Unleash The Walrus

Problem: problems

2012-01-28T19:06:00.000-08:00

THE ZONE OF UNEASE, Jan 28 – I have a new Vice column out regarding the phenomenonof god damned fucking shit that doesn’t fucking work right. This column wasinspired by Blogger / Blogspot, which I would gleefully curb stomp into thousands ofshards of plastic and circuits, if only it were a physical thing I couldphysically assault in the real, non-Tronworld.

Apparently I’ve been a slow learner in figuring out how badBlogspot has gotten. When I tell people of my coding woes they say things like oh yeah, that site sucks. The generaltone reminds me of the night I was driving a large rental truck north fromVirginia with all my possessions in the back and my two cats in carriers in thecab and my pal Neil woke from a long nap as we passed Philadelphia only to say,with obvious disappointment, oh you tookTHIS route 95. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THESE THINGS?!?

The good news is that I’ll have a snazzy new blog upsometime before I leave for my book tour in April. Speaking of which, the datesare slowly firming up. Thanks to every one who has been writing in. I’ll keepthe dates below current. And Vice hasalso gone and printed 3 chapters from the new novel. If you’re worried thatthese will spoil the book for you, please keep in mind that there are stillanother 106 chapters that you have not yet read.

Help Needed For Tour

2012-01-19T14:19:00.000-08:00

OK. Book tour time. In case I haven't promoted myself properly to your demographic, I have a new novel coming out on April 1. It's a really good book. To support this really good book, I'm doing a 7-week book tour. The cities are listed below. Any cities marked EVENT TBA are in the process of being booked. Any cities marked SEEKING EVENT are cities for which no shows are booked. It is with these cities that I need your help.

This is an 80+ show tour, meaning I'm attempting to do two events in each city; an early-to-mid afternoon book signing, and then a later spoken word set at a different venue. Here's what I'm looking for:

1. Good bookstores for readings. A good record store would work in a pinch as well.

2. Good venues for spoken shows. All kinds of venues would work for this, with a few important restrictions. I can't play with any loud bands, punk or otherwise. Punk shows are great things for which I am a bad fit. Likewise, I can't do any sets at bars. Bars are awesome if you are 22, or freshly divorced, or a serial killer. They are no good for what I'm doing.

Same goes for house shows. Your house is probably awesome, but I would still be worried about your roommate Paul killing me. Nothing personal.

That still leaves lots of options for events and venues. All-spoken shows can be good (I've done these with Erika Anderson, Sharon Cheslow, Jessica Hopper, and Kevin Seconds, among others). But I'm up for other suggestions. To be frank, the best possible show would be me opening for a barbershop quartet. See if you can get that to work.

I can be reached at:

2012tour AT unleashthewalrus DOT com

Please place your city name in the subject line. Thanks!

Here are the dates:

4/1 SU — NYC

EVENT TBA

4/2 MO — Brooklyn

EVENT TBA

4/3 TU — Providence, RI

EVENT TBA

4/4 WE — Portland, ME

SEEKING EVENT

4/5 TH — Boston, MA

EVENT TBA

4/6 FR — Hartford, CT

SEEKING EVENT

4/7 SA — W. MA

EVENT TBA

4/8 SU — Philadelphia, PA

SEEKING EVENT

4/9 MO — Pittsburgh, PA

SEEKING EVENT

4/10 TU — Cleveland, OH

SEEKING EVENT

4/11 WE — Detroit / Ann Arbor, MI

SEEKING EVENT

4/12 TH — Chicago, IL

SEEKING EVENT

4/13 FR — Cincinnati, OH

EVENT TBA

4/14 SA — Louisville, KY

SEEKING EVENT

4/15 SU — Nashville, TN

SEEKING EVENT

4/16 MO — Atlanta, GA

SEEKING EVENT

4/18 WE — Columbia, SC

SEEKING EVENT

4/19 TH — Raleigh, NC

SEEKING EVENT

4/20 FR — Richmond, VA

EVENT TBA

4/21 SA — Baltimore, MD

EVENT TBA

4/22 SU — DC

SEEKING EVENT

4/26 TH — LA, CA

EVENT TBA

4/27 FR — Claremont, CA

EVENT TBA

5/2 WE — SF, CA

EVENT TBA

5/3 TH — Bay Area, CA

SEEKING EVENT

5/4 FR — Humboldt, CA

EVENT TBA

5/5 SA — Portland, OR

EVENT TBA

5/6 SU — Seattle / Olympia, WA

SEEKING EVENT

5/8 TU — Austin, TX

EVENT TBA

5/9 WE — Dallas, TX

SEEKING EVENT

5/10 TH — Houston, TX

EVENT TBA

5/11 FR — New Orleans, LA

SEEKING EVENT

5/12 SA — Little Rock, AR

SEEKING EVENT

5/13 SU — Memphis, TN

SEEKING EVENT

5/15 TU — St. Louis, MO

EVENT TBA

5/16 WE — Madison, WI

SEEKING EVENT

5/17 TH — Minneapolis, MN

SEEKING EVENT

5/18 FR — Omaha, NE

SEEKING EVENT

5/19 SA — Kansas City, KS

SEEKING EVENT

5/20 SU — OK City, OK

SEEKING EVENT

Difficulties

2012-01-11T11:33:00.000-08:00

Having some technical issues with this blog. In the meantime, please enjoy my groundbreaking Vice columns on Laundromats and cat hair and freaking out. Frowning face emoticon.

Missed Opportunities

2012-01-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

REGRETS DEPT. - These are opportunities that I took pains to miss.

PUBLIC ENEMY (1987)

I'm not going to belabor this one. The Beastie Boys played my hometown arena, and instead of catching the second band, Public Enemy, I elected to interview Murphy's Law in their tour bus for my fanzine. I think I was feeling defensive, as every kid in my school was at this concert (meaning, every kid at my school was, technically, at a hardcore show), and I probably wanted to be able to brag I'd gotten "backstage".

This isn't a big deal. With the miracle of time machines, I'll have plenty of other opportunities to see Public Enemy on their first tour. I'm not worried about it.

PRESIDENT BUSH SMACKDOWN (1989)

I was visiting family in Maine one summer when the President's advance team came to town. They needed a quiet spot from which to drop Bush's cigarette boat into the Atlantic, far from the hounding media of Kennebunkport. Eventually a limo arrived and disgorged the leader of the free world. He was tall. His few security men seemed relaxed by the surroundings. I could've gotten in one good smack across the face. This was pre-Panama and Iraq, so one manly, pistol-crack loud smack - nothing worse - would have been the appropriate response.

Say I'd gotten 20 years in prison. Would I have missed so much?

"I'M IN HELMET" (1992)

In the early 1990's, I spent some time in Fun City, the Manhattan recording studio of Wharton Tiers. At the time, Tiers was known as the go-to guy for a large swath of the alternative scene that would break mainstream in just a few years. He was very personable and professional, and adept at dealing with band members who quarreled openly in his recording room, or in the control room, or on the sidewalk outside, long after the session had ended.

The studio was less of a city, however, than a low-ceilinged basement. Here is where the problem came in. Tiers lived in the building upstairs, and he took increasingly long "breaks", leaving all of us waiting, watching the clock tick away our paid minutes. What did he do up there? Eat leisurely meals? Take baths? Did he have a secret life with another band in another recording studio?

During these breaks, there wasn't much to do besides stare at the walls and wait for his return. One of the walls was worth staring at, holding dozens of master tapes for the city's indie elite: Prong, Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth, Swans, White Zombie. Again and again, I found my gaze returning to the master tapes for Helmet's "Strap It On".

I liked this album. It wasn't such a stretch picturing myself singing karaoke on this album. Specifically, it wasn't such a stretch picturing myself smuggling a blank 1" Ampex tape into Fun City, swapping reels during our unsupervised downtime, bringing the Helmet masters to any one of hundreds of competing studios, re-recording a new mix with my own vocals, replacing the tapes on my next visit, and producing a bootleg a few months later. I wouldn't have needed lyrics; Helmet's staccato riffs required nothing more than someone singing "I'm in Helmet" over and over. I'm in Helmet, I could almost hear myself croon. Helmet Helmet, I'm in Helmet. Helmet Helmet. I'm in Helmet!

I wish I'd done this. Instead, I'd get depressed at my own cowardice and eat lots of junk food from the corner bodega. "You're always eating snacks," Tiers jovially told me during one session. In retaliation, I stole the studio's copy of Celebrity Sleuth magazine.

FARRAKHAN SPEECH (1996)

I spent my first two years in Richmond, Virginia, living in Jackson Ward, which was then a nearly all-black enclave of working families. Me and my roommates weren't greeted with any fresh baked cookies, but it was a safe, quiet neighborhood with exceptionally bright street lights. Whenever any of our parents would visit, they'd look around nervously and say, "how are race relations here?"

Nation Of Islam Muslims manned the intersection that formed the western gateway to this neighborhood. They sold copies of their newspaper, The Final Call, to most drivers stopped at the light. If the driver was a young white male, they'd politely motion for us to roll the window down and then ask us if we'd seen the movie "Congo".

"Not yet," I'd lie to the crisply dressed Muslim man.

"Well, you should," he'd say with a smile, motioning me on when my light turned green.

When Minister Louis Farrakhan came to town, I biked down to the lecture hall. I'd been excited about seeing him speak in person, but when I arrived, I found myself the only bicycling, not-angry, non-black person at the event. I rode home in a cloud of intimidation and self-disgust. Later, a pasty Caucasian acquaintance told me it'd been "fun", despite the bomb threat. Later still, I boycotted the Marilyn Manson protesters at the same venue, to provide some racial balance to my inexplicable cop-out. The end.

Are you e-sperienced? (198?)

2012-01-04T07:45:00.000-08:00

SIGNIFICANT DOCUMENTS, Jan 6 - This tidbit comes from the last page of issue 24 of Sick Teen, a midwest punk zine from the mid-1980’s. I was an avid reader of Sick Teen in high school and college, but I never managed to locate more than 5 copies. It was obscure. It was also hard to read - the sheer density of graphics and writing forced me to use a magnifying glass, even back when I had 20/20 vision.

Here’s one of my favorite bits, enlarged:

Who thinks like this? Not me, evidently, although I've tried hard, over the years, to emulate this level of next-levelness. Enjoy.

New: Mugger Books

2012-01-02T06:16:00.000-08:00

THE INTERNET, Jan 2 - My pal Anthony's new publishing houseis now online. He's also got a Mugger Books blog and Twitter account. I amgoing to nag him to have both be interesting.

Also, the Amazon page is now up for my new novel, The LoomOf Ruin. Every copy you preorder helps it not be #297,818,761,300 in booksales. It also helps you be snooty to people at cocktail parties discussing mymany novels twenty years from now. Win-win.

2012

2012-01-01T06:29:00.000-08:00

Endings of 2011

2011-12-31T13:21:00.000-08:00

1. DIAMOND LANE STICKERS

It's going to be hard, in the far future, conveying theincredible smugness of Prius ownership in the first decade of this century. Fora few years there, the Toyota Prius was nearly the only SULEV (Super LowEmissions Vehicle) on the road, offering all the haughty superiority of a bikewith all the seats and AC and awesomeness of a car. In sharp contrast, all other vehicles on the road - including all those hippie-owned, soot-belchingVWs - were revealed as monstrous gas guzzlers. Owning a Prius in the aughtieswas a fast track to self-righteousness.

It was also a fast track to the fast track. Californiaawarded Prius owners with Diamond Lane stickers. These deceptivelyflimsy decals clung to our bumpers with some super-strong, secret governmentadhesive, and made our futuristic cars 2% more futuristic. They also allowedsolitary Prius drivers access to the car pool lanes. Can you imagine the uniqueself-satisfaction of zipping through clogged traffic in your own privatefreeway lane? Of course you can't. You don't drive a Prius. Or you don't livein California. Or you live in some year later than 2011 and your car is poweredby Hydrogen or yard trimmings and you don't have to worry about air pollution.

Anyway, the dream died in July. You can thank CA vehiclescodes 5205.5 and 21655.9. Also the new PZEV (Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle)cars. And your own indifference to my moral superiority. All of you guys killedthe dream. Congrats.

2. BORDERS

Why do (other people's) bankruptcies make me so happy? Andwhy does the specific bankruptcy of Borders Books make me so especially happy?I spent many nights in the Borders of Montclair, CA. I read a lot of theirbooks, drank a lot of their coffee, sat through a quake in their leatherchairs. I shopped at many Borders in many parts of the country. I never held my miserable one month of employment against them.

So it's weird that I get a little thrill whenever I passtheir exit on the freeway and see that big, bare retail space. And who pays tokeep all their lights on?

I love shit like this. It's messed up.

3. SCULLY

I was kind of disoriented the night I arrived in California,twelve years ago. I retrieved all my worldly possessions - a duffel bag ofclothes and two frightened cats - from a crowded baggage carousel, and realizedwith a rough jolt that I no longer owned keys. My girlfriend picked me up anddrove us to my future in-laws' house at 1 AM. I was jet lagged, freaked, andslightly stunned that I had actually renounced the entire east coast ofAmerica.

All this may explain why I immediately locked us out of thehouse. It was far too late to wake anyone up. I skulked around the bushes nearthe kitchen, noticed one of the windows was unlocked, hoisted myself up, andstealthily popped out the screen. I was halfway inside when a large labrador mutt ran upat face level. It was Scully. We'd met once before, but I didn't know if he wasthe kind of dog who would rip out an intruder’s throat. I froze. We exchanged along, meaningful glance. Slowly - tentatively - his tale wagged.

We were good pals for the next dozen years. My wish now isthat he gets to live in the neighborhood of Dog Heaven where Vincent Price andElizabeth Taylor hand out t-bone steaks every hour and cartoon fire hydrantsdance the fandango on every street corner. Farewell, sport.

Ho x 3

2011-12-25T08:32:00.000-08:00

MAVIS MCCORMIC 1922-2011

2011-12-21T14:24:00.000-08:00

My grandmother Mavis was 47 when I showed up. She and my grandfather Ralph were then living in the outer LA county province of Pomona (a city I'd return to, by complete coincidence, 30 years later). She taught at Mt. SAC College, he taught at Cal Poly Pomona. After their back yard vanished in an overnight mudslide, they moved to Keno, Oregon. But Keno eventually proved too remote - too eerily silent at night - and they relocated to the relatively sprawling metropolis of Klamath Falls. They lived there until his death in 1997, and her death late last month. She was 89.

It's a typical grandparent story. Here’s what’s not typical; my grandmother was a nuclear physicist. Raised in Dust Bowl Oklahoma, she was the first in her family to graduate college, and she went on to work with radioactive isotope treatment for liver and thyroid disease at Stanford Research Institute. Despite her sense of humor – wry? dry? – there was something slightly formidable about her intellect. Although we were very close for four decades, she was never "grandma" or "grammy" or "grim grams". I only called her “Grandmother”.

Here’s a wonderful photo of her from the late 1950’s, working on the first smog study in Los Angeles. I’m not sure of the context, or the nature of her research, or the tie-in to her particular field. I didn’t start trying to sort out the chronology of her career until it was too late, the precise sequence of her life eluding both of us.

At some point before my existence, she worked on weapons systems at General Dynamics. We never discussed this period in her life. During the years I knew her, Grandmother was a progressive’s progressive. She was a founding member of the Northwest Energy Coalition and the Klamath Solar Association, as well as president of the county’s League of Women Voters and active with the Oregon Citizens Utility Board. Sorting her voluminous papers earlier this month, I was struck by the absurd breadth of her interests: solar power, reproductive rights, campaign finance reform, sheaths of technical info on heavy water reactors, power grids, energy efficiency, many articles addressing Enron before Enron’s collapse, lists of legislators, and literally thousands of newspaper clippings, each neatly dated, and many underlined or highlighted. I got through 10 bankers boxes of information, only slightly more than half her paper estate.

In life, it was a little too easy to overlook the scope of her accomplishments in general. Ralph got her into gambling (she financed her unsuccessful 1990 State Legislature race with $7k in poker winnings). She got him into piloting, and they took their Cessna on several cross country flights, including jaunts over the Canadian wilderness and rural Mexico. They lived in Europe for 4 years in the late 1950s, and she traveled on her own to Australia, China, Israel, and the Soviet Union. She was the only person I ever met to fly over the North Pole (although not in her own Cessna).

As a devout agnostic, I have to at least entertain the possibility that somewhere she and my grandfather have been reunited, perhaps with some (or all?) of their wonderful animals: Corky, Pee Wee, Pete, Trudy, Vasi. As a devout atheist, she might be very annoyed at receiving extra innings. Or was she a devout atheist? I'd always assumed so. Discussing the matter with my mom, however, the best we could remember was that my Grandmother had once called organized religion “awfully silly”. It's one more detail requiring the clarification that will now never come.

New: I've written a novel.

2011-12-06T08:03:00.000-08:00

MY LIFE, Dec. 7 - Some things have transpired. For starters, I've changed the name of this blog. The URL is the same, so if you've been kind enough to link to me in the past, then you can sleep well tonight, safe in the knowledge that your link is still valid. Same blog, different title.

The name change comes in the service of something larger: my first novel will be released on April 1, 2012, and I decided to use the title for my new book instead of my blog. Perhaps this seems counterintuitive, in that some people will probably mistake this entirely new, 265-page work of fiction for a collection of blog posts in book format. But here's the thing: I'm Sam McPheeters and I can do whatever I want.

The novel The Loom Of Ruin could be called a "satire" or "dark comedy" or a "story in which lots of terrible things happen to a lot of good people". If you like my writing, you will like this book. It was written with you in mind.

The novel is being released through Mugger Books, a new, L.A.-based publisher run by my friend Anthony Berryman. You’ll be able to preorder a copy in the first week of January. Digital e-reader presales will commence in the next month or so. I'll be posting a lot more information about this book, and the related book tour, in the weeks to come.

This is one of several projects I have lined up for 2012. My blog suffered this year because of these projects. That won't be the case next year. I like posting stuff here. If I had the option, this would be my only online outlet. Thanks for your patience. I'll make it worth your while.

Give Thanks

2011-11-24T14:20:00.000-08:00

Misc: Life, Void

2011-10-30T17:11:00.000-07:00

REALITY, October 30 – In the last half of 1993 and first half of 1994, I did very little with my life. I’d moved to the south, to a large house on a block where nothing ever happened. I learned to ride a bike, played a lot of basketball, and watched a lot of MTV. Although I did have a seasonal job around Christmas to pay an old IRS bill, that was my only adult responsibility. Rent was $95. By any possible measure, I was a lazy sack of slob.

Whatever karmic debt I incurred by my year of sloth has now been paid for with the last few months. It’s hard to describe how busy I’ve been, especially because all the projects I’m currently toiling over won’t come to fruition until next year. I can’t sustain this pace, and I feel bad that I’ve had to let some important things slide, like my blog, or hygiene. Last week, for example, I realized I hadn’t bathed or changed my clothes in three days. I did this a lot in 1993 as well, but back then it was because I was too lazy for grooming. This time around I was too busy for grooming. Either way, it was kind of gross.

On Saturday night I took a break. I went to my friend Anthony's house in LA, watched TV, and ate a lot of bad food. I made sure to shower first.

Anthony had the new Void LP on Dischord. I’d been so busy with my life that I’d forgotten it existed. Last month, I’d considered pitching some magazines about reviewing this as The-Last-CD-I’ll-Ever-Buy type piece, but then it was too late, and doing a review would have necessitated getting a review copy, which would have negated the concept in the first place. Also, I was intimidated to hear it. Many, many times over the last quarter century I’ve stepped into a record store and thought, there’s no new Void record, so why am I here? My bluff had been called, and it felt weird.

It was weird, too, hearing these songs stripped of their scariness. If you watch CNN while listening to their 12-song side of the Dischord Faith/Void split, it will appear that the world is rapidly disintegrating. The demo tracks included on this "new" release, in contrast, were merely sketches, fun - in that junky, generic way of primordial hardcore - but not particularly unique or inspiring. The singer's voice did not yet approximate the Dover clip art of demons and monsters that decorated their LP art (this record just featured an assortment of photos, including one of the singer, sullen in his prom gear). I grew momentarily depressed. This wasn't really a new Void record, because, of course, there can be no new Void record. The drummer has already passed away; someday we will all die. The universe will come and go, but there will never be another Void.

Then we watched “The Jerk” and I felt better again.

New: bugs

2011-10-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

THE INTERNET, Oct 5 – New column up, on the bug pit of Uzbekistan. You should read this while you are eating because I would find that funny.

SEMIRELATED: This is the first October I've been able to enjoy as an adult. Those of you with severe arachnophobia know what misery Halloween season can be. Every public space is decorated with garish, monstrous spider decorations. Sometimes those decorations are in places like supermarkets and banks and Laundromats where one's presence is mandatory. If you’re scared of spiders – giant, cartoony, or otherwise - it’s a long, torturous month.

Hypnotherapy has changed all that. I had to buy some Dayquil at Walgreens recently. While I was waiting in line, it took me a moment to realize that I was standing in front of a 2-foot cloth tarantula. This would have caused me acute distress just a year ago. Now it’s an afterthought. Seriously; if you’re someone who suffers from a major phobia, consider hypnotism. Cost less than $500. Changed my life.

New: Stamina Land

2011-09-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

THE INTERNET, SEPT. 30 - My new article on traveling to Petra, Jordan is now online at - surprise! - Vice. I was there for 30 hours, much of which was spent in excruciating pain. It was the best trip I've ever taken.

Also, I've got a new column up about optical migraines. Which I now have, again. Enjoy.

New: Messiah Hunt

2011-09-16T10:30:00.000-07:00

THE INTERNET, Sept. 16 - My new, 5,000+ word essay on mental illness in the Holy Land is now online at Vice. I've shot my mouth off for years about the complex psychotic rupture known as Jerusalem Syndrome, and I was embarrassed, last year, to read that I'd referenced the phenomenon in at least three unrelated articles. So it was nice of Vice to send me there to cover the real deal. Thanks, guys.

Also, I logged another weekly column on Tuesday. This one's about the Weird Period of late 2002. It's not bad (for me).

Problem: Creepy "Book" Situation

2011-09-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

THE ZONE OF UNEASE, Sept. 6 - Two weeks ago I learned that a book had apparently been written about me. Turns out it’s more of a “book”. The team of Henssonow, Surhone, and Tennoe have also penned such classics as “United States Courthouse and Post Office (Kansas City, Missouri)”, “Raqibul Hasan (cricketer, Born 1987)” and “Alice in Chains (German Edition)”. According to Amazon, there are 118,168 "books" in the series.

My best guess is that this is somehow related to an Amazon phenomenon known as “private label rights”. Maybe that concept has been taken over by spambots. The increasing sophistication of marketing robots makes weird items like this an inevitability. Although it could be something else entirely. My first reaction at seeing this was that I was somehow in trouble, and I guess I shouldn’t rule out that option either.

FYI, I have a birthday coming up in 7 months, if anyone wants to buy me one. Used copies start at a -1% discount!

Also, I have another column up, this one about the crushing crushingness of Kansas’s “Dust In The Wind”. It’s decent.

New: "The Teaching Profession"

2011-08-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

THE INTERNET, August 30 - I've got a fresh column up, on the hideous suckiness of teaching. I give it a B. Writing comedy is hard. For every hit, you get two misses. Or three. I was so frazzled with last week's piece that I never got the thing finished. Although it doesn't seem like anyone noticed. You have to insult a lot of people at once for anyone to take note. I learned this lesson the hard way 20 years ago, so this is neither a fresh observation nor a complaint. But it does mean I'm going to have to start slandering more states if I don't get some feedback. My hands are tied on this one.

New: Things To Read

2011-08-04T18:17:00.001-07:00

POMONA, Aug 4 - My pal Steve tells me I am "blowing it" with this blog. So, to reiterate: I am in the middle of a very, very busy period in my life. Things will clear up soonish. In the meantime, I have two new columns up on Vice, on Glenn McCoy and Chexsystems (two subjects everyone should be up to speed on).

I am running out of filler graphics for this blog.

Also, I remembered the other day that I've been meaning, for the last decade, to write something about Brendan Mullen's "Annihilation Man". I read this 6,500-word LA Weekly piece on Germs frontman Darby Crash in early 2001. The article made an enormous impact on me, vastly expanding my understanding of how music journalism could (and should) work. I emulated this essay years later, with my profile on Doc Dart. And although Mullen abandoned this structure with the following year's Lexicon Devil - opting instead for that flimsiest of book formats, the oral history - I'd always meant to write him a brief Thank You for the Weekly piece. Unfortunately, he died two years ago. So I guess that's off the table now. Unless people in Heaven read my blog. Huh.

Early July Recap

2011-07-18T05:46:00.000-07:00

I did some traveling a few weeks ago and ended up in New York. I didn't get to see many old friends, but Neil and Noelle were kind enough to drive up one night from Philadelphia and meet me for dinner. Afterwards, we walked through the neighborhood where Neil and I were roommates in 1988. The city has changed so much since then that we agreed to refer to each other as "future version of Neil Burke" and "future version of Sam McPheeters". This seemed like the only honest way to deal with 2011. At one point Noelle groaned.

The night before, this happened. Sorry.

Also, this occurred, which begat this.

We all know you don't know how to read, buddy.

Me 2023.

Sketchbook: scary guys

2011-06-22T05:37:00.000-07:00

Corrections

2011-06-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

CORRECTIONS DEPT., June 15 - Of last December's post, paragraph two, my pal O. writes;

I fucked up! It looks like he is bending the neck from some angles, but at about 6:21 in this clip from Decline you can see him whanging a whammy bar on his SG during "Beef Bologna." So much for my knowledge of things. Retract!

And this week's Vice column is now online. Apparently it is an every-Tuesday kind of deal, NOT every Monday. Now I know.

Also, I finally wrote and posted an obituary for my good friend Kara, who died on Valentine's Day. I had such a hard time putting this together that I had to bench it for a few months and let myself get used to the idea that she really is gone. That hasn't yet occurred, but I didn't like the idea of letting this go unwritten indefinitely. So it's up now. I miss her.

New: Hiding The Horror

2011-06-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

THE LAND OF TRIUMPH, June 13 - "Hiding The Horror", my new 5,000+ word essay about beating arachnophobia, is now online at Vice. I took a huge gamble with this piece and it totally paid off. Kudos to me. And thanks to everyone at Vice for facilitating this.

photo by John Michaels

Not long after my pal John snapped this photo - a picture that would have caused heart palpitations a month earlier - I found myself driving home high as a kite on raw human ego. I swerved, I cut people off, I lashed elderly drivers with my car horn. I just conquered my biggest fear, lady! I yelled more than once. What have you ever done with your life????

2011-06-07T10:03:00.000-07:00

THE INTERNET, June 7 - My new weekly column, "The Brutality Report", is now online at Vice. It'll update every Monday.

I've entered a weird - and hopefully brief - period where I'm working above my capacity on projects that won't come to fruition until next year. I've been telling friends I'm operating at 110%. But really it's more like 114%. Some things have to give, and more often than not it's this very unpaid blog that loses. It's frustrating. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon. Until then, my new column can take up some of the slack?

Review: Macho Man Most insane promo EVER

2011-05-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

THE INTERNET / HEAVEN, May 23 - In life, "Macho Man" Randy Savage never made a dent in my consciousness. But I am going to have a hard time forgetting him after seeing the video below. Never has there been a clearer distillation of the Id, Ego, and Superego than in this two-minute WWF promo from an alternate universe eighties / nineties:

Seriously, if I were a psychologist, I'd start every session with a new client by making them watch this. Things happen here that won't even be named until the DSM-VIII. WTF squared.

New: The Offensive Review

2011-05-16T12:57:00.001-07:00

THE INTERNET, May 16 - My 3,322 word exposé on Horseshit magazine is now online at Vice.

If you're someone who asked me, over the course of March, what I was working on, I probably answered, "a bunch of horse shit." As usual, I was being deadly serious.

New: Munchies thing

2011-05-09T16:16:00.000-07:00

THE INTERNET, May 9 - Brooks Headley's episode of "Munchies" is now online. For those of you unfamiliar with Brooks, he was the subject of my 7,320 word profile, "The Dessert Psycho", as well as an implausible string of NY Times accolades, including one from Thursday.

I got the kitchen pretty much cleaned this afternoon and bought some new tube socks, so I'm not sweating it either. Don't worry about me.

New: Four Fresh Sites

2011-04-27T07:06:00.000-07:00

THE INTERNET, April 27 - An average of eight new websites get added to the world wide web every day. I know the people behind four of today's:

- Neil Burke's new art site. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the only place where you can safely purchase a copy of "Oid" for your dorm room. Or perhaps you're not in college quite yet, and you are instead looking for a juicy quote for your high school yearbook. Again, neilburke.net is where you want to be.

- Neil Burke's new blog. I have great hopes for this, and I envy all of us for being around to see its origins. It's like if you or I got to peer over Thomas Jefferson's shoulder as he wrote up the DOI. Don't sneeze!

photo by John Michaels, but only because I was driving

- Jesse Pearson's new site. Jesse is the former editor of Vice, and hands down the best of many great editors I have worked with. There are interviews with Elmore Leonard and William Gibson and photos of Omar Little and the whole thing is simply delightful and classy. If you work an office job, than I am going to ask that you hold off on those TPS reports and instead spend the morning reading Jesse's website.

- Noelle Burke's blog. Noelle runs Xenotees, secretly runs Monoroid, and without her work Etsy would still be a one-room yarn store in Sheepshead Bay. Why was this concealed from me for so long?

Archive: Best Business Writing

2011-04-20T06:27:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES, April 20 - I am, at heart, a frustrated business writer. My old column in Punk Planet (2000-2003[?]) was intended as a forum for business writing in the least businessy publication I knew of. I think the idea was to give my writing some focus. It didn't work - those columns were still pretty disjointed - but it did give me a yearning to someday work on actual finance writing. When I'm grown up. In my late 70's.

Of the Punk Planet pieces, there's the 1,582 word "Indices Of Doom" (discussing an economic downturn that feels quaint now), and the 1,590 word "One Year Of Boring Magazine Subscriptions".

Then there are three pieces from my old websites; the 555 word "Time To Fight", the 590 word "Notes From The 2001 Mordam Convention", and a 609 word piece on the finances of my old band.

Finally, there's the 500 word "The Crying Of Lot '77", a clever little piece from the Village Voice (online). If you are a steady reader of this blog and you also happen to work at Bloomberg Businessweek, seriously: put me in the game. I'm great with deadlines, have decent personal grooming skills, and a simply hilarious resume.

Archive: Best Film Writing

2011-04-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVE, April 15 - Writing about cinema is tough, in that sitting through most movies is tough. But I have gathered a few decent, small scale film pieces over the last few years. Let me get this graphic out of the way, and then I'll provide links.

From my old, pre-blog websites, there's the 778 word "Grief On Mute" (written back in the days when I was more charitable towards audiences at the Egyptian; at the last film I saw there, a drunk behemoth squeezed in next to me and produced his own flask and martini glass), my 989-word review of 2003's "The Core", and a 1,050-word look at the straight-to-DVD "Last Best Chance".

Then there are a few gems from this blog, such as an 817-word review of "What We Do Is Secret", a 1,018-word review of the Turkish non-masterpiece "Kurtlar Vadisi Irak", and an 841-word review of the near-masterpiece "Times Square".

Also, I conducted a delightful interview with filmmaker Alex Cox for the Village Voice. At least it was delightful for me. Enjoy??

Problem: Perpetual Mess Machines

2011-04-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

RECURRING FAILURE DEPT., APRIL 13 - My eBay store - and the affiliated auction of my old fanzine, Dear Jesus - has come to an end. Despite my careful bookkeeping, the whole thing devolved into a shameful and protracted clusterfuck. Dealing with the pricing bureaucracies at eBay, Kinkos, and Paypal was like negotiating with the East German government. I could never get a consistent per-unit dollar amount on the project, and every month eBay hit me with seller fees that equaled two utility bills. It felt counterintuitive. It's like if you wrench $90 worth of copper piping out of your basement, but when you call the guy at the recycling plant, he tells you there's an $88 processing fee. How badly do you want your two bucks? In my case, the answer is Not So Much. These are mere first world problems only occasionally masquerading as second world problems. There's nothing unique about my situation.

Except there is one thing unique about my situation: I hate my product. The jolly Fedex Kinko's staff made this reality especially awkward, what with their insistent cheerfulness and helpful staff. Years ago, a Kinkos employee actually chewed me out over issues of content. I know the drill. It therefore seems a tad dishonest for these nice people to now ignore the awful smut I must enlist their help in manufacturing. When the editor of San Francisco's MRR politely requested a copy for review, I declined (although this would've been problematic anyway) on the grounds that I don't really want anyone to know about Dear Jesus. But how does one manufacture, distribute, and market something on the extreme DL?

So Dear Jesus is now available through this blog*. I'm doing it without the use of eBay, and it's a print-on-demand scenario, which means the orders could take a few days longer to make. I have no idea how long I'll be making and selling these things. The hassle factor is definitely one large consideration.

The humiliation factor is another. My original hope was that the exculpatory introduction would insulate me from all the bad writing and bad ideas I cooked up 20 years ago. But I know that's not really possible. Each little zine packet I send out into the world is another entity representing a "me" that no longer exists. It's confusing, and frustrating. Even though PDFs of the zine aren't online, the mean spirited imp responsible for it is still out there, an autonomous persona with a seemingly open-ended lifespan. I can choose to ignore him, or I can choose to wring a few bucks out of him. But he - the ghost of me - isn't going anywhere.

NY Times writer Jonathan Dee nailed this phenomenon in January 2010:

Not only can the past never really be erased; it co-exists, in cyberspace, with the present, and an important type of context is destroyed. This is one reason that intellectual inflexibility has become such a hallmark of modern political discourse, and why, so often, no distinction is recognized between hypocrisy and changing your mind.

Again, my predicament isn't special. Many people - millions - find themselves typecast and pigeonholed by their former selves. There's nothing unique about my situation.

And yet, again, there is one other thing unique about my situation: the Fear Of Smell blog. This flattering, well-intentioned site documents a compilation album my record label released nineteen years ago. It's a great record, and although I had no real part in its greatness - besides being in the right place at the right time - I did design a wonderful cover for the second pressing in 1998.

The F.O.S. blog, however, focuses on the covers of the first pressing. I did not design a cover for that run, great or otherwise. Instead, friends and distributors were given markers and hundreds of blank record jackets. It didn't occur to me until far too late that many of these covers would be supreme bummers, and it didn't occur to me until it was really far too late that someone might actually want to document all these bummers. Meaning I now have a website where I can regularly find fresh horrors I have inflicted on the world without my own knowledge, as if I were a naughty amnesiac or a chronic black-out drunk. It's a portal of inexhaustible mortification without precedent. I haven't yet figured out how to make a dime off this particular perpetual mess machine, but when I do you'll be the first to know about it.

* 5/5/11 - screw it, I'm done. No more for sale. What a nightmare.

Monday sketchbook

2011-04-11T04:07:00.000-07:00

New: Null Detector Revisited

2011-04-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

THE INTERNET, April 6 - My old bandmate Andy Coronado has just posted his salute to DC outsider bands on the LA Record site. Years ago, he and I had envisioned this as "Null Detector", a specialty radio show on KSPC (meaning we were going to pitch it to KSPC). The idea was that each night would be affectionately devoted to the loser bands of a different major US city's early punk scene. But we just weren't able to get our acts together.

Except for the t-shirt, Andy did a bang-up job with the concept. I'm glad this exists.

Archive: Best Music Writing

2011-04-04T05:13:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES, April 4 - My computer tells me I've written 82,379 words about music in my lifetime. It stands to reason that a fraction of these pieces would end up in the Not So Bad category. A fragment of those articles are in the Almost Good category, and a wee selection of those pieces rise to Kind Of Readable grade. These are the articles I want to share with you.

I gave the OC Weekly a few good pieces. There's the 605 word "Extreme Extremeness",the 647 word "The Disappointment Remains The Same", the badly retitled "Beyond NC-17", and the contemplative, 866 word "Ashlee's Jam".

Then there's the 888 word "Best Records" for DC's Dusted Magazine, and the 800 word "The Formula", which appeared in The Stranger.

Of course if you're a masochist, a night shift security guard, or have jury duty, you can always read the 9,263 word "Survival Of The Streets". This one counts as a film piece as well, but there are plenty of words about music towards the end. Enjoy??

Hard Drive Miscellany (2011)

2011-04-01T04:42:00.000-07:00

BALONEY TIME, April 1 - After a computer virus sent my personal files all over the globe ten years ago, I do all my work on an offline Dell 2400. The 200 GB hard drive - a luxury when I got it - chugs away like an espresso machine. Occasionally I take little excursions through its vast and unordered files to see what kind of weird shit I accumulated during the aughties.

I designed a website for my pal Anthony a long time ago. It didn't really do anything except pop up links to the Cro-Mags site, and eventually the domain expired. D'oh.

A few years ago, I and Tara and Justin and Sarah all went to the Renaissance Fair in Irwindale. The ladies had full 17th century costumes ready to go (what woman doesn't?), but Justin and I didn't have anything from that time period. I salvaged a few pieces from my old Uncle Sam outfit and found a furry camera bag for a hat. Justin apparently murdered a hippie drifter for his duds. At the Faire, we encountered a surprising amount of animosity, with several blacksmithees and pizza booth wenches calling us "jam band guys". I have never seen so much sunburned back-cleavage as I have in that one day.

Early man. I always keep one of these on hand for a few yukks. No matter how bad things get, I'll never be as stupid as this guy. What a bozo!

Only photo from the old fridge. We had 200 of these little portraits up there. It was impressive. Moral: always document your refrigerator.

Found this near my car in 2003(?). If I'd still been living in Jersey City, I would've assumed a Santeria curse had been placed on me. Out here, it just means someone's crummy band didn't work out, and they probably had a meltdown after a bad practice or show and threw this out the car window while driving to a strip bar.

I don't know what this fellow is doing in my computer. Shoo!

Problem: Celebrity encounters

2011-03-30T05:22:00.000-07:00

THE GOLDEN STATE, March 30 - Ten years ago, I bought a map to the stars' homes. I and my dad and my wife forced my 14-year old kid sister to take a two-hour trip through residential Hollywood. My sister didn't really seem to understand our delight at finding Madonna's front gate or the bungalow of Eartha Kitt, but the rest of us had a blast. Seeing celebrity houses is fun.

Seeing celebrities, however, is not. It's creepy and weird and cognitively disruptive. Here are some memorable encounters from the decade since.

1) ELLIOTT GOULD

I run into this joker everywhere, and every time it's the same experience. There's an initial, reflexive jolt of adrenaline at spotting a celebrity, followed almost immediately by the realization, oh, it's just that guy. It's like he's challenging me to say something. But what? "Excuse me sir, but I really hated you in 'Mash'" ????

2) JIMMY KIMMEL

I spotted Kimmel three years ago, at the Hollywood Arclight. It was hard not to spot him. He stood at the head of a long line at the concession stand, facing backwards and addressing the crowd as if doing standup. I was reminded of the handful of punk shows I've attended in DC, and all those exquisitely mortifying moments of avoiding eye contact with various Dischord Records luminaries. So intense was this memory that I actually walked past the concession stand spectacle and then watched my movie in a popcornless funk of humiliation.

3) CHARLIE DAY & MARY ELIZABETH ELLIS

Day and Ellis - "Charlie" and "The Waitress" from TV's It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia - were lingering in front of the Edendale, in Silver Lake, two months ago. I passed them as I walked in, executing a horrible one second eye-contact hold with Day that made me feel as intrusive and guilty as if I'd walked up to him and caressed his cheek. Ellis looked annoyed - in character, perhaps - and the two of them fled into the night, arm in arm. It was a sneak peek into an alternate version of their hit TV show, one in which Charlie actually gets the girl. I'm not sure if this was worth the awkwardness.

4) DUSTIN HOFFMAN

I'd just walked into a tony Santa Monica toy store when I turned and saw the Rain Man. I spent the rest of my brief shopping excursion avoiding whatever aisle he was in. Even though I was the only childless male in the store, it really felt like Hoffman was being the creepy one in this scenario.

5) PATRICIA ARQUETTE

Patricia Arquette walked into a Hollywood Halloween store I was in 10 years ago. This was before her star turn in CBS's Medium, so Arquette was then known as the star of David Lynch's "Lost Highway". If it sounds uncomfortable bumping into someone you last saw being forced to strip nude by Robert Loggia, try doing so while your friend John Michaels says, over and over, at full volume, Did you see who that was? Did you??

6) SETH GREEN

SEE: ELLIOTT GOULD. Then delete the 'Mash' part. Seriously dude, stop following me into every other store and restaurant I eat at. It's not funny. Stop.

Blind Trust & Pie Fraud (2000)

2011-03-28T05:38:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES, March 28 - This originally appeared in a 2000 issue of Punk Planet. It's not a particularly graceful chunk of writing (I definitely don't use as many parenthetical asides these days). And it seems strange to remember that there was once a time when Halliburton wasn't as globally recognized as the Nazi army.

Smart businesses maintain cash reserves for emergencies. Businesses run by bozos, as is mine, maintain scheme reserves. When times get tight, previously ridiculed fundraising plots get dusted off for fresh inspection. A few years back, for example, a lease on a cheap and charmingly decrepit office space required that I buy one million dollars in liability insurance ($11 a month to cover me in the event of a UPS driver pulling a knuckle joint on my doorknob). One afternoon, reading over the insurance document with my lone employee, we discovered that the insurance covered lawsuits resulting from acts of "defamation, slander, harassment and humiliation". We came up with what is looking more and more like a credible business plan. Namely: on videotape, I order my employee to drop his pants, then smash him in the face with a pie and howl with laughter. He sues, an outraged jury awards the humiliated employee the million from my insurance company and we split the winnings down the middle. Although the scheme would probably result in a rate hike, it could be worth the risk. "Humiliation" is a hard thing to disprove. In essence, my intentions would need to be gauged, and there's no exit port for these intentions but whatever comes out of my mouth.

In August, GOP vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney accepted a choice retirement package, certain points of which are making me misty for that pie fraud scheme all over again. For services rendered to Halliburton - the Texas based oil services company he's served as chairman and chief exec these last five years - Dick walks away with $20 million in stocks and cash, instantly doubling his paper worth. A few editorials cried foul at the general, big-picture unfairness of the payout (thousands of employees were laid off during Cheney's watch), but of course the story is so legal and routine in today's economy that it doesn't go far except maybe as exhibit 884-J in the ongoing, stupifyingly obvious epic of US campaign finance corruption. And yet, wrapped up in Cheney's bonus is a puzzle distantly related to my proposed humiliation lawsuit. How would a hypothetical vice president Cheney handle the conflict of interest? How can the man's true intentions be gauged?

To handicap their immense advantages in contacts and insider information, high level public officials are bound by strict laws when reentering the business world. There are lag times, for example, of one to five years before starting at any company whose interests intersect with their old post. Rules are murkier when someone travels in reverse, from business back into government. The "Chinese Wall" - procedures used by investment firms to avoid illegal use of inside information - grows much more complex in an org as large and ridiculous as the U.S. government (statement of disclosure - I encountered the Chinese Wall in 1988 during a very tense 37 minutes of employment on Wall Street as a "cold caller", a job whose description still eludes me. My new boss took me aside and, in hushed tones, pointed down two hallways; left for soda machines, right for "off-limits, sensitive information that won't be in the Wall Street Journal until tomorrow morning" I nodded reverently, veered left, bought my Pepsi and sprinted in disorientation out of the building). The president and vice president, for example, are required by law to address any conflicts arising from their financial holdings, usually by establishing a "blind trust". Someone else handles their investments and doesn't give them any details. If Clinton knows not that he owns 800,000 shares of Exxon, the theory goes, the less likely he'll be to manipulate national policy to influence the value of those shares (although this first family allegedly waited 6 months before setting up their own blind trust).

Bush says he and his running mate would set up blind trusts if elected, which is nice because they'll have to on account of they're both mega-rich and it's the law. Cheney says he'll sell his stock if he gets elected. But not until then, which already gives us some insight. Even issues raised on the campaign trail can theoretically affect stock prices, which can affect how much money this guy gets. Cheney's candidacy is one of the most conflict-seeped of the last half century. If you don't count Perot (whose company wasn't publicly traded) or Forbes (on the grounds of his being a mutton barely able to propel himself about under his own volition), we have to dig back to Wendell Willkie's entanglements with utility companies in 1940. But Cheney's pretty versed in this stuff. He's already profited hugely off US foreign policy he himself was responsible for. Grateful Saudi and Kuwaiti sheiks "saved" by then-Defense Secretary Cheney's prosecution of the Gulf war welcomed Dick with open arms on recent lobbying trips. Halliburton, a company that was pulling in hundreds of millions before his arrival, was working in the billions by this summer. War gave Cheney "clout", one of the great unquantifiables. How much more clout will his candidacy bring? And Big Oil (of which Halliburton is a component, although not an actual oil company itself) also operates with its own interests. Playing dual sides of the fence, both domestically (Cheney lobbied for and won the $900,000,000 Kosovo cleanup contract from the Clinton administration last year) and abroad (Cheney lobbied on behalf of lifting sanctions to oil rich "despot countries" Iran and Libya, and has, at times, had to align himself with OPEC's price hikes, supporting a massive monopoly that'd be illegal under US antitrust laws) is part of Cheney's background. Bush W.'s main advisor Karl Rove took $150,000 from Philip Morris while dishing up the counsel, and Rove's shrug-off of any apparent conflict of interest sums the mode. Bush and Rove "never discussed it", case closed. That's the beauty of conflicts of interest. In essence, Cheney's intentions need to be gauged, and there's no exit port for these intentions save whatever comes out of Cheney's mouth.

Weird questions of causality arise. Al Gore receives about $20,000 in royalties off a Tennessee zinc mine every year, an amount too small to trigger a blind trust. Would a blind trust be required if he made $40,000? $100,000? If a hypothetical President Gore invaded zinc-rich Namibia and inched US zinc prices that much higher, would we really be able to gauge his full intentions? (Punchline: the Gores own 25 times this amount in Occidental Petroleum stock.) Even Ralph Nader owns over three million dollars in technology stocks, companies whose fortunes could be deftly manipulated in a series of lunchtime phone calls from the office he seeks (statement of disclosure - I was fired from Nader's NY Public Interest Research Group in 1986 after a very tense 3 days of employment, and the episode has left a hardened kernel of rage in my heart for all time). Nader was actually accused of conflicted interests 30 years ago, when he issued a report blasting an IT&T merger, then profited off IT&T stock he sold short two days before the merger was approved. "Mere coincidence" he told a reporter, which is accused corporation shorthand for Prove It.

This will be my mantra during the civil case against my alleged acts of humiliation. And when an enraged attorney thrusts a copy of this very column in my face, I'll huff, "mere coincidence". Nearby, a single tear will silently roll down my humiliated employee's cheek.

Achive: Best writing

2011-03-25T05:30:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES, March 25 - There are now well over 100,000 words on this site, much of it archived material from old zines or columns I wrote 5-15 years ago. Some of those old writings are not so hot. But a select few pieces are very hot indeed. Since I haven't done so yet, here's a list of my best writing on the internet. Immediately after this graphic. Which I'm using to represent the quality of the writing below.

First, there's the 645 word Disney's Creepiest Sexy Animated Female Leads Awards, which I wrote for the Village Voice 3 years ago. I was (and remain) very intimidated to write for them, and thus spent a lot of time trying to make this good. It worked! It's a good piece!

Then there's an 845 word review of a 2007 Van Halen show that kicked off this blog. I think I was entertaining the notion that I could sustain this level of quality every day. Hard lesson. For some reason, Blogspot refuses to let me reformat this piece in san-serifs. Another hard lesson.

Punk Planet got three very good columns from me, all of which I reprinted here. There's the 1,047 word About The Postal Exam, the 1,226 word Tweakers Vs. Shredders, and the 2,348 word, two part obituary for Alberti Records which was my first taste of long form essay writing.

Then there's my 7,784 word profile of the man known as 26, The Troublemaker, as published by Vice in early 2009. This thing is like a car that won't run out of gas. I frequently find myself at the mall or in the sauna at the gym having strangers come up to me with tears in their eyes over the goodness of this article. So kudos to me on that one.

Soon: list of worst writings??

Shylock Face (1970's)

2011-03-23T08:48:00.001-07:00

SIGNIFICANT DOCUMENTS, March 23 - In this photo, my grandfather Ralph throws himself into the role of Shylock, the timeless victim/villain of The Merchant Of Venice. From the look of sheer indignation on his face, he's probably at the top of Act 3 ("Hath not a Jew eyes"?). The picture was presumably taken sometime in the 1970's, during his time at Cal Poly Pomona.

Not being a musician, my own influences as a performer were largely visual. This picture was a big one. Now that I'm bandless, I have fewer opportunities to make this face in public. But occasionally some wayward barista or postal clerk will cross me and - blammo! - out comes the Shylock. It's a neat secret weapon, one of many things for which I owe my grandfather a debt of gratitude.

MRP FINANCES (2002)

2011-03-21T05:30:00.000-07:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES, March 21 - This originally appeared on vermiform.com, 1/21/02. I've long since lost the spreadsheet this piece refers to, and it wasn't that funny to begin with.

This has been a slow week, so I've gone ahead and posted the Men's Recovery Project tour finance totals. Some poor use of credit cards is reflected here, as well as the majestic power of merchandise in the life of an unloved band. This spreadsheet probably wouldn't be nearly so funny if this band hadn't lost so much money. Then again, I wouldn't have posted it if the band had made anything. Only the shame gets shared.

Disclosure: three tours are not reflected in the net total. These are;

1) An early excursion through the south, fall 1995. Neil and I rented some monstrous luxury sedan, and the fact that I can't remember the make or model shows the degree to which I neglected bookkeeping in those days. The rest of the band rode with Richmond, VA's Hose Got Cable. We made it as far as Chapel Hill, NC where the band played to ten people and was accosted by a drunk man. After the show, Neil called home and learned that his cat, N_____, had gotten out of the house and had gone missing. After a quick conference, he and I rode the five hours back to Richmond. I spent the next day and a half sulking. N_____ was eventually found safe and sound under Neil's porch, so we loaded the equipment back into the rental car and drove 17 hours to meet up with the guys in Gulf Breeze, FL. We played three more shows, ate well, then drove back to Virginia. I have no idea what any of this cost. A few months later the drunk man from Chapel Hill called and asked to "weasel pipe" on a few MRP shows. It took me a long while to realize that he was referring to his band, Pipe, and not using some cryptic Carolina indie slang. Just this last year I've had the rare joy of discovering the Pipe CD in the $1 bin at Rhino Records in Claremont, and I make a point of tracking its precise whereabouts in that bin whenever I go record browsing.

2) MRP's 1999 European tour. This tour never actually happened, but costs were incurred. In specific, I logged a good deal of man-hours towards securing a weekend of gigs in Morocco. I wrote Maximumrocknroll for leads. They gave me the email address for Luk Haas, their old international columnist. I reached Haas somewhere in between his journeys to Uganda and Kazakhstan. He gave me the address of a fellow in south France, who passed me along to Majdi in Casablanca. Majdi posted me several letters on beautiful cream colored paper with stamps of the dour king Hasan, writing that he was a "big fan" of Morbid Angel and "many other fucking DEATH/BLACK METAL bands!" Majdi seemed to think that my scheme was a terrible idea and that the band would lose lots of money. MRP continued to insist. I contacted the embassy in NYC and got the visa info, sent Madji $10 for notarization in Casablanca city hall and Madji promptly never wrote me back. A few weeks later we realized we no longer had the cash for plane fare and scotched the whole thing. Four months later King Hasan died.

3) MRP's disastrous 2000 tour, which transcended all rules of finance. My account for the last two years had me losing $1,800 on this trip, of which we played less than a third of our scheduled shows. But my records are shaky. It may have been more. Either way, it would have been in very poor taste to try to document any of it.

Pictorial: Decomposing Hope

2011-03-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

I wonder if this is what people in Yemen think American living rooms look like.

Here's how bad the economy has gotten: the wearer of this button had to have their mom buy it for them.

Again, if you are reading this blog from Yemen, please stop stereotyping us Americans. I've been all over this country, and I've seen maybe ten of these signs.

This pretty much sums up life in mid-March 2011. I thought about driving back to the site of the former There Is Hope Foster Family Agency and taping this to the window;

But the news says the Japanese radiation cloud will have reached Los Angeles by Friday, and this maybe might not be quite so funny by the weekend.

Problem: sadly prophetic essay

2011-03-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

THE ZONE OF UNEASE, March 14 - Day three of a major natural / nuclear disaster seems like a good time to mention my article "The Hidden Threat To The Nuclear Renaissance". The piece ran in the American Prospect in February 2010, the same week Obama authorized the first funding for American nuke reactors in 30 years. My article imagined a meltdown in Indonesia or Bulgaria; conjuring multiple meltdowns in the world's third richest country seemed far too ridiculous.

From the article;

The American nuclear industry, repackaged as a model of energy independence, is itself dependent on the fate of every nuclear plant worldwide. As the industry likes to point out, Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island accident produced no casualties. And yet even that level of nuclear crisis was enough to scare millions of Americans and inflame the regulatory surge of the 1980s. Another meltdown like Chernobyl, with all its human misery visible on laptops and iPhones worldwide, could irrevocably taint public opinion against nuclear power.

It seems odd that this idea hasn't yet directly penetrated public discourse. Only this morning, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell tip-toed around this very issue; "My thought about it is, we ought not to make American and domestic policy based upon an event that happened in Japan."

And yet this is exactly what's going to happen. The "we" in McConnell's sentence includes anyone with access to TV, radio, or the Internet. The United States has 23 Fukushima-style GE reactors. The two jolly concrete bosoms of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station - an hour from where I live - sit on an active fault line. The conclusion is inescapable. It's like finding out (or, more accurately, remembering) that your home is built on the edge of a cliff.

This is an important point. Nuclear power in America isn't merely a disaster waiting to happen. It's also a financial disaster currently happening. The massive infrastructure of U.S. nuke plants is susceptible to the fates of every other nuke plant worldwide. Obama's current budget gives $36 billion to an industry with no possible political future.

The full text of the article is here.

KARA ENGEL 1968-2011

2011-02-17T09:55:00.000-08:00

I met Kara in late 1999. I'd just moved to southern California and was living at my future mother in law's house. My dislocation highlighted the importance of quickly stepping into a new social circle. I needed to impress my girlfriend's pals, and I needed to impress them quickly. As my spouse's best friend, Kara posed an extra challenge. The two of them had been tight since 8th grade. What if Kara and I didn't get along?

We did get along. I think we were both relieved that we actually liked each other, and weren't facing years and years of feigned interest. In fact, we had a great deal in common, especially in the List Of Things We Call Bullshit On. This list included, but was not limited to: bad coffee, bad smells, Jane Valez Mitchell's hair, kids, people who have kids (a topic I softened on after several pals started breeding), marriage (a topic we avoided altogether after I married), bad art in general, bad L.A. art in specific, and social networking. Up until two weeks ago, we were both still churning over this list.

Kara's death Monday, at her home in Temecula, offered more than just the shock of death itself. Up until this weekend, I'd have guessed she had many months left, possibly even years. When the end came, the speed and ferocity of her cancer seemed almost supernatural. She was 42.

Twelve years ago, one of many things I had to digest in the strange new state was the versatility of the word "dude". On the east coast, "dude" was a dated, one-note joke. On the west coast, the word was alive with multiple values; as a casual greeting, a heartfelt greeting, a pip of annoyance, a face-saver, a defuser, a warning. The inflections and intonations seemed endless.

Kara had her own way of saying 'dude'. Her voice would drop to a growl and she'd stretch the word out with a slight prelude of phlegmy annoyance, forcing it to carry far more weight than it was intended for. It was how an elderly middle Eastern woman might say "dude", if elderly middle Eastern women used California slang to convey the sorrow of the world. There's no way to spell Kara's version. In the last few years before she got sick, Kara frequently focused this word on growing old, a subject that rose to the top of the Bullshit List. We were approaching our forties, then we'd all entered our forties. She wasn't having any of it.

It seems strange now that she has bypassed growing old altogether. When I think of Kara - as I will do often for the rest of my life - she'll be the same Kara every time: young, funny, annoyed, alive.

Review: "Some and None"

2011-02-10T05:07:00.000-08:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES, Feb 10 - I can't overstate the impact this song had on my formative years. In particular, I can't overstate the sheer existential horror of the "none of us are here" line. I remember laying awake in bed as a petrified kindergartner, pondering the terrible riddle of those five little words. If someone was talking, how could NONE of them have been there?

1. I had not, however, remembered the wonderful little tune. With its pippy organ and peppy game show tempo and that neat start-stoppiness of a good Gun Club song, it seems like it would be impossible to feel sad while "Some And None" is playing. Just try it - go out and get a divorce or get your foot amputated and then watch this video. See? Everything's fine!

2. The mosh pit starting at 0:32. Earlier in the day, I'd read John Seabrooks' gruesome New Yorker article on stampedes and mass tramplings. This song made that article OK.

3. If I ever rob a bank, I want to incorporate this song into the mix (iPod? Boom box? In the getaway car?).

4. This is the only video I could find in English (Ginger Manson just isn't the same in German or Spanish). This version, with its weird, acid reflux sizzle of VHS, raises a different eddy of nostalgia: it feels like I might wear out the YouTube video if I play it too much.

New: Dear Jesus anthology

2011-02-04T12:07:00.000-08:00

THE INTERNET, Feb. 4 - Unlike other lulls on this blog, January's one-post malaise had a blamable agent. I've spent the last few weeks carefully restoring copies of my old fanzine, Dear Jesus, for online sale. Reading all my early 1990's writing - occasionally funny, frequently mortifying - screwed up my writing processes in the present. But that process is now complete, and you can purchase copies of the new collection on my refurbished eBay store.

From the new intro to the Dear Jesus anthology;

Remember when you were 14 and completely insufferable because you thought you knew everything? Ever wonder what would happen if you stayed that way well into your twenties? Well, wonder no more. Dear Jesus is what would happen. I'm not embarrassed by any of my old bands: I am deeply embarrassed by these five fanzines. They provide an accurate written account of me at my absolute worst as a human being.

I've had to do a lot of explaining and apologizing in my career, and I'm not blind to the irony of explaining and apologizing for a zine whose own intro, written 22 years ago, explains and apologizes for my previous zine from the mid-1980's. In a perfect world, I would have hunted down and shredded every copy of Dear Jesus. Instead, the logic of capitalism dictates that I nicely package the whole thing for a quick buck. My humiliation can be your bathroom reading. So be it. No big deal. Enjoy.

Review: Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant

2011-01-03T09:12:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK CITY, Jan 3 - Good news for vegetarians! There's an animal you can eat! They're called "oysters". They're hateful little beasts who lurk under piers. They also lack central nervous systems and subsequently feel no pain. Just try and punch an oyster in the face! You can't! Eat away!

I'd never eaten an oyster until my pal Jesse took me to the GCOB&R two years ago. It's located on the lower floor of Grand Central Station (officially "Grand Central Terminal"). But because of the route to the restaurant - down to this lower level, through a hidden door and then down some more - it seems very much like one is going under Grand Central, down into the hidden bowels of central Manhattan, à la Lex Luthor's ornate, magnificent hideout in 1978's Superman.

In one of the recent seasons of Saturday Night Live, the opening credits feature all the young, hip cast members hanging out at the GC Oyster Bar. In reality, the clientele look like average New Yorkers - beleaguered people grappling with business problems and lousy marriages and life in cramped apartments. When I sat at the bar and tried to decide which oddly named regional delicacy I wanted, the waiter gave me that corny Robert De Niro grimace and walked off because I couldn't make up my mind.

I ate there again a year later, with a large group of locals. My pal S______, a strict vegetarian, didn't buy into the whole thing about oysters having no central nervous systems, so she ate a sad plate of creamed spinach while the rest of us slurped down our viscous, salty, brainless little meals. Later that night S______ suffered massive projectile vomiting. At the time, this seemed like a vindication of oysters over spinach. But then I ate more oysters a few months later, in San Diego, and spent a day dealing with my own massive projectile vomiting (my count had 26 separate instances of puking; I was going to attempt a photo essay for this blog, but I was scared I'd drop my camera in the toilet). I'm not sure what the lesson is here. Except, I guess, don't eat oysters after all.

Also, there are leather hand chairs in the foyer of the men's room. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is how H1N1 got started. But there is no amount of money that could get me to sit in one.

Congrats everyone

2010-12-31T16:33:00.000-08:00

Error reviews (1999)

2010-12-29T04:50:00.000-08:00

FROM THE ARCHIVES, Dec. 10 - Here are some reviews from my Error fanzine, issue 103, written in a period when I had a lot of time on my hands. The writing in this issue got pretty weird, placing this blog entry squarely in the 'filler' category.

+++++++++++++

Franklin “Roy Is Dead” 7

Not understandable. I saw this band five years ago in the Maryland panhandle, and the band’s guitarist ended their set abruptly by flinging his instrument into a bank of metal folding chairs and bawling. It boded badly for the future. Now it is indeed the future and there is indeed a tidal surge of such rigmarole. The music here is so slender it simply fails to register on the ears, and listening to it made me free associate past conversations, the bass progression in the old CNN theme song, the taste of ranch dressing on iceberg lettuce, the fact that my late grandmother briefly lived across the street from actor Brian Denehy…

Merzbow “Hybrid Noisebloom” CD

9 Shocks Of Terror “Earth, Wind and the Sheik Throwing Fire” 7”

9SOT is some anonymous Ohio thrash with mostly hostile second person lyrics. Does anonymous Ohio thrash fulfill a social function? Packaging features a photo of the band playing in someone's living room - full frontal drapes and lamp - which kind of weakens their punch. Likewise, on Merzbow's sluggish “Hybrid…”CD, there’s a photo of the man himself just sitting there, twisting knobs, also completely ruining the mental imagery. Are these failures of imagination or attempts at demystification? Phrased another way - if you walk into a restaurant with a "help wanted" sign and ask to fill out a "crapplication" are you making a statement or just being a wise ass?

Harry Pussy tour LP

Hellnation "At War With Emo" 5"

Make-Up "In Mass Mind" LP

Stereolab "Miss Modular" 7"

Listened to the first side of the Harry Pussy LP while eating dinner (Mrs. T.'s potato perrogis, iced coffee, fruit salad) in the next room. When I finished my meal and put the dishes away, I flipped the record over and listened to the second side as far away from the turntable as my building's layout would permit, noting that the album sounded qualitatively different 3 rooms away. That seemed to go well, so I then left the Stereolab 7" on at a decent volume while I took a shower. Again, no problems. Two days later my apartment was a mess so I played the Hellnation 5" at a restricted volume while vacuuming. Later that night I left to have dinner with some friends, so I played side A of the Make Up album with the volume completely off and when I returned much later that night everything seemed to be in order.

V/A "Southeast Hardcore, fuck yeah!!" 7"

Had a hard time telling any of the southwest hardcore bands apart from one another and I have a sneaking suspicion that they all physically resemble each other as well. Why not a Baja California hardcore comp or an Aleutian Island hardcore comp? What if you forced the peoples of different lands to form hardcore bands??? Like; 'no band, no food'? These are the kind of things I think about when I'm on line at the bank. Actually I'm on line at the bank right now, as I write this. Oops, looks like it's my turn!

Misleadingly Awesome Trailers

2010-12-27T05:40:00.000-08:00

REGRETS DEPT., Dec 27 - A lot of my pals are still in mourning over the profound awfulness of Tron: Legacy. Those first two trailers really were something great. This got me thinking about other trailers that far outshone the products they advertised. I came up with four:

VICE SQUAD (1982)

How amazing would this movie have been if it actually, literally was just a two-hour drum solo over nonstop fights and car chases?

VIDEODROME (1983)

Everyone loves Videodrome. I know, I get it, it's great, whatever. But I'd have enjoyed this film far more if Nam June Paik had directed it and it was just a whole lot of this.

THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT (2001)

This obscure space Western was shot for less than $2 million, although it looks much cheaper. It's not a bad film. But it's certainly nowhere near as gorgeously brilliant as its own trailer. Sit back and soak in that palpable expectation. Then imagine that you will never be able to see the movie this trailer advertises because they don't make movies that awesome anymore. Now you know how I feel.

INLAND EMPIRE (2006)

This one doesn't fit with the others, in that David Lynch gave everyone fair warning that he was working on a non-sequential, non-consequential baloney fest of yawny proportions (although he failed to mention he'd be so flamboyantly wiping his bottom with Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton, and/or the profession of movie directing). Regardless, Lynch should've won a special Oscar for this trailer. Somehow, he compressed all the dread from Eraserhead and Blue Velvet into one exquisite and terrifying minute. And what is the thing at 0:30??????

1974 Xmas wishes

2010-12-24T06:26:00.000-08:00

Guest editor: Neil Burke

2010-12-22T05:00:00.000-08:00

BALONEY TIME, Dec. 22 - I'm still going to be busy through the holiday, so guest blogger Neil Burke takes the wheel today. Enjoy. Thanks, Neil.

Thank you Sam for throwing me in here this week. I'd like to start by apologizing to you for jousting your stereo speakers while we were listening to AC/DC Back in Black (or was it Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap?) all those years ago. However, I will say that you set things in motion when you pulled the record from the turntable and smashed it on the floor. What was I to do? I can't accept full responsibility, but nonetheless, I'm sorry about that.

Maybe we should blame the other guy that was in the room with us...(?)

Now, some standout moments from the last decade:

The pile of garbage on my desk continues to grow.

Welcoming 2011.

Tron on Vicodin

2010-12-20T05:31:00.000-08:00

INFIRMARY, Dec. 18 - A deep, dull ache got me a Monday root canal appointment. A bottle of Vicodin got me to Monday. After a quick consult with my RN mother in-law, (don't drive, remember my antibiotics, beware constipation) I was good to go for the weekend. Friday night I sat around and listened to old MP3s. I'd never really had an opportunity to listen to music on drugs. It's fun! Saturday it was time to tackle Tron. Notes;

- I've been looking forward to this movie for so long I don't care about it anymore. Counting the viral stuff, marketing for Tron: Legacy went on longer than Obama's presidential campaign. Way back in March, jokes comparing speeding Priuses with wayward light cycles already seemed dated.

- The first Tron was a gorgeous mistake on Disney's part, a labor-intensive salute to old-fashioned rotoscope and backlit animation that no rival studio could afford to repeat. The new Tron cost four and a half times as much and looks like a fancy ad for glass cleaner.

- Q: How many drugs are needed to make it fun to go to the movies? A: Too many. The guy next to me narrated everything ("Oh shit!", "Daaamn!", "Ho shit! I want one of those bikes!"), and the mother of a colicky baby cursed out the audience as security showed her to the door. All of this easily cut through the armor of good-time rainbow narcotics fun I thought I'd encased myself in.

- Jeff Bridges shows up as both his old and young self. So does Bruce Boxleitner, also from the original Tron. They do it with computers. It was sad that their 1982 costar Cindy Morgan wasn't invited back. At 61, Bridges still gets the kind of great roles (3 this month) most actresses can't land after 40. Once CGI face-replacement technology is perfected - soon - chauvinist ageism will no longer be a plausible option for male studio heads. If Disney didn't want the 56-year-old Morgan, they still could have hired back the 28-year-old Morgan.

- Although the technology isn't perfect yet. The fake young Bridges mostly looked fake ("an animated death mask" says the NY Times). It was even creepier in the few shots where it did work. The political implications of foolproof face faking are staggering. So far, the only public figure to acknowledge this pending reality is former Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad, who said, of the United States, "If they can make Avatar, they can make anything." Although Mahathir is a wackadoo anti-Semite (his quote referred to Americans faking 9/11), he pretty much called it on this one.

- I kept getting sucked in and out of the experience. The 3D was flattened by huge stains on the screen; my chatty neighbor kept pulling me out of the dialogue; the lousy dialogue kept distracting me from the special effects; the distant but insistent pain in my tooth kept tugging me back to reality. After an hour of this, I wasn't having much fun. It occurred to me that I could enjoy myself more by hanging out in the lobby, so I did this. The angry mom was there, with her two colicky, angry children. She reminded me of everything I hate about movies, malls, people, rudeness, and overpopulation, so I popped another pain pill and then everything was fine. Two thumbs up for Tron.

Friday sketchpad

2010-12-17T05:47:00.000-08:00

There's been too much writing on this blog lately.

New: Huffington Post piece

2010-12-15T08:53:00.000-08:00

THE ZONE OF UNEASE, Dec 15 - My first piece for The Huffington Post just went online. This one's an experiment. I can put together an essay like this pretty quickly, but I'm not sure I enjoy doing so. For one thing, reading through the ocean of WikiLeaks-related stories (meaning, secondary to the actual data released by WikiLeaks) of just the last week was kind of depressing. And sifting through all the misogynist vitriol against Julian Assange's rape accusers left me feeling psychically slimed.

Also, where does it end? The goal of any opinion piece is to provoke more opinion. This doesn't always seem like a good thing. Naomi Wolf's ghastly attack on both accusers - the impetus for my piece - was, after all, just an opinion piece itself. Everyone's got something to say. It's a scary rabbit hole to stumble down. When I called my dad (a journalist for two decades) to get his perspective, he laughed and said, "it's the wild west now." Except I think the west was a bit more courteous.

I'm aware that - in the several-dozen strong community that follows my work - I have a reputation for incivility from my fanzine and band days. In hindsight, I'm glad I got most of the rudeness out of my system before the internet showed up. I've taken great pains, in the last ten years, to purge these tendencies from my writing. For the most part, I've been successful. Life is too short for writers to be impolite. I'm trying.

That said, if you are an anonymous hacker who attacks alleged rape victims online, you are the worst kind of dickless asshat, and my Christmas wish for you is bee stings and UTIs and personal failure. Amen.

New: two stories & a review

2010-12-13T05:20:00.000-08:00

OVERKILL DEPT., Dec. 13 - This is one of those rare days when I have three new pieces online. There's my 6,000 word short story "Quant", and the slightly less plausible 1,021 word "The Welcher". Both are in the new Fiction issue of Vice. And at Bookforum, there's an 800 word review of Destroy All Movies!!!, the film guide to 20th century punks I've been relentlessly plugging like I had stock in Fantagraphics or something. If I could just keep up this level of productivity every day, I'd be in good shape. Or an exhausted bag of an old man. One of those.

Review: "Times Square" (1980)

2010-12-10T05:51:00.000-08:00

HOLLYWOOD, Nov. 20 - Of all the films I had to slog through for last year's "Survival Of The Streets" essay, only 1980's Times Square eluded viewing. Netflix hemmed and hawed and never got around to sending it. Online stores weren't cooperative (Amazon starts used copies at $90). So when the Destroy All Movies promotional book & viewing tour swung through town I jumped at the chance to see this lost bit of Bad NY history in a proper theater setting. Before the show, director Allan Moyle said a few words, including that this would be the first time he'd ever seen his own film. Ever. The project had been taken over by its producers, and he'd never had the heart to sit through it. None of us knew exactly what to expect.

Times Square's Times Square snares two teenage girls - rich kid Pamela Pearl (Trini Alvarado) and street waif Nicky Marotta (Robin Johnson). After meeting in a hospital, the duo run away, make a home in an abandoned dock house, and explore the grungy wonderland of midtown. The two form the band/gang Sleaze Sisters, who perform a proto-punk song (lyrics: "spic, nigger, faggot, bum, your daughter is one") on the radio show of a sympathetic DJ (Tim Curry). Teen girls all over New York follow their exploits, dressing in garbage bags and bandit eye grease. It's the best parts of a half-dozen great 80's films - Desperately Seeking Susan, Hardcore, Ladies and Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains - only better.

The film keeps the girls out of too much trouble. They get chased through porno theaters but are never caught, and when young Pamela starts work at a topless bar, she refuses to dance topless (the script called for nudity, despite Alvarado being 13; she stayed clothed only after her mother stormed the set with a Bible). There are no drugs, no threats of rape. Even the strong overtones of romance remain suspended, forever unfulfilled. For a movie celebrating the slime of the Bad Apple, it's a very innocent story.

Pamela's politician father heads an embryonic Times Square cleanup campaign, complete with Milton Glaserish posters reading RECLAIM THE [HEART LOGO] OF THE CITY. Mr. Pearl isn't so much the villain as his campaign is, and the audience's sympathies are steered towards the "authentic" / "vibrant" take on megatoilet Manhattan. Here's a neat scene from the middle of the film, showing Pamela and Nicky cavorting down the forty deuce;

It's a Guys And Dolls moment in a Taxi Driver universe, a Disneyish romp two decades before any hint of an actual Disney Store (the real-life campaign to clean up Times Square, also kicked off in 1980, only declared victory last week).

The time capsule value of Times Square is fascinating, but it's Robin Johnson who steals the show. She's a 16-year old force of nature, rivaling Tim Curry's own star turn in Rocky Horror just two years earlier. Johnson struts, preens, pounces, and explodes, a preposterous Popeye voice emerging from a Joan Jett / Angelina Jolie face. The scene where the two girls swear a blood oath in the abandoned dock house - screaming each other's names into pleading echoes- produced a visceral reaction I didn't know I was still capable of. Over the course of the movie, finding it impossible to conceive of a universe where Johnson didn't go on to stardom, I convinced myself I was watching a young Leah Remini, perhaps performing under a stage name.

Afterwards, DAM coauthor Zack Carlson headed a Q&A with Moyle (I've known Zack since we toured together in '98, and thus suppressed a familiar twinge of jealousy - so far this year, other former colleagues have played at Madison Square Garden, walked on the north pole, and garnered a 4-star NY Times restaurant review; but who's counting?) Moyle fingered producer Robert Stigwood for the film's flaws. After the director was fired, many of his darker elements were removed, producing curious errors of tone and continuity. Squeamish about lesbianism, RSO deleted the explicit romance ("it wasn't like they were eating each out or anything. Just necking and stuff."). Stigwood, having made a bundle producing Saturday Night Fever and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, slapped an absurd Bee Gees song over the credits and called it a day.

This was more amusing than sad - Moyle repeatedly mourned the "corn" of the final product - until he implicated Stigwood in Robin Johnson's disappearance. Johnson signed a development deal with RSO. The film tanked at the box office, and she was kept from promising projects for three years. After a decade of bit parts, she wound up as the voice of a helicopter traffic reporter at local KFWB.

Someone asked about Johnson's whereabouts now. Moyle told us she was alive and well, living in Florida and operating heavy construction machinery. He also said that she occasionally channeled a several-thousand year old being, in the vein of Doonsbury's Boopsie Boopstein. The audience laughed, perhaps thinking he was joking, and when he made clear he was quite serious on both counts, laughed even harder. It was a sad end to the night, and an intriguing one. When does someone make the movie about her life?

Letters to clothes, 2010

2010-12-08T05:18:00.000-08:00

Dear Nightmarish Collection of Hippie Garments,

Sorry I screamed just now. It's just that there are so, so many of you. And that means there are just as many hippies out there, waiting to be clothed by you. It's a hard thing to get my mind around.

Dear Pregnant Ramones Shirt,

How dare you. There're 6.973 billion people in the world, more coming down the pike every hour, food riots and pandemics and tp rationing all over the place, everyone's struggling just to scare up a scrap of Soylent Green, and you sit there smugly in your storefront window, trying to convince kids it's "cool" to get pregnant? You're worse than Joe Camel and the Hitler Youth guys combined. Get a life, jerk.

Dear Comically Amateurish Obama Shirt and Hat(?),

Where are you now? Does someone, somewhere, still strut proudly in your candy cane assemblage of forgotten joy? Or have you been flung from attic to basement to yard sale to thrift store, forsaken by liberals who willfully ignored your centrist platforms during the campaign, deliberately downplayed your historic triumphs on health care, finance reform and economic recovery legislation, and whipped themselves up into a Ruplestiltskin tizzy fit just because you secured extension of jobless benefits for two million miserable, desperate Americans by striking a compromise with the Republicans instead of playing political chicken for the next two months and then having Bush tax cuts extended anyway by a hostile congress only now without the jobless benefits? Which is it?

Dear Bull Shit Shirt,

Hey, chief. I know, I know. I only wear you when all my other clothes are dirty. The thing is, you come on a little strong. Like if I'm at the food court at the mall. Maybe I was mad about high gas prices or something when I left the house - who the hell really remembers - but by lunch time I've kind of forgotten that I'm wearing a "message" shirt. Then everyone's staring at me and, well, it's uncomfortable. You understand, right? Don't worry. Soon enough, it'll be Mad Max times, and then it's going to be you and me all the way, bud. OK?

Dear Wall of Glow In The Dark Horse Shirts,

Take a good look at the hippie duds up top. The people who will wear you will someday have to fight the people who will wear them. Sure, there's more of them. Sure, they're probably made of sturdier materials and, yes, those materials are almost definitely less toxic than whatever weird inks and compounds make your gorgeous steeds glow in the dark. But you do glow in the dark. That gives you a notable advantage, and plenty of time to dangle about and figure out how to use it.

Interview with Shaan Obney

2010-12-06T04:49:00.000-08:00

Shaan Obney performed in the bands Le Shok and Nazti Skinz, and roadied for Wrangler Brutes for two weeks in the American south. I place him in the top 5% of roadies I've dealt with. This interview avoided any specific question (depths, operating speeds, specific nations he'd been off the coast of) that could land him in Leavenworth. This was also the first we'd spoken in half a decade.

SAM: I have a suspicious memory from your roadie days. What I recall is that you never showered or changed your clothes, but instead rose every morning, still dressed after sleeping on the floor, fastidiously cleaned yourself with two lint rollers - one for your back, one for your front - and then you were good to go for the rest of the day. Did this actually happen?

SHAAN: No. I actually showered when everyone was asleep. Because, at the time, I felt like I was imposing on the rest of the band....

SAM: That is good roadie behavior.

SHAAN: ...so I would wake up before everyone else and I would shower, then I would wear the same clothes but I would change my underwear and socks. And then I would de-lint myself.

SAM: It set a powerful template for on-the-road personal hygiene.

SHAAN: I gotta say, the lint brush thing kind of haunts me to this day, because everyone expects me to have one.

SAM: They're not cheap.

SHAAN: That's true.

SAM: So after Wrangler Brutes broke up in late '04, you were so distraught that you immediately joined the Navy....

SHAAN: Exactly.

SAM: Where was your basic training?

SHAAN: Great Lakes, Illinois. It's about eight weeks.

SAM: My impression of basic training is that it is not fun.

SHAAN: You know what? It's not fun. But Navy boot camp is basically a two-month course on how to fold clothing correctly.

SAM: Really. You're not crawling through mud, or having the guy from Full Metal Jacket yell at you?

SHAAN: No running the gauntlet. After basic training, I went to Basic Enlisted Submarine School, which is another two months. Eventually I spent four years on the USS Boise.

SAM: And was that the excitement equivalent of Boise, ID? Or did you get a party sub?

SHAAN: On my first day on the boat, I was told that 'Boise' was an acronym for 'Being Onboard Induces Suicidal Emotions'.

SAM: What was your job?

SHAAN: I am a sonarman. I trained for a year to do that.

SAM: OK. I have the USS Boise up on Wikipedia. It's a nuclear sub!

SHAAN: Yes. The United States has no diesel powered submarines.

SAM: But no nuclear weapons on the Boise.

SHAAN: No, I was on the class of submarines that doesn't carry nuclear weapons. Although we can, technically.

SAM: So if some shit goes down, like with a Soviet sub, or a giant squid, you gotta ram 'em.

SHAAN: That would probably be a bad idea, because the front end of the submarine is actually made of fiberglass.

Pre-Man Shaan, as Wiggins The Roadie, Mississippi, 2004

SAM: I've heard rumors that your sub was stationed under the North Pole at one point.

SHAAN: We weren't stationed there. We were transiting from Norfolk to Japan, and we went under the North Pole and broke through the ice. But we were never 'stationed' at the North Pole.

SAM: Did you hop out in a ski parka like Rock Hudson in Ice Station Zebra?

SHAAN: I did go topside and walk around on the ice....

SAM: Holy fucking shit.

SHAAN: Yeah. I literally walked around on the North Pole.

SAM: Jesus. How was it? What's it like up there?

SHAAN: Well, based on it being winter, it was dark all the time, so it looked super fake.

SAM: It was dark but not pitch black.

SHAAN: It was kind of like borderline sunrise. You had enough daylight to see what was going on, but only enough that it looked like you were on some Universal Pictures sound stage.

SAM: So at that point, standing there, did you think 'wow, this was all worth it'?

SHAAN: Yeah. 'Nazti Skinz never got me anywhere near this latitude'. (Laughs) No, I kind of felt like 'what was I thinking'? There was some poor decision making to be had, and I was at the helm of the poor decisions made....

SAM: ...that led you from civilization to this barren wasteland...

SHAAN: Exactly. At that point the barren wasteland was kind of like a metaphor for my life. (Laughs)

SAM: And so, was this just a pit stop? Like 'here's you chance to see the North Pole, boys.'

SHAAN: It was pretty much like 'hey, we're at the North Pole, it would be cool to break through the ice. Just to say we did it.'

SAM: Wait a minute. That just makes it sound like it's a bunch of dudes in a van making a pit stop....

SHAAN: It is. I've always said to people that being on a submarine is pretty much like if you're on tour with a band and you were trying to go through Texas but you were stuck in some weird time warp and you just did it for six months straight.

SAM: But there's chain of command. Somebody must have made an executive decision to break through the ice...

SHAAN: I think it's one of those things where it's the commanding officer's discretion.

SAM: So you are telling me that it's like if Andy is driving and we happen to be passing by The Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz and he's like 'guess what? We're going to The Mystery Spot now.'

SHAAN: Pretty much.

SAM: Wow. Hey, that reminds me. Andy wants to know where is his jacket.

SHAAN: Oh! Yeah. I know what he's talking about. I lost it overseas.

SAM: "At the north pole" is what I think you mean to say.

SHAAN: If it makes the interview any better, yes.

Books Read: Nov '10

2010-12-03T05:08:00.000-08:00

A RAISIN IN THE SUN by Lorraine Hansberry (Claremont Library, 25¢)

Before reading Raisin, all I'd really known of this 1959 play was A) its zinging at the hands of Strangers With Candy, and B) the hammy dialogue ("damn my eggs! Damn all the eggs that ever was!") that I'd unconsciously mimicked, in prolonged private monologues to my cats, for years and years. I was shocked at how little of the plot I'd picked up by osmosis. Are American kids supposed to have read this in school?

There're two ways to interpret this play in 2010. The Full Circle reading (several barely-employed generations smooshed together under one roof = life after Sept. 2008) is nicely checked by a Jetsons-style smugness (Chicago has birthed a Sidney-Poitier-style black president! We have iPhones!). Although both readings are deeply undercut by Hansberry's pleading earnestness. And is it already so far into the future that Phylicia Rashad - megafox of the Cosby Age - has to play the frumpy Mama role? What?

I REMEMBER JIMMY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JIMMY DURANTE by Irene Adler (La Jolla Library, $1)

Reading this undemanding, sincere account of Jimmy Durante's life left more questions than answers. How did a man this homely get to be so famous for so long? What kind of talent could propel a face like that into motion pictures? Was he a mascot? A dupe? The token Ugly Guy? Someone the masses could laugh at / with?

Irene Adler's book doesn't solve these riddles. What it does do is provide 187 pages of wonderful photos of the Schnozzola in action, starting with his early days in late-stage vaudeville right through to his TV appearances in the early 60's. In nearly every photo, Jimmy mugs for the camera - a ghastly sight - usually surrounded by the cream of Old Hollywood royalty and/or vixens. The faces at the edges of each photo are often more interesting than the subject.

I enjoyed this. My only complaint is with Arlington House (also publishers of The Forties Gals and The Funsters), who couldn't be bothered with such trivial concerns as quality bookmaking. Reading this in bed, the binding disintegrated, sprinkling loose chunks of flaky, yellow book dander all over my pillow. It looked carcinogenic.

FEAR OF FLYING by Erica Jong (Claremont Library, 25¢)

Here's a phenomenon from a 70's childhood I can't imagine was unique. 1) I'd go to a friend's house to stay the night, 2) inevitably I'd have to cross through the bedroom of the friend's parents to use their bathroom, and 3) inevitably Fear Of Flying (occasionally accompanied by The Joy Of Sex and/or Kama Sutra) would be waiting for perusal on a nearby dresser or bedside table. It was impossible to avoid peeking, and equally impossible to hide my mortification afterwards. In the pantheon of childhood Forbidden Horrors of Adulthood, Fear Of Flying wasn't quite the Sex Pistols or Dawn of the Dead. But it was up there.

Reading FOF as an adult, I feel vindicated. Grown ups of the 1970's seemed creepy and sex-obsessed because, apparently, they were. Jong's Isadore Wing romps through Europe with a sweaty brute of a man, delving again and again into all the sticky crags of the human psyche (and body). In the service of escaping an unfulfilling marriage, Wing brutalizes her cuckolded husband, then rationalizes this brutality in the framework of second generation feminism. The writing is zippy, occasionally inspired (especially the bits about Wing's ex, and his mental insanity), but also mean spirited, sordid, and grubby. According to Amazon, there are only 17 "cunts" in the whole novel, which seems impossibly low. It felt like Wing's boyfriend called her this at least three dozen times.

For a paperback with such a racy cover - its tantalizing peek of naked hip and boob soffit hinting at something even more lowbrow - I've never read a less sexy book. Many of the grim depictions of adult relationship complications were deeply depressing. Endless arguments, mixed signals, the tangible horror of romantic indecision; why would anyone want to re-live any of this through fiction? Then there was the day I brought this to read at the laundromat. That was not so classy on my part. Seemingly overnight, I've become one of the creepy adults my own self. No thanks.

Review: The Hoochie-Coochie Man

2010-12-01T04:17:00.000-08:00

THE INTERNET, Dec 1 - I've spent the month browsing Destroy All Movies, a 450-page "complete guide to punks on film". It's an amazing book. On page 149, there's a reference to 1983's Get Crazy, a movie I'd never heard of. It apparently stars Malcolm McDowell, Ed Begley Jr., Daniel Stern, and Lou Reed. It also features Fear's Lee Ving as "Piggy", which is similar to the character "Lee Ving" he plays in The Decline Of Western Civilization, only more fun. Piggy's band plays a show at L.A.'s Wiltern Theater, which was due for a real-life renovation and thus green-lighted for a trashing. The result is this;

It's not Fear. But really it is. Fear's Derf Scratch and Philo Cramer are listed in the credits, and although I count nine guitarists (and a conductor) onstage, Cramer's signature bendy licks are clearly audible over the whole thing. A friend who know such things tells me that Cramer plays a Gibson without a whammy bar, instead bending the neck of the instrument itself. The movie's poster seems to confirm this, with a young woman joyfully riding a guitar into the night sky, stretching the neck like an old stalk of celery. Some particulars:

1. This actually exists. I'm not comfortable with the implication. Namely, that with enough due diligence, I can find a completely amazing unreleased version of a completely amazing song, by one of my favorite bands, with an accompanying 35MM video, if only I scour the internet long enough and hard enough and with a pure enough heart. This seems like a recipe for future disappointments.

2. The yell at 0:53. I've tried to do this very scream many times - in both my professional and private life - and never quite pulled it off.

3. Right at that moment when the human mind wonders 'how can this thing that I am watching top itself?' - one minute twelve seconds - everyone starts speaking German. Having never seen the film, I choose to believe that this is part of the original American edition, and was used to make something already awesome far more awesome still.

4. I've witnessed a few stage dives from balconies and rafters over the years, and each one was pretty terrifying. But this video makes such behavior - a volley of bystanders, young and old alike, drifting down to the dance floor in dreamy delight - look like something I would someday still like to do.

5. A giant shopping cart materializes at 2:37. Fifteen seconds later, maniacal laughter spills into the song. I would like to work both of these elements into my life somehow.

Review: "Collapse" (2009)

2010-11-29T05:54:00.000-08:00

This time last year, moviegoers were treated to a triad of Christmas-season apocalypse movies; the bubbly Earth-buster 2012, the dramatically less bubbly The Road, and the much, much, much less bubbly documentary Collapse. This last movie - Chris Smith's look at one lone, persuasive doomsayer - served mostly to make The Road seem palatable as an entertainment choice. I myself only made it through 2012. Who wants to pay $18 (with drinks and popcorn) to sit through a non-exploding apocalypse? Why would I pay any dollars to see a movie that plausibly makes the case that civilization is dying? But Collapse eventually wound up on cable, and I grudgingly scooped it into my DVR. Unlike many distasteful fictional films, it seemed irresponsible to not give this documentary a respectful viewing.

Collapse's Cassandra is an unassuming ex-cop named Michael Ruppert. Ruppert ran the From The Wilderness newsletter (no mention is made if the initials are deliberate), and the film follows his dire predictions, from spring '09, through onscreen interviews and narration over stock footage. This version of doomsday stems from petroleum scarcity - nuclear weapons and global warming are distant afterthoughts - although its oracle doesn't limit the scarcity to just oil. Our era, he tells us, is "peak everything", pegged to an unsustainable "infinite growth paradigm". How many dates were ruined by this movie?

Being a film about the immediate future of civilization, Collapse elicits defensiveness. I found myself seeking cracks in Ruppert's persona, willing wrongness upon his premise. The film starts with stills from his newsletter that look vaguely Larouchian; I kept waiting (hoping?) for him to mumble something nasty about Jews. It was distressing to realize that I lacked the capacity to approach the subject matter objectively, my frightened brain automatically trying to discredit the messenger.

Ruppert obliges my skepticism. Several times, he does that annoying conspiracy theorist thing of pausing with a tiny smile after saying something provocative. Once, faced with a startlingly relevant question ("what about human ingenuity"?), he answers with a non sequitur about "the MSM", then defiantly waits for the interviewer's reaction. There is a distinct lack of self-reflection in Ruppert's pronouncements, a stubborn reluctance to utter the words, "I know this sounds crazy, but consider...". At one point he advocates buying gold, that staple of Glenn Beckonomics, as a means of avoiding fiat currencies. Isn't gold the ultimate fiat currency?

Ruppert's sales pitch is based on defensive logic. He's been right before, the thinking goes, therefore he must be right now. Only; was he so right? He drapes himself in the doomsday mantle of Nouriel Roubini without totally delivering the predictive goods. "My economic predictions," he says, pausing for a bit of pursey-lipped certainty, "we had it so right." His pre-crash lectures on mortgage-backed securities were uncannily accurate, but the big picture seems off. In this telling, 2008 was a crash "nothing like we have ever seen before," and the Greek debt crisis "a revolution". It's not quite Nostradamus.

Illustration courtesy of Joe Preston

Throughout his dialogue, Ruppert toggles between two extremes. Are his dire predictions in the vein of Al Gore (a warning) or Fred Phelps (a verdict)? He comes across as the enemy of hyperbole, then equates a global economic meltdown with the asteroid collision that killed the dinosaurs. There's an unfortunate bit about restoring "balance" to civilization, as if every problem he discusses - greed, disorganization, short sightedness - wasn't an innate, timeless function of human nature. I was reminded of Dr. Seuss's The Butter Battle Book, an arms race parable that - like Collapse - discounts progressive crosscurrents in human nature. What about all the people across the globe who agree with Ruppert? Where does Ruppert's own dissent factor into the fate of western civilization?

After an hour of colluding with its subject via grim music and grainy footage of oil wells, Collapse abruptly switches gears when Ruppert starts weeping onscreen. Tellingly, the tears come not from the direness of his predictions - the millions, if not billions, who will die if his scenario comes to pass - but from the isolation and frustration of being a full-time doomsayer. The film then becomes a study of a lonely man, and then the study of the duplicitous filmmaker who subtly betrays this lonely man. It's impressively meta.

Collapse didn't scare me nearly as much as I'd thought it would, although I'm still glad I avoided it in theaters (certainly there were no scenes as delightful as 2012's cosmic whoopee cushion smackdown of Los Angeles). Pondering the film afterwards, I was left with a strange appreciation for the world as it is now. Something terrible is surely coming for all of us this century. But it's not here yet. Ruppert's somber narration imparted me with a deep appreciation for antibiotics, freeways, libraries, Pandora, statins, Turner Classic Movies. And I registered a gratitude for those even more impressive, and entirely invisible, triumphs of human organization: alternating current, bar codes, packet switching, sewage treatment. That people have made it even this far is impressive.

Also, watching the blobby, JPEGgy title cards brought an even more urgent realization: I need to pony up for HD.

Brooks Recap

2010-11-26T14:18:00.000-08:00

THE INTERNET, Nov 26 - Two weeks ago, I and Brooks Headley - subject of last year's The Dessert Psycho - were featured on "The Food Scene" online radio show. More accurately, Brooks was featured and I called in and tried to not sound snide or weird.

I had some funny gag questions I was going to slip in, but being on the radio is scary and I choked. The full interview is here.

Smashing Party @ Tit Mouse

2010-11-24T06:40:00.000-08:00

HOLLYWOOD, Nov. 20 - The invitation to the Titmouse smashing party told us to arrive anytime after five o'clock. Titmouse - producers of TV's Metalocalypse, among other projects - have held annual smashing parties since 2004, and they seemed to have worked out all the fine points. "If you want to smash," the invite explained, "bring something you hate and/or something that smashes really good. Hint - CRT monitors and TVs smash really good. So do toilets, plaster statues and giant vases. Don't bring watermelons or fire. We can't allow any food due to slippery danger or fire because it is fire."

The invite failed to mention that a thousand people had been invited. We decided to arrive early. At the front entrance, I was given a plastic wristband and made to sign a two-page liability waiver. Fine print told me, "The risk of injury from the activity and weaponry involved in smashing is significant," and had me acknowledge that "the activities of smashing are physically and mentally intense." I was issued a heavy duty respirator that seemed more expensive than the paltry 3M dust masks I'd salvaged from my garage's earthquake/ Al-Qaeda kit. Several people milled around in full eye-goggles and Road Warrior masks.

A large tent covered the Titmouse parking lot. Inside this tent, a smaller cage had been erected from chain link and protective mesh. Inside this cage, I could see three plastic trash cans. One stood upturned to make a pedestal, while the other two held all the implements of smashing; axes, shovels, sledgehammers, swords. A bowling ball rested nearby. Past this, in the Titmouse lobby, an open bar received a few sober partygoers. I grabbed a free Coke and returned to the cage, where I overheard one gawker remarking to another, "you can't imagine how gross it's going to get in just an hour from now."

graphic courtesy Titmouse

I caught up with writer and animator Christy Karacas, who'd I'd only met in person the night before, although we'd worked together twice last year. Christy is one of those gentlemen who fits the description of "the best". He told me and Tara about the glorious second season of Superjail!, and then a guy with a bullhorn took the stage in the cage and announced, "We must smash into ash all that is trash!"

A heavily protected man attacked a nude female mannequin with an ax. It was thrilling, and also disturbing. People whooped and hollered. He took a half-dozen whacks to get the head off. Bits of plastic - or whatever mannequins are made of - flew everywhere. One more blow speared the head on the ax, with the blade popping out of the lady mannequin's forehead. Afterwards, another padded fellow attacked a TV set with the head/ax. It was easy to see that the air in the cage - and thus the tent - would soon be a toxic 9/11 soup of heavy metals and carcinogens. I retreated.

Unlike most of the rest of the crowd, I wasn't so keen on smashing anything. I've broken a lot of possessions in my life, so my thing now is more like, how do I not smash anything? Back when I had a small record label, me and my business partner Neil used to hold frequent smashing parties of our own stock. Only the night before, at the same party where I'd met Christy, did it occur to me that this might have been a problem for the artists on my label. Later, I located Joel from Landed and asked if this had been a problem for the guys in his band. "Oh yeah," he said, not missing a beat. "It was a bummer, dude."

An hour in, we had to leave. Cinefamily was holding a 6:30 showing of the elusive Times Square - itself a movie with lots of things being broken - and sometimes you have to make sacrifices. "We usually get shut down by midnight or so," the invite had warned. Now I understood this would probably come from the growing throng of freely drinking party smashers, and not the sounds of the smashing itself. Later I would learn that we missed celebrities, live music - a marching band, some sort of "speed oi" act - and lots and lots of destruction. It was sad to miss the whole thing, but I still felt grateful to have been invited to a simply smashing party in the first place.

Review: The APL Delaware St. Annex

2010-11-22T05:55:00.000-08:00

REGRETS DEPT., Nov 22 - A lot of businesses and organizations have had the honor of firing me over the years, but the Albany, NY public library system got there first. This was at their Delaware Street annex, in 1985. The APLDSA was a tiny branch - about the size of a large suburban living room - and not known for difficult customers. It was the perfect job for a 16 year old who fancied himself a budding smartfellow.

In hindsight, I should have paid more attention to office politics. On the second Friday in November, I reported to work as usual, shelved some books and greeted some customers. My friends Bob and Eddie arrived at closing time. High school juniors, we were all too young to drive, and my boss, a Mrs. Lorraine Smi, had agreed to chauffer us to the Corrosion Of Conformity gig across town. I was closing up shop when Mrs. Smi beckoned me into a thinly partitioned back office. There was a problem - she said in a tone both soft and final - with my shelving. Then she read me a poem;

While you are trying your best

you are unable to perform

your paging duties

to my satisfaction

and I feel

at this time

it is necessary for me

to terminate your employment.

I accepted the letter in shock. I was barely a man and already unable to perform my duties. I knew my friends had heard everything through the meager wall. It was a library; what else was there to hear?

“Can we,” I asked quietly, “still get a ride to the show?” Ms. Smi nodded without smiling and drove the three of us to the Washington Street VFW in a difficult silence. Bob and Eddie are big shots now - a TV journalist and a doctor - and I thank them for not laughing out loud until Ms. Smi left us on the sidewalk and drove off into history.

Her face has faded with time, even if her insult has not. I was a good god-damned shelver. I shelved the shit out of that place. I’ve always felt I was unjustly dismissed, collateral damage in Albany budget battles, a pawn in a much larger game. I can accept that. Or maybe some mentally insane hobos came in and rearranged my careful shelving. I can accept that as well. Stranger things have happened. But I don’t know if I can accept that I was a bad librarian.

Here's the thing: was I a bad librarian? Subsequent years haven’t given me any chances to disprove this negative. I’ve frequented a lot of libraries since, but almost never fetched a book on my own. At the famous NYC 5th Ave branch – in the ornate, vast reading room that strangely reeked of old gym socks and whose windows were still blacked out from WW2 – I wrote my book requests on slips of paper and handed these to employees, who then lowered these requests, by hydraulics or rope pulley, into the catacombs below. Downtown, at the giant cube library NYU graciously let my college use, I only studied, or wrote terrible fanzines. In Richmond, VA, I spent many hours in the main branch on Franklin street, a fake airport terminal that seemed to mirror the Cancelled Flight inertia my life had taken on. But I almost never checked out books. The charming Providence, RI library had a good VHS selection. I use the local Claremont, CA library now only when I need graphics of cowboys or body parts, and I know what aisles to browse.

At the time of my firing, I had no way of knowing that I'd participated in the final days of the traditional, multi-millennia-old library system. A year later, arson destroyed 400,000 books at the central Los Angeles library. Six years after that, the National & University Library of Bosnia & Herzegovina was destroyed by war, a 1.5 million book hit to humanity's archives. Up until the 21st century, libraries - and books themselves - were lousy, lossy mediums for storing data. The minor uproar over digitizing card catalogs in the 1990's has given way to the wonderland of digital library information available from any computer in the 2010's. Soon it won't be possible to lose any books. "misshelving" will cease to exist, as a fireable offense or otherwise.

Here's what else isn't going away: the ding to my honor. If you've Googled yourself, Mrs. Lorraine Smi of upstate New York, and found this page, know that this indignity remains an open account. You may have won this round, but the battle is far from over.

New: George Washington's America (review)

2010-11-18T09:17:00.000-08:00

EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM DEPT., Nov 18 - My review of Barnet Schecter's George Washington's America; A Biography Through His Maps is now online over at Bookforum.

I probably would have accomplished more with my life by now if I had a cool name like Barnet Schecter. But, you know, water under the bridge.

New: Spice Up Your Marriage

2010-10-18T12:29:00.000-07:00

EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM DEPT., Oct. 18 - "Spice Up Your Marriage", my contribution to Vice's upcoming comedy issue, is now online.

New: For The Faithful

2010-10-07T08:09:00.000-07:00

EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM DEPT., Oct 7 - My 2,174 word preview of the upcoming Articles Of Faith reunion show is now online at the Chicago Reader. But I just wasn't able to shoehorn one story into the piece, despite its relevance.

In 2004, my band spent a week in Chicago, recording at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio. I'm neutral on Albini's music, so I was more awed by the facilities than the engineer. The control room overlooked a huge studio with 30-foot ceilings that resembled a spent fuel pool in a nuclear power plant. It could just as easily have held water and glowing uranium wands instead of drum parts and racks of equipment and a Nelson-Wiggen grand piano.

On my first day of vocals, I found myself in a large alcove directly under the control room. My only communication with those above was through headphones and one of the dozens of antique microphones that surrounded me and which I was terrified of accidentally kicking or tripping over. Albini's voice came into the headphones, asking me to give him some information about my vocal style.

I thought about this for a moment. "I've been told that I emulate the vocals of Vic Bondi," I said. "From Articles of Faith?" We'd spent most of the week indoors, so it still doesn't seem totally implausible that I'd forgotten that we were physically in the city of Chicago, dealing with a Chicago engineer, with a long, long history with the punk scene of Chicago. There was a lengthy pause in the headphones. Finally, Albini's voice returned.

"Goodbye."

Then I was left to stand in silence, wondering how, once again, I had screwed up something so swiftly....

Interview with Marty Violence

2010-10-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

I met Marty Violence in Richmond in 1994. A decade later, Marty moved to New York during a weird period in my life when all my friends from different parts of the country converged in one city and started forming odd interregional alliances. In the middle of this period, Marty - a Virginia friend - started playing bass for Ted Leo - a New Jersey friend. Ted Leo's band got a slot opening for Pearl Jam, and the long and short of it is that Marty wound up playing on stage at Madison Square Garden.

So our friendship has been colored by this new inequality. At the end of your life there are, after all, only a handful of things that you can regret having missed: seeing the pyramids, climbing Everest, swimming the English Channel, writing the Great American Novel, playing onstage at Madison Square Garden. Marty has now been denied one of these items. It's weird. I caught up with him last May, at a Brooklyn back yard gathering in which I suspect some drinking had just transpired.

Sam: I read somewhere that you gave me credit for the name "Marty Violence". But I didn't come up with that!

Marty: I'm pretty sure you did.

Sam: When?

Marty: I'm positive you came up with it.

Sam: It sounds like something I'd do. But I don't remember doing it.

Marty: I know you did it. There was a time when you were like, 'you need a name'. And that's what you came up with....

Sam: I don't like that I have a whole period of my life where I'm the equivalent of a blackout drunk. Why can't I remember this?

Marty: Maybe it was you and Adam? But I'm pretty sure it was just you and then Adam kept calling me that. And that's why it stuck. I didn't really want to call myself that...

[discussion of time Marty fought a possum in the bathroom of the apartment below Sam's]

Marty, 2nd from right, in a Steve Bruleish moment

Sam: We've both lived twice at 514 W. Clay Street in Richmond. After you moved out of the downstairs apartment and I moved out of the upstairs apartment, I moved back in to the upstairs, and then you took over my lease after I left the city in 1998. Did you have any problems with the downstairs neighbors?

Marty: Oh, yeah....

Sam: I need you to clarify something. The day I left, I thought this is incorrect. I can't cede this apartment to Marty without a zinger. So I did a walkthrough as you. I walked through the entire apartment pretending I was a buzzed Marty; smiling, holding a bottle in my right hand - you're a right hand beer holder, always have been - halting in the doorway of the back bedroom. I thought, Marty wouldn't look to the right. That's not his style. Marty is the kind of guy who would look left. And then, drunk and content, Marty would further tilt his head up. That's where I wrote 'Marty Sucks' on the inside of the door frame. This worked, right?

Marty: Nyeeeeah..... I remember that.

Sam: And thus you were zinged? Sorry, dude. Gotcha.

[drunken third party laughter]

Marty: No, I actually don't remember any of that.

Sam: Seriously! You don't remember this.

Marty: No.

Sam: I've told this story for years! You never noticed that someone had written your name, with the word 'sucks', on the wall of your house, where you lived?

Marty: I don't recall that at all.

Nappy: I'm timing this interview. You guys have two and a quarter minutes left.

[drunken chortling and guffaws pick up volume]

Sam: From my perspective, there's been a jump cut. It goes from Young Man Marty - good time mascot Marty - to boom! Man Marty; bearded, married, Madison Square Garden Marty. Was there a very specific moment when you thought 'Hey, I'm the new Marty'?

Marty: Hm. (strokes meager beard)

Sam: I'm going to call it 'The Change'.

Marty: Well, I don't want to be too clichéd, but I guess it would be, well, the day I got married...

Sam: That's very nice. And very clichéd.

Marty: OK.... Madison Square Garden?

Sam: Right. About that. You played two nights there?

Marty: Yes.

Sam: OK. This is how I picture it. Either A) you have total clarity and you're like, wow, I'm playing at Madison Square Garden, as Steve Martin described being on the Tonight Show for the first time. Or B) it's so terrifying that you have to force your body to do every movement, step by step, like a giant meat marionette. Which one was it?

Marty: Definitely A. Our sets were 25 or 30 minutes. What really helped was that it was so dark. You could barely see people's heads in the audience. But you could tell they were out there. It was totally different from being on Jimmy Fallon, where I got really wasted before I went on. And then it happened, and then I was like, "Oh, that's over." And I barely remember it. But I was completely sober at Madison Square Garden.

Sam: In either of these appearances, at any point, did my face pop into your mind as someone who should have shared in your experience?

Marty: No.

Sam: If you're on stage at Madison Square Garden and you break a bass string do you just, like, fart and die? What happens?

Marty: Well, if you're opening up for Pearl Jam, what you do is you break a string, and you go, [makes unintelligible gesture] then you put your own bass string back on.

Sam: In front of everyone.

Marty: In front of everyone.

Sam: Now, do you actually have to tune on stage at Madison Square Garden?

Marty: Yeah. You do that. In front of the 500 people that are there before the 25,000 or so that will show up.

[explosion of drunken hoots and hollers from increasingly belligerent partygoers]

Sam: This is MY interview! Woodward and Bernstein didn't have to put up with this! Christ almighty!!

Review: the ruins of the Enchanted Forest

2010-09-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

THE ZONE OF UNEASE, Sept 30 - Me and the missus broke into the remains of the Enchanted Forest theme park last month. This is in Ellicott City, Maryland, on the north side of Route 40, just east of Centennial Lane.

The Enchanted Forest was a lovingly crafted nursery-themed theme park, opened just one month after Disneyland in 1955. The park closed in 1988, reopened briefly in 1994, and was finally sold to the first in a succession of realty companies. In the spirit of all the countless American housing developments whose thoroughfares recall what they've replaced - Shady Creek Drive, Apple Orchard Place, Dying Wildlife Lane - this is now the site of the Enchanted Forest Shopping Center. From the highway, the statue of Old King Cole points to a Petco. Not far away, one sad vestigial castle stands with its drawbridge firmly drawn, warning pedestrians that there is NO TRESPASSING. Everything else is closed.

Actually, it isn't correct to say we broke in. We strolled in. All you have to do is walk around the Petco and the Eastern Savings Bank, turn left and keep walking towards the large fence. At one point on the right, just before the next large block of strip mall buildings, you'll see a gap in the fence wide enough to admit a human body. It's not much more difficult than walking into any of the shops.

From photos on my wife's blog, I'd assumed this was going to be a nice little walk through a perfectly tended but blissfully vacant theme park. Instead, it's an ominous hike through an overgrown wasteland. Anyone - or any thing - could have been hiding there.

Inside the mildewy ruins of the Ice Cream house, a giant rat had been spray painted on the wall. Perhaps it was warning of real rats, or perhaps someone wanted to commemorate or threaten someone accused of snitching. I took a picture from just through the open door, thinking about The Blair Witch Project. No force on Earth could have compelled me to step across the threshold.

Anything small enough to be moved is gone: the giant candy, the Crooked House, The Easter Bunny's House, the Little Red Schoolhouse. My aunt-in-law told us she'd passed one of the giant teacups on the back of a truck on the highway. Many of these items wound up at a farm 4 miles away. All that remains are the structures too big or decrepit to move.

We walked down towards the old pond where the Little Toot tugboat once tootled. It was now covered in a thick green scum that looked plastic. If I hadn't been acutely freaked out by this point, I would've tried skipping rocks to see if it really was solid.

Marauding teens had left ample graffiti. But there were no discarded beer cans, or cigarette butts, or campfire remains. It was as if someone - or some thing, perhaps living in the half-submerged Alice In Wonderland tunnel - made periodic sweeps to keep their new home clean. I kept looking for the missing debris, until I realized that I was scared I might find a pile of shoes, or a human femur. It was time to leave.

New: Two old pieces

2010-09-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

THE INTERNET, Sept. 20 - I have lots of half-finished pieces for this blog that, for one reason or another, never make it online. Only this weekend did it occur to me that this is my blog, and I can post anything I want, anytime I want. I guess that should have been obvious. So, here is an old review of a Devo show and a LA Philharmonic symphony. More to follow???

New: Anti-Music issue

2010-08-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM DEPT., Aug 16 – The “Anti-Music issue” of Vice Magazine, for which I guest edited, is now online. I have two big pieces in this issue – the sad mask of “Closed Frontier”, which is balanced by the happy mask of “The Vice Guide To Not Being In A Band”. There are also some great articles and illustrations by Erika Anderson, Anthony Berryman, Neil Burke, Rick Froberg, Oliver Hall, John Michaels, Ian Svenonius, and Tara Tavi, among many others. And a gripping article on the current Crass litigation which appears to be a scoop.

I wrote a little over 10,000 words for this issue. There are 1,105 emails in my Gmail “Anti-Music” folder. It was a lot of work.

Thursday Sketchbook

2010-08-12T06:36:00.000-07:00

Misc: The Cycle Of Life

2010-08-09T06:25:00.000-07:00

Sig was born in 2007. He seems to have a handle on everything. Last week, a police car sped by, sirens blaring, and Sig turned to his dad and explained, "his boyfriend died!"

Last month I called animal control to come get a baby possum that was slowly dying in the back yard. I didn't get too close because it might have diseases. The animal control guy arrived, and I led him around back. He said, "that's not a possum. That's a rat. We can't take rats." We stood there, watching the rat wriggle through its death throes. Finally, the animal control guy looked at me and said, quietly, "cycle of life, man."

False.

I had to buy two new tires yesterday. When I rounded the back of the tire garage place, I saw this;

It took a good moment to realize it wasn't a real dead head. My educated guess is that they keep this thing by the dumpster year round, and all the extra adrenaline in my system somehow resulted in me buying a more expensive grade of tire than I'd planned. That's how they get you.