend has a penis, her bukakke dreams are unrealizable. Sorry

Q:
Dear Aunty Brendan.__I'm female, 31, attractive enough, but not enough to qualify as "super hot". I don't tan or frizz or any of that retarded shit though.__I've been celibate for about a year by choice because I got tired of really crappy men, and really crappy sex, usually one with the other.. However, a year without balling is lame, and I'd quite like to get laid. Where or how do I find guys that (a) don't smell weird (b) don't suck in bed (c) can at least treat me like a human being instead of some potentially clingy leper later. I really need a friends with benefits sort of situation, but I've not lived here long enough to find any friends I really want to fuck, and one night stands seem to assume that a friend relationship is like, the women's backdoor to getting married, and tend to just treat me like shit at some point later, so I get irritated.__Of course, ideally, monogamy is great, but since I'm having no luck finding that, is it really too much to ask to get some half decent fucking every now and again? Or should I just give up?_

A:
Hey, if I could answer this one I’d be the richest man alive…How do you find someone to bang who you get along with that’s decent in bed that doesn’t have weird issues that get in the way, that’s pleasant to be around? Well, I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what you should do if you find them: Marry their ass. This is a TALL order. Think about the highschool class equation. In anyone’s given class, from ANYONE’S perspective, there are probably about 3 really great people, ten people who are pretty decent, another ten you can deal with and everyone else is a TOTAL bag of shit, right? This ratio holds true in every circumstance, even the act of trying to find someone to stimulate your genitals. It’s hard. Most people have issues/suck in bed/are assholes. I will say though, your best bet is to be social, diversify where you spend your time and keep an open mind. Sitting at the same bar with the same losers will result in a long line of the same exact kind of dudes fucking you the exact same kind of poorly. Go to events, shows, plays, galleries, food classes, the racetrack, the baseball game whatever…even if you think that shit sucks…try some variety. It’s the kind of thing that’s good for you anyway, it’ll make you more well rounded, expand your circle of potential wangs and ultimately make you more attractive to higher caliber people, simply because you’re more interesting than the bitch who just sits at the bar and only talks about facebook. Good luck.

Q
Dear Mr. Kelly__I find that I am currently in several sexual relationships, these girls don't know about each other, but that's not really the problem. Its more of a purely sexual thing with these girls, "fuck buddies" if you will. The problem is; not one out of these three girls I find myself regularly having sex with will perform fellatio. Now call me crazy, but those odds don't seem kosher, I suppose this must be gods way of telling me I'm a bastard, and it sucks. So I was wondering if you have any tricks/tips/magic words that can help me out. I've tried everything I know including but not limited to: getting them rip roaring retarded, asking nicely, asking repeatedly, and just thrusting my junk in their face. What the hell do I need to do!?!?

A
Wash your dick/balls.

Q
Well I have a best guy friend and recently we became more than friends. After we said that we loved each other, he backed away though and I guess got scared. Now we don't even act the same as best friends anymore and he is always talking to ugly sluts. So I guess my question is why are guys so scared of the perfect girl for them and would rather waste their time with stupid sluts?

A
I’m guessing you’re young. You and he are looking for different things. Once you start to bone, things, friendships change. It’s like sprinkling salt in water. You can’t just decide you don’t like the new salty water and take the salt out…what’s done is done. He’s a young guy who’s been bolstered by confidence thanks to being able to bang (or feel up or whatever) a girl who’s close to him…so like it or not, he’s found that he’s more confident, and therefore more able to attract other girls. You were probably not looking to bolster his confidence and send him out on the prowl, but he clearly was not looking for what you were either. Why would dudes rather waste their time with stupid sluts? Easy, they fuck you, they blow you and then, when you move on to other stupid sluts, they just move on to other asshole guys.

Q
I've known this chick for like 8 or 9 years, we're pretty close friend. After all these years I sure as hell don't want to date her or anything (boring) like that. She lives a few hours away now. Lately she's been talking to me online a lot about fucking. Not fucking ME, per se, but she talks about how lately, she's really horny and needs lots of dicks. If I were an idiot, I'd say she keeps bringing it up because she wants to bone me, but I'm not an idiot so I know she only talks to me about cock because she looks at me as a friend whose opinion she values. But, being that I'm a guy, I want to get on that, and this slutty juncture in her life would be the perfect time to do so, no? How do I plant the seed that fucking her best guy friend next time he visits might be a great idea?

A
Get drunk, get her drunk and just go for it. If she’s talking to you about fucking, she’s at the very least trying to get you to think about her fucking…if not fucking you. You have nothing to lose. But be courteous. “she looks at me as a friend whose opinion she values”. Heh. What are you, sixty?

Q
Alright so, I just slept with this guy for the first time. The chemistry is really great and things were going well. I was semi-drunk so I don't remember all the details but after we were done I realized he didn't come. I asked him to make sure and he said he just doesn't come during sex. He can during blow jobs but never during sex. This is bugging the shit out of me. I brought it up to him again yesterday and he said it has nothing to do with me, it's all him. He says it's extremely rare for him to get off. He says he enjoys sex and has a crazy libido but the stars just have to be aligned for it to work.

Not to be conceited but I know what I'm doing when it comes to the dick. So my question to you is this- is this common? Is this totally psychological? Is this even a big deal? I think maybe I am blowing (no pun intended) this out of proportion but it is just really bugging me and I don't know if it's something I want to deal with. I care about the guy getting off more than myself and I think if this problem were to continue it would cause us both a lot of frustration. This is a relatively new relationship and I don't know if it's worth ending over this but I also don't know if it's worth getting too involved if this guy has mental problems. What do you think?

Other possibly important info, he had 4 or 5 drinks, was wearing a condom, and it lasted i'm guessing 20-25 minutes.

A:
Okay, good question. This actually isn’t that uncommon…Lots of guys have this uh…syndrome as a hangover from when they were teenagers and couldn’t really get condoms or birth control, but didn’t want to deny themselves the brave new world of pussy that was suddenly available. Solution: Don’t come in the pussy…come in the mouth. This is predicated on necessity, the fear of god, the fear of parents, pregnancy, and some dumb asses who think that disease can’t be transmitted without jizz..whatever the reason, lots and lots of guys trained themselves in their sexually formative years to only be able to come while whacking off/getting a beej/ peeking in through the crack in the girls shower. So don’t be hard on yourself. This guy is just dick deep in a psychological mindfuck brought about by his basic survival instinct all wrapped up in his libido. How do you fix it? Well, I’d suggest a few things…get your asses tested, get on the pill, talk dirty and talk dirty some more. Beg him for it…that should set him straight.
If that’s more of a commitment than you want to make, ditch his ass and I’ll have a contest here to see how many dudes would write an essay to see you coax a load out of them, using nothing but your vagina/ass. They’re definitely out there…


Q
so, as an avid porn watcher and connoisseur (god bless spell check), i've gotten to thinking - maybe my boner is curved a little too upward. i think it comes from me constantly getting boners in class and pulling the whole 'superbad' boner waistband up-tuck (which i invented YEARS ago, thank you). do you think if i, ya know, over time, kind of kneaded my boner downward, it would eventually start getting back to being a nice straight boner? thanks for your help

A
If you think you invented that move, I’ve got some news for you, man…the cave men were turning their boners up in their pelts before chicks even stopped looking like monkeys. That shit is as old as time, and fuck Superbad for having the GALL to suggest that that’s any sort of new innovation. To answer your question: no dude. That’s the way your dick looks. I bet your dad has the same one. Don’t you know your Darwin? It’s not from whacking off…It’s just not.


Okay, good luck out there. If I didn’t answer your question, it was terrible…Sorry. Have a good week and I’ll talk to you when I’m back from Mexico.
XOXOXOXO

Thursday, January 29, 2009

a triumphant return to form

Good morning Viet Nam!
Okay…that’s a reference from a movie starring a guy who everyone used to think was funny just because he was coked up but who now everyone thinks is funny just because people USED to think he was funny. He hasn’t done anything worthwhile since Popeye (eh…the Fisher King was pretty cool) but no one seems to realize that. People still think he’s funny, but he NEVER was…he’s like Bruce Willis in that movie with the robot kid. Someday we’ll all look back and go, “holy shit! He was unfunny this whole time!”
Anyway, more advice, eh? I had no idea you people were such wayward lost souls. Okay, fear not, I’m here to set the world right for you and tell you what to think, like, dislike, mock openly and hold unwarranted prejudices against.

Oh, and we’ve gone over this before, but for those of you who are new here, I don’t delete the comments. Any time you see a deleted comment, it’s the person who wrote the comment who has deleted it. I’ve never deleted a comment on here. So there’s that. Whatever. Who cares? On to your depraved shit fetish, diaper wearing, rape fantasy, heroin suppository craving issues:

Q:
One time in college, at a lame Get Up Kids Show (at the time I thought it was pretty awesome though), I met this chick from downstate (ISU to be exact). We hung out the whole night, exchanged phone numbers/IMs and the whole e-communication bag that kids do nowadays. Despite the fact that she lived hours away, I was so into this girl I still cannot believe it.__Anyway, and a long story short - it never worked out and I'm better off for it. She's married now and I almost am and things are good. However, we were pretty good friends for a long time, but that kind of subsided after a few years, but we still keep tabs on each other. __If I were to be in the area she lives in with or without my current significant other, would it be out-of-line to suggest some kind of meet and greet just to say whatsup and chat at some lame coffee house or something? No blowjob exchanges or anything like that.

A:
Wait, What? Where’s the interesting part? Yeah, (hypothetically) hang out with her. Who cares? What’s your girlfriend, six? Who gives a shit? If she doesn’t trust you to hang out with someone you never even banged, you’re in a bad relationship. Get some real problems please. Next.

Q:
OK. So several years ago, while still a raging college student, I developed this insane crush on this girl. I saw her every day for weeks and it made me feel terrible. Whenever she was around my heartrate skyrocketed and I got really stressed out. It felt like I was 10 years old and it was very embarassing. Finally I worked up the nerve to talk to her even though she had a boyfriend. A while later we became friends but I have good reason to believe (in fact, I know) that the attraction was mutual. However, she proceeded to get married to said boyfriend, and then proceeded to get pregnant, which brings us to today.__My question is, how do I resume relations and, uh, go to the next step with said wonderful girl if things, you know, dont work out with the whole marriage thing? Keep in mind that she will probably have a child at this point (I dont really do well with kids, no offense) and she is very Christian (I am not), but not in a bad way. It is a sticky hypothetical situation.

A:
Now, THIS guy has some problems! First guy, take a lesson from this guy. Here’s a dude who has been into a chick (who he also never banged, and I suspect never even removed the bra of) who’s now married with A KID and who has an entirely different belief system than him and he’s trying to figure out the best way to fuck her, if, you know, it doesn’t work out. BUT, he’s not good with kids…Hmmm. That IS a pickle. What in the world should you do?

Okay, listen…I’m not gonna say you’re retarded or anything but have you really looked at the situation here? Obviously not. She got married. She had a kid. Granted, these are subtle, subtle hints, but the clues are there, man. She doesn’t like you. She probably senses you like her and she’s nice in return, which in the ethereal world of non verbal communication sometimes translates to deluded people as “wow, she likes me.” But, she doesn’t, brosephus. Oh, yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “See, you don’t know. That one time at the bar/in the park/in Glen’s basement/when we were driving back from the Chevelle concert she told me she was really attracted to me/ we drunkenly kissed/ she gave me those eyes/ she mentioned something about how her boyfriend was a schlong and then put her hand on my thigh…” Whatever dude. Firstly, there’s no rule with love that all of a sudden, once you’re hooked up with the right person that you’re no longer attracted to other people. IF and that is a BIG IF she is in fact attracted to you, fine. Feel good about yourself. You’re good looking, at least to her. That doesn’t mean she likes you. That doesn’t mean she wants to be your girlfriend. That doesn’t even mean she wants to fuck you. It probably means you’re one of the better looking people out there that still make her feel desirable to the general populace even though she’s beaver deep in a committed relationship.
Look, here’s the sad truth: She MIGHT be attracted to you. She’s more attracted to her husband. You are dealing with a delusion, and EVEN IF I’M TOTALLY WRONG AND SHE’S WAY INTO YOU (not likely) you’d be such an absolute DICK for even planning any sort of contingency plan for once she gets divorced, because man…there’s a kid out there with a very vested interest in those people not getting divorced. You should take your charm and good looks and focus them on some chick who’s married with no kids, or maybe just engaged, or maybe who just has a live in boyfriend. There’s a lot of fish in the sea, man.
Oh, and here’s the last point…She’s a Christian with a kid…being a divorcee MAY trump that, but it sounds to me like she’s probably already given her last blowjob. And it wasn’t to you. Just sayin. Even best case scenario (what’s that? She gets divorced, and the kid dies? I mean…hmmm…that’s not too good either. Hmmm…) you’re not exactly getting the same girl you got all stupid for all those years ago, eh?

Q
whats the best way to get with the hot slutty sorority chicks? i mean obviously alcohol is a factor, but their parties are pretty closed-door type deals here. any suggestions?
A
I’m glad you asked this question…As with all women, slutty sorority girls are attracted to one thing and one thing only. That is confidence. You will need some friends, because no one looks confident standing by themselves at a party. You will need some confidence and you will need to use said confidence in a way that makes you seem relaxed, unconcerned, but vaguely friendly. If you can pull this off (watch that dungeon master Mystery and his greasy sidekick Matador on VH1’s The Pick Up Artist for a retarded-ape’s-guide-to-fucking-off-duty-cocktail-waitresses if you need the most basic of lessons in how not to be terrifying to even the most desperate women) . Here’s another little tip, and this doesn’t always pan out, but it’s worth keeping in mind…If you see a group of girls, forget the pig and forget the super hot one…talk to the one that obviously goes tanning, dyes her hair, has her tits mashed together, she’s probably a little thick and she probably smokes…She’s the one that is the easiest to fuck. She’s insecure so she’s altered everything about her as a message. That message is this “I’m insecure and easy to fuck as a result. Note my orange skin, mashed together tits, fried blonde hair, raspy smokers laugh and proclivity for Goldschlager. What do I have to do? Put a ‘take-a-number’ wheel on my chin?” Yeah…this is a shitty thing to say, but whatever…I didn’t tell her how to present herself. Now, if you’re not confident, you won’t have any more luck fucking her than that Russian drunkard did trying to fuck that raccoon earlier this week (google it), but if you play your cards right, you’ll be sneaking out of her room at four thirty in the morning with your pants over your shoulder and your shoes in your hand before you know it. Good luck. Oh, and as for getting into the parties…I don’t know, start a band or something. Or just walk right in. Confidence works wonders in every scenario, dude. This is major balls level confidence, but if you really truly act like you’re supposed to be somewhere, chances are VERY good that no one will question you.

For the rest of you, I can’t tell you how to pick a beer or why your bandmate doesn’t seem to share your enthusiasm…that’s just not for me to say.
Tomorrow is my last blog for a week, because I’m going to Mexico, so be sure to get your advice questions in, or you’ll be left all week wondering what to do with the dead whore in your laundry room.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

dear abby,

Hello all. It’s advice day, and as promised, those with questions about felching move to the top of the list.

Q:
Some people are telling me felching is putting a gerbal in their butt. It is not, will you please express the correct meaning of felching? These dumb fucks really need to understand how serious this is.

A: Okay, firstly, no one really stuffs gerbils in their ass. That’s just not happening… do you doubt me? Gerbils are A) soft and B) equipped with teeth and jaws that can easily gnaw right through something as soft as the human rectum…So then what’s the move? Tape up the gerbils and break their jaws for easy insertion (this is, actually what some people think goes on)? Oh yeah, nothing like mutilating an animal to get me in the mood for some ass play. Jesus Christ! Do you see how depraved this is? Okay, news flash: Gerbiling isn’t real. It’s something that homophobic fundamentalists made up to further demonize queers…Let me spell this out for you as plainly as possible: NO one, not even John Wayne Gacy types, stuff gerbils up their asses. If you think otherwise, you’re believing propaganda on the same level as oh, I don’t know…whacking off makes you blind or Polish submarines have screen doors on them.
So, no…that is not felching. That’s not even real, and believe me, felching is real.

Next:
Q:
1. how do i convince my girlfriend to try crazy new sex positions? not boring ones... _2. if i drunkenly chomped on my girls' box after sex (no 'dom) does that count as felching? _3. how do i send you pictures of my genitals? or of somebo(d)ys genitals.

A:
1. Get her drunk and start kind of flipping her around in the heat of the moment. You’re not going to talk your way into any sort of anal piledriver over fondue and cabernet. You need to just kind of let shit roar… This all goes back to confidence. It’s what all women are attracted to. You need to use some. Flip her around, you know, confidently but courteously. If she doesn’t like it, believe me, she’ll let you know. Don’t be a dick about it…banging is supposed to be a leisure time, fun activity…Keep that in mind and make sure everyone’s having a good time. Should be fine.
2. No. Felching isn’t like buttfucking. With buttfucking you can go in for a little regular fucking, but you’re drunk, you’re not really paying attention and boom! Before you even realize it, you’re buttfucking. With Felching, it’s different. You need to be specifically going for it, I’d say. I mean, I’m really not on the official panel of what constitutes/doesn’t constitute fleching or anything, I just think what you describe is some pretty standard post coitus cunnilingus, right?
3. Send them to my email which is linked on the page.

Q: I'd love some advice for my chick problem. I met this girl at the Alkaline Trio show in South Florida. We dated for two months and she moved to Las Vegas (she told me she was going to be moving so I knew it was just going to be a fling). Our last weekend together went great and she really wants me to come visit. The problem is: I'm pretty low on cash right now and I don't know when I'm gonna be able to afford to take a Vegas vacation. How long of a window of opportunity do you think I have to visit her and have her still be interested in me. You know, for boning purposes. That kind of stuff. Thanks in advance, JT

A: This is pretty boring, dude…cash flow problems? The alkaline trio? Sheesh. I thought we discussed this. But, since it’s advice day, and I’m in a good mood…Okay, Twenty years, or twenty minutes. It just depends. People still want to bone after all that time, and people also get bored pretty quick. Depends on your chemistry. Good luck. Don’t let her see this though…she’ll think you’re dull.

Q:
Living in Elgin, I've been with my fair share of E-town hoes as some people like to say. Since you have you been pretty much all around this great state. What other towns in Illinois would you suggest to find more of these women?

A: The smaller the town, the higher concentration of sexually active people. This, friends is an immutable truth. Other places that have high concentrations of sexually active people: College towns (not only students…the vibe of the college permeates the town, for reals. Also, highschoolers attempting to go to college parties and all that seeds banging in their cultural playbook early on, and because they’re emulating college students in an unsupervised environment, they have a completely different idea about promiscuity), and towns with army bases…Be careful in these though. Overall, your best bet is a tiny, crappy rural city…Mobile, Omaha, Rockford, Pueblo, Baton Rouge…Places with just enough population that people feel entitled to fun, but with nothing going on. This is where people just get loaded and bone.


Here’s a list for the young lady who asked for some great pet names for a dick:
Steve
The gnome
Jesus
Wanda
Patient 642
Winston Churchill
Cunt crusher
Smeagol
Allah
Spanish speaking houseguest.

There you go. That’s ten. I have to take my fat Chihuahua to the groomer and my baby to the gym and my cleaning lady is on the way…no stories of my horrible jobs today…But I’ll get back to it tomorrow, unless, of course, there are more advice queries that need to be addressed.
Peace
BK

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

she's my hot Mahatma ghandi

Okay, as any regular reader of this lovely diarrhea flavored page knows, I’m currently in the middle of reviewing all my jobs and figuring out how my own life experience has spit me out into the backwash of polite society…I’m currently discussing being in a band, and, as that is the job I’ve held the longest, it gets more airtime than my two month stint at McDonalds…makes sense, right? Okay, before we continue (if you’ll recall, our last entry found five young men who called themselves Gladhand about to embark on an epic journey to Malo’s, a rock club out in Aurora to play a show with Violent Youth Assembly and Slugbug), I’d like to, in the spirit of any good reader/master relationship, respond to the requests for more advice oriented columns…

I’m going to be cranking up the advice machine this week…Get your questions ready and send em in. Know, however, that I will not answer your question if it’s any of the following issues:

1. ANYTHING having to do with writing music or the ideals of rock n roll- This is not an area where advice can be given, really…Okay, that’s wrong. Here’s the answer to your question about punk rock, what it’s supposed to mean and how you should go about trying to write a great song: “You need to stop worrying about what other people do/think and figure some shit out for yourself. Not everyone is cut out to write good songs. You may be one of those people.” There…glad that’s settled.
2. Something so obvious that it’s not even worth printing here. “my girlfriend and I are both 18. She went away to college and I think she’s fucking this other guy… I really want it to work out. What should I do?” Come on…she’s DEFINITELY fucking that dude, and you’re shit out of luck. Try to find some underclassmen to bang to get your mind off everything…But don’t text them pictures of your dick. That will land you in jail.
3. Something boring- You already know if your question is boring. Usually, it’s something like “I like this boy, but we’ve never kissed or anything, but I THINK he likes me, although, maybe he likes my friend…should I go for it? Oh, also, we’re both into all the same….” Do you see how boring that is? It’s boring.

Okay, so send in the questions, and I’ll fix you right up. As always, and as mentioned in the first ever BSC post, all questions about felching go straight to the top of the pile and will be answered first. Anyway, back to the rock n roll lifestyle:

We got to Aurora, to Malo’s, which was a little free standing rock club and to me, it seemed way, way cooler than the gateway, just because, well, it was a real show, we were sort of on the road (a little bit, right?) and there were only 3 bands. This wasn’t some cattle call! This was rock, rolling along like it is wont to do, man…Fuck!
The dudes from Slugbug were there already and we got to talking. Chris and I had an instant rapport with those dudes, while our other three guys in our band (the bum, the black sideshow bob and the elderly hippy) were acting kind of standoffish. It was odd. Slugbug assured us that Violent Youth Assembly was the dorkiest band of all time, (no small achievement when on the same bill as Gladhand) and they were right. Without giving too much away, they were three buzzards, slightly punkified, just attempting to jam out, but there were three big problems. The drummer was complete dogshit, their amps were so bad that you couldn’t hear anything but the drums and the guitar player was in a wheelchair. It was awesome.
By this time, I’d already bought and listened to the Slugbug tape and I was, I guess it could be said, a bit of a fan…so I was able to talk to those dudes about their music and stuff, which really broke the ice. I mean, they were only sixteen themselves, so to have a long haired guy in oversized cut off green corduroys, a security guard button up and several medallions tell you how cool your band is must have been a real stone groove for them. Heh.
Okay, let’s see. Long story short, the show sucked…There was NOBODY there. Violent Youth Assembly was hilarious, Slugbug, again was totally pro, and I was actually able to sing this time, which was a nice change of pace. At the end of the night, I got Matt from Slugbug’s phone number because I wanted to get phone numbers and addresses and advice so I could get the pro demo tape treatment for the sweet Gladhand demo that had, up to now, gotten us so many great gigs.
The next day I called him about the tapes. We got to bullshitting and he mentioned that he thought I had a pretty cool singing voice and then mentioned that he and the drummer of slugbug, Rob, were starting this new band with this dude named Dan who was from a band called Flowers (yes, Flowers). They’d tried out a bunch of singers, but no one had been working out…long pause.
“Uh, hey, I’d come out and sing for your band, man…” I said, not really knowing if that’s what he was getting at, and he assured me that it was EXACTLY what he was getting at. He told me that the new band would be doing ska…which was, at the time, a term I had never heard. I said, yeah, what the fuck, cool, yeah… and hung up the phone feeling, for probably the first and last time in my life, like a pretty damn good singer.

Now, this was where shit started to get interesting for me. Matt and Dan and Rob had all been in bands that had played lots of shows, and were part of a scene. I had nothing like that. I didn’t know what punk rock was, or ska, or how Jawbreaker was different from Mother Love Bone. It all just seemed like music to me. I also had long hair and medallions, mind you. SO, when I showed up to hang out with these guys, they had the interesting task of teaching me about punk rock, even though I was already kind of into punk rock by accident. They showed me all about the DIY scene and sort of pointed out that you know, Naked Raygun and Bad Religion are kind of THIS sort of band, while The Farmers and Bitch Magnet really are a whole other thing…It was enlightening. This took place over the course of a few months in which time I learned about guitar sounds, club shows, stage presence, how to actually write songs, what actually made bands interesting and of course, I finally shaved my head. That was a real relief to all the guys in the band.
The first practice was in Rob’s basement and it went well. Pat Ford, the singer of Flowers was down there, kind of sizing me up, and he intimidated the shit out of me. Funny, because now, I’d put his ass in a headlock faster than you can say “Beethoven’s haircut” but at the time, I was very, very new at all this, and easily cowed (I’m actually quite sensitive. The dick jokes are a defense mechanism, really).
After practice, Rob and I went out and got Mexican food and then Dan and I got stoned. It was the beginning of something, all right.

Friday, January 23, 2009

The big show.

God, so there used to be this place called the Gateway theater out west on Lawrence Avenue and they would have these shows with fifteen bands for ten bucks or something ridiculous. (the gateway is actually still there, but I haven’t been there in like fifteen years. It’s just past the Admiral, which is the fully nude strip club that doesn’t serve alcohol. Talk about a classy clientele).
So, I don’t remember any of the details, but I do know that when I was a junior, Gladhand got a show at the gateway. We were so fucking excited we pretty much went crazy. This was a real show at a real club! We were going places. I think we’d submitted the same demo that we submitted to get the homecoming dance show…whatever, not important. The promoter was a guy named Matt Nelson, and he was a typical Chicago punk rock dude from the late 80’s: Flat top, leather jacket, dubious ties to skinheads, coke habit, sketchy fucker. SO, Matt gave us a hundred tickets to sell at ten bucks a piece, and gave us the following deal:

Sell all hundred, you get three bucks a ticket.
Sell seventy five, you get two bucks a ticket.
Sell fifty you get a buck a ticket.

Okay, now, these tickets, again, cost ten bucks. Right? Let me just spell this out for anyone who’s not hip to this scheme…This is a screw job. This was my first show, so I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s not the band’s job to sell tickets. That’s the job of the promoter. It’s in every way the equivalent of showing up with no gear and expecting the promoter to play your show for you…It’s fucked. BUT whatever, the entertainment industry is full to the brim with shady practices and this is hardly the shadiest. There are, as we speak, people getting literally fucked up the ass and in the mouth for some sort of paltry bit part in some crappy, direct-to-lifetime movie (yes ladies, even lifetime has it’s predators…they should do a movie about it. Woah, but what do you have to do to get a part in said movie, eh? It’s like a Charlie Kaufman script).
Well, we sold and sold and sold. My mom bought some tickets and gave them to her friends. I think all our moms did that, actually. We sold them around the park we hung out in and in our schools, especially to the younger kids who probably wouldn’t be allowed to go to the show out west on Lawrence anyway. Heh. You know, it’s all steps of finding your way as a young adult. We were playing at having a real show in a real club (which, by the way I now recognize as such a complete insult to real shows and real clubs everywhere) and these young middleschoolers were playing at being the kinds of people who could actually go do the things that they bought tickets to do. Well, in the words of David Spade, Not so fast, Billy Ray.
The night before the show, we, the wonderfully diverse pastiche of boys who comprised Gladhand met in Chris’s mom’s basement (which is where we practiced). We realized that we’d sold ninety tickets. A little quick math revealed to us that if we bought the last ten tickets ourselves, we’d get three bucks a ticket instead of two, and so even though we’d have to put a hundred bucks down, we’d still walk with more money. Genius.
The day of the show came and we were all so fucking geeked out excited we didn’t know what to do. Chris and I went to the same highschool by this point, and I just remember being in the diner across the street (we could leave the school for lunch) and banging the table and throwing a spoon across the room for some reason, just because I was so excited to be the SINGER in a BAND that was playing a SHOW at a CLUB. The whole day we were all nerves. I don’t honestly remember much besides that. Oh, I was wearing my favorite shirt with the Cheerios logo on it. This was back before ironic branding had become the international language of pseudo hipster suburban box store fashion, mind you. Not trying to be a snotty dick or anything (although: snotty dick! what an image! eew) just saying, the Cheerios shirt in 93, not exactly the same thing as the Cheerios shirt in 09. In fairness though, I had hair down to my nipples and was probably wearing more than just a few medallions and rings…So, I wasn’t exactly winning any ‘gateway theater best dressed’ awards that night.
We got to the show and we handed Matt Nelson a thousand dollars.
Just go ahead and read that sentence again, because by the end of this story, it’s that sentence right there that really stings. Here it is again:
We got to the show and we handed Matt Nelson a thousand dollars.
I remember a hardcore band called fifteen month pregnancy played and they had a song about a local convenience store called “White Hen” and then this band called Slugbug played. They, I recall were really together, with big amps and they sounded awesome, even though they were only our age. They also had these sweet demo tapes that were totally pro, as in, the tapes were screened, they had sleeves. Wow. I bought one. It had a fucking thank you list inside! This shit, in my mind, was so unbelievably professional. It was like, other level type stuff.
Well, we played and I’d been getting myself psyched up for so long, and I was so nervous, that my voice was completely shot before we even went on stage. It was a bad and embarrassing show, but it was a REAL show, and we were pretty stoked on that part.
After we played, Matt Nelson approached me and said, “hey, that was really great. I want to do a smaller show at this bar I do in Aurora, called Malo’s and I want you guys to play. It will be you guys, Slugbug and….” Fuck. I can’t remember the name of the other band….Hopefully it’ll come to me by tomorrow…Violent something…it was three words…Violent Youth Assembly!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!
Okay, so the show was gonna be Gladhand, Slugbug and Violent Youth Assembly. We were unbelievably stoked. We’d just played our first show in our hometown and now we were gonna play another show fifty miles away? This shit is all happening so fast!
Well, I came to realize, at the Malo’s show that the reason that Matt put us and Slugbug on the bill is because we were the only two bands that sold all one hundred tickets. VYA wasn’t even at this show, but I’m sure they’d pulled something similar at one of Matt Nelson’s other ‘screw-the-bands-a-thons’. Whatever, don’t piss on my cloud, man. This was a big moment. We had a real show under our belts, we had another booked and Gladhand was fucking going places.
Matt Nelson handed me a hundred bucks. “here dude. Thanks for playing. I’ll call you about the Malo’s show.” I was so young, intimidated, excited, nervous, confused etc. that I didn’t even say anything. I gave him a confused look, but he was already gone. Hey! After buying those last ten tickets, at least we broke even! Fuck man. He would eventually call me and mail me tickets to the Malo’s show too, which unfortunately, I couldn’t even sell to my parents. SO the night was one of highs and lows, especially when I found out that I’d locked myself out of my car. I called and woke up my parents…it was about midnight or 1, and Chris and our friend Cary and I had to sit there in the Chicago winter for an hour, farting on each other for warmth, waiting for my very disgruntled parents to wake up, shake the dust off and drive back to the Gateway to give me the spare keys.
Rock n’ Roll, man.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

strong strong strong reaction

Christ, I’m late for work already. What is today? The continuing saga of my life as a barely employed wretch? Great. I think when I left off, my first highschool band, Gladhand was a four piece, consisting of Brian, the stinky drummer who pan fried baloney, lived in a laundry room and rocked a pretty sweet (and I use the term ‘sweet’ drenched in so much sarcasm that it almost sounds like I’m not being sarcastic at all…try it some time) Eddie Vedder impersonation (hey, it was the 90’s. Who didn’t have one of those?), Tim, the worst bassist of all time, who’s dad was a creepy fundamentalist preacher and Chris, my best friend, on guitar and me just singing. We played a few shows in basements and at Chris’s school and then things got pretty sweet.
Tim was about to graduate from highschool. We needed a replacement so Gladhand could continue on. Enter Jordan, a tall, skinny dude that we used to say looked like a black version of Beeker from the muppets, but who actually, thanks to his dreads, looked a lot more like a black Sideshow bob. He had never played the bass before, but we all hung out in this one park after school, and for whatever reason, he was into Gladhand. I brought a bass to the park and taught him a few things, (which is, to this day, all I know about the bass). Well, within 2 weeks, and I’m not exaggerating, he was WAY better at the bass than I was, (even now, looking back, he was a great player…one of the most naturally gifted players I’ve ever seen) and we asked him to replace Tim in the band. Well, sure as shit…He said yes, and Gladhand was rolling strong. No more people who were completely incompetent on their instruments! A black guy! Oh yeah.
Anyway, there was this guy named Doug who was good friends with Jordan and he was about 24, which at the time was old as dirt. He looked like a leprechaun with a red ponytail, red beard, blue eyes and very fair complexion (actually, last time I saw Doug was in the United Center, and he was literally dressed as a leprechaun. That was about ten years ago, maybe more…wow) and he wore a big rug with a hole cut in the middle of it, poncho style, everywhere he went, regardless of temperature, and a crocodile Dundee type hat. He also had Jeffrey Dahmer glasses.
He was always hanging around and one day, he brought his guitar to practice and let’s just say he shredded like you wouldn’t believe. Let’s just say it, because that sounds cooler than the truth, which is, that he was a wanky blues soloist.…So, here’s the band now: Baloney frying, under the bed living, smell of homeless zombie drummer, me, chris, tall skinny black guy into funk, slapping and popping his way through the sort of punkish songs that Chris and I wrote, and some leprechaun hippy Stevie Ray Vaughning everything by about 25%. It was actually worse than it sounds, if you can believe it.
Also, guess what? We still played Nuts nuts we want nuts. Even with this dynamic new lineup. Finally we had someone who could play the bassline, so we weren’t about to let that gem just fade.
We had a friend…I don’t exactly remember how this all went down, but we had a friend who somehow got us a gig at the St. Scholastica all girls school homecoming dance and offered us seven hundred bucks. This was the first paying show I ever played, and the biggest payday for at least another five or so years. I remember sitting in the principal’s office, playing a demo we’d made to the principal and the head of the dance committee and them, inexplicably saying, ‘yeah, we’d love to have gladhand play the dance.’
We had to play for a few hours, and we did a lot of embarrassing covers. This was actually funny. We didn’t know any songs but our own, so we bought a guitar transcription magazine and just learned all the songs in it. So we ended up playing such hilarious and crappy, crappy covers as ‘alive’ by pearl jam and ‘the weight’ by the Band, just because they happened to be in the issue of “guitar Player’ that we bought. The whole thing was a complete clusterfuck. We played, and (keep in mind, at this time, I listened to a lot of punk rock bands, but I didn’t know anyone else who listened to that kind of music besides my friends…we had record stores where we’d go and just blow money on tapes we’d never heard of, based on band name or on the covers, and we just kind of gravitated towards the punkier stuff without knowing there was a scene, or a defining characteristic that made things ‘punk rock’ as opposed to ‘stoner rock’, ‘alternative’ or ‘metal’ or ‘hardcore’ or ‘funk’. We were really naïve, which explains why our band was such a hot mess, but anyway,) there were these kids at the dance, who I now, looking back, recognize as punks, who were calling out for “Strong Reaction” by Pegboy…Well, that wasn’t in the issue of Guitar Player that we had bought, so we didn’t know it, but they kept screaming for it, so what did we do? Of course, we played Nuts nuts we want nuts, but changed the words (which are pretty much all in the title) to Strong, strong strong reaction. It went over huge and marks the first time I ever played music to a ‘mosh pit’ even if it was at a homecoming dance in an all girls religious school.
We got seven hundred bucks which we blew like idiots. My mom had a friend who did design on her computer, which back in those days was the technological equivalent of smashing electrons together, and she was nice enough to make us thirty shirts for about five hundred bucks. Looking back, it’s the second biggest screwjob of my musical career, the first biggest being the story for tomorrow, our first REAL show at a REAL club.
Bye. Oh, and chris, come see me at work. (look at that, we’re still buddies. Heh.) XOXO

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

lick my presidential balls...heh...heh...heh heh heh heheheheheheheheh.

Good morning everyone…It’s time to return to my saga of crappy jobs I’ve held in an attempt to figure out where my life has run so drastically off track. When we left our hero, he had held jobs at the comic book store, the ice cream parlor, the jewish summer camp, the Metro, the Record Exchange, McDonalds, drywalling basements…blah blah blah…pretty crappy for a college grad, huh?
It’s funny, because I think about how when I was a kid, the big, omnipresent societal barometer in the sky kept telling us, through articles, newscasts and all that shit that my generation would be the first one to make less money than their parents generation on the whole. I remember thinking, ‘wow, that really sucks for those people in my generation who are gonna blow the curve, because I’m pretty sure that I’m destined for millions.’
Funny how shit tends to sneak through the tall grass, worm into your sleeping bag and bite you on the tip of the dick, [leaving your camping buddy in an awkward and up-to-this-point hypothetical situation…oh, nevermind], because I’m pretty sure that I make less money than everyone in my family. My little brother’s a lawyer for fucks sake…I’m currently in workout shorts doing this, with no paystub in sight…Hmmm…I blame society.
Okay, so the next job I’m going to talk about is sort of the main job I’ve ever had, I’ve done it longer than I’ve done anything and it’s probably the reason, in some way or another, that you stumbled across this blog in the first place. I’m talking of course, about being a glory hole attendant.
When I was fourteen, I went down to this place called the bijou to get some weed. Clark, the night manager, told me that I could get the good weed for cheaper if I ‘worked the weasels’. Hmmm….I didn’t know what that meant, but then he explained that it was just like the whack-a-mole game at carnivals, where the moles, or weasels, depending on your region, pop through the holes and you hit them with a mallet before they disappear. This was like that, but when the ‘weasels’ popped through the holes, you just had to hold this warm, wet sponge around them UNTIL they disappeared. Oh, what? Did you think someone was really, HONESTLY sucking your dick back there? Now who’s being naïve?
Okay, this isn’t the job I was gonna talk about. From the time I was twelve until, well, now…I’ve been a guy in a band. It’s been the way I make most of my money since I was eighteen. The first show I ever played was at my middle school, outside. The band was called Spermicidal Tendencies and we did two songs, the second of which fell apart and we had to stop halfway through.
Spermicidal Tendencies was also the first band I ever recorded with. My friend Nick has been proficient with a four track since we were about eleven, so we’ve been recording ever since. (In fact, the most recent song I’ve recorded has been with Nick. We’re a rock and roll type thing called the Coke Horse. Say it out loud if you don’t immediately think it’s funny…It’s the best band name ever. I will say right now that if you like any of my other bands, this probably isn’t for you, and I don’t really know when/if the Coke Horse will ever release something, but it’s a creative partnership that endures as the longest running one in my life, if not the most consistent, fruitful or successful…whatever)
Now, when you’re eleven or twelve and you’re recording songs, they tend to be pretty narrowly about one or two possible subjects, as there’s really not a ton of life experience to go on, (unless you’re one of those kids who used to have to do horrible things to get by, in which case, you’re most likely in porn), so we had songs about finding pubic hair in food, songs about blowjobs (the idea of them; Empirical blowjobs were still a LONG way out of our realm of imagination) and a whole song about balls, called “nuts, nuts we want nuts”. Looking back, it was kind of a gay project, but hey, we were writing about what we knew, and as anyone who’s ever been a twelve year old can tell you, every bit of information that comes in or out of you is filtered through your junk.
Freshman year in highschool, my best friend Chris and I decided to form a band. We had been playing acoustic guitars and making tapes in our rooms for a while, and we decided it was time to bite the bullet and get a drummer. We went with this dong-wallet who couldn’t keep time with a fucking clock. He was terrible. THEN, we got this guy on bass named Tim, who was like the bass playing version of the drummer. I just sang. We called ourselves Vegetable Train and we sucked the dick off a dog.
We played two shows, that I recall. The first was in the drummer’s creepy religious girlfriend’s basement, for a birthday party. Her parents were very clear that there was to be no cursing or anything like that. Well, we launched into ‘nuts nuts we want nuts’ (it was such a jam that I brought it with me from Spermicidal …I know) and Chris, Tim and I pulled off our pants, inciting a religious frenzy that led to us running out the back door as the drummer’s girlfriend’s parents chased us. We left our poor, terrible drummer there to apologize/pack up his drums. Heh. The next show was in his kitchen. While he was in the bathroom, after we had played and before ThoughtCrime played (don’t ask how I remember that) this guy got on the drums and started fucking around. He was way better than our drummer, so Chris and I covertly talked to dude, and got him into our band.
The next day at school, in gym, I was standing next to our drummer in some sort of drill line and I said
“dude, the band broke up”
Which is hilarious. As though I was talking about a band that neither of us were in…I was a freshman in highschool, though, gimme a break. After getting over the shock and confusion (How could Vegetable Train break up?) he asked if I wanted to start another band. I said, nah. I already had another band. It was with all the same guys from our band, but with a different drummer.
I think he took it pretty well.
Okay, so we changed out name to Gladhand, and we were still terrible. This four piece incarnation of Gladhand took the Spermicidal tendencies, ahem…tendencies to write songs about schlongs and magnified it by a billion. In that first creative flurry, we wrote “penis manwich’, ‘penis of the night’, ‘dicks’, ‘penis rising’, ‘ride the anal train’ (which is, actually more about dicks than anuses, despite what the title would lead you to believe) and of course, we brought along ‘nuts nuts we want nuts.’ In fact, I think that with the exception of any song of the first Lawrence Arms record that we still play, (which is only Evening, Detention, Kevin, and L and L, for those of you who care) Nuts nuts we want nuts may be the most enduring song in my musical career. That’s fucking terrible.,,,But whatever, things were starting to happen.
Oh, make no mistake, things were starting to happen. We had this drummer, (who, by the way is the guy of living in the laundry room, under the bed, working at the hot dog stand, getting abortions fame) and this exciting band. We were hanging out with all the big local stars like the dudes from Mama’s Groove (one Jeremy Sisto of Hollywood fame was the vocalist of said band) and CheerioHead. Cheeriohead featured awesome song titles like “battle Axe’ and “fat booty alert”. The members went on to form, and this is not a joke, “Freakilicious Alien Booty”.
People say that 99% of all records never sell 1000 copies. See why? Everyone’s an idiot. Mama’s Groove? FREAKILICIOUS ALIEN BOOTY??? ULTRAVIOLET HIPPOPOTAMUS????
Okay, this saga will continue another time…that’s all for now. I gotta go to the bank and get paid.
XOXOXO

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

ding dong, the hillbilly's unemployed.

Man, that was about the best MLK day I’ve ever spent. Racially diverse? You bet your dicks/cunts it was! I’ve never had such fun…and you know what today is? That’s right, black president day! Man, if it wasn’t for all the institutionalized racism, completely fucked racially based caste system we have in this country and you know, blah blah blah, it would really be a top notch week for black folks, huh? Oh well.
Man, I’m in such a good mood, I erased my tirade about how stupid you turds are for missing the point entirely regarding Clint Eastwood, but without getting too deep into it, let’s just say that I’m allowed to say a movie looks stupid without saying it’s a bad movie, and I’m allowed to say a movie looks stupid without seeing a movie. That’s acceptable. Let me take you back to the previous century to give you all an example that maybe you can relate to:

“Hey, did you see the previews for that new Star Wars movie, Episode one?”
“Yeah dude, that shit looks awesome!”
“Not so fast, dickhead! I’ve seen the movie and it sucks, so just stop right there. Don’t you dare tell me how you perceive the movie based on the trailers that everyone is stuffing up your ass until you’ve seen it. Until then, you’re just wrong.”

But see, that’s not wrong. Our buddy here is allowed to say the movie looks awesome. I mean, fuck, that movie LOOKED awesome. It’s not, don’t mistake me here. But it’s not wrong for a person to have an opinion based on the trailer. In a similar way, Clint Eastwood’s dumb movie looks terrible, regardless of how it plays out. But hey, that’s all under the bridge now, crybabies, so let’s just move on.
Today is a day to reflect on Martin Luther King day and to look forward to Barack Obama night. Yesterday, as I mentioned earlier, I had a race relations packed day. It could all probably be best summed up by my trip to CostCo.
Okay, so CostCo is a gigantic warehouse that sells shit in bulk. It’s horrifyingly overwhelming and being in there is like being on the deck of a massive ship in a storm, in a drunken fight with giant products. I never thought I’d be a part of the Costco crowd, but here I am finding that suddenly I need a thousand diapers at a time, so, what’s a daddy to do, right? Anyway, Costco is all business. It makes the post office look like a fucking day spa. The people there don’t really fuck around, there’s no decoration…it is, in every way, exactly where I imagine Winston going to buy his Victory gin in 1984. Totally creepy…all this is neither here nor there, I’m just painting a picture.
The items are huge at Costco, so for every cashier, there’s some guy there to corral the big stuff and get it rung up. In our line, that was a guy named Alvin. Alvin was black, probably about 25 and had a tattoo on his neck that I couldn’t read. He seemed like a nice enough dude, I suppose. I mean, if I had his job I’d be punching motherfuckers, so, I guess what I’m saying is, he was holding it together, and he seemed like he knew the guy behind us in line, who was a grey bearded Dwight Schrute type guy who was buying a dutch apple pie.
Here’s the conversation (keep in mind, this was on MLK day)
Dwight: Happy Birthday
Alvin: Man, my birthday is a long way off.
Dwight: No, everyone’s celebrating their birthdays today…At least everyone with any little bit of soul. (wink wink)
Alvin: oh…

This struck me as pretty clueless…Yay! Thanks white guy with the day off and nothing better to do than cruise through Costco looking for that perfect pie for pointing out that I’m actually at work while YOU get the day off on a day that, you know, in theory, should probably be MY day off. Hmmm…well, that’s life I guess, and that’s me too: Brendan Kelly! The defender of black people everywhere! I don’t know, it’s so hard to talk about this kind of thing without sounding like a dick. So whatever, caution to the wind.
We had to take our baby to get his nine month exam (3 shots and a TB test…If you’re ever feeling too good about yourself, hold down an infant while a fat Mexican lady stuffs him full of needles…See what that does to your self opinion) and in the waiting room were four families. Us, a polish family, a Mexican family, and a black family. If you ignore Asia all together, it was a pretty good sampling. Actually, these demographics probably make up about 90% of Chicago, but hey, whatever…I’m just saying that I was sitting there thinking ‘oh, gods of race, what a nice little waiting room of diversity you’ve put together for us here, on MLK day.’ Actually, there’s no point to that part of the story, so I don’t know…in this super duper pussified day and age is it racist to notice that kind of thing? It was really pretty obvious. Okay, I don’t care.
Our baby’s doctor is a black guy and his name is Dr. Martin. Now I was trying to convince my wife to greet him by saying “Happy Martin Luther King day” and then complimenting him, not only on being a black guy, but also being named Dr. Martin. I mean, that’s great, right? Well, she didn’t think so. He probably thinks we’re assholes now. Whatever. I bet the polish couple said something.
Tonight, we get a black president, but more significantly, a NEW president. I’m pretty excited…We had a drunk old bagger at the grocery store yesterday (he was about 70) do a little dance of joy about Bush’s last day. It was great. He also said that when he goes to bagger heaven (he was such a sweet little guy) he hopes everyone has cloth bags. I was like, ‘cmon man, in bagger heaven, you’ll be able to bag other people’s groceries in WHATEVER kinds of bags you want! It’s bagger heaven, after all!’
That’s when he did the dance.
Okay, this was fun. Let’s see how many of you were paying attention. Also, read this article please. It’s one of the best things I’ve read in a long, long time.

http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html

Friday, January 16, 2009

Well, do you? Punk?

Well fuck a duck, man. It’s even colder today than yesterday. Today, our thermometer on the porch said negative twenty five. That’s fucking impossible, right? Who makes thermometers that go down to negative twenty five? I don’t have a lot of time today. I’m late, so let me just point out one quick thing that’s been bothering me lately.
Gran Torino
Okay, you’ve all seen the trailers, right? You’ve probably all seen the movie, as I’m hearing the shit’s huge. It’s essentially about some mean, shitty gangbangers, some other kids with hearts of gold stuck hanging with the wrong crowd, and a grumpy, racist old man who’s gonna show everybody who’s boss, and in what I hope was a fit of satirical genius (but, I really don’t think it was), the old man in the trailer ACTUALLY SAYS “get off my lawn.” Fuck, man, you can’t write that shit. Well, in this case you can, but you can’t make up how completely deluded Clint Eastwood has become. Okay:
He was a bad ass leading man for what, thirty years? That’s enough to make anyone think they’re awesome, and let’s not be total snarky internet dicks, Clint was pretty fucking awesome. He’s got that whole ‘chicks want to blow me, dudes want to be me, terrorists and (the other kind of) Indians and gangsters want to kill me,’ but nope. None of that shit’s happening (except the blowjobs, probably). Why? Because I’m Clint fucking Eastwood. The world was down with it.
THEN he started directing movies, and beyond Midnight in the garden of good and evil, he’s had a pretty insane career as a director. He’s won tons of Oscars, been nominated for more. The guy is pretty much unstoppable. You know how many times he’s had some tagalong sycophant sidekick dildo indulge one of his dumb ideas? More times than I’ve taken a dump in my life. At this point, everything that guy says has to be interpreted as potentially brilliant…”Okay, listen up. I’m making a movie about a lady boxer who dies. Very, very sad. Hopeless. Soul crushing. You in?” Doesn’t sound that good, but hey, Clint pulled it off, man. He even convinced some motherfuckers to let him put out an album where he sings…No one even called bullshit on that, because it’s kind of a ‘oh, look at the old man and his little pet project’ type of thing. It didn’t have to be good. It’s a novelty, and that’s fine. The world was down with it.
Now, with this new movie, he’s gone too far. What’s the premise? “Hey, you know who the most terrifying, bad ass, hard boiled, tough mother fuckers are? Old ass men. Let’s get some kids standing on his lawn and just watch him go off.”
What’s the climax? They hit a ball onto his roof? Put some dogshit in a bag and set it on fire on his porch? I mean seriously, Clint? Dude, you’re old. No one is afraid of old people….okay, that’s totally wrong. EVERYONE is afraid of old people, but, like in the same way they’re scared of bugs or skeletons, or dogshit on a stick. They try to touch you sometimes, they remind you of death and they smell strange and look gross and are dripping, respectively. BUT, not since the Firm (with Wilford Brimley impossibly cast as an ass whupping senior citizen lawyer who can take out a young tom cruise in a fist fight) has Hollywood made such a monumental miscalculation about the potential of an old ass man to seem like a dangerous badass. Just because that old man is clint eastwood doesn’t’ make it any different. He’s still an old man. He’s yelling ‘get off my lawn’ at kids. That’s what Mr. Wilson yells at Dennis the Menace. That’s what the hobo who invented itchy and scratchy yells at Bart and Lisa. It’s completely refuting the idea that the old man (and I’m referring to both character and director here) is any sort of dynamic badass. He’s the classic old man, that shakes his fist and gets off his belt to show the kids how they did it in the old days just to watch his pants fall down around his ankles and the kids laugh their asses off at his sock garters and gigantic yellow underpants.
Anyway, you get the idea. Nice try eastwood. Can’t wait until you’re dead and making zombie movies.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Candy cane earmuffs!

0kay, first things first, you guys are terribly sweet to comment so extensively on the last post, which was essentially about rock of love and the inevitable decline in quality and popularity of everyone’s favorite peanut butter colored daily entertainment. Thanks. Secondly, it’s even colder here today than yesterday. I drove my baby to daycare (and the INSIDE of my windows were covered in ice! The scraper is made for the contours of the outside of the window, so let’s just say it was harder than fucking a soapy pig that’s high on adderal while you’re too drunk to stand to clear away enough space for me to see) and when I got to the daycare parking lot, I put the car key, that was IN the warm car, in my mouth so I could get the carseat out of the back (I’m totally one of those scumbag dudes with a carseat now…I see people notice that, and I watch their eyes register ‘shoulda kept it in your pants, scumbag dude.’ I get that at the daycare a lot. People are a little hesitant to open the door for me, especially if it’s hot and you can see my arms or if I have a beard. All the girls that work there know me, it’s the other parents, who are all old for some reason, too old to be having a toddler…Shoulda whipped it out of your pants a little earlier grandpa. Now you’ll be too old to enjoy any time with your ugly, fat baby once she finally grows up and wants to play floor hockey and run around…You’ll be too busy fighting off dementia and hiding your shitstained underpants from the family. Heh.) and the fucking key stuck to my tongue, Christmas story style. That’s how cold it is. The temperature gauge in my car, which doesn’t measure windchill said it was negative nine degrees. For those of you who use Celsius or Kelvin that’s pretty fucking cold. Balls climbing back into your body cold. Although, if you use Kelvin, you’re almost undoubtedly smarter than me, and you probably have a pretty good handle on converting temps, at least I’d imagine. I actually went to school with a dude named Kelvin…no, wrong. His name was, I’m pretty sure, Kelwin. I think he’s a city planner now. He used to wear a seashell in his dreadlocks. Pretty nice look.
Okay, so back to the saga of my crappy jobs…I was, for a while, the door guy at a bar. This was a shitty bar that brought in a nice smattering of total assholes in expensive jeans and stripey button ups, skinheads, punks, bums, sluts of all shapes and sizes and more than a few drug dealers. Here’s a little piece of advice that I got from my good buddy Nader regarding working the door at a bar: Always act like you’re vaguely pissed off. Don’t really look at people too much when you ask for their ID’s and don’t ASK at all, for that matter. Kind of look out the door, hold out your hand and say “ID please” in a kind of annoyed way. This is key to having people cooperate with you. When I first started checking ID’s, I was polite, because let’s face it, I wasn’t raised by assholes. I like to be nice, and it was amazing how people just instantly interpret the door guy as a bit of a confrontation and try to seize the upper hand. It’s hard to explain, but at the door, being polite created a lot of problems. Lots of dudes without ID’s would try to push their way in. People would try to laugh it off and walk by, people kind of shit talking…It sucked/still sucks for polite door guys. AND, this was everyone, by the way, not just the dicks from the suburbs or the punks or the sluts…EVERYONE. Once I started acting like a bit of an asshole, BOOM. No more problems at the door.
It was a good job in that I got paid cash and free drinks and I got to sit there at the bar that I would have been at anyway, but it sucked because, in that little room, that little society of drinking, you’re the cop. That’s not a good feeling, ever. I remember one night a giant, giant dude with tattoos on his face and head came in and started getting a little aggressive, and I told the owner, “if that guy starts anything, I want you to know, I quit.” And I meant it. I’m not about to get paralyzed for fifty bucks and a couple of highlifes. BUT, that was a special circumstance, in that the guy was straight out of Mordor. Usually, I broke up any fights, and threw anyone out who was being an asshole, and I never really had a problem.
ALTHOUGH, one time, I was in the bar after I stopped being the doorman and I was hanging with my friend Mike (who does sound for Seether and Chevelle…you think your office plays shitty music…HA) and these dudes started messing with him. I went up to my replacement doorman (a big fat guy who looks EXACTLY like what Garfield would look like if he was a human) and said, “hey, there’s some dudes causing trouble over there” and he said “You know what, the night’s almost over and I’m not gonna do anything about it. I’m tired.” This was a sack punch, to say the least. Well, sure enough, the dudes got in mike’s face to the point where the door guy had NO choice but to go over there, so he, being pissed that he was being forced to, you know, do his job, just kicked everyone out, including mike, and locked the door. Well, on the street, the dudes beat the crap out of mike and one guy punched him repeatedly with a key sticking through his knuckles. Mike turned out to be okay, but it was shitty, for sure.
Final result? This big fat guy kind of hates ME for some reason. I guess he can’t handle how great I was at the door. And I left it all behind kids, for this. Being a bartender, which is where I’m going right now. xoxo

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

I thought this was rock of love, not rock of fucking.

It’s blizzarding, and it’s approximately thirteen degrees outside my house. My baby seems content to not sleep at his scheduled naptimes, and my cleaning lady is coming in just a few short hours. I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do with this day. I’ve got a lot of conferring with my writing partner about some script ideas we’re working on and I’m supposed to take my dog to get his nails clipped, I need to get an external hard drive and I want to go to the gym…but man, it’s fucking blizzarding! It’s gonna be one of the most monstrous pains in the ass to get anything at all done. That will, of course make me feel completely useless, which will spiral out of control into me exerting way too much energy on something that I can’t possibly do well around the house with my cleaning lady here, like trying to write songs or some shit.
I’m out of coffee.
So, man, the recession seems to have really hit my blog hard, eh? I mean, not last month I was averaging somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen comments, and the month before it was usually in the twenties…Since 09 began though, not so much….Perhaps this all goes back to my mom liking the blog now, which, if we apply the equation Anything that A Mom Thinks Is Cool=So Terribly Uncool, well, then I guess we have some sort of answer, but I don’t know…maybe all those people out there have moved on. Is my time as a rising star of the blogosphere coming to an end? Am I doomed to be another white dwarf just dimming out there on the galactic horizon? Am I gonna be the blog writing equivalent of the dude that cruises through the anonymous sex park and strikes out, no matter what color handkerchief I wear in my back pocket? Well, par for the course, I suppose.
You know what’s disgusting? Rock of Love Bus…I said this before and I’ll say it again…Those hoes are so DIRTY, they make the chicks who were taking turns sucking off disgusting Bret Michaels in season 1 look like fucking nuns. I mean, there was a time, not that long ago when a woman taking a shot of liquor on a first date sent a signal to a man which could be construed as “I’m easy to bang”. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a woman and taking a shot, or going after what you want…I mean, fuck, that’s great as far as I’m concerned. I’m merely pointing out that this little message has transformed a bit it seems, because on the opening episode of the Rock of Love Bus, on the first night out with Bret (who, by the way is so gross now. If you filled up a brown faux leather bag with hamburger meat, put some my Little Pony Tails on the top and then strapped a bandana over those, you’d have his face…Plus, he’s still wearing those jeans and those dumb fucking Ed Hardy shirts…DUDE! YOU’RE OLD! There’s nothing wrong with being old, there’s everything wrong with pretending you’re not) took a shot out of a test tube that was in another girl’s vagina. Modern times, man. Wow. I mean, that’s a statement of intent right there. “I intend to give you Chlamydia,’ is what I think it’s saying, and it kind of seems like it’s aimed at everyone. Whatever. Good for her. Drink that gross buttery nipple shot out of the test tube in that skanks vagina. Good on ya, as they say down under.
You know when Chris Rock mentioned that if you’re a parent of a girl, your job is to ‘keep em off the pole’, as in make sure they don’t grow up to be strippers? He goes on to say that if your girl does grow up to be a stripper, you fucked up raising them. Well, I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know enough strippers well enough to draw any conclusions, but I can say with utmost certainty, that if you’re the parent of a girl who ends up on Rock of Love, you’ve done a terrible job of parenting, not necessarily because they’re strippers too, mind you…Because they’re on that horrible show doing gross things to a gross guy who they don’t even recognize as a cultural figure BEYOND being the guy from Rock of Love and the only desired outcome is internationally broadcast humiliation. I mean at least when you give a lapdance you get a twenty. At least when you spread your clam in a magazine or fuck a dude in a movie you get a decent amount of money. What do those hoes get? Made fun of on the Soup, or in BSC. Yeah, whatever, I’m sure there are probably many avenues of social discourse run by snide, smarty pants assholes that fall in between this blog and Joel McChale’s show…and yeah, hoes, you’re getting made fun of on those too. I mean, even Bret Michaels himself mocks these bitches, and he’s the one looking for love. Also, and I’m just throwing this out there, Big John, Bret’s personal assistant guy, he’s the one who ends up fucking ALL those chicks. I mean, you just don’t get access into Bret fucking Michaels’s exclusive sleep n’ bang chamber by just walking up and opening the door…Don't be naive, people. There's only one way in. You know what they say: the way to a man's heart is through his personal assistant's dick. Good on ya big John. Good on ya, gross hoes.
In conclusion, fuck the pole…Keep your daughter off the Rock of love, right? Right.
Maybe I’ll continue the saga of my employment tomorrow. Today, I’m not feeling it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Okay, I gotta make something happen or I’m going to go crazy. I’m off to get my dog’s ass glands all squeezed out.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

I should have known you'd bid me farewell...

Greetings earth people! I’m at a bar with a baby, and a dog just pissed on the floor and another dog is drinking said piss. It’s a wild scene. The bar is closed, and we’re waiting for shwarmas. It’s noonish. I’m eating beer nuts and drinking Crystal Geyser, which is water, so save your sermons, religious dickheads and various parade shitters…Well, in fairness, I’m also snorting Heroin, which, let’s be honest, it’s not gonna make the shwarmas any more delicious…But whatever. I mean, nothing says ruining your appetite like a pint glass full of beer nuts and a little sweet Georgia brown. Heh. Funny story, four fifths of the original starting lineup of the Harlem Globetrotters were deep in the horse, and that’s why they decided to use that theme song. Again, heh. Some other great Americans who used heroin include Thomas Edison, Mahatma Ghandi and Miles Davis. In unrelated local news, tomorrow’s supposed to be the coldest day in the last fourteen years in Chicago, so there’s that.
Zoinks.
Okay, I’m not really sitting around doing heroin, I don’t fuck with anything that makes you constipated (except air travel and cheese)…and no, Ghandi isn’t American, but everything else is true. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been going through all the jobs I ever held in an attempt to figure out where I went wrong in life. However, I don’t know which job to tell you guys about next. Okay, for a few years I worked as a dj on a wacky morning zoo. I went by the name Zany Gary (after my boss at the Record Exchange) and it was my job to get people psyched up to go to work. You know the scene, phony phone calls, celeb interviews, the whole thing. Best interview I ever did was with Cybil Shepherd. After a little baiting and goading, she won fifty bucks off me by fitting an entire eggplant in her vagina using nothing but her hands and a canister of spray butter. I know what you’re thinking, but whatever. It was the station’s money, and besides, it made for great radio.
Another great moment on the air was when I got my big fat sidekick, Sweaty Pete to take a shit in a police station waiting room on a Monday morning. Oh, man, did he ever get a beating. First from the trannies waiting to get booked on public felching charges and then later, by the cops, who, in a great moment of corporate synergy crammed an éclair up Sweaty’s ass while we were on the phone broadcasting it all. My sound guy, Glen, was laughing so hard that he literally popped all the blood vessels in his eyes. Glen was sick like that, though. His wife (who had lost her left leg riding one of those super dangerous three wheeler ATV’s in the 80’s. She had this really crappy fake plastic leg with a red high heel just painted onto the bottom…it was awesome) used to call him at work and you could just hear her yelling and screaming about god knows what right through the phone. He’d almost be in tears, and then, next thing you know, he’s in his office just moaning and grunting through blubbering sobs. I’m not saying he was crying and whacking off to the memory of his wife shaming him in front of his coworkers or anything, but that’s what it sounded like.
The dream died one September morning (I remember it was the week of my birthday) when we were on the air and we had two midgets wrestle in a kiddie pool filled with jellied pig dicks. The black guy was winning, when our station manager busted in and put a stop to the whole thing. I got suspended and during my suspension the station switched to a country western format and suddenly Zany Gary was out of a job.
Last I heard, Glen was working at the DMV and Sweaty Pete was managing this Tanning salon/video store in boystown. Who knows? Who cares, honestly?
After that, I was pretty depressed for a while, but then my friend Eric told me about this opportunity to work with him ripping asbestos out of unfinished basements and putting up drywall. I’d never done anything like that before, but he assured me that it was only ever gonna be the two of us down there, we could make our own hours, lie on our timesheets, drink beer, and make 20 bucks an hour. So, you know, duh.
We had a little tiny radio that just played the oldies station. It was during this time in the basements that I developed a love for ‘the Mighty Quinn’ and “Red Rubber Ball”. There were others for sure. I also developed a love for Velveeta Shells and Cheese and beers, both of which we consumed religiously at the end of each work day. I don’t know if you guys have ever tried beers, but man…can’t recommend them enough. Velveeta shells and cheese are good too, but man, they’ll make you a lard ass, so be careful.
I don’t remember why I stopped working the drywall job…I actually think that I stopped when the Lawrence Arms (my band) went on our first extended tour. Since our first tour was 8 weeks long and our second one started up after just a week off and was thirteen months long, there wasn’t really time for shells and cheese, asbestos, old style or the Mighty Quinn…sigh. All great things come to an end, I guess.
Okay, my friend Toby just started playing American Steel in here, and my baby seems like he’s waking up, so I’m gonna get the fuck out of here. More in my saga of questionable employment tomorrow.

Monday, January 12, 2009

good golly miss molly

My brother was in town this weekend, and I think it’s pretty safe to say we had an awesome time. I think between the sparks and the cheeseburgers I have to be at my lowest ebb on a scale of any sort of personal well being…I think yesterday alone I consumed a million billion calories. But, there I go again, talking calories and weight watchers points, sounding like a Wisconsin housewife. Okay, enough of that. Let’s get down to business, and of course, by business, I mean continuing the saga of all my crappy jobs. We left off at the record store, on a positive note. However, as fate would have it, I was gonna still need to have a lot more jobs. What was the next job I had? Dildo salesman? Cleaning up at the dojo? Um…vatman at the fat rendering plant? Those were all later on, and I’m trying to do this in order. I will say though, there’s nothing like the door to door dildo game to really help you connect to the pulse of anytown USA. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Up next, is I guess when I was the stage manager at the Metro.
Okay, so I wasn’t usually the stage manager. That was usually my friend RL’s job, but if he was ever off, then it became my job, SO, when talking to my parents friends or my inlaws or whatever, rather than saying “I carry amplifiers up and down stairs at a club” I could say, “I’m the stage manager at the metro.” This sounds a lot more glamorous, right? And let’s face it, it’s all about churchin shit up. That’s why people trim their pubes.
Okay, so yeah, I was a loader at the Metro. It was a pretty decent job. I got in fairly good shape running up and down those stairs with heavy shit, and we had this little room with a tv and a microwave and a shitter, and we just got to kind of sit there between load in (anywhere from 10am to 5pm) to load out (anywhere from 10pm to 4am), and we got paid for the whole day. It wasn’t a bad job, and there were lots of good people working there, so that made it pretty bearable.
Because so many asshole wannabe rockstars came in and out of the metro, it’s hard to even pick out a good story as an example of that job. The dude from Guided by Voices tried to get me to fight him on the stage after their last show ever. That was funny. He was a very drunk old man and the whole thing would have been extremely sad if he wasn’t such an asshole. Thankfully, he was, and when he started yelling at me to quit talking to his girlfriend (I had been trying to get around her, so I believe my exact words were ‘excuse me, please’) and I told him that everything was cool, it was a cool show, there’s no reason to get all agro, brah, he said “you’re fucking fired! Get the fuck off my stage!” So I dropped his guitars in a huge clanging pile onto the stage and went to the crew room and drank some champagne. I have no idea how his sloppy old ass eventually got all his crap down the stairs and into his station wagon, but I certainly had nothing to do with it.
One time we had System of A Down at the Metro (and the day after we had Coldplay…and then Garbage later in the week. Metro holds 1100 people, so those were CRAZY shows) and I had to go around and find the singer guy a bathrobe. There were all sorts of real specific requirements, like it had to be linen with a thread count of so and so and it couldn’t have a hood, or maybe it HAD to have a hood. I don’t remember. Anyway, I went all over the fucking city looking for this fucking robe, and when I finally got back with it, one of his assistants (yeah, he had five personal assistants, and still I was the one out looking for the perfect robe) told me that the robe was totally unacceptable because it was made in Turkey. I returned that robe and went to a dildo store and got him another robe, very nice, not in any way associated with Turkey, and, pretty pleased with myself, returned, handed over the robe and was told by the assistant ‘yeah, it doesn’t really matter. He’s not gonna like it no matter what and he’s definitely not gonna wear it.’
Cool.
They kind of sucked, by the way. The lights were awesome and they traveled with their own PA, so the sound was amazing, but they were dull as shit to watch. That guy’s voice is perfect live, but he looks like a toy poodle or something, just posing and preening and all glisteny and curly…bleh. Those guys all look like perverts anyway, so whatever.
When Coldplay played, Gwennyth Paltrow was there, and she nodded her head arhythmically and generally looked like a dork. They were pretty good. That song Yellow is pretty nice. I don’t care what you think of me. It was good. Chris Martin has kind of a big ass, just throwing that out there.
Once, my friend Chris and I were in the Reno airport and it was about ten am and we were sitting in the bar, and suddenly Cub legend Mark Grace comes around the corner with a beer in each hand. He also had a pretty big ass. I don’t know what the connection is, but, yeah.
My mom wrote me a letter recently that said she likes my blog again. I don’t know when she stopped liking it or what’s changed, but my instinct clearly states that her approval probably means the blog is getting lame. Sorry, I guess.
Oh, and just to clarify, I already wrote about meeting Little Richard, but here’s the quick and dirty version. I was at a hotel bar in LA with rock and roll luminaries Chris McCaughan, Mike Burkett and Matt Skiba when Chris said, “hey, dig little Richard over there.” I turned around, expecting to see some flamboyant gay black guy with jerry curl…which is what I saw, but it was the ACTUAL little Richard, not just some random creepy dude with a similar style. I said “man, I’d love to meet him” and Matt said, “dude, I bet he would LOVE to meet you” so I bolted over there, spilled a vodka cranberry on his security detail, and held out my hand to Little Richard. I said something like “I’m a huge fan” which is a lie. I mean, who honestly gives a shit about little Richard? Right? Anyway, that’s kind of irrelavent. His face looked like a fucking Ice cream cake. He was just so chocolatey and makeuppy and fucking bizarre looking. He gave me a book about jesus. Then I tried to shake his hand again and he gave me ANOTHER book about jesus. Thanks Little Richard. Pretty sweet.

Friday, January 9, 2009

A small, weather induced detour, please forgive the delay

Hey! So it’s snowing here, a lot. I just took my baby to daycare and my car is already covered again. I have to work, and since our mayor decided that in order to cut costs he wasn’t going to salt or plow the streets, it’s gonna take a while for me to get there. THEREFORE, the unbelievable saga of my past jobs and quest for self actualization will be put on hold for today, because there’s simply no time. Instead, I’d like to welcome Jude James Halborg into the world. My friends Eric and Noelle had a critter yesterday, which is pretty exciting, and everyone’s happy and healthy, as per my understanding. So, good work.
Also, my brother is supposed to come to town today…I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, but suddenly, the snow is conspiring against me. I don’t know if he’s gonna make it. The thought of him not coming is making me sad….sigh.
Could this be more dull please? Uh…I’m losing my audience…Um, Felching! Taint punch! Um, fuck…I’m panicking. Oh! That one band you like is horrible! Uh…I met Little Richard.
Whatever. It’s snowy. Go fuck yourselves. (emoticon)

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Seems like everyone has got something I have not...

Continuing my saga of jobs I held….When I was around twenty I started working at Record Exchange. This was a classic storefront owned by a hippy. What I mean is, everything was piled haphazardly, priced sporadically, there were pots catching water leaking from the ceiling in the middle of the aisles and stacks of dishes, garden tools, dresses, whatever scattered everywhere. In short the place was a total fucking dump. I worked the counter along with Jeff, the very gay fortyish guy who always talked about his wife and his former corporate job that he left so he could do something with music (this would be pathetic enough on its own, but if you add to the equation that his ‘corporate’ job was being a manager at coconuts records…well, you see the level of delusion you’re dealing with here…In this guy’s mind, he was a straight, married corporate robber baron turned industry mover and shaker, in reality he was a single gay guy who had a career being a clerk in various record stores…nice guy though. He’s the guy who told me princess Di was dead, and he also told me that when they found Janis Joplin’s corpse, upon examination it was revealed to be carrying seven different strains of venereal disease…understandable). There was also a roving cast of employees, most of whom lasted about two weeks due to the boss being a batshit crazy hippy dick.
His name was gary, and he was bald, but he’d save and save and get a few hairplugs put in, then he’d wear a hat for a while, then the hat would come off and he’d have this perfect, inch wide strip of hair along the front, then he’d save, wear the hat, then the strip would be two inches…The whole thing was really sad. He had a huge pushbroom mustache and he kind of looked like if Cheech Marin was a red headed Jew. Also, he was completely bipolar. Well, let’s put it this way: he was a hippy. In my experience, almost all hippies are uptight dickheads just waiting to explode, but they bottle it all up under “nah, no worries, no problem, it’s mellow man…” until something goes too far and then they FREAK THE FUCK OUT!!!!!!! This was Gary. I watched him make so many of his female employees cry. He was crazy. CRAZY. He was one of those dudes who would all of a sudden just snap because you didn’t know what Yes’s follow up to “Owner of a Lonely Heart” was and he’d literally start calling you a moron in front of the whole store at the top of his lungs while his spit flew everywhere and he turned purple (and this was back in the days of CD’s, when people were still in record stores). Anyway, he was a dick, that’s that. Everyone in the world that’s ever known him hates his guts….The other people I worked with were way more interesting.
This girl Tara was goth and in a surprise turn, disgusting. She looked like she was wearing a half deflated innertube around her waist under her lacey black turtleneck. She was really into the band Coal Chamber (remember them? Me either.) and she’d come to work and tell us about all the shit that the dudes would do to her. “Oh, tommy stuck this here while Bobby put his beer bottle up my this and that…” These were her stories. Her breath smelled like a fish had shit on her teeth, and she somehow had the nerve to attempt, on a daily basis, to make me picture her getting spit roasted by a couple of goth dudes while a third guy poured beer into her asshole or whatever was going on that day. She was so foul…But there was this other guy there who kind of loved her. He was also goth, and losing his hair with the giant, ever expanding forehead…and he was a much older guy, SO he did the kieth Richards thing where he wore the bandanna over his forehead, and just let his curly long hair go in the back. The result was he looked like the keyboard player from air supply, but he was goth. Otherwise, he was very mild mannered. It had to be a bummer for him, just all around, you know, between coal chamber and air supply, this guy probably had a lot of undeserved sleepless nights.
There was this other goth kid who never talked and wore panty hose on his arms and shit and one day his drug dealer came in and started screaming at him. “you got my fucking money? You did all my shit and now you ain’t gonna pay me? I’m gonna fuck you up, Junkie!” Screaming this. Strangely, the kid was fired on the spot.
Every day I’d walk to work from my place and pass by this designer shoe store with super hot girls working there and I’d look in. At the time I was in a relationship, but it was already doomed, so I was particularly wistful around cute girls. One morning I was in the record exchange, hating my life when my cellphone rang. This was one of the first calls I ever got on my cell, and I was one of the very first people I knew to get a cell phone, just to put into perspective the era when this was happening…I was shocked to be getting a cell call at all.
On the phone was a very nasally voice that said “hey, is this Brendan?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Fat Mike. Uh, I really like your band and I think you should do a record with us. You’re the guy with the gravelly voice, right?”
Now, for those of you who don’t know, Fat Mike is the singer of one of my favorite bands. I’ve been a fan since I was twelve. He also runs a great record label…We still work together today. SO let’s just say this phone call was fucking super exciting.
I hung up the phone and I was shaking. I walked inside, told Gary to go fuck himself and walked down the street to the shoe store, opened the door and yelled into all the chicks “I QUIT MY JOB!!!!” Then I went and got drunk at the LnL. Man, back then things sure seemed to be looking up. Sigh.
Have a good day. I have to go to my current shitty job.
Bye

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

I have a masters degree in storytelling

Dear anorexic girl at my gym,
You’re gross. Have you considered that the saggy ass that you have is probably due to A) you not having any assmeat with which to fill your ass skin and B) your body not having enough nutrients to make anything taut? Just throwing that out there. Also, going back and forth from the stairmaster in one room to the elliptical in the next room every hour isn’t fooling anyone. You’re reminding me of decay and the inevitability of death, it’s like working out next to a picture of amy winehouse. I mean, the guy with one arm…I can deal with him on the elliptical machine (it’s really quite a sight) and I can handle seeing that one chick from rock of love there, even though she’s obviously got at least as many problems as you. It’s just that you’re kind of killing yourself right in my face, which is forcing me to have to worry about you, which I really don’t want to do…So come on. Let’s get real: You’re too skinny, you’re dying, you need to eat, and fuck, lady, the exercise is only making you grosser.
Sincerely,
Me

Speaking of anorexia, barfing and disease did anyone watch the new rock of love last night? Holy shit! These hoes are making the hoes from rock of love one look like the hoes from Gone With the Wind (there were hoes in Gone with the Wind, right?) The one girl took a shot out of the other girl’s beaver? On the first day? When she’s trying to impress a suitor? Well, shit. Call me old fashioned, but I didn’t think it was ladylike to do shots on a first date. Huh. Times are a changing. Anyway, that’s enough pop culture for now, back to the jobs I once held:

Okay, so after my stint at McDonalds, I became a camp counselor. I did this with a few of my close friends, including Chris, who you all may know as the other guy in the band I’m in that’s not Neil. Anyway, this job was cool. We were 17 and we were playing sports with jewish 8 year olds. We all tried to bone a few of the female counselors (uh…wendy, who worked with the 5 year olds comes immediately to mind) but we were seventeen and as such, we had very little idea what we were doing, so nothing really materialized there.
The funny thing about this job was the head of the whole camp was this five foot two guy named Jay who had a merciless jewfro, acted like a totally spazzed out Tom Cruise and took every (and I mean EVERY) opportunity to take off his shirt and show off his ripped upper body. And, let’s be fair, he was ripped to the tits, man. But seriously, the day the counselors had to go check out the swimming facility, even though it was well known that no one would be getting in the pool, he changed into his trunks and stood there just flexing while the creepy old Jamaican guy (a WHOLE other story) told us about the dimensions of the pool and shit. Pretty awesome. Also, he was an aspiring film maker and his films all featured him, shirtless, working out. He showed these movies to us on every moment of down time. Dude loved his torso.
Yeah, so you get it, camp job. It was cool. The kids were great, and there’s nothing more humbling than working with an 8 year old who may not know more than you, but who’s definitely more intelligent. Everyone should try it sometime.
After that, I worked at Ben and Jerry’s. This was a while ago when there were only about seven Ben and Jerry’s locations in the whole country, so the place was constantly rocking a line down the street and around the corner all summer long. The job itself was terrible. Parents waited with their impatient kids in lines a block long to get ICECREAMICECREAMICECREAMICECREAM!!!!!!!!!! And by the time they got to me (scooper guy) they (parents) were already worn to the bone. So then they’d finally arrive at the sneeze guard and they’d say “tell the guy what you want” to the over excited six year olds who would all scream incomprehensibly at me at the same time. Now, the MOMENT I got that perplexed look on my face that was inevitable due to the circumstances, the parents, without fail, would begin chastising me like it was MY fault they were loaded up with kids at the Ben and Jerry’s and they had to let go of their dreams of being a dancer or whatever. “HE SAID HE WANTS CHUNKY MONKEY IN A WAFFLE CONE YOU MORON!!!!!” No shit. This is how they’d talk to me. Add to this that the ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s has no softening agent, so my wrist was in a chronic state of misery AND when I’d walk home, mosquitoes would flock to me because I was covered head to toe in sugar. Sweet job. Also the boss was literally a crack head. He had a crack pipe in his office and it always smelled like toxic waste in there. So he was irrational and everything totally sucked, except for a few choice things:
1) Free ice cream all the time. Also, I drank their milkshakes. Heh. Seriously, the ice cream there is awesome.
2) Nitrous- We made our own whipped cream and so there was an endless supply of nitrous oxide on hand. Here’s a little secret. If you’re ever at an ice cream parlor (or a coffee place) and some teenager comes staggering out of the back and slurs something at you and then suddenly regains their composure, they were just sucking nitrous out of the cream canister. It’s a guarantee.
3) I think I mentioned this once before, but when Carlos (manager) fucked Maureen (skanky coworker who wasn’t attractive but who was so skanky that she had that ‘you-could-totally-bang-me-in-the-cooler-up-against-the-icecream-cakes-if-you-wanted-to’ sort of appeal (you know the type) she didn’t find the condom until it finally came out of her three days later. I love this story. It’s one part cautionary tale, one part ugly truth about biology, and one part romance.
So, I quit that job and then I started working at one of the funniest jobs I ever had (and one I left off yesterdays list), the Record Exchange for this crazy, CRAZY bald but be-hairplugged and mustachioed OCD hippy named Gary. But, I’m gonna tell you all about that tomorrow, because I’m fucking starving. So, yeah. Later, dorks.