Anything I could say about one Lemmy Kilmister has probably already been said. The dude saw The Beatles perform in a bar in England back in the day. He was a roadie for Jimi Hendrix. His time with Hawkwind was not only that band's best years, but probably the absolute most perfect swirl of hippie energy with outlaw biker alpha male machismo that ever got etched into wax. I am still to this day amazed at Doremi Fasol Latido any time I dig the album out and put it to the turntable. And shit man, everyone knows about Motorhead. But the simple fact that the same guy who was singing and thunk up Hawkwind's "The Watcher" also came up with "Ace of Spades"... I don't know if anybody has ever been so goddamned perfect at very different ends of a spectrum.
Personally, in high school I rocked a jean jacket for a while with a Motorhead back patch. Of all the old Oui magazines my dad had stored under his bed, when I knew they were overlooked and I could embezzle a couple to keep in my room, inevitably the one with a long Motorhead interview was one I chose. This was an interview from the early '80s, and Lemmy was snorting lines of crank off a giant knife then, saying he had been doing it for 20 years and obviously nothing was wrong with him. The pictures had him and Philthy Animal Taylor rubbing motor oil all over a naked chick, and in the interview, Lemmy said, "Sex, drugs, and motor oil," which has been a phrase I toss out ever since. I don't know if anybody has ever known where it came from.
To this day, apparently, even as an old man, Lemmy still lives in the same shitty little Hollywood apartment he's been in since the '80s, and still drinks whiskey like a goddamned hellion. Still has the long hair and scowl, but oddly enough, probably knows more about music than most living human beings. I mean seriously, look beyond the drugs and mayhem and ultimate rock-n-roll persona, and you're talking about a guy that was living with Jimi Hendrix when Jimi still dabbled in soul. You're talking about a guy that sat in a bar and saw The Beatles play before that was an impossibility. You're talking about a guy that was a veteran of the early '70s festival circuit long before he became a 1980s rock icon. He has had his finger in a number of eras, and pretty much has sat on the mountain like a crazy hermit and witnessed the entire birth, growth, sprawl, and stagnation of rock-n-roll music itself.
And he's still unrepentant. There's no regret in him looking back at all. That's a good lesson - that all the fucked up shit you do, the mistakes and screw ups, it's all part of a process. And if you run from yourself, you're just gonna run yourself into another wrong turn. It's best to just soak it in, and move on. The natural world doesn't change drastically, so why should we? Sure, it's constantly changing, and Lemmy's career discography is about as wide-ranging a collection as you could probably get. And actually I had a partial MP3 of him doing "Ace of Spades" for a German commercial acoustically, like a return to those early Hawkwind roots. Why not? It's all part of what he is. We all have to just be what we are. There are always gonna be people that typecast and try to fit us into one mental photographic angle of how they view us, regardless of whether we fit that 24-7/365 or not. Just keep on being though. Sex, drugs, and motor oil.
And man, I wonder whatever happened to that jean jacket I had with the Motorhead back patch? The things I did in that jacket as a young aspiring rock-n-roll delinquent in Farmville, Virginia...
Showing posts with label L.E.o.R. Fall '10. Show all posts
Showing posts with label L.E.o.R. Fall '10. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 23
Tuesday, February 22
LEARNED ELDERS: Gabriel Duenez
Gabriel Duenez has achieved fame in recent years as a guy who, according to urban legend, spearheaded a musical movement called cumbia rebajada, which is basically cumbia music slowed down to a slower pace, so that the bass bumps higher from the pitch shifts in sound, and the snares and high ends pop a little more, with vocals turning ghostly. The story of how he discovered this sound, like anything, is murky at best, and with word-of-mouth being involved, who knows if he was actually even the guy to do it, to first have batteries die in a radio pumping at a dance, but loving the warbled sound so much that he purposely recorded from 7-inch records in that manner to create mixtapes he sold at the Monterrey flea market in Mexico of nothing but slowed down warbled cumbia music. The sound, when combined with mind-altering substances, is really pleasing.
But in the context of Learned Elders, the lesson with Duenez is not fame, because he does not have that, except for in tiny corners of the internet (this part included now, I guess) where guys who have nothing better to do with their time than dig through all sorts of music that has no cultural relation to their immediate life can prop this guy up as The Creator of a Sound. In real life, you know where Gabriel Duenez is? Fixing air conditioners as an old ass Mexican man somewhere in or around Houston, Texas, turning screwdrivers with old hands that used to hold vinyl records with obsessive love. Being the cumbia rebajada guy has meant very little in the way of propping his life up on a pedestal, beyond the adulation of those not present in his life. Like, he will never probably know about this Learned Elder thing, nor will his death be broadcast in major newspapers, so the old guy may pass on to the next world and I'll never know.
But he loved music, and not playing it but listening to it and sharing what he loved with others, and sat in a Mexican flea market selling tapes to anyone who would want one. Life was life, and he ended up working on air conditioners in Texas as an old man, those high life days of playing music for shaking asses back in the '60s faded memories, replacing thermostats and cleaning filters and smelling the dusty muck of stagnant water at the bottom of an AC tray.
The Learned Elders Hall is for the students of my Rojonekku school, and I know a lot of this Gabriel Duenez write-up sounds like internet pretentiousness, but for the Rojonekku kids, the lesson is a man who loved something, shared something, and ultimately got nothing material out of the arrangement. Yet his life started something in motion that has spread beyond him, and he probably doesn't even realize it. That's the beauty of what you can do as a person. You may never be rewarded financially for what you take on as your life's passion, and to expect to have that happen is naive, and often times actually compromises that passion in the process. But there's something noble and beautiful and perfectly pure about shooting those passions out to the world, and the ripples reverberate, whether you see them or not. Ultimately, with the transplanting of Rojonekku kids in other states, that's my goal as well. It moves beyond you, into other worlds, and just spirals on its own. You start something and let it spiral. It is probably better a lot of times not to turn it into money, because then you start to feel ownership of what it is that is spiraling out, and you want to control it, so as to maximize the profit factor. But you can't control the spirals and ripples you create; and by trying to, you destroy them.
But in the context of Learned Elders, the lesson with Duenez is not fame, because he does not have that, except for in tiny corners of the internet (this part included now, I guess) where guys who have nothing better to do with their time than dig through all sorts of music that has no cultural relation to their immediate life can prop this guy up as The Creator of a Sound. In real life, you know where Gabriel Duenez is? Fixing air conditioners as an old ass Mexican man somewhere in or around Houston, Texas, turning screwdrivers with old hands that used to hold vinyl records with obsessive love. Being the cumbia rebajada guy has meant very little in the way of propping his life up on a pedestal, beyond the adulation of those not present in his life. Like, he will never probably know about this Learned Elder thing, nor will his death be broadcast in major newspapers, so the old guy may pass on to the next world and I'll never know.
But he loved music, and not playing it but listening to it and sharing what he loved with others, and sat in a Mexican flea market selling tapes to anyone who would want one. Life was life, and he ended up working on air conditioners in Texas as an old man, those high life days of playing music for shaking asses back in the '60s faded memories, replacing thermostats and cleaning filters and smelling the dusty muck of stagnant water at the bottom of an AC tray.
The Learned Elders Hall is for the students of my Rojonekku school, and I know a lot of this Gabriel Duenez write-up sounds like internet pretentiousness, but for the Rojonekku kids, the lesson is a man who loved something, shared something, and ultimately got nothing material out of the arrangement. Yet his life started something in motion that has spread beyond him, and he probably doesn't even realize it. That's the beauty of what you can do as a person. You may never be rewarded financially for what you take on as your life's passion, and to expect to have that happen is naive, and often times actually compromises that passion in the process. But there's something noble and beautiful and perfectly pure about shooting those passions out to the world, and the ripples reverberate, whether you see them or not. Ultimately, with the transplanting of Rojonekku kids in other states, that's my goal as well. It moves beyond you, into other worlds, and just spirals on its own. You start something and let it spiral. It is probably better a lot of times not to turn it into money, because then you start to feel ownership of what it is that is spiraling out, and you want to control it, so as to maximize the profit factor. But you can't control the spirals and ripples you create; and by trying to, you destroy them.
Saturday, October 9
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 – Finals
So this is the final showdowns for the Fall 2010 Learned Elders of Rojonekku. The winners will be inducted into a living hall of fame, which means I’ll steal from multiple sources, add some cusswords, and post long biographical posts the day of October 15 (maybe) about the actual five. Then we do this whole thing again in the springtime, and on until we have 100 people, some of which will probably die along the way, so be removed since you have to be alive, and then I can continue to do this nonsense, in perpetuity, to continually keep it filled as much as possible. WHEN WILL MY MADNESS STOP?
Anyways, I decided to do these final showdowns comparing the pair using seven specific factors as to how highly they should be included into the Hall of Fame. Here are those factors: Learned Factor (being this is a living Hall of Fame, for the kids in my back roads ninjitsu life lesson “academy” of a couple camper trailers, I can imagine being incredibly endowed – financially – and building a college where I pay crazy motherfuckers to come teach crazy things to these kids; the Learned Factor is basically which person I’d rather pay to come teach at this insane college that does not exist); Death Factor (which one is closer to death or will be a more tragic death or probably should get this honor more being they can only get it while alivers on earth); Fight Factor (which one battles normal society or the status quo or squaresville fuckheads the hardest throughout the course of their life, either directly or subversively); Wikipedia Factor (I’ll just read the Wikipedia page and get a gauge on which one seems cooler from that tame ass mainstream mindframe; ideally none of these people would have a wikipedia page); Diversity Factor (do they add something to the genetic mix of the Hall of Learned Elders that no one else does?); Obscurity Factor (aka the Contrarian Factor, or how much do regular lame ass people know and love this person, so as to potentially annoy me with ironic t-shirts or ridiculous banter that causes me to re-evaluate my position in the future because if a complete and utter dumbass thinks the same way as me it’s time to switch gears); and the Personal Factor (final tiebreaker if necessary, which one has infused my personal life with the most direct awesomeness). So let us do this ridiculous thing, where the first one to 4 advantages in factors is the dude or chick who wins…
FIDEL CASTRO vs. GABRIEL DUENEZ
Learned Factor: This is the Hispanic battle, and if I had to hire one to come teach my runaway delinquent boys that hide out on the compound the ways of the world, honestly, I’d go with Duenez. I mean, Castro has ruled a country and now hangs out with dolphins, watching baseball on satellite TV; but Duenez started an obscure sub-genre of music and now is an old guy who repairs air conditioners in Houston. That’s real life shit right there. Advantage: Duenez (1-0).
Death Factor: I almost certainly would not even find out if Gabriel Duenez died until years later probably when some internet hipster world music fucker wrote about him on something I happened to read. So that is a negative. And Castro seems to be settling into that twilight mode where he is trying to show his softer side to drum up attendance at his funeral. Advantage: Castro (tied, 1-1).
Fight Factor: Castro overthrew a government. Duenez played slowed down cumbia music. Advantage: Castro (2-1, Castro).
Wikipedia Factor: Duenez has no wiki page, and Castro’s is long and boring. But I did learn he married a rich Cuban bitch and got to see Cuban money people up close and personal and blew threw a lot of money before getting all crazy nationalist and then turning on those people. It is good to stab the belly of the best from within the beast’s belly sometimes. Advantage: Castro (3-1, Castro).
Diversity Factor: Both are hispanics causing panics, but Duenez is Mexican. I think. At least he made his fame at the flea market in Monterey. I like Mexicans better than Puerto Ricans, and to be honest, I haven’t dealt much with Cubans, but I often imagine Cuban women to have hairy yonis and to be able to shake their ass really well. Still though, Mexico is like Candy Mountain in my brain. Although Duenez lives in Houston though. Whatever. Advantage: Duenez (3-2, Castro).
Obscurity Factor: Not even close. Advantage: Duenez (tied 3-3).
Personal Factor: Don’t get me wrong, I’m as anti-government as anybody, but communism is just another form of government. No government really works. Fuck them all. And I am ruled in my day-to-day life, all throughout it, by music far more than by laws, although the law has a way of getting the way of my good time fairly regularly. Just another reason to be anti-government though. Advantage: Duenez (4-3, Duenez).
WINNER: GABRIEL DUENEZ
GHOSTFACE KILLAH vs. LEMMY KILMISTER
Learned Factor: In a battle of musical heavyweights, and although Ghostface could drop some serious metascience regarding supreme alphabetics and mathematics and which herbs do what for this or that, no person can deny the immense body of knowledge in the brain of Lemmy Kilmister. Dude has seen it all on the personal experience level, and musically, was a roadie for Jimi Hendrix and has lived through multiple eras of hard rock music in the same shitty apartment in L.A., and understands music and the music industry far better than most non-Jews could ever hope to. Advantage: Lemmy (1-0).
Death Factor: Even though a rap career is short as fuck, Ghostface is still a young man by common standards. Lemmy is old as fuck, and what with all the things he’s put into his body, you cannot be sure it all won’t crash on him one day. Then again, he may have found the perfect chemical combo to live forever. Advantage: Lemmy (2-0).
Fight Factor: I would imagine if I gave both these men an army, Ghostface would do more damage. They should have a real life Risk game in some third world place as a reality TV show, where six people are given armies to overtake each other. I mean, that’s basically what we’ve gotten to as a people, isn’t it? Advantage: Ghostface (2-1, Lemmy).
Wikipedia Factor: While Ghostface’s wiki write-up has it’s moments (notably being referred to as “Ghost” for the most part), Lemmy’s has entire sections called “Sex Legend” and Drugs. Like if someone wanted to make up a rock-n-roll story they couldn’t do one quite as good as Lemmy’s real life. Advantage: Lemmy (3-1, Lemmy).
Diversity Factor: Ghostface is the only potential black dude left trying to get into the Hall of Learned Elders. There are a lot of white dudes still around. Advantage: Ghostface (3-2, Lemmy).
Obscurity Factor: Neither is an obscure figure, though a lot of Lemmy’s interesting life was before the age of the internet, so people may not know about the Hawkwind years, much less his youth going to see the Beatles play and being a roadie for Hendrix. There’s probably sites that have every available picture of Ghostface there is all collected together. I hate the internet, even though I am the internet. Advantage: Lemmy (4-2, Lemmy).
WINNER: LEMMY KILMISTER
MIROSLAV TICHY vs. OXANA MALAYA
Learned Factor: In the wacky foreigner battle, it’s not even close when it comes to Learned Factor. Malaya is still in her 20s, while Tichy is an old pervert recluse with a giant beard. Advantage: Tichy (1-0).
Death Factor: Like I said, Malaya is in her 20s, and Tichy is an old ass dude. Advantage: Tichy (2-0).
Fight Factor: Again, Tichy took semi-perverted pictures of people with a camera that looked like scrap cardboard, so that people posed in ways they never would’ve normally. That’s fairly subversive, especially when combined with his anti-society beliefs. Oxana Malaya basically was left to run with street dogs by her drunken parents. Her outlaw status is more environmental conditioning than personal war against normalcy. Advantage: Tichy (3-0).
Wikipedia Factor: Malaya actually has a wiki page, but it’s pretty short, which is to be expected. Tichy’s was pretty damn interesting though, as he has become somewhat known for his work. But in the details of what he did, it’s very much a creative compulsion with no attachment to the final product – more just something he had to do because it was in his brain. I always love that type of shit, especially as I try to think up ways to actually pay bills with my bizarre desire to put words in different orders, which always sucks the life out of me and causes me to not write, which in turn makes my inner-me violent and reckless, causing me to write again, and usually with no real possible monetary outcome. I hate this world. Advantage: Tichy (4-0).
WINNER: MIROSLAV TICHY
JACKIE TYSON vs. JIMMY VALIANT
Learned Factor: This would be the battle between rural Virginian crazy white dudes who fit the lyrics of “Longhaired Country Boy” by Charlie Daniels Band. And while Jimmy Valiant knows many things about specific nonsense, namely the twisted and sordid world of professional wrestling, Jackie Tyson was a long-hauling truck driver for years, and also has experienced probably the same amount of sordidness as Valiant. Plus, Tyson lives nearby and actually comes to my house and schools me on shit, like how to sharpen a chainsaw chain or what plant you can use for a pot scrubber if you don’t have money or how to breed chickens or how awesome it is to get high and sit on the front porch and watch the guinea hens run around in big giant circles when it is mating season for them. Advantage: Tyson (1-0).
Death Factor: I don’t even want to think about Tyson dying, because I might even end up being the one to find him. One time I went to his house and usually his gate is chained up but it was open, so I drove up the mountain, started yelling so he knew it was me, because I know how he is, knocked on the door, again yelling “It’s Raven! It’s Raven!” and he still swung the door open in a mad fit of paranoia with a long-barreled .357 pointing right in my face. He said, “Goddamn boy, you almost got yourself shot!” Hahaha. Real life is awesome sometimes. Advantage: Valiant, so I don’t have to find Tyson (tied 1-1).
Fight Factor: Both of these guys are such good ole boys, it’s hard to imagine them for-real fighting. But Jimmy Valiant did have an epic war with Paul Jones’s Army back in the day. Epic. Advantage: Valiant (2-1, Valiant).
Wikipedia Factor: Of course, Jackie Tyson has no wiki page, and Jimmy Valiant’s – like most wrestlers – page is fucking stupid as hell, hung up on dumb trivia and lists of crap that mean nothing. Still though, he wins by default I guess. Advantage: Valiant (3-1, Valiant).
Diversity Factor: In regular diversity factors, they are both just white dudes. But if you look at their genres, Valiant is a wrestler. I have spent far too much time in my past watching bizarre old wrestling, and for what? Tyson is a real life dude, and that’s what I’d like to have represented in this internet bullshit more than a bunch of goddamned wrestlers anyways. Advantage: Tyson (3-2, Valiant).
Obscurity Factor: Again, not even close. None of you even know who Jackie Tyson is now after I’ve talked about him. Advantage: Tyson (tied, 3-3).
Personal Factor: Although in recent years, since I’ve lived where I does now the past decade, Tyson has been a strong personal real life influence, throughout the course of my life, few pop cultural individuals have tweaked my brain quite like Jimmy Valiant. As a kid, he was probably my hero, more so than any football or baseball player. And plus, for a good part of my childhood, from like age 5 until like age 13, none of us back home really ever saw Tyson except for strange quick drunken flashes, and then he was gone again. Advantage: Valiant (4-3, Valiant).
WINNER: JIMMY VALIANT
CHARLES MANSON vs. DAVID ALLAN COE
Learned Factor: In a showdown between prison guitarists, I have to give the Learned Factor to Charlie Manson. Holmes had a wealth of strong salesmanship back in the late ‘60s, and I am sure has only added to his bizarre repertoire in the forty years he’s spent in maximumly secured oppression ever since. David Allan Coe has been softened by freedom and the political correctness of this outside world. Advantage: Manson (1-0).
Death Factor: As much as I’d like to imagine Charles Manson is going to live until he is 300 years old, until they basically are forced to release him from prison because he’s served his actual sentences, or the American government that holds him captive disintegrates around him, thus becoming free again through sheer perseverance, this probably isn’t going to really happen. Actually, fuck that, it will. If you don’t believe in ATWA, it won’t believe in you. Still though, he is old. Advantage: Manson (2-0).
Fight Factor: Not even close. Manson wanted to abduct and kill cops but remove their uniforms and leave them in the seats of the cop car to look like they were just vaporized. That’s some next level fight factor right there. Advantage: Manson (3-0).
Wikipedia Factor: David Allan Coe’s wiki page is surprisingly short, and just leads you to shit to buy eventually. Manson’s is a meandering history of the dude that leads, eventually, to all sorts of strange tribute sites, which in turn causes me to look up strange cults and then go to Acid Sweat Lodge and finally just listen to Black Sabbath in the back yard real fucking loud. Advantage: Manson (4-0).
WINNER: CHARLES MANSON
Anyways, I decided to do these final showdowns comparing the pair using seven specific factors as to how highly they should be included into the Hall of Fame. Here are those factors: Learned Factor (being this is a living Hall of Fame, for the kids in my back roads ninjitsu life lesson “academy” of a couple camper trailers, I can imagine being incredibly endowed – financially – and building a college where I pay crazy motherfuckers to come teach crazy things to these kids; the Learned Factor is basically which person I’d rather pay to come teach at this insane college that does not exist); Death Factor (which one is closer to death or will be a more tragic death or probably should get this honor more being they can only get it while alivers on earth); Fight Factor (which one battles normal society or the status quo or squaresville fuckheads the hardest throughout the course of their life, either directly or subversively); Wikipedia Factor (I’ll just read the Wikipedia page and get a gauge on which one seems cooler from that tame ass mainstream mindframe; ideally none of these people would have a wikipedia page); Diversity Factor (do they add something to the genetic mix of the Hall of Learned Elders that no one else does?); Obscurity Factor (aka the Contrarian Factor, or how much do regular lame ass people know and love this person, so as to potentially annoy me with ironic t-shirts or ridiculous banter that causes me to re-evaluate my position in the future because if a complete and utter dumbass thinks the same way as me it’s time to switch gears); and the Personal Factor (final tiebreaker if necessary, which one has infused my personal life with the most direct awesomeness). So let us do this ridiculous thing, where the first one to 4 advantages in factors is the dude or chick who wins…
FIDEL CASTRO vs. GABRIEL DUENEZ
Learned Factor: This is the Hispanic battle, and if I had to hire one to come teach my runaway delinquent boys that hide out on the compound the ways of the world, honestly, I’d go with Duenez. I mean, Castro has ruled a country and now hangs out with dolphins, watching baseball on satellite TV; but Duenez started an obscure sub-genre of music and now is an old guy who repairs air conditioners in Houston. That’s real life shit right there. Advantage: Duenez (1-0).
Death Factor: I almost certainly would not even find out if Gabriel Duenez died until years later probably when some internet hipster world music fucker wrote about him on something I happened to read. So that is a negative. And Castro seems to be settling into that twilight mode where he is trying to show his softer side to drum up attendance at his funeral. Advantage: Castro (tied, 1-1).
Fight Factor: Castro overthrew a government. Duenez played slowed down cumbia music. Advantage: Castro (2-1, Castro).
Wikipedia Factor: Duenez has no wiki page, and Castro’s is long and boring. But I did learn he married a rich Cuban bitch and got to see Cuban money people up close and personal and blew threw a lot of money before getting all crazy nationalist and then turning on those people. It is good to stab the belly of the best from within the beast’s belly sometimes. Advantage: Castro (3-1, Castro).
Diversity Factor: Both are hispanics causing panics, but Duenez is Mexican. I think. At least he made his fame at the flea market in Monterey. I like Mexicans better than Puerto Ricans, and to be honest, I haven’t dealt much with Cubans, but I often imagine Cuban women to have hairy yonis and to be able to shake their ass really well. Still though, Mexico is like Candy Mountain in my brain. Although Duenez lives in Houston though. Whatever. Advantage: Duenez (3-2, Castro).
Obscurity Factor: Not even close. Advantage: Duenez (tied 3-3).
Personal Factor: Don’t get me wrong, I’m as anti-government as anybody, but communism is just another form of government. No government really works. Fuck them all. And I am ruled in my day-to-day life, all throughout it, by music far more than by laws, although the law has a way of getting the way of my good time fairly regularly. Just another reason to be anti-government though. Advantage: Duenez (4-3, Duenez).
WINNER: GABRIEL DUENEZ
GHOSTFACE KILLAH vs. LEMMY KILMISTER
Learned Factor: In a battle of musical heavyweights, and although Ghostface could drop some serious metascience regarding supreme alphabetics and mathematics and which herbs do what for this or that, no person can deny the immense body of knowledge in the brain of Lemmy Kilmister. Dude has seen it all on the personal experience level, and musically, was a roadie for Jimi Hendrix and has lived through multiple eras of hard rock music in the same shitty apartment in L.A., and understands music and the music industry far better than most non-Jews could ever hope to. Advantage: Lemmy (1-0).
Death Factor: Even though a rap career is short as fuck, Ghostface is still a young man by common standards. Lemmy is old as fuck, and what with all the things he’s put into his body, you cannot be sure it all won’t crash on him one day. Then again, he may have found the perfect chemical combo to live forever. Advantage: Lemmy (2-0).
Fight Factor: I would imagine if I gave both these men an army, Ghostface would do more damage. They should have a real life Risk game in some third world place as a reality TV show, where six people are given armies to overtake each other. I mean, that’s basically what we’ve gotten to as a people, isn’t it? Advantage: Ghostface (2-1, Lemmy).
Wikipedia Factor: While Ghostface’s wiki write-up has it’s moments (notably being referred to as “Ghost” for the most part), Lemmy’s has entire sections called “Sex Legend” and Drugs. Like if someone wanted to make up a rock-n-roll story they couldn’t do one quite as good as Lemmy’s real life. Advantage: Lemmy (3-1, Lemmy).
Diversity Factor: Ghostface is the only potential black dude left trying to get into the Hall of Learned Elders. There are a lot of white dudes still around. Advantage: Ghostface (3-2, Lemmy).
Obscurity Factor: Neither is an obscure figure, though a lot of Lemmy’s interesting life was before the age of the internet, so people may not know about the Hawkwind years, much less his youth going to see the Beatles play and being a roadie for Hendrix. There’s probably sites that have every available picture of Ghostface there is all collected together. I hate the internet, even though I am the internet. Advantage: Lemmy (4-2, Lemmy).
WINNER: LEMMY KILMISTER
MIROSLAV TICHY vs. OXANA MALAYA
Learned Factor: In the wacky foreigner battle, it’s not even close when it comes to Learned Factor. Malaya is still in her 20s, while Tichy is an old pervert recluse with a giant beard. Advantage: Tichy (1-0).
Death Factor: Like I said, Malaya is in her 20s, and Tichy is an old ass dude. Advantage: Tichy (2-0).
Fight Factor: Again, Tichy took semi-perverted pictures of people with a camera that looked like scrap cardboard, so that people posed in ways they never would’ve normally. That’s fairly subversive, especially when combined with his anti-society beliefs. Oxana Malaya basically was left to run with street dogs by her drunken parents. Her outlaw status is more environmental conditioning than personal war against normalcy. Advantage: Tichy (3-0).
Wikipedia Factor: Malaya actually has a wiki page, but it’s pretty short, which is to be expected. Tichy’s was pretty damn interesting though, as he has become somewhat known for his work. But in the details of what he did, it’s very much a creative compulsion with no attachment to the final product – more just something he had to do because it was in his brain. I always love that type of shit, especially as I try to think up ways to actually pay bills with my bizarre desire to put words in different orders, which always sucks the life out of me and causes me to not write, which in turn makes my inner-me violent and reckless, causing me to write again, and usually with no real possible monetary outcome. I hate this world. Advantage: Tichy (4-0).
WINNER: MIROSLAV TICHY
JACKIE TYSON vs. JIMMY VALIANT
Learned Factor: This would be the battle between rural Virginian crazy white dudes who fit the lyrics of “Longhaired Country Boy” by Charlie Daniels Band. And while Jimmy Valiant knows many things about specific nonsense, namely the twisted and sordid world of professional wrestling, Jackie Tyson was a long-hauling truck driver for years, and also has experienced probably the same amount of sordidness as Valiant. Plus, Tyson lives nearby and actually comes to my house and schools me on shit, like how to sharpen a chainsaw chain or what plant you can use for a pot scrubber if you don’t have money or how to breed chickens or how awesome it is to get high and sit on the front porch and watch the guinea hens run around in big giant circles when it is mating season for them. Advantage: Tyson (1-0).
Death Factor: I don’t even want to think about Tyson dying, because I might even end up being the one to find him. One time I went to his house and usually his gate is chained up but it was open, so I drove up the mountain, started yelling so he knew it was me, because I know how he is, knocked on the door, again yelling “It’s Raven! It’s Raven!” and he still swung the door open in a mad fit of paranoia with a long-barreled .357 pointing right in my face. He said, “Goddamn boy, you almost got yourself shot!” Hahaha. Real life is awesome sometimes. Advantage: Valiant, so I don’t have to find Tyson (tied 1-1).
Fight Factor: Both of these guys are such good ole boys, it’s hard to imagine them for-real fighting. But Jimmy Valiant did have an epic war with Paul Jones’s Army back in the day. Epic. Advantage: Valiant (2-1, Valiant).
Wikipedia Factor: Of course, Jackie Tyson has no wiki page, and Jimmy Valiant’s – like most wrestlers – page is fucking stupid as hell, hung up on dumb trivia and lists of crap that mean nothing. Still though, he wins by default I guess. Advantage: Valiant (3-1, Valiant).
Diversity Factor: In regular diversity factors, they are both just white dudes. But if you look at their genres, Valiant is a wrestler. I have spent far too much time in my past watching bizarre old wrestling, and for what? Tyson is a real life dude, and that’s what I’d like to have represented in this internet bullshit more than a bunch of goddamned wrestlers anyways. Advantage: Tyson (3-2, Valiant).
Obscurity Factor: Again, not even close. None of you even know who Jackie Tyson is now after I’ve talked about him. Advantage: Tyson (tied, 3-3).
Personal Factor: Although in recent years, since I’ve lived where I does now the past decade, Tyson has been a strong personal real life influence, throughout the course of my life, few pop cultural individuals have tweaked my brain quite like Jimmy Valiant. As a kid, he was probably my hero, more so than any football or baseball player. And plus, for a good part of my childhood, from like age 5 until like age 13, none of us back home really ever saw Tyson except for strange quick drunken flashes, and then he was gone again. Advantage: Valiant (4-3, Valiant).
WINNER: JIMMY VALIANT
CHARLES MANSON vs. DAVID ALLAN COE
Learned Factor: In a showdown between prison guitarists, I have to give the Learned Factor to Charlie Manson. Holmes had a wealth of strong salesmanship back in the late ‘60s, and I am sure has only added to his bizarre repertoire in the forty years he’s spent in maximumly secured oppression ever since. David Allan Coe has been softened by freedom and the political correctness of this outside world. Advantage: Manson (1-0).
Death Factor: As much as I’d like to imagine Charles Manson is going to live until he is 300 years old, until they basically are forced to release him from prison because he’s served his actual sentences, or the American government that holds him captive disintegrates around him, thus becoming free again through sheer perseverance, this probably isn’t going to really happen. Actually, fuck that, it will. If you don’t believe in ATWA, it won’t believe in you. Still though, he is old. Advantage: Manson (2-0).
Fight Factor: Not even close. Manson wanted to abduct and kill cops but remove their uniforms and leave them in the seats of the cop car to look like they were just vaporized. That’s some next level fight factor right there. Advantage: Manson (3-0).
Wikipedia Factor: David Allan Coe’s wiki page is surprisingly short, and just leads you to shit to buy eventually. Manson’s is a meandering history of the dude that leads, eventually, to all sorts of strange tribute sites, which in turn causes me to look up strange cults and then go to Acid Sweat Lodge and finally just listen to Black Sabbath in the back yard real fucking loud. Advantage: Manson (4-0).
WINNER: CHARLES MANSON
Saturday, September 25
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 20 to 10 - 2 of 2
We shall repeat the short and sweet question battle version, because it just makes sense...
AFRIKA BAMBAATAA vs. GHOSTFACE KILLAH
Who makes a point of dancing with fat chicks on stage at pretty much all his shows? Ghostface Killah.
Who extended the influence of creepy ass Kraftwerk on pop culture by 20 years? Bambaataa.
Who would I rather have teach a group of 10 to 13 year olds for an afternoon seminar on whatever the fuck they felt like teaching about? Ghostface Killah. He should take over Zulu Nation and change the name to Zag Zig Zag Nation.
Advantage: Ghostface Killah.
JIM "DANDY" MANGRUM vs. LEMMY KILMISTER
Is Jim Dandy awesome as fuck? Yes.
Is he Lemmy? No.
Advantage: Lemmy Kilmister.
FIDEL CASTRO vs. GARY SNYDER
Which one has shot guns a whole fucking bunch? Castro.
Poetry? Both, in all likelihood.
Had sex with the most brown-skinned women? I am going to assume Castro.
Favorite natural type thing? Dolphins for Castro, Sierra Madre Mountains for Snyder.
Advantage: Fidel Castro.
LEONARD KNIGHT vs. MIROSLAV TICHY
Possessed by inner godliness or inner bedevilment? God for Knight, devil for Tichy.
Favorite medium? House paint for Knight, homemade junk camera for Tichy.
Ultimate goal? Make you accept Jesus for Knight, fuck you leave me alone for Tichy.
Advantage: Miroslav Tichy.
DAVID ALLAN COE vs. SWAMP DOGG
Raw as fuck? Yes to Coe, kind of to Swamp Dogg.
Times I've seen them and had my mind blown? Like four mind-blowings by Coe, only one by Swamp Dogg.
If I filled up an 80 minute CD with my favorite songs by them, how much of those songs would be awesome as fuck without a doubt, even if I was hungover so badly when listening to it that a Dr. Pepper made with real sugar didn't make me feel better? 71 minutes on the David Allan Coe CD, 48 minutes on the Swamp Dogg CD.
Multiplied awesomeness from their best song ever? Times 72 for "Walkin' Bum" by David Allan Coe. Times 83 for "Sam Stone" by Swamp Dogg. Still not enough though.
Advantage: David Allan Coe.
AFRIKA BAMBAATAA vs. GHOSTFACE KILLAH
Who makes a point of dancing with fat chicks on stage at pretty much all his shows? Ghostface Killah.
Who extended the influence of creepy ass Kraftwerk on pop culture by 20 years? Bambaataa.
Who would I rather have teach a group of 10 to 13 year olds for an afternoon seminar on whatever the fuck they felt like teaching about? Ghostface Killah. He should take over Zulu Nation and change the name to Zag Zig Zag Nation.
Advantage: Ghostface Killah.
JIM "DANDY" MANGRUM vs. LEMMY KILMISTER
Is Jim Dandy awesome as fuck? Yes.
Is he Lemmy? No.
Advantage: Lemmy Kilmister.
FIDEL CASTRO vs. GARY SNYDER
Which one has shot guns a whole fucking bunch? Castro.
Poetry? Both, in all likelihood.
Had sex with the most brown-skinned women? I am going to assume Castro.
Favorite natural type thing? Dolphins for Castro, Sierra Madre Mountains for Snyder.
Advantage: Fidel Castro.
LEONARD KNIGHT vs. MIROSLAV TICHY
Possessed by inner godliness or inner bedevilment? God for Knight, devil for Tichy.
Favorite medium? House paint for Knight, homemade junk camera for Tichy.
Ultimate goal? Make you accept Jesus for Knight, fuck you leave me alone for Tichy.
Advantage: Miroslav Tichy.
DAVID ALLAN COE vs. SWAMP DOGG
Raw as fuck? Yes to Coe, kind of to Swamp Dogg.
Times I've seen them and had my mind blown? Like four mind-blowings by Coe, only one by Swamp Dogg.
If I filled up an 80 minute CD with my favorite songs by them, how much of those songs would be awesome as fuck without a doubt, even if I was hungover so badly when listening to it that a Dr. Pepper made with real sugar didn't make me feel better? 71 minutes on the David Allan Coe CD, 48 minutes on the Swamp Dogg CD.
Multiplied awesomeness from their best song ever? Times 72 for "Walkin' Bum" by David Allan Coe. Times 83 for "Sam Stone" by Swamp Dogg. Still not enough though.
Advantage: David Allan Coe.
Thursday, September 23
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 20 to 10 - 1 of 2
We will make this round a simple best of three questions format...
ATSUSHI ONITA vs. JIMMY VALIANT
Where do they live? Somewhere in Japan vs. Shawsville, Virginia.
Do they have a beard? Not that I know vs. yes, a long ass one.
Advantage: Jimmy Valiant, two to none.
CHAZ BOJORQUEZ vs. GABRIEL DUENEZ
Who is older and more obscure? Duenez.
Were I rich, who would I more likely commission to do something for me? Bojorquez.
Am I rich? No.
Advantage: Gabriel Duenez.
JACKIE TYSON vs. JOHN RIGGINS
Which has cut down a tree in my back yard? Jackie Tyson.
Which has taught me awesome things in real life and once almost shot me with a .357 because he is really paranoid and I thought I was a neighbor crackhead trying to rob him? Jackie Tyson.
Who was on a football team I watched on TV when I was a kid? TV heroes are gay.
Advantage: Jackie Tyson.
CHARLES MANSON vs. TED KACZYNSKI
Who is smaller? I don't know; they're both small as fuck.
Who has the better beard? Upon arrest, probably a push, but I'd bet Manson keeps better facial hair in jail. Still, no photos to prove this.
Who wrote a better manifesto? Again, a push, because The Unabomber Manifesto was a nice piece, but very intellectual. Manson was a word-of-mouth oral manifesto manifester. There is something to be said for that.
Who would I rather receive a letter from if I wrote both of them in jail? Oh, without a doubt, Manson.
Advantage: Manson.
LARRY FLYNT vs. OXANA MALAYA
Who subjugates women? Flynt. (This would not be considered an advantage, in case you were wondering. Women can be objectified, but they should be treated well so as to enjoy their rampant sexualization as much as you enjoy it.)
Who wants to live amongst wild dogs? Malaya. (This is an advantage.)
Who is more obscure, thus making me feel like more of an obtuse internet hipster fuckface, and after all, isn't that what this is ultimately all about? Definitely Malaya.
Advantage: Oxana Malaya.
ATSUSHI ONITA vs. JIMMY VALIANT
Where do they live? Somewhere in Japan vs. Shawsville, Virginia.
Do they have a beard? Not that I know vs. yes, a long ass one.
Advantage: Jimmy Valiant, two to none.
CHAZ BOJORQUEZ vs. GABRIEL DUENEZ
Who is older and more obscure? Duenez.
Were I rich, who would I more likely commission to do something for me? Bojorquez.
Am I rich? No.
Advantage: Gabriel Duenez.
JACKIE TYSON vs. JOHN RIGGINS
Which has cut down a tree in my back yard? Jackie Tyson.
Which has taught me awesome things in real life and once almost shot me with a .357 because he is really paranoid and I thought I was a neighbor crackhead trying to rob him? Jackie Tyson.
Who was on a football team I watched on TV when I was a kid? TV heroes are gay.
Advantage: Jackie Tyson.
CHARLES MANSON vs. TED KACZYNSKI
Who is smaller? I don't know; they're both small as fuck.
Who has the better beard? Upon arrest, probably a push, but I'd bet Manson keeps better facial hair in jail. Still, no photos to prove this.
Who wrote a better manifesto? Again, a push, because The Unabomber Manifesto was a nice piece, but very intellectual. Manson was a word-of-mouth oral manifesto manifester. There is something to be said for that.
Who would I rather receive a letter from if I wrote both of them in jail? Oh, without a doubt, Manson.
Advantage: Manson.
LARRY FLYNT vs. OXANA MALAYA
Who subjugates women? Flynt. (This would not be considered an advantage, in case you were wondering. Women can be objectified, but they should be treated well so as to enjoy their rampant sexualization as much as you enjoy it.)
Who wants to live amongst wild dogs? Malaya. (This is an advantage.)
Who is more obscure, thus making me feel like more of an obtuse internet hipster fuckface, and after all, isn't that what this is ultimately all about? Definitely Malaya.
Advantage: Oxana Malaya.
Sunday, September 19
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 40 to 20 - 4 of 4
The last of the second round. Please share your opinions of things with me because it occupies my life as I wait for the second number to get carved into my tombstone while sitting at work waiting for it all to crumble in on me...
DAVID MANN vs. LEMMY KILMISTER
No matter how much Sons of Anarchy I watch, nothing will make me think David Mann posters are cooler than Lemmy Kilmister songs. Especially if you've ever heard that semi-acoustic version of "Ironhorse/Born to Lose". I have it somewhere but I'm not going to find it and upload it. Just come by the house. We will plug in the camper and the backyard speaker and I'll play it real fucking loud while we get up a game of bones or huvna at the picnic table. I found a couple of boxes of our spring lemon homebrew and have been drinking brown and tans with that and Guinness lately. It's a lovely combo, the perfect double dropkick of your daily blues.
Advantage: Lemmy Kilmister.
DAVID ALLAN COE vs. WILLIE NELSON
In case you haven't noticed, I pair these match-up of similar people, so as to avoid something stupid like all five of the final people being wrestlers or all five being musicians, or whatever catches my personal interior pop culture retard flow at an awkward angle just perfectly while I'm doing this. This really isn't a fair battle for the second round because both of these guys are not only immense figures in the wacky real world, but immense figures in my real life. I grew up with my dad usually drinking and stoning til all hours of the morning. Many late Friday and Saturday nights were spent with him demon driving a car home from Cumberland county all the way to the south end of Prince Edward after a long night of small stakes poker playing, with me laying down sideways in the back seat so as to not see the outside world swerving past, and to hope I made it home alive. And God bless the old man, he never killed me once. We never even wrecked. And if it was a good night at the kitchen poker table at Tip's house, and we were coming home late enough, he'd buy me some cinnamon-n-raisin biscuits from Hardee's on the drunken sneak through Farmville. When I was about ten or eleven, I used to get to sit with the grown folks and play poker too, with my parents giving me like five or six dollars in change to gamble. Really, it showed how much they trusted me, because no other kids ever got to do that in all the time (we're talking years) these weekends went on. And if there weren't enough grown folks chairs for all the grown folks players, I would sit in Tip's son's high chair with the top off of it (rest in peace Tony Tipton... shit rest in peace all of them, Tony, Tip, my dad, Stuart just died from cancer, memories full of wild back roads ghosts), so we'd joke, "Raven's been playing poker since he was sittin' in a high chair."
Anyways, the ol' man would wake up early in the morning, probably about the time his drunk wore off, and start playing music loud as fuck and cooking up big fat breakfasts and cleaning the house and just generally, it seems to me in retrospect, cleansing himself with a good life. Of course, come dark, if it was the weekend, he was right back at it. But a lot of Willie Nelson and David Allan Coe got played. And though I think that "Redheaded Stranger" may be one of the greatest songs ever (and definitely the best country album ever made), David Allan Coe is just such a lifelong kook. Finding his underground stuff, or all the full albums that the For the Record was compiled from, or even his early post-prison insane rock-n-roll blues country drunken nightmare shit that it's hard to believe people actually made back in the late '60s/early '70s. Willie Nelson is amazing, but there's a lot of square ass people who love them some Willie Nelson. You go to a David Allan Coe show, yeah there'll be some bullshit fratboys, but there's gonna be some real shit there. Bikers staring at cowboys who are laughing at the hippies, so to speak.
Advantage: David Allan Coe.
CHARLES MANSON vs. LEONARD PELTIER
Not even close.
Advantage: Charles Manson.
MIROSLAV TICHY vs. VOLLIS SIMPSON
Oh man, this is another pair that I kinda wish could both be the final five, except I'm matching them now because they are both crazy self-taught artist types. I seriously cannot say how much I love Vollis Simpson and the idea of this wacky Carolina farmer dude starting to weld metal things together to blow in the wind, with them growing ever larger and gaining notoriety worldwide for what he does. But Miroslav Tichy did a similar thing but more anonymously, taking pictures with a homemade camera. And Tichy resents the fame he has achieved, because he is just an old man who wants to be left the fuck alone by society. I can understand that all too well, and probably more so than I should at my age.
Advantage: Miroslav Tichy.
GARY SNYDER vs. HARRY CREWS
Two of my favorite writers that are living and breathing and have rarely let me down. Hard to pick either or because they both have great books that are bibles in my mind, and I've read through things they've both done that did not interest me even slightly. But I guess if this dude writing in the Huffington Post about me said I was the "literary and philoshopical heir to Harry Crews," as sad as it sounds to say, he must not be as great as Gary Snyder if some raggedy blog-having piece of shit like me is his heir apparent.
Advantage: Gary Snyder.
DAVID MANN vs. LEMMY KILMISTER
No matter how much Sons of Anarchy I watch, nothing will make me think David Mann posters are cooler than Lemmy Kilmister songs. Especially if you've ever heard that semi-acoustic version of "Ironhorse/Born to Lose". I have it somewhere but I'm not going to find it and upload it. Just come by the house. We will plug in the camper and the backyard speaker and I'll play it real fucking loud while we get up a game of bones or huvna at the picnic table. I found a couple of boxes of our spring lemon homebrew and have been drinking brown and tans with that and Guinness lately. It's a lovely combo, the perfect double dropkick of your daily blues.
Advantage: Lemmy Kilmister.
DAVID ALLAN COE vs. WILLIE NELSON
In case you haven't noticed, I pair these match-up of similar people, so as to avoid something stupid like all five of the final people being wrestlers or all five being musicians, or whatever catches my personal interior pop culture retard flow at an awkward angle just perfectly while I'm doing this. This really isn't a fair battle for the second round because both of these guys are not only immense figures in the wacky real world, but immense figures in my real life. I grew up with my dad usually drinking and stoning til all hours of the morning. Many late Friday and Saturday nights were spent with him demon driving a car home from Cumberland county all the way to the south end of Prince Edward after a long night of small stakes poker playing, with me laying down sideways in the back seat so as to not see the outside world swerving past, and to hope I made it home alive. And God bless the old man, he never killed me once. We never even wrecked. And if it was a good night at the kitchen poker table at Tip's house, and we were coming home late enough, he'd buy me some cinnamon-n-raisin biscuits from Hardee's on the drunken sneak through Farmville. When I was about ten or eleven, I used to get to sit with the grown folks and play poker too, with my parents giving me like five or six dollars in change to gamble. Really, it showed how much they trusted me, because no other kids ever got to do that in all the time (we're talking years) these weekends went on. And if there weren't enough grown folks chairs for all the grown folks players, I would sit in Tip's son's high chair with the top off of it (rest in peace Tony Tipton... shit rest in peace all of them, Tony, Tip, my dad, Stuart just died from cancer, memories full of wild back roads ghosts), so we'd joke, "Raven's been playing poker since he was sittin' in a high chair."
Anyways, the ol' man would wake up early in the morning, probably about the time his drunk wore off, and start playing music loud as fuck and cooking up big fat breakfasts and cleaning the house and just generally, it seems to me in retrospect, cleansing himself with a good life. Of course, come dark, if it was the weekend, he was right back at it. But a lot of Willie Nelson and David Allan Coe got played. And though I think that "Redheaded Stranger" may be one of the greatest songs ever (and definitely the best country album ever made), David Allan Coe is just such a lifelong kook. Finding his underground stuff, or all the full albums that the For the Record was compiled from, or even his early post-prison insane rock-n-roll blues country drunken nightmare shit that it's hard to believe people actually made back in the late '60s/early '70s. Willie Nelson is amazing, but there's a lot of square ass people who love them some Willie Nelson. You go to a David Allan Coe show, yeah there'll be some bullshit fratboys, but there's gonna be some real shit there. Bikers staring at cowboys who are laughing at the hippies, so to speak.
Advantage: David Allan Coe.
CHARLES MANSON vs. LEONARD PELTIER
Not even close.
Advantage: Charles Manson.
MIROSLAV TICHY vs. VOLLIS SIMPSON
Oh man, this is another pair that I kinda wish could both be the final five, except I'm matching them now because they are both crazy self-taught artist types. I seriously cannot say how much I love Vollis Simpson and the idea of this wacky Carolina farmer dude starting to weld metal things together to blow in the wind, with them growing ever larger and gaining notoriety worldwide for what he does. But Miroslav Tichy did a similar thing but more anonymously, taking pictures with a homemade camera. And Tichy resents the fame he has achieved, because he is just an old man who wants to be left the fuck alone by society. I can understand that all too well, and probably more so than I should at my age.
Advantage: Miroslav Tichy.
GARY SNYDER vs. HARRY CREWS
Two of my favorite writers that are living and breathing and have rarely let me down. Hard to pick either or because they both have great books that are bibles in my mind, and I've read through things they've both done that did not interest me even slightly. But I guess if this dude writing in the Huffington Post about me said I was the "literary and philoshopical heir to Harry Crews," as sad as it sounds to say, he must not be as great as Gary Snyder if some raggedy blog-having piece of shit like me is his heir apparent.
Advantage: Gary Snyder.
Saturday, September 18
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 40 to 20 - 3 of 4
Continuing with the process...
LEONARD KNIGHT vs. NAZARIO MORENO
I don't know, as awesome as La Familia seems, having followed Mexican drug cartels on google news for over a year now, I'm starting to be afraid of them. They seem like just by reading about them too much you might get your head chopped off. Those dudes actually blockade the streets of major Mexican cities whenever they want to. It's not like they are some underworld element anymore; they can flaunt their power in the open in Mexico. And as much as I embrace chaos, I don't necessarily want mass murders to be part of my chaos. (Automatic "fuck you, shut up" to whichever budding Tea Party mind out there is all like, "Well, when you have chaos you have murder." I had a teacher in 6th grade who when I asked her the difference between anarchy and communism, she said there was none. And I wasn't being a smart ass; I wanted to know. You kids are lucky you have the interwebz to teach you all the mind-corrupting things your ignorant ass teachers cannot.)
Leonard Knight is still painting the desert, and honestly, there's a handful of people in this first process that I'm like, "Oh shit, I need to get them to be part of the final five hopefully because they might die before next time." Knight is one of those dudes.
Advantage: Leonard Knight.
GHOSTFACE KILLAH vs. R.A. THE RUGGED MAN
R.A. is awesome, and a one of a kind American treasure, but Ghostface is Ghostface. The best rapper alive and the greatest rap show I ever saw, by a thousand miles. R.A. is a treasure, but Ghostface Killah is a blessing.
Advantage: Ghostface Killah.
GABRIEL DUENEZ vs. HENRY FULCHER
It is fall so all music should be slowed music. I cannot even listen to some things normal speed anymore. Bluegrass is way too fast, and probably will be more my speed come the cold when the woodstove is fired up and you have to wear wool socks when chilling out on the couch at night. But for now, leaves are just starting to change, and I haven't started carrying a coat with me during the stupid boring ass days.
Advantage: Gabriel Duenez.
JIMMY VALIANT vs. TERRY FUNK
If you assigned three wrestling nerds each to both of these guys and had them come up with a single DVD of great moments to watch to compare, I am sure for the average human being, Terry Funk would win out. But I am a southside Virginia knucklehead, born from longhaired rednecks and redneck hippies and lifelong underachievers and never-coud-be-ers because the world does not travel paths we know how to navigate, regardless of the innate talents and raw awesomeness we possess. Jimmy Valiant is one of us. We are street people, even if from back roads, and we understand each other without even having to know one another.
Advantage: Jimmy Valiant.
CAROL NESMITH vs. JACKIE TYSON
Nesmith raises chickens in the deep south for cockfighting in foreign countries. Tyson showed me how to raise chickens in central Virginia. I don't have three slabs of pork chops in my front porch chest freezer for no Carol Nesmith.
Advantage: Jackie Tyson.
LEONARD KNIGHT vs. NAZARIO MORENO
I don't know, as awesome as La Familia seems, having followed Mexican drug cartels on google news for over a year now, I'm starting to be afraid of them. They seem like just by reading about them too much you might get your head chopped off. Those dudes actually blockade the streets of major Mexican cities whenever they want to. It's not like they are some underworld element anymore; they can flaunt their power in the open in Mexico. And as much as I embrace chaos, I don't necessarily want mass murders to be part of my chaos. (Automatic "fuck you, shut up" to whichever budding Tea Party mind out there is all like, "Well, when you have chaos you have murder." I had a teacher in 6th grade who when I asked her the difference between anarchy and communism, she said there was none. And I wasn't being a smart ass; I wanted to know. You kids are lucky you have the interwebz to teach you all the mind-corrupting things your ignorant ass teachers cannot.)
Leonard Knight is still painting the desert, and honestly, there's a handful of people in this first process that I'm like, "Oh shit, I need to get them to be part of the final five hopefully because they might die before next time." Knight is one of those dudes.
Advantage: Leonard Knight.
GHOSTFACE KILLAH vs. R.A. THE RUGGED MAN
R.A. is awesome, and a one of a kind American treasure, but Ghostface is Ghostface. The best rapper alive and the greatest rap show I ever saw, by a thousand miles. R.A. is a treasure, but Ghostface Killah is a blessing.
Advantage: Ghostface Killah.
GABRIEL DUENEZ vs. HENRY FULCHER
It is fall so all music should be slowed music. I cannot even listen to some things normal speed anymore. Bluegrass is way too fast, and probably will be more my speed come the cold when the woodstove is fired up and you have to wear wool socks when chilling out on the couch at night. But for now, leaves are just starting to change, and I haven't started carrying a coat with me during the stupid boring ass days.
Advantage: Gabriel Duenez.
JIMMY VALIANT vs. TERRY FUNK
If you assigned three wrestling nerds each to both of these guys and had them come up with a single DVD of great moments to watch to compare, I am sure for the average human being, Terry Funk would win out. But I am a southside Virginia knucklehead, born from longhaired rednecks and redneck hippies and lifelong underachievers and never-coud-be-ers because the world does not travel paths we know how to navigate, regardless of the innate talents and raw awesomeness we possess. Jimmy Valiant is one of us. We are street people, even if from back roads, and we understand each other without even having to know one another.
Advantage: Jimmy Valiant.
CAROL NESMITH vs. JACKIE TYSON
Nesmith raises chickens in the deep south for cockfighting in foreign countries. Tyson showed me how to raise chickens in central Virginia. I don't have three slabs of pork chops in my front porch chest freezer for no Carol Nesmith.
Advantage: Jackie Tyson.
Friday, September 17
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 40 to 20 - 2 of 4
Let us resume this nonsense with very little explanation, so as to work my way closer to finishing up the fall class of Learned Elders of Rojonekku.
CHAZ BOJORQUEZ vs. ROBERT CRUMB
I looked at a bunch of gang graffiti online the other day, yet did not masturbate to muscle worship videos.
Advantage: Chaz Bojorquez.
OXANA MALAYA vs. PHYLLIS LIGHT
My wife is taking another class under Phyllis Light at some point this fall, and she's an awesome old herbal lady, but there is something that warms my heart about a 20-something chick who loves to tend animals on a mental hospital farm because she is considered mentally retarded or undeveloped or handicapped or whatever because she was raised by wild dogs. I am very much on a kick lately about how science and religion are both religions of course, and they differ on so much. Yet for some reason science has wholeheartedly taken the Dominion over the Earth thing and still attempts to point out constantly how superior humans are, when really how do you judge superior? Superior by our standards of what makes something better? Wouldn't that be biased? I love Oxana Malaya and wish they'd let her just hang with the dogs and stop trying to force her into some super role of reformed beast child.
Advantage: Oxana Malaya.
ATSUSHI ONITA vs. MIKE TYSON
Tyson is a wonderful story, especially if you work in all the strange superstitions and processes of boxing culture. But Onita blew himself up in fake fighting matches, got elected to Japanese Congress, and helped the children of Afghanistan somehow. My daughter just joined Facebook and her first status update was "I am sad about Afghanistan."
Advantage: Atsushi Onita.
TED KACZYNSKI vs. VINCENTE PIERRE
Pierre is a local hero of militant anti-governmentality gone to jail, while Kaczynski is a living legend of such affairs. There are only two people I'd like to initiate a prison/not-in-prison letter-writing relationship with - Kaczynski and Charles Manson. Of course, we all use laptops nowadays so I'm not sure I even know how to write with my hand. My signature has become swirly squigs with a couple of humps. I don't even get the number of humps right anymore.
Advantage: Ted Kaczynski.
DIEGO MARADONA vs. FIDEL CASTRO
Diego Maradona is a soccer player who went to coach soccer. Fidel Castro is a baseball player who went on to overthrow a corrupt government. Now he is old and hangs out watching dolphins. Che Guevara's daughter is a marine veterinarian. I read it on the internet last week, so it has to be true.
Advantage: Fidel Castro.
CHAZ BOJORQUEZ vs. ROBERT CRUMB
I looked at a bunch of gang graffiti online the other day, yet did not masturbate to muscle worship videos.
Advantage: Chaz Bojorquez.
OXANA MALAYA vs. PHYLLIS LIGHT
My wife is taking another class under Phyllis Light at some point this fall, and she's an awesome old herbal lady, but there is something that warms my heart about a 20-something chick who loves to tend animals on a mental hospital farm because she is considered mentally retarded or undeveloped or handicapped or whatever because she was raised by wild dogs. I am very much on a kick lately about how science and religion are both religions of course, and they differ on so much. Yet for some reason science has wholeheartedly taken the Dominion over the Earth thing and still attempts to point out constantly how superior humans are, when really how do you judge superior? Superior by our standards of what makes something better? Wouldn't that be biased? I love Oxana Malaya and wish they'd let her just hang with the dogs and stop trying to force her into some super role of reformed beast child.
Advantage: Oxana Malaya.
ATSUSHI ONITA vs. MIKE TYSON
Tyson is a wonderful story, especially if you work in all the strange superstitions and processes of boxing culture. But Onita blew himself up in fake fighting matches, got elected to Japanese Congress, and helped the children of Afghanistan somehow. My daughter just joined Facebook and her first status update was "I am sad about Afghanistan."
Advantage: Atsushi Onita.
TED KACZYNSKI vs. VINCENTE PIERRE
Pierre is a local hero of militant anti-governmentality gone to jail, while Kaczynski is a living legend of such affairs. There are only two people I'd like to initiate a prison/not-in-prison letter-writing relationship with - Kaczynski and Charles Manson. Of course, we all use laptops nowadays so I'm not sure I even know how to write with my hand. My signature has become swirly squigs with a couple of humps. I don't even get the number of humps right anymore.
Advantage: Ted Kaczynski.
DIEGO MARADONA vs. FIDEL CASTRO
Diego Maradona is a soccer player who went to coach soccer. Fidel Castro is a baseball player who went on to overthrow a corrupt government. Now he is old and hangs out watching dolphins. Che Guevara's daughter is a marine veterinarian. I read it on the internet last week, so it has to be true.
Advantage: Fidel Castro.
Friday, September 10
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 40 to 20 - 1 of 4
This begins the second round of my retarded self-indulgent tournament of awesome living human beings, to create a Hall of 100 (eventually) Living Human Beings aka the Learned Elders of Rojonekku who would be the 100 dudes or ol' ladies I would pay all my money were I a bazillionaire, to teach the homeless teenagers I and my co-conspirators take in all the wonderful things they know in this world, and fill their heads with hopes and dreams and retardedness and wildernesses and double tough batshit crazy. So let us - meaning me - begin - meaning start.
AFRIKA BAMBAATAA vs. TOO SHORT
I could listen to Too Short all night long, driving westwardly under a new moon with a bloodstream full of THC, and an oil can of Foster's in my non-shifting hand, but when it comes to Learned Elders, Afrika Bambaataa is the epitome of that. A street thug turned new-fangled musical artist turned spaced out cult leader. He is Sun Ra for the hip hop generation, and it is a shame that rap music is so hung up on the latest shit so that there is no room for Bambaataa to stalk around and say crazy shit in more publicly accessible forums.
Advantage: Afrika Bambaataa.
BILLY GIBBONS vs. JIM "DANDY" MANGRUM
If I had to pick between these two ten days in a row, I'd probably change my mind every day. Billy Gibbons is a one of a kind type rock-n-roll blues legend. But there is an interview I had in a shitty magazine I used to write for with Jim "Dandy" Mangrum where, in his middle-aged days, he bragged that he's never had a real job and doesn't even know how to use a hammer, and also how much he loves women. Now, I would not pride myself in such things, but I am a man of the earth by birth. If I could trade it all in to waste my life with drugs, alcohol, and pussy, I probably would. Especially if you offered it to me at like 16.
Advantage: Jim "Dandy" Mangrum.
JOHN RIGGINS vs. TIGER WILLIAMS
Hockey is awesome, especially legendary enforcer types, but I am not Canadian or Swedish or whatever the fuck. I am American.
Advantage: John Riggins.
STEVE EARLE vs. SWAMP DOGG
Oh man, I bet Steve Earle could put together a really great two hour radio show about Swamp Dogg. And I bet Swamp Dogg, when presented with Steve Earle, would want to sing over top of Steve Earle's music. In alpha male hierarchical status, that means Swamp Dogg is the alpha. This is no slight on Steve Earle, just the way things are.
Advantage: Swamp Dogg.
BILL MURRAY vs. LARRY FLYNT
Bill Murray is a funny motherfucker, but a Kentucky hillbilly who took mass media pornographic magazining to a whole 'nother level of the game is a dude that I can be like, "Yeah, he has done a thing that impresses my rural stupid half-ignorant over-educated ass."
Advantage: Larry Flynt.
AFRIKA BAMBAATAA vs. TOO SHORT
I could listen to Too Short all night long, driving westwardly under a new moon with a bloodstream full of THC, and an oil can of Foster's in my non-shifting hand, but when it comes to Learned Elders, Afrika Bambaataa is the epitome of that. A street thug turned new-fangled musical artist turned spaced out cult leader. He is Sun Ra for the hip hop generation, and it is a shame that rap music is so hung up on the latest shit so that there is no room for Bambaataa to stalk around and say crazy shit in more publicly accessible forums.
Advantage: Afrika Bambaataa.
BILLY GIBBONS vs. JIM "DANDY" MANGRUM
If I had to pick between these two ten days in a row, I'd probably change my mind every day. Billy Gibbons is a one of a kind type rock-n-roll blues legend. But there is an interview I had in a shitty magazine I used to write for with Jim "Dandy" Mangrum where, in his middle-aged days, he bragged that he's never had a real job and doesn't even know how to use a hammer, and also how much he loves women. Now, I would not pride myself in such things, but I am a man of the earth by birth. If I could trade it all in to waste my life with drugs, alcohol, and pussy, I probably would. Especially if you offered it to me at like 16.
Advantage: Jim "Dandy" Mangrum.
JOHN RIGGINS vs. TIGER WILLIAMS
Hockey is awesome, especially legendary enforcer types, but I am not Canadian or Swedish or whatever the fuck. I am American.
Advantage: John Riggins.
STEVE EARLE vs. SWAMP DOGG
Oh man, I bet Steve Earle could put together a really great two hour radio show about Swamp Dogg. And I bet Swamp Dogg, when presented with Steve Earle, would want to sing over top of Steve Earle's music. In alpha male hierarchical status, that means Swamp Dogg is the alpha. This is no slight on Steve Earle, just the way things are.
Advantage: Swamp Dogg.
BILL MURRAY vs. LARRY FLYNT
Bill Murray is a funny motherfucker, but a Kentucky hillbilly who took mass media pornographic magazining to a whole 'nother level of the game is a dude that I can be like, "Yeah, he has done a thing that impresses my rural stupid half-ignorant over-educated ass."
Advantage: Larry Flynt.
Friday, September 3
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 80 to 40 - 5 of 5
JACK CHICK vs. LEONARD KNIGHT
Last of the first round, fast and furious. Chick drew Jesus comic strips that are ironically hilarious, yet the local baptist church still hands them to my kids every summer stapled to popsickles in a serious fashion at the Scottsville 4th of July Parade. I gather up as many as I can that get tossed on the ground. Knight lives in the desert of California, painting a mountain and trucks and anything in his way with donated housepaint in the name of the Lord. Stoner people you know have coffee cans full of Jack Chick pamphlets. You have to get in your car and drive to see Leonard Knight's roadside proselytizing.
Advantage: Leonard Knight.
GARY SNYDER vs. GIL SCOT-HERON
Look, Gil Scot-Heron is awesome as fuck, and if you've never heard of him you should get ahold of his music, especially the 1970s era stuff, as soon as possible. But Gary Snyder introduced me to about the only poetry that I think is not stupid and gay, through his translations of the collected works of Han Shan. And even though he's a long dead T'ang Dynasty poet, no one has had as much an influence on my adult life as Han Shan. If I could emulate one man who walked this earth surface, it'd be Han Shan.
Advantage: Gary Snyder.
GHOSTFACE KILLAH vs. MF DOOM
MF Doom is cool and all, quirky to be quirky, but Ghostface is the best rap show I've ever seen in my life, and he had the flu that night. And he's the best rapper alive. Period. He can switch phases and styles and remain himself and remain relevant. Period.
Advantage: Ghostface Killah.
DAVID LEE ROTH vs. JIM "DANDY" MANGRUM
You know all the tight pants womanizing lead singer over the top craziness that made David Lee Roth the man during Van Halen's for real years? It was all a carbon copy of what Jim Dandy did ten years earlier as lead singer of Black Oak Arkansas. And Jim Dandy still has long hair.
Advantage: Jim "Dandy" Mangrum.
NEK CHAND vs. VOLLIS SIMPSON
Nek Chand is an Indian dude ("Thank you, please be coming again" Indian, not "How, paleface, your litter make me cry" Indian) who built a giant rock city for no reason. It is awesome, but in India. Vollis Simpson builds giant metallic whirligigs (homemade things that move in the wind) in a field on his farm in North Carolina, which is not far at all. In fact, I should take the kids down there this Labor Day weekend, and look at his whirligigs, and dream up building 60 foot tall contraptions on my own compound because fuck the world especially my uptight neighbors.
Advantage: Vollis Simpson.
BILLY GIBBONS vs. ROKY ERICKSON
Roky Erickson is "man, this dude is crazy, fuckin' LSD, hunh?" awesome. Billy Gibbons is motherfuckin' Billy Gibbons. Were I to have bazillions from winning the fake lotteries three Fridays in a row, I'd build a college to replace my Rojonekku Training Compound, and Billy Gibbons is one of the first dudes I'd hire as a professor. We just wouldn't talk about all that electronic bullshit from the 1980s.
Advantage: Billy Gibbons.
SHARON JONES vs. SWAMP DOGG
Sharon Jones is amazing, and it'd be like my Lucinda Williams write-up with her too. But Swamp Dogg is Swamp Dogg, the most amazing R&B singer extraordinaire from Virginia that ever did exist, and with a voice that no one's ever been close to having one like. He is a state treasure, even though he's not claimed Va. for the last half of his life. God bless that motherfucker. And if you are a John Prine fan, and love that "Sam Stone" song, go find the same song by Swamp Dogg and pretty much ruin John Prine for yourself forever.
Advantage: Swamp Dogg.
DAVID ALLAN COE vs. MERLE HAGGARD
Merle Haggard is here because I needed 80 guys and I like him and all because he made a lot of songs about riding trains and used to live in a boxcar as a house when he was a kid, which has always been a dream of mine, and he lived on a houseboat in Utah for a while as an adult, which has also been a dream of mine. What is it about white trash types wanting to live in things other than houses? What the fuck is wrong with me?
But David Allan Coe is David Allan Coe. Jail. Outlaws biker gangs. Practicing polygamist. Underground records. Early Jerry Lee Lewis on acid meth albums. Old guy to this day playing flying vee guitar with rebel flag paint job and he sports a dreadlocked beard and writes song about how gay people are awesome. There are a lot of motherfuckers on this earth but there is only one David Allan Coe. In fact, I just found out he's playing a club in Richmond the weekend before my birthday next year, so start paypalling me money now, because we gonna tear some hotel up (or somebody's back yard if someone lets me crash).
Man, I could write a goddamn 2000 word essay just on wacky shit that has happened to me at David Allan Coe shows, much less about the guy himself. Having my hippie girlfriend decide to break up with me. Being the hippie getting laughed at by cowboys who were being stared at by bikers. Almost fighting an entire frat but dazzling them with my retarded drunken mantis style that then had one of them come bring me a beer and my wife be like, "what the fuck was that about?" although she's gotten kinda used to retarded shit like that going on around me now. I'm like Pigpen from Charlie Brown, except my dust cloud is an aura of retarded.
Advantage: David Allan Coe.
Last of the first round, fast and furious. Chick drew Jesus comic strips that are ironically hilarious, yet the local baptist church still hands them to my kids every summer stapled to popsickles in a serious fashion at the Scottsville 4th of July Parade. I gather up as many as I can that get tossed on the ground. Knight lives in the desert of California, painting a mountain and trucks and anything in his way with donated housepaint in the name of the Lord. Stoner people you know have coffee cans full of Jack Chick pamphlets. You have to get in your car and drive to see Leonard Knight's roadside proselytizing.
Advantage: Leonard Knight.
GARY SNYDER vs. GIL SCOT-HERON
Look, Gil Scot-Heron is awesome as fuck, and if you've never heard of him you should get ahold of his music, especially the 1970s era stuff, as soon as possible. But Gary Snyder introduced me to about the only poetry that I think is not stupid and gay, through his translations of the collected works of Han Shan. And even though he's a long dead T'ang Dynasty poet, no one has had as much an influence on my adult life as Han Shan. If I could emulate one man who walked this earth surface, it'd be Han Shan.
Advantage: Gary Snyder.
GHOSTFACE KILLAH vs. MF DOOM
MF Doom is cool and all, quirky to be quirky, but Ghostface is the best rap show I've ever seen in my life, and he had the flu that night. And he's the best rapper alive. Period. He can switch phases and styles and remain himself and remain relevant. Period.
Advantage: Ghostface Killah.
DAVID LEE ROTH vs. JIM "DANDY" MANGRUM
You know all the tight pants womanizing lead singer over the top craziness that made David Lee Roth the man during Van Halen's for real years? It was all a carbon copy of what Jim Dandy did ten years earlier as lead singer of Black Oak Arkansas. And Jim Dandy still has long hair.
Advantage: Jim "Dandy" Mangrum.
NEK CHAND vs. VOLLIS SIMPSON
Nek Chand is an Indian dude ("Thank you, please be coming again" Indian, not "How, paleface, your litter make me cry" Indian) who built a giant rock city for no reason. It is awesome, but in India. Vollis Simpson builds giant metallic whirligigs (homemade things that move in the wind) in a field on his farm in North Carolina, which is not far at all. In fact, I should take the kids down there this Labor Day weekend, and look at his whirligigs, and dream up building 60 foot tall contraptions on my own compound because fuck the world especially my uptight neighbors.
Advantage: Vollis Simpson.
BILLY GIBBONS vs. ROKY ERICKSON
Roky Erickson is "man, this dude is crazy, fuckin' LSD, hunh?" awesome. Billy Gibbons is motherfuckin' Billy Gibbons. Were I to have bazillions from winning the fake lotteries three Fridays in a row, I'd build a college to replace my Rojonekku Training Compound, and Billy Gibbons is one of the first dudes I'd hire as a professor. We just wouldn't talk about all that electronic bullshit from the 1980s.
Advantage: Billy Gibbons.
SHARON JONES vs. SWAMP DOGG
Sharon Jones is amazing, and it'd be like my Lucinda Williams write-up with her too. But Swamp Dogg is Swamp Dogg, the most amazing R&B singer extraordinaire from Virginia that ever did exist, and with a voice that no one's ever been close to having one like. He is a state treasure, even though he's not claimed Va. for the last half of his life. God bless that motherfucker. And if you are a John Prine fan, and love that "Sam Stone" song, go find the same song by Swamp Dogg and pretty much ruin John Prine for yourself forever.
Advantage: Swamp Dogg.
DAVID ALLAN COE vs. MERLE HAGGARD
Merle Haggard is here because I needed 80 guys and I like him and all because he made a lot of songs about riding trains and used to live in a boxcar as a house when he was a kid, which has always been a dream of mine, and he lived on a houseboat in Utah for a while as an adult, which has also been a dream of mine. What is it about white trash types wanting to live in things other than houses? What the fuck is wrong with me?
But David Allan Coe is David Allan Coe. Jail. Outlaws biker gangs. Practicing polygamist. Underground records. Early Jerry Lee Lewis on acid meth albums. Old guy to this day playing flying vee guitar with rebel flag paint job and he sports a dreadlocked beard and writes song about how gay people are awesome. There are a lot of motherfuckers on this earth but there is only one David Allan Coe. In fact, I just found out he's playing a club in Richmond the weekend before my birthday next year, so start paypalling me money now, because we gonna tear some hotel up (or somebody's back yard if someone lets me crash).
Man, I could write a goddamn 2000 word essay just on wacky shit that has happened to me at David Allan Coe shows, much less about the guy himself. Having my hippie girlfriend decide to break up with me. Being the hippie getting laughed at by cowboys who were being stared at by bikers. Almost fighting an entire frat but dazzling them with my retarded drunken mantis style that then had one of them come bring me a beer and my wife be like, "what the fuck was that about?" although she's gotten kinda used to retarded shit like that going on around me now. I'm like Pigpen from Charlie Brown, except my dust cloud is an aura of retarded.
Advantage: David Allan Coe.
Thursday, September 2
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 80 to 40 - 4 of 5
CAROL NESMITH vs. JUNIOR JOHNSON
Carol Nesmith did time in prison for cockfighting and now runs his operation mostly for just breeding, although most cockfighting information is really hard to find, being it is illegal. There were some dudes near me who word was ran cockfights, but after the Michael Vick thing, the state of Virginia came down hard on everybody, and they sold off their operation to some guy in California. Now they run mud bogs.
Nesmith is one of the main dudes in America for the sweater breed of gamecock, which goes back to some dude in North Carolina back in the 1920s, and there is a large paying market for these birds in the Philippines and Mexico, and I'm sure here too, wink wink nudge nudge. Being an owner of chickens, and knowing these remarkable yet dimwitted creatures well, I can understand the fascination with cockfighting, and breeding a good game bird. These are the lost arts our modern world is overlooking while everyone gets giddy because some dumb bitch did a blog about every recipe in a Julia Roberts cookbook. (Yes, I know that's not correct, but it will be one day; trust me.)
Junior Johnson, similarly, was a bootlegger who ran shine throughout the south, infamously. Legend had it he was never caught, and when Nascar turned into a thing (nothing like the thing it is now though), he was one of its earliest superstars, parlaying mad stock car success into owning his own racing teams, and ultimately into a pork product empire still seen on grocery store shelves, like any good Carolina boy would do. In fact, his life was basically a long-winded money-laundering scheme.
However, he has gone legit, through redneck sports, while Nesmith remains not necessarily outside the law, but flirting with the edges of legality for sure. This world becomes more of a slave ship every time another outlaw dies, because cell phones are HAARP beams.
Advantage: Carol Nesmith.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL vs. CHARLES MANSON
Bobby Beausoleil was a dude who sold some drugs to Charles Manson's family, in a bad deal, and went to retrieve the money with Manson, and killed a guy in the process. Beforehand, basically he had just fucked some of Manson's chicks, and hardly hung with the crew, but the Manson family hysteria has caused Bobby Beausoleil to be stuck in jail the rest of his life. He has used this solitary confinement to paint, make music, and write some really interesting things about the spiritual aspects of high-minded masturbation. Really, he's an amazing motherfucker.
Charles Manson is Charles Manson. He is the best con man the world has ever known, able to reflect exactly what you want to see in him. I sometimes hope he never dies, or at least lives to be like 139, so that they have to release him from jail, because he has outlived American society.
Advantage: Charles Manson.
JIM BROWN vs. JOHN RIGGINS
Football running backs who are #2 and #3 in the all-time career rushing yards list as I recognize it in my heart (behind only Barry Sanders). Brown only played for 7 years, kicked ass, did movies, and attempted to uplift broke ass black kids. John Riggins was insane, wore his hair like Travis Bickle, passed out drunk at a Presidential dinner, and is still crazy as fuck. I am a Redskins fan though.
Advantage: John Riggins
LUCINDA WILLIAMS vs. STEVE EARLE
While I think both of these people can be overrated, as most things that fall under alt.country tend to be, being the type of people who rant and rave about alt.country lack that much of the country part of the genre title to get a good feel for real life shit. Steve Earle, as a musician, is not nearly as awesome as I'd like him to be. I could probably whittle his catalog down to a couple of CDs full of my favorite shit. But his life story is an amazing one, and he knows the real deal about Nashville. And when it comes to music, good lord, the man fucking knows it. His satellite radio show he used to do (may still do, I just never remember to listen) is one of the most amazing things you could ever hear. And you throw in all the political shit he's done, and his involvement in The Wire, and what you have is a rock solid bearded man from Kentucky.
Lucinda Williams is the type of older crazy drunkard woman I'd like to share a shitty hotel with for a couple weeks, until we almost kill each other, and I ride a Greyhound home, and never talk again for ten years, until we find each other on Facebook and time has made our memories of each other more romanticized, and we share in pretend nonsense about how great things could have been. But they wouldn't have been.
With all that being said, ultimately I have to think about the influence of the eventual Learned Elder on my teenage trainees. A crazy old vagina that likes to drink and play guitar can rip apart entire groups of friends, while a crazy old beard that had to quit drinking but still plays guitar can bring them together better than ever.
Advantage: Steve Earle.
BILLY CHILDISH vs. LEMMY KILMISTER
Billy Childish is a national treasure for whatever nation he's from (Scotland? Is that it's own nation anymore?), but Lemmy is motherfucking Lemmy. I mean, he's Lemmy.
Advantage: Lemmy Kilmister.
JACKIE TYSON vs. JESCO WHITE
Jackie Tyson is a dude who was friends with my folks and grew up with my dad and lives not too far away from me and keeps me connected to my upbringing yet grasping for something more. He is a solid motherfucker who I will not speak too much upon at this point because he may find it on the internet and freak out and never talk to me again.
Jesco White is a crazy country character like thousands of others, yet he had a documentary made about him. There are Jesco Whites all over this fucking country, including Jackie Tyson, who are allowed to flourish in their natural habitat without being dragged into the public consciousness like a goddamned zoo animal.
Advantage: Jackie Tyson.
CORMAC MCCARTHY vs. HARRY CREWS
Two of my favorite four living writers (along with Gary Snyder and Chris Offutt), and a pair of guys I hope to be a quarter as successful as before they chunk me in the ground and poke a slab of soapstone in at me. Oddly enough, most of my life, I did not read any Cormac McCarthy, even when a few people had specifically told me, "Hey Raven, I think you'd really love Cormac McCarthy; you should read him." And I never did, because usually when people tell me about things they think I'd like, it just ends up making me think they don't really know me. But yeah, when we were pregnant with our second kid, the boy's name we had in reserve in case it was a boy was Cormac, because it means "son of raven". But we had a girl. However, an interest in Cormac McCarthy completely separate from people telling me how much I'd like the new Little Brother CD or Kevin Smith movie or a book by him actually had me get some shit from library. And honestly, I have not finished half of the books I've read by him, but his style is so goddamned thick and dirty, yet very beautiful, it makes me realize very easily how far I have to go as a writer and how, even at 37 years and writing a few thousand words a night, I'm a goddamn baby on this stroll.
Harry Crews is the best ever, in my book. I could give a fuck about his novels, and haven't gotten into them when I try to, but his collection of essays (Florida Frenzy and Blood and Grits) are the fucking shit I would try to emulate. Good writing about regular crazy-assed people. It is what I grew up around, what has been sterilized by Wal-Marts and satellite TV and Toby Keith songs. He is a man I'd like to sit across the table from, or in a classroom with, or somewhere, and just listen and learn. Not that I think he'd tell me anything I couldn't figure out on my own, or I'd try to impress his old ass and get in good or be his holmes as a little sycophantic young 'un, but just to soak up the vibe. He's been on the same road, with the same crazy ghosts swirling around in his head, just when he went on it, it was unpaved gravel, and by the time I got to it, it was asphalt, but still unlined, and still way off the interstate. And while I think Cormac McCarthy's collected works would have more to offer than Harry Crews's collected works, the influence of man vs. man edge has to go to Crews.
Advantage: Harry Crews.
HENRY FULCHER vs. RALPH STANLEY
Henry Fulcher is an AM radio DJ in my hometown of Farmville, Virginia, and in some sort of country music or bluegrass hall of fame because he's a famous old school DJ back when playing music on the radio meant something more than getting your 19 Facebook friends to listen to you online. And what an entertainer. I have heard him play songs for the first time ever, then stop it by scratching the needle across the record saying, "We won't be playing that no one no more, folks." He'll talk about an old dude who died and then play a wonderful gospel instrumental that'll make you cry like you just heard Red Sovine's "Teddy Bear" for the first time ever. And work in plugs like a mad man, talking about getting your pork chops cut thick at the butcher's counter at some grocery store that still does stuff like that somewhere in southside Virginia where that type of thing is still appreciated. You know, them old folks are dying off. And I can tell you from a whole lot of personal research in my lifetime that the fried chicken you get from a Food Lion or Wal-Mart ain't shit compared to what you could get at the deli counter at them country stores or old mom-and-pop grocery stores. The best fried chicken you can get in the whole middle part of Virginia is in Palmyra, at the E.W. Thomas grocery store. And they have pickled beet eggs, for real ones, not those pink pieces of rubber shit they try to sell at other places as pickled eggs.
Ralph Stanley is of course a founding father of bluegrass music, which is basically speed metal for hillbillies. He also is a Dr. of some sort, and many bearded men in work trucks want him to be President. And though I'd want Ralph Stanley music to be played at my funeral (like it was at my dad's), Henry Fulcher is a fucking classic, in a dying breed way of doing things, and that's what Learned Elders are all about. There's all kinds of newgrass dumbasses playing Pink Floyd on banjo that can half-assedly carry on the legacy of Ralph Stanley. Who the fuck on the internet is gonna tell you where to get pork chops?
Advantage: Henry Fulcher.
Carol Nesmith did time in prison for cockfighting and now runs his operation mostly for just breeding, although most cockfighting information is really hard to find, being it is illegal. There were some dudes near me who word was ran cockfights, but after the Michael Vick thing, the state of Virginia came down hard on everybody, and they sold off their operation to some guy in California. Now they run mud bogs.
Nesmith is one of the main dudes in America for the sweater breed of gamecock, which goes back to some dude in North Carolina back in the 1920s, and there is a large paying market for these birds in the Philippines and Mexico, and I'm sure here too, wink wink nudge nudge. Being an owner of chickens, and knowing these remarkable yet dimwitted creatures well, I can understand the fascination with cockfighting, and breeding a good game bird. These are the lost arts our modern world is overlooking while everyone gets giddy because some dumb bitch did a blog about every recipe in a Julia Roberts cookbook. (Yes, I know that's not correct, but it will be one day; trust me.)
Junior Johnson, similarly, was a bootlegger who ran shine throughout the south, infamously. Legend had it he was never caught, and when Nascar turned into a thing (nothing like the thing it is now though), he was one of its earliest superstars, parlaying mad stock car success into owning his own racing teams, and ultimately into a pork product empire still seen on grocery store shelves, like any good Carolina boy would do. In fact, his life was basically a long-winded money-laundering scheme.
However, he has gone legit, through redneck sports, while Nesmith remains not necessarily outside the law, but flirting with the edges of legality for sure. This world becomes more of a slave ship every time another outlaw dies, because cell phones are HAARP beams.
Advantage: Carol Nesmith.
BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL vs. CHARLES MANSON
Bobby Beausoleil was a dude who sold some drugs to Charles Manson's family, in a bad deal, and went to retrieve the money with Manson, and killed a guy in the process. Beforehand, basically he had just fucked some of Manson's chicks, and hardly hung with the crew, but the Manson family hysteria has caused Bobby Beausoleil to be stuck in jail the rest of his life. He has used this solitary confinement to paint, make music, and write some really interesting things about the spiritual aspects of high-minded masturbation. Really, he's an amazing motherfucker.
Charles Manson is Charles Manson. He is the best con man the world has ever known, able to reflect exactly what you want to see in him. I sometimes hope he never dies, or at least lives to be like 139, so that they have to release him from jail, because he has outlived American society.
Advantage: Charles Manson.
JIM BROWN vs. JOHN RIGGINS
Football running backs who are #2 and #3 in the all-time career rushing yards list as I recognize it in my heart (behind only Barry Sanders). Brown only played for 7 years, kicked ass, did movies, and attempted to uplift broke ass black kids. John Riggins was insane, wore his hair like Travis Bickle, passed out drunk at a Presidential dinner, and is still crazy as fuck. I am a Redskins fan though.
Advantage: John Riggins
LUCINDA WILLIAMS vs. STEVE EARLE
While I think both of these people can be overrated, as most things that fall under alt.country tend to be, being the type of people who rant and rave about alt.country lack that much of the country part of the genre title to get a good feel for real life shit. Steve Earle, as a musician, is not nearly as awesome as I'd like him to be. I could probably whittle his catalog down to a couple of CDs full of my favorite shit. But his life story is an amazing one, and he knows the real deal about Nashville. And when it comes to music, good lord, the man fucking knows it. His satellite radio show he used to do (may still do, I just never remember to listen) is one of the most amazing things you could ever hear. And you throw in all the political shit he's done, and his involvement in The Wire, and what you have is a rock solid bearded man from Kentucky.
Lucinda Williams is the type of older crazy drunkard woman I'd like to share a shitty hotel with for a couple weeks, until we almost kill each other, and I ride a Greyhound home, and never talk again for ten years, until we find each other on Facebook and time has made our memories of each other more romanticized, and we share in pretend nonsense about how great things could have been. But they wouldn't have been.
With all that being said, ultimately I have to think about the influence of the eventual Learned Elder on my teenage trainees. A crazy old vagina that likes to drink and play guitar can rip apart entire groups of friends, while a crazy old beard that had to quit drinking but still plays guitar can bring them together better than ever.
Advantage: Steve Earle.
BILLY CHILDISH vs. LEMMY KILMISTER
Billy Childish is a national treasure for whatever nation he's from (Scotland? Is that it's own nation anymore?), but Lemmy is motherfucking Lemmy. I mean, he's Lemmy.
Advantage: Lemmy Kilmister.
JACKIE TYSON vs. JESCO WHITE
Jackie Tyson is a dude who was friends with my folks and grew up with my dad and lives not too far away from me and keeps me connected to my upbringing yet grasping for something more. He is a solid motherfucker who I will not speak too much upon at this point because he may find it on the internet and freak out and never talk to me again.
Jesco White is a crazy country character like thousands of others, yet he had a documentary made about him. There are Jesco Whites all over this fucking country, including Jackie Tyson, who are allowed to flourish in their natural habitat without being dragged into the public consciousness like a goddamned zoo animal.
Advantage: Jackie Tyson.
CORMAC MCCARTHY vs. HARRY CREWS
Two of my favorite four living writers (along with Gary Snyder and Chris Offutt), and a pair of guys I hope to be a quarter as successful as before they chunk me in the ground and poke a slab of soapstone in at me. Oddly enough, most of my life, I did not read any Cormac McCarthy, even when a few people had specifically told me, "Hey Raven, I think you'd really love Cormac McCarthy; you should read him." And I never did, because usually when people tell me about things they think I'd like, it just ends up making me think they don't really know me. But yeah, when we were pregnant with our second kid, the boy's name we had in reserve in case it was a boy was Cormac, because it means "son of raven". But we had a girl. However, an interest in Cormac McCarthy completely separate from people telling me how much I'd like the new Little Brother CD or Kevin Smith movie or a book by him actually had me get some shit from library. And honestly, I have not finished half of the books I've read by him, but his style is so goddamned thick and dirty, yet very beautiful, it makes me realize very easily how far I have to go as a writer and how, even at 37 years and writing a few thousand words a night, I'm a goddamn baby on this stroll.
Harry Crews is the best ever, in my book. I could give a fuck about his novels, and haven't gotten into them when I try to, but his collection of essays (Florida Frenzy and Blood and Grits) are the fucking shit I would try to emulate. Good writing about regular crazy-assed people. It is what I grew up around, what has been sterilized by Wal-Marts and satellite TV and Toby Keith songs. He is a man I'd like to sit across the table from, or in a classroom with, or somewhere, and just listen and learn. Not that I think he'd tell me anything I couldn't figure out on my own, or I'd try to impress his old ass and get in good or be his holmes as a little sycophantic young 'un, but just to soak up the vibe. He's been on the same road, with the same crazy ghosts swirling around in his head, just when he went on it, it was unpaved gravel, and by the time I got to it, it was asphalt, but still unlined, and still way off the interstate. And while I think Cormac McCarthy's collected works would have more to offer than Harry Crews's collected works, the influence of man vs. man edge has to go to Crews.
Advantage: Harry Crews.
HENRY FULCHER vs. RALPH STANLEY
Henry Fulcher is an AM radio DJ in my hometown of Farmville, Virginia, and in some sort of country music or bluegrass hall of fame because he's a famous old school DJ back when playing music on the radio meant something more than getting your 19 Facebook friends to listen to you online. And what an entertainer. I have heard him play songs for the first time ever, then stop it by scratching the needle across the record saying, "We won't be playing that no one no more, folks." He'll talk about an old dude who died and then play a wonderful gospel instrumental that'll make you cry like you just heard Red Sovine's "Teddy Bear" for the first time ever. And work in plugs like a mad man, talking about getting your pork chops cut thick at the butcher's counter at some grocery store that still does stuff like that somewhere in southside Virginia where that type of thing is still appreciated. You know, them old folks are dying off. And I can tell you from a whole lot of personal research in my lifetime that the fried chicken you get from a Food Lion or Wal-Mart ain't shit compared to what you could get at the deli counter at them country stores or old mom-and-pop grocery stores. The best fried chicken you can get in the whole middle part of Virginia is in Palmyra, at the E.W. Thomas grocery store. And they have pickled beet eggs, for real ones, not those pink pieces of rubber shit they try to sell at other places as pickled eggs.
Ralph Stanley is of course a founding father of bluegrass music, which is basically speed metal for hillbillies. He also is a Dr. of some sort, and many bearded men in work trucks want him to be President. And though I'd want Ralph Stanley music to be played at my funeral (like it was at my dad's), Henry Fulcher is a fucking classic, in a dying breed way of doing things, and that's what Learned Elders are all about. There's all kinds of newgrass dumbasses playing Pink Floyd on banjo that can half-assedly carry on the legacy of Ralph Stanley. Who the fuck on the internet is gonna tell you where to get pork chops?
Advantage: Henry Fulcher.
Tuesday, August 31
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 80 to 40 - 3 of 5
JIMMY VALIANT vs. OX BAKER
I am going to blaze through this group of eight match-ups, because I feel like blazing. This is a pair of wrestlers who were awesome when I was a kid. Jimmy Valiant was the greatest wrestler ever because he looked and talked and acted like one of the dudes that would be getting drunk and stoned with my dad, playing poker on Friday and Saturday nights. Ox Baker was the biggest, scariest dude ever.
As it stands, Jimmy Valiant is still a crazy dude, has a wrestling school in southwest Virginia, and drives weird bengali striped stationwagons, plus still rocks long hair, plus has ridiculous tattoos like pink roses in his ear and "COME TO PAPA" on his belly. Shit man, there's too many pluses to even list. For most of my life, if you could pick a famous person to be your fake dad, Jimmy Valiant would be my choice.
Advantage: Jimmy Valiant.
JOHN WATERS vs. ROBERT CRUMB
A pair of artistic freaky-dekes. I do not like John Waters' movies too much, because they are either shocking just to be shocking, or slightly pretentious. But I have never really seen anything John Waters has cosigned that hasn't been at least worth my while. Robert Crumb is a perverted old comic strip maker, born from the '60s, but pretty up-to-date with modern fetishes throughout his time putting ink to paper. If I was picking a guy to lead a tour of retarded shit scattered throughout a strange city on a bus tour, it'd be Waters. But if I was going to pick a guy to kick it in the minds of my teenage Rojonekku trainees for the rest of their lives, I'd want Robert Crumb's thumbprint in there.
Advantage: Robert Crumb.
AFRIKA BAMBAATAA vs. KOOL DJ HERC
Two of the three founding fathers Fly Trinity of hip hop (along with Grandmaster Flash), yet two very different dudes. Kool DJ Herc was a guy that liked it loud, carrying a big ass Jamaican-inspired sound system in his late model convertible to blast cats with back in the early days. He was a party rocker. Meanwhile, Afrika Bambaataa was on some other shit, somehow morphing from gang leader back when NYC still had old school The Warriors-style gangs into a space commander making strange danceable cybertronic musics from the future. And really for me, it all boils down to the fact that Herc, though a pioneer, lacks the post-pioneer days resume of retarded shit that Bambaataa has, starting the Zulu Nation (of which you can fill out an application form online, though their website is like a geocities website or some shit), and leading the charge to turn the housing projects he lived in and used to rock jams in the basement of into a historic marker and a sort of temple to hip hop, although most likely it will be torn down and turned into a condominium like the rest of New York City.
Advantage: Afrika Bambaataa.
BILL MURRAY vs. ROBERT DUVAL
A pair of actors, neither of which I imagine will make it even close to the Final 5. Bill Murray has always been one funny motherfucker, and still regularly does wacky shit like get DUIs while driving a golf cart. Robert Duval is a great actor, but more of a serious business actor. Plus, I'm watching Lonesome Dove the last couple nights, and the special effects on that thing are so goddamned stupid looking, it's actually leaving a bad taste in my mouth for all the actors involved, regardless of how good they are. Also, so far as I know, Duval never did a movie with Rodney Dangerfield.
Advantage: Bill Murray.
DAVID MANN vs. SONNY BARGER
This is a battle between American outlaw biker influences. David Mann is the artist who drew all the crazy white trash centerfolds that were in Easyriders magazine throughout the '70s and '80s. Sonny Barger was President of the Hell's Angels. Having had an uncle who rode in the Pagans back in the day, plus all the crazy fuckers my old man knew, who would actually have Easyriders laying around for me to just thumb through when no one was looking, biker shit is a small thread in the bizarre fabric of my life. I actually remember seeing David Mann centerfolds stapled to walls back in the day. And the drawings are so goofy, like it raining on a biker dude and his old lady taking off for the road to catch a ride with a trucker, or a giant close-up of a pair of freaked out eyeballs in a sideview mirror with four burly motorcycle dudes riding up behind him. Quality art.
Meanwhile Sonny Barger took outlaw biker and made it sort of corporate, although still criminal. And as much as I enjoy the whole sub-culture of proud dirtbags on motorcycles, I am more for the shitty yet wonderful art that would come from such a sub-culture than the intellectual property ownership or whatever stupid shit has happened ever since the Hells Angels trademarked and copyrighted all their shit. That does not mean I want you guys to fuck me up though, because I know there's crazy biker shit going on in Virginia right now. My uncle was called Littlejohn. I also spent a week in the hospital with a dude named Smurf who knows you guys too. We both got our faces caved in at the same time fifteen years ago or so, mine by a concrete stairwell after a gallon of wine, his by a 2x4 after a riverside bonfire party fight.
Advantage: David Mann.
ATSUSHI ONITA vs. EL HIJO DEL SANTO
More wrestling bullshit, but of an international variety. Atsushi Onita is a Japanese hardcore legend who got blowed up, wrapped in barbed wire, and generally mangled for years, and long before anybody else did it to quite the extent he did it. Also he became a successful politician in Japan, and wrestled in Afghanistan after 9/11, for the children. He truly is an amazing human being.
El Hijo Del Santo is the offspring of the most famous Mexican wrestler ever, and has carried that tradition on almost exactly, except just not quite so much. I don't think 100,000 people will line the streets of Mexico City when he dies like they did his father. Yet lucha libre is one of the most bizarre and wonderful sub-cultures on this blessed Earth. Still though, El Hijo Del Santo never got elected to Mexican Congress.
Advantage: Atsushi Onita.
COLONEL BO GRITZ vs. TED KACZYNSKI
Ahh, yes, a pair of anti-American influences, from the right and left wings. Colonel Bo Gritz was involved in trying to go back to Vietnam and recover POWs, and it is said the character of Hannibal on the A-Team was based on him (although he sold the rights to his life story to William Shatner back in the '80s). He was the go-to man when it was negotiation time with Randy Weaver or the Montana Freemen, and I think he ran for President a couple of times. He was connected to Ross Perot somehow. And the best thing is he was never even an actual colonel.
Ted Kaczynski is the infamous Unabomber, a super smart Ivy League genius who wanted to disappear into the wilds of Montana to live a simple and unseen life. But motherfuckers had to go and start building shit into the wilderness, and just generally wreak their "let's make order out of all the chaos with our dominion over the earth" bullshit on everything. We destroy everything. So he started mailing bombs to select motherfuckers.
Now I do not endorse killing motherfuckers, not at all, but I do endorse abandoning society completely and getting pissed at them if they won't let you alone and growing your beard long and hair shaggy and writing long-winded explanations about everything that's happened to have ready once the authorities finally close in on you.
Advantage: Ted Kaczynski.
BILLY JOE SHAVER vs. WILLIE NELSON
In the process of filling out the field of 80, just like with March Madness, there's going to be some mismatches in the beginning. Billy Joe Shaver is a crazy fucker, and an outlaw country original, and shot his wife like so many country people dream about doing. But he is not Willie Nelson.
Advantage: Willie Nelson.
I am going to blaze through this group of eight match-ups, because I feel like blazing. This is a pair of wrestlers who were awesome when I was a kid. Jimmy Valiant was the greatest wrestler ever because he looked and talked and acted like one of the dudes that would be getting drunk and stoned with my dad, playing poker on Friday and Saturday nights. Ox Baker was the biggest, scariest dude ever.
As it stands, Jimmy Valiant is still a crazy dude, has a wrestling school in southwest Virginia, and drives weird bengali striped stationwagons, plus still rocks long hair, plus has ridiculous tattoos like pink roses in his ear and "COME TO PAPA" on his belly. Shit man, there's too many pluses to even list. For most of my life, if you could pick a famous person to be your fake dad, Jimmy Valiant would be my choice.
Advantage: Jimmy Valiant.
JOHN WATERS vs. ROBERT CRUMB
A pair of artistic freaky-dekes. I do not like John Waters' movies too much, because they are either shocking just to be shocking, or slightly pretentious. But I have never really seen anything John Waters has cosigned that hasn't been at least worth my while. Robert Crumb is a perverted old comic strip maker, born from the '60s, but pretty up-to-date with modern fetishes throughout his time putting ink to paper. If I was picking a guy to lead a tour of retarded shit scattered throughout a strange city on a bus tour, it'd be Waters. But if I was going to pick a guy to kick it in the minds of my teenage Rojonekku trainees for the rest of their lives, I'd want Robert Crumb's thumbprint in there.
Advantage: Robert Crumb.
AFRIKA BAMBAATAA vs. KOOL DJ HERC
Two of the three founding fathers Fly Trinity of hip hop (along with Grandmaster Flash), yet two very different dudes. Kool DJ Herc was a guy that liked it loud, carrying a big ass Jamaican-inspired sound system in his late model convertible to blast cats with back in the early days. He was a party rocker. Meanwhile, Afrika Bambaataa was on some other shit, somehow morphing from gang leader back when NYC still had old school The Warriors-style gangs into a space commander making strange danceable cybertronic musics from the future. And really for me, it all boils down to the fact that Herc, though a pioneer, lacks the post-pioneer days resume of retarded shit that Bambaataa has, starting the Zulu Nation (of which you can fill out an application form online, though their website is like a geocities website or some shit), and leading the charge to turn the housing projects he lived in and used to rock jams in the basement of into a historic marker and a sort of temple to hip hop, although most likely it will be torn down and turned into a condominium like the rest of New York City.
Advantage: Afrika Bambaataa.
BILL MURRAY vs. ROBERT DUVAL
A pair of actors, neither of which I imagine will make it even close to the Final 5. Bill Murray has always been one funny motherfucker, and still regularly does wacky shit like get DUIs while driving a golf cart. Robert Duval is a great actor, but more of a serious business actor. Plus, I'm watching Lonesome Dove the last couple nights, and the special effects on that thing are so goddamned stupid looking, it's actually leaving a bad taste in my mouth for all the actors involved, regardless of how good they are. Also, so far as I know, Duval never did a movie with Rodney Dangerfield.
Advantage: Bill Murray.
DAVID MANN vs. SONNY BARGER
This is a battle between American outlaw biker influences. David Mann is the artist who drew all the crazy white trash centerfolds that were in Easyriders magazine throughout the '70s and '80s. Sonny Barger was President of the Hell's Angels. Having had an uncle who rode in the Pagans back in the day, plus all the crazy fuckers my old man knew, who would actually have Easyriders laying around for me to just thumb through when no one was looking, biker shit is a small thread in the bizarre fabric of my life. I actually remember seeing David Mann centerfolds stapled to walls back in the day. And the drawings are so goofy, like it raining on a biker dude and his old lady taking off for the road to catch a ride with a trucker, or a giant close-up of a pair of freaked out eyeballs in a sideview mirror with four burly motorcycle dudes riding up behind him. Quality art.
Meanwhile Sonny Barger took outlaw biker and made it sort of corporate, although still criminal. And as much as I enjoy the whole sub-culture of proud dirtbags on motorcycles, I am more for the shitty yet wonderful art that would come from such a sub-culture than the intellectual property ownership or whatever stupid shit has happened ever since the Hells Angels trademarked and copyrighted all their shit. That does not mean I want you guys to fuck me up though, because I know there's crazy biker shit going on in Virginia right now. My uncle was called Littlejohn. I also spent a week in the hospital with a dude named Smurf who knows you guys too. We both got our faces caved in at the same time fifteen years ago or so, mine by a concrete stairwell after a gallon of wine, his by a 2x4 after a riverside bonfire party fight.
Advantage: David Mann.
ATSUSHI ONITA vs. EL HIJO DEL SANTO
More wrestling bullshit, but of an international variety. Atsushi Onita is a Japanese hardcore legend who got blowed up, wrapped in barbed wire, and generally mangled for years, and long before anybody else did it to quite the extent he did it. Also he became a successful politician in Japan, and wrestled in Afghanistan after 9/11, for the children. He truly is an amazing human being.
El Hijo Del Santo is the offspring of the most famous Mexican wrestler ever, and has carried that tradition on almost exactly, except just not quite so much. I don't think 100,000 people will line the streets of Mexico City when he dies like they did his father. Yet lucha libre is one of the most bizarre and wonderful sub-cultures on this blessed Earth. Still though, El Hijo Del Santo never got elected to Mexican Congress.
Advantage: Atsushi Onita.
COLONEL BO GRITZ vs. TED KACZYNSKI
Ahh, yes, a pair of anti-American influences, from the right and left wings. Colonel Bo Gritz was involved in trying to go back to Vietnam and recover POWs, and it is said the character of Hannibal on the A-Team was based on him (although he sold the rights to his life story to William Shatner back in the '80s). He was the go-to man when it was negotiation time with Randy Weaver or the Montana Freemen, and I think he ran for President a couple of times. He was connected to Ross Perot somehow. And the best thing is he was never even an actual colonel.
Ted Kaczynski is the infamous Unabomber, a super smart Ivy League genius who wanted to disappear into the wilds of Montana to live a simple and unseen life. But motherfuckers had to go and start building shit into the wilderness, and just generally wreak their "let's make order out of all the chaos with our dominion over the earth" bullshit on everything. We destroy everything. So he started mailing bombs to select motherfuckers.
Now I do not endorse killing motherfuckers, not at all, but I do endorse abandoning society completely and getting pissed at them if they won't let you alone and growing your beard long and hair shaggy and writing long-winded explanations about everything that's happened to have ready once the authorities finally close in on you.
Advantage: Ted Kaczynski.
BILLY JOE SHAVER vs. WILLIE NELSON
In the process of filling out the field of 80, just like with March Madness, there's going to be some mismatches in the beginning. Billy Joe Shaver is a crazy fucker, and an outlaw country original, and shot his wife like so many country people dream about doing. But he is not Willie Nelson.
Advantage: Willie Nelson.
Monday, August 30
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 80 to 40 - 2 of 5
BIZ MARKIE vs. TOO SHORT
A pair of elder rap legends, who came from a different angle. The Biz (whom allegedly cannot be beat) was a big, goofy fucker and Too Short came from the wrong end of the country and was doing lower class anthropological dissertations on the culture of pimps and prostitutes. I met Biz Markie once, at the Marriott in Richmond, while Jay-Z was surrounded by a hundred Mennonite kids getting his autograph (no shit, one of the most surreal moments of my life) and Biz was over by the bathrooms so I said, "What's up," and he looked like he was pregnant with a watermelon in his belly.
Too Short, although not the cultural icon that Biz is, is definitely something I still listen to regularly. When he gets onto his "I'm gonna make a comment about some shit other than pussy" kicks, there really ain't nothing like a Too Short song. And I guess if I was forced to get high and play Mario Kart Wii with one of them, I'd pick Biz, but in every other way, life is Too Short.
Advantage: Too Short.
ANGELA DAVIS vs. LEONARD PELTIER
And now a pair of "I'm going to college and really like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky a lot" legendary types. And being I don't want to waste my life writing long in-depth analysis of all these match-ups that ultimately don't mean anything, even within the retarded parameters of what I'm doing here in this little microcosmic corner of the interwebs, I will simply say frybread is fucking awesome.
Advantage: Leonard Peltier.
DIEGO MARADONA vs. GAYLORD PERRY
Cokehead world soccer star who did not lead his native Argentina to World Cup glory again as a coach like he did as a player, matching up against a wiley old baseball white dude who pretty much made his name off cheating, pitching baseballs with all sorts of imported illegal substances. And while the intriguing nature of being a spitball pitcher in Major League Baseball is one of the few wonderful snippets of baseball lore, and for me far different than dudes taking steroids, because there's so much more trickery and deceit involved in having vaseline hidden inside your zipper and somehow rubbing it on the baseball while nobody sees you while you are standing in the most obvious and watched place in the entire fucking stadium, it's hard not to appreciate Diego Maradona's eccentricity, which is what you call a stone cold crazy fucker when he's richer than everybody else around him.
Advantage: Diego Maradona.
PHYLLIS LIGHT vs. STEPHEN HARROD BUHNER
These are a pair of herbalist types that come through my brain via my wife's influence, who has studied under both of these people. I am sure if she were picking, it'd be Phyllis Light in a heartbeat. She is an older Alabama woman who practices the old mountain folklore ways of herbalism, and unlike a lot of modern new agey herbalist types, is not afraid to mix in some real world shit like, "Drink a Coke, just a regular old every day Coke." Her son is apparently an MMA fighter of some sort, and she has some crazy herbal farm in rural Alabama that we have apparently been invited to visit if we'd like. I'd like. I feel I haven't had a thick infusion of deep South craziness in my life for far too long, too mired down in this watered down pretend Virginia south where everybody loves bagels and lox and the New York Yankees.
Stephen Harrod Buhner has written a book called Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, which is a must-have if you are into the homebrewing shit, because he can guide you into the realm of mildly psychotropic beers. Also, I met this dude one time, painting a lady's house, and we hit it off, and he told me how happy the house was to have a guy like me painting it. I was like, "No doubt," because all houses liked me. It's just their stupid owners that made it hard to survive self-employment, not to mention the overall decline of the American economy. Plus, Buhner cold kicks it with two partners, which I guess new agey types call "polyamorism" to make it sound more impossible to deny than just admitting you got two ol' ladies in the same house. On one hand, I can dig that, and it makes sense physiologically in a lot of ways, not to mention when it comes to the companionship make-up of men's and women's minds. But I also am pretty good with my one ol' lady, which, even as good as we have it, is hard to navigate at times. Having two ol' ladies, that I'm mentally saying I'm lifelong committed to, and them saying the same, and to each other, I don't know, I can see it getting oddball as hell emotionally and filling that hunk of soul right above my intestines with a clenched fist.
Advantage: Phyllis Light.
LOUIS FARRAKHAN vs. MIKE TYSON
When I still lived in Richmond, I used to love buying Final Calls, although a few of those dudes wouldn't even sell them to me, what with me being a white devil and all. The dietary column alone was worth the couple dollar donation. There are some really great philosophical aspects to the Nation of Islam, bus pigeons, which give him some meditative moments, and just generally tries to continue navigating his way through life, like we all do, with as little a clue as anybody, but a much thicker publicly known history. There are shady industries like boxing all over - pro wrestling, porn, the music industry - that create these pop cultural monsters, squeeze every dollar they can out of them, let them burn through their small cut of it, and then dump them on the side of the road as a celebrity has-been. I just can't help but feel like Tyson's story ain't over, and some pretty crazy (in both good and bad ways) shit is still gonna develop out of this man, especially now that he's older and realizes he can't knock out the world.
Advantage: Mike Tyson.
LARRY FLYNT vs. RON JEREMY
Larry Flynt made magazines, where you actually got to see an open vagina, plus a dick beside it. And he gave us the Chester the Molester cartoon, not to mention Beaver Hunt, which pretty much helped inspire a large corner of the interweb's naked parts.
Ron Jeremy is a porn dude who did it far longer than anybody else, and with a tongue-in-cheek style. Even as porn moved far away from having people actually act anymore, he still made a living at it. But that's about it.
Flynt fought, no matter how ridiculously his arguments were, the government. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for people who fight the government over their God-given right to express their retarded perversions publicly. Plus, he's a Kentucky hillbilly who became a millionaire. Ron Jeremy's probably from like Reno or Arizona or something.
Advantage: Larry Flynt.
CHAZ BOJORQUEZ vs. SEEN
A pair of graffiti legends, both of which I'd love to have a piece by hanging up in my living room. Seen is a NYC legend of the first order, and you can actually contact him through his website to deal straight with the guy about buying some art. He's straight graffiti style though. Chaz Bojorquez, being an L.A. legend, has this weird style of script that's very obviously cholo-influenced, yet artsy as fuck. And I don't want this to seem like an east coast vs. west coast thing, but the wild styles that NY graffiti developed into is cool to look at, but it doesn't speak to me like seeing actual letters that are just barely legible do. Bojorquez's stuff is crazy as fuck, like any wild style, but still there's something that keeps it a written word with a message, even if it buried behind stylistic bedazzlement. The thing that sets him apart, for me, is how just with black and white, he can make something strong. Most graffiti relies on an abundance of color, and I've always been attracted to simple black-and-white. That's why I never have and never will get any colored tattoos on my body. Basic is solid. And then you take that solid basicness and wild style the fuck out of it.
Advantage: Chaz Bojorquez.
GRADY STILES III vs. OXANA MALAYA
Kind of an odd pairing, in that Grady Stiles III is a seventh generation lobster boy, and the heir apparent to a living as a freak show superstar, except his dad was an abusive alcoholic, and got his self killed by a hitman hired by his then wife, and Grady the III's mom. Thus, the long run of playing the Lobster family in the carnivals ended, as Grady III didn't want to follow in those footsteps. So he's a stay-at-home lobster boy (technically, it's called ectrodactyly), and even though his fingers and toes are fused together into something resembling claws, he has that head full of a carnie ass family and living on the freak show circuit as a kid to get him through life. Last I heard, like many children of severely abusive alcoholics, he doesn't drink at all either, which means he will probably mire away in obscurity in Gibtown, Florida, where the freaks are dying off, and they are building condos in their place.
Oxana Malaya is the Ukrainian dog child. More so than carnival freaks, I have always been fascinated with feral children, because we have these grand notions of what it means to be human, even if we don't subscribe to Christian dogma, most scientifically-minded people still believe in man's dominion over the earth. So I find it interesting when a child who has not yet formed into a solid thing is left to the wild. Malaya's parents were also terrible alcoholics, and sort of just kicked her out when she was 3. So she started roaming the streets, and ended up tagging along with wild dogs, who took care of her and taught her basically everything she knew when she was discovered in 1991 at age 8. Ever since that point, she's been in a government joint for the mentally disabled, being she behaved and acted like a dog for the most part, and she's slowly learned many human things, most notably language and what is considered somewhat normal behavior. But she is not connected to humanity at all, and has expressed this, saying she is most comfortable when she is hanging out with dogs. She is now 26 and takes care of the cows at the clinic's she's been in since being found.
Honestly, I think looking up to something like that is a good thing, because it challenges the whole dominion over the earth thing anyways. To be a simple dog person who takes care of cows, what the fuck is wrong with that? Personally, I think we need more feral children, not less, and I am proud of the fact that I've abandoned two of my five children in the woods.
Advantage: Oxana Malaya.
A pair of elder rap legends, who came from a different angle. The Biz (whom allegedly cannot be beat) was a big, goofy fucker and Too Short came from the wrong end of the country and was doing lower class anthropological dissertations on the culture of pimps and prostitutes. I met Biz Markie once, at the Marriott in Richmond, while Jay-Z was surrounded by a hundred Mennonite kids getting his autograph (no shit, one of the most surreal moments of my life) and Biz was over by the bathrooms so I said, "What's up," and he looked like he was pregnant with a watermelon in his belly.
Too Short, although not the cultural icon that Biz is, is definitely something I still listen to regularly. When he gets onto his "I'm gonna make a comment about some shit other than pussy" kicks, there really ain't nothing like a Too Short song. And I guess if I was forced to get high and play Mario Kart Wii with one of them, I'd pick Biz, but in every other way, life is Too Short.
Advantage: Too Short.
ANGELA DAVIS vs. LEONARD PELTIER
And now a pair of "I'm going to college and really like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky a lot" legendary types. And being I don't want to waste my life writing long in-depth analysis of all these match-ups that ultimately don't mean anything, even within the retarded parameters of what I'm doing here in this little microcosmic corner of the interwebs, I will simply say frybread is fucking awesome.
Advantage: Leonard Peltier.
DIEGO MARADONA vs. GAYLORD PERRY
Cokehead world soccer star who did not lead his native Argentina to World Cup glory again as a coach like he did as a player, matching up against a wiley old baseball white dude who pretty much made his name off cheating, pitching baseballs with all sorts of imported illegal substances. And while the intriguing nature of being a spitball pitcher in Major League Baseball is one of the few wonderful snippets of baseball lore, and for me far different than dudes taking steroids, because there's so much more trickery and deceit involved in having vaseline hidden inside your zipper and somehow rubbing it on the baseball while nobody sees you while you are standing in the most obvious and watched place in the entire fucking stadium, it's hard not to appreciate Diego Maradona's eccentricity, which is what you call a stone cold crazy fucker when he's richer than everybody else around him.
Advantage: Diego Maradona.
PHYLLIS LIGHT vs. STEPHEN HARROD BUHNER
These are a pair of herbalist types that come through my brain via my wife's influence, who has studied under both of these people. I am sure if she were picking, it'd be Phyllis Light in a heartbeat. She is an older Alabama woman who practices the old mountain folklore ways of herbalism, and unlike a lot of modern new agey herbalist types, is not afraid to mix in some real world shit like, "Drink a Coke, just a regular old every day Coke." Her son is apparently an MMA fighter of some sort, and she has some crazy herbal farm in rural Alabama that we have apparently been invited to visit if we'd like. I'd like. I feel I haven't had a thick infusion of deep South craziness in my life for far too long, too mired down in this watered down pretend Virginia south where everybody loves bagels and lox and the New York Yankees.
Stephen Harrod Buhner has written a book called Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, which is a must-have if you are into the homebrewing shit, because he can guide you into the realm of mildly psychotropic beers. Also, I met this dude one time, painting a lady's house, and we hit it off, and he told me how happy the house was to have a guy like me painting it. I was like, "No doubt," because all houses liked me. It's just their stupid owners that made it hard to survive self-employment, not to mention the overall decline of the American economy. Plus, Buhner cold kicks it with two partners, which I guess new agey types call "polyamorism" to make it sound more impossible to deny than just admitting you got two ol' ladies in the same house. On one hand, I can dig that, and it makes sense physiologically in a lot of ways, not to mention when it comes to the companionship make-up of men's and women's minds. But I also am pretty good with my one ol' lady, which, even as good as we have it, is hard to navigate at times. Having two ol' ladies, that I'm mentally saying I'm lifelong committed to, and them saying the same, and to each other, I don't know, I can see it getting oddball as hell emotionally and filling that hunk of soul right above my intestines with a clenched fist.
Advantage: Phyllis Light.
LOUIS FARRAKHAN vs. MIKE TYSON
When I still lived in Richmond, I used to love buying Final Calls, although a few of those dudes wouldn't even sell them to me, what with me being a white devil and all. The dietary column alone was worth the couple dollar donation. There are some really great philosophical aspects to the Nation of Islam, bus pigeons, which give him some meditative moments, and just generally tries to continue navigating his way through life, like we all do, with as little a clue as anybody, but a much thicker publicly known history. There are shady industries like boxing all over - pro wrestling, porn, the music industry - that create these pop cultural monsters, squeeze every dollar they can out of them, let them burn through their small cut of it, and then dump them on the side of the road as a celebrity has-been. I just can't help but feel like Tyson's story ain't over, and some pretty crazy (in both good and bad ways) shit is still gonna develop out of this man, especially now that he's older and realizes he can't knock out the world.
Advantage: Mike Tyson.
LARRY FLYNT vs. RON JEREMY
Larry Flynt made magazines, where you actually got to see an open vagina, plus a dick beside it. And he gave us the Chester the Molester cartoon, not to mention Beaver Hunt, which pretty much helped inspire a large corner of the interweb's naked parts.
Ron Jeremy is a porn dude who did it far longer than anybody else, and with a tongue-in-cheek style. Even as porn moved far away from having people actually act anymore, he still made a living at it. But that's about it.
Flynt fought, no matter how ridiculously his arguments were, the government. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for people who fight the government over their God-given right to express their retarded perversions publicly. Plus, he's a Kentucky hillbilly who became a millionaire. Ron Jeremy's probably from like Reno or Arizona or something.
Advantage: Larry Flynt.
CHAZ BOJORQUEZ vs. SEEN
A pair of graffiti legends, both of which I'd love to have a piece by hanging up in my living room. Seen is a NYC legend of the first order, and you can actually contact him through his website to deal straight with the guy about buying some art. He's straight graffiti style though. Chaz Bojorquez, being an L.A. legend, has this weird style of script that's very obviously cholo-influenced, yet artsy as fuck. And I don't want this to seem like an east coast vs. west coast thing, but the wild styles that NY graffiti developed into is cool to look at, but it doesn't speak to me like seeing actual letters that are just barely legible do. Bojorquez's stuff is crazy as fuck, like any wild style, but still there's something that keeps it a written word with a message, even if it buried behind stylistic bedazzlement. The thing that sets him apart, for me, is how just with black and white, he can make something strong. Most graffiti relies on an abundance of color, and I've always been attracted to simple black-and-white. That's why I never have and never will get any colored tattoos on my body. Basic is solid. And then you take that solid basicness and wild style the fuck out of it.
Advantage: Chaz Bojorquez.
GRADY STILES III vs. OXANA MALAYA
Kind of an odd pairing, in that Grady Stiles III is a seventh generation lobster boy, and the heir apparent to a living as a freak show superstar, except his dad was an abusive alcoholic, and got his self killed by a hitman hired by his then wife, and Grady the III's mom. Thus, the long run of playing the Lobster family in the carnivals ended, as Grady III didn't want to follow in those footsteps. So he's a stay-at-home lobster boy (technically, it's called ectrodactyly), and even though his fingers and toes are fused together into something resembling claws, he has that head full of a carnie ass family and living on the freak show circuit as a kid to get him through life. Last I heard, like many children of severely abusive alcoholics, he doesn't drink at all either, which means he will probably mire away in obscurity in Gibtown, Florida, where the freaks are dying off, and they are building condos in their place.
Oxana Malaya is the Ukrainian dog child. More so than carnival freaks, I have always been fascinated with feral children, because we have these grand notions of what it means to be human, even if we don't subscribe to Christian dogma, most scientifically-minded people still believe in man's dominion over the earth. So I find it interesting when a child who has not yet formed into a solid thing is left to the wild. Malaya's parents were also terrible alcoholics, and sort of just kicked her out when she was 3. So she started roaming the streets, and ended up tagging along with wild dogs, who took care of her and taught her basically everything she knew when she was discovered in 1991 at age 8. Ever since that point, she's been in a government joint for the mentally disabled, being she behaved and acted like a dog for the most part, and she's slowly learned many human things, most notably language and what is considered somewhat normal behavior. But she is not connected to humanity at all, and has expressed this, saying she is most comfortable when she is hanging out with dogs. She is now 26 and takes care of the cows at the clinic's she's been in since being found.
Honestly, I think looking up to something like that is a good thing, because it challenges the whole dominion over the earth thing anyways. To be a simple dog person who takes care of cows, what the fuck is wrong with that? Personally, I think we need more feral children, not less, and I am proud of the fact that I've abandoned two of my five children in the woods.
Advantage: Oxana Malaya.
Saturday, August 28
L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 80 to 40 - 1 of 5
ESTEVAN ORIOL vs. MIROSLAV TICHY
Estevan Oriol was the manager of Cypress Hill back in the day, and somehow stumbled through this into becoming a photographer of hip hop acts, but then took pictures of gang members in L.A. because he was considered an insider and not some asshole coming to take pictures of gang members.
Miroslav Tichy is some reclusive dude in eastern Europe who built these homemade cameras from scraps he found and went around taking pictures of women for years and years. A lot of times, they posed in ways they never would have had they known the chunk of trash he was holding actually took pictures. A pair of photographers, but far from normal photography.
I will admit that if there was one piece of art I could be given from my wife for a birthday or Christmas or something, it would be a print of this one picture that Oriol took of a Bloods dudes flannel shirts on hangers hanging on a clothesline in the back yard, with some rusty building behind it. It’s an amazing picture. But Tichy is a recluse who has suddenly found fame from his homemade camera photography of sexy women, and doesn’t even want the fame. He just wants to be left fucking alone. Meanwhile, or as chill a dude Estevan Oriol is, he’s trying to sell you t-shirts.
Advantage: Miroslav Tichy.
PRINCE PAUL vs. R.A. THE RUGGED MAN
Prince Paul has been involved in all sorts of great moments in hip hop history - the explosion of De La Soul (which had black dudes in my high school wearing their hair all sorts of off kilter), the Gravediggaz (ahh... the blending of boom bap and horror movies), Handsome Boy Modeling School, The Dino 5 (greatest kid rap album ever made)... he’s just a rock solid voice of hip hop that’s been around from the old school until the now.
R.A. the Rugged Man is just an obscure white rapper for most people, yet within hip hop, he’s an underground legend, whom Biggie Smalls himself glossed as one of the greatest he’d ever been in a booth with. He also does a good bit of freelance writing, for magazines like Mass Appeal (R.I.P.) and Vibe (god, what a terrible magazine), and has a book on boxing coming out at some point in the next year. His style, both in rhyme and written word, is wide open without restraint, and he tends to go for shock value over egotistical boasting. He’s a straight up dirt bag.
And while Prince Paul is one of only a handful of dudes you could say make up the spinal cord of hip hop, and one of the only people whose music I would steal from the internet without question because you know it's going to be at least interesting, R.A. is not limited by genre. The dude is a legend for being banned from playing clubs, and his knowledge of cinematic trash is amazing. I'm very interested to see what a scumbag Long Island white boy roughly my age makes of boxing in book format. And he has the single greatest verse in the past fifteen years of hip hip with his contribution to the Jedi Mind Tricks "Uncommon Valor" track.
Advantage: R.A. the Rugged Man.
DON CHERRY vs. TIGER WILLIAMS
A showdown between hockey legends. Hockey is a sport I never was witness to as a kid growing up, and while in college, had a friend who was the mascot for the minor league Richmond team, so we got comped in a lot of times, and I fell in love. Not too long after, I lucked into like two years of free NHL Pass on a satellite system, which was during the years of the Avs/Red Wings hate epitomized by that epic fight/game they had where the goalies were squaring up at center ice at one point. Fucking classic game.
I am a sort of Washington Capitals fan, although I'm no die-hard, but the Alexander Ovechkin era has really made it easy. Don't think I'd be into it so much if they had Sydney Crosby instead, but it's hard not to like Ovie. He's a knucklehead, and that's basically my favorite part of hockey - the whole "I'm just a big fucking bearded longhaired lunkhead from somewhere far off your normal 3rd grade American history class map" aspect. Plus, they are not afraid to get physical and throw some 'bows if need be.
Don Cherry is a color commentator who often says stupid things and is very entertaining, sort of like Bob Uecker just punch drunker. Tiger Williams is an old dude who holds the all-time NHL record for penalty minutes. He got in more shit than anybody ever, and was proud of it, and is still around to tell ice war stories.
And while I cannot deny that Don Cherry is a great ambassador for his sport to drunken degenerates like myself, when I first got into hockey watching those Richmond Renegades, one of the main reasons was Trevor Senn, who was their team enforcer. Watching an enforcer on the ice instead of simply following the puck like they do on TV is a great joy, especially with a 16 ounce beer in your hand, and maybe a touch of psilocybin in your brain. So really, it is that type of player I am impressed by more than anything else.
Advantage: Tiger Williams (though I think it goes without saying that had Bob Probert not died this year, he would've smoked both of these dudes and pretty much anybody else in my stupid little Learned Elders internet hall of fame nonsense).
FIDEL CASTRO vs. KIM JONG IL
I have always been intrigued by dictators and fascists. The ability to have a cult of personality over a large group of people is quite an accomplishment in itself, but to then parlay that into a ruling position which shifts into authoritative domination that stifles all dissent, that's a serious ass parlay. You think about America and as fucked as we've been with our last few Presidents, all of whom have had the cult of personality, but no matter how much they secretly shift towards the authoritarian role, it never quite takes over. There's nothing special about America, except maybe we are a very diverse crop of humans, making it hard to get enough people in deified awe of someone to install them in absolute power over everybody else, fuck them if they disagree.
I think it is sad Kim Jong Il is not more hyped as some sort of alternative demented genius. I mean, I now the whole Might Could Start a Nuclear Confrontation thing is a drawback, and liberal hipster types, for as contrarian as they tend to be, don't necessarily like to endorse dictators. But the whole Kim Jong Il (and his father before him) saga in North Korea is crazy, regardless of the propaganda machine that might prop it. (Which can we trust that anyways since it is our propaganda machine that tells us this happens?) But the guy has giant stadium performances with thousands upon thousands of people, just for him. Like the seats are full of performers who turn over cards at the appropriate time to create giant pictures. And he kidnaps actresses and actors to force them to make films for him. I don't know if there has ever been an evil dictator type with such an artphag bent before, and frankly, I find it very very impressive.
Ol' Fidel on the other hand, is old school. He's a baseball player who decided to overthrow a government, and has never really stepped down ever since. A simple guy, no one can accuse him of squandering his country's wealth, as he's not kicking it in gold necklaces on yachts. Dude has worn nothing but olive drab military gear for decades, ever since he hung up the baseball spikes. He's rocked the utilitarian communist beard for that time as well, and although yeah, communism is evil, whatever, there are some things that make it not seem so bad. Cuba has the lowest illiteracy rate in the world (well it did at one time when I read that, so it just stays true in my brain) as well as a very low infant mortality rate. It's a beautiful Caribbean country, and no one I've ever read about going there outside of the tourist areas has not been overwhelmed with what a beautiful and simple place it is. Making lemonade out of lemons. They can't get new cars from America (embargoing assholes) so all those old 1950s bombers are still puttering down the streets.
Who's to say simple is bad? Think about the high tech modernization going on at Guatanamo, where American authorities have taken the Arabs they've kidnapped to torture and detain until they reveal whatever it is they are supposed to know. Not to mention the fact the U.S. government beams constant propaganda via radio waves from that little corner of Cuba as well at the Cuban people.
To be honest, I'd rather sit around a picnic table and listen to old men play guitars and we all drive ratty old cars and we all drink cheap gutrot liquor and we are poor but we are happy and all our wives have big asses that bounce in the moonlight when we do it from behind on our simple beds with no screens in the open windows so you might get a mosquito bite or two than fucking think about torture and detainment and idealogical wars and all that crap. I mean, we're storing prisoners of our current idealogical war on a carjacked corner of an island that we've had a long-running idealogical war with. It's fucking crazy. And I know I'm simplifying things somewhat, but still. The motherfuckers shooting the propaganda at me and you through Time magazine and the cable news and Executive Orders, they simplify it all far worse than I do.
Advantage: Fidel Castro.
VINCENTE PIERRE vs. WHITEY BULGER
A battle between the criminal element, though very different types.
Vincente Pierre is an accused black Muslim terrorist who started an Islamic trailer park community in Charlotte County, Virginia, not too far from where I grew up - between where my mom lives in Meherrin and my one sister lives in Clarksville. They got busted for some sort of weapons violations, and it turned out that Pierre had multiple wives, most likely, in his rural southside Virginia trailer park compound, plus underground tunnels and all sorts of other crazy militiaman stuff that would make my dead daddy proud, except that it was black Muslims. The crazy thing is right down the road from my mom's house, and actually now on land that I used to wander as a kid and was once owned by my grandfather, a second community linked to this first one has sprouted up. They first started building it when I was in high school, but now it's full-blown, and they have some weird security force with a website that provides bodyguard services and computer security and all sorts of nefarious shit that you normally don't associate with a bunch of people that live in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere.
Whitey Bulger was a former boss of an Irish-American mob in Boston, and made hella money in all the normal mob ways - gambling, pussy, guns, and drugs. The thing that makes Whitey Bulger so awesome is he bolted in the mid-'90s when the DEA was about to come down on him, and has been a successful fugitive ever since. He's been on America's Most Wanted 15 times, and has often been seen around the world, though those sightings are not always verified. The last verified time anyone saw him was in London in 2002, though the FBI has chased after leads in Uruguay, Italy, and elsewhere since then. He is assumed to be alive and breathing still though, coming up on his 81st birthday next week. He is also considered the inspiration for Jack Nicholson's character in The Departed.
This is a hard one for me to choose. Pierre is more of a "protect your own" kind of guy who is building his own community separate from the world at large, while Bulger had that classic successful criminal Robin Hood element that had the poor people of Boston loving on him for how he protected the hood and gave out turkeys on Thanksgiving. And frankly, you have to wonder if Bulger is still alive, although I doubt the FBI would still be putting resources towards him if he weren't.
At the same time, I've been reading the 120 Questions from Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad a lot lately, although mostly to lead myself back to Clarence 13X and the Nations of Gods and Earths more than to get into Islam. The Nations of Gods and Earths really jibe me more than most religions, other than maybe Taoism, with a lot of mathematically based new age science and general wackiness that fucks with language and reality. I've been working on rewriting some texts to incorporate whiteys like myself into the whole 5% philosophy, because if you dig into what they're saying, and even a bit of what Clarence 13X preached, it wasn't black man as in literal black man so much as a black and white where the roles of good and evil were flipped off the standard Christian color scheme. You can be a black man in that sense but not have dark skin. But shit, in America we've complicated racial matters so goddamned much, I'd probably get stabbed if I tried to pull off some shit like that. Plus, Vincente Pierre and the other black Islamic trailer park down the road from my mom's, they're not Nation of Gods and Earths people, but straight up militant Muslim who are part of an Al-Fuqra anti-America campaign. Although I'm as anti-governmentarianism as anyone, so that's not an automatic x.
Advantage: Vincente Pierre (South Side Virginia, represent... and it is odd how Clarence 13X the founder of Nations of Gods and Earths was born in Danville, and this other stuff is happening in Charlotte and Prince Edward county... not to mention the first free black community in America was a place called Israel Hill just outside of Farmville; who knew I was born in the lap of so much culture? I thought it was just a rundown place where everybody became addicted to or sold different illicit things and had a hopeless outlook on the world).
DAVID SCHULTZ vs. TERRY FUNK
Ahh...the stupid professional wrestling. I got caught up in this nonsense too much as a kid, to the point now that I can have completely separate work and home personnas and it's not a problem for me compartmentalize it because it makes sense. That's been a big influence on my writing styles over the years too because I can very easily add a complete lie to something that's otherwise completely truthful so that there are people to this day who think I let a guy suck my dick in the bus station in St. Louis, Missouri, because I felt sorry for him.
David Schultz was basically Stone Cold Steve Austin back in the 1980s - a foul-minded, beer-drinking redneck dude who took no shit. Problem is, he was also an enforcer, and when John Stossel was doing a feature for 20/20 on how wrestling was fake (hard to believe that was actually a story, isn't it?), Vince McMahon told Schultz to rough him up or scare him or something, so Schultz, being the loveable guy he was, when asked if wrestling was fake, slapped the shit out of Stossel, asking him, "Does that feel fake?" Ultimately, John Stossel ended up deaf in that ear, sued WWF, and Schultz got blamed for it to cover their asses, fired, and blacklisted from wrestling. (Looking back though, what's really more sleazy - TV news programs like what Stossel does or pro wrestling? They're both so fucking nasty, and at least wrestling admits it's fake now. Having suffered through more than a few John Stossel pieces over the years where he throws out fear-inducing propaganda under the guise of actual information, I can't say I mind the fact he got deafened by David Schultz.) Post-wrestling, Schultz was a truck driver and then a bounty hunter, which when you think about some completely bad ass blonde afro having redneck dude from the '80s disappearing and then filling out his life through long hauling and hunting fugitives, that's a pretty tight storyline.
Terry Funk, on the other hand, may be the most amazingly fucked up yet beautiful professional wrestler there ever was. He dabbled in Hollywood for a while, both acting and doing stunts, after his first run as a World champion wrestler was winding down in the 1980s, yet came back as an old man who would bloody himself up in barbed wire matches. And listening to the guy talk, he is an amazing man. And crazy as fucking bat shit. Really, I just wanted to expound a little bit more on David Schultz before I just chose the Funker.
Advantage: Terry Funk.
GLEN STEWART GODWIN vs. NAZARIO MORENO
A cocaine criminal element showdown this time. Glen Stewart Godwin is a guy who in the early 1980s had absolutely no criminal history whatsoever. But it is believed he and a friend had planned to rob a drug dealer, and ended up killing the guy and burning the body in a truck to try and hide the evidence. He got sent to Folsom Prison, where he escaped in 1987, never to be caught. He ended up in Mexico, where he started selling cocaine, as a white guy, and got put in Mexican jail. American authorities were working to extradite him when Godwin stabbed and killed a Mexican cartel member in jail, which slowed down extradition proceedings. During this time, he escaped Mexican jail. Sadly, I do not know of any narcocorridos about Glen Stewart Godwin, although I guess it's only a matter of time before a white rapper takes that name as his own. The FBI put him on their most wanted list in 1996, and he's believed to still be active in the drug trade somewhere in Latin America. Or he might be at the bottom of a Mexican well. Hard to say.
Speaking of Mexican drug cartels, Nazario Moreno is the leader of La Familia, which is the cartel that has members carry the Bible with them, although Moreno has made his own translations of many parts. Basically they are a Christian cult drug cartel that murders motherfuckers in the process of selling drugs. The thing is, when they first started up, it was more as a protection against other drug cartels as a sort of vigilante police force for the poor, and they actually have more control over many of the cities in the Michoacan state than the government does. Moreno preaches that they have divine right to kill their enemies, and no member of the cartel is allowed to use drugs. Their philosophy is part evangelism and part up-with-the-people sloganeering, and Moreno gives out books as required reading to cartel members and even pays rural school teachers and government agencies to teach those books in schools in Michoacan. (Really, Mexico is straight fucked.) His nickname is Mas Loco, and La Familia trained alongside Los Zetas to be the paramilitary branches of drug cartels in the '90s, although both of have split off to become their own, mega-violent cartels.
And while I am interested in both of these guys, I can't help but think Godwin hasn't bitten it somewhere and no one will ever know because his body's been decomposed in a vat of acid by now. Plus, the mixing of religion and organized criminal activity has always seemed really intriguing to me. Religion is some serious shit, and yet we always fall for it as humans, even if the falling for it is that there is none and science is the one true answer for science is the only true religion.
Advantage: Nazario Moreno.
BLOWFLY vs. GABRIEL DUENEZ
Boy, I had not expected to write 3500 words on this shit today, but here I am. This last match-up for today is between a pair of fringe musical influences. Blowfly was an R&B singer and made adult-oriented party tapes wearing crazy costumes. Basically, he was the Ol' Dirty Bastard before there was one, just he wasn't addicted to crack, so far as I know. To be honest, I've never really listened to too much Blowfly because it's novelty music and you can't really get into it. There's plenty of music that I can dig on for real and not just to be like, "haha, check out what I'm listening to."
Gabriel Duenez, at this point in his life, is an air conditioner repairman in Houston, Texas. But back in the day, he used to make slowed down cumbia mixes he sold at the flea market in Monterrey, single-handedly creating cumbia rebajada, which is essentially screwed and chopped cumbia music, which sounds fucking fresh as shit. I love screwed music, and the percussion of cumbia music screwed is so perfectly tweaked, and the bass gets down to a nice steady hum, with ghostly spic vocals... man I wish this shit was on 7-inches and my jukebox was fixed because I'd just sit in the dark drinking cough medicine listening to that shit all night long.
But beyond that, a guy creating a musical genre that in the internet age would have gotten him a lot of non-moneyed blogospheric love, who did the same in the 1960s and sold a bunch of mixtapes at the Monterrey flea market, but now is a broke ass old man fixing air conditioners. There's something noble and pure about that. And perfect.
Advantage: Gabriel Duenez.
Estevan Oriol was the manager of Cypress Hill back in the day, and somehow stumbled through this into becoming a photographer of hip hop acts, but then took pictures of gang members in L.A. because he was considered an insider and not some asshole coming to take pictures of gang members.
Miroslav Tichy is some reclusive dude in eastern Europe who built these homemade cameras from scraps he found and went around taking pictures of women for years and years. A lot of times, they posed in ways they never would have had they known the chunk of trash he was holding actually took pictures. A pair of photographers, but far from normal photography.
I will admit that if there was one piece of art I could be given from my wife for a birthday or Christmas or something, it would be a print of this one picture that Oriol took of a Bloods dudes flannel shirts on hangers hanging on a clothesline in the back yard, with some rusty building behind it. It’s an amazing picture. But Tichy is a recluse who has suddenly found fame from his homemade camera photography of sexy women, and doesn’t even want the fame. He just wants to be left fucking alone. Meanwhile, or as chill a dude Estevan Oriol is, he’s trying to sell you t-shirts.
Advantage: Miroslav Tichy.
PRINCE PAUL vs. R.A. THE RUGGED MAN
Prince Paul has been involved in all sorts of great moments in hip hop history - the explosion of De La Soul (which had black dudes in my high school wearing their hair all sorts of off kilter), the Gravediggaz (ahh... the blending of boom bap and horror movies), Handsome Boy Modeling School, The Dino 5 (greatest kid rap album ever made)... he’s just a rock solid voice of hip hop that’s been around from the old school until the now.
R.A. the Rugged Man is just an obscure white rapper for most people, yet within hip hop, he’s an underground legend, whom Biggie Smalls himself glossed as one of the greatest he’d ever been in a booth with. He also does a good bit of freelance writing, for magazines like Mass Appeal (R.I.P.) and Vibe (god, what a terrible magazine), and has a book on boxing coming out at some point in the next year. His style, both in rhyme and written word, is wide open without restraint, and he tends to go for shock value over egotistical boasting. He’s a straight up dirt bag.
And while Prince Paul is one of only a handful of dudes you could say make up the spinal cord of hip hop, and one of the only people whose music I would steal from the internet without question because you know it's going to be at least interesting, R.A. is not limited by genre. The dude is a legend for being banned from playing clubs, and his knowledge of cinematic trash is amazing. I'm very interested to see what a scumbag Long Island white boy roughly my age makes of boxing in book format. And he has the single greatest verse in the past fifteen years of hip hip with his contribution to the Jedi Mind Tricks "Uncommon Valor" track.
Advantage: R.A. the Rugged Man.
DON CHERRY vs. TIGER WILLIAMS
A showdown between hockey legends. Hockey is a sport I never was witness to as a kid growing up, and while in college, had a friend who was the mascot for the minor league Richmond team, so we got comped in a lot of times, and I fell in love. Not too long after, I lucked into like two years of free NHL Pass on a satellite system, which was during the years of the Avs/Red Wings hate epitomized by that epic fight/game they had where the goalies were squaring up at center ice at one point. Fucking classic game.
I am a sort of Washington Capitals fan, although I'm no die-hard, but the Alexander Ovechkin era has really made it easy. Don't think I'd be into it so much if they had Sydney Crosby instead, but it's hard not to like Ovie. He's a knucklehead, and that's basically my favorite part of hockey - the whole "I'm just a big fucking bearded longhaired lunkhead from somewhere far off your normal 3rd grade American history class map" aspect. Plus, they are not afraid to get physical and throw some 'bows if need be.
Don Cherry is a color commentator who often says stupid things and is very entertaining, sort of like Bob Uecker just punch drunker. Tiger Williams is an old dude who holds the all-time NHL record for penalty minutes. He got in more shit than anybody ever, and was proud of it, and is still around to tell ice war stories.
And while I cannot deny that Don Cherry is a great ambassador for his sport to drunken degenerates like myself, when I first got into hockey watching those Richmond Renegades, one of the main reasons was Trevor Senn, who was their team enforcer. Watching an enforcer on the ice instead of simply following the puck like they do on TV is a great joy, especially with a 16 ounce beer in your hand, and maybe a touch of psilocybin in your brain. So really, it is that type of player I am impressed by more than anything else.
Advantage: Tiger Williams (though I think it goes without saying that had Bob Probert not died this year, he would've smoked both of these dudes and pretty much anybody else in my stupid little Learned Elders internet hall of fame nonsense).
FIDEL CASTRO vs. KIM JONG IL
I have always been intrigued by dictators and fascists. The ability to have a cult of personality over a large group of people is quite an accomplishment in itself, but to then parlay that into a ruling position which shifts into authoritative domination that stifles all dissent, that's a serious ass parlay. You think about America and as fucked as we've been with our last few Presidents, all of whom have had the cult of personality, but no matter how much they secretly shift towards the authoritarian role, it never quite takes over. There's nothing special about America, except maybe we are a very diverse crop of humans, making it hard to get enough people in deified awe of someone to install them in absolute power over everybody else, fuck them if they disagree.
I think it is sad Kim Jong Il is not more hyped as some sort of alternative demented genius. I mean, I now the whole Might Could Start a Nuclear Confrontation thing is a drawback, and liberal hipster types, for as contrarian as they tend to be, don't necessarily like to endorse dictators. But the whole Kim Jong Il (and his father before him) saga in North Korea is crazy, regardless of the propaganda machine that might prop it. (Which can we trust that anyways since it is our propaganda machine that tells us this happens?) But the guy has giant stadium performances with thousands upon thousands of people, just for him. Like the seats are full of performers who turn over cards at the appropriate time to create giant pictures. And he kidnaps actresses and actors to force them to make films for him. I don't know if there has ever been an evil dictator type with such an artphag bent before, and frankly, I find it very very impressive.
Ol' Fidel on the other hand, is old school. He's a baseball player who decided to overthrow a government, and has never really stepped down ever since. A simple guy, no one can accuse him of squandering his country's wealth, as he's not kicking it in gold necklaces on yachts. Dude has worn nothing but olive drab military gear for decades, ever since he hung up the baseball spikes. He's rocked the utilitarian communist beard for that time as well, and although yeah, communism is evil, whatever, there are some things that make it not seem so bad. Cuba has the lowest illiteracy rate in the world (well it did at one time when I read that, so it just stays true in my brain) as well as a very low infant mortality rate. It's a beautiful Caribbean country, and no one I've ever read about going there outside of the tourist areas has not been overwhelmed with what a beautiful and simple place it is. Making lemonade out of lemons. They can't get new cars from America (embargoing assholes) so all those old 1950s bombers are still puttering down the streets.
Who's to say simple is bad? Think about the high tech modernization going on at Guatanamo, where American authorities have taken the Arabs they've kidnapped to torture and detain until they reveal whatever it is they are supposed to know. Not to mention the fact the U.S. government beams constant propaganda via radio waves from that little corner of Cuba as well at the Cuban people.
To be honest, I'd rather sit around a picnic table and listen to old men play guitars and we all drive ratty old cars and we all drink cheap gutrot liquor and we are poor but we are happy and all our wives have big asses that bounce in the moonlight when we do it from behind on our simple beds with no screens in the open windows so you might get a mosquito bite or two than fucking think about torture and detainment and idealogical wars and all that crap. I mean, we're storing prisoners of our current idealogical war on a carjacked corner of an island that we've had a long-running idealogical war with. It's fucking crazy. And I know I'm simplifying things somewhat, but still. The motherfuckers shooting the propaganda at me and you through Time magazine and the cable news and Executive Orders, they simplify it all far worse than I do.
Advantage: Fidel Castro.
VINCENTE PIERRE vs. WHITEY BULGER
A battle between the criminal element, though very different types.
Vincente Pierre is an accused black Muslim terrorist who started an Islamic trailer park community in Charlotte County, Virginia, not too far from where I grew up - between where my mom lives in Meherrin and my one sister lives in Clarksville. They got busted for some sort of weapons violations, and it turned out that Pierre had multiple wives, most likely, in his rural southside Virginia trailer park compound, plus underground tunnels and all sorts of other crazy militiaman stuff that would make my dead daddy proud, except that it was black Muslims. The crazy thing is right down the road from my mom's house, and actually now on land that I used to wander as a kid and was once owned by my grandfather, a second community linked to this first one has sprouted up. They first started building it when I was in high school, but now it's full-blown, and they have some weird security force with a website that provides bodyguard services and computer security and all sorts of nefarious shit that you normally don't associate with a bunch of people that live in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere.
Whitey Bulger was a former boss of an Irish-American mob in Boston, and made hella money in all the normal mob ways - gambling, pussy, guns, and drugs. The thing that makes Whitey Bulger so awesome is he bolted in the mid-'90s when the DEA was about to come down on him, and has been a successful fugitive ever since. He's been on America's Most Wanted 15 times, and has often been seen around the world, though those sightings are not always verified. The last verified time anyone saw him was in London in 2002, though the FBI has chased after leads in Uruguay, Italy, and elsewhere since then. He is assumed to be alive and breathing still though, coming up on his 81st birthday next week. He is also considered the inspiration for Jack Nicholson's character in The Departed.
This is a hard one for me to choose. Pierre is more of a "protect your own" kind of guy who is building his own community separate from the world at large, while Bulger had that classic successful criminal Robin Hood element that had the poor people of Boston loving on him for how he protected the hood and gave out turkeys on Thanksgiving. And frankly, you have to wonder if Bulger is still alive, although I doubt the FBI would still be putting resources towards him if he weren't.
At the same time, I've been reading the 120 Questions from Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad a lot lately, although mostly to lead myself back to Clarence 13X and the Nations of Gods and Earths more than to get into Islam. The Nations of Gods and Earths really jibe me more than most religions, other than maybe Taoism, with a lot of mathematically based new age science and general wackiness that fucks with language and reality. I've been working on rewriting some texts to incorporate whiteys like myself into the whole 5% philosophy, because if you dig into what they're saying, and even a bit of what Clarence 13X preached, it wasn't black man as in literal black man so much as a black and white where the roles of good and evil were flipped off the standard Christian color scheme. You can be a black man in that sense but not have dark skin. But shit, in America we've complicated racial matters so goddamned much, I'd probably get stabbed if I tried to pull off some shit like that. Plus, Vincente Pierre and the other black Islamic trailer park down the road from my mom's, they're not Nation of Gods and Earths people, but straight up militant Muslim who are part of an Al-Fuqra anti-America campaign. Although I'm as anti-governmentarianism as anyone, so that's not an automatic x.
Advantage: Vincente Pierre (South Side Virginia, represent... and it is odd how Clarence 13X the founder of Nations of Gods and Earths was born in Danville, and this other stuff is happening in Charlotte and Prince Edward county... not to mention the first free black community in America was a place called Israel Hill just outside of Farmville; who knew I was born in the lap of so much culture? I thought it was just a rundown place where everybody became addicted to or sold different illicit things and had a hopeless outlook on the world).
DAVID SCHULTZ vs. TERRY FUNK
Ahh...the stupid professional wrestling. I got caught up in this nonsense too much as a kid, to the point now that I can have completely separate work and home personnas and it's not a problem for me compartmentalize it because it makes sense. That's been a big influence on my writing styles over the years too because I can very easily add a complete lie to something that's otherwise completely truthful so that there are people to this day who think I let a guy suck my dick in the bus station in St. Louis, Missouri, because I felt sorry for him.
David Schultz was basically Stone Cold Steve Austin back in the 1980s - a foul-minded, beer-drinking redneck dude who took no shit. Problem is, he was also an enforcer, and when John Stossel was doing a feature for 20/20 on how wrestling was fake (hard to believe that was actually a story, isn't it?), Vince McMahon told Schultz to rough him up or scare him or something, so Schultz, being the loveable guy he was, when asked if wrestling was fake, slapped the shit out of Stossel, asking him, "Does that feel fake?" Ultimately, John Stossel ended up deaf in that ear, sued WWF, and Schultz got blamed for it to cover their asses, fired, and blacklisted from wrestling. (Looking back though, what's really more sleazy - TV news programs like what Stossel does or pro wrestling? They're both so fucking nasty, and at least wrestling admits it's fake now. Having suffered through more than a few John Stossel pieces over the years where he throws out fear-inducing propaganda under the guise of actual information, I can't say I mind the fact he got deafened by David Schultz.) Post-wrestling, Schultz was a truck driver and then a bounty hunter, which when you think about some completely bad ass blonde afro having redneck dude from the '80s disappearing and then filling out his life through long hauling and hunting fugitives, that's a pretty tight storyline.
Terry Funk, on the other hand, may be the most amazingly fucked up yet beautiful professional wrestler there ever was. He dabbled in Hollywood for a while, both acting and doing stunts, after his first run as a World champion wrestler was winding down in the 1980s, yet came back as an old man who would bloody himself up in barbed wire matches. And listening to the guy talk, he is an amazing man. And crazy as fucking bat shit. Really, I just wanted to expound a little bit more on David Schultz before I just chose the Funker.
Advantage: Terry Funk.
GLEN STEWART GODWIN vs. NAZARIO MORENO
A cocaine criminal element showdown this time. Glen Stewart Godwin is a guy who in the early 1980s had absolutely no criminal history whatsoever. But it is believed he and a friend had planned to rob a drug dealer, and ended up killing the guy and burning the body in a truck to try and hide the evidence. He got sent to Folsom Prison, where he escaped in 1987, never to be caught. He ended up in Mexico, where he started selling cocaine, as a white guy, and got put in Mexican jail. American authorities were working to extradite him when Godwin stabbed and killed a Mexican cartel member in jail, which slowed down extradition proceedings. During this time, he escaped Mexican jail. Sadly, I do not know of any narcocorridos about Glen Stewart Godwin, although I guess it's only a matter of time before a white rapper takes that name as his own. The FBI put him on their most wanted list in 1996, and he's believed to still be active in the drug trade somewhere in Latin America. Or he might be at the bottom of a Mexican well. Hard to say.
Speaking of Mexican drug cartels, Nazario Moreno is the leader of La Familia, which is the cartel that has members carry the Bible with them, although Moreno has made his own translations of many parts. Basically they are a Christian cult drug cartel that murders motherfuckers in the process of selling drugs. The thing is, when they first started up, it was more as a protection against other drug cartels as a sort of vigilante police force for the poor, and they actually have more control over many of the cities in the Michoacan state than the government does. Moreno preaches that they have divine right to kill their enemies, and no member of the cartel is allowed to use drugs. Their philosophy is part evangelism and part up-with-the-people sloganeering, and Moreno gives out books as required reading to cartel members and even pays rural school teachers and government agencies to teach those books in schools in Michoacan. (Really, Mexico is straight fucked.) His nickname is Mas Loco, and La Familia trained alongside Los Zetas to be the paramilitary branches of drug cartels in the '90s, although both of have split off to become their own, mega-violent cartels.
And while I am interested in both of these guys, I can't help but think Godwin hasn't bitten it somewhere and no one will ever know because his body's been decomposed in a vat of acid by now. Plus, the mixing of religion and organized criminal activity has always seemed really intriguing to me. Religion is some serious shit, and yet we always fall for it as humans, even if the falling for it is that there is none and science is the one true answer for science is the only true religion.
Advantage: Nazario Moreno.
BLOWFLY vs. GABRIEL DUENEZ
Boy, I had not expected to write 3500 words on this shit today, but here I am. This last match-up for today is between a pair of fringe musical influences. Blowfly was an R&B singer and made adult-oriented party tapes wearing crazy costumes. Basically, he was the Ol' Dirty Bastard before there was one, just he wasn't addicted to crack, so far as I know. To be honest, I've never really listened to too much Blowfly because it's novelty music and you can't really get into it. There's plenty of music that I can dig on for real and not just to be like, "haha, check out what I'm listening to."
Gabriel Duenez, at this point in his life, is an air conditioner repairman in Houston, Texas. But back in the day, he used to make slowed down cumbia mixes he sold at the flea market in Monterrey, single-handedly creating cumbia rebajada, which is essentially screwed and chopped cumbia music, which sounds fucking fresh as shit. I love screwed music, and the percussion of cumbia music screwed is so perfectly tweaked, and the bass gets down to a nice steady hum, with ghostly spic vocals... man I wish this shit was on 7-inches and my jukebox was fixed because I'd just sit in the dark drinking cough medicine listening to that shit all night long.
But beyond that, a guy creating a musical genre that in the internet age would have gotten him a lot of non-moneyed blogospheric love, who did the same in the 1960s and sold a bunch of mixtapes at the Monterrey flea market, but now is a broke ass old man fixing air conditioners. There's something noble and pure about that. And perfect.
Advantage: Gabriel Duenez.
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