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The Malfunctioning Me
Tuesday, April 17, 2001 I felt the rhino-viratic rage
encroaching on my last day of gainful employment. "Gainful," in a
monetary sense only. Then, on Easter morning, the day in
Christianity when corpses walk the earth delivering eggs to all
non-sinners, I myself arose from bed and felt as much like an
animated cadaver as anyone else ever had on Easter morning. I was
brought eggs, however, thus I must be a non-sinner according to my
own rules of egg deliverance, as mentioned a couple run-on sentences
ago. Monday, the infestation of nasal clogging, lung irritating and
eye watering micro-vermin was at its peak. And now, today, Tuesday,
the good fight is being won. Granted, I must keep my mucus and bile
gushing face over a large plastic tarp at all times, but this is a
sign of getting well I have been told. With that in mind, flood
forth ye rivers of snot!
Mighty convenient it seems that I get
sick only after I complete the duration of my two weeks notice at
the porn shop so as not to allow me any enjoyment of my
unemployment. Yup, mighty convenient. Perhaps, my body had been
saving this illness on me for a time when it had nothing but my own
life to interfere with. Or perhaps, more sinister, the porn shop
floods vaporized anti-biotics into the air to keep its employees
fully functional and its customers always healthy and strong for
renting and whatever it is they do with the rented material once in
the safety of their own home.
That's about all I'm good for
here. The brain hasn't gone unaffected by this common cold, and it's
getting upset that I'm forcing it to do more than passively filter
E! True Hollywood Stories day in, day out.
Album Reviews (I, Critic)
Saturday, April 14, 2001 Various Artists
A Tribute to
Carcass
Deathvomit Records
Another totally useless, nigh embarrassing tribute album,
this one to Carcass. Every last damn band on this “why bother?”
tribute to Carcass plays the songs as if the idea of a cover was to
create a meticulous non-mechanical reproduction of the original. It
shows all bands gathered here on this limp dick, no balls of an
album have talent, but what a bloody waste of their talents. Another
gripe, is that Carcass was fun. They rocked! They knew of the
intrinsic humor involved in their acts of musical terrorism as they
grumble along about eating corpses and various autopsy procedures.
The bands on this tribute manage to totally suck that spirit out of
their retreads. Only one band succeeds in keeping the spirit of what
was Carcass intact, they are Impaled with their cover of Carneous
(sic) Cacoffiny off of Carcass’ brilliant Descanting the
Insalubrious. You see, I liked Carcass. Keep that present tense, I
still like Carcass, but never once did I think, “Boy, I’d sure like
it if somebody would put out a tribute album to these guys.” I’d
rather hear all the bands on this tribute covering U2 or Poison. How
about that? They could do a tribute to Carcass in this fashion:
every band imagines what it would have sounded like if Carcass had
covered various songs by Talking Heads. Then the album you’d have is
A Tribute to Carcass’ Hypothetical Tribute to the Talking Heads.
Wouldn’t that just rip your tits off?
Dimmu Borgir
Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia
Nuclear
Blast
I have no idea how Dimmu Borgir’s eighth studio album
Super-Puritanical-expi-Euphoric-alla-Misanthropiocius stacks up to
their previous seven since I’ve never heard them before, but this
new album is some high quality, full blown, by the neck and by the
balls, black metal to summon up goat lords by. In what seems to be
typical Black Metal style, Dimmu Borgir open with a
Rachmaninoff-esque dark little synth-diddy that wouldn’t be out of
place on the soundtrack for any Dario Argento flick. After the
peaceful introduction they blast into Blessings Upon the Throne of
Tyranny, and from there with the wild, flailing yet tightly packed
drumming and furious “how fast can I possibly pick picking” guitar
thrashings, you’re on your own in Dimmu Borgir’s brightly painted
canvas of hell until the very last track. The last track brings some
listeners back into familiar territory. After all the
well-orchestrated evil and infernal stink lord worshipping, the
cover of Twisted Sister’s Burn In Hell was good for a bit of a
chuckle. Fans of Dimmu Borgir know this band has had a very loose
line-up, shifting instruments within the band, losing members and
gaining new ones. On PEM they have “released” guitarist Astennu and
replaced him with Galder from Old Man’s Child, a very capable
musician and songwriter as one listen to any Old Man’s Child album
would have to tell you. If you like Black Metal that’s not afraid to
play with itself then this is your album, doubly so if you like men
in white face paint. Could you imagine getting a blow-job from one
of these guys? Your bush would look professionally frosted by the
time they finished.
Darkane
Insanity
Century Media Records
I bet death metal singers give the best blow-jobs. You
could probably jam your cock deep into their throats, and they’d
growl making their little uvulas rapidly vibrate back and forth
right at the peak of your cock’s crown above the urethra. That’d be
some gnarly head, don’t you think? After the obligatory Black Metal
introduction of a Carl Orff arrangement crashing head on into the
oompah-oompahing of typical Danny Elfman songwriting, Darkane’s new
album rips in strong. This is a great album for metal heads. At
times Darkane satisfies old secret urges for classic Bay Area
thrash, while plodding head long into newer metal sounds. The band
debuts a new vocalist on Insanity, Andreas Sydow (any relation to
Max Von?), who is a great catch. Mr. Sydow, in classic Burton C.
Bell from Fear Factory style, rapes ears with his low Cookie Monster
growls and counters it with smooth high melodic passages. The music
is relentless, technically complex and should make a strong mark for
this band. If they’d drop the crappy deathly artwork they could
probably draw in more fans. The music and cover art don’t
necessarily reflect one another. I know nobody ever said they had
to, but this nasty saran wrap face with pointy teeth is just
ridiculous. I hate it for being so, but sometimes stupid decisions
for a cover’s art can hurt a band. This artwork will surely hurt.
Darkane is a Black Metal band with possible cross over appeal as
soon as this NuMetal chokes to death on the last layer of Linkin
Park-esque shit being smeared on post-haste by every dumbass record
executive attempting to leach the last few pennies out of the
bloated corpse of the goose that laid the gold album. Trixter rules!
Texas Terri and the Stiff Ones
Eat Shit +1
Junk Records
A drowsy and sultry female vocal saunters over a relaxed
rock riff that grows with menace until the tempo kicks up two steps
and that sultry drowsiness is replaced by a huff of coke and a
shrieking rasp. That’s how you’re introduced to Texas Terri and the
Stiff Ones on the first music track on Eat Shit +1, Lifetime
Problems. I find most critics like to compare Texas Terri and her
band of stiff ones to Iggy Pop and his Stooges. That’s what most
critics say, “A female Iggy Pop.” I disagree. The statement assumes
time is linear and that Iggy Pop isn’t simply the male version of
Texas Terri. (Oh, fuck you too, pal! I’m the fucking music critic
here so piss off. I don’t care if you think I’m retarded.) As the
title of the album suggests, Eat Shit +1 is a re-release of Eat Shit
except there is one song on it (Women Should be Wilder) that didn’t
appear on the original release. Eat Shit has also been remastered,
but I can’t hear the difference (Yes, I do own the original), but
then again I have tin ear drums and shouldn’t be reviewing music in
the first place. There are some very nice contrapuntal arrangements
between Texas Terri’s vocals and Demon Boy’s stripped down nasty-boy
glamour-punk riffings that help drive the album along at a brisk and
suitably trashy pace. Some, if not most of the songs, suffer from a
paper-thin production. In other words, the sound is more like a
q-tip in the ass than a big angry dick, and I know that’s what all
you fags out there want right? Big monster music critic cock
straight up your puckered little fancy fan-boy chuters. You’re
asking for it pansy!
Judas
Friday, April 13, 2001 What bad luck shall befall me
today? It is the extra special dark day when foulness rides the air
like... like it always does in L.A., but today it rides it
everywhere. Perhaps I'll celebrate this day of wickedness by
watching a horror movie at the porno store, something like Tales
from the Clit ought to do nicely. It seems like a normal day.
Friday the thirteenths always go by quietly without incident. For
that matter, for all the times I've walked under ladders, spilled
salt or broken mirrors (and I've broken some hella mirrors) nothing
bad has ever seemed to happen as a result. Did I use "hella"
properly? How do superstitions get started? I looked up the Friday
the Thirteenth shit and it seems to the best of internet knowledge
to have something to do with the the number of folk at the last
supper, the day of crucifixion, some Knights Templar and maybe even
some witches. What a hodge-podge of crap. It's hard to sort through.
I always thought Christians believed the betrayal and subsequent
crucifixion of Jesus was a good thing. If it hadn't happened then
they'd all be bound for hell in an Easter basket, right? They call
it Good Friday for Christ's sake. Thus, why bad luck for the
thirteenth? Seems something became screwed up along the way, some
wires crossed with good ol' Paganism as Christianity is wont to do.
Superstition is most likely a good thing. That is, if religion is a
good thing or if any deep set beliefs about the "true" nature of
reality are good. Superstition can keep people from having to face
up to the facts that they may not be able to handle. Facts such as
the world being random and sometimes downright awful things (like
Tomcats the Movie or Eminem) happen for no good reasons at all.
There's no justifying some shit. The worst thing about today is that
it's time to go to work.
Worm Hole
Thursday, April 12, 2001 On the Discovery Science
channel last night, they presented a story about an unfortunate
young woman who had to under go brain surgery. That's not so unusual
if you stop there. She had been experiencing seizures, suddenly,
whereas she had never had seizures before. Physicians discovered
that some kind of a worm had bored deep into her brain. The worm had
to be removed which meant surgeons would have to dig their way
equally deep into the brain to extract the bugger. As the surgeons
pushed aside the gray mush in pursuit of the burrowing little
fellow, they kept the patient fully conscious so she could speak to
them. In this way the surgeons could remain certain that throughout
their brain digging search they weren't causing any damage. When
they found the worm it turned out to be dead already. It wasn't the
tunneling of the worm that caused the seizures, but the decaying had
spread off the worm's body and into the surrounding brain tissue.
The surgeons cut the shit out and the woman is now right as rain
during the rainy season. From whence came the worm, you ask? As far
as anybody can tell, the woman inherited the worm from an
undercooked pork taco she ate while on holiday in Mexico.
I
recount this story because I feel both like the poor ladies brain
and the worm. I'm boring a neat hole straight through my own
cerebral cortex. What I'm saying is, "I fucking hate doing taxes,
and love eating undercooked pork tacos." And that's about it. I
wrote up seven CD reviews today, scanned seven CD covers in (a pain
on this 24 megs of RAM trash heap of wires and whirring), cleaned
the bathroom, retrieved tax forms from the post office and now must
bake a loaf of bread. I have two days left of work at the porn shop
and then I'm unemployed again. This seems to happen quite often.
It's nothing new. I'll start seeking extra work again and maybe, if
it's unavoidably necessary, I'll take the C-BEST and substitute
teach high school English, and only high school English. I'm
preparing lesson plans on Bukowski this very minute.
Pirate Cat Radio 87.9 FM Los Angeles, CA
Tuesday, April 10, 2001 It's just another sunny day in
L.A. until you realize the fucking FEDS are on your roof! That's
life for the Monkey Man, operator and originator of Pirate Cat Radio
87.9 FM, an honest to god real life Pirate Radio station just like
in the hit movie Pump Up the Volume except Pirate Cat Radio plays
good music and hardly any Was (Not Was), and for a brief shining
moment on April 5th had a DJ far, far sexier than Christian Slater:
me. But before I get an exclusive one on one with myself I should, I
reluctantly suppose, talk about this Pirate Radio Station
first.
WHERE:
First off, where is
Pirate Cat Radio? It's on the FM dial at position 87.9 in the
Hollywood, West Hollywood, Downtown, Crenshaw, Inglewood area. It
runs 24/7, and is the only Pirate Radio Station currently operating
in Los Angeles.
WHO:
The station
is run by an individual known as Monkey Man. He has been engaged in
Pirate Radio activities for over six years and has recently, as of
March 8th 2001, moved his Pirate Station, Pirate Cat Radio to Los
Angeles, CA where he has gotten his largest response ever in his six
year history as a pirate of the airwaves.
Where, who, and many
would want to know "how?" Well, illegally for starters. On Thursday
April 5th Monkey Man came home to find out that agents of the
federal government's communications control branch, the FCC, were on
the roof of his apartment building examining his RF anttennae. He
also found them in his apartment, and like a sudden infestation of
roaches they scattered when the light was thrown on them. The light
was from the end of a camcorder. Monkey Man was no fool. Quickly
throwing a bandana over his face to disguise his identity, he
captured the government's illegal activities, including entering
without a warrant, on video.
The FCC has ridiculous control over
America's airwaves, airwaves that supposedly belong to all of us,
airwaves used to, as with every other business in America, make a
few people rich while the others eat their shit in the form of
endless harangues about what you should buy and why buying it will
make you a better person. When, exactly, the government decided they
should control the radio waves is beyond me. It's my theory that if
they could control the visible light spectrum of waves to determine
what we should and should not see, then they would. Pirate Radio
breaks their laws and their strangle hold. Who the fuck decided you
want to hear Linkin Park eighty times a damn day on KROQ? And who
decided that you don't want to hear the DJ say, "fuck?"
Pirate
Cat Radio is trampling the constrictive boundaries. You can call in
and say, "Fuck," live on the radio and you'll only be harassed for
being a dunder-headed dolt as opposed to for breaking the FCC's
obscenity code. Pirate Cat won't be bringing you Linkin Park,
primarily because nobody calls in requesting it. The community has
taken to the station. The people are speaking up, calling in for
information on unsigned bands they're hearing right on their
automobile's built in FM receiver. If you request Bach, on goes
Bach. Same for Siouxsie and the Banshees, Celtic Frost, OhGr or even
Fear and Naked Aggression.
Speaking of Fear and Naked Aggression,
Pirate Cat is helping to take off through live in studio guest DJ's
that on Thursday, April 5th included Kirsten Patches, singer for
Naked Aggression (featured band in The Decline of Western
Civilization: Part 3 by Penelope Spheeris, 1998) and Lee Ving,
singer for Fear (featured band in The Decline of Western
Civilization, 1981). It was, more or less, a historic moment of
punkdom, with two of punk rock's greatest, from opposite ends of the
punk timeline, coming together into the same studio, and broadcast
live without any bleeps or whistles to hide their words. Just the
time elapsed between the two Decline movies contains 17 years of
punk history. What, quote/unquote, "real" FM Radio station would
even care to do what Pirate Cat did? The answer, you all know.
As
An interesting side note, later in the evening when many of us made
our way to a local watering hole, we ran into Lemmy, singer for
Motorhead, who appeared in The Decline of Western Civilization Part:
2, The Metal Years. Strange Decline coincidence running through the
evening. Lemmy may soon be the next guest DJ on Pirate Cat Radio,
stay tuned.
Of course, as mentioned earlier, I also DJ'ed. And
just let me say, I DJ as great as I write. Take that how you will.
Did you know it's illegal to get drunk while DJ'ing? I didn't, and
that's why I did. Did you know that just to apply for a license from
the FCC it costs around two thousand dollars? I didn't. You'd think
there'd be more Pirate Stations out there with the exorbitant costs
of applying for a license (not mentioning all the fees once you have
one), and all the restrictions placed upon DJs by the FCC and
station imposed, major label approved play lists. How fucking
soulless do you have to be to play the same old Korn, followed by
the same Limp Bizkit hit single, followed by... Well, you get the
point. The same songs by the same artists over and over again:
that's radio. Yet in our culture that is screaming bloody murder for
diversity and equal representation, the only place to find it in the
business of FM radio is on low frequency college stations (only for
students) and pirate stations (for whoever has the cajones).
You
dig?
Tea Time
Monday, April 9, 2001 Not only tea, but the thought of
tea makes my teeth hurt. Deep within the teeth, first on the upper
right and then spreading from that epicenter, there is a Pavlovian
throbbing. This is why I'm primarily a coffee drinker, but yesterday
I used my last filter (I like the brown unbleached filters to avoid
any potential bleachy run-off into my coffee) and true to form was
either too busy, thought I was too busy or was just plain too lazy
to pick up a replacement pack and now here I am, piping hot, just
done whistling, cup of tea in front of me. (the tea is piping hot,
just done whistling and not me, thanks) My teeth throb. Perhaps it's
my association of tea with the British. British people don't make my
teeth hurt either by their presence or by the thought of them, but
they do have interesting teeth that could be playing out a form of
subconscious terrorism upon my own through their tea. That's what
the British say in movies right, "Fancy a cup of tea? Biscuit?" And
it's not really a biscuit at all, but a sugar loaded sugary sugar
cookie pulled straight from a tin. But real British folk, as seen in
life and Mike Leigh flicks all seem to be drinking coffee. And
here's a hint: the real life Brits I've spotted, and the ones in the
Mike Leigh flicks (the ones drinking coffee in the Mike Leigh flicks
at any rate) all have straight, white, all lined up in a row proper,
teeth. I wouldn't want to suggest anything at this point, anything
that could have the afffect of increasing coffee sales on a world
wide scale (this site is so important), thus devestating the tea
market, but I will allow you more astute readers out there to draw
your own conclusions. As for you less astute readers: here.
If you followed that link, read the shit at the other end of
that link, and are now back here reading this, then you may
continue. if you did not follow that link, then do so now or just
wait because I'll give all pertinent information here anyway. What
it says is Burger King, to be less cruel to animals, principally
cows, will now stun them before popping a cap in their crowns. In
order to stun a cow you do what then? Shoot a flash off in the cow's
face like it's Raymond Burr come to throw you out a window? Maybe
get the Blue Angels to fly loop-de-loops over head? No, it's none of
these. Rather than simply herding the cows along and plugging them a
good fatal one, Burger King will now make their ConAgra suppliers
first wack the cow lightly, so as not to kill it, then give it the
death blow. Christ, who the fuck does this satisfy? Didn't the
French come up with Guillotine because they decided one clean swift
blow all the way through the neck was less cruel than a dull axe
blade making it one quarter of the way through, roughly dislodged
after a brief struggle, then crashed down on the neck again? And
don't cows all look pretty stunned out there to begin with? If we
really want to focus on Burger King's cruelty, then let's take a
look at their cruelty to human beings and I'm not just talking about
their under paid teenage and minority laborers, I'm talking about
the slathering shit sacks in the drive-thru. I'm talking about the
woman throwing down chicken tenders onto her four-year-old's plate.
I'm talking about all the people dying the slow fat drenched deaths
the fast food lifestyle has created. They have betrayed and murdered
the human race, and I don't mean that as some kind of metaphor
meaning, "Luke, your dad changed, became a bit of an asshole
responcible for genocide on a scale greater than any the universe
had ever known." I mean it as point blank fact, that fast food is
killing the planet, choking off the food supply to starving people
world wide while offering up nothing but the least nutritious shit
this side of a Spongiformed sheep brain haggis in Hong Kong Flu
Chicken sauce.
Oh yeah, sorry about that Monkey thing.
My Monkey Works on Shakespeare
Thursday, April 5, 2001 Richard III
Act One Scene One
Now is the summer of our merriment! gvyuier
vui viebv vuibvoe bb iob i;vb bii irgubv vboeho ohuhve voevivh bbohv
otbo03e byuidfb iwyr b iief iib igb bior rilh bi nourehb ibuiryb uil
buigrhbih iorb uo0uo r ob or oubre buoeg ber brn uo rogr bo b
UOhbiubv IYU UIObOUIboubo oJIu o io; hou Ui uiob ibiuH uio O bopuih
ouui uio oshock the monkey yuigr vbuifb i oefb dhvoeou jrln bljfb
jbkfj bb jkdb vodb dib ifd i oib iowe feio oufyuh8i2uryig 9oytu 77
9yg 078TGO789t OUUYJKOUYGOGy h 0O89089oi98 JKhugkgbj viurvh idjgf
uoerh 3uroh ouf uifv i get your paws off me you damn dirty ape vebv
iilebb neuon oenb o nio nboenb uo o onu eon oen eb n ehb ob
wephvhjbiuhgUIHGyiG vikb io ;vn v
Stupid fucking monkey. I don't
have infinity here!
That's My Bad Review!
Thursday, April 5, 2001 Since yesterday was my
birthday, and nothing particularly exciting happened, for today's
update, I'd like to pretend that I'm flying high over the city in a
television news, eye-in-the-sky, helicopter and talking to my
anchor, let's say, Tom, down in the studio. Imagine, please, the
sounds of the whumping blades whiring round and round or if that
won't due, slicing the air in rapid spins. I have to yell over the
cacophony of the engine's roar, the wind whipping by and those
aforementioned thum-thum-thum-thum-thuming blades.
From my
perspective up here, Tom, things are pretty much going to shit. I'd
like to think that it'd be dog goned easy as breaking wind to write
a funny parody of the Bush White House, but somehow Trey Parker
managed to create hideous, nigh-pro-Republican dreck from doing just
that, Tom. I don't understand it. Maybe Parker delights in being the
"edgy" Hollywood bad boy whose chief claim to fame is putting words
like, "Chode," "fucking jew" and "Robert Smith" into the mouths of
cartoon eight year olds while simultaneously being a shameless
conservative twat on every issue aside from, maybe, freedom of
speech. What do you think, Tom? Tom? We seem to have a faulty
connection. Anyway, wasn't it funny in That's My Bush when
Trey portrays the leader of the pro-choice movement as a big bull
dyke? It's supposed to be funny because, as we all know, there's
something fundamentally wrong with large women who have crew cuts.
Therefore, we should laugh at them, and possibly ridicule any
politics they have remotely connected with sexuality because they
are so ostensibly non-sexually desirous to anyone but lesbians and
the guys who fit into the Jerry Springer/Georgian demographic. Isn't
that right, Tom?
How very right you are indeed,
Rick
What really got me about the show, was how it tries so
very hard to be a hip and clever post-post-post-structuralist
deconstruction of sitcoms. It liked to throw that into our faces
about every thirty seconds or so. Too bad Married With
Children already did that well over a decade ago, huh, Tom? And
that laugh track used in That's My Bush, it couldn't have
been more intrusive or so clearly "nudge-nudge-wink-wink"ing
everyone as if to say, "Hey, doesn't this showy, ostentatious laugh
track display oh-so wittily how truly obnoxious and pandering
regular laugh tracks on other sit-coms are to their audiences?" Yes,
Trey, boy does it ever, and that's why you win the Junior High
Observation Award for your efforts in television sit-com analysis
because you are so right about those laugh tracks.
In the world
of half-baked politically feeble dip shits, Trey Parker is the
asshole from whence they dangle. Back to you Tom.
round and round
Wednesday, April 4, 2001 Yesterday, it seems so very
like 24 hours ago or so. It was a day of failed expectations. Full
on, full blown assault of expectational failure. What the wheel was
supposed to bring 'round, 'tid not bring 'round. That was my lot...
yesterday. But today should be different. If their is karmic justice
(as a friend has suggested recently) then today I should get my
karmic just desserts. Unless just desserts are bad, then I'll take
some other just something or other. Today, as of half past six, I'll
enter the last diurnal course of my 3rd decade. If for no other
reason than that, today is different than yesterday. Turning 29 is a
fairly concrete expectation that only one thing could change, and
even that can't stop it from happening. Of course, that one thing
could stop me from realizing it is happening, but it doesn't change
the fact.
Yesterday, I woke up, got out of bed, dragged... my ass
out to the car and drove to the Post Office where they were holding
a package for me that they were unable to deliver the day before. I
reasoned that by getting to the p.o. right when they open at 8:30 in
the a.m., then I'd have no line to wait in and be in and out. An
hour later I was out. A whole fucking hour of my last full day as a
youthful, spry twenty-eight year old, robbed from me by the
insidious bastards known as the government of the United States of
America. The fellow in line in front of me (told me he was an actor
- what's f 'n' new?) began grumbling about how the post office was
always this way. It was like, I don't know, some Spinozan constant
for him. It was an immutable attribute of the P.O. He shouldn't have
talked to me. I launched fury against the shabbiness of the Post
Office, the understaffing, the great expenses paid for security and
the lack of attention to expediency. All the people in line began to
focus on my mouthing off, and before I knew it, everyone was
detailing at least one postal horror story. "Shit," I thought, "This
is L.A. Fuckers out here have rioted for less than slow service at
the post office. What have I done? I must make amends!"
And
amends I did make. I quickly spewed up a line of pro-worker,
anti-government rhetoric that'd make Marx cry (not in joy, babe. not
in joy). I followed by hanging my hat on the underpaid postal
employees and how the postal system fights the desires of its own
workers for positive change. So remember, when you're not reading in
the history books about the Los Angeles riots of naught one,
remember who quelled that insurrection. The riots of naught one were
also likely to be nick named the "Zimmer Frame Riots" as most of the
hardcore croaking and angered groaning was coming from the
extraordinarily aged.
After my quick trip to the post office I
returned home. The next denied expectation: No Dave Mustaine. This
one, I don't care too much, but it does piss me off a bit. I had
some good questions for the fucker. Not much I could do. All I knew
was the name of the hotel where the interview was to take place, and
nothing more. The hotel appeared in searches over the greater Los
Angeles area. My journalistic pursuits for the day: squashed. So
much for that.
Finally, it is now late into the evening. Fear and
Loathing is about to come on the Sundance Channel. I've opened a
Heineken, peeled the foil seal off a jar of Fischer's peanuts, and
I'm ready to sit and watch. I hadn't seen the film since the theater
and it seemed like the perfect thing to be on television and watch
at that moment. I turn it to Sundance, and laugh. On the digital
cable, at the bottom of the screen, they have a banner that tells
you what channel you're on and what is either on or about to come
on. I laughed because the banner had an odd typo. It said, "Fear and
Learning" was up next. Then, came a commercial, telling me to stay
tuned because a show called "Fear and Learning at "some elementary
school" was about to come on. It was no typo, but that hardly needs
mentioning. That was the final straw. I closed the peanuts, slammed
the beer, brushed my teeth and crawled back into bed.
None of
these minor defeats are that big of a deal. Maybe it was a way for
my year that was my 28th (a rather shitty year really) to cap itself
off in a series of small, minor defeats before allowing the karma
wheel to start turning the other way or at least looking the other
way and leaving me the hell alone.
Misanthropy Melt Down
Tuesday, April 3, 2001 Some semblance of well-being is
returning. I've been down under the muck of the porno job, but with
the submission of my two week resignation notice, I feel the murky
clouds of misanthropy and deep depression parting like the curtains
on a very festive mixed metaphor. Today, I have time off and if all
goes as planned I'll be assisting in an interview with Dave Mustaine
at four o'clock. What the fuck I want to ask D.M. I have yet to
figure out. I think I'll ask how Megadeth's VH1 "Behind the Music"
special will differ from every other band's accounts of their
descents into a nightmare world of booze, broads, and buffoonery. A
friend suggested I ask him what color his roots are. Maybe I'll save
that for last. I could ask Dave some questions straight out of Young
Miss magazine such as, "What do you do when you're feeling naughty?"
or "Who's hotter: Michael Anthony, Ricky Martin or Lars Ulrich?"
Maybe the whole interview could just be a long series of "hot or
not" queries. Or the ever popular, and so very in-depth, "in or out"
questions. Napster, in or out? Rock Stars over 40, in or out? Your
cock, in or out? I'll probably just ask him about the election, and
if he feels the Bush Crew is better for freedom of speech than
Gore's bitch. I mean, Dave must be political, right? I'm not a
fish...etc... Powerful stuff.
This week creates a nice link for
me through the history of The Decline of Western Civilization
movies. I seem to have met just about everyone involved in the third
film (musicians, squatters and so forth), but none from the first
and second. Well, now this is my week. Today it's Mustaine and
Thursday it's Ving (from two and one respectively). At least I don't
have to interview Ving. Kirsten and Lee are both being interviewed
by a "pirate" radio station (87.9 fm) Thursday night at 8pm and I'm
going to cover the event and the station for Modern Fix. "Pirate" is
in quotes simply because, technically, to be a real pirate station
you must be operating illegally and there's no fucking way a station
on the FM band in Los Angeles can operate illegally for more than a
few minutes tops. I have no convenient way to wrap this rambling
mess of an update up so...
Internet Party!
Friday, March 30, 2001 I am catched cold in the brain.
And due to laziness I will not use my own words, words like, "Frue"
and "Proufgh" and "Jorkely" in today's update, but rather, I will
copy and paste some compelling tidbits from other online journal
keepers' journals. Let us begin:
It's strange how people can
seem perfectly normal at school, them be found in a car dead. Fuck
our society.
They practicly give those out to anyone wearing
pants and I got decline.
Im cold and lonely. I wish someone was
here to share my chowder with me.
I wash my hands of that
idea. It was a bad idea. Journal sites leave me feeling violated in
rather unpleasant ways.
Finally, after a year and a half out
here, I have made the trip to the DMV to settle the score and get a
CA driver's license once and for all. It wasn't too bad. I had to
endure some flirtacious skank in line who wouldn't stop talking to
me. No real trauma, but did I look like I wanted company? Did I
really want to hear about her old home town in Kentucky? I
understand that some people are lonely or just simply can't shut the
hell up. Everyone at times wishes someone was there to share the
chowder, so to speak, but I'm not the chowder sharing type. After a
half hour of stories involving drunken night time adventures, an
amish 7-11, and various traffic violations that had the end result
of placing her in line next to me at the DMV, I was called to the
window. I read line C. I read line D. I read line E. They took my
fifteen dollars and made me take a no-brainer multiple choice exam.
The questions are the sort that are impossible to answer wrongly as
long as you take no longer than one breath to choose the answer.
Thinking is not the way to score high. With that in mind, I scored
100%. One question had a picture of a sign reading, "Do Not Pass,"
and asked, "This sign means don't pass:
a) Until after you pass
the sign.
b) Unless it seems safe to do so
c) Other vehicles
for any reason.
The fucking sign that says "DO NOT PASS" means do
not pass, fucking period. If this is all driver's need to know to
join Los Angeles's great autobahn dance, then the number of
accidents is no wonder. I guess you could say, "They practicly give
those out to anyone wearing pants." Fuck our society. And, um, make
mad donkey love to our culture.
Walking up the Hills
Thursday, March 29, 2001 I was asked this morning by
my mother in law to be if there was any place nearby to go for a
walk. This is L.A. If there is one thing this city is no good for
it's being able to walk out your front door and head in any
direction to go for a walk. Sure there are plenty of places
to walk. It isn't like the city tore up the sidewalks along
with the rail system at the behest of the oil and automobile
industries, but "to go for a walk" is a whore
of a different color. To go for a walk, you need to first drive
several miles to find a place suitable for walking. In Madison, you
walked the block to whichever lake was nearest you and strolled
along its fishy scented shores. There are no fish scented shores in
L.A. People that have lived here their whole lives are often
surprised to learn that that concrete trench winding its way through
every burnt out down trodden neighborhood in the land of sunshine is
actually a river. A river of graffiti, concrete, trash and a trickle
of water. Unless it rains, then the fucker can transform in moments
into a raging white water torrent, teeming with cigarette butts,
Mcdonald's hamburger wrappers, rusty grocery carts and everything
else the street run-off feeding the suddenly furious river contains.
After the rains, the river still flows, vital and proud, happy to
masquerade as a real river even if for a short time, and if there
was a way to walk along the river, it wouldn't be too bad. It'd have
great appeal for sociologists who want to discern what litters the
streets of the poorest ghettos through which the river flows. Lots
of papers bearing the Taco Bell logo. Lots of disposable
diapers.
To walk in L.A., one must drive upwards. To walk in
L.A., one must get up into those hills, criss-crossed with trails.
Deer still live in the hills, and maybe a coyote or two, but I
wouldn't hold out much hope for spotting any. And don't try to get
up into those hills without first driving up into them. That's the
only way. Unless you're one of those freaks jogging around with a
catheter up your urethra and a little box at your side digitally
counting down the seconds to your death. I think those guys jog up
into the hills with a smile on their face because they're genuinely
happy having come to grips with the absurdity of life by behaving in
one of the most ostensibly absurd ways a man can: monitoring their
hearts with a machine on their hips while deliberately exerting
themselves in such a way, in remote locations, as to induce a heart
attack or at the very least, heat stroke.
So much for walking.
I've been busy making the final repairs to Angel's Song, and have
achieved a state of completion. I'm washing my hands of it for now.
Now it must go into the hands of others while I nurse another of its
type into existence. Maybe, dear Sisyphus looked upon his endless
toil with the rock and the hill in such a way as to not view each
attempt to roll the damn thing to the top of the hill as a failure,
but rather as a completed cycle from which, for having tried and
accomplishing as much as he could by giving it his all, he derived a
sense of pride and well-being. I should take on that attitude. Here
I am, back at the bottom of the hill, a new screenplay I am
beginning to push. The main difference here, between myself and
Sisyphus, is I'm not pushing the same exact boulder back up the
hill. I think, perhaps, the hill is identical to the last if not the
same, but it's definitely a different boulder since my last one has
yet to roll back down on me. I doubt it not, it will roll back down,
but I'll be one up on it by being half way back up with another.
Kill Don't Kidnap
Monday, March 26, 2001 What sort of effect is work
having on me? Last week I write a short script about Britney Spear's
sexual activities after her death (I'll post it eventually) and
yesterday at work I wrote an essay on musical criticism that ends up
with me beseeching the public to smell my shit to truly understand
the music being reviewed. (I'll fine tune that and post it later
this week). Something still isn't quite right. I find myself unable
to write. Everything is blocked off. Distractions are constant:
people walking by, talking, shaking of pills from the bottle,
pigeons flying into the window and then cooing with wrathful vigor,
doors slamming and the constant looming threat of work. I've spent
more hours complaining about work in my daily writings than any
other single topic. It's hard to put a finger on what makes me so
adverse to work. Truth be told, it's not the work that bothers me,
but the forced direction placed upon my day, my time, my fucking
life, you know? I sit there or stand there, at the video store,
watching these victims of pornographic addiction file through the
doors and regardless of what they are like as human beings, I
despise them. A red hot ember burns in the center of my forehead as
the rage increases with each new customer so does the intensity of
the hot spot. I worry one day, one customer too many will walk
through the door and a highly concentrated heat ray will shoot from
my head and reduce him to smoldering ashes and a pair of shoes. I
say, "him" because 99% of the people who walk through the door into
the land of porn (if you discount the old Russian women trying to
buy vodka)* are men.
*I have to assume they're trying to buy
vodka because I can't understand a word they say even if they're
speaking in English. The other day some Russian speaking in heavily
inflected Ruskie English was trying to ask me something, what I
still don't know:
He says something in unidentifiable
English.
I say, "What?"
He repeats in the same unidentifiable
English.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand."
Again with the
gibberish.
"Yes, the sale items are against that wall."
"No,"
he says, and shakes his head. Then, for the first time, he speaks
clearly and I understand! He says, "Is my English that
bad?"
"Yeah, sort of," I answer.
Eventually he left without
porn. It's probably for the best. Don't need him getting all horny
and breeding.
What I'm getting at is it might be high time to go
back into the whole extra work thing. Sure the hours suck, but it's
easy. You get hang out, drink coffee, talk shit on Marky Mark behind
his back with pissed off P.A.'s (even if he's not in the movie), eat
swordfish steaks, listen in on the lost dreams of horribly desperate
and shattered, way down deep inside, actors and actresses. Speaking
of actors and actresses, are Russel Crowe and Julia Roberts really
the two best we had last year? The art of acting is in serious
friggin' trouble if it's true. It seems the academy equated "good"
acting with volume and underwire support. Note to be wouldbe
kidnappers: why kidnap when you can kill. I'm not advocating the
death of Russel Crowe mind you, but rather the head's of studios
that allow movies like "Say It isn't So!" and "See Spot Run" to be
made. Here's how it works, you kill one studio exec. and announce to
the world's primary news sources, i.e. Extra and Inside Edition,
that next week another one of the artless bastards gets iced unless
you receive the budget money allocated to the next piece of
"American-Beauty-Pie" piece of "Manchild, Money For Nothing"
bullshit. If they fail to deliver the cash in small non sequential
unmarked bills, take out the next one immediately, and then increase
your demands. For every failure to deliver, tell them another one
dies and your requirements to stop the killing steepens. This would
actually be a service to humankind as opposed to a simple disservice
to some descendant of the criminally insane.
INT. MORGUE
Friday, March 23, 2001 What I wrote for today, I've
decided is too graphic for posting at the moment. Besides, it isn't
even typed up. I wrote out a short five page screenplay for a short
film at work the other day. The problem is I need Britney Spears to
play the lead, and since her role involves hardcore necrophilia and
drug use, I doubt she'll be accepting the part any time soon. I'm
burnt out and feel no flair for this writing shit at the moment.
That's really to bad, you know, since I'm trying to be a writer or
something of the sort at any rate. I think it's work that is the
culprit. I have no g.d. breathing room. No two days off ever come in
a row. Slowly, I realize that I've spent about as much time slinging
porn as I can put up with. There is a straw, and it's coming soon,
and it'll be the last. It'll break the camel's back. It'll crack the
beetle's carapace. It'll finish the robin's nest. It'll suck the
last of the malt from the bottom of the cup of tolerance. Since I
can't write, I'll try to be useful.
Looking for music? Try here. I ordered a disc through their
service last Sunday and it arrived in my mailbox today. That's some
fast delivery. It doesn't seem to matter what you're looking for,
they have it. Of course, there's always Napster. Oh yeah, drink
Coke. And, uh, eat Doritos or Fritos in a pinch, it's okay.
I
have six pack of beer with my name on it so I must go, yes, I must
go. Actually, the name on the beer is Shiner Bock. Just another beer
on the long sad road of Leinenkugel-lessness. It sounds like a
Nietchean state of being "Leinenkugellessness." Beer drinkers proof
that God is dead.
Waste of Time
Thursday, March 22, 2001 Soon, the porn must come to an
end. I don't know for how much longer I can take this parade of
sad faced men, through the glass doors and into the dark recessess
of depravity. I have come to loathe the regulars. The men who take
home two or more videos every other day in a continual chain of
renting, masturbating, returning, renting, ad infinitum... I want to
be mean to these people. Find any loophole I can in the overly
pedantic corporate policy of Leisure Time Entertainment to restrict
them from what they want. I follow every rule to the point of
irritating customers away and I hope they never come back. I watch
TV and ignore them as they stand at the counter waiting for me. They
cough to get my attention, but until they make an actual distinctive
cry in understandable English like, "I'm ready, here," I won't
budge. I look none of them in the eyes unless they piss me off, then
I stare them down as I berate their stupidity. I overcharge them,
make up bogus fees and hand out rewind charges willy-nilly. I refuse
to accept returns on damaged videos. Whatever I can do to take my
aggressions out on them I will do.
The job sickens me. It steals
my time away and pays me in wages that should be considered
criminal, especially for a corporation that launches satelites into
space. I do the bare minimum. Their is no reward for doing well.
I've never come in late or called in sick. Not once. Yet I still get
a written warning for standing up for myself. Well, that warning did
it. Now, I do nothing. I refuse. I resist all authority. They lay it
on thick and I let it bury me. No more rules. Today, I do everything
the way I want to. That is, I do everything my way. The way they
want me to do things will not be the way things are done. No more
work. I will show up for work, but not work. They owe me an apology
by gum. And I'll rest until I get it.
Today: an update by, and interview with, a RIOT GRRRL!
Wednesday, March 21, 2001 feverish free flowing
effervescent fornicating fuck farms of the homo sapien rictus spread
as an all aspiring seminal shock wave of masculine malcontent
malicious malaise. i am gripped within its dirty heat. spanked hard
by its scurrilous meat. i am strapped down and brutalized by the
gnawing anxieties of masculinity's itchy thermal underwear. under
where. underwerewolf changelings upsetting their core beliefs for
cheap thrills spills kills will less abandon in babylon. mark my
meteoric shame made humble by the expurse of estrogen. all shunned.
all punned. all gunned down for contrariness to the system. system
of perversions and distortions and illegal abortions seeking
contortions through which my body my self must be undergone gone
gone with the originally sinned. sinned against by syndicates
cooperatives cooperations corporations corporeal realizations. oh
the femininity. failing blimps passing fiery gasses descend in every
waking moment. i crash and i burn again. i crash and i yearn for
more to get me back up. high. high. up up and away. up up and
enslaved. and even still i must poop.
Rick: I'd like to thank my GRRRRRL guest writer. That was
a nice change of pace. Wasn't it? Can you tell us anything about
your writing?
GRRRRL: men are afraid to write from within.
truly from within for masculinity's withered sex hangs outside
disallowing inner explorations.
Rick: I
see.
GRRRRL: no men can truly see.
Rick: Are you
a lesbian?
GRRRL: a woman's powerful denunciations of man
made constructs often leads weaker minds to need to think the woman
is perverted from the straight and narrow and the men feel safe in
this assessment in the knowledge accompanying it that would keep the
woman from entering motherhood.
Rick: So you're saying
you're not a lesbian?
GRRRRL: i'm saying within my ways
there is no priority given to what comes first. the system of
capitalizing the first letter in sentences and proper nouns comes
from the notion that man came first upon the world and is somehow
superior. and the only true punctuation is the period. a pause a
sign of life a constant in the lives of women.
Rick:You
say the cutest things.
Well, that's all for today. I hop we all walk away from this a
little bit wiser.
Say it isn't so!
Tuesday, March 20, 2001 Terrific. A virus. And my
Viral hunter, seeker software suffers a fatal error when attempting
to cure the ailing hard drive. Maybe it's related to why I can't get
anything to come through on my old site: see the classic DGI link to
the left. It seems to have fried the FAX software and screwed file
relations. I've corrected most of that, but still can't get GIFs to open up. It doesn't
matter how much I scream at them or how forceful my language is.
"Open the durn hell up, ya idgit GIF!" Nothing. Nothing. Nada. I'm
resigned to a life of abject failure. There's nothing wrong with it
really. Sure I dance on a poverty line, devoid of GIFs and cash, but
I help disseminate information about... myself mostly, but someone
has to do it and it ain't going to be Entertainment Tonight, baby. I
also help disseminate pornographic video tapes and some sex toys.
Not so many of the latter, but the former go out the door like hot
cakes at a hot cake convention with lots and lots of doors. I ain't
whistling
dixie. Fucking
world, fucking hell, fucking handbaskets.
Do you wish you
could be more interesting? Or would you rather those around you be
more interesting? Are you dying without accomplishment? Does lack of
accomplishment make you want to die? What do you regret, right now?
What will you regret on your death bed? Why are you where you are?
What keeps you there? What perpetuates the same old habits? Are
there answers? Is there
"thee" answer?
When W.C. Fields was on his death bed
a friend came to visit him. Mr. Fields was thumbing through a
bible.
"What are you doing?" asked his friend, "You don't believe
in God. Are you having a change of heart now?"
Fields replied in
his classic drunkard's drawl, "No, I'm looking for loopholes."
Or
something like that.
Useless Waste
Monday, March 19, 2001 "Consider Schizophrenia!" It
almost sounds like a new slogan cooked up by the beef industry. I
know Mad Cow isn't schizophrenia, but I'm not writing about Mad Cow.
I'm not quite writing about schizophrenia either. If I keep this up
I'll just be, more or less, writing about what I am and am not
writing about. That's all dandy when writing philosophy, but this
clearly isn't philosophy. This isn't even a cohesive train of
thought. With that said, let me get back on track. I was considering
various mental disorders, and the only one I can fully get my mind
around is schizophrenia. That's an easy one because we all at times
hear voices or maybe briefly see a person where there is no person
to be seen. It's usually a trick of the lighting or from driving too
late into the night. Sometimes it's from sitting and doing nothing
for too long a period of time. The mind hates that so it makes you
hear things, maybe someone calling your name. You distinctly hear an
external source say your name, but there is nothing that could have
spoke. It's easy to imagine how it would be to live life in a state
of constant imaginary stimulation and paranoia. I tried the same
with mental retardation, trying to imagine life with that particular
affliction, but could not. The best I could get a sense of was
pretending to be retarded: dropping your pants in the middle of the
street, howling like a feeble wolf, living in Florida, etc...
Pretending is nothing like being, however. I went down to Compton
and pretended to be black, and no one fell for it. "Hey there my
fellow jive ass nigga! Good Times! Spike Lee! Right on, brother!
Word." It didn't work as planned. It's not the same as throwing on a
green sweater vest and making like you're Irish. The Irish don't
care. They're all too drunk, busy bombing everything in sight and
chasing leprechauns. This racism must stop. We need big drinking
holidays for every country. Aren't they all equally deserving of
their own special day of acknowledgment? I think a russian day would
be fun. The day could be spent by beginning drinking at 8 am,
wandering around the streets drunk, and cutting ahead of others in
lines when ever possible. I'm sorry, ever since the cold war ended
I'm not sure if it's still okay to make fun of the impoverished baby
eating, nuke-mad scoundrels the media took every last measure to
make me fear and hate as a youth.
Schizophrenia, I think that
was the topic. It's the most easily fully realizable mental illness.
It's too hard to imagine being bereft of intelligence while
maintaining a controlling intelligence.
I'm sick of that.
Yesterday, for the first time, I ordered a product online, thus
flinging myself, my trust, faith and credit card number, headlong
into this bold new technology. I hope I'm not swindled. It sure does
seem wrong entering a credit number and expiration date into java
fields on the world wide web. What if somebody uses my card to buy
child porn? Well, I won't stand for it! I'll start a watch dog group
out of my faithful readers. If you see anyone buying "Little Sally
and the Stud Bull," with credit card number, 2377 8970 0926 9992
with an expiration date of July 2003, then let me know.
Bilge
Thursday, March 15, 2001 I have but a few minutes for
todays update. Is my lack of time for writing caused by working too
much or that my roommate has hooked the apartment up with digital
cable? It's such mind numbing shit. I'm glad to have it. At least
the Simpsons will come in clearer and I'll no longer have to wiggle
the rabbit ears around to watch Survivor, but if it starts cutting
into my life, if I feel myself inexorably drawn to the plethora of
stations, (Bravo, Sci-fi, IFC, Sundance, AMC, Comedy Central, MTVX)
unable to control my viewing impulses, then I'll remove the digital
enemy from the television. It does have an allure I find hard to
resist. Even now I fantasize of clicking, clicking, clicking,
through the numerous stations and watching the images quickly form
like rapidly freezing water into ice crystals on a pane of glass.
It's so beautiful. The station isn't immediately there. You click
from Judge Roy Judy Brown to Rikki Springer and watch the audience
come into view as the box decrypts the image. Depixelation, I call
it. Why do I have such a hard time not heeding its siren's
song?
Blurbs:
I just finished off five cd reviews for
Modern Fix. The highlight of
the metal fistful of discs was the Wesley Willis Fiasco: Live
E.P. Whip it up mother Fucka'. Scream, Dracula, scream! It's
actually much more fun than Wesley Willis on his own since the
Fiasco in their punked up Van Halen way bear repeat listening
whereas once you've heard Rock And Roll McDonalds there isn't much
of a need to hear it again.
I have officially, as opposed to my
earlier unofficial announcements, sworn off fast food. Except In-N-Out Burger which would be
akin to abandoning, um, akin to abandoning... something you really
wouldn't want to abandon, I guess. Yeah, it'd be like that. I also
refuse to give up the good old White Castles. Not
that I have to worry about ever eating at one out here.
That's
all the room I have for words. Note how I made a deliberate and
succesful attempt to keep today's writing apolitical? Expect more
contentless fluff in the near future.
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