Monday, July 6, 2009

Dungeons and Dragons!

I’d like to think I can be funny. Nah, that’s just false modesty. I’m funny. To me, at least. And to my friends. In certain circles, I’m pretty funny. This kind of spills over to the (ahem) stage sometimes. During the very best shows, the banter is as good as the music. That’s always the goal, though sometimes the banter blows the music away (usually due to drunkenness) and sometimes there’s almost no banter, as we just came to rock. I personally like a nice balance when I see a band. Keep it moving, but stop and get your personalities out a little too. Some would say that I almost always talk too much, but there’s no scorn like the scorn of one of our fans who comes to see one of our shows where I don’t talk at all. People get pissed. They have actually gone so far as to get in my face after a show to ask me what the fuck was going on…why didn’t I talk more? Hey brosephine, I just came to rock today. I’m not a comedian. I wasn’t billed as a comedian, so just relax with the spitting and the bad breath and the jack and coke (disgusting, by the way).
Hecklers are a funny little wrench in the whole mix of talking/playing, because, well, it’s your job to deal with hecklers. In stand up, it’s the test of your mettle. A good stand up is a professional joke teller, and if he can’t shame and quiet down a heckler, he’s exposing his lack of proficiency with his craft. We’re a band, though. We have the ability to drown out a heckler with a ton of feedback or noise or whatever, but we’re technically not really supposed to have to be able to put them in their place. I don’t like hecklers. It’s part of the job, for sure and it’s something you have to deal with, but it’s not my favorite thing, by any means. On a good night, a heckler really won’t stand a chance against me, though. And on a bad night, we can just keep playing and drown out his “you sucks” or “NOFX! NOFX! Chant or whatever. One time, however, this heckler totally stole the show, and I gotta tell you, it was downright brilliant.
We were playing in the old Creepy Crawl in St. Louis, which was a shitty, shitty little place in the middle of the sort of quasi abandoned downtown area. This was uh…maybe 2003 or 2004. I was, as per the style of the era, attempting to fill up the dead space between songs while chris tuned his guitar. When I ran out of extemporaneous shit to say, I fell back on a joke. I almost never do this, but I had just heard the joke in question and I thought it was pretty funny. Here’s the joke:
Q: What’s the difference between Michael Jackson and a grocery bag?
A: One’s made of white plastic and dangerous for kids to play with and you put your groceries in the other one.

Ha. Yes, yes, it’s an old joke, and Michael Jackson is dead now, off moonwalking around in heaven and all that, and every single Michael Jackson joke has come out of retirement for one last reunion tour and as such, this joke is no longer funny. Hey, whatever. That’s what made me think of this story in the first place, assholes. Anyhow….
This was right before his big 2005 trial, so then, like now, he was all over the news. So, back to St. Louis: It’s been a little while, the crowd is getting a bit antsy. I bust out with the first line.
“What’s the difference between Michael Jackson and a grocery bag?”
And this kid in the crowd shouts out
“You’ve already condemned him!”
and I kind of lost it. That’s just too funny, man. That’s one of the greatest pieces of heckling ever. EVER. So I’m laughing, but I quickly recover and deliver the punchline.
“One’s made of white plastic and dangerous for kids to play with and you put your groceries in the other one.”
And the same kid shouts out
“Why are you putting your groceries in Michael Jackson?”

Hey, like I said, I’m funny, but I know when I’m beat. That kid was on target that night, man. Fuuuck. I don’t know if this story is as funny in print as it was to live through, but man, me and all the guys in my band and crew from that day still laugh about that shit. So, there you go. That’s the last time I’m gonna talk about Michael Jackson in this space. On to bigger and better topics:
My friends got married this weekend in northern Wisconsin in a beautiful and picturesque little town inhabited by mongaloids. The ceremony was catholic (stiff and never ending), but thankfully, the drinks were also catholic, so that made up for it. I had fun, but I thought about you guys a lot. I imagined what you must have gone through without this dumb blog to tether you to reality, lost, like a bunch of Chevy Chases wandering through the desert after jumping the wagon off the closed road during that short cut through Arizona. No words of wisdom to live by/second guess, no place to congregate and all that. Oh, poor thirsty little dogs of war. Sorry to leave you for so long.
Hey, look, I’m back now, right? And to show you that I’m totally dedicated to the pursuit of outstanding achievements in the field of excellence, I’m gonna tell the girl who wrote in for advice because she no longer loves her pets what to do.
Kill your pets. Yup. Kill ‘em. Not only will it solve the problem of you having to see them, but it will also force you to really weigh how much you hate them. Maybe it’ll warm the cockles of your cold, callus heart and you’ll decide, in your grief, to get some new, more dynamic pets that you WILL love, at least for a while. Right? How’s that advice?
What? You never heard of the prodigal son? Fucking heathens. Look, you don’t like your pets. Tough shit, man. Pets are a pain in the ass, but they like you and they’re, you know, compassionate little things and you, like it or not, are their mommy. You can give em to a friend for 2 weeks (if you have a friend who’s actually willing to do this) and see how it makes you feel. If you start to miss them, hey, nice one! You’ve rekindled that flame. If not, well, then pretty much your option is giving them away to some family or something that wants pets (if they’re the kind of pets that would be nice to kids) or you know, animal control (which is, as outlined in the last paragraph, killing them). Those are your options. Or fuck, talk to the drawer, maybe one of these perverts that comments here wants some barfing, irritating pets. Everyone wins there. But in answer to your question, yes. You are now a heartless old crone incapable of ever loving or doing something sweet for the rest of your black little life.
Nah, kidding. Pets get annoying. Pancho bugs the shit out of me. But I put up with it, because he’s a sweetie deep down (even though his breath smells like disembodied assholes). That’s life, man. Can’t just bail on shit when it gets irritating. If you could, I’d be single and without a band or any parents or anything. So would my kid. So would you. Mmmhmmm.
Finally, keep those nudes coming people. It’s july. Nothing says “get out your dick and/or vagina and send it in an email” like America’s birthday. That’s what we fought the Germans in Pearl Harbor for, man. That’s practically what the star spangled banner lays out as our reward for defeating them and creating America! Don’t you know anything about history? Sheesh. I’m waiting.

22 comments:

steveisjewish said...

I dont ever recall seeing you tear down a heckler before - but you did wear my Yamaka at the Shady View Terrace/ TLA split relsease show at a hall in NJ.

B said...

Hey, I was at that show.

Seagull Steve said...

I have yet to see someone tear down hecklers with more precision than Fat Mike. The kids who talk shit on NOFX on punknews wouldnt dare make a peep at a show.....on a completely unrelated note I once saw this screamo/hardcore band play at Gilman, and the guitar player started crying when the neck somehow snapped off his axe.....his makeup was running and it was oh so precious!

Nico said...

Man, I'm kinda dissapointed that there wasn't anything about dungeons & dragons in the post.

Angiepants said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Angiepants said...

Well, okay, maybe I should've gone a little further. It's like someone flipped a switch. I have no feelings towards these animals anymore. At all. It just stopped. There was no, "Oh, awesome, you puked on my bed/ate shit out of the litterbox/peed everywhere again" moment. I literally just woke up one day and didn't give a fuck. It's really freaking me out because I don't know when or why it happened. So my concern isn't really "Why am I pissed at my pets?", it's "Why did I stop caring for no reason and with no explanation?"

I think I have a brain tumor. Help me, Sock Drawer.

MOG said...

I think its obvious that these feelings stem from the fact that you have no heart and are an awful person with no sense of responsibility. I hope you do actually have a brain tumor and die in your sleep. Then for the next week your pets feast on your decaying flesh and organs (except your heart because as pointed out before you have none).

Good luck with it though! Hope it all works out.

Oh and if I was ever heckled I would quote Michael Richards.

Seems like a sure-fire comeback.

Angiepants said...

Way to read my comment, dude. "These feelings"? I thought I made it clear that I have none.

Angiepants said...

That is to say, I'm a heartless automaton. I might as well come clean. I'm a government-created killer nano-robot. I wasn't programmed to love.

Nico said...

You sound like my perfect girlfriend.

Dave said...

Brandon, I have a poster from that show proudly hanging in my room. I believe that was the Wilhelm Scream tour.

The Creepy Crawl sure was a shitty place. Shitty sound, shitty bathrooms, and shitty people running the venue.


p.s. You guys should be playing under the Arch, for the all-star game, and not Sheryl Crow.

p.s.s. my word verification word is "brostili" I am going to use that one at work today.

Ted Yang said...

Everyone says they hate hecklers (well, all you showbiz types), but I think the only reason I love Patton Oswalt as much as I do is because of how hilarious I find his responses to hecklers. Check out Werewolves and Lollipops for my favorite response to heckling ever. Oh, and check out the DVD for heckling through peeing on some guy standing next to you.

Ted Yang said...

Also, Angiepants, maybe if you murder your whole family...then you will feel so alone and desperate for friends that you will embrace your pets for sticking with you through it all.

Anonymous said...

hey, is your friend still in Cordoba?i might just be in the same town and everything,tomorrow i'm back to Buenos Aires.

Oh, and don't even think about killing your pets without raping them first, what kind of person are you? sheesh...just as bad as the australians that attacked Perl Harbor.

Rodrigo

Anonymous said...

I love tour stories and it reminded me:

The Brighton Bar in Long Branch, NJ.

http://cojackproductions.com

It's BEGGING you to play there. Sometime. Anytime.

And I'll buy all 3 of you beers.

Robb said...

It boils my blood when I reflect on how pearl harbor was triggered by a mindless pet-raping. Which Lincoln would later dub the "pet rape heard 'round the world"

Robb said...

And with the hecklers, just use that line from Grandma's Boy. 'Oh? So how much do clothes cost in the Matrix, anyway?'--REGARDLESS of what they're wearing! Guaranteed smiles.

kylewagoner said...

I saw a movie today that Andre 3000 wrote or some shit. It was called "Idlewild." Anyway, one man says at one point in it "Pussy and money. If God created something better, he kept it to himself."

One of your followers started following me as of last week. I'm assuming that's how bored people get when you quit writing. I had to post lots of shit because I had nothing to read. And I also had to worry about my dad who's being an asshole and I had to vent about him via blogging.

love,
Kyle

jbody said...

Angie,that's enough about your pets.

jbody said...

btw3's angie its just that old scenario where you can tell that your pets find you to be physically unattractive so you do that silly mirror protractor move on them this has happened with me and princess in the past I simply improved myself and now i am quite sad she is dying

Anonymous said...

attn: DAVE. its BRENDAN, not brandon. asshole.

brendan, you're the shit and you guys better fucking tour for the EP.

James said...

Ahh, Alison. So new. So naive.