RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Wednesday, April 30

MNZ: Trains May 2008


I will not front, I buy a motherfucking magazine from time to time with pictures of fucking trains riding around. The articles suck (although one time there was a column on how bad graffiti was on freight trains, and they had example of good graffiti, albeit wrong, and one was a memorial to Bob Marley, as they described it, except it was really ODB with an "RIP ODB" underneath), but I like looking at pictures of trains. Basically, two things will probably happen in my life as I get older. If I somehow screw up my family, instead of ever paying a dime of child support, I will disappear, become a hobo, probably use my genetic disposition to maintain this position in life and help unlock any repressed racialism and class hatreds I have worked hard to keep from growing in my mind due to my born lot in life. Or, I will maintain things, continue to improve our collective position, and end up being one of those weird old fuckers who has like a model train set-up in his attic or shed or some shit, except I was brain-fucked by the '80s, so mine will be goofy and have graffiti and little immaculately constructed cardboard ghettos with homeless people and burned up Matchbox cars and completely ridiculous stupid shit like that. And I will spend all my free time out there, since in that choice of the train fork of my life, I will probably not drink anymore by then.
Anyways, American government hasn't invested shit in trains or train tracks, other than to subsidize shitty Amtrak's shitty operation, so now that diesel fuel has gone the fuck crazy, and we are almost completely dependent upon trucking to haul our foods around, a fucking can of tuna fish has gone up like twenty cents since Christmas. I even noticed that the bread thrift store's nicer breads, which have been $1.49 a loaf for as long as I've gone to that particular store the past few years, just bumped up to $1.59. When the price of the day-old bread at the bread thrift store is jumping a noticeable amount, you know shit is fucked.
Another part of the problem is how investors, since real estate is all screwed up from predatory lending habits, have bought into commodities futures like wheat or rice or oil and that's driven the price of all those things up. Actually, that's supposedly a big cause for the high price of oil. So it's good to know that we've come to a point where capitalism's free market bullshit is driving the price of common necessities up so that regular people have to struggle and foreign people will starve. Now maybe somebody will slit some of these fake ass pseudo-changing throats before too long.
Oh yeah, there was a guide to tourist trains in this issue, so I can pretend me and the wife will take the kids to ride a scenic passenger train through the southern tip of West Virginia until I actually look it up or call their number and find out it's like $2000.

12-Pack Review: IWA-MS 06/15/02

BEER ONE: No guts, no blood, no glory – that’s the type of shit that makes sense to me. I got this tape at the post office today, and I’m very excited, as after it happened a few people emailed me saying I had to see it – it was the perfect Raven type of show. You see, I like the odd, ugly, realness of things. Laid back and wasted, yet able to keep all the responsibilities covered, much like school, coasting, getting just enough of a grade to succeed, not shooting for straight As, but generally regarded as an honor roll type of motherfucker, even though I don’t deny myself the adult parallels of getting high in the bathroom by the typing class on the back side of the Vo-Tech building. I love wrestling, but most of what I see now, I don’t love. That’s obvious. Everybody who’s ever stopped long enough near me talking about wrestling has heard me run it down; I can’t help it. It’s all soap opera bullshit, or supposedly great lightweights who’d be lucky to not be classified as a mini south of the border. Same ol’ shit, same ol’ shit. And it’s not like IWA is anything different, as it was one of the many ECW wannabe, hardcore clones that sprang from the ashes of a burning out Paul Heyman creativity in the late ‘90s, but Ian Rotten has persevered with IWA, and it has built itself into some weird hybrid of what I don’t know. When I watch an IWA show, I know, eventually, I’m gonna see something I like, whether it be in the ring, or some fresh-faced teenage hooker wearing a cut-off black t-shirt in the crowd. I can imagine the watering holes in Clarksville, Indiana, to be warm places, reverberating with the thump of Nappy Roots or Trick Daddy, yet mostly all white faces in the dim, sucking on Budweisers or Bud Lights or Smirnoff Ices, as that’s all they probably offer, the cross-breeding of black culture with lower level white culture in full bloom, being it’s fuckin’ beautiful fuck-you-light-that-blunt-bitch self. Now, I’m exposing myself as too wordy and shit. That’s the culture I sprang from, yet I sprang myself to college, and am still changing names and addresses and avoiding the Big Payback however possible. I bet not a one of you knows my real name; hell, most of my best friends don’t even know it. Word. I am too educated to be smoking blunts at the pool table in the back room of a bar anymore, yet too fuckin’ trashy to clean and polish up nice enough to ever make something of myself in this world, the making something being relative to income, which for some fucked up twisted reason is the accepted standard of making something of one’s self. And that’s the thing, too. I remember reading somewhere someone talking something about how Ian Rotten barely gets 200 people for his shows, yet he puts on these great shows time after time, with all these great guys. How does he do it? LOVE, MOTHERFUCKERS, LOVE! Take your goddamned dollar bills and stuff them up your fuckin’ brainwashed asses. Sure, it’s great to be able to pay the light bill on time doing something that you like to do without answering to some asshole who doesn’t care about you no way; but when you LOVE something, you’ll find a way. I hate motherfuckers who talk about funding for the arts being necessary, or how downloading the new Jurassic 5 undermines the artist as they won’t be able to do their art anymore. MOTHERFUCK THAT! You love something, you do it, period. I love putting bullshit intangible words together and always have and always will. What the fuck do you think I get for this? Let’s see, I got a bill for my web server the other day, but I hit everybody up for money a few months back, and used that money for said light bill instead. And a random email from time to time. But nothing really, other than the satisfaction that even though I spend at least ten hours of each day doing some dumb shit that if I could cut off one finger and never have to do for the rest of my life but still make a paycheck like I was doing it then yeah bye-bye finger, I can come home and scribble out some dumb shit. Okay, blah blah blah. I’m drinking Coors Light because we had a keg party this weekend and The Tara Monk came to visit, and she buys this shit and leaves it here when she goes home and the last three times I’ve drank Coors Light have been the last three times she’s visited. On to the tape, which is in loving memory of Old Man Charlie, and I don’t know who the fuck that is, but that’s one helluva name, so I’ll drink to him.

BEER TWO: Ian Rotten looks more and more like the type of honest crew foreman that we’d all love to work for. The great Ian is announcing that they will break their five-year lease to move three doors down and have air conditioning and heat, and the fat white crowd pops like a fight broke out on Springer back before it was stereotypical to have fights on Springer. Wrestling as religion has always been a theme in my head, with Ric Flair as Jesus figure throughout the south, and I guess the country, before the blasphemy of sports entertainment sabotaged souls into believing in false prophets like Triple H and all. And though those days are gone, moments seeing a guy like Ian talk to his crowd at the beginning like it’s a cookout and their saying grace before the food is picked apart, it gives me that feeling again. They’re not selling Old Man Charlie’s seat anymore, and a generic plastic chair has a piece of paper taped to it dedicated to him. God fuckin’ damn. And the crowd is a real crowd, who hates the hated and loves the loved, and Ian says Tojo Yamamoto better make room in Heaven, and Ian’s head is stitched together from the night before, I assume. It’s all so overwhelming, and exactly how I want wrestling to be. Brad Bradley comes out, with some chick, and he’s big and athletic and I’ve never seen him before. Mark Gotticker is his opponent, who looks young and goofy, and has terrible late ‘80s/early ‘90s Memphis heel tag team trunks, all bright colored and floral patterned. Bradley is from Steel Domain Wrestling school, they say, and that has to be good as most of the guys I saw on their tape I had never seen were good. Bradley is dishing the pain and Gotticker is taking it with floppy arms, this is a great opening match, doing what needs to be done.

BEER THREE: I gotta admit, I’m getting primed here. The Smart Mark, who by the way, fuckin’ rock. I haven’t bought shit from them, but all their shit is great, and lacks seven thousand copyright notices. But the announcers are talking about Necro Butcher vs. Pondo, and the return of Tracey Smothers, and mystery tag team partners, and I’m stoked. Gotticker gets a schoolboy victory over Bradley. Your ring announcer looks like a down’s syndrome disco machine. Some girl comes to the ring with the announcer or some shit, and she has one of those tattoos that’s low on her back, half exposed by her pleather pants or whatever, and I desire anal sex with her. Jayden Draigo is your first person in this next match, from Shawn Michaels school in Texas. He’s got a dope fucked-up look that I’d expect from a wrestler, with long braided hair, yet the sides and back shaved, and a sculpted ghetto Backstreet Boy beard. Draigo chants “you’re a fat fuck” to override the crowd chant. Adam Gooch is your crowd favorite, and he looks very normal in pants and an orange shirt. Adam Gooch is a redneck lucha fan, and I can’t complain about that one little bit. The crowd chants “Charlie” for the dead guy. You know, the true sign of a wrestling show being worthwhile is if there’s a crazy old guy you recognize from other shows at the thing; and they always find their way to the front row somehow. Again, that’s why sports entertainment sucks, because the crazy old guy doesn’t somehow get front row seats every show. It’s always some shitty college kids who got up early on Saturday morning to hit ticketmaster.com and get their fuckin’ tickets on the credit card they were supposed to use for emergencies only. Gooch hits a German suplex with a bridge and gets the pinfall. Ahh, wrestling as it’s meant to be, with shitty extra rooms built on with doors with no knobs being the dressing room, and some kid behind a table with a stereo on it as the music player. Desiree is the chick with the tattoo and she’s coming out with the ref each match, I think. “All That” Matt Murphy is out, and he is small and wearing really shiny trunks, and he was trained by Harley Race. Murphy’s opponent is Chris Hero, who is escorted by Nadia Nyce, who bignaturals worthy. They’ve got to be real because they bounce; and Hero is pasty and wearing a Superman shirt, and goddamn I feel like I’m at a party at my youngest sister’s trailer, legit no bullshit, and that’s a great thing.

BEER FOUR: When I watch the wrasslin’, it means a lot when the guys look like we could party. It’s always been that way. This explains why, as a kid, I was drawn to guys like Jimmy Valiant and Buzz Sawyer and Blackjack Mulligan – they looked like the types that would be in the backyard smoking joints and playing shoes with my dad and the gang. The same is still true. And when I look at a guy like Chris Hero, without even seeing him wrestle, and Ian Rotten too, in his current state, they look like the type of guys I’d be leaning against the back of a pick-up, splitting a twelve-pack down at Eugene’s, before he died, in Cumberland, talking shit about nothing at all. Some of the Dukers would show up, and Paul, who I first smoked weed away from home with, would ask what I was doing and how many kids I had. Smarty Marty would eventually pull up and ask about my mom. Percy would be there, barefoot, still unemployed and still the stoner he was when I met him and split bottles of stolen wine behind the Big Star sixteen years ago. Percy said he started smoking weed at age eight, and I can’t argue with him, because he’s burned out, but a good burned out. When I coached little league softball in high school, one of the girl’s on my team was Percy’s half-sister, and I’d have to take her home to the trailer and Percy would answer the door and that little girl had beautiful eyes that only came from reality. You can’t put a white trash sticker on your car and have eyes like that. Then again, so many of my white princesses have been pimped out by Springer stereotypes and early teen pregnancies and Big Tymer videos that they’ve lost those eyes, too. Matt Murphy asks the crowd to put out their cigarettes, as he’s a real athlete. What a great heel tactic. I like this Chris Hero; he’s not bad, and not afraid to put his moves right up on you. The commentators are talking about a Chris Hero drinking game from some dudes in England; man, this shit is right up my alley. All IWA needs is a big-tittied (natural, of course) valet with an Andy Capp tattoo on one of her tits. Or Snuffy Smith. Or both.

BEER FIVE: Chris Hero gets twisted in the ropes, and Murphy throws some shitty punches. Hero is not afraid to be stiff with the clotheslines. “Modified flipping DDT thing,” says the announcer, and I think he’s stealing lines from my reviews. Fuck knowing the name of everything. Double Hero’s Welcome, after dropping Nyce’s tits on Murphy, which didn’t move a lot, which challenges my real thought, but she still has a fat enough ass. Desiree is dope, and I know her tits are real, because they’re small. “Back in Black” as theme music! From here to forever, it means drink. 2 Tuff Tony, man, what a guy, giving the crowd pounds instead of hand slaps. IWA needs a glow-in-the-dark shirt like the Metallica metal-up-yer-ass shirt. Corporal Robinson, with a cig in mouth, his forehead puffed up from blading, at his age, well ahead of the pace that Perro Aguayo Sr. set as the high watermark. If Robinson can go for another twenty-five years, he’ll definitely have what looks like four knuckles trying to bust out his forehead at 55, god bless him. I feel like I should blade during every review, just so I’m not some bullshit internet dork.

BEER SIX: Robinson’s head busted open during a collar-and-elbow hold-up, and now he’s in the face of a fan, talking mad shit. The fan looks bonafide confused and pissed, and Robinson just sky-rocketed up the Raven Mack 500 list in my head. I remember reading a quote from Dusty or Wahoo or somebody saying they had so much scar tissue, sometimes if they had a violent sneeze, they could start bleeding. Why does Corporal Robinson want me to fake his ass? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Tony hit a brainbuster on a chair ringside on Robinson, and even with the awkward playing-it-safe angle the move took, it could never feel good, like sex with an ex-girlfriend who tried to stab you at her friend’s house that time. Robinson sets up an ironing board, and then 2 Tuff takes over, and I desire to see how they break this thing apart. Corporal Robinson gets rammed into the water heater, and that’s a first I’ve ever seen, at least at a wrestling match. The building is the cinderblock and sheet rock that a good indy show should be in post-corporate wrestling world. Holy fuck, 2 Tuff Tony is choking Robinson with his own arm, a move I used to make fun of the mixed martial arts faggots I used to work with, since they’d be rolling around on the floor in “guards”, which looked like homoerotic foreplay to me. Robinson and Tony do a quick two-count sequence with four two-counts, which is great, considering who these guys are. Tony has a dollar bill stapled to his head now; that never ceases to impress me. And now there’s one another bill stapled to his cheek; and I hope to fuckin’ god they’re using eighth inch staples. And in the type of rampant carelessness I love and respect, Robinson backtosses Tony into a stack of chairs leaning against the wall, folded, so that they all just tumble and he lands all awkward as shit.

BEER SEVEN: Tony still has two dollar bills stuck to his head, one on his cheek. 2 Tuff Tony is fuckin’ great; he just dropped Robinson on his fuckin’ skull on a thumbtack bat, then lays an extra door on two chairs, now understand, this is not like a piece of plywood, this is an extra door they found laying around, on two chairs, in perfect violent beauty, and pours thumbtacks all over it. Robinson gets layed on the door with tacks on chairs, and Tony comes with his corkscrew plancha into a three count, and into my heart. And the one dollar bill is still stuck to his skull, though the one on his cheek came off. And Tony, in a hardcore redneck honor twist, starts a “Corporal” chant into the house mic. People like this make me not hate America completely, because this country is full of people like this. Fuck the fags in suits and ties who talk their liberal or conservative bullshit and care about dumb shit like bombing places I can’t drive to or planning budgets. Budget? What the fuck is that? I pay my bills and if I have extra, I blow it. And of course, Tony has to cut an after-match promo outside with the dollar bill in his head. “LONGHAIRED COUNTRY BOY” AS THEME MUSIC! “LONGHAIRED COUNTRY BOY” AS THEME MUSIC! I, too, get stoned in the morning and drunk in the afternoon. And I don’t have a blue-tic hound, but my dog Waylon likes to lay around in the shade. And I, too, don’t have no money, but I damn sure got it made. One time, my hip hop group, no shit, hip hop, played this party, and these two big redneck dudes came in talking shit, one of which looked like a sloppy John Tenta, and they were talking shit, and I went to our DJ, because we had two vinyl copies of the Charlie Daniels Band record with “Longhaired Country Boy” on it, because he scratched the part about “a drunkard wants another drink of wine” for the hook of our song “Drankin’ Wine”, and he cued it up, DJ Nabby Swift was what he went by, and we spun that shit, and the redneck dudes and us and others, including my boy Boxhead, god bless his soul, wherever he is, all sang like drunks, and nobody fought and everybody was friends and this was ten years ago, and goddamn, just that song makes me happy because I grew up on it. The crowd is clapping because they understand the song. Tracey Smothers comes out with his old Confederate flag jacket on. Tracey Smothers the Southerner is twenty-nine times better than Tracey Smothers the Italian, which was pretty fuckin’ entertaining. Smothers’ opponent is Jamie Dundee, that’s right Jamie Dundee. I have to drink in anticipation of this meeting of the underground heroes.

BEER EIGHT: Smothers stretches out. By the way, for you bitches out there, me drinking during this shit is not a work. Usually, I prove it by saying continually stupider shit as the review goes on. I’m just saying, if you’re doubting, fuck you. Jamie Dundee is coming out to “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan. That’s fuckin’ perfect in it’s own right. Beyond the match at hand, this is a battle of redneck culture. You’ve got, on one hand, the old school early thirties guy who loves some CDB and Skynyrd and ain’t afraid to tuck a black t-shirt into a pair of jeans and take his lady to the fair. On the other side is a mid-twenties kid, who grew up in the exact same environment, except for one very serious intangible – rap music. It changed everything, even for some fuckin’ hick kid in Tennessee. I am 29 years old, so this battle is very real to me, as it occurs daily on my turntable. Do I throw on Nightrider by Charlie Daniels Band or do I throw on the second Jedi Mind Tricks LP? Is my perfect Sunday morning record Redheaded Stranger by Willie or the instrumental version of Criminal Minded by BDP? David Allan Coe Rides Again or the Goodie Mob’s first record? It’s hard to say. Let’s let the wrestlers decide. The great thing is both these guys are somebody’s Crazy Uncle. Tracey Smothers is talking shit about smart marks, and calling people fat boy, telling people to meet him out back after the show’s over. This is the best heel promo I’ve heard in a few decades, as Tracey seems to be genuinely disgusted by the fans, which is what makes a heel a heel. And the greatest thing, Dundee takes the mic, and he looks like any shit-talking young redneck in any small-city, except he’s added elbowpads to his non-shirt wearing ensemble. They do the whole trading poses for the crowd, which of course, results in Smothers getting booed and Dundee getting cheered, at least in the scenario laid out by a shit-talking Smothers. Where else could Jamie Dundee get cheered? God Bless Ian Rotten. Smothers is talking mad shit, and some hot bitch with big tits grabs some weapon. Man, she’s got nice tits, and thumbtack whiffle ball bat. HAHAHA! Smothers rolls out the ring and talks shit with the same part of the crowd, then headbutts the metal pole. That chick is freaking out and yelling like chicks do at parties when they’re drunk and pissed off for no reason, and the dude sitting next to her man is doing the ol’ tongue in the cheek “you gave someone a blowjob” taunt. A “Dirty Sanchez” chant breaks out. Man, the only thing that would make Smothers talking this much shit better would be if Tommy Rich was ringside as his manager talking even more drunken shit.

BEER NINE: Finally, we have some wrestling, and Tracey Smothers rules. And you can tell Tracey is working the crowd, even in his drunken heel mode, as he tries to call time-out, but points his time-out call in the direction of all the people he’d been talking the most shit to. I wonder how many times Jamie Dundee and the Road Dogg were smoking joints together outside of big arenas in rental cars while employed by the Big Perv, Vince McMahon. I just went outside to piss off the porch (trademarked) and it was sprinkling, so I stood there with my dick out and my arms held out, feeling nature’s love; it was great. I pissed all over my leg, but it was great. Jamie Dundee hit a powerslam? Smothers, I think, is the greatest wrestler going. He puts his feet on the ropes and gets a three-count. Jamie Dundee reaches into the cooler on his way to the back. Now wait a second, I heard there was a riot with Tracey Smothers. Maybe I’m a little too hard, literally, on wrestling circles, but to me, a riot means a fuckin’ riot. Over the years, the fuckin’ pussies who love to over-analyze the professional wrasslin’, have overextended the meaning of riot. A riot should entail a wrestler actually engaged with “fans” in fisticuffs in order to get his paid-to-wrestle ass back to the dressing room. A riot should entail violence. Over the last few years, from the Terry Funk interference in that Sabu/Al Snow match in California where Funk ends up under a van, to the thing in TJ where El Dandy smashes somebody with a chair (not really, he swings a chair at them), wrestling riots are fuckin’ overrated. Calling something a wrestling riot is like calling it a pussy riot. A riot means people are pissed and breaking shit, not just sitting there, talking shit, pretending to be mad and doing the ol’ tongue in the cheek taunt. Fuck. I want a riot. I have never, NEVER NEVER NEVER once gotten a tape that was supposed to be a riot where it ended up in a riot. NEVER! NOT EVEN FROM PUERTO RICO! Man, fuck these watered-down riot standards. Next WWE pay-per-view they have in the Great State of North Carolina, we’re gonna have a riot. I’ll start taking donations now, as, if I can get the money together, the financial backing if you will, we’ll buy a fuckin’ shitload of seats, and we’ll have a genuine riot. A for-real tear gas riot, with bloody wrestlers fighting their way back to the dressing room where they don’t know if it’s safe or not, but they know the numbers are probably are in their favor. We’ll make it an Us vs. Them, and fuckin’ take over. Fuck these pussy “riots”! You know what’s a cooler word than “riot”? “Stabbed”. When you’ve been “stabbed”, you know how to “riot”. None of this pussy bullshit of some bitch with fat tits waving around some whiffle ball bat. Goddamn, no wonder the terrorists hate us. But God Bless Tracey Smothers. He did his best to start a riot; he should’ve just punched somebody to put it over the top. Okay, next match, Dysfunction is the Mid-American champion, which harkens back to the Memphis title of the same name, and he’s putting the title on the line against Ian Rotten, who’s put his fan’s hair on the line, a chick named Phyllis. “He’s lost over 80 pounds in a year,” says the announcer, and I’m here to tell you, I’d be the first investor in some stock (you mean like car racing?) if it involved the Ian Rotten Fat Loss Program. Okay, Rotten is fuckin’ up Dysfunction regularly, but he hits a powerbomb on the concrete, and that was extra sick.

BEER TEN: Ian is cold fuckin’ up Dysfunction. Ian hits a spinning toehold in a baggy acid-washed jeans. Then bust the Figure Four. The announcers are selling how Dysfunction is a tool for his promoter in Wisconsin, and how he got here tonight late and didn’t get to stretch, and this is supposed to explain Ian kicking his ass without any fighting back. Yet, by Dysfunction not losing yet, even if Ian picks his head up, it makes the kid who’s bloody and fucked look tough. They have talked about the ref needing to call the match a couple of times. Ian cuts a promo that makes me afraid of him and makes him shoot to the to 5 in the Raven Mack 500 in the head of mine thang. Rain, a chick, comes out, and dudes in the crowd are holding out dollar bills, and Rain snatches them and puts them next to her titties in her tank top like anything in pop culture does with money in the last 20 years. Lacey comes out as the opponent, and she’s got a nice bulbous ass, though she’s also got fake tits it looks like. Why can’t bitches have a fat ass and real tits that are big?

BEER ELEVEN: I think I’d rather fuck Rain more, she’s more natural looking, and I dig the silver pants highlighting her ass curves. Although Lacey has some jiggle when she flops on the mat. You know, I read some shit on my site tonight, on the message board, and I can tell you, I masturbate more than anybody, usually a couple times a day, and never in my life have I thought it a good idea to masturbate to a story of my boy fucking some chick. Never. Really, never. I can imagine myself having a ménage-a-trois with an alien and a donkey and get off, but not pretending to watch a friend have sex. Fuck that shit. One of the chicks won the match, and I wasn’t watching. I want to get Desiree pregnant. Tarek the Great is probably the scariest person I’ve seen in some time. I thought this guy was partners with Shark Boy. Goddamn, he’s freaky looking, like a gay biker Hare Krishna. “Sexy” Ace Steele is even more disturbing, as he’s Jeff Spicoli’s younger brother, the kung fu heel looking type from Thrashin’ 2: the Eclectic Jiggaboo. Man, I hate Ace Steele, just because he did the Jeff Jarrett relaxing on the top rope thing during the intros. Tarek is my pencil-selling man. Although, he’s also my Merle Allin’s best friend type, as well. He could be the seventeenth drummer for the Murder Junkies. Somebody won while I wasn’t paying attention. Mark Wolf comes out with that stick slut Francine as his sidekick, and damn, she’s as ugly as ever, with silicone on a bone framework, so fuck it, but not literally.

BEER TWELVE: Mark Wolf’s secret partner is Bobby Eaton, yes, Bobby Eaton, in a warehouse in Indiana. That is wrestling, folks. I have seen Eaton more than once, from the large confines of a packed house at the Richmond Coliseum to the bare necessities of the Buckingham, Virginia, County High School football field. Mean Mitch Page & Rollin’ Hard are your tag team champs and the opposition. Rollin’ Hard fuckin’ rules as well, coming out like New Jack in Smoky Mountain, betraying his race and not fuckin’ around. Holy shit, Mean Mitch Page is billed as from Salt Lick, Kentucky; I remember going through there and thinking what a fucked up town name that was. The great thing about Mitch Page is he looks like Ian from a year and a half ago. Well, Tracey Smothers shows up and starts beating down Eaton, and it goes haywire from there, and I apologizie for my pussies-talkin’-riot thing before, though most of you are still pussies, and not the good kind worth licking. But watching Smothers punch and flip all sorts of folks, worker and non-worker alike, after that same bitch with the nice tits clocked him during a melee, it renewed my faith in wrestling to be unnecessarily unpredictable. John Cena pinning Chris Jericho is not unpredictable; it’s called building a new product. Fans getting punches in the fuckin’ face is unpredictable, and I’m willing to live with that and I’m willing to live by the same sword that might cut my head off. Bobby Eaton yelling “goddammit” and saying Smothers doesn’t scare him; man, I think this is the best wrestling show I’ve ever reviewed. It has turned to utter chaos. “Smoke a joint or something, chill,” says Ian to Tracey, and I love the wrasslin’ again. I love it. Hey! The ring is completely surrounded in light tubes and there’s more tubes outside the ring, and out comes Mad Man Pondo, stomping through what’s left of the audience after Tracey Smothers’ episode there just now. Necro Butcher comes out next, and you know why he’s limping? It’s because his knee is all fucked-up, already, all for your enjoyment. And you sit there and complain. Man, fuck you. And looking at the tubes taped to the ring ropes, half of them are burned out, which is great, because that means that Ian gets them for free from places so he can let fuckers batter themselves for others’ amusement. “And somewhere in Heaven, Charlie’s going ‘Move the fuck out of my way, and where’s the tits?’” That’s what Mr. Announcer said. What kills me is Pondo looks retarded, he has to do this to get blowjobs from young girls; but Necro Butcher seems young, maybe balding, he could talk shit to some young bitches and get his fair share of pussy. Yet here he is, back all fucked up, Pondo smashing more glass shards into his skin, and I’m not even thinking about the tube dust that’s carcinogenic or whatever. But God Bless them Both.

BEER THIRTEEN: The ring is glass shards and they’re still going, with Pondo putting shit all over Necro Butcher. This is the most fucked up goriest match I’ve ever seen. Necro’s arms are bleeding; Pondo’s back is a crimson back patch. Holy fuck, the camera gets a close-up of Necro finally getting out of the galvanized garbage can, AND THE INSIDE OF THE FUCKIN’ CAN IS RED WITH BLOOD! Pondo is building some shit with like fifty light tubes and two ladders and Necro Butcher is still kind of laying there. This is so fuckin’ sick. A superplex through all that they set up. Parts of Necro’s arm is hanging out after that move, and Ian rushes the ring as Pondo does the phone on the face ting, and some voice in the crowd yells, “Ian, what’s the address?” They pour water on Necro’s arm, and good fuckin’ god, can you imagine showing up at the hospital with black jeans on and covered in blood and trying to explain how what happened to you happened to you? I only drank one-third of that one, but goddamn.

EPILOGUE: First Star of the Tape – who else? The Necro Butcher, for letting his arm get severed for my enjoyment. Yo bitch, if you read this, you are one crazy fucker, but I bet I can outdrink you. Second Star of the Tape – Tracey Smothers; for causing fights with the crowd and creating mayhem. Third Star of the Tape, and First Star of the Promotion – Ian Rotten; for doing what you’ve been doing and doing it well. I’m not sure what type of God I believe in, as I’m only 29 and pretty fuckin’ cynical, but whatever God I believe in, I’m confident he’d approve of what you’re doing.

Tuesday, April 29

MNZ: Mass Appeal Issue 50


I don't know, I felt underwhelmed by this issue of Mass Appeal, perhaps because I expect goofy greatness from it. Seemed more like a sneaker ad to me this time around. Plus the cover story is the stupid The Game, who is like the most overblown piece of shit, covered in bad tattoos like Eazy-E, N.W.A., and that thing on his cheek that was the butterfly but turned into an L.A. (ala Dodgers style) that is now backgrounded by a giant red star... his whole schtick just cries "GIVE ME ATTENTION! MY DADDY DIDN'T LOVE ME!" but not in a ghetto child way where you don't know your daddy but more of a white kid way where your dad was around but he was a piece of shit and you spent all your childhood life trying to impress him but never seemed to and then he died and now you're left with all these conflicted emotions with nowhere to resolve them. So in turn you over-obsess about your relationship with Dr. Dre, or you get stupid tattoos to call attention to yourself outwardly to pull people away from the internal struggles that nobody would really care about anyways since we all go through bullshit like that.
I was sad that the R.A. the Rugged Man piece was rather short this month, an interview with Roger Corman. They should just give the magazine over to R.A. so it'll definitely be worth a shit. On the plus side, I don't remember seeing any of Livingroom Johnston's crap Bukowski-by-way-of-Harlem fiction, although I might've just automatically tuned it out.

Monday, April 28

SURVIVAL: teenager lackeys

Underage kids don't catch the same criminal charges as grown folks, and also tend to be braver about things like stealing shit from Wal-Mart. Most of the time, security is shoddy at stores and they rely on the threat of getting busted more than being able to catch people doing shit. Part of the perfect way God engineered this World of His is that the type of kid who would steal shit is also the type of kid who likes to get fucked up, and you are an adult who can purchase all the alcohol they might need. It is a standard barter-style give and take - you give them intoxicants and they steal shit for you. It is a good idea to befriend at least a few kids like this, but on outside ground away from your home. Those fuckers will be trying to hang out all the time.

12-Pack Review: Rev-Pro 01/12/01

BEER ONE: Revolution Pro, as I understand it, is the shit. I can’t say I know a whole lot about them, though I know Super Dragon is their star and he’s a cult figure amongst west coast wrestling nerds, and I know it’s lucha styled wrestling, so what the fuck more could I want. I know it’s late, I know I’m at my peak when the moon is high, I know a couple Rev Pro guys secretly worked under hoods in that Hardcore Championship Fucking porn flick that Slammy did, which is the greatest fuckin’ thing ever. I know the intro is blurred out, cheap gym highlights with shitty punk metal music playing which makes me proud to be a wrestling fan. I also know there’s highlights of an outdoor show that looks like it’s raining. When motherfuckers are not stopping the lucha because of outdoors rain, then I am happy. This is the swankest first minute in the Tournament of Independents yet, as they are housed in some ran down pub, with balcony seating for two rows of folks with a wooden staircase right beside the ring. It looks like it’s in somebody’s loft. The ring has a nice green canvas, and some fat lady is rushing to her seat with her daughter, who is wearing a pink dress. And some guy directly by the camera is heckling the ring announcer. I am already sold on how great this shit is and will force myself to get drunker than necessary.

BEER TWO: First match is a “return grudge match”, between Excalibur, who is skinny as fuck and wearing some luchariffic shit, and Shogun, who has five white boys on the opposite side of the ring with one letter each on their chests, like sports fans or some shit. Shogun looks up the steps to the balcony, and I’m sure this is a sign of trouble. They are right at it, and Excalibur almost dies right away. I will drink when people almost land brain first on concrete. A kid with a mohawk is holding a camera on the other side, filming. When shitty punk rock and lucha wrestling come together, it is a glorious thing. My enthusiasm is waning rapidly, as Excalibur lacks that certain something. We’ll see what happens when Shogun takes over the match. Well, he took over, and has an evil looking submission hold on skinny dude. Mulkey Flip! I know I drink too much, because beer makes my body settle down and feel normal. At least I’m not abusive, I guess. Then again, if I’m in one of those stereotypical alcoholic hazes, I wouldn’t be able to recognize if I was an abusive husband/father anyways. Oh well. Wrestling is on, so fuck all that noise. Excalibur goes all the way across the ring for a diving headbutt, and this is wrestling that is so good it should only be on public access; and I do not mean that as an insult at all. Great, weird shit comes on public access, and for it to go beyond that, it has to compromise and prostitute itself. Hey, Shogun got held up in a pedigree suplex thingy (fuck knowing the names of shit) all long time like a Candido suplex, then dropped on his fuckin’ brain. Excalibur wins. I just slapped a mosquito on my arm and I hope I don’t have West Nile Virus now.

BEER THREE: Some evil crazy clique is in the ring, demanding their shitty music to dance to, and this is great. One dude is doing a disco gimmick and he’s got a Japanese buddy holding up a little mirror ball. Man, you can tell all these kids are so young, and I think about this relative to CZW, and it’s no comparison. These kids are going crazy and wearing weird colorful outfits and coming up with kooky ass names for themselves, and CZW, those kids all wear black t-shirts and do the same shit over and over, and though I hate California, at least it’s not New Jersey. And these guys all have some great fuckin’ masks, very swank. This Kikuzawa cat’s english is, how you say, inelegant, but he does know how to point at everybody one by one and say “shuddup”. And to top it all off, the ref has a forty-year-old redneck stoner style ponytail. Next up is Kikuzawa vs. American Wild Child, who comes out to “Voodoo Chile”, which makes me expect black confetti to fall from the sky. American Wild Child looks like the type of guy who is not afraid to snort cocaine, slam shots, and pour maple syrup on some stripper’s titties all night long. Basically, if you went to a multi-cultural high school, this would be what happened when the fat grungy Oriental kid had a wrestling match in his backyard with a ska punk kid, while the Mexican guy who sold everybody weed refereed, and some kid with a mohawk filmed it. Except they have a wrestling ring and a paying (I’m assuming) audience.

BEER FOUR: I am keeping up the torrid pace, because this is lucha, and in lucha, even the supreme athlete types like Shocker and Rey Bucanero have that weird beer belly, very much like late ‘70s American wrestlers who were beer-drinkin’ hell-raisin’ bodybuilders, the type you see on a young Jimmy Valiant or David Schultz, very thick and in shape, but that gut’s there. My own beer belly is prominent, it pushes a t-shirt out, but it ain’t biker standard by any means. Then again, my beard is only seven inches long at best, too. I’m a young buck, and have plenty of time to work on the beer belly and beard and bad tattoos. Part of my regiment involves slamming these weird-tasting Old Milwaukees, that were in the fridge, then left on the porch for a few days in the heat, then re-refrigerated, then sitting out for a while. It gives cheap beer that odd taste that reminds you of being sixteen and actually stopping your car on a back road with a car full of other teenage fools, so you can show off by slamming a whole can of Milwaukee’s Best while “Bonzo’s Montreaux” is reaching a crescendo of chaos, and then you throw the can out the window and zoom towards your future, whatever the fuck it may be, hopefully with some pussy and hopefully with some time to sleep it all off tomorrow. Some, my uncle Ricky, who’s dead now comes to mind, forever live that way, at least till they die tragically, always tossing empties out the window and racing towards that magical pussy, whatever may be symbolic of getting laid in their lives, and banking like bad credit on being able to one day to sleep it all off and everything will be okay. The stacks of books unread, and tapes unwatched, and loads of records or CDs that you don’t really need, but you have, because one day… Wild Child is clocked with a Singapore cane, bulldog DDTed, and pinned. The Jap with manager who is wearing a swank Doc Chan-like mask, a leather jacket, and low top Chuck Taylors, prevails, then they tease cutting the Wild Child’s skater punk hair. I suddenly have the urge to drink some Olde English 800 and blast some Jodie Foster’s Army. Hey, it’s NOSAWA, still with mask, out to cause trouble. Perhaps I’m biased, because Nosawa’s American translator has bribed me with merchandise, but Nosawa has been winning my soul lately in EMLL. The fucker is pure quality. His first opponent is El Gallinero, decked out in orange and black and begging for applause. The third guy in this 3-Way is Mr. Excitement, and holy fuck, I think Nosawa might have the Pink Panther laid back and sleeping on the ass end of his trunks. Mr. Excitement looks like the type of guy I’d run into when I used to play pick-up basketball, high, like five hours a night when I was sixteen. Nosawa is great because he always looks like a bad guy in an American Jackie Chan flick.

BEER FIVE: El Gallinero shatters both his knee and his brain on a stupid plancha onto Mr. Excitement ringside. God Bless self-destruction, and right in front of that little girl in the pink dress, too. Nosawa Michinoku drivers Gallinero away from the match, and now it’s Mr. Excitement vs. Nosawa, Puerto Rico vs. Gothic Japan, in southern California, at somebody’s loft, with the kitchen being the dressing room for the wrestlers. Well, Mr. Excitement steals a victory, and Nosawa argues with then spits in the face of the stoner redneck referee. I’ve had my face spit upon twice in my life, and it is not fun. The first time was by this crazy bitch Amber I was wrapped up with, and my boy Scan was present and he split immediately, afraid he might be witness to some man-on-woman crime. I didn’t touch her that night, probably except later to fuck, as she was all twisted like that. She’s the only bitch in my life that I ever tried to hurt physically, and after her, I realized beating a woman was wack, and I’d probably do best to avoid that type of situation by not falling in love with schizo Greek-Italian bitches who like to come home with hickeys on their fuckin’ necks and not tell you where they been, no matter how nice their tits might be. Man, that chick was gone. The most pathetic moment of my life was probably when I got beat by the Richmond Police, and I refused to let them take me to the hospital, so I walked home from where they beat me, blood and gravel in my face, back all bruised up, and I get home to my apartment on the 1100 block of Grace Street in Richmond, which is a noted transvestite prostitution block, and half my shit is on the front porch. So I know what’s up, Amber’s pissed again and deadbolted me out the house, and thrown some of my shit on the porch of our first floor apartment to teach me a lesson, I guess. So I knock on the door, she says she’s not letting me in because I’m an asshole, that’s a quote. I just, in my most pathetic Clint Eastwood voice ever, say, “Look, I’m bleeding. The cops just beat me up. Let me in the fuckin’ house.” And she did, took pictures of my bruises and shit, called the cops to complain, everything. Man, the fuckin’ two years of my life involved with that bitch were straight out a Bukowski book. I should’ve been betting the horses and writing poetry. Oh wait, I was writing poetry back then. The best night with that chick, I was selling acid, and we each took a couple hits, and we got all naked in the dark, with Stevie Wonder’s Innervision playing over and over on LP, and just rubbed each other, all over, slow and constant. It got to the point there was nothing sexual about it and we were just rubbing each other because it felt good. It was odd. Finally, the sun came up and we had actual sex, and I guess we were coming down from the trip because we laid there together and fell asleep after a while. What a crazy bitch. Bamber Boblazney was her name. I put that there because eventually she’ll be able to google her name and this will come up. You crazy bitch. Remember when I was gonna marry you to prove to you I loved you? Remember when you were poking holes in condoms, hoping I’d get you pregnant and be stuck with you? Remember the two miscarriages you had? Shit won’t meant to be, bitch. I hope you’re enjoying your life now, looking this shit up at the library you probably work at, shelving books and getting fat and still thinking that guys like you when they put their dicks inside you. (I through some Bs up in front of her name since she's always google searching it. Go away bitch.) Wait a second, there’s wrestling on TV. It’s Buddy George, who has a nice beer gullet underneath a Superman t-shirt; and he’s going up against Matt Sinister, who is some sort of champion.

BEER SIX: Matt Sinister is wearing a W.A.S.P. shirt.

BEER SEVEN: And his title belt is the hokiest, and thus greatest, title belt I’ve seen since me and my sister drove to Bassett, Virginia, to watch the American Independent Wrestling Federation live. My sister ended up with a bruise on her knee from some “worker” kicking a chair randomly down the aisle. It was great. Sinister’s title is some sort of Mexican lucha title, and properly sports some red and green and white leather on it. Mayan, I got to piss off the porch because I’m drunk, but my dog Waylon’s out there, sitting in my Datsun that’s broke down, listening to the new Alan Jackson tape, and he’ll start barking and wake up the baby. George and Sinister have taken it ringside, and this is a bad barfight, without a bar. Well, I’ll drink to the fact that Buddy George is not afraid to take a stiff chair shot to his skull without so much as putting one hand up to cushion the blow. Cushioned blows are for pussies.

BEER EIGHT: Out of Old Mills, so I dug a Milwaukee’s Best out the back of the fridge. I hope Rev Pro isn’t much better, because after this Beast, there’s nothing but Country Club malt liquor cans left for me to ingest. Holy fuck, that first sip of the Beast actually had no taste at all. How do they do that? The smart ass beside the fan camera is yelling, “Take it home!” Sinister drops a top rope headbutt to the nuts of the other guy. I think the best selling of hurt balls is D-Von Dudley, who does that nice clutching his thangs and bouncing on his ass deal, all while making a big O with his mouth. Nosawa is lurking about ringside, as is the stoner redneck ref. I think the real ref of this match is like in his first match ever and hasn’t picked up on hand signals from the back to end this thing. Sinister brainbuster has to end it…has to…NO! ANOTHER TWO-COUNT! Perhaps there’s some ulterior motive going on here, and they’re lulling the crowd for the ultra-spectacular swankitude of the next match. Fuckin’ Sinister takes the mic and the match ain’t even over, and he dedicates the shit to somebody else. It’s a bad People’s Elbow that he turns into a chokehold. Morgus the Maniac he ain’t, even if he is wearing a W.A.S.P. shirt. God, won’t this match end, ever? Has anybody ever won with a backslide before, since the days of Brian Adias, who had to drop the second “d” in his last name because he wasn’t Run DMC? Holy shit, there is a God! You know how I know? Right after a shitty missed clothesline into the ringpost by George, the screen went blue, then it came back on and Sinister had won, and some slutty-yet-attractive type of alcoholic chick with lower back tattoos perfect for looking at while clutching her fat ass and pumping it from behind to make thangs jiggle with the motion of love walked by the camera shot. And that match is over. Thank you God, you pervert. Sinister won’t stop the beatdown though, and Mr. Excitement comes out in Mango shorts and hits the most awkward Texas Tornado punch I’ve ever seen. I wish when guys were retiring, instead of having gay-assed retirement ceremonies, you had a guy cut a Black Bart type promo, saying he was gonna try to end the guy’s career, and he did. That’d be great, especially if you could get one sick-looking fucker, say Hack Myers, to do it to like three guys in a row. You’d make Hack a star, even more so than before. Now we’ve got our main event, a tag match, between rudos Ultra Taro Jr. & Disco Machine, going up against Super Dragon & Rising Son. Disco Machine blew his whole wad on that weirdly swank jacket, and has to wrestle in blue sweatpants. He rocks, and that Kikuzawa cat is holding that little disco ball again. Super Dragon and Rising Son are fake ninjas, but so what. Anybody emulating the beautiful cockrocking egotistical superstardom of the Great Sasuke is fuckin’ perfectly okay by me. Okay, Gurentai, the heels, get the crowd chanting their names. Then Rising Son does the same, and Ultra Taro Jr., how has big fake ears coming off his mask, holds his ear appendages on his mask in disgust. That is some shit that makes me happy. Your ref is Scrappy McGowan Jr. Double tag, and the dude known as Super Dragon comes in. Super Dragon smacks the shit out of Taro’s chest. Where the fuck is Ultra Taro Sr.? Fuck, this is great shit going on here, too fast to explain, especially since my thinking is slurred. Oh fuck, Ultra Taro goes from the shoulders of Disco, and flips out, but barely hits the good guys and lands on his fuckin’ head. It reminds me of when pussy Firefighter Matt moved out my way when I came with my 220 lb. cross bodyblock of doom off the back of Little Scott’s porch when we used to get together to order ECW pay-per-views. Matt moved, and I landed fist first in the yard, breaking three bones in my hand. I’m still missing one knuckle in my left hand from that. But I still have seven knuckles, that ain’t too bad. Usually, they grow back, just without the point on them, as I’ve broken two other knuckles apart. It’s just that far left one never grew back at all, there’s just a soft desensitized spot there. Rising Son is nuts, but Super Dragon is nutser, with a corkscrew moonsault from the apron. It causes the derelicts in the crowd to smash their chairs in unison, and little kids in hoodies are cheering ringside. Oh fuck, Taro gets brainbusted, then Son goes up for the shooting star press, and lands face first, actually bottom jaw first, in the canvas. Taro Jr. gets the pin on Super Dragon right as I finish my beer.

BEER NINE: I open up the Country Club and sip while the heels dance and parade in victory. And I refuse to believe that Country Club is “America’s Premium Malt Liquor”. If we can dominate so many things, like track and field and bomb technology and deaths by handguns and power consumption, then we can certainly come up with a better malt liquor than this. All the gangsta kids from across the camera’s way are filing out, and now American Wild Child is making very special announcements. “Viva the Revolution!” No doubt, holmes. No doubt.

EPILOGUE: FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: Ultra Taro Jr. He has the lucha insanities, he has the dopest mask, where he can hold his fake ears in disgust as a rudo, and he can talk some shit on the mic, as leader of Gurentai. SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: Rising Son. It’s easy to see, watching this shit, that Blitzkrieg would fit right in, and if I’m not mistaken, which I usually am, he used to be involved with these guys. Wow, Blitzkrieg, what a rock star he is, for kicking ass and disappearing so quickly. Rising Son did the crazy shit and had some style to himself that made me happy. THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: American Wild Child. Skate punks with Voivod haircuts rule it. Point blank, period, check mate, beeyotch.

Sunday, April 27

100 VINYLZ: #96 - Run Joe 12-inch by Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers


(1986, Future Records)
Go-go is a form of music with widespread popularity from the southern part of Maryland all the way down to the northern part of Virginia. At times, something or other will happen to have it hit a peak that spreads it wildly from Philly to Carolina, but that main area with D.C. as the epicenter is it’s homeland. Basically, in case you don’t know, instead of looping break beats like a DJ would do with the rapping musics, go-go has a live band play the loop in smoky drunken manner, with call and response type lyrics, and a tremendously ridiculous percussion section that owes as much to black marching bands and broke ass kids beating on five-gallon buckets as it does to the standard Afro-Spanish jazzy influences you’d expect to read up on in a WaxPoetics article on the subject. Concerts are advertised with large day-glo posters that I used to snag off of abandoned buildings in Shockoe Bottom and cover the walls of my studio room in the shitty Oregon Hill house we lived in when we had our first kid. Lime green and blaze orange backgrounds with black block letters and the faces of Rare Essence or the Junkyard Band or Backyard Band or Northeast Groovers or Chuck Brown staring out.
Chuck Brown has earned the nickname the Godfather of Go-go, and is as famous a D.C. landmark as Ben’s Chili Bowl, guys who used to hang with Rayful Edmonds, or homeless con men with maps waiting for you once you step off the metro at the National Mall. The aforementioned WaxPoetics just had an article on Brown himself, and I learned that he actually spent time living near where I grew up, he in the far end of Charlotte County, Virginia, plus all over southside Virginia he bounced around as a kid. And he maintains his base throughout that region, as he’s usually scheduled to play Brown’s Island free Friday evening shows in Richmond, that standard deal where you can groove and drink overpriced cheap beers using beer tickets, except the Richmond ones tend to have that upwardly mobile black couple demographic covered, which is always fun to soak up. (It’s odd to me how many families like that have weird old sambo advertising art up in their homes, I guess to remember something or other and be thankful, but it’d be kind of like me keeping a framed print of like Junior Samples from Hee Haw in my bathroom… which come to think of it, would be pretty damn pimp.)
Anyway, the past few years I have acquired a decent collection of good to fair go-go singles, mostly happening to catch record stores that have no idea even what the fuck go-go music is. I got a slew of 12-inches, including this one, at a indy record store in Charlottesville in this manner, because the guy just had it all lumped into the soul $1 bin, and when I came up with a stack of T.T.E.D. and Future Records releases, the guy behind the counter (also the owner) was all like, “What is this stuff?” And I had to do the thing where you know what it is but you don’t act like it’s really anything or the fucker would’ve been like, “Okay, let me look these up…” then fucked around in the ebays long enough to charge me five bucks for each shitty, half-scratched 12-inch. And even though “Bustin’ Loose” is probably considered Chuck Brown’s biggest national hit (I remember a black kid telling me in like first grade a joke about how the Incredible Hulk sang “I feel like bustin’ loose! Bustin’ loose!” after busting through a wall, which was hellafied funny when you’re like six seeing who can piss into the urinals the farthest across the room, all geeked up on grape Kool-Aid with like triple the recommended sugar), but “Run Joe” is my favorite go-go single I’ve gotten hold of over the years. Basically, it’s a song (I think it’s actually an older song reworked by Chuck Brown into your standard eight-minute go-go groovefest) about a dude having to bolt out the club because the cops have showed up. It’s also an ironic go-go hit, since Washington D.C. sort of outlawed go-go music at most clubs in the ‘80s because of people getting shot up, although to be fair to go-go music, at that point in D.C.’s history, when crack and crack money were flooding the streets, it was a notoriously insane place and you couldn’t really gather together more than a hundred black people under the age of 25 without expecting somebody to get shot at.
The terrible thing is how screwed music has brainwashed me into loving everything screwed at times, and I had a long kick where I would only buy 12-inch disco singles and play them with the pitch control dragged as slow as it would go. This was when my man Boogie Brown had given me a pair of Numarks to fuck around with, and I was working up some retarded sets. The only two sets I really came up with were a good 25-minute or so redneck hippie funk set, and taking the best breaks from all the immensely shitty disco singles and mixing in some go-go and hard funk shit from the mid-’70s, of course all of it slowed down. I made a couple mixtapes of this, including a spell where the only cassettes I could find were some shitty 60-minute TDKs (I usually only rocked the Maxells - preferably 100-minutes, but of course, I don’t think you have more than one choice most times nowadays for cassettes), and playing “Run Joe”, which usually was towards the front of me making these slowed down disco/go-go mega-mixes, ended up usually running most of the first side of the 60-minute tape, pushing a good 11 minutes when dragged slow. Man, that’s some good shit to get high to. But not crack. Crack doesn’t give you the right mindframe to enjoy that constant go-go percussion, which is probably why there used to be so much violence at go-go shows.

Saturday, April 26

S14: NFL Draft Concerning Washington Redskins Highest Picks

Now, for the final installment of draft dorkery 2008, I'm going to painfully relive the top fourteen overall picks in the draft executed by the Washington Redskins in the past 11 years of NFL drafting the rights to athletic specialists of the football variety. As I am a lifelong Redskins fan, and they have done nothing but cause me pain and suffering the past decade (at least), I'm sure this will suck...
#1: LaVar Arrington (linebacker, 2nd overall pick in 2000) - Had some decent years, concussed Troy Aikman's stupid ass out of football, but never really lived up to his potential as the real-life equivalent of Jefferson from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I have a LaVar jersey my wife got me for my birthday one year, and I was sad because I knew LaVar didn't mean for his jersey to be merchandised. He just got tricked by his agent into signing a bad deal. But I kept that jersey, and it was pretty shoddily manufactured. So I can see where LaVar was coming from.
#2: Chris Samuels (tackle, 3rd overall pick in 2000) - Big stupid Chris Samuels has made the Pro Bowl a few times, but damn, dude is like a false starting machine, and always looks like a mongoloid. I still refuse to consider him awesome, especially being he was the third fucking pick. The Redskins had two of the top three picks in a single draft, and they get LaVar Arrington and Chris Samuels. I don't give a fuck how many Pro Bowls Samuels ends up making, it's impossible to consider that a good deal as a Redskins fan.
#3: Sean Taylor (safety, 5th overall pick in 2004) - Sean Taylor was really starting to shine as a natural ballhawking gamebreaker on defense, as Gregg Williams had installed a defense around his skills last year. It sucks we weren't able to see how that turned out in the long run.
#4: Laron Landry (safety, 6th overall pick in 2007) - Man, Landry started looking good as the season progressed last year, but he was picked to be a one-two punch of super destruction with Sean Taylor. Now he's gonna have to be the man now, dog. Also, he's a sixth overall pick, which we learned earlier this week is a doomed pick.
#5: Champ Bailey (cornerback, 7th overall pick in 1999) - Trading Bailey straight up for Clinton Portis is hard to hate on, because Champ, when he was getting a new contract back then, was hoping for wide receiver money, because his thinking was he stopped them from scoring, so he should get the same as Randy Moss. I remember thinking that was retarded, and I think the NFL maybe came around on it, but I never did. Also, there is no hating on Clinton Portis. That guy is my all-time second favorite running back ever, only behind John Riggins. I know this is football in the 2008 and no one stays around because it's business, never personal, but I'm gonna be bummed whenever they force ol' Clinton out of D.C.
#6: Carlos Rogers (cornerback, 9th overall pick in 2005) - Busted his knee up last year, and has not performed up to his superstar promise, although he hasn't been that bad. I don't hate upon him, but it does seem the less help he has, the more he gets hung out to dry, and he was supposed to be the new shut-down guy after Champ Bailey left.
#7: Rod Gardner (wide receiver, 15th overall pick in 2001) - Man, in Madden '03, I won like eight Super Bowls in a row with Gardner. In real life, he sucked.
#8: Jason Campbell (quarterback, 25th overall pick in 2005) - I still have plenty of faith in Jason Campbell, and I hope he lives up to it, because really, he's my only hope right now as a Redskin fan. If he ends up really fucking sucking and regressing this year, we're fucked for another five years.
#9: Patrick Ramsey (quarterback, 32nd overall pick in 2002) - He ended up really fucking sucking, and fucked us for five years. He was very much a Christian though. Even married his high school sweetheart. Basically he was like the goody goody guy from North Dallas Forty, except he didn't win for shit.
#10: Rocky McIntosh (linebacker, 35th overall pick in 2006) - Fucked his knee up, but was showing promise last year before doing so. Seems that's all we ever have anymore is promise and injuries. I am thankful for Sam Huff and Sonny Jurgensen doing the radio for the games, because nothing makes a shitty favorite team more tolerable than a couple of old drunks calling the games.
#11: Jon Jansen (tackle, 37th overall pick in 1999) - I still like Jansen; he's a classic old school knucklehead butt ugly whiteboy offensive lineman. He was playing with two broke hands at one point. It's hard to hate on somebody like that. I don't even like walking around after getting a splinter in my hand.
#12: Taylor Jacobs (wide receiver, 44th overall pick in 2003) - Thanks Steve Spurrier for picking your boy right out of college. The Patrick Ramsey/Taylor Jacobs era turned out real well, didn't it?
#13: Fred Smoot (cornerback, 45th overall pick in 2001) - Smoot is awesome, and will always be awesome. He never belonged in Minnesota, having strippers on lake boats and shit. And even as fucked as this franchise is with Dan Snyder and his boytoy Vinny Cerrato fucking everything up worse and worse each year, with wacky characters like Fred Smoot and Clinton Portis and Chris Cooley, it's hard to not still be a proud Redskin fan. What the fuck does that mean though? I sit around and watch them and become emotionally attached to something completely beyond my control. It's fucking retarded.
#14: Stephen Alexander (tight end, 48th overall pick in 1998) - I vaguely remember him as a decent ass tight end. He's has no Chris Cooley type character though, which is why I probably vaguely remember him.

Friday, April 25

S14: NFL Draft Concerning Top Ten Picks That Busted

Let us reminisce now over big draft busts of the recent years. These are the most previous fourteen guys who were a top ten overall pick in the draft who are not currently playing inside the NFLs...
#1: Pacman Jones (cornerback, 6th overall pick in 2005 by the Tennessee Titans) - Pacman is well known for his multiple forays into lawbreaking, but not really any noble forms of breaking laws. I mean seriously, how the fuck are you retarded enough to think that you throw money all over the floor at a strip club and the whores aren't supposed to take it? Anyways, the Dallas Cowboys have tendered a trade for holmes, but it's likely that he might not get reinstated to the NFL just yet, since he either was extorted or paid hush money to some dude, which usually when you get caught doing something like that and you go, "Oh, I didn't break the law; I was extorted and shit," the cops don't believe you. Jerry Jones has gotten crazy about the miscreant third chance troublemakers on his team, hasn't he?
#2: Sean Taylor (safety, 6th overall pick in 2004 by the Washington Redskins) - Dead. Man that sucked. It's really made me hate Dan Snyder more than ever, because Taylor's death was so senseless, but somehow the Redskins and Joe Gibbs came together and performed beyond their destiny, having a helluva run. And then Dan Snyder fucked it all up within ten days of Joe Gibbs going home to his leukemia grandson. R.I.P. Sean Taylor. (I'm not sure if they have the internets in Heaven or not, although I would assume not since the internets are mostly evil.)
#3: Johnathon Sullivan (defensive tackle, 6th overall pick in 2003 by the New Orleans Saints) - Man, the sixth pick in the draft is cursed or some shit, hunh? There is no tragedy or criminality involved with Sullivan, he just ended up sucking and is out the league already.
#4: Charles Rogers (wide receiver, 2nd overall pick in 2003 by the Detroit Lions) - An early part of Matt Millen's long-term quest to prove he's not a fucking idiot. Charles Rogers did not help much though. It's actually quite impressive a guy that was the #2 overall pick five years ago doesn't even play in the NFL anymore. I think even Ryan Leaf did better than that.
#5: Mike Williams (tackle, 4th overall pick in 2002 by the Buffalo Bills) - You know, offensive linemen are a hard pick to really justify to highlight-happy fans somewhere this high in the draft, so you better hope they fucking pan out.
#6: Jamal Reynolds (defensive end, 10th overall pick in 2001 by the Green Bay Packers) - Doing some internet researchs, Reynolds is notorious amongst Packers fans for sucking. I never heard of him to be honest.
#7: Michael Vick (quarterback, 1st overall pick in 2001 by the Atlanta Falcons) - We all know the deal with Vick. But at least he can be excited that Jerry Jones will probably be the first face to greet him, albeit a stretched surgically enhanced face, when Vick leaves Leavenworth. Apparently he is playing football there. I wish Adam Sandler hadn't ruined my The Longest Yard memories so I could pretend Michael Vick was remaking that flick.
#8: Corey Simon (defensive tackle, 6th overall pick in 2000 by the Philadelphia Eagles) - Simon actually had a pretty productive career, but injury forced him to retire last season. Godspeed, Mr. Simon.
#9: Peter Warrick (wide receiver, 4th overall pick in 2000 by the Cincinnati Bengals) - Warrick, of Florida State's Shoegate fame, really was an early frontrunner in helping the Bengals build their status as a team full of underperforming thugs. He underperformed so well he is out the league. And I remember him being considered the hottest receiver to enter the NFL that year.
#10: LaVar Arrington (linebacker, 2nd overall pick in 2000 by the Washington Redskins) - I feel sorry for LaVar, because he tried really hard, and he was loyal to the Redskins, probably far more than he should've been. From what I've heard from people who've dealt with him firsthand, Arrington was a really stupid person, although a really nice one too. He has been sponsoring boxers in the D.C. area lately, and it makes you wonder if a guy like him, so physically gifted but not really smart enough to read offenses, but probably smart enough to stick and move, he could've been a great heavyweight fighter had he been properly exploited as a youngster.
#11: Chris Claiborne (linebacker, 9th overall pick in 1999 by the Detroit Lions) - Never heard of this guy, I don't think. At least the Redskins won't be the only team with multiple representations on this list of futility.
#12: David Boston (wide receiver, 8th overall pick in 1999 by the Arizona Cardinals) - Boston was one of those prototype big strong receivers a few years back. I think he flamed out in Miami maybe, but I can't remember too well. It's hard for me to remember much of shit anymore, what with the constant barrage of electronic popular cultures. Cybertrons clogging up my neurons.
#13: Akili Smith (quarterback, 3rd overall pick in 1999 by the Cincinnati Bengals) - Haha, he's actually the posterboy for bad draft picks. There was an ad for something like that I saw in some magazine and I felt bad for the dude. He's out there somewhere, just an honest dude, living with that shame. I also feel bad for Dennis Dixon this year, because the previous to famous quarterbacks to come out of Oregon are Akili Smith and Joey Harrington. That probably will cost him a few picks alone.
#14: Tim Couch (quarterback, 1st overall pick in 1999 by the Cleveland Browns) - The state of Ohio tore it up in the draft that year. Both the Browns and Bengals picked what they would hope would be their QB of the future, their cornerstone, and neither ever amounted to shit. Such is the NFL draft. I am glad the Redskins are toying with trading like five draft picks for shitty Chad Johnson, because I don't have to wait for draft picks to pan out to realize my team sucks. They just go ahead and fuck it up right from the beginning.

100 VINYLZ: #97 - Steal Your Face 2xLP by The Grateful Dead


(1976, Grateful Dead Records)
The Grateful Dead are kind of like politics in that people who care to have an opinion have a very strong opinion at the far ends of for or against. Plenty folks hate the Dead, and what they term hippies in general, with a passion, full of contempt for anything remotely close to even credit to the Dead for anything, much less musically related. And those into the Dead blindly talk of unfiltered, unhindered creativity that you can't really understand unless you get into it deep enough to truly understand it. I accepted them at a young age because I was really into drugs and drugs and the Dead went hand and hand. There are conspiracies that the CIA was involved in the trafficking of LSD in association with Dead tour for decades, with the death of Jerry Garcia times perfectly with the rise of more pharmaceutical hallucinogenics. I went to my first Dead show in like 1990, with two buddies from high school, both of whom had already graduated. They both had cleared it with their folks; I was still only 17 with one year left and think I mentioned it to my dad the evening before at my sister's softball practice, and he was all bugged up about it, not because he was uptight, because he did far more drugs in his short life than I could hope to touch, but he knew the deal. He knew what was up and shit, and didn't want me doing something retarded like buying up a couple hundred hits of acid to sell back home to avoid having a for-real job.
I can see both sides of the Dead opinion spectrum, probably leaning more towards the hatred than the love, but the truth, like always, is in the grey area in between. I grew up with the influence of redneck hippies who had no pretensions really, more of a Miller High Life/homegrown set than a Newcastle Brown Ale/killer kind bud set. It took a few years of college (okay, a couple weeks) to realize the fucking full of shit suburban fucks who buy into hippie looks and make it embarrassing to have anything to do with anything resembling them. Idealistic chicks driving Subaru stationwagons with VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS bumper stickers with their stupid clean-shaven dreadlocked boyfriend in his NORML shirt. But I could still enjoy a Dead show now and then (even getting miracled at a show where everybody I went with didn't get in, got mad stoned and made out with what in hindsight was probably a 14-year-old, and while wandering around completely fucked afterwards trying to find the dudes I came with, realized I was walking fifty feet behind the guy who drove us up there, who was looking for his own ride, but had some shrooms to split with me... perfectly fucked up day), but I couldn't get into that Dead worship bullshit. When Jerry died, man, I didn't really give too much of a fuck.
As for records, Workingman's Dead is probably their best studio album, when Garcia was first exploring his country/bluegrass interests, but they were always more of a live group, being they are the most famous shitty cover band to ever have existed, so Steal Your Face is what I'd consider my favorite, or most personally memorable record. I've probably played Europe '72 a bit more, mostly because it has a version of "Tennessee Jed" which they always played at every live show I ever saw, but Steal Your Face I have associated in my mind of not yet being completely hateful towards hippies and dabbling in hippie vagina crack and laying on a sweaty bed in a shitty apartment with a stoned chick, buzzed on THC together and excited to fuck like fuckers. "Sugaree", "Big River", "U.S. Blues"... I got personal fuck memories to all that shit. It should also be noted that, regardless of how stupid hippies or the Grateful Dead are, if you removed all personal preconceptions from it, the Steal Your Face logo is pretty fucking awesome.
I'm sure there's hardcore Deadheads who have bootleg live shows pressed on vinyl, but that's one of those serious business sub-cultures, where you get into something so heavily it is SERIOUS ASS BUSINESS. No mic dubs but shit straight from the soundboard, and no sharing with you unless you have something to share in return. Man, I've gotten high with dudes like that, with racks and racks of live shows on cassette, pulling out a specific one because "it has the best version of 'Me and My Uncle' you'd ever hear, Jerry was on fire that night man" or some nonsense. The funny thing is, that sub-culture obviously grew with the internet, but then the Grateful Dead shut it down, after decades of letting people tape shows, because they want to slowly release everything as Dick's Picks Volume 329 and on or whatever. The local community radio station has some dudes who have a Dead show on the weekends, and they are all about it, still, even in this age of the crushing corporate marketing of the Grateful Dead. They were never going to perform again, but oh wait, they did for a fucking Barack Obama fundraiser. Fucking bastards.
I will admit to seeing a couple of decent Phil Lesh & Friends shows early on when they did that, but I think part of my enjoyment was he had some hippie dude who looked exactl like Mr. Show's David Cross from a distance who played the pianeys, including a Hammond organ. But once that got popular, the rest of the stupid Dead got involved, chased off most of Phil Lesh's friends, and it was basically the stupid non-Jerry Garcia Dead still.
Honestly, stupid fucking trustafarian hippie types have ruined it so badly for me that it's hard for me to remember the Dead can be non-annoying at times. But on some days - a warm spring Saturday afternoon where there's no obligations except to do serious damage to a cold 12-pack sitting at the picnic table in the backyard, I can drag a speaker out on top of the camper and hook up the turntable and throw on Steal Your Face and still enjoy it. But if someone shows up at the house, I get all self-conscious about it and probably put on a Black Sabbath record or something, just to make sure they know I'm not a pussy.

Wednesday, April 23

S14: NFL Draft Concerning Other Virginia College Players

Now we get to the retarded no-names, as I delve into the top fourteen overall picks in the draft out of colleges in my home state of Virginia that aren't UVA or Virginia Tech. Hampton has some sort of proactive movement to actually get players into the NFL, but other than that, it's hit or miss for Virginia's second tier of college football athlete. So come with me through the lower level of upper echelon amateur football standouts from my stupid homeland..
#1: Justin Durant (Hampton linebacker, 48th overall pick in 2007 by the Jacksonville Jaguars) - Durant actually got on the field last year and did well and has a good chance to win a starting spot at outside linebacker this year, and maybe help force Mike Peterson out of a job, being he is paid highly and over-the-hill at age 33.
#2: Cordell Taylor (Hampton cornerback, 57th overall pick in 1998 by the Jacksonville Jaguars) - Taylor bounced around the NFL from a few teams for two years before getting bounced from the league without ever even scoring an actual on-field tackle.
#3: Darren Sharper (William & Mary safety, 60th overall pick in 1997 by the Green Bay Packers) - Had a big career in Green Bay, parlaying that into a sizeable free agent contract to continue in Minnesota, where he is their elder statesman on defense, meaning he's likely to get cut due to salary cap issues. The Vikings defensive line should be ridiculous now with short-and-long party haired Jared Allen joining those two fat negroes with the last name Williams on the defensive line. Now if they can just hike the ball straight to Adrian Petersen on offense, maybe they'll be good.
#4: Curtis Keaton (James Madison running back, 97th overall pick in 2000 by the Cincinnati Bengals) - Had a big year in his second season as a kick returner for the Bengals, then got cut and after sort of playing for the Saints, disappeared. He is probably working at UPS now, which is the standard joke for washed-up football dreams gone awry.
#5: Shawn Barber (Richmond linebacker, 113th overall pick in 1998 by the Washington Redskins) - I always liked Shawn Barber while he was with the Redskins, because he wasn't a retard, though he was smallish for a linebacker. Then when he went to play for the Eagles, I had to hate him forever. He has been around a little and just got cut by the Texans, which serves him right for betraying the Redskins.
#6: Jerome Mathis (Hampton wide receiver, 114th overall pick in 2005 by the Houston Texans) - Dude's from Petersburg, which was a notorious crack-addled death zone in the '80s (featured in Time magazine) and has never been a choice place to live at. He set collegiate kick returning records for yardage, and was very successful (Pro Bowler) returning in the NFL. And he is the Washington Redskins, my beloved team's big free agency signing this offseason. A kick returner. So that's all we really needed to improve on from last year, was to let our coach leave, run off his most important assistants, and get a new kick returner. Which means Rock Cartwright might be gone, and Rock Cartwright is the best-named football player the Redskins have had in twenty years.
#7: Macey Brooks (James Madison wide receiver, 127th overall pick in 1997 by the Dallas Cowboys) - Briefly dabbled with a fringe professional career with the Chicago Bears, but is now nobody again, at least as far as google is concerned.
#8: Muneer Moore (Richmond wide receiver, 154th overall pick in 2000 by the Denver Broncos) - Apparently, through internet consultation, Broncos fans thought Muneer Moore, a fifth round draft pick, was going to be some sort of super receiver, perhaps buying into the Mike Shanahan is genius belief. He didn't turn out to be that great receiver, but he also didn't get shot at a night club.
#9: Ralph Hunter (Virginia Union cornerback, 168th overall pick in 2002 by the Dallas Cowboys) - I don't know if he ever played or not, but the fact a dude from Virginia Union got drafted is great. Virginia Union and Virginia State are local archrival traditionally all-black motherfuckers colleges around Richmond, and mostly VUU is known for it's Division II dynasty basketball team (coached by a funny-haired white guy), but I guess their football team has been good at times too. I don't know though. When you ride by their football field, it's like wrapped in chain link fence and doesn't even look like bigger high school football fields do. So props to Mr. Ralph Hunter.
#10: Ed Perry (James Madison tight end, 177th overall pick in 1997 by the Miami Dolphins) - Perry is one of those small college success stories, getting snagged in the sixth ground, and playing for seven seasons, eventually getting lost in the coaching shuffle that Bill Parcels is going to magically fix-er-up.
#11: Marc Megna (Richmond linebacker, 183rd overall pick in 1999 by the New York Jets) - Well, Marc Megna did not have a successful NFL career, but he did get to pose as a beefcake in Cosmo magazine and then move onto to motivational speaking. Who better to motivate you than some prep jock muscle geek?
#12: Zuriel Smith (Hampton wide receiver, 186th overall pick in 2003 by the Dallas Cowboys) - He was on the Cowboys roster for a couple of seasons; I remember because back when I would do my yearly wacky named player lists, he was always a candidate at WR. After a few years bouncing around as a practice squad member, he's gone from the NFLs.
#13: Antico Dalton (Hampton linebacker, 199th overall pick in 1999 by the Minnesota Vikings) - Bounced around the lower levels of the NFL, but found his place as a dominant foreign defensive lineman for the Edmonton Eskimos of that crazy Canadian Foozball Ligua.
#14: Tony Booth (James Madison safety, 211th overall pick in 1999 by the Carolina Panthers) - Was a back-up safety for a minute, then poof... he was gone. The greatest trick the devil ever played was making you think he didn't exist.

S14: NFL Draft Concerning Virginia Tech Hokies

Virginia Tech is more the torchbearer for college football in my home state than UVA in the past decade or two. Frank Beamer’s creepy old ass has taken them from a nowhere school at the fringes of major college athletics and created a football program that consistently contends in the ACC, flirting with BCS bowl payoffs pretty much every year. Even though I was raised a UVA fan by my ignorant ass dad, I always rooted for in-state schools and was never into that whole bullshit UVA vs. Tech mentality where you rooted against your archrival even when they were playing a bunch of homos from California or some shit. But gradually I have come to root for Tech even more, partly because I live near UVA where I see what fucking rich fuckfaces half the students are there. But also because I have some good friends down the Tech way, or maybe just because they’re actually good so I can bandwagon upon that shit and have some state pride, which I hardly ever have, because anything we have good, North Carolina (or West Virginia in the more lawless affairs) has better. Anyways, here’s the top picks by how high in the draft they were taken from Virginia Tech in the past 12 years, which I went ahead and did since I accidentally did it that way for UVA…
#1: Michael Vick (quarterback, 1st overall pick by the Atlanta Falcons in 2001) - We all know how this one ended. I still support Michael Vick to this day. I would rather my children fight dogs than fight drug addiction and a godless society. I look forward to Ookie Mexico’s triumphant return to the NFL, when he will take the Washington Redskins to multiple Super Bowls, and reclaim the title of Chocolate City for Washington, D.C., taking it back from that bourgoisie ass Atlanta.
#2: DeAngelo Hall (cornerback, 8th overall pick by the Atlanta Falcons in 2004) - Hall was run from Atlanta for being too black and too strong, and also too ignorant and too retarded. I am sure he will find a nice home somewhere else, using his natural athleticism to not suffer the same foreclosure woes many of the rest of us are suffering due to the predatory nature of the banking/credit industry. He should thank his lucky stars for that, except if you believe heavily in science over god there is no use in thanking lucky stars, so instead he should study genetics really intensely once a week.
#3: Jim Druckenmiller (quarterback, 26th pick overall by the San Francisco 49ers in 1997) - It was almost impossible for me to not type “Drunkenmiller” it has become such a part of my vernacular. This guy was hyped up as the apparent heir to the Joe Montana/Steve Young lineage. He ended up date raping some chick. Congrats brah.
#4: Kevin Jones (running back, 30 overall pick by the Detroit Lions in 2004) - He’s actually paying dividends, meaning he’s contributing to the Lions offensive output, not so much that they’re actually making money off of selling his jerseys. It must suck to be a Lions running back because you will always be less than Barry Sanders, and Barry Sanders never won shit (even if he was pretty awesome), which means the Lions are just heavily smokestained by the dust of losery.
#5: John Engelberger (defensive end, 35th overall pick by the San Francisco 49ers in 2000) - Engelberger is interesting because he was opposite end of the Tech d-line when Corey Moore played (who finished as first alternate on this list), and Corey Moore got all the attention as the bug-eyed black man who crippled quarterbacks and raped their girlfriends in his daydreams. But he didn’t do shit but struggle and get shot a couple of times in the NFL. Meanwhile, Engelberger has had a productive professional career, and I think is still with the 49ers to this day. I remember when he got drafter over Moore, I was all like, “What the fuck?” That goes to show I don’t know shit; and I know more than you do.
#6: Jimmy Williams (cornerback, 37th overall pick by the Atlanta Falcons in 2006) - The Falcons love them some Virginia Tech Hokies. We will see if that changes in the coming years. Arthur Blank seems like a sucker, even if he is a multi-millionaire. He has the look of a mark you could con into some simple assed shit to fleece of some coin. And I guess Michael Vick and whatever that Sopranos extra-looking fuck that was their coach last year have done exactly that.
#7: Jake Grove (center, 45th overall pick in 2004 by the Oakland Raiders) - Dude, I don’t follow offensive linemen enough to know what happened to this guy. All I know about the Raiders o-line is they have that Robert Gallery guy who looked like he might’ve been a metalhead, but most likely he was one of those weightlifter Sic Semper Tyrannis fuckers who like to get to Tazmanian Devil tattoos.
#8: Andre Davis (wide receiver, 47th overall pick in 2002 by the Cleveland Browns) - I think he is no longer with the Browns, but why would he be, being a highly touted draft pick they made in recent years?
#9: Torrian Gray (safety, 49th overall pick in 1997 by the Minnesota Vikings) - Homeboy is already in his second year of being the defensive backs coach at Virginia Tech. Frank Beamer knows which side his bread is buttered on, and once these blue chip athletes he exploits (only partially) for his own benefit run their professional course, he brings them back for cushy coaching gigs to get them into the fraternity of fleecing future “amateur” athletes of their gridiron warrior image for monetary gain.
#10: Ike Charlton (cornerback, 52nd overall pick in 2000 by the Seattle Seahawks) - Is currently enrolled at Detroit Lions university as far as I can tell, but had a stint in the CFL, except he played linebacker up there. I guess motherfuckers are smaller in the CFL. Oh wait, according to wikipedia he’s back in the CFL again. Have you ever looked at those discussion pages for wikipedia entries? Man, what a fucking miserable life it must be to care about shit like that all day long.
#11: Darryl Tapp (defensive end, 63rd pick overall in 2006 by the Seattle Seahawks) - I do not know Darryl Tapp nor like the Seattle Seahawks so fuck them both, although one of the both is actually a team, and even more so an entire organization, which may or may not include the fans themselves, depending on your perspective. So fuck them all.
#12: Eric Green (cornerback, 75th overall pick in 2005 by the Arizona Cardinals) - Just signed a lucrative offer this past month to keep him from becoming a free agent, which will also keep him on a losing ass team. It was funny when the NFL realigned and the NFC East was getting carved around, and everyone was like, “Shit, we have to keep the Cowboys!” But when it came to the Cardinals, nobody said shit.
#13: James Anderson (linebacker, 88th overall pick in 2006 by the Carolina Panthers) - Being he is a linebacker on the Panthers, I hope he is a white dude with long hair. In southwest Virginia, there is anti-Redskins backlash from the ‘80s and ‘90s, so most of the folks down there tend to identify with the Panthers as their professional football team of choice, so this guy must be living the good life at area restaurants.
#14: Aaron Rouse (safety, 89th overall pick in 2007 by the Green Bay Packers) - Youth member of that punishing defense that will have to overcome Brett Favre’s lack of game-ending interceptions skills this year.

Tuesday, April 22

MNZ: Donk Box & Bubble Summer 2008


(Note: This is actually the cover to the 3rd issue, but I didn't feel like scanning the actual cover since I have a stack of a CDs and my super thick dictionary on top of the scanner right now. It'd be too much trouble to move all that shit.)
Every day I go to the grocery store, I walk through their raggedy magazine aisle hoping for a new issue of Donk, which only comes out twice a year, put out by Rides magazine. Last Saturday, there it was. The obvious trends in high riser cars are rims that take paint to match to your car's color, which makes sense since the rims are so gigantic nowadays with turntable belt tire technology in full effect. They also have dust guards (like $100 for a four-pack) that you can paint and put on behind the rims so if you get rims with less gaudy visible chrome, that shit looks good. I would like to see someone fabricate a Dayton style gold (or chrome) spoke rim that accomodates a backing plate as well, because that shit would be tight.
The other thing I saw that seems amazing to me is there is some shit called Outrageous Finishes (that's the company) that has developed a paint that is shiny as candy paint, but also has the color-shifting looks of certain paints (often used on race cars, like the Vega stationwagon my uncles race), and also has a pearl finish instead of high gloss. It is the best of all worlds, if the only worlds were 8-Ball & MJG fans, people who like drag racing a lot, and grandmothers who drive Buicks.
This issue had more variety in vehicles, with a Buick Electra and a Pontiac GTO (which had an unfortunate rear spoiler, which have always looked gay as fuck, from muscle car days to Honda Civic era). But the stars were still the early '70s Impalas. And thankfully, there weren't that many "bubbles", which are pimped out '90s to '00s era Caprices. Man, that's a fucking stupid car to spend so much accessorizing money upon.
Also, a full-page ad with a half-naked white slut in this issue led me to Rim Financing's webpage, where you can use your tax refund to get rims. I was just figuring what with the economic stimulus shit going down next month to try and prevent us from admitting we're all fucked, they expect you to blow that money, and what better way to ride over top the homeless fuckers in our American streets than on top of some shiny ass 26s?

100 VINYLZ: #98 - Another Sign 12-inch by Schoolly D


(1994, Ruffhouse Records)
Schoolly D is a hip hop living legend. I know the standard rap dork meme is "hip hop's original gangster," but whether or not that is true is unimportant to me. He dropped Saturday Night, where he drew the cover on notebook paper (or at least it looks that way), which is where people got killed on wax for the first time, to paraphrase every rap historian's stupid book ever. But beyond that, he dropped Am I Black Enough For Ya and Smoke Some Kill, both of which took black nationalism to a different level entirely. Shit, Smoke Some Kill is one of my all-time most played tapes ever, a classic from start to stop. Oddly enough, he had a track on there called "No More Rock-n-Roll" where he declares an end to the rock era, of course over top a classic rock guitar sample.
All that history is what led me to buy this "Another Sign" single by Schoolly when he was well past his prime. It was on the same label as Cypress Hill, and produced by Joe "the Butcher" Nicolo, who helped Muggs create that weird rock-n-roll/rap hybrid that helped Cypress Hill hold top spots in the High Times 100 for years. But I think this song is one of the most classic, unheralded rap/rock hybrids songs (aka rack-rop, which is also how Koreans with Down's syndrome say "laptop") to ever be. The beat is laid back as fuck, but the guitar is pure studio electric guitarism filtered heavily through someone who had been digging on the blues lately. And Schoolly's lyrics are beyond revolution, beyond caring. He's given up and doesn't give a fuck anymore, but not in a "I'LL SHOOT ANY MOTHERFUCKER ALIVE" not giving a fuck but more of a "sigh... I guess I'll get drunk tonight and sleep on the couch and maybe tomorrow if I'm lucky I'll die." It's a great song, and not often remembered in the normal hip hop nerd memes regarding Schoolly D, because it came out after Schoolly was considered relevant. I still play it whenever I'm on one of my moody ass fuck-the-world kicks.
I remember watching Space Ghost one night all blazed up and Schoolly D was on that bama. On one hand, shit like that makes you think, "Cool, they got some wild shit up on the TVs nowadays," but on the other more realistic hand it just means you're an old ass washed-up piece of shit that's moved into a more marketable demographic of your life. It's like that cell phone commercial with the dude wearing the Motorhead shirt but talking like a prep school faggot in theater class. There's nothing cool about that commercial, but it does point out to you how uncool you are now, for even sitting around on the couch long enough to see that shit, so you might as well give up and buy the useless shit they're trying to sell to you. What the fuck else are you gonna do until you die? Get drunk and sleep on the couch? Ha! Yeah right, you've got to work in the morning, you fucking square.

PP: Part Twenty Three


I have apparently become a big fan of the godly front driver's side fender candid. This is our friend Bessie's late model inherited Benz, which she's converted to bio-diesel, except she's pregnant so she hates the smell of her car all the time since it smells like french fries. Her real name is Stephanie, but my middle kid just started calling her Bessie for no reason back when they hung together one day a week, and the name has apparently stuck. That makes me proud of my middle kid, only four years old but has already given someone a nickname that has replaced their real name.

Junk car matchings like this is why I want to build a custom junkyard. That shit just looks cool, sitting there turning to rust. Oddly enough, obviously there are environmental disasters attached to such a redneck feng shui project, but I was poking around inside the internetz the other night, and apparently there's the world's first environmental junkyard in northern Virginia, all indoors with all parts already removed. I imagine that shit is crazy expensive for used parts and crazy not as cool looking as a couple of tons of American metal and car machine eventually going back to nature in a slow and steady process that is uglier than fuck to ugly-souled individuals who like to make rules and regulations against people like me and the things we enjoy.

As you can see from this picture, our local county landfill has become more of a land-grow than landfill, but this is the truck they use to shuffle around dumpsters as they get filled and unfilled. I will be sad once they close this landfill, although last week when I went, it looked like they bought up some adjacent farmland and will continue to pile all our homegrown trash within a convenient distance of my home, so I don't have to sign up for trash service.

This old garage in Elkton had like five busted up Mustangs sitting beside it. This was my favorite since it's been stripped of windshield, tires, axles, doors, pretty much everything of worth; but apparently not everything, which is why it still sits there, frame flat on the grass, waiting for some greasemonkey vulture to come snake some more shit out of it's dying carcass.