Friday, August 28, 2009

This aggression will not stand, man!

I went to the theater last night. What a bunch of fucking goofballs theater people are, am I right? It’s all loud chicks who talk about fucking all the time, overweight hams, gay guys and those woefully out of place untalented dudes who haven’t quite figured out that this isn’t for them yet. People say that theater is the true actors medium, and I guess I can see that…you have people right there, it’s just existing in the moment, the potential for disaster is humongous, that’s all great. Problem is, most theater is terrible. This, as we’ve discussed before, is indicative of a bigger equation that basically states that in any given field of interest, there are about a zillion people doing it shittily for every one person doing it well. The thing I saw last night was pretty good, though. It was sketch comedy, which is very easy to fuck up, but in this case, it was pretty funny. That’s good, because it was a production that stars one of my fellow cast members.
Speaking of, for this movie I’m making, we have to deal with a security company that patrols this abandoned town in order to film there. We were given permission and filled out the forms and blah blah blah, and everything was cool. The head of the security team drives around in a white range rover, and he loves to stop and see what we’re up to, which, 100% of the time, ruins whatever it is we’re up to. The other day we were doing a driving scene. We had a pretty detailed shoot planned, with four passengers and five camera setups (4 closeup window mounts and one wide hood mount), and about 4 takes per passenger, we were looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of doing the scene twenty times. It’s kind of a longer scene and it was hot and everyone was tired and we were trying to get through this pretty hellish shoot but the head security guard kept circling around and making his best attempts to cut off our car, and then he’d circle the block again and find us and scream “Hey! I wanna be on TV! Can you put me on the TV?” and totally ruin the scene. He kept doing this over and over and over. It never got old to him.
Sigh.
It would be great to have stopped the car and told him to go fuck himself, but we need him. It doesn’t matter that he’s so stupid that he has no idea that he’s ruining what we’re doing by being an irritating mongo, it doesn’t matter that he obviously doesn’t know the difference between movies and TV (we had already explained to him several times that this project would, at the very least, not make it to the TV for a looooong time) he’s the asshole who can kick us out of our location, so we have to smile and nod and ignore that he’s barely smarter than a golden retriever.
Again, sigh.
In my darkest moments, I look at my creative output and wonder who the fuck I think I am. I look at songs/books/movies that have really touched me, or I look at truly exceptional people and their output and I hold up my crappy little handful of songs/writings/this movie and I wonder who the fuck let me do this and why. There are really funny, smart, moving, talented people out there and I’m just some guy who’s surrounded myself with other people who are similarly marginally talented, similarly ambitious and blindly optimistic and we sit around and suck each other off and say we’re good at whatever, but are we? Are we really people who can make something worth being seen by other people?
Okay, you know your one friend who’s the dancer/actor/musician/painter who always makes you go to shows or openings or whatever, but they suck, but they love it and you want to say “hey, Beth…look, you’re bad at this. I know you love it, and good for you, but if you’re thinking that someday you’re gonna do something great in the medium of interpretive dance/sketch comedy/punk rock/chamber theater etc, I got news for you…you’re more likely to find the hope diamond just chilling in your vagina” but you never say that, because it’s mean. I feel like Beth sometimes. Or, the landlord from the Big Lebowski, you know? This comes from a deep seeded paranoia that I’ve had ever since I was small. When I was little, I remember very clearly suspecting that I was retarded and that my mom just paid everyone around me to pretend I was normal and that they were my friends. This wasn’t just some passing thought, either. I TRULY suspected that this was what was going on for a long, long time. It’s kind of the same thing now, in these moments of doubt. I look at myself and say, “dude, you’re fooling yourself. You’re making garbage. You’re not special, you’re not talented, you’re mildly smart but you’re nowhere near as smart as you think you are, you’re past your prime and from here on out you better get used to crushing defeat because after this piece of shit movie is finished you’re gonna be staring into the face of gigantic, irrefutable evidence of your mediocrity.”
It kind of makes my skin cold.
Then, I think about that assneck security guard going “hey man! Put me on the TV!” and I realize that I’m brilliant, at least in comparison to most of these crapsacks. The bar is so fucking low out there, and there are so many mongos, and there are so many of these mongos doing things (dane cook! Hinder!) and generally blowing it, that it’s my fucking DUTY to get out there and stink up the place . That’s usually when I go get a beer.
xoxo

Thursday, August 27, 2009

u'membah me?

Yo! Nation! How’s it swingin? Sorry, I know it’s been a while since I rapped at ya, but I’ve been busier than an Islamic fundamentalist with a ticket from boston to new york on a flying whorehouse lately… Today would be my tenth straight day of shooting if the rain wasn’t giving us all a much needed day off. The other day I robbed a convenience store using shaving cream as a disguise. I’ve been forced to smoke so many cigarettes that I’m a little concerned about the ease of returning to my non smoker status at the end of this whole thing and I’m sore in every single muscle in my body, due mostly to running from an el camino driven by a group of crazed, fencing-sword wielding film school hooligans through neck high grass. I’m doing all my own stunts in this bitch, man. Ah, art. It’s like being on PCP but with a more acceptable excuse.
Today is one of my favorieist people in the world’s birthday. My friend Toby turns the big three three today, putting him all the way up there with my wife in terms of ancient-ness. I’m gonna take him out for liver and onions and some shuffleboard right after I roust through his underwear drawer and steal all his candy and take the belt his niece gave him for Christmas. I got him some depends, a bottle of sweet vermouth and one of those comb holders that they have at the gym with all that blue shit in it for his birthday. Guys, explain it to the ladies if you’d be so kind.
Seriously though, it’s rainy and my lungs hurt and my friend’s having a birthday and I NEED to go to the gym (and not just to get one of those combs) and my baby is eating all the other babies at his daycare and it’s threatening to become a huge problem and my wife and the management over at the daycare have exchanged * words* and well, I kind of have to side with my old lady on this one. There’s some rules at the daycare. If you bite three times, you have to go home. Well, the other day my kid bit three times within ten minutes of being there. The general consensus at my place was that if he was able to bite three times in ten minutes (keep in mind, he’s not even one and a half and he doesn’t really understand or say much) that’s not really controlling or defusing the situation, that’s just waiting to send him home without doing anything about the problem…The consensus at the daycare: We got rules. Rules is rules. That’s Stalinism in my book, but you throw Stalinism at a middle management child care worker before ten AM, shit’s gonna get ugly real quick, at least in my experience. Plus, I was busy watching hot chicks in bikinis drink goldschlager with a fat guy in his underpants while he handed them hundreds at the time when all this was going down, so I was doing my part to combat socalist doctrine by at least witnessing an artful interpretation of capitalist immorality and physical decay, right? Right. So anyhoo, my wife decided to use a capitalist approach and say, ‘hey man, if you aren’t able to watch our kid, and I’m gonna have to keep leaving work to come get him and thereby lose money while you refuse to do the job we’re paying you to do, well, we’re not gonna pay.” The response was not good. There was a back and forth. I, now, am decidedly unsure of if my kid still has a spot in this daycare BUT, I’m gonna attempt to store him there for the day anyway.
Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.
Middle management childcare workers, as a rule, like all middle management peons who are stuck in the bullshit service/childcare/mailroom/security/valet/summer camp etc industry, that’s really just a summer job, or school job or job you do so you can pursue artistic or athletic or other endeavors, like all poor, sad fucks stuck in CAREERS in one of these industries, they love nothing more than to swing their dicks around and exercise the tiny little power that they have. Think about it. Remember your last crappy job from last summer or whatever? Okay, now pretend you’d worked there for ten years. Now, pretend you still work there. NOW pretend that you know, in your deepest recesses of your pathetic little soul, that you’ll be there forever. Suicide time, right? Well, maybe not, because there’s still those tiny droplets of joy that you can suck from the flower of making other, freer, less completely fucked people feel the stinging pain of your pathetic helplessness for a tiny moment, right? That’s right. Tell that waitress she MUST work Christmas. Tell that poor young couple that they MUST pick up their kid and lose/endanger their job in the process. Tell the cashier that he’d better get in there and clean the bathroom. Tell the altar boy that these balls aren’t gonna produce perfectly good but for some reason useless priest jizz on their own, there’s sucking in your future, my son…(funny story, I actually read that a diocese [maybe in new England] recently tried to use the following as an excuse when confronted with all the counts of young boy sexual abuse that they’d racked up over the years: “uh, certainly we knew it was a moral transgression, a sin in the eyes of god, but none of us knew it was against the laws of man.”
Really? That’s the party line, eh? Okay, I’m paraphrasing a bit, but let’s examine this, shall we? Firstly, yes you did. Secondly, you’re PRIESTS!!! THE LAWS OF MAN ARE NOTHING, REPEAT, NOTHING IF THEY GO AGAINST THE LAWS OF YOUR DUMB GOD, RIGHT? THAT’S WHY JESUS GOT IN ALL THE FUCKING TROUBLE IN THE FIRST PLACE, INNIT? Fucking retards. Third, yes you did.
I think people in positions of power like that [and priests are the ULTIMATE middle managers, and their ‘flock’ the ultimate summer jobbers, especially the kids, and well, being forced to blow a priest is a TON worse than picking up your kid or having to work Christmas {although, that could be considered the same thing if the timing worked out, right? Like, a quick beej to celebrate a midnight mass well done? Heh.}] who use their pathetic little power to hurt kids, and fuck up their brains by messing with them sexually or whatever, bad news. Yeah, you heard me. I’m not down with child molesters. I’m taking a stand, man. Actually, that’s a new Anti Flag song. It’s called “Fuck off Child Molesters!” and it’s a scathing indictment of the entire child molsestation scene. I don’t believe they went there. Ah, I kid. I love those dudes, and you heard it here first: one of the absolute best live bands I’ve EVER been lucky enough to tour with. Okay, enough covering my ass. What were we talking about?)
Point being, I’m about to take my kid to daycare and I really don’t know how it’s gonna go. He’s a biter. I’m dedicated to the idea of biting him back if he bites me, but he doesn’t bite me. I guess he can sense my eye of the tiger. Heh. I really hope none of those kids are very delicious in there today. I gotta take Toby around and I can’t be fucking toting a baby around like an early 80’s Michael Keaton, can I? Not if I’m gonna be smoking PCP with Toby I can’t. And it’s not a Tobias Jeg birthday without a little bit of angel dust. That’s for sure. Okay, okay, okay. I gotta go. Thanks for your patience, sorry these posts aren’t more regular these days. We’ll return soon, but know this, I love all my little dogs of war, and all my socks and all the various drawers. God bless all the readers of the sandwich.
Uh...
Not that god has much to do with anything. Nah, fuck it. Do your worst to 'em, god. I'll take my chances with evil, reckless fun and a general sense of depravity. May that bless you all. Trust me, it's way better.
Xoxoxox

Friday, August 21, 2009

Anoooooooo, Duuuuuuuuuuuude!

Okay, so today I have to go back to work. After all this high glitz and Hollywood glamour, I have to go back to asking people what kind of dressing they want on their salads. After meticulously listening to mixes and comparing potential album covers and fixing last minute credit omissions, I’m back to pouring 14oz faux pints of stella for assholes. After bemusedly watching a buddy of mine casually do key bumps at three in the afternoon while surfing the internet, I’m back to…wait, what? Jesus Christ, the doldrums of summer are upon us, right? And here in Chicago, nature has responded by just making it autumn early. Nice. We had…uh, two weeks of summer, I think. Real cool, Jesus. No wonder everyone hates you. So capricious with the sunshine.
Okay, tonight is a barbeque for a buddy of mine from Japan who’s now living in the US. He’s a great photographer, but beyond that, he’s the GREATEST dude on the planet. He’s obsessed with American slang, and that’s pretty much the only English he speaks, which makes for some pretty hilarious sentences, like “Ooooh! Master blaster! That’s super electric lips and assholes, muy bueno! I’m audi!” Which means, “hey, that was a good hot dog. Thanks. See you later.” He carries books and books of slang that he’s picked up while touring with bands and if you’re lucky enough to say something that he’s never heard before, you’ll be treated to his excitement as he whips out his book and asks you to explain the usage for the piece of slang you just introduced him to. He’s amazing. I’ll repeat this, because it’s so true. He’s amazing. If you’re EVER lucky enough to find yourself in the presence of Hiro Tanaka, stay close, because he’s a walking party, man. Fer real. Tonight we barbeque him. It’s gonna be great. He looks pretty wiry, but I think he’s gonna turn out pretty tender when it’s all said and done.

I was thinking about punk rock this morning, and I started thinking about one of my favorite types of “punk rockers,” namely, the peacocks. These are the ones with the two Mohawks, the chains and bondage pants and the sid spikes and the three belts and bleach and manic panic on their tour busses or in their bathroom at their moms house or whatever. You know the ones, right? They call themselves ‘street punk’ or ‘crusty’ but neither of those terms really seem very accurate to me, because there’s nothing street or crusty about peacocks. They’re meticulously constructed and everything is clean and they spend more time getting ready than a sixteen year old debutante from Georgia does before a cotillion, and I don’t know, man…it’s just so fucking goofy, you know? Now, I’m not talking about actual crusty kids (who are just as make-fun-of-able, but for different reasons) or actual ‘street punks’ (whatever the fuck that means) I’m talking about the dudes with the neck tattoos, fancy, fresh dyed crazy hair, jean vests, 400 dollar pre shredded ensemble, the fashion punks. These fucking dudes are hilarious. This is a look that in some universe is supposed to make you look tough? You look like a fucking circus clown mixed with a pageant contestant. These guys tend to listen to music about smashing states and anarchy and stuff like that, but man, without sweatshops, there’d be only one zipper on your pants…not to mention, any true state of anarchy would result in actual tough guys beating the crap out of you and stealing all your jewelry. Sure, you’re all painted up, but you’re tough the way ed Norton is in Fight club. We understand where it’s coming from because we see the story around it, but we also know it’s just a story, and I don’t think anyone REALLY buys it. There has never been a truly badass dude who has had to spend an hour and a half doing their hair before they go out and stomp motherfuckers. Sure, there are probably dudes out there who get all dolled up like this who could kick my ass, yeah. For sure there are. BUT, and this is a big point, they’re dorks. I mean, there are probably some retarded guys who could beat my ass. There are some girls who could beat my ass. The ability to beat my ass is not the issue. It’s not hard. Acting like a fucking makeup kit, sink counter full of hair products and goofy jewelry and clothes make you tough, that’s the issue. Right? I mean, am I crazy here? Not since the bad guy in Commando have people so woefully miscalculated the appearance of toughness, and that’s all I’m trying to say.
There are trannies in Chicago who are fucking tough. They’re mean as shit and they’re big and they will stomp you into fucking applesauce. THEY spend a lot of time getting ready and doing their hair, and they look fucking terrifying. THAT’S the look you peacocks should maybe go for if you just need the beauty regimen part. (also, trannies, I am NOT making fun of y’all. You girls are beautiful. Don’t kill me.)
Okay, that’s all for now. These sandwiches aren’t gonna serve themselves.
xoxoxo

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Death to all Tyrants!

Yesterday, I smoked cigarettes on a swingset and sold weed to some highschool kids while a very patient group of about 25 mexican men waited about 45 minutes to play soccer on the field that our film crew had cruelly overtaken. It was pretty fun, except for the smoking part. I got to do a little cursing.
Tonight I’m doing an all night shoot. This shit is crazy. The difference between making a record and making a movie is like the difference between drawing a line and constructing a cube from scratch. With recording music, you’re in a sterile environment and if you do your part right, at the right time, with the right rhythm, and the engineer isn’t asleep, you got it. With movies, you’re out in some playground, or in some junkyard or something, and even if you do your part right, with the right rhythm, if you make a funny face when you do it, don’t seem sincere, a plane flies by, the camera guy sneezes, the sound director has some problem, the boom guy gets in the frame, a dog barks, a car beeps a horn in the distance…I mean, fuck. It’s so much harder. That’s why so many nineteen year olds can make great albums but don’t often make great movies. Music is easy. Movies are hard.
Now, that being said, music is probably cooler than movies, just in that music is portable. It’s in your head all the time, it’s the facet of your life that turns your day to day drudgery into YOUR personal movie. That’s cool. And it conjures emotion pretty easily. Music is like David Blaine. Just out there, innocuously roaming around blowing people’s minds on a fairly personal scale, but movies, movies are David Copperfield; a big stupid gaudy production that culminates in the statue of Liberty vanishing for a few seconds. David Blaine, you believe in, or at least you could see yourself believing in him, whereas Copperfield, you know the whole thing’s a show, but it’s so fucking crazy that its authenticity isn’t an issue. It’s the same thing with music and movies.
With music, often we believe that the artist really means/feels/lives what’s going on in the songs. It’s a real personal connection. Never mind that music is just another art form that need not have anything to do with the artists actual personality. It’s easy to see one guy singing about being a broken hearted sap and ignore the fact that, not only did the drummer actually write the song, but the singer dude’s a handsome millionaire and the chances are very good that he’s (for example) fucking around on his wife AND his girlfriend with a dude. We choose to believe that the singer guys words are sincere. It’s just an easy emotional connection to make if a song speaks to you. Not unlike when David Blaine levitates right in front of you (if you’re an excitable black teenager) and you just lose your mind and assure us viewers at home that he’s real magic, y’all.
With movies, it’s totally different. No one even thinks about the writer of a movie. They think about the actors, if anything. Sometimes the director gets credit, but usually only if he also writes or stars, or if he’s got a serious track record (Michael Bay). There’s no sense of propriety in movies, and even in the few cases where there are, (Quentin Tarrantino seems like an obvious example) it’s never EVER assumed that he’s ever had any sort of experience like those in his movies. He’s just seen as a nerdy eccentric who’s got a lot of ideas and time on his hands.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Movies totally hit home emotionally too, but it’s different. A movie takes all your senses…well, no. A movie involves you sitting down and being static for a while to appreciate it, so you kind of necessarily leave that emotional connection at home at some point, when you go out and have to live your own life and you put on your headphones, right? That’s music, sneaking back in.
Jesus Christ man. I don’t know. This whole movie making thing is crazy. I’ll say that much. I mean, I went to school for it, and I know my way around a set a little bit, but fuck…everything is so specialized. It’s really a nerds endeavor. And really, that’s the thing. You CAN’T make a good, real movie without the input and help of nerds, while great albums can be made by a bunch of nihilistic wastoids, or morons, or uneducated criminals, and there’s something endearing about that. Something is magically awesome about people who don’t even care about doing something great kind of accidentally changing someone else’s life for the better, and that can’t happen in movies. It’s too calculated. That’s the difference. You HAVE to be sure you’re doing everything to make a movie. With music, you can show up at midnight, high on cough syrup and, while blacked out, churn out some song that ends up being everyone’s favorite jam of the summer.
That’s fucking pretty cool if you ask me.
Can’t do that with a movie though, unless you’re david Hasselhoff and his daughter, I guess…
Okay, have a good one.
xo

Monday, August 17, 2009

dude, strange things are afoot...

Yesterday I rode a bicycle made for a six year old girl for four hours. I also smoked ten cigarettes and drank a lot of apple juice. I usually never do any of these things. But fuck, man, this is what I do for art. I also worked last night and just woke up. It’s fucking late. I need to pick up my bike from my friend-who-has-no-sweat-glands’s house. That’s a truth. He was born without em. Apparently he can get his hands kind of sweaty if he squeezes a penny for a long time, because a few glands grew into his palm in the last few years, but otherwise, nope. Dry as a bone. I’ve talked about this before, I’m sure, but it’s always good to get new readers on the same page, yesno? Good. I should also go to the gym. Dumb smoking. It’s gross. I don’t believe I used to do that shit for fun.

Actually, it was more than fun. I smoked because I thought it looked cool. That’s the only reason anyone ever starts smoking and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. You know why? Because there’s no other reason to start smoking. No non smoker ever was nervous and suddenly, out of nowhere decided that a cigarette would calm them down. That’s a tic brought on by addiction and/or socialization. No non smoker ever looked at someone wafting disgusting smoke at them after a meal and decided, ‘that really does look like it would make this dining experience complete.” The first time you ever smoke a cigarette, it makes you sick. The second time you smoke a cigarette, it makes you sick. There’s NO POINT where the flavor ever tastes good. Cigarettes taste like shit. You know that smell? It’s similar to that of burnt hair? That’s cigarettes, that’s also how they taste. They make you smell like shit, taste like an ashtray, look like a piece of beef jerky, die, and generally look like a neurotic turd who has to step out onto the porch every fifteen minutes to indulge your disgusting habit. AND, you CAN’T EVEN GET INTO IT WITHOUT GETTING SICK AND PRACTICING! It’s impossible to introduce poison to an organism and have it be a pleasurable experience. Only in repetition can cigarettes become enjoyable. And THAT, my friends, is why anyone who tells you that they smoke for any reason other than “I thought it looked cool” is just like someone who tells you they read playboy for the articles or goes to Thailand for the history of it all…full of shit. You know why people go to Thailand, right, dogs of war? Discuss in the sock drawer. Go ahead.

When my band, the Lawrence Arms, first started, we had this idea for a seven inch. We had the title picked out and we even knew what the cover was gonna be. We promised ourselves that our first seven inch would have this name and this cover. Well, we never did a seven inch (except for one that was part of a label series, which meant that the cover and the title were sort of more beholden to the big picture rather than our dumb ideas) and the whole thing kind of languished, and now, ten years later, in conjunction with our ten year anniversary show and subsequent west coast run (the first run in over 2 years), we’ve got our first real seven inch on our hands. And guess what? We fucking named it the name that we thought up ten years ago. That’s right, assholes. When we decided what our first seven inch was gonna be called, ‘a digital release’ sounded like some sort of futuristic way to blow your load using your computer, and yet this fucking record is gonna be released digitally with an extra song. That’s, again, right, asshats. You guys wanna know what it’s called? Do you? It’s called Buttsweat and Tears. Why? Well, for one thing, they’re the two most secreted liquids from the three of us over the last decade, but of course we didn’t know that would be the case when we thought up the title. We just thought it sounded tough, you know?
What? Sure it does. Sigh.
I’m out of here. Later, puds.

Friday, August 14, 2009

I'm fucking crazy, man. You don't wanna mess with me, man.

Pretty much anyone who ever tells you something that a normal person wouldn’t ever say out loud is full of shit. Think about it. You know when you hear someone go “I’m crazy, man. I just don’t give a fuck!” what they’re really saying is “I act out for attention because I’m an insecure pussy with a monstrous list of things to prove. Daddy was always working late and never wanted to play catch/house.” When someone says, for example, that they’re in the mafia, or they know some serious people; nope. No. Sorry. You aren’t and you don’t. People who are in the mafia (John Gotti excluded) go to GREAT lengths to keep that information secret.
This shit is true for the guy who brags about getting laid, this is true for the chick who has the famous friends and the open invitation to the modeling contract that she’s just never taken because she digs being a hairdresser. This is true for the person who goes to great lengths to tell you, unprovoked, that they aren’t a drunkard, don’t cheat on their boyfriend, work really, really hard, scored a genius level on an IQ test, whatever. This is the fucking hallmark of lying, although sometimes it’s a little more complex than just being a straight up falsehood. For example, “I’ve got an 8 inch dick, you know” means one of two things: 1. Person has small penis. 2. Person has 8 inch penis but never gets laid and he’s unsure of how to get the word out. Ah, well, I spoke too soon. I guess there’s: 3. Person is a disgusting guy who thinks that women react to dick size the way dogs react to bacon or 4. He’s a gay guy at a club making casual conversation. There’s always exceptions, people. See John Gotti for an example.
The crazy one though, that’s the real irritating one. “I don’t give a fuck man. I’m crazy.”
Look. I’m no psychiatrist but I’m pretty sure that the FIRST thing about being crazy is that you don’t think you are. If you’re having the thought “man, I’m going crazy!” you’re fine. It’s people who are just out in their bathrobes, pissing on a fire hydrant while holding a stack of pictures of David Schwimmer cut out of magazines that are looking at you like “hey asshole, what the fuck’s so interesting over here that you gotta stare?” or even better, maybe they say “excuse me. Which way to my aunt’s house? Do you know anything about the law?” Those motherfuckers don’t think they’re crazy. They know that what they’re doing is normal. Perhaps they think that everyone else is crazy or out to get them or something. But those fucking people, each and every crazy person on this planet is not only unaware that they’re crazy, they’re totally fucking positive that they aren’t.
Because, being crazy isn’t cool. It’s like being addicted to drugs. High school kids who smoke a ton of pot think it’s funny to call themselves drug addicts. Dudes that suck penises for hits of meth do NOT call themselves drug addicts. They call themselves The Alkaline Trio.
Heh. Couldn’t resist. Seriously though. Real addicts (unreformed) tend to try to stay as far away from clinical descriptions as possible, and real crazies, the same thing. Real addiction, like real crazy, isn’t cool, and only someone who had no fucking idea about being crazy would ever brag about it. Just throwing that out there as a primer to a very short story about addiction and craziness. Here goes:
Okay, someone asked me to write something funny in this space today, since I guess yesterday was kind of a downer (if you’re a TOTAL pussy, but that’s another topic). I immediately thought of this story, starring my friend who was also our tour manager on a bunch of European tours. He’s small and toothless and generally the coolest dude in the world, but on this tour, we kind of got the feeling that he was getting a little crazy with the speed. He’s an older dude, and he’s been a road dog for something like 25 years, and in general, when you deal with lifer crew guys, drug habits aren’t that odd, and usually don’t get in the way or even really talked about, but in this instance, it became pretty weird pretty quick. He of course denied that he was doing drugs (see the above paragraph about addiction) and honestly, I guess I don’t know if he was. I never saw him do anything, but this one night in spain, he exhibited some pretty questionable behavior.
We were all sitting around. He went to get some sleep because he hadn’t slept in about two days. Needless to say we were concerned. I told him “dude, we aren’t leaving here until you sleep. Go sleep. I’ll handle everything with the money and shit.” So he went down to the van to crash. About 20 minutes later he came back up grinning ear to ear and screaming that he had the best fucking idea ever. He had taken five pins (or badges if you’re british) from the opening band, and he’d taken the CD from the headlining band (we were second on a 3 band tour). He’d ripped up the cd from the headlining band and taken the heads of each dude from the band photo inside and taped each head to one of the pins from the opening band and was walking around with these pins that were not only homemade teenybopper style individual pins for each dude in the headlining band, but also a vulgar display of lack of respect for the merch of both bands we were out with.
Anyway, his idea was this: (and he said this with such enthusiasm that you’d think he just figured out cold fusion or something), he’d go to the headlining band and get them to buy us a transvestite hooker. The thinking here was that it would be worth their while to pay for the hooker for the sheer joy that would come from seeing us uncover its penis and the resulting disgust and backpedaling etc. HOWEVER!!!!!!! That was just what he was gonna tell them. What he REALLY wanted to do was fuck the tranny himself. We, he told us, could film it, and then we could make a DVD and sell it!!!!!! And all the while the headlining band pays for the hooker! It’s fucking GENIUS!!!!!!!

Dead silence.

I feel Chris and Neil’s eyes burning into me, screaming “dude, what the FUCK???!?!?!?!?”
No one is saying anything.
Tour manager says “well, isn’t that fucking brilliant? What do you think?”
Silence.
“What The Fuck” eyes are burning into me even more.
I clear my throat and try to sound very casual. I say “yeah, man…but uh, we don’t, uh…have a video camera.”
He says “That’s the least of our fucking worries!”
No shit dude. No fucking shit that’s the least of our worries. You’ve been up on speed for three days, we need to drive all night , you’ve alienated the two bands we’re on tour with and you’re trying to grift some very nice, generous people into buying you a prostitute/force me to film you having sex with a tranny. I’d say you’re right. The not having a camera IS, in fact the least of our worries.
So, in the end we did it, and he was right. It was a great plan. The sales went through the roof. Best selling disc I was ever a part of. This was before the internet came along and made tranny porn free. Those were the golden years, man. Fuuuuck.

I start shooting next week, so I don’t know how diligent I’ll be able to be with this, but know this, dogs of war…I love you all, and I’ll try to check in as much as possible.
Enjoy your weekends.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Lost mind! Reward if found. Friendly, but easily startled!

God, moviemaking is a gigantic pain in the ass. I went to college for it, so I kind of knew what I was getting into, but I’ve never really attempted anything of the magnitude that I’m attempting now. I’ve also got this record going into production this week, so I’ve got the art and mixing to deal with, and I’ve been doing some shit for my wife’s office, which has officially made me uh…what’s the word? Crazed? Frazzled? Something like that. Today, I have to go to work at the bar. My schedule for the next few days is as follows. Work Thursday, work Friday, Friday night rehearsal, work Saturday, Sunday morning first day of principal photography, work Sunday night, shoot Monday morning, then work Tuesday morning Wednesday morning Thursday morning and Friday, Saturday shooting, Sunday shooting, Sunday night work Monday morning shooting….and it goes on and on like this. Fuck.
Also, just got a call that my kid has already bitten twice at the daycare. One more and he gets sent home, which is real bad, since we’re both working all day. I have no idea what to do about that…Grown up-ness is hard, man. That’s why we’re all dorks. We’re out of our element all the time.
I actually can’t tell which part of my life is the kid part and which part is the grownup part. Well, the having a baby part is grownup. The working at the bar though? Kid or grownup? I dunno…All the various art projects that stress me out so much that going to work is almost a relief, is that grownup stuff that runs my life or kids stuff that helps me create and escape? I dunno. Internet porn? Officially adult, but really, kind of adolescent in nature, innit? I have almost no cut and dry line between my stress and my leisure. It’s making me crazy, but you know what? I think it’s better than when my stress was my job and my leisure was just sitting around. Because that’s fucking dull, and the only thing that happens then is that your job consumes your life and your stress consumes your few precious moments of free time and you sit there miserable, just refreshing your email, whacking off, watching tv, drinking a beer, smoking weed, playing video games, whatever, just thinking “man, I gotta go back to that fucking place tomorrow and it SUCKS!!!!!!!” and that’s NO fucking fun, man. No thanks. I’ll take the perma-stress, I guess, because it helps put everything in perspective.
Wow, I actually feel better after writing this. Thanks, dogs of war, for listening.

The two things on this earth that make me the saddest are lost pet signs and old delivery guys. Lost pet signs make me picture worried, crying kids, parents who feel absolutely horrible and scared lonely pets. The whole thing just makes me so incredibly sad.
Old man delivery guys…man, fuck. I order pizzas a lot. I also live on the third floor. When the guy comes up with a 2 liter of coke (which all pizzas in Chicago come with, for some reason. I don’t drink soda at all and I’ve got about seventeen 2 liters in my kitchen because they’re the pizza delivery equivalent of tortilla chips at Mexican restaurants) and he’s in his seventies, oh fuck me. It’s heart breaking. Pizza delivery is a job for a sixteen to nineteen year old guy. It’s a rad job. You take your shitty car out, play your music, smoke pot, maybe pick up your girlfriend and get a handjob (if she’s cool) and generally cruise around your town taking it all in.
When you’re seventy, however, not the same. You lived your life wrong. While all your peers are chilling out in retirement or death, you’re stuck lugging 2 liters and pepperoni and mushroom calzones up 3 flights of stairs to a bunch of stoned college guys. Your back hurts. You can’t even eat pizza or drink soda anymore. No one you work with was even born when you got to the point where you no longer cared about pop culture…much less remembers your favorite Gershwin song, much less remembers Gershwin at all…It’s sad. Okay, now I feel worse again. AND I gotta go to work.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

You're driving me crazy!

When I was a young skateboarder, I subscribed to Thrasher Magazine. I’d read that shit front to back. I’d read the letters, I’d read the music section, I read the reviews, the interviews and I’d even read the insanely incoherent articles about contests and shit. The best part, however, was the recipes. The recipes in Thrasher were so fucking ridiculously disgusting, on purpose, I now realize, but I bought into the whole post-modernism of it and actually prepared and consumed a few choice meals. This led to a strange phenomenon where I made myself believe I liked very disgusting things.
One of my favorite snacks was an uncooked hotdog, a pickle and some cheese in a hard taco shell covered in salsa. I ate that shit all the time. Looking back, was it gross? Actually I don’t even remember it as being gross. It sounds good to me still. I know, intellectually that it’s gross, but man, I used to LOVE that shit. I think it’s affected me to this day, as I’m still pretty capable of eating anything, and I’ll happily eat tuna right from the can or a whole jar of peanut butter just with a spoon. As long as there’s no ketchup, and there’s not too much mayonnaise (which I’ll get to in a sec) I’m down. Is this from my young, experimental days as a budding young chef? Only Jesus knows, I guess.
***
A side note on mayonnaise:
Okay, Mayonnaise is gross. If you don’t think so, you are gross. This is an inarguable point. Please understand, this isn’t a value judgment about people who eat mayonnaise. It’s just the facts, ma’am. When I go out, I never specify that I want mayonnaise on anything, because it’s gross. However, if a sandwich or something just COMES with mayo, I’m secretly pleased. Why? Because the shit’s fucking delicious, man. Oh, it’s disgusting, make no mistake, and I’d never specifically request it, and too much of it is about as repulsive as it gets, and fuck, it’s bad for you, BUT, if you know in your heart that mayo in moderation improves, for example, a turkey sandwich. Yes it does, you bullshitter! You, like me, have been so conditioned by your societal and subcultural standards that you’ve let yourself believe that it’s so gross that you don’t like it, but you DO. Secretly, YOU DO!!!!!!!
But I will concede that it’s disgusting. Oh, and guys, gals; rule of thumb: Never, ever order something with mayonnaise if you’re dealing with someone who you’re attempting to fuck/suck off/feel the tits of. It’s not classy. It’s like farting. Someday, if things work out, it’ll be cool, but at this embryonic stage, show a little self-restraint. Anyone that overlooks your bowl of mayonnaise or greasy farts during a courtship is not good enough for you. Period. End of story.

Now, getting back to the recipes in Thrasher, I was so young and dumb that I believed sincerely that these recipes were what skaters ate, and I so desperately wanted to be part of something that I ate it too, regardless of grossness. This is not dissimilar to the way that I tried, right around the same time (12-18) to force myself to like bands that I thought were “important” or ‘cool’ or ‘necessary.’ I mean, I spent more time trying to get into stupid, terrible bands that I really had no aesthetic interest in. Mostly hardcore, metal, funk, terrible punk and shit like that. I tried to like Primus…I tried to like Youth of Today and I tried to like The Accused and Instead and Bold and all that shit. (Burn, however, was awesome-that EP totally killed me.)
I can’t even remember now all the tapes I had that I just needed, NEEDED to get into. Suicidal Tendencies. Oh, how I tried. Problem is, they’re terrible. There’s no way to spitshine any of these bullshit garbage records. AND, and this is a big part of all this, once I became a “punk” if I found a band that was tolerable, and yet still off everyone’s radar, I decided that they’d be my favorite band, just for the sort of je ne sais quoi of the whole thing. That’s how come I know every word to Underdog’s breakthrough album “the vanishing point” even though it’s TERRIBLE, if I listen back to it now.
This, if I’m really being honest with myself, I think may be the reason that a lot of people like my band. We’re off everyone’s radar (your friend that likes Against Me! and Daughtry isn’t gonna like us) but we’re just barely good enough that you can make yourself get into it. That’s what it is, innit? Thought so.
Hey, it’s not all like that though. Bands like Bad Brains and Fugazi really DID take a bunch of listens to click with me, and I’m glad I stuck it out, because those are two pretty awesome bands. You never know when a song doesn’t quite grab you if you’re dealing with a Sailin’ On or an Institutionalized. Gotta do the legwork.
Speaking of, I’m starving and my baby is awake. Later dildos.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

hallelujah! holla back!

Hey ho dildos, it’s Tuesday, which is farmer’s market day and also a day to reflect on how fucking insane things have become around here. I’m shooting test footage today for a movie, AND I’m organizing all the art/lyrics/mixes/song titles for our new record, AND I’m hosting a houseguest from Norway with a vestigial tail, AND I’m doing some stuff for my wife’s company and, and AND I’m being a daddy, and I’m doing all the goddamned laundry, not the least of which was a load of rugs brought on by the poo marathon that took place in here last week (see yesterday’s post “bizarre situations?” for details) AND, AND AND AND, there’s a chance one of the rugs is a little bit pink now, thanks to my harried attempt to get everything done. This will not go over well when my wife gets home, unless she’s in a great mood, and even then, who knows?
You know, it’s not really that pink. Just slightly tinged. I mean, pink’s a cool color, right? A lot of my favorite things are pink. Flamingos, perfect example.
Mark Twain once said that houseguests were like fish and begin to stink after about three days. I find myself completely flummoxed when it comes to having a guest these days. I go to bed early, I get up early. I’ve got a blog to write and hordes of people to entertain, and I’ve got this kid who kind of dictates my schedule, and, AND, I’ve got a job. I don’t know how long this guy is staying here. Frankly, I don’t want to know, I will say though, in his defense, that 2 years ago he stayed here for a solid 3 months and when he left it was a bummer, and not just for him…it was a bummer for my wife and for me too. However, that was, of course, before the baby came along and turned our house into an Elmo shrine, so we’ll see.
I dunno, folks. Sometimes having a lot to do is overwhelming and it makes it impossible to sleep, other times it offers a sense of purpose that has a very calming and focusing effect. When I was completely unemployed with nothing to do but dick around, I felt like I was going crazy. When I was just working a couple of days a week at a bar, I’d completely lose it if I had to get a shift covered or go to the post office or anything like that. Now that I’m so busy that I literally don’t have enough time to change my clothes, I’m getting tons of shit done in my scraps of down time. Yesterday, for example, my father’s day present finally came. It’s a ghetto revival hoodie. You may remember the Ghetto Revival and it’s spokesman, John Brown, the “King of the Burbs” from the greatest reality show of all time, Ego Trip’s uh…the next great white rapper (or something approximating that). He was the slope faced mongaloid with the flow that sounded kind of like he was deaf, who kept repeating catch phrases without any notion of what they meant, and without any comprehension of why people were angered and confused by him.
It’s a testament to how great (read:terrible) the competition was that he came in second place behind an irish inbred hillbilly who’s flow was one part lobotomized Appalachian auctioneer, one part terrible Bubba Sparxxx impersonation. (White people, take note: you should, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES be wearing a grill of any kind. It just looks creepy and gross. Yes it does.)
Anyway, my wife, who knew how obsessed I was with the show, hooked up an awesome John Brown “ghetto Revival” (apparently the name of his crew) hoodie, but it never came. She even had to get paypal involved and the whole deal.
Yesterday, before nine AM, I contested a traffic ticket and then went down to the post office where, using an old USPS slip, I sweet talked the lady into giving me my package even though it was addressed to my wife and it was already on the truck to go back to the hard assed Ghettos of Davis California (where the king of the burbs throne be), and it was my hoodie. Sweet. Only thing is, the fucking thing is an XL. Make no mistake, I’m still gonna figure out how to wear it, but I’m a tad bummed…He’s not printing mediums. He’s got a big sale on XL’s because he (like everyone who makes hoodies for the first time) foolishly believed that people wanted XL’s. He sold through all the rest of his sizes and doesn’t want to print anything else till he gets rid of the garage of xl’s he’s sitting on, at least that’s my theory.
Thing is, no one wants XL’s. We don’t even print but four of them for a tour, and we rarely have complaints, AND we’re a lot more popular than Ghetto Revival (at least I hope we are).
Anyway, I know he’s out of mediums and if I ship it back and say “yo! King of the burbs! I ordered a medium, what the fuck?” He’s not gonna send shit back and it’s just gonna be more drama, and frankly, I’m scared of John Brown. He’s hard. He’s got friends that look like authentic negroes and he smokes cigars with green tobacco inside. You’d best believe I’m afraid.
Okay, enough of this bullshit. I’ve gotta go interrupt the Norwegian guys’ jerk session to tell him I’m stepping out for a quick bike ride. Hope he’s at least got the dignity to be under the sheets, you know?

Monday, August 10, 2009

bizarre situations?

Welcome home. My house looked like a fucking dog poo fetishist’s wet dream when we got back here due to some serious negligence on the part of our beloved dogsitter. He combined diarrhea inducing chew sticks that they’re allergic to with a little bit of the old classic “blind eye” to the massive shit deposits everywhere. End result? Trip to the rug cleaners, couch cleaning, massive hands and knees scrubbing last night. Seriously exhausted daddy. It’s cool though, as I just happen to BE a dog poo fetishist. I love it when it’s warm under my nails.
Ew.
Today I just narrowed down the cover of our new record to four potential photos. Up next, I email the label and see if there’s gonna be an insert on this bad boy. This should all happen pretty quick. I think I’m gonna go in and hear the final mixes/sequence this afternoon and then that’s pretty much it. Well, no. I still need to get a designer to lay it out for me, but it shouldn’t be hard. Simple placement of words, you know? Well, I guess I still have a few songs to name…that’s always fun. I’m thinking “even at our best we’re worse than most, unless they’re also at their worst, in which case, eh…maybe we stand a chance” is a pretty good title. Whaddaya think? Is that too niche of a joke? What can I tell you? I’m a real snob, man.
Okay, okay. My friend Eric, who I hung out with this weekend has an intern, a la Kramer on Seinfeld. Eric has no job. He watches a baby and dicks around on his bass and dicks around on his computer and he’s got this intern who’s a highschool kid who comes over and does his bidding. It’s amazing. The kid’s a really talented artist, and so Eric just has him draw shit for his band, logos, tshirt designs, shit like that. In return, I guess Eric imparts some wisdom on him in the form of how to steal computer programs and general pointers on life. I dunno. It’s fucking funny. Eric and his intern. HA! And, it’s pretty smart. I mean, fuck, maybe I need an intern. Anyone out there want to be my intern. Here’s the qualifications: My baby must like you. You must live in Chicago. You must have a nice rack (photo required) but you don’t necessarily have to be a chick, Um, what else? You will not get paid, as this is a highly coveted position, kind of like in the Pursuit of Happyness (sic), where the learning is reward enough. Um, you should probably be able to do something that interests me, and you must have a general sense of aesthetic and design skill. This does NOT just mean that you think you can kind of draw. Repeat: this does NOT just mean that you think you can kind of draw. Jesus Christ, my band did a contest about 4 years ago to have someone design a tshirt for us, and the garbage that flooded in was remarkable. So many people, such a very tiny little amount of talent. Anyway, back to the requirements: No junkies, no aversions to dogshit, no aversions to babies, no losers or turds. That kind of rules out most of you, huh? Well, I don’t wanna have to post on Craigslist, so don’t let me down, Dogs of War.
There was one other thing…Oh yeah, my friend Eric, the guy with the intern is friends with Andy Johns, music producer extraordinaire of Led Zeppelin 4 and Exile on Main street fame. He told Eric a story, which Eric recounted to me about one time when he was over at a party at Salvador Dali’s place. It was a fancy affair, with butlers and servants and shit, and after the 7 course meal, Andy was getting ready to leave. At this point, Salvador said, “andy, wait…I’m having a little show after dinner” and so the guests, in all of their finery sat down on these nice velvet couches, and a servant wheeled out a female corpse, and there, beneath the chandelier, one of the guests fucked it. The deceased was described as “green”.
That’s what I mean by having a sense of aesthetic, people. That’s a show. Not a bunch of spinkicks and flipping your haircut out of your eyes. Let’s fuck some corpses! I mean seriously.
Okay, seriously though, good luck out there kids…Lotsa pervs walking around. Oh, and speaking of that, I’ve been getting queries for advice lately, but I haven’t been answering. Don’t fret, little socks. I’ve got advice to give. I’ve just been waiting for the right day. Perhaps tomorrow.
Ta.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

cut! It! Out!

Gooooooooooood morning. I just learned how to turn off the censor when I google image search, so I’ve been wasting time typing ‘dong’ and ‘vagina’ and just kind of chuckling for the past twenty or so minutes. I was just reading about vaginaplasty when my browser crashed. Apparently this is a hot thing nowdays. No flaps, no curtains. Just a modern, sleek clearly delineated vagina. Nothing but clean lines, it’s the embodiment of cosmopolitan sophistication. Unforch for you, your vagina isn’t so nice. It’s, well, flappity…Uneven. Hey, not your fault though. Some people go bald, some people are born with baby tyrannosaurus arms, some people do everything they can and still cart around a spare tire of unsightly flab. You, you’ve got a repulsive vagina. So go ahead. Do what you know you want to do and pay a few thousand dollars to get the pussy you never knew you always wanted until suddenly you saw this article and asked yourself “oh my god! What is this disgusting squid that I’ve been sitting on all this time? I must, MUST do something about this!” Go on. I’ll wait.

It’s a good, solid idea. Sure, it diminishes sexual pleasure, but hey, no one’s hitting the heights of arousal while they’re all self conscious about their clam either, right? It seems pretty obvious to me that bare minimum, it’s an even trade. Get it? Even? Heh. Also, while you’re down there fixing stuff, you should really bleach your asshole. Sorry, but it’s true. It’s gross. Yeah, it is. And don’t roll your eyes at me. Asshole appearance IS important. It’s everything, frankly, and yours, the way it’s a slightly different hue than the immediately surrounding assflesh, it’s…well, it’s distracting, if I’m being honest. So, be a dear and while you’re getting your vagina tailored, bleach out your asshole too. An extra couple grand, tops.
This is shit that people actually DO to themselves. I mean, what in gods name is wrong with this earth? I’ve seen some stupid fucking things in my time. I’ve seen that assbag with the puzzle pieces tattooed all over him, that cheetah lady, those cyberpunk dipshits who screw attachments into their head and walk around with a Mohawk made of nails, those future primitive dweebs with all their spacers and tribal tattoos and disgusting ideas about sex (probably) and of course, the completely moonfaced inflatatit post op chicks who all kind of look the same, vaguely hot but not really like a person (and that’s the lucky ones. Ever see that cat lady from brazil or whatever? She completely fucked her face up. Google image search ‘cat lady’ and check out what happens when you get a complete face restructuring in South America in the 70’s. it’s pretty wild. ) but the idea of altering your vaginal and anal appearance is just so fucking out there that I don’t even know what to say. I’ve addressed this before, I know. But bear with me please…How fucking crazy neurotic do you have to be to hack off part of your vagina? I mean, hey! That’s not the point, you know? It’s a VAGINA! It’s not supposed to look a certain way, it’s supposed to FEEL a certain way. It’s all just so fucking irrelevant, innit?
Okay, enough. I’ve babbled too long about this. Seriously though, unfilter your google and image search ‘dong.’ It’s funny. Lots of asian guys. Not their dicks either. Just their faces. I guess I should have expected that.
I’m so incredibly tired, and while this baby naps, I should be napping, but it’s not happening. Why? Because I’m writing to you fuckers. My lovely Colorado vacation is more than halfway through and I’m gonna be super bummed when it finally comes to an end. So, that settles it. I’m off to enjoy the day. No more of this bullshit for now. A quick assbleach and vag trim and then it’s off to see the fucking Rocky Mountains and Cripple Creek and uh…what else? Eh, maybe I’ll just call my friend Dong and get a beer. It’s a vacation after all, right?

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

a brief and triumphantly half assed entry

I always write this shit on word. I never do it right in the blogger window, but today I am. Why? I went to see the copyrights and the cobra skulls last night. I heard the new teenage bottlerocket record. I saw some good friends and 2 different sets of cans and a beav and I can safely say that a great time was had by all, if by all I mean me. I think I may have been repeating myself by the end of the night, which isn't fun to listen to. So whatever. Sorry, dicks.
I just got back to my inlaws house. My wife's working, my inlaws are off doing shit and as of now, it's my job to prevent the baby from doing all the things he does that could potentially cause him to die, which is pretty much everything he wants to do. Stairs? He's headed right for em. Sockets? Let's lick em. Knives? Heavy pots? Shattered glass? Yup. He's all about it. SO, I gotta keep this real brief. Every moment that the baby wanders unsupervised is a moment that I am really half assing this daddying thing.
Okay, so quickly, this morning, at Johnson's Corner, I saw a Highlander. He was seven feet tall and dressed as a cowboy with spurs jingling on his boots. No shit. He just walked through the diner, looking for other highlanders to kill, and when he didn't find any, he just sauntered on out. There can be only one.
That's all, folks. I'm tired and I gotta walk the baby around the block so my old lady can work. Send me some jug/clam photos please, ladies. My inbox is nothing but dongs these days.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

i said no, no, no.

Whatever happened to Amy Winehouse? That’s the question. Last time I saw her she looked like Horseshack from Welcome Back Kotter with some kind of barrel gut, topless in St. Tropez, frolicking in the water like an inebriated squid with surprisingly perky cans. Where did she go? She was, to borrow Paris Hilton’s latest (and probably best) catchphrase “huuuuuuuuge” not long ago, but now she’s done.
Was it the drugs? The crazy? I don’t think so, man. Drugs and crazy are what made us notice her in the first place. Without the drugs and crazy, she’s just Joss Stone. Yeah, Joss Stone smokes weed, but don’t be a pussy, that’s not even a drug. That’s like saying you drank last night because you had water with dinner. Technically correct, but not in the spirit of what’s going on in the conversation you semantics nazis.
Anyway, point being, without the crazy, Joss and Amy, pretty much the same. Amy is crazy and trashy and that’s why everyone loved her. That creepy lizard skeleton husband, the ill conceived tattoos, that stuff got us foaming at the mouth. Without that stuff, she’d just be Lilly Allen, a piggy little princess who acts out because she’s always been a spoiled little fat thing…a Kelly Osbourne, if you will. (My friend Peter [yes…same guy] used to call fat little cunty brit girls DLP’s, an acronym for Daddy’s Little Piggy. I always thought that was pretty great).
So anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah. Without the talent, Lilly Allen would be just another Kelly Osbourne, who, with a few less deserts would just be Peaches Geldof, who, if she sounded like Dionne Warwick, looked like someone had drawn a cruel 1940’s caricature of a jew on her face and made her batshit insane, would be Amy Winehouse, who, to bring this full circle, is essentially Joss Stone but crazy and fucked up on (real) drugs. And Joss Stone, as we all know, is a talentless slute of a human being who essentially channels the worst parts of Mellissa Ethridge through the body of that girl that’s hot enough to bang at camp or on vacation, but as soon as you make the mistake and bring her around your friends, you’re so bummed out. Oh, man! She’s talking about unicorns again. And unironically! Oh Christ. Did she just get stoned and start laughing so hard and for so long that she started hyperventilating and everyone got weirded out and went on the porch to smoke and now I’m just stuck in here with her? Ah fuck! All this because she was the best looking girl at the resort, but the joke was on me because her beaver was an unkempt backwoods and she had strange nipples! Don’t leave me alone with her, dudes! PLEEEEEAAAASE! I’ll never bring a dumb outsider chick around again! I swear!!!! Ah, fuck. They’re gone. I don’t fucking believe those guys took off! (long, uneasy silence) What did you say? Okay, fine. Yeah, I’ll watch “Nights In Rodanthe” on demand, I guess.
You get the idea. That’s Joss for you. And the rest of em too, probably. Actually, I dunno. That Peaches seems like she’s a party wrapped in a couple of crazy pills from India wrapped in a saline drip, if we’re being honest. I’d hide in her closet while her dad yelled at her about something. If I wasn’t married, that is. Huh…I guess I could put her on my list of Unassailable Bangables. Nah. Waste of time. She’d pass out before the good stuff started.
You know what I’m talking about, right? Everyone has a list of I dunno, five people that, should the opportunity arise, they can bang and their spouse can’t be mad. Well, I’m here to tell you, as someone who crafted my list carefully, to include only girls I thought I may potentially meet, who I could conceivably (theoretically) convince to sleep with me, that the whole thing is complete bullshit unless you’re like our polyamorous friends in the Sock Drawer, in which case you don’t need a list, or, well, your list is actually the people you CAN’T bang, (which I think probably doesn’t work most of the time either, but you know, nice try).
Anyway, point being, when I met Avril Lavigne, I called my wife just to kind of prepare her, and the response was less than enthusiastic. My response to her response? “Hey, not my fault you picked a harder list than I did. I like to do the legwork with my mind. Not my fault that my listees come to punk shows and your listees hang out on Yachts in france watching all Angelina’s kids. Bad choices, if you ask me.”
So, yeah. Long story short, I fucked her. Angelina, that is. Avril smelled of rotten salmon. Not really what I expected, though. Angelina’s vagina- huge and tattered. And greasy and kind of sideways, actually, if we’re being honest. All pockmarked too, just like her husband. Whatever. She smelled okay at least. Like crisp linen.
Anyway, I tried to make my list all my wife’s friends and various girls I work with and stuff, but she balked at that. She said that everyone had to be famous. So, anyway, here’s my list. If you’re out there, let’s bang. I got a green light:

Kelly Osbourne
Joss Stone
Amy Winehouse
Lilly Allen
Nancy Grace

Nah. I can’t bang Amy. She’s too gross. She’s covered in sores, but what happened to her? That is, after all, the question, innit? When did her drug use stop being compulsively watchable and become career poison? I mean, she’s not any bigger of a fuck up than lots of people who I see every night in bars, starting fights, passing out, barfing, walking around with coke rimmed nostrils, getting fucked in urinals, shit like that. Her behavior is remarkable only in that she doesn’t pretend it doesn’t happen. You. Yes. You. You out there have done some stupid fucking things, and if you were in the public eye like poor Amy, you too would be branded a complete fucking wastoid. But you’re not, so you just sit there and judge. Why? Because it feels good to shit on people who are rich and successful and to claim they don’t deserve it because they have the same problems that we do. Well, guess what? They also do stuff. Stuff that people respond to. Where’s your stuff? Eh? Thought so. So anyway, this one’s for you Amy. It’s a little early, but I’m sure you’d approve, right? Cheers, you various dicks and front butts!

Monday, August 3, 2009

supplies!

Man, I had just written this thing and I decided it would be clever to let my baby guest blog, which, you know, would essentially look like akldjjf;owejp;odjadngaerkghae;, and we’d all have a good laugh, but guess what? He deleted everything. SO, let’s start again. Pretend that you’re just coming onto the page to notice a new update NOW, okay? Okay. Here goes:
HOLY SHIT! It’s like when the Tonight Show broadcasts from an amphitheater in Indianapolis or something. Coming at you live from Cook street in Denver, it’s BSC:Rocky Mountain Profanity Fountain edition! So far, the week’s been great. I solved my label dilemma, I went to a wedding, I am currently hanging out with a pair of babies and my friend Eric just took a pretty leisurely dump. Last night I babysat four, count em, FOUR kids. Then I did some rapping in the back yard. Overall, there’s nothing really on my agenda but drinking coffee, drinking cocktails, doing some chair dips and kind of watching the mountains do, I dunno, whatever the fuck they do…Slowly erode as they provide striking physical evidence of tectonic movement, collect snow on their icy peaks, that kind of shit. You get it, right?
I’m currently in the midst of some stress. This vacation is sort of just what the doctor ordered. When I get back, I’m undertaking a humongous project, and THAT, my friends, is when this here blog is gonna start getting a little more brief and infrequent. SO, I’m gonna go ahead and do my best to get this shit out there while I can, cuz come week 2 of august, I’m fucked, timewise, kids.
Okay, so let’s see. What does Colorado have that Chicago doesn’t, besides mountains? Hippy tolerance. There are disgusting hippies just everywhere singing out of tune versions of “Friend of The Devil” with blood dried into their beards with an unfortunate dog tied to em with a rope. Poor dog. You can almost hear the dog say “yeah, I’m stuck to this smelly turd. Kind of sucks. I’d really be a lot happier just kicking it solo and eating trash, but instead I’m reduced to hanging out in this parking lot while this dildo’s dumb friend’s feed me poptarts and hemp muffins and bug the living shit out of everyone unfortunate enough to have to see us. Sorry. Jesus fucking Christ.” Colorado contains hippys, outdoorsy folks and those leathery, wiry smoker looking people. You know the ones. Super tan, muscular in an unfortunate way, never good looking. You just KNOW they smoke. They’re exactly what I imagine every single person at Headonism looking like. Tattoos on their tits and jean shorts and questionable sunglasses. They’re everywhere too. But it’s the outdoorsy people that really strike me. I guess it makes sense. The outdoors here is nice, real nice. Where I’m from, the outdoors isn’t even available 4 months out of the year, and as a result, we have lots of bars and places to get hot dogs. Here, the hotdogs aren’t that good, but this guy standing in the grocery store just climbed something and biked a ton of miles and now he’s just getting a cliff bar and he’s off to do some other active, outdoorsy bullshit. And he’s wearing nothing but lycra and it’s all sorts of fucked up bright colors and the shorts match the shirt matches the hat. And once again, nice sunglasses. We don’t have too many of those in Chicago either. We have double cheeseburgers and deep fried macaroni and cheese. Which, you know, will also get your heart rate up, so, yeah. We got that going on.
The other thing about Colorado is the hipsters here. I don’t know what it is, if it’s just isolated enough or what, but these kids out here just go for it all at once. It’s like, pink Venetian blind sunglasses, flat brimmed trucker hats, face tattoos, vampire lip piercings, hip hop hoodie that zips all the way over your face, neckerchief, beard, wacky shoes, crusty kid jeans (cut into shorts) with patches and shit everywhere, fitted leather jacket etc. It’s like the last ten years of hot topic best sellers exploded all over the bar scene here. Whatever. I’m having fun. Just pointing out some of the more fun little idiosyncrasies, a la some sort of travel show. Hey, now there’s an idea. Maybe I should have my own travel show. You listening, studio bigwigs? It could be awesome. Like Insomniac meets…uh, well, hmmm…like Insomniac meets…Okay, fine. Just like insomniac, but but BUT!!!!!! I’ll do it in the DAY instead of the night. No? Okay, day AND night. Huh? Huh? That’s what I thought. Draw up the paperwork.
Okay, I’ll try to rap atcha tomorrow.
Peace out, ladies and turds.