Alert!!!!

Heyo kids!

I'm doing a show in fort Collins, Co. this sunday. It's just gonna be me and a guitar. It's a super last minute deal, and I think it's gonna be a good time. Here are the details:

August 1 at 8:00pm
@Hammer Time! Tool Co-Op
1000 E Laurel
Fort Collins, CO

Uh, come check it out, eh? It promises to be a real hoot. Also, I guess there's a new static age up over at jbtvonline.com. Check that out too.

That's all. Return to your regular lives.

wait...team WHO?????

Gooooood morning everybody. It’s another wonderful day in the Ozarks and I’m coming at you semi-live for what will likely be the last time this week. Oh, wait. It’s Friday, so yeah. Definitely the last time this week. Anyhoo, on to the big stuff:

Have you ever heard of Brokencyde? Good, good. I figured you had. BUT, for those few of you who haven’t, Brokencyde is one of the uniquely worst bands of all time. Sure, this kind of hyperbole gets tossed around a lot, especially in this new space age of internet connections and anonymous dipshits having platforms to do and say things that no one on earth would otherwise care about (see: this blog as an example) but in this case, I’m deadly serious. Brokencyde is such a depraved and horrendous example of doing all the wrong things at the exact wrong times that their cannon can truly be called “The Room” of popular music (if you don’t know what the Room is, well, it’s pretty much the best movie ever. You should just stop reading this and youtube “you’re tearing me apart, Lisa” and “Brokencyde freaxx official video” so we can continue this discussion like reasonable human beings.)

Okay, you back? How bout that shit, eh? Told you. Apparently the little squishy one from the Freaxxx video, the one that looks like an uglier rasta muppet version of the dude from sum 41 is named Seven. Yup. Like the number. The fat and balding one with all the bandanas and the belly who’s always hanging around with the guy in the pig costume, his whole job is just doing lights and smoke or something. The whole thing is vastly retarded and it’s made lots of otherwise sensible people very angry.

People like hating Brokencyde more than people like LIKING gaslight anthem. It’s truly a phenomenon that’s hard to work your way through. Brokencyde is hugely popular, and they know that people think they suck and they seem to be cool with it and all the haters and ranting about how they’re truly the WORST only serves to make them more powerful. The results? These people, otherwise reasonable people have gone completely Fred Phelps on Brokencyde, saying things that are vastly, VASTLY inappropriate when talking about a bunch of choads that you don’t know who just make some crappy music that you can turn off or never even turn on.

This came to a head this week when some guy made a fake TMZ website and concocted a story about Brokencyde being arrested on their tourbus with drugs, an underage girl and photos of the various dick tasters in Brokencyde plugging up a ton of other underage girls. According to the story, which, I hasten to repeat is total fabrication, the band was charged with rape, kiddie porn, drug possession and uh...what else? Maybe slavery or something. In short, it was pretty easily the most thorough slander job you could pull off in one go. In a stroke of massive brain loss, a bunch of semi ‘reputable’ news sources (metal hammer is where I get all my news, y’all) printed the story, at which point all sorts of anonymous dickweeds got on message boards everywhere and generally ejaculated massive amounts of glee, almost as though the Brokencyde deesh DESERVED to be purveyors of child porn and perverts because their music is unpalatable.

That’s not that cool. But it gets much, much lamer.

Once the story was revealed to be fake, this same cabal of anonymous internet choads expressed massive disappointment that the story was fake, somehow reasoning that the loss of Brokencyde as a musical entity (and the subsequent excuse to completely write them off as perverts and criminals and thereby “win” some sort of pointless and dumb argument about relevant culture [presumably with Brokencyde fans, so…uh, way to win an argument with those tards, everyone]) is enough of a reward that the crimes that they allegedly committed (remember! Raping and photographing underaged girls!) would be a small price to pay. In essence, the mob decided that they’d rather have this group of dudes be child pornographers than be musicians, and uh…that’s so incredibly FUCKED UP that I don’t even know where to start weeping.
Look, I’m no prude and I’m no Brokencyde apologist or anything. I think they’re a big shitty sack full of smaller sacks of burning, rotten turds, but man, there’s nothing cool about calling an innocent person a child porn connoisseur and/or rapist. It’s so irresponsible and gross and fucked up and my friends, it’s the beginning of the end of free society.

Lest you think I’m being dramatic, think about it: Someone calls these dudes rapists, news outlets pick it up, no one does any fact checking (thank you internet retardation!) people scan the headlines: Boom! Brokencyde condemned. They’re now drug abusing child photographing rapists and sure, the part where they end up in jail hasn’t come to be YET, but the notion that one guy could suddenly get the world at large to be SURE that a bunch of innocent dudes are depraved sexual deviants and offenders in one lazy Tuesday morning seemed like an impossible notion just a few years ago. Mark my words: this kind of shit is the beginning of the end, and it’s terrifying.

Now, there are lots of people out there who have said things like this: “well, Brokencyde promotes misogyny and violence in their lyrics, so it’s not only totally believable, it’s also kind of their fault” or “well, they deserve that shit because their music is so bad.” These are obviously two very different statements. The first is serious, the second is kind of a joke, but what these two statements have in common is massive retardation that can only be perpetrated by the dumbest of human beings. Here’s the response, folks:
1) They can sing about whatever the fuck they want to. When you cite their musical content as proof of their character, you sound like your Christian aunt talking about Judas Priest. You sound like the dimwit televangelist railing against hip hop or Little Richard back in the day. You don’t have to like what they’re singing about, folks. You don’t have to like the iconography in the videos. In fact, you can think that they’re disgusting mongoloid turds that promote everything you hate. Hell, that’s what your redneck uncle thinks about Nas, and you can have that same opinion about Brokencyde, BUT!!!!!! Don’t suddenly turn around and decide that kind of rhetoric in pop culture is dangerous when you (white [or at the very least, immersed in white culture] internet user, probably male, interested in punk rock and/or various subgenres of modern aggressive music, and generally probably not as dumb as you come off sounding on the internet) laughed at people who said that Grand Theft Auto promoted violence or that Better By You Better Than Me caused those buzzards to kill themselves in the 80’s, or that Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood was really about gay sex (wait, what? It is? Huh…makes sense I guess. Anyway…).
Okay, so last example notwithstanding, you get the point. You can’t just up and decide that because brokencyde is bereft of talent, that suddenly they’re the ones who are actively promoting and contributing to the moral decay of society without falling in line with the rest of the party pooping jesus pumping shitheads that came before you, who said the exact same things about the shit you like.

2) The idea that they somehow “deserve” to be slandered as sex offenders (and even drug offenders) is massively fucked up, be it because of the content or the quality of their music. I don’t like Brokencyde any more than you, kids, but uh…seriously? Shit’s uncool. That’s the equivalent of saying that a decorated war hero was actually a cowardly sack of queefs trembling in the back of a swift boat during viet nam just because you don’t like the fact that he’s erudite, boring and into upholding Roe v. Wade. Wait, what? That happened too? Sheesh.

Look, you guys get my drift, right? These dudes are butt tasting hacks and their songs are little more than audio penis sores, but this entire thing is so fucking lame that I’m finding myself in the unfortunate position of having to go ‘team brokencyde’ and I don’t like it one bit. So listen, can we stop with this shit, folks? I don’t want to sit here and side with these dildroids any more than I absolutely have to, but when the opposition is a torch bearing mob of assholes with shitty malicious smiles and a taste for blood, I got no choice. Lay off Seven and the fat one, kay? And the pig and also the guy in the pig costume. See what I did there? I called the one guy a pig and then it got funny cuz I was….never mind. Just go back to talking about how much these dudes are losers, and they’ll go back to laughing at you from their nice homes and the balance will be restored and I’ll go back to telling dick jokes and writing terrible songs that I somehow think are way better than Brokencyde’s catalog even though they appeal exclusively to tubby losers with beards and girlfriends a little too good looking for them. Yeah, that’s right. I’m talking to you. You know who you are.

Oh yeah, now’s as good a time as any to mention that I’ve got a record written and I’m just kind of figuring out what to do with it. It’s not TLA, it’s not the Falcon and it’s not really ‘punk’ so much as punk influenced rock, and as such, I’ve got no idea where to put it out or what to do with it. I’ve got the players, but not a ton else. So, here’s your chance, industry mavens who secretly read my blog: sign me up! I’m gonna be huge! Next Brokencyde huge! Beliedat!

Enjoy your death trap ladies!

xoxoxoxox

I! DON'T! WANT! YOU!

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Hey moe!

Good morning all you sugartitses out there in cyberspace! It’s a beautiful Tuesday and I’m so excited to bring all y’all punk rock Tuesdays this evening at the risqué café on clark and sheffield. Come down for cheap cans and dollar tacos and an “hour of power” from 9 to 10 that will leave those of you brave enough to take it on good and drunk. It’ll be a good time. I’d say that I’ll even bring my guitar and play some songs but I don’t think we have the PA capabilities for that, so…well, sorry.

Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’d like to talk about my main man Mel Gibson. How awesome is he? I mean, Mad Max was good, Tim was fabulous, the Road Warrior introduced us to the phrase “the ayatollah of rock n roll-a” and of course the ‘Lethal Weapon’ series taught us that even if you’re a sensible black family man who’s too old for [a wide variety of] shit, you can still work together with a young, wacky, Curly-from-the-three-stooges-impersonating bemulleted white guy to get shit done. I mean, did any two people seem so in love through their mutual frustration as Riggs and Murtaugh? No. The answer is no. Not Jessica and Nick, not Snoopy and Charlie Brown, not Sigfried and Roy. There was no fairytale quite like Mel and Danny (and later Joe Pesci and Danny [dig on the homoerotic undertones woven throughout 1997’s masterpiece “gone fishin’” for a dynamite example]).

Well, goes to show what a talented actor Mel Gibson is, because turns out, he hates the movies, and by ‘movies’ I mean Jews, gays, women, packs of black dudes, and fake tits. And, um…you can’t make a movie without these things, people. These are like the flour and butter for the cake that is a Hollywood feature. Okay, I guess you can get away with not having a pack of black guys, but the rest of these categories are necessities in Hollywood. Hell, if you removed the Jews and the gays and the fake titted women, it’d be nothing but mel Gibson, Will Smith and a bunch of gardners from Bel Air to the Fairfax district.

Anyway, my point is Mel Gibson is really REALLY hitting his stride right now. You thought Lindsay Lohan was sabotaging her career? Step aside you half stepping drunkard! Let uncle Mel show you how this shit’s done. He’s literally rocking the “Firebombing of Dresden” style attack on his own life and I gotta tell you, it’s fabulous. I’d say he’s probably gonna go down as the entertainer of the year for this, if not the decade.

Oh. I’m dead serious.

Listen, before you get out there and condemn Mel, remember that it’s our world that we’re building here. It’s us that decided that we wanted 24 hour entertainment news and six or seven magazines devoted to beach bodies and nipple slips and losing the baby weight and dream homes et al.

We now focus more on what celebrities do when they’re not working than when they are. Think about it. Think about the amount of press that uh, what? Twilight gets. Now think about how much press Rob Pattinson’s hair gets. I know it’s all corporate synergy and all that, but the point is that the movies are now really just a small part of the way these people entertain us. The main thrust of the entertainment comes from watching them navigate clumsy interviews, stumble drunk out of clubs, hang out in skimpy clothes, say stupid things and every once in a while tell their baby mommas that they’re gonna deserve it when a “pack of niggers” rapes them because they insist on wearing that ‘green thing from today.’

That’s entertainment, folks. I mean, Mel has been setting himself up as this arch villain for a long time now. He yells at cops, he hates jews, he hates gays, he’s divorcing his wife for a much younger foreign model, he’s making movies with subtitles. He’s really cultivated his niche in Hollywood as “drunk hyper-religious kooky sex fiend bigot” in a way that very few have managed to pull off, and now he’s delivered the knockout blow to his career with the swift devastation of Mike Tyson punching himself in the face. Threatening to kill his wife? Awesome! Implying black guys travel in ‘rape packs’? Brilliant! Hating on fake breasts (as though they’ve ever done anything to him!)? Wonderful! I mean, the only way that he could have fucked his career up more quickly and permanently would have been to have cut into a live broadcast of the broadcast of the superbowl with footage of him fucking a six year old boy while wearing blackface and high fiving Kim Jong Il. I mean, when the days of you publically talking about hating jews and their responsibility for ‘all wars’ and drunkenly calling a cop ‘sugartits’ are the simpler time when things were calm, you know you’ve stirred up some decent action.

I love it. Iove that we’ve created a world where the movies and albums (which are free) are now secondary to the taped phonecalls and pussy flashing that is part and parcel with getting out of cars. You want to be on the front of a magazine? Don’t waste your time honing your craft and picking the right roles. Get that clam out in front of the Ivy, gurl!

And while we’re on that subject, pray tell, what happened to all the pussy flashing? It used to be that we couldn’t go a day without someone getting out of something without something getting photographed without some form of panties on it, but that golden age of clam-flashery seems to be behind us now? Why? I know it’s not because those gross greasy dudes that drive around taking the pictures suddenly decided to have a smidge of decency. What’s the deal? Are women in Hollywood not taking as many drugs? Are panties the new black? I don’t know what’s up, but I really, really don’t like it. Where’s the new Lindsay, Britney and Paris and their sparkly new devil-may-care vaginas? It sickens me the way this world is going to hell, sometimes. THOSE girls knew how to entertain us. This new generation is nothing but a bunch of no name vagless peacocks, frankly and it sickens me.

Anyway, good work Mel Gibson on being very compelling and completely and thoroughly unlikable and unredeemable. That’s a selfless dedication to your craft that more of your contemporaries should consider shouldering, because right now, you’re way out there, all alone in front. And you’ll probably be out there and all alone for a while.

Nice. Oh, I’m going on a family trip for the next few weeks, so 1)the blog will be more sporadic than it already is and 2) this is the last punk rock Tuesday for a couple weeks. Come take shots and listen to Propagandhi with me. Maybe I’ll show you my vagina.

xoxoxo

guess who's back?

That’s right, kids! Eminem! And he’ sober this time and boy, he looks a lot better than he did a year or two ago when he was kind of doughy and put out that last shitty record. And he seems to know all about it, too.

His first video for “I’m not afraid” features him with a lot of makeup on, flying like superman and pointing out that his last record wasn’t that good, but this new one is awesome because now he’s clean and sober and he’s better than ever. And in the song he sounds pretty good.

Now, this is a somewhat unique thing, because almost without fail when an artist gets sober or cleans up their act they come back and say the same thing “I’m back and I’m better than ever! This new clean living has cleared my mind and I’m doing the best work of my life!” However, we all know what the results usually are, don’t we? Terrible. Time and time again, the newly sober musician’s triumphant return kind of sucks.

The difference is always the same thing: what was once effortless sounding and dangerous and easy is now approximated fairly well in a calculated and mercenary manner that’s in no way awesome. Underwhelming. Think about guns n roses. They were AWESOME when they did Appetite and Lies. Then they got rich and did two bombastic disasters that were wildly entertaining (then they shit out the contractual obligation album “the Spaghetti Incident” which totally blew [but is kind of beside the point here]) then they broke up, got sober and returned to the scene as Velvet Revolver. And Velvet Revolver is a highly competent, almost never entertaining bar band. They’re not even in the same league as Stone Temple Pilots, which is saying something, since that band was terrible.

So what’s the deal? Do you really need drugs and/or booze to be good at making music? Of course you do, silly! It’s a simple universal truth!

Nah, I’m kidding. The fact is, being drunk or high may cause you to take some chances that you wouldn’t otherwise take. This is true in life (where you might bang someone unprotected, or stage dive or tell your boss that she’s a cunt) and it’s true in songwriting. When you take weird chances writing songs, it either turns out great or terrible. Now, being drunk or high also makes you a bit dumber and slower, so while you’re taking more chances, most of them will be stupid choices. Whereas, when you’re sober, the chances you take will probably be more calculated and wind up serving you better.

My point is that while drug and alcohol use may have their place in songwriting, they’re not by any means a tool, and they’re not by any means what makes anyone good ever. They may make you fat, or stupid or supremely gross looking, but they’re not gonna ever make you better at anything. That’s a promise. So what’s the deal then? Why do these rockers sober up and then become terrible? If it’s not the cocaine and jack daniels, what is it?

Well, it’s a lot of stuff. For one thing, as you get older, your brain starts to decay. For the average male, 25 is the peak age of synapses and quick response in the brain. That means that after that, you’re decaying mentally. I don’t think this is a huge and noticeable deal, but it’s worth noting that by the time the average rock and roller needs to reinvent themselves, they’re getting sober with a brain that’s nowhere near as sharp as the one they started polluting. Couple that with the fact that any given human being only has so many songs inside of them and no matter how good they are, eventually they’re gonna run out of material, ESPECIALLY if they spend their lives on a bus surrounded by sycophants. There’s no life experience to draw on there.

Now, this just all adds up to the same thing: writing songs gets harder as you get older. No matter what. You’ve written all these songs, you don’t want to repeat yourself, your brain slows down, you’ve no longer got that desperate need to prove to everyone that you’re awesome and stuff your success up the ass of all the nonbelievers. You’re established and you’re sitting on top of a large catalog and people either like you or hate you and it’s almost impossible to shake who you are, and your songwriting becomes its own worst enemy (what I mean is this: there was a time when Jon Bon Jovi could hope to write a song that would be hailed as ‘the next Glory Road’ but now, he’ll never write a song that’s not just compared to Livin’ on a Prayer. To his fans and his critics, he’s insulated within his own cannon, whether he likes it or not) and generally the shit’s just less interesting. Oh, what? You’re drunk all the time too? Well, good luck not totally sucking at this eventually. There’s only one answer: You get sober.

SO, there you are, sober and with a clarity that you’ve not had in years, and suddenly, shit’s changed and you can write songs again! And it seems easy and enjoyable and it’s tempting to say that you’re back and “better than ever” because that’s how it feels, but you’re not. You’re just better than you were when you were so bad that you had to give up your best friend, Oxycontin just to be able to quit sucking.

Back when you were young, Steven Tyler of Areosmith, you may have been doing a ton of cocaine and drinking booze, but you were also sharp in a way that only exceptional people in their early years can be, and you were hungry and angry and eager to make a name for yourself. The booze and the drugs were sort of an irrelevant part of the whole thing. Now you’re a bloated millionaire with absolutely no reason to do anything except to try to prove to yourself that you’re as good as ever (which you aren’t. You’re an old man now, bro. Ask ten thousand people if they’d rather be you now or you thirty years ago. You’re gonna be disappointed in ten thousand answers).

If you were drunk or high now, you’d be fucking TERRIBLE at doing what you do. And you’re not that good sober. And you know this, and I know you know this because your songs are now written by teams of little mom-like jewish ladies. And that makes sense. Because you’re not better than ever. You’re just doing okay, which is good. Most people’s career in the music industry lasts three months. You’ve got an astin Martin. Good on ya. Just quit with the bullshit.

So anyway, we’re talking about Eminem, right? Well, he’s back and he’s still pretty good, which is surprising and kind of unheard of. In fact, his verse on the track Airplanes part 2 from the B.O.B. album is one of the best verses he’s ever done. I listened to that a few times last night and I think it’s absolutely mindblowing. No shit. And yes, that is the ‘reboot’ or whatever of that dumb song with the rectangle faced harpy from Paramore singng the chorus. Don’t be such a dick, kids. She’s got some pipes, and once she starts getting loaded, she’s really gonna be going places. Heard it here first, folks.

spies!

I’ve noticed something rather disturbing. Perez Hilton is trying to really brand himself as some kind of lifestyle camp, and frankly it’s disgusting.

I know, I shouldn’t concern myself with the dealings of Perez, and for the most part I don’t, but I’ve found myself checking in on the Lindsay Lohan updates (mostly because [sorry ladies] she’s so hot in those distressed courtroom photos [oh, make no mistake, she’s good looking. All hot and trashy and you can still see the dying innocence flashing in her stumbly, smeared aura]) and I’ve noticed a few disturbing trends over there on PH.C.

He’s trying to introduce some kind of new word or new lexicon or something, because he keeps saying “Amazeballs” in every story. Now, I’m just an old man in a cabin with a gun and an AM radio, so I don’t know, is this something the kids are already saying, or is this an invention of Perez’s own devious making? Because it’s SO TERRIBLY WACK. I mean, Amazeballs? that stinks. It stinks to high heaven, frankly.

Woah. I just looked it up and here’s the definition on Urbandictionary:

Amazeballs: Some annoying term Perez Hilton keeps trying to make happen, by saying it repeatedly, even though it makes no sense

It also seems to imply that Perez got it from some lame ass female comedy duo (which, you know, sounds like it would be good on paper, as the only thing funnier than female comedians* [or comediennes {nice term}] is comedic duos. Maybe they play guitars too and have a song about amazeballs. Sheesh. That would be, well, amazeballs, folks. There. I’ve said it.)

I don’t know. He’s also apparently doing this thing where he goes shirtless once a year to ‘inspire’ and well…it’s gross. His body looks like uh…I don’t know. You guys remember the old Alva John “Tex” Gibson skateboard? Probably not. Huh. Well, he’s got this big huge set of man cans that kind of slop over into his armpits and then a slightly smaller (still gross) torso kind of treetrunking down into whatever gross, stained boxers or gold briefs he’s wearing. He’s also got tyrannosaurus arms.

Inspiration, eh? I mean, it’s inspiring to know that someone with absolutely no redeeming qualities, physical, mental or otherwise (and you know he just smells like shit!) can make millions shitting out judgment and “pointed barbs” on their dumb blog (wait a minute…no redeeming qualities? Dumb blog? Shitting out judgment? Uh oh. Well, at least I’m broke. Sigh.), but bro, keep the shirt on. It’s so, so gnarly.

Finally, he’s really getting harsh on my girl, Lindsay. Yeah, she wrote “fuck u” on her nails as a sort of communiqué to the court, and for that she’s going to have to spend an extra week in jail. And sure, she ditched her alcohol ed. classes to do cocaine on yachts, but who among us wouldn’t do that, folks? Answer me that? I dunno. I love Lindsay, and I don’t care what Perez sez (the title of some feature on his blog that’s too reprehensibly named for me to find out what it is). She’s dumb and irreverent, but she’s still foxy.

Man, speaking of secret communiqués and good looking people in the news, that Russian spy has stolen the microfiche of my heart, that’s for sure. You know what I’m talking about? They’ve been talking about it on the news. Don’t you all watch the news or do you get all your info from the Daily show and Perez like the rest of us? Well, do yourself a favor and get into this spy story, cuz, man…it’s fascinating. These people were in deep cover for years, sometimes even having kids just to blend in better.

That’s crazy! Imagine if your life, literally, was nothing more than a badge of authenticity in some post cold war espionage plot. Pretty awesome. Or, maybe, more to the point, not awesome at all. Well, their parents are all going to jail or being deported in some sort of spy swap deal, so I guess they’ll have plenty of time to ponder their unique existences while getting molested by their foster parents. Ugh. gross.

I dunno, folks. I’m going to work tonight, so if you’re not doing anything and you like sitting around asking if we have things that we’re probably out of, stop by Risque Café where I’ll be kicking it all night. Oh, and my band is playing Riot Fest, which is pretty cool. It’s in Chicago. We can’t seem to get out of Chicago these days.

Man, speaking of that, I read that whole article on Ted Leo’s “retirement” and it makes a lot of sense. It’s scary to get old and realize that your only job has been sitting in a van and farting on other people. Not really much of a resume builder. You know?

*Spare me. I know. Women are hilarious. Good. Nice. We can all do everything. Glad that’s settled. I LOVE female comedy! What? Seriously! Witney Cummings is pretty funny. Same with Sarah Silverman and Joan Rivers. And, the best part? Their acts are all so feminine! I mean, at least they’re not just impersonating men, right? Hmmm….

Hey, I shouldn’t be insinuating that females can’t be funny, because that’s just not true. I should be suggesting that femininity doesn’t often lend itself to humor, in much the same way that masculinity doesn’t lend itself to grace, or being morbidly obese doesn’t’ lend itself to dignity or looking good shirtless (take note, Perez). No, women are often hilarious. However, it’s not really the feminine part of them that makes them funny. That’s why all the chicks on sex in the city talk like gay dudes and not straight women. I don’t know. This all feels like I’m gonna get an awful lot of shit from my funny female friends. Uh…hmmm. Don’t know what to say/do about that. Send nudes? Ah, that should do it.

ah, finally you can poop.

Oh, hello, Dogs of War. Where have you guys been? It’s like I’ve just been talking to myself over here. Nah, sorry about the last few days. I had a bunch of late work nights in a row and a whole full slab of early mornings and the results have been that lots and lots of naps were needed in order for me to keep up my energy and maintain my title as “Most Kick Ass Dude of All Time (north america [not including Quebec])” and something had to give. So yeah, but I’m back now.

Anyway…

My neighbors to the immediate east of my place have crap all over their yard: plastic birds, sculptures, garbage, old signs etc. and the shit’s just haphazardly scattered everywhere. On any given morning, the paternal leader of the clan can be seen clad in his loose fitting yellow(ing) jockeys, sitting at the table in the yard, reading a paper or just chilling out with the big droopy-sacked basset hound that occupies the space between all the clutter (and howls like a drunken werewolf).

There are lots of people in this family, and when they get together, there’s lots of beer and big sloppy sandwiches and cursing and loud, raucous good times. The family features at least one fat woman in a sports bra and umbro style shorts, a few possible juggalos, a ton of potential juggalos (kids under ten), a classic car stuffed into their crammed garage, and various assorted ‘creepy uncle’ types; skinny with beer guts, in mesh hats, amber glasses and mustaches who all sit around and eat tuna salad and drink Hamms while waiting for the sheet cake to get cut during these get togethers, and of course, the wives, who are all, to the last, fat.

Now, lest you think I’m judging anyone, these people seem like they have an absolute blast when they all get together and I’d LOVE to be invited to one of their wacky backyard blasts. In fact, they seem like the happiest people on earth, except for one thing: their neighbors two houses down.

The neighbors two houses down are harder for me to see, so I don’t have as clear of a picture of who they are, but here’s what I know: they’re Mexican, and they too are all fat. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty of them in that house and they often congregate in their garage, which is spotless and empty, save a television, some chairs and party streamers around the ceiling, where they watch whatever it is that they watch on television. They also seem like a good time, and they also love hosting big family get togethers, which also seem awesome.

These neighbors seem to dislike each other rather immensely. They are the two biggest clans on the block, they both party in the back (heyoo!) out by the alley, and on days like the fourth of july, their parties take on this crazy hatfields/mccoy’s thing that is pretty great to watch.

The young ones (juggalo age) tend to spill out into the alleys where they (both families) pull out various motorcycles and scooters and go carts and shit and zip around the alleys, glaring at the rival camp, while the old guys waddle out with their beers every now and then and just kind of assess shit. However, on fourth of july, this alleyway rivalry takes a positively awesome/wildly dangerous form when the two families compete head to head for dominance using the weapon of choice: illegal fireworks.

Now, I live in a crowded neighborhood and our alley butts up against the el tracks, and trains go by about every five to ten minutes. Various wires crisscross above the alley, bringing cable and phones and high speed pornography to all the thousands of people in all the buildings on my block. And amidst this, on sunday, I sat on my porch and watched these two families stand in two groups about twenty feet apart, around various huge, fat cardboard tubes, and blast off fireworks that would, quite seriously, be at home in a mid market town’s new years eve display, glaring at each other all the while. It was awesome.

The people next to me had the numbers. They shot off five huge blasting things for every one that the Mexican family shot off. But the Mexicans had the big, really, really impressive shit. It was a good old fashioned quality vs quantity battle and I think the Mexicans ultimately pulled it out due to the sheer massiveness and majesty of their bombs. As I looked around the city, which looked a little like a gay version of Baghdad with all it’s rainbow colored explosions and smoke everywhere, I was struck by the fact that these two sets of rival neighbors clearly had the biggest, most insane fireworks that weren’t legal in the whole city, and some of the ones the Mexicans had were comparable in size to the legal display down at the water.

Yeah, sure, there were a couple of misfires that resulted in all the neighborhood rooftops being showered in sparks, and at least two bombs blew up right there in the tubes, causing all families involved to scatter in panic, but overall, it was absolutely awesome. And the cops didn’t come at all. Goes to show, you can pretty much do whatever you want in this town as long as enough other crazy sumbitches are doing it too.

Anyway, it was a good holiday, but I’m back, at least for a while. I’m going around to visit all sorts of family in a week, so shit’s gonna remain sporadic for a while, but hey, I gots a new baby, man! Gimme a break.

Happy Thursday. Now get wiping!

Happy birthday to Jesus's America

Yo, it was so fun we decided to do it again! This Saturday, I’m gonna be bartending at the L and L, and it’s gonna be off the proverbial heezy! Go see Against Me! at the Aragon and then come on down to the L and L for the kind of Saturday night you’ll almost certainly regret. Like I said before, folks, this is the bar that inspired most of the Lawrence Arms songs about killing yourself to live in some shitty dive, so come down and live the interactive “Chicago TLA death spiral experience” with me this Saturday at Clark and Belmont.

Okay, my mom is in town, and I’ve got some grandkids to hand off to her, so I’m not gonna waste your time with any hilarity or zingers today. Check out the BSC guide to summer fun (below) if you need something to read while you poop. I’m going outside.

Bye.

splash into summer with BSC!

hey hey! It’s july, one of the most famous months of the year. I’m a fan. When I think july here’s what I think of: egg salad sandwiches, picnics, sprinklers, slip n slides, guys with nice shorts and tons of bryll cream in their hair, beach balls, and of course, the celebration of when Jesus made America the official country of God. Now, I don’t eat egg salad, nor do I have a sprinkler, a slip n slide or any bryll cream (or nice shorts, for that matter) but today, in honor of july and America, I’m gonna make a little list of great stuff to do in the summertime. Ready? Me too.

First up, Summertime drink:

Everybody is really into infusing vodka these days. It seems like I can’t go into a bar without seeing some tub full of pineapples and vodka. This sounds refreshing to me, but I think for my money, there’s nothing that says summer like a can of Busch light, shotgunned on your back porch in the harsh sober dawn.

Catchphrase-

We’ve been living in the era of the ‘douche’. I don’t know what went down in 2003 or so, but at some point ‘douchebag’ went from being a hopelessly out of date insult that reached its zenith of visibility when Booger uttered it during a particularly vitriolic scene in the 1984 classic Revenge of the Nerds, to being the Lady Gaga of words. The shit is everywhere. How popular is douchebag? During the recent broadcast of the Tony awards, the word was spoken no less than seventy nine times. The latest polls indicate that at any given second, at least one person in thirteen is saying douche, douchebag or some variation therein. Clearly, this has to end, and as we all know, there’s no better time to start a new trend, and kill an old one than summer. So, what’s the new catchphrase? I’d like to offer up “Go fuck an old man” but I’m open to other suggestions too.

Passtime:

The beach? Totally so yesterday, bro. Skateboarding? For kids and manchildren. Flying kites? Cool, but only if you’re really, really high. Nah. Fuck those old school summer activities. This year, nothing’s gonna say summer like having sweaty intercourse in porta potties with anonymous strangers. And remember, the more uh…’red state’ your intercourse is, the more likely it is to result in the miracle of pregnancy, so those port a johns at the NASCAR track are a good place to start. Don’t let me (and by extension, jesus) down, kids! This summer we can get started on a whole new army of fans of whoever the next generation’s Larry the Cable guy is.

Soundtrack-

Remember that scene in Your Friends and Neighbors when the guy from Lost Boys is doing situps and listening to a cassette of himself fucking some chick on his walkman? That’s pretty weird. Anyway, I think this summer we should all listen to more Daughtry.

Fashion trend-

Will this finally be the year that the world embraces the ballsack cleavage trend that I’ve been advocating for so many years? Probably not, but you know what? They laughed at Gloria Steinem when she wore pants. They laughed at Ben Franklin when he put buckles on his shoes. They laughed at Martin Luther King because of his fruity stockings, so don’t let those assholes get you down. Hang your ballsacks over your belts this summer and join the long list of freedom fighting pioneers that didn’t give a fuck about the naysayers, but be sure to put sunscreen on yer boys or you’re gonna be bummed. Oh, ladies, you can just use a chewed piece of bubblegum as a substitute (or just expose your cans. That’s classic fashion that never goes out of style, kind of like wearing a tiara).

Non Procreative Sex Act-

Oh, here we go. It’s been a while, but here comes the felching. I thought we were done with this tired topic….No? I mean, honestly, you’re a thirty three year old man. Can you go get a job or something? Don’t you have kids? Can you stop talking about felching and farts and butts and shit for just…well, how bout forever? You’re supposed to be an educated guy and some kind of ‘intellectual songwriter’ (whatever the fuck that means) but all you ever do is sit here ineffectually and talk like a budget version of a pre-lobotomy Tom Delonge. Way to mature, dude. No wonder you’re such a loser. People are supposed to change. People grow and your friends are riding around on tour busses and hanging out with the dudes from Nine Inch Nails while you’re sitting there in the stench of your putrid farts typing stupid, predictable ‘witticisms’ about ass play. What’s that tell you, smart guy? How bout you pull it together, for your kids if nothing else, eh? You’re pathetic.

Sigh. Um, jeez. Anyway, yeah. It’s felching.

Disease-

No era is complete without a disease, right? I mean, the 20’s had syphilis and the dark ages had the plague…that’s pretty much everything, right? Oh, the 80’s had AIDS, they had ebola in the 90’s. We had what? Bird flu, swine flu, and Bieber Fever already this millennium, so what’s it gonna be this summer? I’d like to suggest that we just make it easy on ourselves and go with HPV since most of you already have it anyway.

Okay, thanks for reading the Splash into Summer edition of the BSC. Now get out there and live!

Happy birthday Jesus!