old punks web zine

Blog Article Archives 4/05 - 4/06

Old Punk Moment 472:

At my gym, L.A. Crapness, they’ve been pretty good lately at putting on the station that plays a little of everything instead of all ©rap or the equally mind-numbing slow jams. It seems like years of complaints from the morning regulars (average age: 50!) finally worked. At least until they hire another 20-something O.C. cretin to open the place.

Anyhoo, every so often they play something by Basement Jaxx called “Where’s Your Head At”, based on a sample of the 3-note synth riff from Gary Numan’s 1979 album track “M.E.”

So, every time it comes on I sing “And me I eat dust” after the 3 notes play, which must come across as weird to those around me. Then the music nerd in me wants to say the song playing is based on another song, like I'm proud of some kind of personal accomplishment.

All things considered, I’m glad when the song comes on and even happier when it ends.

On a related note, when you shut down a computer with a newer Microsoft Windows OS, it plays the 4 signature notes from Gary Numan's "Cars".

Old Punk Moment 387

In the 1970s there were dance clubs where white people awkwardly moved to Led Zepplin and and Queen. I think they were generically called Rock Clubs. Then in 1977 Saturday Night Fever appeared and disco fever swept the land, turning every other loser into Disco Stu, Disco Sally, disco ducks and overall hairstyle and fashion victims.

Sure, other people might have existed, but if you were a teenager you had to choose between rock and disco. It was war.

In 1979 the Chicago White Sox sponsored the infamous "Disco Demolition Night", where disco records burned in the outfield of Comisky Park as a riot broke out. The fumes were toxic, exacting an ironic revenge on the rockers.

After many years and battles we finally got the morning music changed at my gym, L.A. Crapness. Instead of all (c)rap or slow jam they play a station with a variety of middle option tunes, so I often hear "Rock Lobster", "The Devil Went Down To Georgia", "Blister In The Sun" and helpings of disco cheese from back in the day. It's still cheesy and laughable, but, to be honest, compared to what's out there now, what I once thought was a sign of End Times is now quaint and goofy.

I didn't admit liking The Spinners' "Rubberband Man" because it was a hit at the disco. Hearing it now I realize it's a Motown classic and not disco at all. So I am, was, and forever shall be, Hard To The Core!

(Here's how to say "Hard To the Core" correctly. Start in a neutral stance with your hands to your side. Say in a normal, slow voice "I'm Hard", pause, then pump your fists in front of your chest, your tense forearms crossing into the Straight Edge "X" while saying in a louder, faster tone "To-The-Core!", dragging out "core" for appropriate effect. Now you try it!)

Old Punk Memories 1 & 2

These are my first two punk memories. I forget which came first:

1) The first Ramones album came out in May, 1976. I was 15. My best friend brought out this album from his sister's room. I didn't like it at all, especially the lyrics of "Beat on the Brat" because it was about beating a child with a baseball bat. The whole album seemed sing-songy. I'm a Ramones nut now but I still don't like "Beat On The Brat", and when I see the album I vividly remember being an unworldly, gawky kid thinking "what the hell is this?!"

2) My school's gym bleachers were the accordian kind with no safety features, so if you took a wrong step you fell through and probably broke something groin related. I was sitting on it pondering the danger of the situation when this long haired guy sat down next to me and started talking to a friend of mine. He wore a button that read "Blondie Is A Group". This made no sense because Blondie is a comic strip character. He talked about CBGBs in Manhattan, and I thought he was the coolest because he took the train into the city to hang out in a bar. He might as well have been traveling to Dimension X to fight Venusians.

Old Punk Moment 127

I buy car stuff at Pep Boys because Manny Moe and Jack were east coast Jews, like me!, and on the Jew-To-Do-List, next to the Blood Libel, is to buy from fellow tribe members. You know, spend locally and control globally. Gabba Gabba Oy!

As you all (should) know, The Dickies recorded "Manny Moe and Jack" in 1979 (like George Carlin said, a golden oldie from before you were born, remember kids?) Sing!

"When you're on the road/and your car wont pull that load/ and your wheels aren't feeling fine/ Well I know of this joint/ where they'll check your plugs and points/ I know these guys they're three good friends of mine/ Manny Moe and Jack/ They know what I'm after/ Manny Moe and Jack/ They Know what I'm after/ They're Manny Moe and Jack/ Once your inside/ they wont take you for a ride/ they got a good deal for you and your automobile/ for the right price/ they will sell you fuzzy dice/ and leather hand grips for your steering whee-al/ [Chorus]/ If its tires you want/ they got a lot for you/Dunlop, Firestone, Pirelli too[x8] /Many Moe and Jack!/They know what I'm after..."

Every so often I forget to keep my mouth shut and I ask the guy behind the register if he's ever heard the song. All I ever get is a blank look. Then I hear crickets and tumbleweed roll by. Isn't and shouldn't this be the official company song? Shouldn't everyone who works there know it just as an interesting piece of work-related trivia? What's wrong with these people? Why must I be treated like a raving lunatic when I start screaming the chorus? it's not me this time, it's them. Stop looking at me.

Old Punk Memory 37H

Rock The Cashbar!

I saw The Clash on their 82-83 Combat Rock Tour. I saw so many camouflage pants (like in the video!) I knew one of my favorite bands had jumped the shark, crested the wave and abandoned all hope. Cut The Crap came out three years later and it once again proved the maxim that you shouldn't title your work with a word like crap if it's literally crap.

'Cause I know people I went backstage after the show and Saint Joseph Strummer, (oops, wrong pic. Try this) was hypnotizing a room of teenagers with earnest talk while dub reggae played on a boom box. Since then I noticed Joe probably couldn't even order a pizza without being passionately sincere.

He seemed nice enough and utterly harmless. Hey, if you google "Joe Strummer" and "bad teeth" you get 102 returns.

Old Punk Memory 392 - Club Kid Edition

Yesterday I reviewed !!! and quoted a goofy review. The whole thing is here. This made me laugh hardest: "On the back of all this arrive !!! (pronounced chk chk chk), a band who's very name looks like an act of defiance." Nothing stands strong against oppression like naming your band after a punctuation mark. If that's so then Prince is John Connor.

A decade ago I dated a woman who years before regularly drove from Cleveland to NYC to go to clubs run and populated by the insane clownish posse featured in Party Monster. She was fabulous. We were watching a daytime talk show and the topic was Club Kids. The first to come out was a lumpy dumpy teenage girl who struck a pose and warbled "Don't hate me because I'm an Icon!" I fell off the couch in hysterics. The next putz was a dumpy lumpy fat boy wearing coke-bottle glasses who said he doesn't like his mother because she disrespects him. I was still on the floor and at this point I started flopping like a fish.

My girlfriend started crying because she was a Club Kid and knew all their trials and tribulations, their hopes and dreams, their gender confusion and love of clothing with a built-in expiration date of one wearing. She demanded I have compassion when all I had to offer was a spit-take and some floor-stompin'.

Needless to say, it was all my fault (as usual).

New Wave Memory 41

In my junior year of college I transferred to the University Of Maryland and joined a fraternity because I was #1499 on the waiting list for dorm housing. A frat brother was the college rep for CBS records, so he set up store displays, distributed promotional records and even drove artists around to radio stations.

One day he asked if I wanted to drive around with him and this new artist. I would have gone but I was on my way to the gym. I did see the concert that night at the 9:30 Club and when I came back I told everyone this singer was going to be HUGE. I was less than believed because I was into all kinds of strange music, which made me a strange person who didn't know nothin' about nothin'.

The singer was Cyndi Lauper and she was touring her debut LP, Girls Just Want To Have Fun. It just came out or was about to. I could have spent the afternoon with her, which would have been great because she's a sweet and entertaining person. She grew up in Brooklyn, I was born there -- I could have joined her entourage or received a thank-you on her next record or something. I'm sure of it. I did have a good lift that day, so I at least have that.

Old Punk Memory 5

I could never figure out the appeal of Barry Manilow. My father tormented me with Manilow 8-Tracks on long trips, and the only good to come from it was to make the Neil Diamond that followed tolerable. Barry was so Liberace he turned Neil into Lemmy. His fans created and use the word "Manilove", for Jiminy's sake! On his 1977 live album he sang a medley of commercials he wrote for Dr. Pepper, Kentucky Fried Chicken, State Farm, McDonald's and others. The memories flood back and they hurt.

On a TV show around 1980 Barry did the following: he said "This is my impression of New Wave", then he waved a limp wrist and made a childish face of insult. Cut to commercial.

What...A...Dick

The BBC, Orwell's inspiration for 1984's Ministry Of Information, ran a puff-piece on Barry that featured the following trail of poop. I keep on forgetting I'm out of style:

Punk, New Wave, Grunge, House, all may have come and gone, but Manilow ploughs on regardless, like an acrylic-clad ocean liner.

Old Punk Memory 87 1/2

Frankie Says Relax (your sphincter)

This is as much my brother's memory from 1984 because he worked in NYC and saw a number of people afflicted with Frankie Goes To Hollywood disease. He thought it was hysterical.

I rarely saw the infamous Relax shirt on Long Island (pronounced Lawn-Guylind) but Frankie was one of the last nails in the coffin of New Wave as a genre one could take seriously. Duran Duran started digging the grave and Culture Club bought the wood and nails. They all have a special place in my version of hell.

In 1978 the Village People came out with "YMCA", my first experience with an obviously gay song embraced by straight people and even (I imagine) homophobes who never bothered with lyrics. What made the Relax shirt different was that you had to buy and wear it. It took conscious effort and money to get one.

What made my brother laugh was seeing obviously heteronormative and macho homophobe types wearing it in full-blown obliviousness of what Frankie was saying you should relax.

Every time I think of Frankie Says Relax I remember the imitation my brother did of your typical NYC numbnut saying it like it was the cool thing to say.

Old Punk Memory 61

From 1980 to 1983 I worked concert security at various Washington DC concert halls, from the Capital Center to the University of Maryland. Being a music nut it was a great opportunity to meet bands and be at great shows, sometimes the whole time looking away from the stage.

The worst was a go-go concert at the Cap Center where street gangs were breaking in by tossing cinder blocks through glass doors. At the time, Go-Go was the local DC name for hip-hop. The next to worst were any shows involving Grateful Dead members. Hippies feel entitled to everything and get angry when told no. The punk shows were ok and new wave shows the easiest.

One night before a new wave show I was walking down the line telling people what they couldn't bring into the venue. When I listed spikes a woman looked at me sideways and said "I can't wear my shoes?"

Ba dum bump! Enjoy the show folks. Order the veal!!

Old Punk Memory 4

Today brought to you by The Uranus Corporation, who remind you that Good things come from Uranus!

Reader New Evolutionist casually mocked my punk personlyhood by tossing the so-called word "Mancunian" to describe things relating to Manchester (UK). I thought they were an alien race on Star Trek, but no, Google has 98,400 hits on a word that shouldn't exist -- but does! So people from Tampa are called, what, Tampons?

My unrelated point is that I have very fond memories of a time, roughly from 1978 to 1984, when I was of age, new wave and punk were my scene, it was cool to be into it, there were places to dance, bands to see and the future was so bright I had to squint a lot. That time is long gone and I hope all kids have their own golden years to look back on.

It started strong and I thought it might last forever, especially in 1979 when Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, the B52s, Iggy Pop, The Clash, XTC and others were all putting out great records. I slowly, painfully watched that scene die a death of a thousand cuts as disco faded and New Romance and disco-lite filled the void. Culture Club, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet - these were not the things dreams are made of. I went to clubs until they stopped playing enough songs I liked to make it worthwhile. I listened to radio stations until they ran out of good music or dropped the format completely.

I didn't leave popular culture, popular culture left me. That's what all us geezers say. I can't swear the old days were better than today because I know nostalgia is a lie. It's a pretty lie, and I hope it stays with me until Alzheimers, major head trauma or death washes it all away.

Old Punk Moment 319

It was one thing to buy a Big Black bumber sticker and a whole 'nuther one to actually put it on your car.

Old Punk Moment 98

Yesterday at a Las Vegas buffet a pudgy, dumb looking mom and her pudgy, dumb and angry looking 12 year old son sat down in the next booth. He's wearing black jeans and a new Aus Rotten t-shirt. It was black since the tie-dye ones were sold out. It might have been this one. I try not to look at these people directly.... because they threaten the status quo and challenge my beliefs.

What can I say about 5th generation Crass bands whose visual motif comes from Maximum Rock N Roll and Pusmort. It appeals to belligerent kids and nihilistic adults who hang around belligerent kids. It's a patch and a handful of slogans, where at concerts you hear "This is a song about pathetic humanity. It's called 'Pathetic Humanity'!" Then they throw their instruments down the stairs and whatever sounds come up is the song.

I spent a few minutes coming up with different things I'd say as I walked by. To him I could say "Smash the State, Timmy, as only a doughy pimple farmer like you can", or to mom I could just whisper "You failed" or tell her not to worry since it's a phase most children grow out of. You know, give her hope when all she can see is despair.

Thankfully this suburban chud nonsense didn't exist when I was 12. In 1973 everybody had long hair, from hippies to stoners to the junior Bowie kid I was becoming. The worst I could have been was this, which was actually pretty scary.

Old Punk Moment 39

Buster Poindexter is Hot Hot Hot!

David Johansen of New York Dolls fame, desperate for some of that sweet Kid Creole And The Coconuts money, reinvented himself in the late 1980s as novelty lounge singer Buster Poindexter.

The nation danced to such standards as "Inez (Is Just A Big Rage Queen)", "Who Drank My Beer (While I was In The Rear)" and everyone's favorite, "Hot Hot Hot", with the hernia rendering lyric "People in the party hot hot hot People in the party hot hot hot They come to the party knowin what they got They come to the party knowin what they got I’m hot, you’re hot, he’s hot, she’s hotI’m hot, you’re hot, he’s hot, she’s hot!"

Oh do I wince when this song comes on, a perennial money-machine for David, which sure beats working, but when it's "Hot Hot Hot", how far behind can be "The Macarena"?!

This song also begs the question: is it worse than David Lee Roth's "Just A Gigolo". Whoever wins, we all lose.

As revenge for this transgression nature is aging David into a deadly cocktail of Mick Jagger and Curious George.

Old Punk Moment 574

At the community college swap meet, amongst blankets piled with used tools and booths selling cds from singers who resemble The Frito Bandito , I came across a sectioned wood cassette case filled with weathered old tapes. I took a look, and if I had Sandy Duncan's Eye (obscure punk band reference!) it would have flown out and migrated home to Daddy.

Here were home tapes of The Cramps, The Dickies, The Pandoras and various surf mixes, all lovingly compiled with the maker's bestest handwriting on the covers and spine, all fifty cents each. Do you kids realize how much time it took to fill up a 90 minute cassette tape from albums and singles? It's my generation's walking to school ten miles each day, in the snow, uphill both ways, wearing old newspapers for shoes. Kids today know nothin' of hardship.

A quick glance at the AARP member in charge told me these weren't hers. I innocently asked where she found them. Her smile faded and her thirty word English vocabulary shrunk to four.

I looked down at these labors of love with both pity and nostalgia. Ah, but for the grace of god goes my cassette collection. I couldn't take them all home, but I did buy 2 surf tapes, a 1985 Dickies bootleg and the original Dickies ROIR concert. I paid my two dollars and didn't look back at those I had left behind. I can only do so much.

Old Punk Memory 49

Yesterday & Today Records was located on Rockville Pike in Rockville, and many a weekend found me either there, at Phantasmagoria Records in Wheaton, MD, or Joe's Record Paradise, where the singer of No Trend worked and surprisingly kept very quiet.

Y&T took up 2 small storefronts in a nondescript row of stores anchored by a bakery outlet. You couldn't see it from the street. Most of the stores faced the building next door. The second store, which was rarely open, was stocked to the rafters with 7" records, and if they say they have over a million in stock I wouldn't doubt it. The prices weren't cheap but it sure wasn't like that highway robber scumfugg Bleeker Bob.

Y&T's higher claim to fame was its place in the burgeoning DC punk scene. When Ian sings "Skip, we love you" at the end of "Stepping Stone" he's referring to Y&T owner Skip Groff, who also produced a number of bands and ran the Limp label (read this interview). Many musicians at one time worked there, including Ian Mackaye, Neck Rollins and Tesco Vee. I thought the employees in general had a bad attitude, but Ian was nice to deal with. Skip showed a wary temperament but you couldn't really blame him. The clientele tended towards the personality disordered.

I didn't know Y&T closed almost 3 years ago today. I now live 2,718.5 or so miles away. I can't blame Skip for giving up retail. Imagine all the headaches and dime store con artists he had to deal with.

End Of The Line (Blog Edition)

Exactly one year ago today I started this blog as a continuation of a web zine I wrote for five years (oldpunks.com). It's run its course so I'm stopping. I think I'll let the old site die too so I won't have to renew the domain name.

Whatever motivated me to write and review five-ish times a week has subsided. Whatever points I wanted to make have been made, and reviewing cds takes the fun out of listening to music. I'm not a political person and I have no agenda to push. I don't have the answers and I don't pretend to. My goal in life has long been to avoid what I see as negative people and situations. I wish more people were smarter, nicer and more considerate so the world wouldn't be as screwed as it is.

My politics vary depending on the issue, but I can say with certainty that the most evil figure in world history has to be Karl Marx, whose theories have led to more misery and wholesale slaughter than anyone could have imagined. It's a mental illness where Utopia is achieved through genocide, revenge, resentment and perpetual misery. Its followers know this, but it's their way of exacting revenge on a reality they hate.

Thanks for visiting and please hit the links to visit other sites I hope will still be around for a good long time.

Bob Mould - Occupation: Gay Man

Husker Du and Sugar guitarist/singer Bob Mould writes a blog called Boblog where he details everything he does, says, listens to, eats and reads. He records and DJs club nights called Blowoff. Bob now lives in beautiful Washington DC.

I love Husker Du, really like Sugar and own two solo albums I've listened to once. I was front and center when Husker Du played the 9:30 club to support New Day Rising and they put on a great show. I couldn't stop staring at Bob's calves - they were the skinniest I've ever seen on an adult. Bob's a serious lifter now, as his blog links to every gym he walks by, and hopefully he's built them up to Tom Platz size. Or at least half-Platz.

Read Boblog and you'll soon realize Bob's now first and foremost a gay man living within the confines of the gay world. Everything else is secondary to his sexual identity. Bob's not a musician, he's a gay musician. According to OUT magazine he's the "Hottest Returning Gay Rock Icon". He talks about the Gayborhood he lives in and maybe he'll move to Long beach if he can get an apartment at The Gaytonia. It's in a nice gayborhood too, close to gay dining, gay bars and gay dry cleaning.

Hooray for Bob and I'm happy Bob's happy. I do find it odd to define yourself so fully in what should be a person's secondary characteristic. I like to think we all should be judged by our actions and content of character, not just gender, skin color, religion, political beliefs or sexuality. That might be heteronormative of me but I look forward to the day Gay Bob will be so comfortable with himself he can just be plain old Bob again.

 

Two Types Of Punk Buts

1) A fellow at my gym looked punkish so one day whilst standing next to him I struck up a conversation. He answered to the punk question in the affirmative. A few bands were discussed and then he brought up Skrewdriver, the Minor Threat of white power hate music. I said "Well... I'm Jewish", which made him thunk a second and then he replied "But, they write great songs". I blinked a few times and exited stage left.

2) I knew a homosexual gentleman in Washington DC who was a tenant in a fancy apartment building I helped manage. He said he could help me get a civil service job, which didn't offer a great starting pay but it was secure work, and if you stuck around long enough you could do ok. One day I visited him and he was drunk. As I was leaving he asked if I wanted to watch a video. In response to my query he said it was in fact a gay sex video. I reminded him, for the 10th time, that I wasn't gay. He thunk a second and then said "But, it's so hot!" I exited door right.

Punk Was Rubbish

I found this article by accident but it addresses what's been going on in my mind as I read Dance of Days. I'm up to where Rites Of Spring, Embrace, Beefeater and others are creating a renaissance in the DC scene, the endlessly referenced Revolution Summer (aka Revolution Summer Camp). I can't stop laughing.

The scene is nth power earnest and really, really super important. It's desperately working to keep things peaceful, exciting, meaningful and real. Still, it can't keep itself from exploding, imploding and losing members to adulthood. It's the word "yearn" as a course, guttural sound, like a hissing whine or when last night's Mexican buffet insists on leaving the next morning.

"Jon Kirschten - Chris Bald's younger brother, who had started coming to shows in the last year - confronted some slamming skinheads in exasperation. 'I was nearly in tears', he remembered. 'I just took a lyric sheet and pushed it at the guys, saying 'Here, please read this.' Instead one of them gave Kirschten a hard shove, the usual prelude to a fight."

Printed lyrics soothe the savage beast! Maybe that's what Grizzly Man needed. Damn, I lived there the whole time and somehow missed out on this endless parade of teenage numbnuttery. The harDCore scene was a kidz only clubhouse but some great records came out of it and I gave them credit for being organized. Who knew they were also so goofy and hopeless.

One more thought. The book refers to an incident where Lefty, (get this) the black, female and psychotic leader of a gang of teenage racist skinheads, almost starts a rumble with bikers when her crew knocks over a row of motorcycles because they aren't American made. Riders of Japanese motorcycles are not "bikers". Bikers ride Harleys, and the day DC punks knock over a row of Mongol's bikes is the day their remains are found spread out over twelve counties.

Tesco Vee, Where Are Thee?

What ever happened to Tesco Vee of The Meatmen? This site contains everything you need to know about one of punk's great personalities. It's written from a very pro-cock rock perspective, a side of Tesco's career I shy away from. I prefer their kinder, gentler Mentors material. Tesco's real name is revealed, something I thought was a trade secret like the true identity of The Residents.

Someone e-mailed yesterday about finding a copy of Tesco's 1988 MTV show "Way U.S.A.", where Tesco soaks up local oddball color as your sleazy, wheezy master of ceremonies. The only place to find any and all weirdness is Los Angeles' Mondo Video-A-Go-Go, where there's probably a section labeled "Midget Nazi Vampires".

I met Tesco in the 90s at a show in Baltimore. He was showing off weird German porn mags to friends by his van. I went to his annual Halloween blowout and he showed me some of his prized toy collection. He was most proud of the vintage mint Beverly Hillbillies truck that set him back a few hundred dollars. He later opened a used toy and whatever else he could find store.

I thought Tesco was a great guy and nobody had a better act. On Gonzo Hate Vibe there's a song about Jeffrey Dahmer called "Jeff Boy R Dee", sung to "Yummy Yummy Yummy". It starts "Jiffy Jeffy Dahmer's an apartment embalmer/If he feels like offing you/Slips you Mickey Finn/And then he's slippin' it in/With his fridge and belly full of fools". At shows he sold Jeffrey Dahmer cooking aprons. If you tell me it gets better than that you're a frickin' liar.

Patti Smith Named Queen Of France

Earlier today Patti Smith was presented the insignia of Commander of the Order of the Arts and Letters by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres in Paris. Good for her.

The AP Article noted "The ministry, in a statement, noted Smith's appreciation for 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud..." That's when my eyes rolled like a broken slot machine. Arthur Rimbaud: history's prime example of the artist as consummate asshole. I think people worship him because he was an asshole just as more people prefer Charles Bukowski as a degenerate drunk.

Rimbaud was a sadistic bully. He stabbed someone at a poetry reading and, as gloriously recounted by Smith herself, urinated on a poet because he didn't like the work. Later on he skipped town after committing murder and then ran guns and traded slaves. A real lovely person whose poetry absolves him in the eyes of his fans. The art world allows itself a great number of get out of jail free cards.

In 2003 Paris made Mumia Al-Jamal an honorary citizen. When that happened my eyes didn't roll but I did urinate on a french roll. At least Patti didn't stand over a policeman and shoot him dead, so I'm glad the French have upped their standards. If you think the French didn't think Mumia killed the cop, think again. He was given the honor because they thought he did. You do things like that when your role in the world is duplicitous coward.

Like Punk Never Happened

I heard a Boy George (not your father's Elton John) song this morning and remembered there was a book about him called Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club and The New Pop. I thought he wrote it but it seems it was from one Dave Rimmer, who writes travel guides. Every time I read that title I groan the groan of the consummately annoyed. Culture Club and Duran Duran were in a hot race to see who could destroy new wave as a viable music form. Culture Club was to punk what fish are to bicycles. When you put punk and Culture Club in the same sentence the universe should collapse into an infinite mass. Or something. Like punk never happened....oy....

Thankfully Publishers Weekly hated the book. There's hope for the universe yet:

 

Rimmer intends here to compare English New Pop bands of the '80s with their predecessors, the punk rockers. Although he documents the lessons New Pop musicians learned from the punk bands (more artistic control, better business acumen), he rarely quotes from the punk movement about the new bands. Likewise Rimmer is strangely silent about Culture Club, with whom he traveled during a tour of Japan. Apparently he conducted no extensive interview with Boy George and did not get cooperation from other members of the band. In the end his comments are limited to his own observations and a few other similarly limited ones from others. A typical statement comes from promoter Miles Copeland, who defines New Pop by saying, "We're not in the music business. We're in the commodity business."

Mosh Like The Pros Do

Worth 3 credits at any community college, here's The Beginner's Guide To The Mosh Pit

 

Q: Can I mosh to my favourite pop music?

A: A resounding no. The joys of moshing are reserved only for the followers of metal, rock and punk. I recommend you get piecings and give up listening to that mind numbing trash.

Off The Punk Wagon And Lovin' It

I visit Interpunk on a regular basis just to see what's new and popular. I don't read zines anymore and a number of punk sites appear to be nothing more than corporate dumpsters for band announcements. Here's one. There's another.

I have no idea who these new bands are, and a while back I lost interest. I've poured a lot of time and money into keeping up with the (Steve) Joneses since 1976. I officially gave up buying music on a weekly basis maybe four years ago and I'm so happy to be out of the loop. And richer too (richer being a very relative statement).

I've always wondered how much it costs on a yearly basis to be current with "the scene". I have no idea what I've spent, but if I had invested everything I ever spent on pinball, comic books and records into early Microsoft stock I'd now own pinball machines, a gazillion comic books and every record I've ever heard of.

Ah, but that's what time travel is for.

The Homeless Steal Oxygen

This AP article takes me back to when I lived in Northern Virginia, where libraries act as day-care centers for the homeless. They hang out quietly because if they get kicked out they lose the benefits of nice chairs, clean bathrooms and stuff to read. They didn't smell as much as it was impossible to breathe near them. It was like being underwater.

Re: the homeless, many need and can use help. Others are crazy and should be institutionalized. There's also those who choose homelessness. I'm serious. It's a life of scrounging and danger but some prefer it over work and related responsibilities.

I see a number of them scavenging for recyclable cans and bottles. If other trash had a cash value the homeless could make more money and the streets would look nicer. Let's start with cigarette butts and fast food containers.

The relationship between the homefull (groupers) and the homeless (gobies) can be symbiotic, hopefully of Mutualism (scroll down!) and not Commensalism or Parasitism. That would be bad.

Second Wave Straight Edge Follies

Leafing through my singles I ran across this and started laughing at the shaved head, X, raised fist, gaping maw and splotchy, eyeless zombie. All that's missing is a hooded sweatshirt. I'm so glad that error/era ended.

Youth Of Today took Minor Threat & 7 Seconds and amped it up to 11, leaving behind the intelligence and inclusiveness. Kevin Seconds produced and released this 7" in 1985, helping invalidate his own credo of "it's not just boy's fun".

Counteracting unintentional parody with hysterical satire I pulled out Crucial Youth, who got it right while Grudge didn't because they were trying to be Doggy Style and Gang Green.

2nd wave SXE was a mix of heavy metal mosh and thrash, with a moral and punishment code straight out of Judge Dredd comics. Not only did Youth Of Today sound like Italy's Raw Power, Ray Cappo made English sound Italian. Cappo famously became a Hare Krishna, which today may be quaint but back then they were a swarming annoyance competing with the Moonies for who could be more of a public nuisance.

Annie's Anorexic

After 10 years The Huntingtons are calling it quits. The solid middle of their career saw them channeling early & snotty Queers (themselves copying The Angry Samoans), Screeching Weasel and the Ramones. Their must-have albums are High School Rock, Get Lost and Plastic Surgery. There's a greatest hits coming out but that can't be since it's missing "Annie's Anorexic". I found the lyrics on a site about eating disorders, but more on that later:

 

she makes all the guys at school// turn their heads and start to drool// and i would marry her if i could// the star of every young boy's dream// i surely would not have guessed// she starved herself to fit that dress/ well now the truth is out at last// that she's been on a two year fast// oh annie annie annie annie// oh annie's anorexic annie's anorexic oh my annie

her mom went nuts when she heard the news// the girl scout with too much to lose// she never skipped class in her life// but she skipped dinner every time// i surely would not have guessed she starved herself to fit that dress// she looked so fine how could i tell// that deep inside whe wasn't well

hangin' with her friends you know she looked so very (?)// she laughed at all my jokes and she didn't find me funny// when it comes down to (???) she'll pass by everybody

Since it's "Be Happy With Who You Are No Matter Who You Are Day" at oldpunks, there's a number of pro-anorexia resources on the www. Go there now. Wikipedia offers this pearl about the movement: "Anorexics are believed to be able to spot other anorexics at first glance." Well, how hard can THAT be! It's not ha-ha funny, it's the world's gone mad funny. It's Leaving Las Vegas but with starvation. It's as nuts as drinking household cleaners because you think you yourself are a germ.

This site sells pride and solidarity bracelets for anorexics. Isn't there a pit we can throw these parasites and their wares into? I'm so sorry anorexia exists and I feel only compassion for anorexics and their loved ones.

 Music Is Better Off Seen As A Commodity

'Doc, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken,' and the doctor says, 'well why don't you turn him in?' And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.'
I'm 1/4 through Dance Of Days, an engrossing history of the DC Punk scene. I'll probably stop once it gets to years/bands I don't care about. Where I'm up to, Ian Mackaye is feeling really hurt again because someone said bad things about him, HR of Bad Brains is a Rasta prophet who gives a note to Biscuit of The Big Boys that reads "Burn in hell, bloodclot faggot", hate-machine Henry Rollins leaves the DC scene after a member of his SXE gang takes a baseball bat to the head in Philly, women are treated like non-entities, outsiders are shunned, heroin is a major reason why things don't happen... I could go on for a while.

Ian and Henry formed a crew to beat people up for fun after seeing firsthand an episode of the O.C. Reich destroying the L.A. punk scene. Let me type that again - the jock, suburban fuggknuckles who destroyed the original L.A scene inspired the prep school SXE gods to create a violent mob.

Dance of Days, while a decent book, is another collection of stupidity, rationalizations and royal fugg-ups. So-called creative people as a group are damaged goods, and maybe instead of idolizing them we should just humor them as long as they provide us entertainment. Maybe art is an insanity/genius thing, a savant thing or a cry for help thing more than about natural talent. Singers, writers, painters and poets are not better than those of us whose only skill might be to show up to work every day.

I, by buying a book, record or DVD, or by seeing a concert, am as important in the process of culture as the people who create the works. I help make it happen with my cash, and I validate them by paying attention to what they're doing. I pay their salaries, so give me my packaged goods and spare me your many personal failures.

I read books on music history so I can write about them. On one hand they give me information, but on the other they lead me to believe I'm better off not knowing how the sausages of music are made. It's really ugly.

To Serve Man, by Pat Buchanan

Before "Soylent Green Is People" there was "To Serve Man - It's A Cookbook!", the best Twilight Zone punchline ever. The Addam's Family's Lurch played the aliens. Every time neo-neo-nazi Pat Buchanan opens his yap I wonder why everyone doesn't know he's a Hitler fanatic and that everything he writes is a cookbook of nazi recipes.

Drudge links today to this article, "Was World War II Worth It?" and this Newsday editorial. Pat hasn't met a pro-nazi issue he didn't champion, from Holocaust denial to defending nazi prison guard John Demjanjuk. Here's a great article from FrontPage.

What a scumbag. Why doesn't he just come out and sieg heil already. Stop dancing around it, Pat, come out of the nazi closet for real. You're not fooling anybody.

The dirty punk anarchy machine

This is pretty decent. At the Dirty Punk Anarchy Machine you can create your own pun crock masterpieces. Once I master this I'm going to open for Anarchy Stu and The State Smashers down at the West Podunk skate park.

Forgotten New Wave History

There once was a man from Nantuck... no, wait, there once was a band from Washington, DC called R.E.M. By the time of their 1982 12" they changed their name to Egoslavia because, you guessed it, Athens, GA's R.E.M. pressed the issue. Egoslavia's Greg(g) Strzempka recently googled himself and found my review of the 12". He e-mailed that my history was a little off and I begged him not to shatter the happy memories I had of that time and place when music I liked was popular and all around me. The delusion of nostalgia is all that keeps me going.

He did share this:

I somehow run into the "other" (y'know) REM guys at various airports- and we recount a backroom deal at the 9:30 where it 's agreed that; whomever gets a
record out first keeps the name...well... "radio free europe" and it was all over ....but heck they still know my name!

I Get A Lot Of E-Mails Like This

Since I started writing oldpunks.com in 1997 I've received a goodly number of e-mails like this one. I'm never sure if it's written to me or for me to post as a letter to the editor. The content differs but the tone is always the same. Usually they're well written and display smarts and healthy introspection. Here's the good word from Ygfs81james3gvfP, or as him mom calls him, Ygfs81:

 

You're right when you say punk is only a word. I listen to punk. I was born in 91. Yeah, it sucks to listen to bands that died years before I was born. I know there's a stereotype about the one's who call themselves punk around my age, so I'll just name some favorite bands.

Bad Religion (mostly the older stuff), Dead Kennedys (Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables is O.K.) oh, and to alot of people who talk about how they dress, I want to quote Jello in saying "spiky hair don't make you hardcore!" and to racist skins "nazi punks f--k off!, Misfits (but I never wanna meet Glenn . . .evvvvvverrrr . . .crazy motherf--ker/baby killer), Black Flack (pre-Rollins and post-Rollins, I love the first four years and Damaged),Bad Brains (i against i is O.K.), Minor Threat (hardcore at best), Ramones (appeals to that poppier side), Descendents (Milo Goes To College got [is getting] me through those awkward years), Crass (punk's dead), Exploited (punk's not dead), Germs (shhh, what we do is secret), Sex Pistols (SQUID VICIOUS, haha that's funny!), (Charged) G.B.H. (no, I'm not a crusty), Fear (f--k you, I don't care about you! and f--k christmas too!), Operation Ivy (no, I'm not a rudi, but "Knowledge" and "Bombshell" are O.K.) here's a few of 'em

I'm 13. Don't have a mohawk or liberty spikes, don't see a point in plaid and safety pins, and can get dressed in under a minute. With knowing that, there are a lot of people who would say I'm not punk. It doesn't bother me. I don't think punk in general will ever be dead as long as there is one crazy 13yr old kid with a guitar and a DK album. And if it is, then I'm just a zombie with hardcore in my heart.

...That's all

Post-Punk Defined, Finally

Slate started an ongoing exchange about a new book on Post-Punk, a term as vague as Punk. The first entry has some timeline things off in my book, but hey, we all can't have my massive, swelling, itching brain.

Sex Pistols Just Say No

You may not have read it here first, but if you're reading this than you're at least reading it here at this time.

"They're being the outrageous punksters that they are, and that's rock 'n' roll."

Vivienne Westwood, Still Sewing Truth To Power

Vivienne Westwood, the oldest looking UK '77 punk, went from designing clothes made from plastic garbage bags to tea cozy head burkas.

Westwood told reporters she wanted to raise attention to the case of Leonard Peltier, a American Indian activist convicted for the 1975 killings of two FBI agents. "Leonard Peltier is innocent. He's been in jail for 30 years now," Westwood said, pointing to the invitation letter for her show, featuring a blue penis with wings and the word "Innocent."

Blog By Dolby

Thomas Dolby has a blog. He's now as bald as the law allows.

Morrissey In The News

The guy's huge in Mexico and a threat to both the US and the UK.

What the hell does he mean about music being an "untouchable platform"?

Punk's In Again? Finally!

My new arch foe Ratface linked to this article, teased with "A spate of upcoming documentaries shows that a movement some had declared dead may be newly relevant for today's youth". And as we all know, documentaries are slaves to fact and objectivity.

It's full of the usual trend humping and wishful thinking - activist journalism applied to pop culture. I've been listening to this music since 1974. How it ranks in Faith Popcorn's trend reports has never concerned me. Some years are better than others but punk ain't going nowhere kids. It'll always be with us, like rap (unfortunately) and Abe Vigoda (more god than man).

As usual, the article pretends punk was and is always about "something". Having musicians explain themselves is as useful as a five year old waxing poetic on the meaning of life. If I've said this once, I've said it at least one time: anyone who tells you they know what punk is and what it stands for is lying to you. Here's a flying wet diaper right now:

 

Steven Blush, the author of "American Hardcore: A Tribal History," the book on which one of the documentaries is based, agrees that part of the attraction of punk was that it never allowed itself to be co-opted. "In a world where everything is a sellout, a TV commercial, a blur of Hollywood nonsense, it's the one thing that stands as pure."

Oh my god. They interviewed unreadable Marxist theorist Dick Hebdige, whose book on punk is the most impenetrable rape of paper and ink ever. Here's a typical line: "This is not to say that semiotics was easily assimilable within the Cultural Studies project. Though Barthes shared the literary preoccupations of Hoggart and Williams, his work introduced a new Marxist 'problematic' which was alien to the British tradition of concerned and largely untheorized 'social commentary'".

In the article Dick spouts:

 

"We're now in a hands-off culture of the World Wide Web," says Dick Hebdige, the cultural theorist and UC Santa Barbara film studies professor who wrote the punk anthropological bible, "Subculture: The Meaning of Style," in 1979. "There's [an underlying] desire to get down and dirty. Punk is about rolling in the dirt in the darkness to become strong."

"Punk is about rolling in the dirt in the darkness to become strong". Once again, oh my god. Can't you just smell the mental manure? He makes a very good living putting random words together. His book is here called a "punk anthropological bible". I'm staring at the screen now, unable to come up with words to accurately describe how horribly wrong that is on every level.

Sure I'll Open your Attachment, Guy Who Wrote To Say I Suck

If you write a web site you get hate mail. I received my fair share until I wrote rules for e-mailing on my main page which seemed to do the trick. In 1999 I wrote about Emil Matasareanu, whose family was suing Los Angeles for his (snicker) wrongful death.

The site I link to was written by a fan, and another cavity creep from Canada began sending me insane e-mails with virus attachments. He would sometimes send 15 viruses at a time as quickly as he could paste my e-mail address and hit send. He had a website where he claimed to have written 50 unpublished books and sang with bands. I can't find it now. I imagine the government paid him an allowance to buy food and pay rent because he was too sane for an institution and too crazy for a real job. I blocked his e-mail address and for all I know he still sends me virus attachments.

A serial killer groupie wrote a threatening e-mail a year ago asking where I lived. I responded that his message was evidence, the kind that probably violates whatever agreement he has with local authorities that allows him to leave his room.

I have a new virus pen pal from Austria. Herbert Newland. At 1st my crime was being a bad writer. Then yesterday he sent a virus with the message "See You". I googled his name and was able to send an e-mail to his internet provider, what might be his child's school, AND his local police. I figure they should know what kind of kook they're dealing with. Anti-social behaviors usually come in bunches. And I have proof to back it up. Moo ha ha.

The only attachments I ever open have to say Punk Kittens and mean it, man.

The Only Time I Will Ever Respond To An Insulting Comment

My sometimes friend/sometimes foe Anonymous left a comment in my post about Bob Mould's website. This will be the only time I respond to or let live an insulting comment. I will turn them into e-jacks-in-the-box and banish them to the cornfield. I don't look for compliments and, as the will of the people, will not allow criticism of the people's will. If you don't like it, don't read this blog. I don't do this for you, I don't do this for me. I just do it. I enable comments for yuks. This is not a dialogue, this is Old Punks fascism. Gabba Gabba Heil!

Here's Anon's comments and my answers to said comments. Like in sitcoms, nothing will be learned and nothing will change. I'm only doing this once kids, so pay attention:


ANON: Why be critical of a guys personal blog?
God (me): It's a commentary on it, not a criticism. I read his blog all the time. This is a punkish blog so I comment on punkish people, places and things.
ANON: So what if Bob Mould participates in many "Gay" activities and who are you to decide what he should take interest in?
God (me): Bob can be the gayest gay man if he wants to be. Who am I to decide? I'm not deciding anything. I made a comment on something I noticed.
ANON: Sure sexuality is something YOU can take for granted, but I'm sure it would mean a hell of alot to you if it was taken away.
God (me): I don't take my sexuality for granted, I live with it as it is. I have nothing against Bob being gay. It's a lot roomier outside the closet. I put being gay in the same category as being left-handed.
ANON: Also it seems that your blog has an unhealthy preoccupation with conservatism why do you see that as any less secondary than Moulds homosexuality?
God (me): I'm not conservative. I hate the far right as much as I do the far left. I find my personal neo-con beliefs to be non-hypocritical, activist, responsible liberalism. I'm like Wesley Snipes in Blade: I'm half belligerent prick/half secular moralist and my mission is to destroy pure-blood belligerent pricks. I assume I'd be healthy in your eyes if I didn't think Gnome Crapsky was the genocide excusing, dictator pandering political pedophile he is. If I called where I lived my Conservatown maybe you'd have a point.
Anon: ps- get a life :)
God (me): So if I had a life I wouldn't think like I do, eh?.... Ok Clem Kadiddlehopper

Skafish Friday

In celebration of the elevation of Joey Ratz to Benny The Pope I offer my Catholics readers fish on friday. I give you.... Jim Skafish!

He was the Klaus Nomi of the massively shnozzed. He could stick a thumb up each nostril and ring them like bells. And with that Friar Tuck haircut he was the Hutch-Nose Of Notre Dame. I'd break his nose but I only have two hands! Yes, I'm here all the week.

His new site is astounding. Print it out and you'll have the definitive book on Skafish. You must read the FAQs:

Q: Are any audio or video works by Skafish available for sale at this time?
A: At this time, nothing by Skafish or anything Skafish was included in is currently in release anywhere in the world.

Q: Does Skafish have anything to do with "Ska" music?
A: No, the first syllable of his name is pronounced SKAY, not SKAH.

(I don't care what you say, Jim, you're SKA-FISH!)

I also recommend watching Jim evolve from a gawky Baby Huey into a distinguished middle-aged man in the pictures section. He looks good thin, like Jean Reno with a honker designed by Basil Wolverton.

The Other "N" Words

I never use the "N' word. It doesn't reside anywhere in my conscience where I'd use it for any purpose. My insults are cross-cultural with the word "asshole" the Rosetta Stone of my attack.

The "N" word is not my issue but I will say I think it's been deconstructed and demystified enough to be retired forever.

I do admit when I first heard the word "Wigger" I almost wet myself with glee. I'm surrounded by them in Orange County. I avoid them in droves at my gym, L.A. Crapness. A group of teen wiggers were lifting together and I said to a friend, "Don't you recognize them. That's the new boy band sensation Whiteys To Wiggers!" We shared eight good laughs between us.

Looking around I've noticed there's other pale, suburban fuggknuckles pretending they're gangbangers. Here there's the Higger (Hispanic) and Aigger (Asian, pronounced Aye-ga).

The "er" word ending is for formal writing only. The actual pronunciation is either "ah" or "uh". Linguistic Paleontologists are working day and night to create accurate usage maps for both derivations.

Try it yourself. "Wuzzup, Aigga?", "MY Higga!"

Remember, the "N" word is wrong in all cases but the other "N" words should be taught in public schools. Excel, I mean, Word!

Cliff Clavin Explains The Buffalo Theory

Cliff Clavin's Buffalo Theory

"The buffalo herd can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. Thus the general speed and health of the herd keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members."

In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells, and excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cell first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.

"That's why you're always smarter after a few beers."

Air America and Newspapers

Air America isn't doing well and the right is gloating (here and here) while the left proudly turns their frown upside down (here) and says who really wants to be on the dumb radio anyway.

George Will herniates a Cray Computer to come up with statistics on the decline of newspaper readership. It's his first article to not provide a topical anecdote from 50 - 12,000 years ago.

I was once an NPR fanatic but after 9-11 I demanded my news sources not call insane murderers "insurgents". I never liked Rush on the radio but can handle reading his site sometimes. I commute on a motorcycle and like my apartment quiet so I've never heard Air America. I guess they can't be any worse than Michael Savage, whom I'm amazed is popular since he sounds a bit like Jackie Mason as The Aardvark on The Pink Panther cartoons.

I liked Al Franken before he went nuts and settled on screaming the same small insults ad nauseum. Janeane Garofalo was great in Mystery Men and I liked how she used a cheat sheet (like I did) when she performed stand-up. Now she's the angriest dog in the world, taking smug superiority to new levels of hate and disgust.

I stopped reading newspapers altogether. I get all my information on the internet, which does often include articles from newspapers. I thought I'd miss it or miss out, but I don't.

Powerline interviewed the author of South Park Conservatives, and he provides this comment from Trey Parker that sums up my own feelings on Hollywood and the mainstream media.

“People in the entertainment industry are by and large whore-chasing drug-addict f--kups,” he said. “But they still believe they’re better than the guy in Wyoming who really loves his wife and takes care of his kids and is a good, outstanding, wholesome person. Hollywood views regular people as children, and they think they’re the smart ones who need to tell the idiots out there how to be.”

Re: Ward Churchill - Forrest Tucker Wasn't The Biggest Prick In The Imaginary West

If you get the joke in the title I owe you a beer.

This one's old but I'm new here. The last on Chief Whitey Fake-em-good (AKA Sitting Bull$hit) is that the University of Colorado issued a report and may be trying to whitewash (Ward's already white) the issue.

Ward's fake-yet-accurate tale of 'doh! is best detailed by VDH. When Colorado Indians repeatedly protested to the University that Ward wasn't real they were told ethnicity is solely determined by the person making the claim. In that case I'm a member of the So-Sue-Me Tribe and I want to build a casino in my living room.

Whitey also stole the combat stories of a real Native American and presents them as his own. Jewish (turned Italian) thespian Steven Segal did the same thing. Then there's Rigoberta Menchu, whose fake-yet-accurate life story was detailed by Frontpage. Her work is defended as "biomythography", a feminist literary genre that "explodes male-centered definitions of history, mythology, autobiography and fiction." Once again, fake-yet-accurate, but in Victim Culture you don't even have to be a real victim. And as Albert Einstein once said, isn't imagination more important than knowledge?

The First Amendment arguments will never be resolved, but it's laughable that a tenured professor is being defended like he's a Supreme Court justice. Churchill is just a state employee. He should be fired if he's lied, cheated and stolen.

The American Indian Movement also thinks Churchill's a prick. Check out the cartoon they themselves post. Here's a small pic of the Ward as hippie terrorist that made us all laugh so hard a while back. Also read the quote next to it. Here's the Cranky Neocon turning himself into Che Churchill.

She Ringtoned Me With SCIENCE!

Thomas Dolby pops up in articles because he writes and records cell phone ringtones for a living. I'm happy he makes good money creating musical haiku but I remember when he was a new wave wunderkind, writing "New Toy" for Lene Lovich and recording his one great album. Now he creates the annoying bleeps and bloops that precede dimwit A telling asswipe B all about the funny thing that just happened.

Thomas even teaches the SCIENCE! of ringtones:

 

~ So You Want to Create Ring Tones: Attend a Thomas Dolby Workshop ~

"Composing Polyphonic Ring Tones" workshops provide musicians and ring tone vendors with the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of composing polyphonic SP-MIDI ring tones for the latest Nokia phones, including the Nokia 3510, 7210, 3650, and 7650.

In the latest of these one-day workshops presented by Headspace, Thomas Dolby explains the SP-MIDI format and covers sound banks, polyphony, the MIP message, conversion tools, and techniques for using your favorite MIDI sequencer to make the best-sounding polyphonics. The workshops also address copyright law and business issues relating to ring tones.

Mother Sheehan

I resisted writing about Cindy Sheehan because the political wars of the left and right have no appeal to me. But hey, I need something to write about.

Cindy Sheehan proved to be a narcissist who's taken the unfortunate death of her son in Iraq as an excuse to go insane in public. She's wasted all her pity points on raw hatred. She realized the ultimate fantasy of a Munchausen By Proxy mother, focusing the world on herself and her lose, like she's the only one who's ever felt pain. Her son's death was the best thing that ever happened to this nobody hausfrau who embodies the great Vindictives tune "Future Homemakers Of America"

 

Stooping in the morning picking up the garbage, littering her green lawn, Susan does her busywork thinking that it's valuable, yacking at the phone. Flipping through the channels, screaming at the wallpaper, waiting for tomorrow, underneath the shady trees, flip-flopping with K-mart ease, clutching sugar that she borrowed. Good morning future homemakers of America, Oh Mrs. Dishrag won't you kiss me? Susan's going crazy now dreaming about movie stars featured in her magazines rearranging furniture wishing she was manager of her local Walgreens. Pondering the growth of mold sitting on her toilet bowl thinking about slitting her wrists, diving through the window and yelling at a paperboy who doesn't even know she exists. Oh Calgon take me away.

DailyKos decided she should always be referred to as Mother Sheehan, a pretension I never expected anyone would dare attempt. Would this wordplay equate Sheehan with Mother Teresa? More like Mother Courage.
I found myself turned off by her incessant cursing. I was appalled when I read she spoke at a rally in support of terrorist-abetting bag-lady lawyer Lynne Stewart. Then, when she blamed the war on THE JEWS I decided any sympathy I had for her was replaced by a desire for only the worst for her for the rest of her days. Her family is embarrassed and her husband filed for divorce. She's well on her way.

I'm sorry her son died. That's about it. Cindy Sheehan, the sock puppet of suffering, makes me laugh whenever I see her cry a river.

Mark Steyn sums it up best, as he often does. Cindy Sheehan, another weird chapter in a country that rewards public displays of idiocy.

8/24/2005: I like this poster a lot. "Pull Out Of Iraq...And Let The Bloddbath Begin". I'm sorry, but whenever I see Sock Puppet Sheehan's sobby face I just laugh.

8/25/2005: Here's an article from Powerline that puts all things Sheehan into the proper chronology.

I Found That Essence Scary

I found this page, visited the home page and then the links. I needed the links to figure out Break For News is a far left site, since this level of dementia cuts across both the far left and right.

There's something seductive about fully formed conspiracy theories. They add drama to ordinary lives and make people feel important. The ego component of paranoia has always interested me. It's funny and scary at the same time. Nobodies become somebodies because they know everything's a lie, and now they're targets! How exciting!!

The list of fake CIA internet sites carries this disclaimer: "Note: We do not contend that everyone associated with these websites are knowing intelligence operatives. Some have been professionally manipulated, others merely misled. In any event these are promoting the psyop agendas and disinformation themes of the covert controllers. This is also not meant to be a fully comprehensive listing of all the fake websites."

Then on the links page of fellow travelers they link to sites they claim are fake CIA fronts. WTF?

The Horrible Truth About CBGBs

Hey Kids! Did you catch the Mission Of Burma reference in the title?

NYMary has a powerpop blog and she posted a recent entry on the fate of CBGBs, which may have to move or close down. Someone called DeepToej left a comment that speaks to the truth of the matter that CBGBs has been legendary, as in the past tense, for a long time. Everybody knew it/knows it but unless you go there all the time it's hard to know for sure. DeepToej writes like he's been there and he's going back in two weeks.

 

In my opinion, CBGB has not been a viable music venue since the end of the 80's. As much as I really like the physical space of the club, and the quite good sound system, I am rarely provided with reason to go there. The main problem is their policy of putting on 7 or 8 bands every night of the week, usually without thought of compatability. So Band A shows up to play, and a few friends come out to see them, then the band and their friends leave, and Band B shows up with their friends. Maybe that's profitable, but what the hell, it's hardly going to motivate someone to check their ad in the Village Voice every week, which is what I did religiously years ago. Maybe it gives bands an opportunity to play, but there are many, many... many clubs in New York for bands to play.

Danceteria Lives On. 3 People Notice

There once was a club called Danceteria, from whose bathrooms you could get diphtheria, I went there once and I felt like a dunce, so I vowed never, never, never to go back there.

If you were in New York City a quarter century ago and wanted to be rub shoulders with fellow hipster doofuses, one of many places you could go was Danceteria. There's a web site reviving the memory of the club, and it's worth visiting to look at the flyers and such which were the best of a visual style very popular at a time when white Capezio shoes and those red framed owlish glasses whose name escapes me were popular.

At the time, in one of NY's five burros, there was a gas station called Gaseteria.

Why Work?

This is the Labor Day edition, a day late and a dollar short.

The Futureheads have an annoying song on their altogether great debut cd. Titled "First Day", it depicts the corporate workplace as a death mill for the body and spirit. I'm glad they're writing to a 20-something crowd instead of the homework crew but is this supposed to be clever and insightful? I've been self-employed and worked for companies large and tiny. What they all have in common is they're all royal pains in the arse. If it wasn't work it would be called play. People are no nicer at a food co-op than at General Motors. Hell is other people and they seem to be everywhere. Corporations don't suck - work sucks. How pretentious to pretend otherwise.

Then there's one of the great recruiting tools for anarchy - the Why Work argument. It litters zines and now there's even a web site that's another front in the left's attack on Capitalism. To lazy rich kids there must be an allure to the idea that under pure socialism they wouldn't have to work hard (if at all). Scratch and sniff an anarchist and you'll fall down unconscious, but I wager $100 e-dollars if you ask a few questions these zeds will admit they think they won't have to work after the people's revolution as payment for their efforts for the cause.

There's also CorporationsSuck.com, for people who think corporations and everything else sucks. I've always enjoyed FuggedCompany.com, which at least provides inside information on failing companies.

A billion years ago Crass asked "Do They Owe Us A Living?" If you're a lazy, dumb, useless sack of crap - NO! Why do THEY owe YOU anything besides opportunities to help yourselves? Society is a desert island. Either contribute and share the rewards or fugg off and die. Those in true need get help and the lazy and useless can eat poopies. The laziest Eskimo gets pushed off the ice flow. Ya know what I'm sayin'?

R.I.P. Big Boy Randy "Buscuit" Turner (alt. title: Leaving Austin)

Hat Tip to the excellent Something I Learned Today MP3 blog.

Buscuit, one of the big boys in Austin, TX's legendary Big Boys, died on the 19th. The most eclectic band of the early American Hardcore era, they made Austin, TX a mandatory stop for traveling bands. They created and owned their scene like 7 Seconds and Minor Threat did theirs. Hardcore's #1 party band, they alternated funk, thrash and post-punk without mixing genres. I never went for the funk but between the three sweet collections The Wreck Collection, The Skinny Elvis and The Fat Elvis I've compiled a 80 minute cd that would convince anyone the Big Boys are mandatory. My pet theory is that the funk will always hold them back.

Turner drank himself to death. I find that sad, unfortunate and also pathetic. I didn't know him but I can't believe he didn't know about his condition at some point. Unless you can convince me otherwise, he committed slow suicide with booze. The Straight Edge guy in me thinks that's weak.

Here's how the Austin Chronicle reported it:

In the worst form of serendipity imaginable, Randy "Biscuit" Turner was found dead in his home late Thursday afternoon. Close friends had not heard from the local musician/artist for several days when Chronicle staff writer Marc Savlov, author of this week's cover story on the ebullient Austin icon, stopped by Turner's house to ascertain his whereabouts. Sensing something wrong, Savlov called the police, who arrived and found Turner's body inside. As of 11:30am Friday morning, the medical examiner's initial autopsy report attributes cause of death to "gastrointestinal hemorrhage due to cirrhosis associated with chronic [alcohol] abuse." Although time/date of death has yet to be determined pending a final report from the medical examiner, it's believed that Turner, 56, had been dead for at least several days.

Super-duper-fluous Cover Songs And The Bulletproof Song

This morning I worked out to The Futureheads. It's a great cd and they do a nice cover of Kate Bush's "Hounds Of Love", possibly her most enduring track. This brought to mind the concept of the bulletproof song. Then while doing situps I heard "Is She Really Going Out With Him" by Sugar Ray and thought about the superfluous cover song. Both ideas are patent pending.

The bulletproof song is eminently worthy of being covered, cannot be equaled or bettered, and is nearly impossible to ruin. The Residents came close with their version of "Satisfaction". A few bulletproof songs that come to mind are "12XU" by Wire, "Suspect Device" by Stiff Little Fingers and "Gates Of Steel" by Devo.

Two glaring examples of the superfluous cover song are the Joe Jackson one above and The Wallflower's version of Bowie's "Heroes" for the Godzilla soundtrack. Allmusic.com's review of the Joe Jackson cover fawns it's "where vocalist Mark McGrath precisely mimics the tone, timbre, and phrasing of Joe Jackson". Like it's a good thing! Bowie's "Heroes" will never age and it annoys me to no end that some numbnut decided to have a popular young band do a cover instead of using the bulletproof original by old man Bowie.

If you have other examples of the bulletproof song and the superfluous cover song, please leave a comment.

Rich Kid anarchists In The News!

Drudge links this article on the wacky hi-jinx of two teen anarchists from Sarasota, FL who burned flags and stuff to protest stuff. And, oopsie, they also tried to firebomb a car:

 

Scott A. Baber and Brian A. Richard III, both 18, told deputies they burned the flags because they are anarchists and disagree with the war in Iraq and other U.S. government policies.
If Scott and Brian have two brain cells and an original thought between them I'll eat my hat. Notice the article put anarchists in quotes. These adult children live in the Bent Tree subdivision, "a gated neighborhood with curving streets and elegant homes surrounded by large manicured lawns blending into natural areas with some of the homes edging the Bent Tree golf course." They might as well have claimed to be pirates.

I'll never grow tired of mocking the idiocy of so-called anarchists, be they angry rich kids still acting out their terrible twos, or angry old hippies too bitter to accept their ideals were all lies in practice. anarchy is an imaginary construct considered irrational even by diehard communists. In a way you can say anarchy is utopian, since utopia in psychology is a state of mental illness. Utopia for anarchists begins and ends in mindless destruction.

There's no shiny, clean, peaceful end to anarchy, only the act of destruction. anarchy is nihilism - it just sounds cooler and there's bands and clothes and patches and stickers and records and stuff, like this shirt for $59.99! It costs money to look this good whilst smashing the state.

6/29 update: The Smoking Gun is there with pics of the "Baby Faced anarchists". Isn't that the young Fred Savage on the right?

7/5 update: Here's an editorial from a SoFla paper, with my favorite kind of cut in this situation,"Their political extremism may well be as fleeting as many a boneheaded and rebellious conviction that 18-year-olds adopt for a while, before settling down to become taxpayers trying to make mortgage and car payments."

Straight Edge Snitch List

This probably isn't a joke, at least intentionally. Here's the "How's Your Edge?: The Straight Edge Break List", where traitors to the SXE death cult are outed, nailed to the "X" and removed from all crucial crew lists. I'm so glad someone's finally naming the names.

Choice examples of Edge Breakage:

Chris "Sweeper" Murphy, Buffalo, NY. Mid 90's Buffalo crew. Called Sweeper for his sweeping mosh maneuver. Played guitar in Lockjaw and Wrong the Oppressor/The Fire. Replacement member (replaced before any shows were played) of The Alleged.

Little" John Mordan, South Orange County, CA. Founding member of alliance crew. let everyone know what was coming when he started eating meat again. once had LORDS after his hide for calling them sellouts. now drinks like a sailor, but still a solid dude.

Ben Hughes, South Wales, UK. Played guitar in From This Moment On. Broke his promise to become a football hooligan. Still busting a Converge shirt but with a Burberry scarf. Go figure!

Hippies Love Genocide & I Don't Heart Commies

I answered a comment from MikalM on the post below (re: pretty boy mass murderer Che Guevara) by stating the obvious -- Hippies Love Genocide. He later added:

 

Yup. Just a few days ago I was reading an online commentary at Tribe.net, and some brain-dead bliss-bunny was whining about how humans are destroying Mother Earth, and how she wanted 90% of humanity to perish to save the planet. (Obviously she and her friends would be among the lucky tenth of survivors, although she didn't explain how they'd deal with all the dead bodies and the collapsed infrastructure of human civilization...) Last time I checked, 9/10ths of humanity is 5.4 billion people. The combined wars, genocides, plagues, famines, natural disasters, and other assorted die-offs of history amount to a small fraction of this number. It's funny -- people who will proclaim their "compassion" and "peacefulness" until they're blue in the face, will turn around and advocate a ten-digit omnicide that the worst mass-killers of history would have never dreamed of, nor desired. When I read that post and thought about the implications, even the usual Hitler/Stalin parallels didn't work any more. The first thought that came to my mind was the story "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft, where a cult was trying to call in supernatural powers to destroy all life on earth so that its members could become godlike rulers of a cleared planet.

MikalM knows. Peace is a marxist codeword for War, which they call The Struggle, just as Justice, Fairness and Equality are excuses for resentment and retribution.

I imagine there are true pacifists who aren't cowards or pathological liars. They're cuddly and sweet but useless in an emergency. Stories of pacifist accomplishments in Mao's China, Stalin's Russia and Pol Pot's Cambodia are legion.....(snort). It's better to do nothing than something and to die quietly on your knees instead of fight. How pure.

Cardboard Mike Tyson sports huge Mao and Che tattoos. He's a homeless, washed up nobody so I don't hate him for his ignorance. I can't work up any anger either over Green Day's great political statement, American Idiot, because they're adult children in teenagers bodies. Bad Religion, now there's something solid to hate. The only advice a heroin addict can and should offer is to stay off heroin. To come back as a political pedophile is even worse than sticking needles filled with smack in your veins because hate is better taken out on yourself than spread like a cancer in the minds of impressionable children. I also wonder if Gnome Crapsky, the sociopathic Mr. Rogers, actually teaches any classes at MIT.

Death Is Yummy

I'm watching the entire run of Millennium, a mostly great TV show that should be called Se7en: The Series. I only watch one or two at a time because I don't want to go insane in the process. I just finished "The Well Worn Lock" and I'm very angry. Even the title is horrific beyond words. On Thursday came news this baby fricker kept records of 36,000 child molestations. Thirty-Six THOUSAND.

These people need to be stopped immediately, and hopefully killed in the process. Killed so we don't have to spend an extra dime on them working the system for mercy and understanding because they themselves were victims of porn or a mommy that didn't love them or a daddy who loved them too much. There are certain acts that destroy pity - murder, rape, incest and child frigging top my list. By rape I mean real rape, not the all-men-are-rapists idiocy of man-haters.

Who am I to judge? I'm Emerson, and if it ever comes up on a ballot my vote is that these monsters should be killed first and asked questions later. There are too many people who need legitimate help to have time and money wasted on the irredeemable and those unworthy of redemption. The far left talks of social and economic justice, just another marxist revenge fantasy. I believe in criminal justice that protects victims and stops victimizers. If victimization is a cycle there's one way to definitely stop the cycle from repeating.

The "peace" group behind International ANSWER was created by Joseph Stalin, who said of his rivals "No Man, No Problem". For certain people I definitely agree.

Again, who am I to judge? My name is Emerson.

The Speedies Speed To The Rescue Of HP!

Obscure but great 70s NY power pop/glam/punk band The Speedies scored a major victory in their 25 year battle to break into the national consciousness. Hewlett Packard is featuring their single "Let Me Take Your Foto" in a national tv ad campaign. Who would have thought? It's like winning the lottery while lighting hits you. Then again, who ever thought The Ramones' music would one day be used in commercials.

There's a Speedies revival on the way and I'll be there cash in hand. Their two singles are out of this world great.

No word yet if Speedy Alka-Seltzer will rejoin the band. They say he fizzled out in 1982.

Silly Blimp Attack Thought

A Goodyear blimp crashed last night in Florida and my silly cinematic blimp scene came to mind. This is in no way a mockery of what happened on 9-11. Believe you me I'd give my left one for this to have happened instead.

Evil doers hijack a blimp and they're going to fly it into a skyscraper. People on the ground and in the building see what's about to happen and they panic as the blimp attacks at full blimp speed, which I imagine is still comically slow. The blimp finally hits the building, flattens out a bit, and then bounces backward leaving the building unharmed. The End.

Billy Idol - WTF

I can't be the only person who thinks Billy Idol is the biggest pretty-boy poser ever to come from our scene. How's this! Again Again and Again!! I could do this all day, people.

I don't hate the guy but the pumped fist, Sid/Elvis sneer, signature "Ow!" (see also Michael Jackson's "Ooooo" and David Lee Roth's falsetto yelp) and all the rest are laughable. He's from the UK but sings a song called "Rebel Yell"? Huh?! He reminds me of Vanilla Ice and Spike did a better Billy Idol than Billy does.

I liked some Generation X and loved "Dancing With Myself". "White Wedding" is a guilty pleasure. It sounds like Iggy's crooning on "Eyes Without A Face". "Mony Mony" was a gimmick that sold while the electro-tinged Cyberpunk bombed.

Sorry I don't have bigger fish to fry today. Ow!!!!!

 More Like Black Market Geezer Take A Nap Grandpa! (chortle)

His children seem to have a difficult time picturing their father as a punk rock pioneer.

"The record company sent promo posters to the house," he recalls. "I put one on the fridge, and I've gotten so much grief -- 'Dad, what are you doing that for? You don't even look like that anymore.'"

John Belushi: Unsung Hero Of The Punk Rock

John Belushi (real name: John Belushi) was a huge punk rock fan, especially of The Dead Boys and Fear. Before his death in 1982 he was talking of starring as a journalist in a film about punk. He played drums for a benefit show for Dead Boys drummer Bobby Blitz at New York's CBGB's and held as a condition for appearing on the Halloween, 1981 episode of Saturday Night Live that Fear be the musical guest. For the film Neighbors he wanted Fear on the soundtrack so he blasted Fear in the executive offices and jumped on the furniture.

The songs Fear played on SNL were"Beef Bologna", "New York's Alright If You Like Saxophones", "Let's Have a War" and "I Don't Care About You." Skins and punks, some from DC (Ian says he and Henry were there) slammed, trashed and naughty words were spoken. There was a quick cut to commercial.

Fear's Spit Stix wrote that "In 1982 I produced demos written by FEAR and John Belushi for the movie Neighbors with Belushi singing. The final tracks were produced by Steve Croppa and vocal coached by Lee Ving and Mick Jagger, but were never used as Belushi passed away before its' release".

 Payday Punks

Payday Punks gets funnier the deeper you read into it. Hit the site map and start clicking.

 

No one is really sure why Don hates faxless loans so much. Some of the Punks got him wasted one night off aerosol cans and glue, and Don told them something about a Frenchman pushing a no fax payday loan on his mother right when she first stepped off the boat. But who knows, Dirty Don is just a pissed off punk with an artesian gift and enough spray paint to cover Egypt.

Anti-War, Christopher Hitchen's Foot

Anonymous wrote that I labeled everyone I disagree with a Stalinist. I only call Stalinists Stalinists. Communists I call Communists. If you don't know the evils of Communism and its pure Nazi equivalent, Stalinism, here's a good place to start your edgimuhfication. I refer to Cindy Sheehan an insane hausfrau, Ward Churchill "Whitey Fake-Em-Good", Noam Chomsky "Gnome Crapsky", Bad Religion "Political Pedophiles", Anti-Flag "immensely Inconsequential" and Michael Moore the death of documentary filmmaking as a legitimate art form. Believe you me, I give these nobodies all the respect they deserve.

Don't get me wrong. I hate Rev. Phelps and Pat Robertson, and rednecks and preppies are no better or worse than hippies and organic food snobs, but far left genocidal nimrods are being pushed as the mainstream by cretins and scumbags, and I want the debate of politics to only involve people of good intentions. Phelps and Crapsky can both die in the same fiery pit as far as I'm concerned. No, everything doesn't work in theory and not all opinions are of equal value.

Christopher Hitchens, formerly one of the great minds of the left before discovering the far left is intractably genocidal and suicidal, skewers the phony left in this piece on Slate.com.

If you don't like my politics, don't read my blog. If you don't like what I review, don't read my blog. If you like it here, thanks. If not, go away.

Mykel Board

Former MaximumRockNRoll columnist Mykel Board just released a book compiling writings for that zine, which I recall ran in the 80s. He also had an arty non-punk punk band called Artless. He was asked to leave MRR at some point because he created offenses not in line with dirtball publisher Tim Yohannon's allowed offenses. I followed the hullabaloo at the time but in retrospect everyone involved deserved a beating, and in the bigger picture of life it was a non-event of immense proportions.

Board was a scumbag who wrote about being a scumbag. I think he was allowed to write for MRR just to make everyone else appear more sane. It was hard to figure if was serious or if his tales were made up to enrage. He and his defenders hid behind the excuse of his "honesty" but I think (my memory is bad) he wrote a number of times about having sex with small children.

Did he really do that or was it a joke? Was he a scumbag or was it all a lark? I'd like to know.

Cameron Archer Speaks Truth To Power

Cameron Archer haunted the web for years with sites analyzing and defending the indefensible - heavy metal bands with long hair, shirtless muscle dudes and stage acts straight from Spinal Tap. Cameron may think otherwise but that's his beat because I say it is! He now has a blogish thing on any topic revealed to him by Jolt Cola and Twinkies. He also has this page, which looks empty but I'm sure is filled with promise.

He wrote to say:

 

I received a promo of Jello Biafra and the Melvins' Sieg Howdy! today. Great fun. Jello's still pissed off about the guy from Dr. Know touring as the lead singer of Dead Kennedys enough to write a song about it. His attempts at being funny meet with diminished returns, and at this point he seems more and more neurotic with each day. "Kali-Fornia Uber Alles 21st Century"? I'm not amazed the man could make his own song unfunny, as the whole "hippie=nazi" comparison of the original song has been replaced with...well, the song's about Schwarzenegger, the dots connect themselves. Honestly, I worry about Biafra at this point. It's never a good thing when he's aping Elvis Costello by slagging off former bandmembers through song. I hope I never act this way by the time I get to my mid-forties. Not that I'm anything more than dumb now.

Cam, I'm 44 and have never been dumber! If you look up "functional insanity" in the dictionary you won't find Jello's picture there - only because it's not listed. But if it was... ooo baby Jello would be the picture of the boy who came with the wallet.

I asked about the Elvis Costello thing and he clued me in that "'How To Be Dumb' is about former Attractions bassist Bruce Thomas. It's from Mighty Like a Rose, which is 1990's-era Elvis Costello in what seems to be an "angrier middle-aged man" phase he was going through." I met Elvis once around 1982. He was tall and wide, twice the size I was expecting. He seemed nice enough.

Watch The HP Ad featuring The Speedies

Here's a link to a HP page where you can see the commercial featuring the song "Let Me Take Your Foto" by NY's The Speedies. It's the one titled "Road Trip".

It's a catchy little tune and I'm tickled pink to see this happen. Sometimes the little guy DOES catch a break.

The Old Punk Fable Of The Scorpion And The Frog

The Scorpion And The Frog.

This fable came to mind yesterday when I was writing about Sham 69 and how they couldn't find places to play (and eventually broke up) because of the violent National Front contingency they attracted and catered to. Scenes don't last forever, and the ones that die fastest allow in berserkers, scumbags and creeps. A few scenes die out with time and apathy, but in the punk world most are destroyed by the hand of assholes:

"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?" The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog's back. "I could not help myself. It is my nature."

Bums Meet Capitalism. Everybody Wins.

For the terminally homeless who opt out of collecting cans and bottles for the deposit money there's a new revenue flow --- Bumvertising! (thanks to Sondrak)

My answer, for the bums AND mother earth, is to put a small deposit on many items you find littering streets and parking lots, such as cigarette packs, fast food wrappers and alcohol bottles and cans.

Either that or give a new home to everyone without one!

Defining Punk With A Color Pie Chart

What is Punk?

It's a reason to live, to die, a breath mint, a shoe polish, why one hates and why one loves. It's everything and nothing at the same time, threatening to collapse all matter into itself. It's a vague term people define for pretentious, political and commercial reasons. Punk is just so...PUNK!

Follow this link for a USA Today article from 2003 that's a textbook example of lazy pop-journalism. It's well written and tackles many points in a limited amount of space, but it knowingly promulgates the myth that punk is a movement with a visionary history and a defined purpose. The very act of diving punk's "true meaning, history and purpose" should disqualify someone from being taken seriously.

Nitpicking one point of many, someone is quoted as saying “When it was being created in the mid-’70s, it didn’t sound like anything out there before." It's a harmless statement and true as long as you don't scratch the surface of what was going on, but this just isn't accurate. In the mid-70s scene this applied pretty much to the Ramones and maybe the Talking Heads. But, who cares, the journalist had a deadline and the usual suspects lined up to give soundbites.

I'll tell you wnat Punk is. It's this and this. And my toaster. It's angry yet sincere. This kid here isn't punk, but someone really should call Social Services.

 Rock The Cashbar

At least once a week someone finds this blog by searching for "Rock The Cashbar". The zombie of Joe Strummer is not pleased.

Devo 2.0y Vey

Oh my god! Have you heard?! Disney is destroying the legacy of Devo!!! No, wait, Devo did that themselves in 1984 with Shout, which yielded the classic hit, uh, hey look, a shiny object!

Devo 2.0 is a kid-friendly and kid-populated band who play Devo songs with lyrics cheered up and toned down for four to eight year olds. I've laughed hysterically at comments from the cool-crowd mafia either offended or sure it's a subversive plot on the part of of Devo to destroy civilization through the wee ones. "Subversive" is getting thrown around a lot. It's the self-centered ego-hump of paranoia applied to popular culture.

It's a quaint venture with nice songs kids should enjoy. There's nothing else to see, folks. Don't listen to anything Casale has to say about it since he's the king of the hipster doofuses. There's probably no person on this earth who feels his greatness has been slighted more than Gerald. De-Evolution is real, man!

Mark Mothersbaugh is also a general on the psi-ops war against conformity. Without him nobody would think for themselves:

Mark Mothersbaugh, Devo's lead singer, currently at work on a new CD, "When Pigs Fly," has just come forward to admit that he and his fellow bandmates put subliminal messages in their music. They have, he tells Wireless Flash News, instructed people to buy jeans because they're "the uniform of the proletariat."

But that's just the tip of the subliminal iceberg. Mothersbaugh says he's sneaked the message "question authority" onto the soundtrack of "Rugrats, " for which he wrote music. And says it's "entirely possible" that a cereal commercial he worked on secretly featured the phrase "sugar is bad for you," just to be subversive.

Cookie Monster Vomiting

I recently described the singing style of my friend Seth's favorite bands as the Cookie Monster vomiting. Well, it seems the Cookie Monster thing is old hat. Here's some metal-speak that flew over my head at the speed of "wha?":

 

Before going further, it's important to clarify exactly what constitutes genuine Cookie Monster vocals. Really, the only genres in which vocalists use that particular style are death metal and its close cousin, grindcore – bands such as Napalm Death, Carcass, Obituary, and Suffocation, whose focus is, or was, death, decay, and other such existential dilemmas. This vocal style is not to be confused with the rasping, higher-pitched shriek of Norwegian black metal bands such as Darkthrone, the thick-necked barking of weight-lifter metal bands like Pantera, or the anxious roar of current Headbanger's Ball favorites like Shadows Fall.

Fashioncore Is Out Of Fashion

My pal Ratface posts a very special episode of her blog today, speaking truth to power about the #1 cold sore on the lip of the underground hardcore/emo scene -- Fashioncore, which started with men wearing women's jeans but spread to eyeliner and gawd knows what else, taping it down for a smooth crotch? Boys Keep Swinging, boys always work it out.

Rat's witnessing what might be her first natural cycle of a music scene created, developing, rising, growing fat and old, and inevitably dying. My little girl is becoming a woman (weep). Like the Byrds sang:

There is a season - turn, turn, turn/ And a time for every purpose under heaven/ A time to be born, a time to die/ A time to plant, a time to reap/ A time to kill, a time to heal/ A time to laugh, a time to weep/ A time to build up, a time to break down/ A time to dance, a time to mourn/ A time to cast away stones/ A time to gather stones together/ A time of war, a time of peace/ A time of love, a time of hate/ A time you may embrace/ A time to refrain from embracing/ A time to gain, a time to lose/ A time to rend, a time to sew/ A time to love, a time to hate/ A time of peace, I swear it's not too late!

I Know It's True Because I Thought Of It First

"Either there are a bunch of phantom females out there, or somebody is lying."

I always thought this meant there were a few women in every locale who offered, like Vegas casinos, the loosest slots in town.

My New Che Shirt Idea

I always write curse words as s--t and f--k. It's just my thing. Here's a dirty joke I wrote: Did you hear Lois Lane won't go down on Superman? Yeah, she's afraid she'll blow her brains out.

I can't do photoshop so here's my great new t-shirt idea. On the front it'll have this picture of dirtbag mass murderer Che Guevara dead on a slab in Bolivia. On top it'll read "S--T Guevara" (except it'll be the real curse word) and on the bottom there will be a little head shot of Moe from The Simpsons and he says his famous line first applied to a monkey knife fight, "He ain't pretty no more."

So, whatta ya think?

Che Shite

I have no idea why people idolize revolutionary butcher Che Guevara. I imagine most just like the look of the Warhol-esque logo-icon you can even find on a cheap plastic clock in the mall next to KISS and the Misfits. I recently stood next to a self-conscious college geek sporting a Che logo shirt and fake combat pants. Part of me wanted to A) laugh, while another voted to B) stand on his neck. The internal lawyer that is my superego decided to walk away before I was arrested for either B or B precipitated by A.

The biggest source of general interest in Che is the hipster-doofus retro-60's revolutionary-chic thing. There's already been one teen-beat movie on him and another is in production. It's despicable. It's not cute because the man was an indiscriminate killer and set up institutions for murder and torture. If The Pineapple wasn't so friggin' fuggly I bet Noriega stickers would also adorn the car bumpers of dimwits.

Hardcore Leftists, genocidal to the core, love how his romantic visions of a people's paradise involved so much pain to innocents. Oh, they do hate the little people. All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others. And remember, he did it all for the revolution, which is change, and change is good! Hate is Love, War is Peace, Oppression is Freedom. That's how the game of Nuance is played by the functionally insane.

Anyway, here's an article I found on the shite that was Che. I'm amazed more people don't know the truth or don't care to know. They just think that logo looks cool. By the by, comrade Joe Strummer is being set up as punk's Che figure.

4/21/05 update: Powerline linked to this great article from the Yale Daily News titled "Radical un-chic: think before you wear". Here da money shot!:

"Marxism was a dark -- perhaps the darkest -- chapter in human history. Those who still admire the ideology are sullied by the black stain of 85 million deaths. Those who -- ignorant of the story behind their beloved leftist icons -- sport Che or vintage Communist Party shirts are likewise tainted by tacit approval of unprecedented crimes against humanity."

It's Superman!

The Fleischer Brother's dark and frankly depressing Superman cartoon shorts from the early 1940's are available to be seen here for free. This was the same studio that created Betty Boop and Popeye. People die and Lois can't go eight seconds without getting into trouble.

The Fleischers were hit or miss but their best work equals Disney's best. I'm a sucker for their "Color Classics" sing-along cartoons, found here. I dare anyone to defy the charms of "The Cobweb Hotel", "Ants In The Plants" ("Make him yell uncle, we'll bust him in the snoot!"), "Small Fry" ("Small Fry, hangin' round the poolroom, Small Fry, should be in the schoolroom"), "The Fresh Vegetable Mystery" ("The yolks on youz guys. I'm hard boiled.") and "Play Safe", which should not been seen on LSD.

They mixed live action and animation, and I always see faces in trees and buildings because the Fleischers anthropomorphized like mad.

The Zen Of Garfield

Listed at Portal Of Evil, this site randomly selects 3 panels of Garfield comics. The more you refresh the page the more brilliant it becomes.

Ahnold In Da Nooze

I'm used to certain people hating Arnold Schwarzenegger. At a party last week a guy next to me for no reason started punching a fist into the other open hand and saying something about people who voted for Arnold. I said I voted for both Arnold and Bush and asked what he was going to do about it (in a friendly way, of course). It was funny how quickly the subject changed.

I have little interest in local politics and I've made it a point not to take an interest. National politics are bad enough so I don't care how sausages and laws are made locally. I barely knew the last governor's name until the recall election. Anti-Arnold forces, led by the ironical MoveOn (they came to be to protect Bill Clinton from charges of rape and adultery) hammered Arnold as a serial groper. If that eliminated Arnold as a candidate, then what of Gray Davis, who verbally and physically assaulted his staff on a regular basis. The LA Weekly uncovered the story that Davis violently shoved his loyal, 62-year-old secretary out a doorway. She suffered a breakdown and refused to ever work in the same room with him. I don't like hypocritical standards.

Arnold was in the news last week for signing and then dropping a multi-million dollar contract that attached his name to various bodybuilding magazines. If this is ethically wrong he shouldn't have done it but, my god, Arnold created modern bodybuilding almost single-handedly. There's an exercise named after him and his annual bodybuilding competition, The Arnold Classic, has been a premier event since 1989. He takes no salary as governor and whatever involvement he had with the magazines would have taken very little time.

Here's a before and after shot featuring Arnold on the beach last year, an unflattering photo used to mock him. He's like 58 years old and not training, What do you want? It's his off season. Here's Arny in his prime.

Here's what made me write this long rant. Someone in a giveaway newspaper wrote he could take steroids and become Mr. Universe like Arnold. Rarely do you come across such a pure statement of ignorance. If there were no steroids Arnold would still have been the best. In Arnold's day everyone was on 'roids. Even with steroids you have to be gifted genetically and train like a fiend. Dieting for competition is a 24/7 torture few can accomplish. To say it's as easy as eating a can of spinach disqualifies you from ever being taken seriously.

Dislike Arnold all you want. Both I and Arnold don't care. I'm no fanatic but I do give him credit for what he's accomplished. He decided as a teenager to be the best in the world at something and he chose bodybuilding. He came to America with $20 in his pocket and made it happen for himself. He trained for a week at a gym where I worked in the early 90s. He wasn't over 6' and he doesn't displace water like Lou Ferrigno, but every muscle was a steel cable and when he touched his toes his bicep was a bowling ball. He was also the most gracious person, talking to everyone and making everyone feel good. He radiated charisma and confidence.

Cute Overload and Death To Millions

I really, really enjoy the nice pictures of animals at Cute Overload. I'm old enough, big enough and mean enough to not care if that doesn't sound cool to anyone. I can't say I even took notice of all things cute until my niece was born years back. Whatever she liked I liked and whatever she thought was adorable I did too. The math was and is that simple.

I often wonder how many of the worst people on the planet would have to die in order for there to be a noticeable improvement in the world. I mean the worst scumbags - serial rapists, child frickers, heroin dealers, murderous gangs and the like. My friend Dave says 90% but he's a nihilist. I learn more towards 10%. Do you have an opinion on this?

My motorcycle license plate was stolen this week. It only cost me $17 to replace, which for theft/vandalism is cheap. My previously stolen side panels cost $250. Unless he did it to buy bread for his starving family I hope the fugg loses an arm and a leg in an industrial accident. "Bye, honey, I'm off to my job of committing crime!" F U.

That's me, protect and cherish cute things and wish horrible pain and suffering for scumbags. Ain't I cute?

Why I Hate "Art", Part 36B

Exhibit A:

A 76-year-old performance artist was arrested after attacking Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" _ a porcelain urinal _ with a hammer, police said.

Duchamp's 1917 piece _ an ordinary white, porcelain urinal that's been called one of the most influential works of modern art _ was slightly chipped in the attack at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the museum said Thursday. It was removed from the exhibit for repair.

The suspect, a Provence resident whose identity was not released, already vandalized the work in 1993 _ urinating into the piece when it was on display in Nimes, in southern France, police said.

During questioning, the man claimed his hammer attack on Wednesday was a work of performance art that might have pleased Dada artists. The early 20th-century avant-garde movement was the focus of the exhibit that ends Monday, police said.

A 2004 poll of 500 arts figures ranked "Fountain" as the most influential work of modern art _ ahead of Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," Andy Warhol's screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and "Guernica," Picasso's depiction of war's devastation. "Fountain" is estimated at $3.6 million.

Exhibit B:

Killing cats isn't art — it's pure evil

These two young men — Wennekers was 26 and Powers 23 — made a video of themselves mutilating a cat, and then called it performance art. During much of the 17-minute tape, which is too gruesome to describe, the cat remained alive, screaming and meowing in pain.

Parody: Sweet! The Onion put this up again. I guess their archive service didn't make money.

Performance Artist Shocks U.S. Out Of Apathetic Stupor

 

What's Wrong Wit Chew?

Whilst enjoying cockney poetry yesterday I had to ask myself if I had a double standard with my general hatred of rap music, whose simple rhyme structures and convenient bending and manufacturing of words reminds me that illiteracy shouldn't be celebrated. Word has it Layer Cake should be subtitled for American audiences while The Harder They Come is subtitled from Rasta to English. I have no problem with either of those because they're dialects. Is ebonics a dialect or slang? I lean towards slang when it comes to rap, which makes up words to fit and works to create new expressions with an overreaching desperation.

At my gym, L.A. Crapness, they now play a music channel that continuously repeats 20 songs. They've bettered the mendacity of the top 40 by half. Twice a workout I get to hear "Dirty Little Secret" and a slow-jam, loud clap hip hop song where the woman keeps singing "Wit Chew" (upon which an angel gets his wings). Sometimes I'll respond by saying "Bless You" to nobody in particular. So, as I hear "Wit Chew" this morning I realize it's wrong of me to enjoy an Oi poet saying Ree-Nay-Since instead of Renaissance while looking down on wit chew. Then, then, she croons the most beautiful "with you" I've ever heard and I know it's a lie. Street my ass.

One more rant about rap. The KKK couldn't have come up with a better scheme to keep minorities uneducated, poor and angry. Only the Taliban treats women with more contempt. Excel!.. I mean, Word!!

1/20/06 update: People dare debate my rightitude on this issue?! Well!! All I need to know about (c)rap I learn from sitting at traffic lights next to cars blasting it.

Boom-Ba-Doom-Boom

Yesterday at my gym, L.A. Crapness, they played an XM radio station that terrified and amazed me. It was dance music not based on songs but two beats and an aesthetic so removed from humanity I thought this was what people in The Matrix listened to in their goo-filled cubby holes.

The beats never changed. Something akin to lite jazz elements were added here and there but the insidious beats never varied and I, like Pheobe on Friends when she ate the cookie, thought "Sweet Lord, this must be what evil tastes like!" One beat was a slightly elevated heartbeat, the other an afro-latin "Boom-Ba-Doom-Boom". It never ended and there was never a hint it might in my lifetime.

Years ago I forced myself to watch Groove because rave culture seemed to be the most inane musical wasteland the mind could conceive. The angst for the DJs was to ensure each song melted into the other with no noticeable change. What made the dancing ravers go nuts were the slightest variations to a beat that never changed. It's an extacy thing so I wouldn't understand.

Boom-Ba-Doom-Boom is even worse.

Bowling For Punk Pennies

FINALLY! Someone made a movie about punk rock bowling in Chicago. That itch has been scratched. Now all I need is a Broadway production of Punk Side Story.

Science And Religion

The Intelligent Design debate is an inevitable controversy that wouldn't exist if both sides would just calm the fugg down. Bible literalists reject any science that goes against The Book while atheists believe the existence of science disproves the existence of God. Both side are nuts because while one the one hand literalists can't brush off all empirical evidence backed by reams of, uh, science, atheists have no proof there is no God. Religion is a science based on faith and atheism is a faith based on science. Ben Weasel once sagely wrote, "Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive". Hell, what if God created all science?

I'm a professional agnostic, so like sock puppet Cindy Sheehan mine is an absolute moral authority. I like religious people but am against proselytizing, which is condescending. Atheists are fine too as long as they hold back their bile, because as a group they're the most hateful and genocidal people I've come across, and it's often directed against family members, which means they're letting me know they live in Dysfunction Junction. As an agnostic I can also just shake my head and move on to more intriguing topics, like what a new Doc Savage movie should be so it doesn't suck like the last one.

The most excellent columnist Charles Krauthammer weighs in with Phony Theory, False Conflict 'Intelligent Design' Foolishly Pits Evolution Against Faith and then how about this: The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms

Here's the lyrics to Screeching Weasel's "Science Of Myth":

if you've ever question beliefs that you hold you're not alone but you oughtta realize that every myth is a metaphor in the case of christianity and judaism there exist the belief that spiritual matters are enslaved to history the buddhists believe that the functional aspects override the myth while other religions use the literal core to build foundations with see half the world sees the myth as fact while it's seen as a lie by the other half and the simple truth is that it's none of that and somehow no matter what the world keeps turning somehow we get by without ever learning science and religion are not mutually exclusive in fact for better understanding we take the facts of science and apply them and if both factors keep evolving then we continue getting information but closing off possibilities makes it hard to see the bigger picture consider the case of the women whose faith helped her make it through when she was raped and cut up left for dead in a trunk her beliefs held true it doesn't matter if it's real or not cause some things are better left without a doubt and if it works then it gets the job done somehow no matter what the world keeps turning

Anarchy Juh-ism!

There must be 5,236 varieties of Anarchy, with more coming, because Anarchy, by nature of its perpetual spitefulness, evolves into something else once it has been raped by the very act of definition.

What all Anarchies have in common is insanity, from insanely juvenile to insanely insane. It's a utopian fantasy that believes either peace will come through the genocides and purges of "the struggle", or that paradise is just what's left once everyone is dead.

As with coprophilia fetishes, it's hard to say why one person prefers poop over pee or nihilism over the urge to "build strong communities that can manage themselves through direct democracy in conjunction and solidarity with other communities". With both, I don't know and I don't want to know.

In the dementia of Anarchy, laws create lawlessness and people will readily give up their vanity and selfishness once television is outlawed and all decisions are made by small, random groups of hu-persons in hemp panchos sitting in weed fields being eaten alive by malaria-bearing mosquitoes.

Your typical anarchy punk web site looks like this, and please hit all the links because they just keep on giving. It's funny, mostly harmless and part of many kid's learning curve. Then there's the Green Anarchists....

Why do people against all civilization and all technology have a website? Shouldn't they be C.H.U.D., living in sewers wreaking havoc on passersby, being, you know, the product of and demise of corrupt, polluted, hierarchical, patriarchal society?

Visit the Green Anarchists and try to read an entire article all the way through. Lawyers and Anarchists both must get paid by the word. At least read the page on the horrors of Niceism.

If you read enough Anarchist literature you'll notice a fascination with all words that end with "-ism". As with most creepy cults, I'm afraid Anarchy is just another way guys try to get naive women to help them to that perfect utopian state of juh-ism.

The Ukrainian Holocaust (I Hate Commies)

Frontpagemag.com posts an excellent interview with the President of the United Ukrainian American Organizations of Greater New York, who are protesting tomorrow outside the NY Times building to demand the surrender of reporter Walter Duranty's 1932 Pulitzer Prize. Duranty is roasting in hell for covering up Stalin's slaughter through forced starvation of up to 10 million Ukrainian peasant farmers.

This stood out for me because it's the horrific lie that underscores the hypocrisy of the far left and their insanely mislabeled "peace" movement:

"...Duranty intentionally covered up this whole massacre because he supported it. Just like the despotism he venerated, he wanted millions to die. Like every believer in earthly utopia, he yearned for the destruction of this world, since in his political vision, as in the vision of the Stalins and Maos and Pol Pots, it is only through human blood that this world can be purified. An earthly paradise can only be built on the ashes of millions of human corpses."

College Radio 101

Slate has a nice piece on how college radio works. I was a DJ at the University Of Tampa in 1979. The only way you could hear the station was if your radio was plugged into the college's electrical grid.

Play-Writing About Punk Rock

I recently exchanged e-mails with a fine young cannibal who asked my advice on the punk rock to make some dialogue in his work-in-progress (I know not what for) sound more authentic. The general topic was "who is punk?" and "what is punk?", two questions that would depress me if I cared enough, because they're unanswerable and playgrounds for screw-heads who think or pretend they know the answers.

Everything is punk and nothing is punk, ok? Like ART and Ward Churchill's Native American Identity it's up to each person to determine what's real or not. The arguments therein are for children in age and maturity.

He mostly wanted to know about the NYC bands of the 70s, especially Blondie, the Talking Heads and the Ramones. What most remember as the CBGBs scene was a collection of bands bound together mostly by location and shared artful weirdness. Some bands did nothing new or different, some only something different, while only a rare few were true innovators. I'll include Suicide but I mostly refer to the Talking Heads and (especially) the Ramones.

Writing dialogue about what is and is not punk is silly. First of all, who cares? Punk is mostly a look and a sound, whatever that may be. It's one thing to read about punk genealogy and another to have characters on paper or screen talk about it. Watch SLC Punk and The Anarchist Cookbook. Dissecting punk carries the same weight as debating the tensile strength of various ethnic nose hairs.

Second, there's no easy answers as to what is and is not punk. It's an argument with no resolution. It's waiting for godot with spikey hair and a bad attitude.

Third, punk isn't that important. Dogma deconstructed Catholicism and was interesting because religion is about the existential question, a huge subject. Punk rock is just, uh, music. Sure you can live your life surrounded by all things punk, but you can also wrap your life around model trains, gardening or a diaper fetish.

I advised this person to make the dialogue funny, mocking the characters for taking something so trivial so seriously. I haven't heard back. Good night and good luck.

Something I Didn't Learn Today About Husker Du

Dr. Frank linked to this way after-the-fact review of Husker Du's 1985 masterpiece New Day Rising. To each his or her own opinion but I found this to be a real groaner. Here's some things that stick out as I fisk for the first time in my adult life:

The record supposedly marked a breaking point where hardcore punk went “power pop”. Someone said that? Really?? Hardcore punk by definition never went power pop. I mean, there was as much disparity in sound in the hardcore genre as in the 70s CBGBs scene, but Husker Du's transition into college radio heck marked the end of their hardcore career, and that would be on Flip Your Wig anyway, not New Day Rising.

Nirvana and Green Day were considered to be Hüsker Dü imitators during their early days.
Nirvana, maybe, but Green Day? Green Day?? You can't draw a line from Husker Du to Green Day without it resembling the NYC subway map.

Most of the music was all so cute. I could only imagine Hüsker Dü getting pelted with gobs when they tried to play the fey post-break up ballad “I Aw-pa-low-gize” while opening for Black Flag.
"I Apologize" is cute? Cute?? Bob's screaming half the time and it's a blaring piece of HC wax. What the...

Worse, the record seemed to be little different from the sentimental dreck I heard on my local “alternative rock” radio stations at the time. I could hear traces of Green Day on the record—the feel-good singalongs that arose from the three-chord raveups.
I'm just speechless on this one...

Ten years later, New Day Rising now sounds like one of the great psych-rock albums of the 80’s.
Psychedelic Rock?... ???

There is also a strong Midwestern vibe in the Minneapolis band’s sound, which is a first for Hüsker Dü as they previously dwelled in the same post-punk and hardcore heard around the world.
Husker Du, from Metal Circus on, sounded like no other band than Husker Du.

I shake my head. That's all I can do. Bob, Grant, Greg, the world has forsaken you.

Madonna Uses The Word PUNK In A Sentence

From Drudge, "It's actually very punk-rock to not watch TV".

These truly are the End Times.

What's A Buzzcock?

I installed Statcounter on my blog and it's been all laughs and tears since. It tells me stuff about my visitors, including IP addresses, where they live, how long they stayed, etc. The best lists words and phrases entered into search engines that direct them to my site. Just today someone typed "learn to dance like Mick Jagger". "Stevo Died" is big and so is, surprisingly, Tesco Vee. Every so often someone asks "What is a buzzcock?" or "What are buzzcocks?"

I know! I know! If you refer to page 22 of your copy of Tony McGartland's book Buzzcocks: The Complete History, it states that on January 20, 1976:

"Scanning the pages of Time Out magazine, a London 'what's on' guide, the three friends find no listing for the Sex Pistols. By chance, reading a review of a Thames television series called Rock Follies about a female rock group, they stumble upon the headline 'It's the buzz, cock!'. Trafford suggest that this phrase, with its hint of aural and sexual irregularity, would make a great name for a band."

Buzz is rumor, gossip, a fad, a craze or a flurry of activity, whilst cock is cockney slang for a few things but it's also a friendly reference to a male friend. Therefore, "It's the buzz, cock!" means "It's the poop, fellow!" or whatever the kids say these days.

It's a pubic cervix to help. Come again!

London's Burning

When I read about the horrific terrorist bombings in London this morning I became angry at the murderers who did this and their defenders who will surely blame this not on the people who did it but the countries at the front lines of stopping these monsters. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, The Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi scumfuggs are the most illiberal entities in the known universe yet are defended and even encouraged by liberals. Why? I have no idea. If conservatives are hateful than liberals are just insane.

The far left sometimes speak of Islamofascists like they're the Sand Amish, diverted from their peaceful, organic lives of art and culture by the intrusion of evil capitalistic imperialism. As if their stated agenda of world sublimation is just words. Then in their fantasies they think of Islamofascists as the army that will kill everyone they hate: jocks, Christians, rednecks, the bathed and the good looking. As if the Taliban will spare the NPR crowd from total religious submission out of gratitude. As if.

The Reasonable Man Theory does not apply to people who kill their own daughters for being raped. You can't negotiate with people who love death more than you love life. You can be a coward and give in to terrorists, assuming they will stop once they get what they want, but what if they won't stop no matter what? Read their literature and listen to their words. Yasser Arafat often admitted he didn't mean anything he said in English. In English he said peace and in Arabic he demanded perpetual war. The left knew this but said nothing. Why? They love war as long as the right people get killed.

At a leftist site today I came across the comment "Violence begats violence", one of those sayings that's only true and relevant when it's true and relevant. like Neitzsche's "That which does not kill you makes you stronger." When the oft stated goal of your enemy is to kill you then only violence will stop them from killing you. Peace is a word used mostly by children, cowards and nihilistic psychopaths. Excuse me when I laugh at a rich American supporter of Bin Laden who speaks of peace.

The new and improved GOPVixen understands, "This is a war of attrition. This is a war the next generation will fight. This is a global war with no front, no capital, no flag to capture, and no end in sight -- at least in my lifetime. And what happened in London today was just another battle."

I'm always amazed when I'm accused of being conservative when I write like this. Al-Qaeda and their ilk want to destroy liberalism. They imprison women in burkas and force men to grow beards. These people have no sense of irony and nuance. It's all black and white. There will be no punk rock or freedom of anything when the enemy of your enemy marches down your street victoriously. Only an endless hell that'll make you long for the days when all you had to worry about were jocks laughing at you and Christians proselytzing on street corners.

Dr. John Explains Things To Us Mere Mortals

Dr. John responds to my bitching about how bad bands sound in concert by talking down to me with his five dollar words and store bought shoes:

Live concerts DO sound worse than they did in the past. There are a couple of reasons I know:

1 - the guys working the sound board are listening with headphones and staring at real time computer sound graphs. They should take off the damn headphones and hear what the audience is hearing. And stop staring at the computers - the human ear is a way better assessment of pleasing sound than any computer printout.

2 - the concerts are WAY too loud. I come from the ear of LOUD concerts. But the sound was always limited by feedback. Now they have computerized "feedback destroyers" that immediately sense feedback and clip the frequency at which it is occurring, so the concerts can be much louder. If you don't wear earplugs (Hearos high fidelity are the best - $20) your ears quickly lose the ability to hear properly and that ruins the concert for you.

3. Subwoofers and the invention of the five string bass. A four string bass, the lowest note is an E at 40 Hz. A five string the lowest note is a B at 34 Hz. and some bands detune (tune their instruments lower to where the open B string is in the infrasound range - below the level of human hearing ) - but you can feel it. This produces what I call the "ghetto car boom box effect" - where you hear each bass note as a thud, not a musical sound. This combined with too many overpowered subwoofers turns the music into sludge.

Shut Up And Dance Like A Chicken

Sir Mick Jagger sticks it to the man as only a 62 year old multi-multi-millionaire can, by writing a song called "Sweet Neo Con". It will be on their new album A Bigger Bang. The tune contains the fist-pumping lyrics "You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite. You call yourself a patriot, well I think you're full of s..t".

Smash the state, Sir Mick, smash it good!

I bolded and italicized their new album because that was one of only two parts of the article I reacted to. The Stones record new albums? I thought they stopped once they became a touring oldies act. Their last well-reviewed album was in 1981. Tickets for their 2005 tour start at around $165.00, a price I imagine only neo-cons can afford. Really, why bother? Sing "Satisfaction", do the chicken strut and cart out the dead guy on guitar.

The article goes on to say:

"Jagger also took a dig at fellow band member Keith Richards, who lives in the United States. Keith said, 'It's not really metaphorical.' I think he's a bit worried because he lives in the S', Jagger reportedly joked."

Keith's in big trouble now! He sometimes comes within 100 feet of people who don't kiss his ass, so anything can happen now, especially since the Stones attack Bush on their new album, A Bigger Bang.

By the way, the Stones might be the greatest single inspiration for punk rock.

Update: A MisterPundit at another blog posted this comment, right on the mark: "Can you imagine Jagger singing about Osama Bin Laden 'You say you’re a Muslim. I call you a hypocrite'? No, of course not. The stupid f--k doesn’t have the balls. Then he goes on to say 'I’m not afraid'. Afraid of what? Those mythical angry neo-cons' who detonate themselves on busses? What a f--king puppet. "

Jim O'Sullivan provides new songs on the Stone's set list:

Let's Take a Nap Together
Gimme Tax Shelter
Limpin'Jack Flash
She's So Old
You Can't Always Chew What You Want
Grandpa's Little Helper
Brown Metamucil

Steven Seagal Article From Spy

I finally found an on-line copy of the great Spy Magazine 1993 article on Steven Seagal, the Ward Churchill of his time. While Ward's a white guy pretending to be Native American, Steve's a Jewish guy pretending to be Italian. Both stole the life story of other men and presented them as their own. Both have big bellies and a nutty look in their eyes. Both have violent tempers. Seagal was backed by the mafia. Ward sold other people's art as his own and appeared with his half-moon chin in video hits like US Off The Planet. Seagal has actual martial arts training, whereas Ward posed with an AK-47 held out by his fat belly. I like some Steven Seagal movies. Ward's wasting valuable oxygen.

Chief Whitey Fake-em-good In Heap Trouble Now

Ward Churchill is a putz. How can you not laugh at Whitey in his camouflage, aviator glasses, beret, greasy hippie hair, AK-47 and huge gut. He's Stephen Seagal without any abilities. Everything about him is a lie but he points to bigger truths, so the Standard Of None applies and hooray for nuance! He proudly stated "One of the things I’ve suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary". In my father's day guy's like Ward weren't heard from again. Today they're martyrs.

Frontpagemag supplies the text of an investigative series on Ward by the Rocky Mountain News. It's a long article but at least scan for gems like "He accused the U.S. Army of deliberately spreading smallpox among the Mandan Indians of the Upper Missouri River Valley in 1837 — but there's no basis for the assertion in the sources he cited. In fact, in some instances the books he cited — and their authors — directly contradict his assertions."

If I hated the far left, which I do, I'd say keep on defending this scumbag. It just makes you look bad.

1/2 Of OMD Is A Hit Machine

Slate has an article today on songwriters, alone and collectively, who crank out pop hits for famous and non-famous singers and groups. It's interesting to consider the singer/songwriter vs. the songwriter and the singer, and if it makes a difference in the long run. My take is that it doesn't as long as a singer doesn't take songwriting credit where it's not due. Elvis Presley took false songwriting credit all the time. It put more money in The Colonel's pocket, and if anything fell out, that was Elvis' cut.

Bananarama and Dead Or Alive were launched by the team of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. For whatever reason I hold Dead or Alive in contempt for this. Wait, I know why, I've always held them in contempt for a list of reasons that expands with the universe. I like Bananarama.

I lit up when I read Andy McCluskey, former bass player and singer for OMD, who had a fine and highly defensible career up to Architecture & Morality, is now a hit maker himself. Andy looks a little like b-movie god Bruce Campbell. And I quote:

Andy McCluskey, formerly of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, created the girl group Atomic Kitten in 1999 and is now behind Genie Queen, a trio audaciously attempting to fuse R&N and '80s-style techno-pop. McCluskey recently declared in an interview, "Master craftsman is my job nowadays and I take it very seriously indeed."

I saw them play a few times and either I met Andy in 1981 or I just think I did. Either way he was very nice. He danced like crazy with his bass guitar when he wasn't singing, working it until you thought he'd do a half-gainer and fly off the stage. I wish him the best of luck.

Vinnie Wuvs David

Vinnie from England wrote to say I wasn't qualified to think David Bowie's career jumped the shark with "Let's Dance". He went on to assert that if I spent time in England I'd also understand the genius of Tin Machine. If only I knew what he knows and experienced the local colour like he does.

It took me a while to get over that guys named Vinnie live in England. I normally don't think of Italians having bad teeth, but here goes (also, don't miss The Big Book Of British Smiles). Years ago a faux-zen martial arts guys told me I couldn't have an opinion on a martial art unless I'd studied it for five years. Then he sat back with a very smug smile I would have loved to wipe off his face except he'd have hurt me too much.

I don't need to visit Lower Uncton to know "Let's Dance" was a major letdown after Scary Monsters, and defending Tin Machine is a lost cause long forgotten.

I don't know Vinnie's age but as an old punk I could easily be right when I say that I knew entire Bowie albums by heart before his parents even met. So there, Vinnie from the UK with the bad teeth. I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food-trough water! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

Whip It! Whip It Good! (whip sold separately)

King Cameron Archer sends this link to a store selling Item #80417 - Devo Costume :

 

Protect the world from de-evolution when you wear this “radiation” Devo Costume based on the New Wave band. Costume includes an energy dome hat, a top with snap closures, pants with an elastic waist, and a wrap-around belt with Velcro® closure. Top and pants are made of tear-resistant plastic with imbedded threads. Fits up to men’s size 46. Sunglasses are not included. Devo Whip, item #80417, is available separately.

Other items of note:

The Halloween Pizza Face (for the literalists)
Remote Control Farting Bear
Giant Cockroach

Intro To When Cool Becomes Anti-Cool

Two days ago I ran across this Slate piece on Al Gore TV. It offers this punk cultural indicator which I take as more rhetorical than true:

 

Now that it's been paired with a sport jacket on the torso of Max Lugavere, the CBGB's T-shirt has officially trickled down as far as it can possibly go, becoming the definitive anti-punk garment. You might have thought this point had been hit when Mark Ruffalo wore one as the huggable hunk in last year's tweener romantic comedy 13 Going on 30, but you would be wrong.
Last night a sales flyer in my mailbox offered a true and pure example of the definitive punk/anti-punk transitive moment. Check it out. "Licenced band t-shirts from Marley to the Misfits." And what a selection! That (worn by a) dope Skull Logo Beanie looks real stoopid (stupid).

 

The New Cosby Kid

So, I'm reading about Meth and I ran across Meth Mouth - "the rapid, rampant tooth rot that looks more like something out of a horror movie than a dental diagnosis." For a second there I thought junkies lost all their teeth except for two massive front ones, a la my main man Mushmouth.

The following pics are not for the squeamish. It ain't pretty. Kiss Me! Alive and living dead The Piece Of Resistance

Stick to booze, kids, and be sure to both brush AND floss. Otherwise this could be you. Hey Hey Hey!!

Violent Femmes In The News!

The Las Vegas Review-Journal carried a little article on one-album hit wonders The Violent Femmes, together now for 25 years. Their classic 1983 debut is “the only album to go platinum without ever cracking the Billboard 200, the magazine's weekly list of the nation's top-selling albums.” That’s a cool factoid.

Bassist Brian Ritchie whines “Every band gets reduced to, if not to one song, a handful of songs. It's an injustice. It's not fair. It's frustrating, but that's just the way it is. I'm frustrated not only as an artist, but as a listener. Everybody is suffering because radio sucks."

Oh, please. “Blister In The Sun” has allowed The Violent Femmes to tour since 1983, and if that’s the only song the radio plays, that’s the only song the radio plays. They can get in line with every other band that thinks their entire catalog should be on constant rotation. “Blister In The Sun” got them this weekend section write-up and it gives Ritchie a platform to moan and insult other musicians. What the hell else does he want...

“Add It Up” and “Gone Daddy Gone” are equally good songs but they don’t get played on possibly any commercial music services. It’s the Holocaust all over again.

 Movie Punks

A punk and a skin gripe over movie minutia for 256 panels and counting.

Green Day's Spinal Tap Moment

At my gym this morning (L.A. Crapness) I was treated to a recent live version of Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends". Billy Bob Joe Clem Skeeter Armweak dedicated it to the victims of hurricane Katrina. Tears welled up in my eyes. Not because of the song but from the hairy, smelly guy next to me.

All of a sudden, Billy Chester Buford screams "New England!" and the barely teen crowd cheers. God, why didn't he yell "Northeast United States Six State Region!". I immediately flashed to Spinal Tap's David St. Stubbins' line "We are Spinal Tap from the UK - you must be the USA!"

I also thought "Hello, Cleveland!", the crown jewel of touring band inanity. Then I hit the can and missed the part where the guy in the bunny suit comes out and everyone dances to "YMCA" (true story)

The Onion On The Feelies

From The Onion's latest edition. I agree AND concur:

Underrated defunct band: The Feelies

Why? The Feelies emerged from the late-'70s New York/New Jersey underground-rock scene and lasted until the early-'90s implosion of college rock, and in its day, the band was respected enough to rank in the upper half of Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Albums Of The '80s" (for its tribal, trance-y debut album Crazy Rhythms) and to score an appearance as the house band in Jonathan Demme's movie Something Wild. The Feelies' jangly, moody sound was a major influence on Yo La Tengo and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck (who produced The Feelies' best record, 1985's supple The Good Earth). And yet today, The Feelies barely get mentioned when people trace the alt-rock timeline, and all four of the band's albums are out of print.

The evidence: Those hard-to-find LPs are worth paying eBay prices for—even the all-but-ignored, band-killing final album Time For A Witness. For a quicker dose of The Feelies, download the trailer for Noah Baumbach's The Squid And The Whale, which prominently features The Good Earth's "Let's Go" in the middle. Better yet, see the movie, where the song is used to symbolize how much cooler Anna Paquin is than the hero's Bryan Adams-loving girlfriend.

 Hang With Ryan Cabrera

At a store in the mall there was a sign that read "Hang With Ryan Cabrera". Why, here he is now! I have NO IDEA who Ryan Cabrera is but someone's running a contest where the grand prize is hanging with him. I have only the slightest grasp of popular culture now and my knowledge of new punk bands is fairly dismal too, so I've resigned myself to the fact I'm hopelessly (and happily) out of the loop.

My first thought was about if I won that contest. I'd say, "So, Ryan, it's nice to meet you. I understand you're a popular young singer. Gosh that must be great for you." Then I'd stare into space for a moment and say "Nice to have met you. Gotta go." Sure that's dull, but wouldn't that be better for everyone than a screaming 15 year old who won't stop crying?

Punk is littered with stories of people whose lives changed upon hearing that special punk band. Ryan went the other way:

Ryan Cabrera never planned on a career in music. His hobby turned into a passion after hearing Dave Matthews, causing him to turn his back on the noisy punk rock of his high-school band, Caine, and pick up an acoustic guitar for the newly minted Rubic's Groove.

Dave Matthews was Ryan Cabrera's Ramones, Sex Pistols and/or Clash. Somebody's spinning in their grave right now - I'm just not sure who.

November 22, 1963

Yesterday was the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination in Texas. The only reason I know this is because of the 1979 song "November 22, 1963" by Destroy All Monsters. I can't find lyrics but it opened with "November 22, 1963, a shot rang out not from one from three" and had in the chorus "Jackie, Jackie Kennedy, hold onto his brains".

Equally good but known by all is "Bullet" by the Misfits, when they were more Ramones than Iron Maiden:

President’s bullet-ridden body in the street/Ride, johnny ride/Kennedy’s shattered head hits concrete/Ride, johnny ride/Johnny’s wife is floundering/Johnny’s wife is scared/Run, jackie run/Texas is an outrage when your husband is dead/Texas is an outrage when they pick up his head/Texas is the reason that the president’s dead/You gotta suck, suck, jackie suck/President’s bullet-ridden body in the street/Ride, johnny ride/Kennedy’s shattered head hits concrete/Ride, johnny ride/Texas is an outrage when your husband is dead/Texas is an outrage when they pick up his head/Texas is the reason that the president’s dead/You gotta suck, suck, jackie suck/Arise jackie o, jonathon of kennedy/Well, arise and be shot down/The dirt’s gonna be your dessert/My cum be your life source/And the only way to get it/Is to suck or f--k/Or be poor and devoid/And masturbate me, masturbate me/Then slurp it from your palm/Like a dry desert soaking up rain/Soaking up sun/Like a dry desert soaking up rain/Soaking up sun

A third Kennedy song that comes to mind is Human Sexual Response's "Jackie Onassis", which wasn't as brutal as the other too. I was only 2 1/2 when Kennedy was shot, but it's seared in my memory that Camelot died that day and life would horribly suck from then on in. Seared.

Tether-Fu !!

12/31/05: I watched Napolean Dinamite for the first time today and I had no idea he was trying to do martial arts with a tetherball. I created Tether-Fu many years ago. My lawyer has been alerted.

All men are glandmasters, but only a few are martial arts grandmasters. A grandmaster is the best of a particular style, and a number have become grandmasters by simply modifying an existing style and giving it a fancy name. I am the grandmaster of Tether-Fu, based on tetherball, more of a training method I admit but I can kick the ass of any inflated ball swung at me with a rope.

There's a martial arts story that goes like this (it may not be true but that's never the point): A farmer in a small village wanted to compete in the region's martial arts tournament, but being poor and busy he had neither the time nor training to enter. He strung a basketball-sized rubber ball chest high between two trees with elastic cords and started punching and kicking it. In time he was able to deliver solid punches and kicks to the ball no matter what crazy angle it came back at him. The next year he entered the contest and won because no matter what moves his opponent made he was able land punches and kicks directly at their heads.

I'm a big fan of self-correcting training devices like heavy and speed bags. I had a small bag one that attaches to the ceiling and floor which drove me crazy, and I failed miserably at building my own wooden dummy. I call these self-correcting because you know right away if a strike or combination doesn't work. Everyone can be a grandmaster of their own style as long as they master self-correcting training devices.

Tether-fu is neat because you have to strike, turn around and strike again. It's like being the poor farmer except you're a rich putz spinning around your backyard giggling like a ninny.

Not Subtle and Not Funny

I had a bad sciatica attack this week so I remembered the TV ad I'd like to submit to the makers of Aleve. My idea for Arroz Con Pollo Pops didn't fly but this one will work.

It's based on the 1975 Al Pacino film Dog Day Afternoon, in which Al robs a bank to get money for his boyfriend's sex change operation. It's a true story too. You can't make this stuff up. I mean, you could, but why would you want to, especially since it's true.

The commercial opens with Al, as Sonny Wortzik, screaming not "Attica! Attica! Attica!" but "Sciatica! Sciatica! Sciatica!". Then an actor made up like Huggy Bear is blue-screened into the crowd and he screams "Give the brother some relief!" The crowd concurs. Next an arm extends from the left holding a bottle of Aleve and two tablets are dropped in to the hand of what's supposed to be Al Pacino. He yells "Ooh-Rah!" Then they show a scene of Al looking rested and he says "Oh, that's the stuff! Let's go home." The crowd cheers, a lot. THE END.

Boxing Day Tape

I hope you all had a festive Boxing Day on the 26th. I know I did. A decade ago I lived in Arlington, VA in a Sears House a few blocks away from the famous Dischord House, another Sears House with a basement that redefined "unfinished". I turned my basement into a gym and boxing area, and I made a tape to box to, like in aerobics except I'm maybe beating Billy Blanks to the Tao Bo punch.

Here's what's on the tape and next to it what I was supposed to do during each song. I doubt I ever made it all the way through. Only one fast punk song on it because I was boxing, not tearing apart a rat with my teeth.

Devo - Snowball (warm up footwork and punches)
Didjits - Dad (slow combo punching)
Squeeze - Annie Get Your Gun (abs)
Rubber Rodeo - Anywhere With You (kicking)
Jawbreaker - Fine Day (speed bag)
Psychedelic Furs - Here Come Cowboys (footwork)
Peter Gabriel - I Have The Touch (abs)
Peter Gabriel - Shock The Monkey (kickboxing)
Elvis Costello - I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down (footwork)
Devo - Beautiful World (non-telegraphic punching)
OMD - Messages (kickboxing)
Bad Religion - Anesthesia (alt. title Hooray For Heroin) - (fast combos)
Kraftwerk - Tour De France (cool down punching)

A Truth

I love this line. The context is irrelevant:

 

As is the custom with intellectual cowards, he wants his ideas taken seriously; he just doesn't want them judged according to traditional evidentiary and logical standards.

Moshzilla

A craze sweeping tiny slivers of the nation is Moshzilla, which started with a single photo from a San Diego punk show. It's now all this and more.

Poor Moshzilla, all she wanted to do was mosh. But for the grace of gosh go us all.

PS: Did I mention some people have a lot of free time and nothing better to do?

 Video Killed The Slamdancers

Whenever I hear The Buggle's "Video Killed The Radio Star" I imagine it being used as the soundtrack for a slamdance/pit scene in a movie. It has ebbs and flows and slow parts and fast parts so to me it'd be great to film a band playing and their fans dancing - and then editing it to generally fit the Buggle's song. Real time and slo-motion would both be required.

Imagine that and tell me if I'm nuts.

The Tao Of Doc Savage

"Doc Savage seemed not to hear the inquiry, which was another of his traits. The bronze man, as those who came in contact with him soon learned, rarely voiced a theory; only what were in his own mind proven facts. Rather than make evasive answers, or indulge in a long argument about what might or might not be the facts, he simply became deaf to inquiries"

Dumb As In Duh...ummmmm

This internet quiz, "are you an old school punk or new school", is really bad. Take it anyway.

The Ballad Of Saint Pancake

Courtesy of Little Green Footballs comes this seemingly improvised Billy Bragg re-write of a Dylan song, celebrating the life and death of rich girl, terror-abetting, violence-loving, game of tag-losing uber-martyr Rachel Corrie, shown here burning a home-made American flag and raging, raging against the machine to teach the next generation of suicide bombers why their own lives are of no value compared to The Struggle. Here's Rachel now in hell for the karmic crime of living a life of hate and calling it love.

She died trying to protect tunnels used to smuggle arms into Gaza, weapons used to kill Israeli men, women and children such as in this great "resistance strike" when a pregnant woman and her four young daughters were repeatedly shot in the head at point-blank range, an act the Voice of Palestine called "an act of heroic martyrdom".

I Can't Pronounce Baccaruda

Ben Weasel linked to a video of The Barracudas performing "Summer Fun" in 1980, featuring the worst lip-sync job of all time. It's a great song but the old car ad that intros the vinyl is a classic slice of comic genius. It involves a beatnik and a professional yet stiff radio announcer, and it goes something like this:

Announcer: I'm a Plymouth dealer. I'm a dealin' man, and right now I'm giving the best deal ever on that fast moving fastback the Plymouth Baccaruda.
Beatnik: Hey man, the name of the Plymouth fastback is the Barracuda.
Announcer: I know ... I can't pronounce Baccaruda.
Beatnik: Oh well, look man, try this ... Say Ba
Announcer: Ba
Beatnik: Ra
Announcer: Ra
Beatnik: Cu
Announcer:Cu
Beatnik: Da
Announcer: Da
Beatnik: Now put it all together!!
Announcer: BA-BA-RA-BA-CU-CU-DA-DA!
Beatnik: Well, it ain't Barracuda, man, but I think we got a hit record!!

Moral Equivalence As Mental Disorder

Moral Equivalence is a debate tactic that enrages me since in practice it's a pretend way of sounding fair before you argue there really is no moral equivalence. It's Orwellian, and by the way, Orwell was anti-socialist. Hitler was a socialist and everything derived from Marx and Engels has proved to be a shitebox of human suffering. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Marxists are so fugged in this regard. You can't approve of genocide and be well-meaning, and as a last act of honor nihilists should all commit suicide before they hurt others.

The demented moral equivalence by Reuters is staggering:

ROME - The strong Western response to a threatened death sentence for an Afghan convert to Christianity looks something like a mirror image of the Muslim reaction to the Prophet Mohammad caricatures printed in the European press.

There have been no riots or sackings of Afghan embassies, unlike the violence that marked the uproar in Muslim countries after the Danish cartoons were published, but the shock and mutual incomprehension expressed in both cases are similar.

The difference lies in the issues at stake. In the cartoons row, Muslims stressed the sanctity of Mohammad, whom they say nobody, even non-Muslims, can criticize. The subtext was resentment against perceived Western prejudice against Islam.

Now, Western governments and societies are speaking out for religious freedom and against the death penalty. The fact many Western troops now help defend the Afghan government against al Qaeda and Taliban remnants heightened the outrage in the West.

Punkymoms.com

Punkymoms.com was featured in the O.C. Register. It's under new ownership, whatever that means. Check out that logo! Everybody knows an American faux UK '77 punk would never wear a Minor Threat shirt with that outfit. Get real! And what's that midget skinhead doing?!

They auction things on what they call Babybay. The Punky Pico de Gallo Platter in the food section was rated highly. The zine itself is very good, and the whole project looks very ambitious. Good luck to Punkymoms!

Long Beach Blogging

I was just going to mention the huge aqua/purple house with the Prince Logo on the driveway gate, but Long Beach, CA is a pretty cool place in general. Let's blog!

Long Beach has an airport ("lowest-cost parking in the region"!) the Queen Mary (ghost-infested floating hotel), the queens named Mary parade, an aquarium (any "Rock Lobster" reference will do), the Grand Prix (sounds like hornets attacking), an international marathon, a hockey team, CCULB, Long Beach City College, the A-1 Traffic School, America's second biggest port, its own dull cable station, a (f)art museum and arts district, miles of beach, America's top rated park and recreation system (so says the sign), and it's where you'll find Jesse James' famous t-shirt mill, West Coast Choppers.

It's relatively cheap to live here, the weather is great and Screwy Louie Carus of Junk Records, punk's unofficial Mayor Of Long Beach, says this is where the freaks of Orange County live before deciding if they want to make the big freak move to San Francisco.

Punk-wise, Long Beach is home to Long Gone John and Sympathy For The Record Industry, the cat-loving SST Records, Release The Bats, and, there's a Yellowcard album titled Ocean Avenue (that's in LB!) that talks about the park on Cherry Street. It overlooks BJ Alley, where men go wookin' puh nub before sunrise (damn you, short summer nights!)

Yes, Long Beach is America's 51st state, and it's where you'll find the empty Prince House, a huge purple Spanish style home on sale for 1.5 million dollars. I'll know it's sold when the house gets painted and that stupid Prince sign comes down. Can you imagine the freaky Addams Family types who lived there? Do you think people knocked on their door to ask the one word existential question of "WHY?!" Can't you just picture the paint store guy saying"you're kidding me, right?"

Ass Pennies

My favorite comedy sketch of all time, by The Upright Citzens Brigade.

Ass -Pennies

Added Bonus: I commute to and from work 25 miles each way on a motorcycle. This film scares the crap out of me. I would feel no pity at all if he died while riding like this.

Find Chester In Your Town

Remember, it's a sexual preference!

Added bonus: click on the squares to see photos of convicted rapists and child frickers in your area. Be sure to say howdy when you see them at the store!

3/16/2006 update: Toddzilla's comments are great. And I quote "Her face looked like a clenched fist."

Survey Says

I get e-mails from students writing class reports. They sometimes want me to answer very long and detailed questions, in essence writing their reports for them. Sometimes it's a survey like this one, which I completed and added to. It, like most punk academia, is based on the false assumption punk was and is a political movement steeped in Marxism. Note the opening kiss-ass line to flatter my fragile ego and make me cooperate. If you want to send Rob your own completed survey, he's at robfromtheband@hotmail.co.uk:

Hi I'm am currently studying media at A-level, your website has offered me some valuable information on the history of punk, could you fill in this internet question and send it back to me. Thanks in advance... Rob

Questionnaire: The Punk Movement

This questionnaire has been adapted for use on the PC. To chose an answer place a capital X within the square brackets. [X]

1) What is your sex? (Male) [x] But on the internet I'm a hot blonde teenage girl into sports and Japanese animation

2) Of Which decade where you born? The 19 – (60’s) [x] I was a youthful baby

3) Where you born in our outside London? (Outside) [x] Way outside, Brooklyn, NY

4) What class do you consider yourself to be? (Working class) [x] Worker Drone Level Two, State Smasher Level B-46

5) What is your favourite genre of music? (Punk Rock) [x] and the white noise my fan makes that helps me sleep

6) Have you ever heard of The Punk movement?(Yes) [x] I've even had a number of punk bowel movements

7) Of which region to you think the British punk movement originated? The Groin [x]

8) How much do you think the punk movement originated from class differences? (1) Being the lowest and (5) the highest.(1) [x] The Marxist view of punk history is a laugh but it does help smash authority by making people really dumb and angry

9) Do you think the Punk movement is as strong today as it was around the 1970’s?(Yes) [x] In both body odor and dead lift strength

10) How much do you think punk was copied or was a trend? (1) Being the lowest and (5) the highest. (5) [x] Especially by those bastard Amish!

11) How strong an effect did you think the punk movement had on the youth of the 1970’s? (Some Effect) [x] In the UK it replaced god and porn. In the US it affected nobody.

12) Do you think punk was controversial and was it on purpose?Controversial (Yes) [x] So was jerking off on the bus. Purposefully (Yes) [x] I did jerk off on purpose, but officer, what's your point?

13) Do you think the Punk movement had any opposition to the political opinions and laws of the government of the day?(Yes) [] (No) [] Pretentious, loaded question [x]

14) Do you think 1970’s punk bands tried to influence the political views of youth of the day?(Yes) [x] The political ones did. The others cared only about pudding

15) Can you as an individual relate to punk music, lyrics and fashion?(No) [x] Most punks are idiots who dress like morons. I like some of the music though.

16) What is your favourite punk band/ can you name a punk band Leatherface, and I'd like to name a lo-fi band Ped-Xing (as in Pedestrian Crossing). In the US that's clever.

17) Do you consider yourself to be a punk or uphold its ideologies? (No) [x] Why would anyone want to call themselves Punk? Do rednecks call themselves "Country"? Do classical music fans call themselves "Classical"?

18) What is your description of punk ideology (Beliefs)? Pretentious and often violent fantasies held my rich children and mentally defective adults.

19) How much importance/relevance do you think the punk movement gave each of these elements? (1) Being the lowest and (5) the highest.(Politics) (3) [x] Whatever side punks are on are usually the most destructive and least effective (Music) (3) [x] Everything's punk if you say it is. (Fashion) (3) [x] Right up there with Lumberjacks and cross-dressers

20) How much do you think The Punk movement changed the world for future generation? (1) Being the lowest and (5) the highest. (3) [x] Without punk the world would like totally suck.

21) In what area do you consider the movement to have changed things the most? (Politics) [] punk hasn't changed politics at all. It's just another front of the same idiocy. (Fashion) [](Music) [x] Now even babies have lines of punk fashions

22) State three words you most associate to the punk movement? 1) - Attitude 2) - Childhood 3) - Trend

23) Of which description do you most associate punk?(Loud, fast and aggressive music paired with unique fashion.) [x] There's also a cute dance you can do to it.(A direct assault on the government of 1970’s Britain) [] Ah yeas, and how effective it was!(A method of alienation from society, dramatising the modern crisis) [] What Gnome Crapsky textbook did this come from?

24) What do you think is the most likely reason for punk’s existence? (Type Here) - The Ramones

What I Like About Living In The USA

It finally hit me that The Romantic's 1980 hit "What I Like About You" rips off Steve Miller's 1973 hit "Living In The USA". The Romantic's "When I Look In Your Eyes" is an inverted version of "What I like About You" from the same album.

So, I throw the ball to who. Whoever it is drops the ball and the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow, Triple play. Another guy gets up and hits a long fly ball to Because. Why? I don't know! He's on third and I don't give a fugg!

Scenestersworld.com

I'm at a loss to explain this but I wish them the best. Somebody's money is on the line here. Scenesters World is so far one set of six punky figurines, some keychains and a button that simply reads "Scenester". Each character has a backstory and I guess they each reflect a young and punk demographic. Brandon is still reeling from his favorite punk band signing to a major label a couple months ago, while Lucky refuses to take money from his parents, and is spare-changing to start a record label to put out a 7-inch record for his band, Spange.

What's the target age for these things? Is it something punk kids buy for themselves or an impulse item for parents with punk kids? They're on sale at Tower, Hot Topic and "other cool places near you".

The word "Scenester" looks funny on paper. Stare at it and after a while it looks like it could be pronounced "Sinister". Does a button that says "Scenester" scream poser, or is there an age where a kid would proudly wear it because that's what they want to be? Uh.......

The Scenesters World site features artwork by Kevin Cross, who you might remember from this cover.

Health Club Design Failure #1

 Want to know how I keep my girlish figure?.....Estrogen.

This and this should never be placed next to each other. Whenever two lumpy Hausfraus enter the weight room they waddle directly to the inner and outer leg machines where they mime a workout while gabbing about their lives of whiny desperation. They do sets of 100 with no weight and then rest for 5 minutes. When they finally get bored they stand up and trade places. Synchronized sitting is not an exercise and doing nothing is the same as doing something completely wrong. 

Sloppy Dan Is Dead!

Aged bag-o-crap Slobodan Milosevic died in his prison cell. Sadly it was from natural causes and not painful, slow torture like Action Jackson got.

Sloppy Dan oversaw a systematic rape campaign against the Muslim women of Bosnia, along with the regular menu of genocidal war crimes. A number of American Peace and Anti-War organizations are actually Stalinist front groups or fellow travelers, and they've offered legal and moral support to Sloppy for years. There's a seeming contradiction here but who knows what that could be.

If there's a hell, Miloseshit is ain't gonna be loving death.

By the by, when Bill Clinton was heckled as a war criminal it was in reference to him stopping Sloppy Dan and saving the lives of countless Muslims.

3/15/06 update: Of course Gnome Crapsky was a supporter of Sloppyshit

A-Million-Archy for you and me!

READER TIM SENDS IN THIS GREAT IDEA THAT'LL SOLVE EVERYTHING!

Ca-ching!! Can you hear that? That's the sound of peace, love and amillionarchy! Hi, my name is Tim, but my friends call me Terror Tim, because I'm so fierce and s--t. I'm not huge and tough for my age or anything, but if you get kept back enough times in high like I have you eventually get to be one of the bigger guys around.

The other day I was hanging around the mall with Malcolm (code name: Malcolmtempt) and Unsightly Stan, whose super power is always having a cloud of dirt around his body like Pigpen in the Peanuts cartoons. We were grubbing for change because we're anarchists and that's what we do. I wanted to call us Crusties but that's all Stan so it's too obvious, ya know? Anyway, we were bitching to each other about Society and Big Brother and Malcolm's mom's new BMW SUV that kills the planet when it's not dropping us off places, when a thought hit me like a billy club on the head of the oppressed masses by the evil capitalist goon squads!

Sure, I guess all it would take for the world to reject civilization and live peacefully in the huge green forest the world would turn back into in a month or two is a few Starbucks being vandalized, but in the meantime, how about stopping inequality, poverty, hunger and all that by giving everyone a million dollars? Everyone's rich and the same and there's no more reason to hate. Capitalism sucks, but so does being broke. Green Doc Marten toe stompin' boots don't grow on trees you know.

Take away all the money from the rich, who've made it all anyway off the sweat of the working class, like I did last summer when I slaved at McDonalds for a week until my parents couldn't handle my complaining anymore so they raised my allowance instead. I'm sure there's enough for everyone to get a million dollars, and if not just print more money because it's just paper, right? I made money on a xerox machine once and the clerk at the 7-11 just looked at me and asked what kind of moron I was. I was able to tell him what type exactly since I've been tested more times than a cigarette smoking monkey. One day he'll be thanking me for making him rich with that money!

Ok, so you're asking who'll clean toilets and flip burgers and sell donuts if everyone's rich. They'll have to to do it because that's part of the cooperative spirit of amillionarchy! Just like in regular anarchy. That'll be one of the conditions and maybe they'll have to sign something promising they will. Then you might ask what about people who spend all their money and are poor again. Aha! Anyone who has more than his or her million will give back the extra money into a communal fund for those with less than a million dollars to take from. It's perfect!

So, everyone will have a million dollars and we'll all be equal and we'll all be able to buy whatever we want. Anarchy is kinda the same but I don't think I'll be able to buy a new Camaro Z28 that way. My way rocks!