Monday, August 11
MNZ: Lindy's Pro Football 2008 Preview
Seems like this thing comes out a few weeks earlier every year. I remember it being around 4th of July to expect it, and I think I got beginning of June this year. I could thumb through this bullshit forever, which I do, to do my stupid NFL bullshit for the blog. Jason Campbell's on the cover of my locally marketed version. I hope he doesn't end up sucking. He talks a little funny to be smart enough to dominate the game and spread the ball amongst seven potential offensive threats.
Homemade Song of the Week: "Heart of Soul"
I would bet last week when I did a Prolo song first, PSY/OPS got all emo for a split second. He's the dude I mostly do music with, as Solaris Earth Pipeline, which is a stupid fucking name, but we made it up on the spot one night early on and are sort of stuck with it like some stupid slut's name tatted on your forearm sewing needle style. I can't afford laser surgery, so we are Solaris Earth Pipeline.
"Heart of Soul" is a very simple beat, reworking (or basically looping and spicing up) a Neil Young song. But it was one of the first (maybe even the first) beats PSY/OPS did once he started making beats for no real reason whatsoever. He called me over, and being I hadn't really done shit but maybe twice a year with Brown, I sat down and wrote that song at his house and we recorded it the first night, one take, just like that. It has circulated amongst some internerd circles and people have found the bent of it goofy (proud rural whiteboy/5 percenter mash-up philosophies can be highly mockable inside the internets), but it gave birth to us a duo making music, because that first time went so smoothly and easily. Now, he hardly hooks up beats because it's so fucking gay and I have nothing to write because I've already written everything in my head. I think we're gonna start doing concept albums based on independent movies from the early '90s though.
So here is "Heart of Soul" by Solaris Earth Pipeline, off our first self-released CD At War With Robots.
"Heart of Soul" is a very simple beat, reworking (or basically looping and spicing up) a Neil Young song. But it was one of the first (maybe even the first) beats PSY/OPS did once he started making beats for no real reason whatsoever. He called me over, and being I hadn't really done shit but maybe twice a year with Brown, I sat down and wrote that song at his house and we recorded it the first night, one take, just like that. It has circulated amongst some internerd circles and people have found the bent of it goofy (proud rural whiteboy/5 percenter mash-up philosophies can be highly mockable inside the internets), but it gave birth to us a duo making music, because that first time went so smoothly and easily. Now, he hardly hooks up beats because it's so fucking gay and I have nothing to write because I've already written everything in my head. I think we're gonna start doing concept albums based on independent movies from the early '90s though.
So here is "Heart of Soul" by Solaris Earth Pipeline, off our first self-released CD At War With Robots.
Sunday, August 10
August O.C.D. #3: state drinking glasses
When we first moved in together, my wife had a slew of these little glasses from the ‘50s and ‘60s she’d gotten out of thrift store, back when Richmond had one of the best thrift store districts in southside, before the ebays fucked that all up for everybody, and they’ve been in our household ever since. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in the past six months, I decided I wanted more of these, which led to internet research. Well, in the ebays, they go for like ten bucks a pop, but I learned they were mostly made by Hazel Atlas glass company (which I usually mistakenly call Hazel Atkins, on purpose), and if ebay is any indicator, they are popular amongst homos as wacky retro-fare. I was about to try and get some from inside the ebays, but buying shit off ebay is so easy and annoying - you just bid, get caught up in “having” to have something, spend way more money than you should, and then it just gets mailed to you with no work involved. Shopping in shitty thrift stores is so much more satisfying, digging your fingers through musty glasses set up on shelves by recovering crackheads for Christ. We took a family trip to North Carolina a month ago, looking for shit like this (as well as other articles of nonsense) in thrift and junk and antique stores in the Raleigh/Durham area, and found a couple of them. But this led to me poking through antique stores in my area, looking for more of them, at a reasonable rate (which doesn’t always exist at antique stores). Poking around antique stores is a hard thing because those places are gay as fuck, meaning if you see five dudes looking around at bullshit in one of those places, one of them is old, one of them is begrudgingly occupying his time while his wife looks at old farm cabinets, two of them are gay dudes, and the other one is a wild card, which is my way of pretending me being in antique stores is not gay, because truthfully the fifth one is gay too, just probably more repressed than the other two more openly gay guys shopping the antique store.
Anyways, I have found more of these, and we now have far too many to really be proud of. Mostly these glasses are a map of the state, with major cities (at that stage in time) marked with dots, plus little caricatures of industry or noteworthy landmarks, as well as useless information like state nickname or song or some such trivia. They come frosted in different flavors (which can be pimped like our blue frosted Kentucky one, or the oddly toxic-looking frosted orange D.C. one), or have the state maps painted in yellow or lime green or odd pink paint. We even found one that was like black with gold markings, but it was all faded and dinged up at one of those crackheads for christ thrift stores. However, I found a stand in one antique store that had another one like that, in perfect condition, like that, and the black with gold markings style is straight pimp. The one I saw was North Carolina, which normally I would’ve snatched up, as Carolina del Norte ranks high on my list of desirable localities, but the old bitch at this stand was wanting six bucks a glass. I stretched my limit one time and bought a few at five per glass, when I was accumulating, but mostly I ain’t paying more than three bucks a glass.
See, obviously I’ve hit the mad homo stage of the state glasses, because now it’s no longer just straight up collecting of the style, but it’s become more like a sports team, with salary caps and shit, where I’m not paying a lot for minor members of the collection, and even if I find a shelf full of these things for three bucks each, if it’s not a good state or wacky looking, I won’t get it. I could turn my blog super-internetty and post digital pics of my favorite glasses, but even me in all my personal faggotries can’t come that far out the closet.
Anyways, I have found more of these, and we now have far too many to really be proud of. Mostly these glasses are a map of the state, with major cities (at that stage in time) marked with dots, plus little caricatures of industry or noteworthy landmarks, as well as useless information like state nickname or song or some such trivia. They come frosted in different flavors (which can be pimped like our blue frosted Kentucky one, or the oddly toxic-looking frosted orange D.C. one), or have the state maps painted in yellow or lime green or odd pink paint. We even found one that was like black with gold markings, but it was all faded and dinged up at one of those crackheads for christ thrift stores. However, I found a stand in one antique store that had another one like that, in perfect condition, like that, and the black with gold markings style is straight pimp. The one I saw was North Carolina, which normally I would’ve snatched up, as Carolina del Norte ranks high on my list of desirable localities, but the old bitch at this stand was wanting six bucks a glass. I stretched my limit one time and bought a few at five per glass, when I was accumulating, but mostly I ain’t paying more than three bucks a glass.
See, obviously I’ve hit the mad homo stage of the state glasses, because now it’s no longer just straight up collecting of the style, but it’s become more like a sports team, with salary caps and shit, where I’m not paying a lot for minor members of the collection, and even if I find a shelf full of these things for three bucks each, if it’s not a good state or wacky looking, I won’t get it. I could turn my blog super-internetty and post digital pics of my favorite glasses, but even me in all my personal faggotries can’t come that far out the closet.
S14: NHL Franchise Post-Season Power Rankings
I established a power franchise system for the major American-based sports leagues (NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB... haha, fuck you soccer) which is fairly simple and completely unnecessary. Basically, take the most recent season, 3 points for winning it all, 2 points for losing in finals, and 1 point for losing in semifinals (usually conference championships). The most recent year, I multiply by ten; last year, multiply by 9, year before that, multiply by 8; all the way down to ten season ago it gets multiplied by one (which I don’t really do, I just leave as is, because I learned that trick when it comes to multiplying things by one a long time ago). And then I have a stupid sports list to do for the sporting lists that I sort of gave up on a while ago but decided to force myself to start again.
I actually did this first one right after the Stanley Cup ended and before NBA finals got all retro-crazy, but I never wrote nothing about it at all, mostly because I didn’t care. I mean seriously, they could have that outdoor NHL game in my back yard, and if there was a halfway decent cooking show on my fuzzy PBS channel, I’d probably watch that instead. I don’t know about next year when it all goes digital, because I can tolerate the fuzzy picture, but I can’t watch the acid trip digital melts that digital TV does when you live too far away from their cybertronics. I loved some hockey when I could go watch minor league Richmond Renegades all the time and Trevor Senn would end up fighting somebody for little reason while they blared Lynyrd Skynyrd over the P.A., but NHL hockey’s just a little boring to me. I tried to watch a few of the weekend games on NBC and I don’t know what’s missing. I used to love watching hockey. I think maybe it’s the fact there’s no consistency, like players switch teams like crazy, even superstars. So it’s hard to follow long-term unless you’re all rabid about learning weird Euro-fuckers names. I briefly cared about the Washington Capitals, getting caught up in Alexander Ovechkin-mania, but I also did the same with the Wizards, and they play at the same time of year and Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler, and Antawn Jamison are far more interesting than some stupid Russian fucker. But yeah, here’s the top 14 NHL franchises of the past ten years, according to my semi-scientific calculating method...
#1: Detroit Red Wings (57 points) - Really, one of the reasons I got into hockey on TV when I did actually watch it was because the satellite TV at my mom’s house gave me free NHL the first year I hooked it up when I was sleeping on the living room floor there, working the second shift in Richmond, and never seeing anyone in the process. Like the first month I was watching was that big Red Wings/Avalanche game where they fought for forty minutes and the goalies even got to mixing it up. When goalies fight, that’s entertaining hockey. I just read in the paper that Patrick Roy’s son is a goalie too, and he got into a fight with the other goalie in some minor league hockey game this past season, and the local authorities charged him with assault. When Patrick Roy’s son gets arrested for beating up the other goalie in a hockey game, it’s difficult times man. We live in difficult times.
#2: Anaheim Ducks (47 points) - I think they won a season ago, but I’m busy downloading DJ Screw music and it’s tying up my internet welfare, so I’m not gonna look it up elsewhere. Anaheim Ducks is the stupidest name ever for a professional sports team at the top level, even if they did drop the Mighty. In fact, I’d say the Mighty made it less embarrassing. Also, did they ever do an Air Bud hockey movie?
#3: New Jersey Devils (35 points) - The New Jersey Devil is a legendary creature described by witnesses much like the West Virginia Mothman and the Bat Monster my mom and dad claimed to have seen when they were fucking in the back of a stationwagon in the early ‘70s. To be honest - and I readily admit my own ridiculous prejudices - that’s the only saving grace of that entire state of New Jersey that I can think of. I used to think the Wu Mansion being there was another, but c’mon man, RZA is straight shitty now, and deluded by Hollywood. I doubt Ghostface spends much time at the Wu Mansion.
#4: Carolina Hurricanes (26 points) - The last time I made a half-hearted attempt at caring about the NHL was when Hurricane-mania was sweeping the Piedmont during their Stanley Cup run. But it petered out pretty hard afterwards because, let's face it, hockey is a side show in the south, meant to be seen at the minor league level where dudes fight for no real apparent reason other than to spike beer sales during the second period. Major league hockey makes no sense aesthetically in the south, just like having Nascar races in Chicago seems retarded. Fuck global multiculturalism. Some shit is meant to be regional.
#5: Pittsburgh Penguins (24 points) - Starring Sydney Crosby, the NHL's future. A pre-eminent franchise (I'm assuming, since they used to be big, and had a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, which is more than most pro sports team can say) that almost went under recently, but has been saved by young ice phenom Crosby, who is supposed to save the NHL too. Haha, stupid NHL... like people are gonna care because of one young superstar. I don't understand why leagues like the NHL and NBA work under these "Michael Jordan/Tiger Woods" assumptions, because the NFL is by far the most popular thing, and it goes way deeper than a single superstar. Plus, when you hitch your wagon to the superstar theory, once that dude goes down (or retires to play baseball or whatever), you are fucked. Oh well, it's their money, not mine.
#6: Ottawa Senators (24 points) - I like the Senators. You know why? When I watched shitty Richmond Renegades minor league hockey, one of the most awesome players was the goalie for the Roanoke team, I think Daniel Berthume (my spelling is deficient probably), and he had played in the NHL for the Senators, but somehow devalued himself to a blacklisted career as a guy too good for the minor leagues but not welcome back to the NHL. Thus, I like the Senators, because they are one of only a handful of teams I have any notion of something deeper than uniform colors.
#7: Edmonton Oilers (24 points) - Just because they won mad Stanley Cups with Gretzky and Mark Messier, I don't like them, partially because I like to playa hate wildly successful sports franchises, and partially because Mark Messier looks like a fucking retarded baboon.
#8: Dallas Stars (23 points) - The Dallas sports tradition as usually good but not good enough is not quite played up enough for my tastes. The Cowboys have not won a playoff game in years, and both the Stars and Mavericks seem to be perpetually good, but bridesmaids instead of brides. Of course, even after doing the research for this, I may have forgotten that they won the Stanley Cup recently, but fuck it. It's only hockey.
#9: Buffalo Sabres (22 points) - The Sabres logo where it looks like a heart with a knife through it is one of the few hockey jerseys I'd want to wear were I the type to wear hockey jerseys (which is probably about two steps lower on the social degenerate scale than I'm currently ready to accept in my personal life). Plus, they had Miroslav Satan as well, who I think is on war crimes trial in Nuremberg now.
#10: Colorado Avalanche (22 points) - For me, I will always associate the Avs with that punishing thug Claude Lemieux, who looks more like evil Germans in old Sgt. Rock comic books than anybody else I've ever seen. Man, Marty McSorley-enforced Red Wings vs. Claude Lemieux-enforced Avalanches, that's how hockey should market itself if it wants to get big with that highly sought after retard delinquent with money young male demographic, not with goal-happy pretty boys like Sydney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin.
#11: Calgary Flames (21 points) - I don't know, I'm really struggling to make comments on some of this shit.
#12: Philadelphia Flyers (20 points) - Aren't they more of a finesse team now instead of their standard Broad Street Bully image? Or was that during the days of Eric Lindros? What ever happened to that dude anyways? Didn't he get like 37 concussions?
#13: Tampa Bay Lightning (14 points) - See, hockey in Tampa seems ridiculous to me. And I think they were the one with the female goalie too, which just goes to show how hockey is a freak show to us southerners. They should've had a grizzly bear goalie too, chained to the net inside the crease. Now that's what I call hockey!
#14: San Jose Sharks (7 points) - I guess hockey in California makes sense to me because California is a far off retarded place to me where people do all sorts of trendy nonsense as standard fare, standing around outside Sharks game waiting to get PBRs in plastic bottles and sushi orders. But then I think about how many Mexicans live in California and I realize my stereotypes of the state are not correct and I should be more careful. Like that old Bo Diddley song "You Can't Judge a Book By the Cover", except Hank Williams Jr. did a really shitty remake of the song that makes me want to judge books by their covers, so fuck California. I bet for all the cool ass spics that have lived there, there's also a bunch that are co-opted by soulless trendy Califuckfacers and become clean cut pseudo-spics standing outside Sharks games waiting to get Coronita plastic bottles and burrito wraps orders.
I actually did this first one right after the Stanley Cup ended and before NBA finals got all retro-crazy, but I never wrote nothing about it at all, mostly because I didn’t care. I mean seriously, they could have that outdoor NHL game in my back yard, and if there was a halfway decent cooking show on my fuzzy PBS channel, I’d probably watch that instead. I don’t know about next year when it all goes digital, because I can tolerate the fuzzy picture, but I can’t watch the acid trip digital melts that digital TV does when you live too far away from their cybertronics. I loved some hockey when I could go watch minor league Richmond Renegades all the time and Trevor Senn would end up fighting somebody for little reason while they blared Lynyrd Skynyrd over the P.A., but NHL hockey’s just a little boring to me. I tried to watch a few of the weekend games on NBC and I don’t know what’s missing. I used to love watching hockey. I think maybe it’s the fact there’s no consistency, like players switch teams like crazy, even superstars. So it’s hard to follow long-term unless you’re all rabid about learning weird Euro-fuckers names. I briefly cared about the Washington Capitals, getting caught up in Alexander Ovechkin-mania, but I also did the same with the Wizards, and they play at the same time of year and Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler, and Antawn Jamison are far more interesting than some stupid Russian fucker. But yeah, here’s the top 14 NHL franchises of the past ten years, according to my semi-scientific calculating method...
#1: Detroit Red Wings (57 points) - Really, one of the reasons I got into hockey on TV when I did actually watch it was because the satellite TV at my mom’s house gave me free NHL the first year I hooked it up when I was sleeping on the living room floor there, working the second shift in Richmond, and never seeing anyone in the process. Like the first month I was watching was that big Red Wings/Avalanche game where they fought for forty minutes and the goalies even got to mixing it up. When goalies fight, that’s entertaining hockey. I just read in the paper that Patrick Roy’s son is a goalie too, and he got into a fight with the other goalie in some minor league hockey game this past season, and the local authorities charged him with assault. When Patrick Roy’s son gets arrested for beating up the other goalie in a hockey game, it’s difficult times man. We live in difficult times.
#2: Anaheim Ducks (47 points) - I think they won a season ago, but I’m busy downloading DJ Screw music and it’s tying up my internet welfare, so I’m not gonna look it up elsewhere. Anaheim Ducks is the stupidest name ever for a professional sports team at the top level, even if they did drop the Mighty. In fact, I’d say the Mighty made it less embarrassing. Also, did they ever do an Air Bud hockey movie?
#3: New Jersey Devils (35 points) - The New Jersey Devil is a legendary creature described by witnesses much like the West Virginia Mothman and the Bat Monster my mom and dad claimed to have seen when they were fucking in the back of a stationwagon in the early ‘70s. To be honest - and I readily admit my own ridiculous prejudices - that’s the only saving grace of that entire state of New Jersey that I can think of. I used to think the Wu Mansion being there was another, but c’mon man, RZA is straight shitty now, and deluded by Hollywood. I doubt Ghostface spends much time at the Wu Mansion.
#4: Carolina Hurricanes (26 points) - The last time I made a half-hearted attempt at caring about the NHL was when Hurricane-mania was sweeping the Piedmont during their Stanley Cup run. But it petered out pretty hard afterwards because, let's face it, hockey is a side show in the south, meant to be seen at the minor league level where dudes fight for no real apparent reason other than to spike beer sales during the second period. Major league hockey makes no sense aesthetically in the south, just like having Nascar races in Chicago seems retarded. Fuck global multiculturalism. Some shit is meant to be regional.
#5: Pittsburgh Penguins (24 points) - Starring Sydney Crosby, the NHL's future. A pre-eminent franchise (I'm assuming, since they used to be big, and had a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, which is more than most pro sports team can say) that almost went under recently, but has been saved by young ice phenom Crosby, who is supposed to save the NHL too. Haha, stupid NHL... like people are gonna care because of one young superstar. I don't understand why leagues like the NHL and NBA work under these "Michael Jordan/Tiger Woods" assumptions, because the NFL is by far the most popular thing, and it goes way deeper than a single superstar. Plus, when you hitch your wagon to the superstar theory, once that dude goes down (or retires to play baseball or whatever), you are fucked. Oh well, it's their money, not mine.
#6: Ottawa Senators (24 points) - I like the Senators. You know why? When I watched shitty Richmond Renegades minor league hockey, one of the most awesome players was the goalie for the Roanoke team, I think Daniel Berthume (my spelling is deficient probably), and he had played in the NHL for the Senators, but somehow devalued himself to a blacklisted career as a guy too good for the minor leagues but not welcome back to the NHL. Thus, I like the Senators, because they are one of only a handful of teams I have any notion of something deeper than uniform colors.
#7: Edmonton Oilers (24 points) - Just because they won mad Stanley Cups with Gretzky and Mark Messier, I don't like them, partially because I like to playa hate wildly successful sports franchises, and partially because Mark Messier looks like a fucking retarded baboon.
#8: Dallas Stars (23 points) - The Dallas sports tradition as usually good but not good enough is not quite played up enough for my tastes. The Cowboys have not won a playoff game in years, and both the Stars and Mavericks seem to be perpetually good, but bridesmaids instead of brides. Of course, even after doing the research for this, I may have forgotten that they won the Stanley Cup recently, but fuck it. It's only hockey.
#9: Buffalo Sabres (22 points) - The Sabres logo where it looks like a heart with a knife through it is one of the few hockey jerseys I'd want to wear were I the type to wear hockey jerseys (which is probably about two steps lower on the social degenerate scale than I'm currently ready to accept in my personal life). Plus, they had Miroslav Satan as well, who I think is on war crimes trial in Nuremberg now.
#10: Colorado Avalanche (22 points) - For me, I will always associate the Avs with that punishing thug Claude Lemieux, who looks more like evil Germans in old Sgt. Rock comic books than anybody else I've ever seen. Man, Marty McSorley-enforced Red Wings vs. Claude Lemieux-enforced Avalanches, that's how hockey should market itself if it wants to get big with that highly sought after retard delinquent with money young male demographic, not with goal-happy pretty boys like Sydney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin.
#11: Calgary Flames (21 points) - I don't know, I'm really struggling to make comments on some of this shit.
#12: Philadelphia Flyers (20 points) - Aren't they more of a finesse team now instead of their standard Broad Street Bully image? Or was that during the days of Eric Lindros? What ever happened to that dude anyways? Didn't he get like 37 concussions?
#13: Tampa Bay Lightning (14 points) - See, hockey in Tampa seems ridiculous to me. And I think they were the one with the female goalie too, which just goes to show how hockey is a freak show to us southerners. They should've had a grizzly bear goalie too, chained to the net inside the crease. Now that's what I call hockey!
#14: San Jose Sharks (7 points) - I guess hockey in California makes sense to me because California is a far off retarded place to me where people do all sorts of trendy nonsense as standard fare, standing around outside Sharks game waiting to get PBRs in plastic bottles and sushi orders. But then I think about how many Mexicans live in California and I realize my stereotypes of the state are not correct and I should be more careful. Like that old Bo Diddley song "You Can't Judge a Book By the Cover", except Hank Williams Jr. did a really shitty remake of the song that makes me want to judge books by their covers, so fuck California. I bet for all the cool ass spics that have lived there, there's also a bunch that are co-opted by soulless trendy Califuckfacers and become clean cut pseudo-spics standing outside Sharks games waiting to get Coronita plastic bottles and burrito wraps orders.
MNZ: Raw Vision Summer '08
I miss getting Raw Vision in the mail, because it's an enjoyable magazine, and this issue was great with Howard Finster and James Harold Jennings (both self-taught artists of a southern variety), and got me to looking up more shit and finding some dude who makes chainsaw critters outside of Raleigh and an old dude who does metal whirligigs on his farm headed towards the beach in Carolina. But shit man, art magazines are crazy with their self-importance. This was $14 for a single issue, and I guess it's printed on fancy paper with soy inks or whatever, but really, I could do without the gloss for like five bucks cheaper. Still, I'll probably resubscribe at some point soon since it's hard to find at the magazine store unless I'm really lucky. In fact, I think I found it at Barnes & Noble this time, which I've never seen it at before, nor since.
Saturday, August 9
MNZ: Mass Appeal #51
I don't know if I'm getting more out of touch with things, or certain magazines I used to really love have fallen the fuck off, but I didn't get a lot out of this issue of Mass Appeal. This used to be one of my top 3 must have mags, but damn man. It did hip me to those faggot Scandinavian kids doing the Wu-Tang covers before the internet went nuts over that, so I guess it was worthwhile. And it taught me about Yahoozie boys in Nigeria, which I still need to try and download those songs. My shitty rap groups myspace page, I got sick of real friends being there and caring about top 8 or whatever the fuck, so I used my internet welfare (aka dial-up) to friend up a bunch of west African rap groups and make them my top 8 friends. Back to the motherland and shit, by way of NYC.
Oh yeah, the big piece of the San Francisco area transit bus graffiti bombers was cool, but I think I watched some shit ass documentary off of Netflix like a year ago about the same thing. So it wasn't like some groundbreaking shit to read about. But probably who suffered the most was The Knux. Stupid Shade 45 on the satellite about the time I purchased this had already been bugging the fuck out of me by playing the remix for "Cappucino" like every time I happened to be in the truck tuned into Shade 45. And then there was a feature in this Mass Appeal on The Knux, and they came off like a couple of chump ass fuckers. And not because they seemed nerdy, because I can get down with someone authentically being a nerd and still being who they are in a loud and proud manner. But these dudes came across like they were trying to have a nerd image, to be that backpacker crossover super act or some shit, like syphoning off the Kidz in the Hall/Cool Kids/Lupe Fiasco and I guess even stupid closet homosexual Kanye West's newfound "I'm not ignorant because I don't rhyme about killing people, even though I ain't really that smart unless your vocab consists mostly of text messaging shorthand" pseudo-Native Tongues fashion district bisexual rap genre. So I came out of thinking, "Man, these guys are stupid fucks. And probably not even for-real gay." I have little respect for people who seem gay but aren't gay, because I imagine if you are truly gay, sucking dicks can be a very satisfying thing. I mean, the penis is a strong appendage visually, and stuffing it into your mouth is probably aesthetically empowering, if you were apt to be that way. But to come across like a fag and not really be a fag, I don't know, it seems a shame to me.
Friday, August 8
August O.C.D. #4: Dirt Track Racing video game
This is a computer game that probably nobody on earth still plays except me, but it’s just a shitty race car game based on dirt tracks. You can race regular stock cars (which has three classes), or pro stock cars where you can customize bullshit (with five classes), or bonafide late models just like at Eastside Speedway (with four classes). But rather than just play the game, I have to be all parametric about it and set up a plan for conquering it, or at least immersing myself in it, which I’ve done on two other computers as well, but just in the past five weeks set the bitch up on my latest computer (I think the game’s from around 2000 or so).
Basically, each class year-to-year has its own schedule with its own set of dates, sometimes conflicting with other classes, so what I did was just start with the lowest stock class and run the three lowest classes I’d never won first place for the year in, going with the lowest as most important, marking them off my list as I finished first for the year. I am deeper into the game this time than ever before, having won all three stock classes, and beaten the first two pro stock classes in the same year (which is amazing dork game accomplishment, right up there with finding the perfect way to run through the Pac Man final screen on the Atari 2600 one day when I was ten, but having to abandon to go to All-Star practice, even though all I was was the shitty left fielder on the All-Star team), and am about four races away from finishing my sixth year, where unless I become retarded from a car accident but still play video games, I’ll beat another level of pro stock. That means I’ll start doing the late models, which go too fast for dirt, so you have to do the illogical thing of turning your wheels the opposite way of what you’d think to control your slides through curves. Luckily, the last pro stock class is a figure eight one, to learn you about using the right turn arrow cursor as well. I used to always use #69, like anybody with my limited cultural upbringing would choose, but this time I went with #0, all into that Agent Zero mantra by Gilbert Arenas (who is putting a million dollar shark tank into his house, with three sharks because that’s all the guy who would get them for him said he’d climb into feed). It was after this that I noticed with the computer drivers, usually the guys with the lower number (which starts with #1) do the best in each class. So I have been working under the assumption that I actually benefitted myself with computer love (you know how games will just screw you over oftentimes) by having the lowest number possible.
I can see this falling off the list pretty quickly though, as just like in real life, once football season starts, I don’t give a fuck about race cars. My newfound retarded Madden ‘08 project will probably preempt Dirt Track Racing dorkery. So hopefully this computer won’t become dead or poisoned by devils like my other ones (I now have a shitty cheap laptop that I relegate all questionable things like music stealing and masturbatory inspiration searches to, which keeps my main one more pure) and I can pick up again next spring.
MNZ: Waxpoetics No. 28
The front and back cover stories of this issue - Al Green and Q-Tip - weren't the best pair I've ever ran across in Waxpoetics. I don't really give a fuck about Q-Tip, as that dude was always questionable genius in my mind already, and then he dropped that "Vivrant Thing" era load of crap, leaving poor funky diabetic Phife Dawg in the dust. So I got no love for Tip. But I love some old ass Al Green. His Greatest Hits is one of the best greatest hits comps you'll ever find, and probably one of the only CD re-releases of the album I'd say you should probably get as well, just for "Belle", which wasn't on the vinyl. But the Al Green interview just didn't do a whole lot for me... kinda boring. Al just hasn't had the same pizazz since that chick threw them hot grits on his ass.
Nonetheless, being a record nerd, Waxpoetics always has something great in there, and this issue didn't fail to deliver. Obscure 7-inches, east European funk bands, disco acetates... good stuff. Maybe not ten dollars good, but Waxpoetics has an inflated sense of its own importance, and I probably do too (hence, a blog), so I guess I can't hate upon that. Do your thang nerd magazine, do your thang.
Thursday, August 7
August O.C.D. #5: NFL Self-hyping
Being I made it through the whole year of self-important dork internet football-related updates, and being the Redskins had such a strangely satisfying end to last year's season (up until Gibbs retired again, as I expected he would, and Dan Snyder took about two weeks to fuck up what Gibbs had built back in four years), I am more stoked for the football season than ever, going through my dork mag, and listening to the NFL channel on the Sirius. Well, I was, but I've had technical difficulties with the satellite, and when I called they had me on hold so long, I am being stubborn and hateful and now don't listen to it in the truck (being their bullshit cigarette lighter charger has broken four times in a year and has burned up both my cigarette lighters to where they just blow fuses now) and only the house, at least through the football season, since they have home team broadcasts for everybody, and then I'll revisit it after that.
It seems odd to me that people might actually like baseball so strongly, because my interest in that (as well as the Nascars) is always fleetingly excited, then drops completely come late summer/early fall. And I know this doesn't seem completely obsessive compulsive, but fuck man, I actually look forward to reading the daily Washington Post sports accounts of Redskins camp, and I don't even want to explain how many stupid half-drunken hours I spend looking up team rosters and a bunch of bullshit minutiae for. Shit, I actually spent about four hours one night using my internet welfare dial-up to go through all the minor NAIA and junior college football helmets at The Helmet Project website to find alternative second helmets for some of the NFL teams to use with my stupid rankings bullshit this year. It’s pretty fucking pathetic. But the worst is the fact the other day I was at Best Buy, and since the new Madden is about to come out, last year’s was on sale for ten bucks, which I got, even though I never really fucked with my Madden ‘07 that much to really warrant an ‘08 model. (I find it better to wait three years between Maddens, and immerse myself completely into franchise mode like twenty years down the imaginary road, to where I’m wanting to buy customized Redskins jerseys of fake players because I create these stupid stories in my head about them. Is there Madden game fanfic? I bet there is; every creepy fucking stupid thing you can think of is out there inside these internets.) But when I first hooked it up, I decided to put every team with me in control, reallign all teams geographically, and then do a fantasy draft where I assign players to the pro teams closest to where they played college ball (with in-state allegiances enforce before out-of-state closer cities). All I could really do the first night was the quarterbacks, drafting two per team, with each team having a third on reserve not yet drafted (since you can only draft positional minimums). The best pair was probably Peyton Manning and Jay Cutler at Tennessee or Brett Favre and Eli Manning in New Orleans, and funniest to imagine was Vince Young and Jamarcus Russell in Houston. Oh yeah, Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart in San Diego would probably be good too, but I think Carson Palmer’s a fucking fruit. I actually probably don’t like that guy even more than stupid Peyton Manning, and I’m not even sure why.
Anyways, stupid NFL football’s all soaking up in my brain lately, to the point I listened to half the Chicago Bears/Kansas City Chiefs preseason game on the radio tonight. That’s pretty bad, and pointless.
It seems odd to me that people might actually like baseball so strongly, because my interest in that (as well as the Nascars) is always fleetingly excited, then drops completely come late summer/early fall. And I know this doesn't seem completely obsessive compulsive, but fuck man, I actually look forward to reading the daily Washington Post sports accounts of Redskins camp, and I don't even want to explain how many stupid half-drunken hours I spend looking up team rosters and a bunch of bullshit minutiae for. Shit, I actually spent about four hours one night using my internet welfare dial-up to go through all the minor NAIA and junior college football helmets at The Helmet Project website to find alternative second helmets for some of the NFL teams to use with my stupid rankings bullshit this year. It’s pretty fucking pathetic. But the worst is the fact the other day I was at Best Buy, and since the new Madden is about to come out, last year’s was on sale for ten bucks, which I got, even though I never really fucked with my Madden ‘07 that much to really warrant an ‘08 model. (I find it better to wait three years between Maddens, and immerse myself completely into franchise mode like twenty years down the imaginary road, to where I’m wanting to buy customized Redskins jerseys of fake players because I create these stupid stories in my head about them. Is there Madden game fanfic? I bet there is; every creepy fucking stupid thing you can think of is out there inside these internets.) But when I first hooked it up, I decided to put every team with me in control, reallign all teams geographically, and then do a fantasy draft where I assign players to the pro teams closest to where they played college ball (with in-state allegiances enforce before out-of-state closer cities). All I could really do the first night was the quarterbacks, drafting two per team, with each team having a third on reserve not yet drafted (since you can only draft positional minimums). The best pair was probably Peyton Manning and Jay Cutler at Tennessee or Brett Favre and Eli Manning in New Orleans, and funniest to imagine was Vince Young and Jamarcus Russell in Houston. Oh yeah, Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart in San Diego would probably be good too, but I think Carson Palmer’s a fucking fruit. I actually probably don’t like that guy even more than stupid Peyton Manning, and I’m not even sure why.
Anyways, stupid NFL football’s all soaking up in my brain lately, to the point I listened to half the Chicago Bears/Kansas City Chiefs preseason game on the radio tonight. That’s pretty bad, and pointless.
MNZ: Boar Hunter January/February 2007
This was another Scottsville Library free bin hook-up, and sadly the free magazine bin has taken a step back from the pit of a piece of furniture full of printed matter to two hokey columns with a single milk crate on top of each. I sort of understand the thinking, as no one really respected the free bin, dumping a bunch of shit in it, and I actually tried to police it at times, hauling off crap that had been in there forever that no one was ever gonna want, but I guess it wasn't to be forever. I can see the current format dying a slow death over the next couple of months and the free magazine exchange bin disappearing forever. I will be a sad motherfucker on that day.
Anyways, I really couldn't pass up a magazine called Boar Hunter, because it's amazing to me when I find mags like this to something I would consider an extreme fringe element. I guess the Prairie dog hunter magazines I found a couple years back are even stranger, but still an entire publication dedicated to hunting wild pigs. Some interesting asides: referring to hunting as "harvesting" will always make me laugh, and the in-depth analysis of wild boar damage to farms to suggest that hunters should be more proactive in killing more fucking wild pigs was pretty funny too. Apparently the key is to kill a few gilts a year, as gilts are female pigs not yet being sexually mature long enough to have dropped a load of piglets on the earth's surface to eat up shit in a wild and undomesticated manner, much to the chagrin of the more domestic-minded. Litter size increases with each litter, so the quicker you kill a gilt, the quicker we stop this terrible menace to property owners. They had tracking devices on wild boars and GPS data on how far the average one roamed to forage and all sorts of in-depth scientifical nonsense to help prove we should shoot more of them fat little wild fuckers. And all the pictures in the mag are of hunters, no little Poindexter types to be seen, so as I read all this supposed data, I didn't imagine some professorial type's voice... I heard it in the voice of the short, squat redneck down the road whose name I don't remember but he remembers mine because I helped him fix the belt on his truck one time outside of my house in the snow and he's actually referred me to people for painting work. I bet he's a Shifflett. Everyone around here I don't know is a Shifflett. Thousands of them, all refugees from the government building the Blue Ridge Parkway and forcing all these hillbillies down into the valley lands of Virginia.
Wednesday, August 6
MNZ: Oxford American No. 60
This is the Home Issue, and I have to admit that the Oxford American has become one of my favorites. I guess it’s pseudo-intellectual bent towards southern-based retarded minutiae fits my alcohol-depleted mind pretty well. There was plenty of good dumb shit to read in here if you were an English major in college and work in a restaurant nowadays, plus a neat black-and-white pictorial from some dude who takes pictures of long abandoned and neglected southern mansions, including some from small towns near where I was growed up. I wish I had known; it would’ve been somewhere new to drag a couch in and party. The place I went to school in for fifth grade was abandoned by the time I was in like 11th grade, so we used to get all fucked up in there at night. We had one room in the basement with a fire barrel (and vent going out an upper window) plus like a four foot tall graffiti mural of a Milwaukee’s Best can. Place was awesome. My boy Chuck was super-tripping on four hits of blue windowpane one night and busted out a bunch of windows though, and that brought the heat. This chick who I used to kinda put my fingers inside of from time to time, her dad was a state troop, and she gave me the word to avoid that place, and I did, and it got busted one night, and we never partied there ever again. Now it’s some bullshit office or home to an asphalt company or some dumb shit. Every time I pass it I think about fingering high school girls.
My wife was going to bed and saw over my shoulder that "fingering high school girls" line and gave me the browbeat. On one hand, most anyone who knows me should know not to ever take me completely seriously (unless I'm being serious), but on the other hand, I have three daughters, and I'm not trying to perpetuate that bullshit line of thinking. Hell, I don't even really think that way. I mean, I do think about sex most all the time, which is normal for guys, but we have to pretend we don't think like that, because female mind attaches more emoticons to sexual thoughts, whereas for men it's as easy as breathing, and there's no attachment to it either. Just because we think of sex with someone or something, it has very little relevance to whether we'll act on that thought. Still, having my wife read that made me feel all fucked up, like I'm some sort of sexual degenerate, which I'm not. At least I don't think I am. I just write things that pop into my head, and they don't necessarily make truthful logic. But I guess they go out there and some dumbass will read them and put weight into words some random asshole they'll never meet wrote inside the internets. And then you'll grow up and end up being part of the dating pool that attempts to get down with my offspring.
Basically, high school girl or not, we all are fucked. I know this and attempt to ease that painful knowledge by writing retarded shit out in typeable fonts. One day, everyone I know will see all the dumb shit I secretly write and nobody will ever talk to me again. I'll live out my days as a drunken hobo with more and more bad tattoos as the years grow by, until eventually getting crippled to death in south Texas in some bullshit involving me trying to talk Spanish at some cranked up Mexicans.
PP: Part Twenty Four
A guy in Columbia fixes up dump trucks and this was sitting there so I snapped it. I ended up having a long conversation with an old black guy about dump trucks and a forest fire in Buckingham that had smoked up our day that day. Some boy had died trying to fight the fire and old uneducated black men and younger educated white guys alike agreed that it was a shame. At least I agreed with the guy just to ease my way back on down the road. His wife came out of whoever she was visiting real quickly and looked at me as if I was about to commit some sort of affront to her husband. Columbia is a little town that was wiped out by floods decades ago and is a lot like the Bottoms in In the Heat of the Night, meaning there's not much there, but what is there has a high ratio of black people and hard drugs.
A little lounger sitting along a gravel road right near Scottsville downtown, on a car lot where some old guy thinks people have absolutely nowhere else on earth to buy a car, so he charges like double regular price. A few years back when we were looking for a family Subaru (my wife coveted that shit), he had one we looked at, but his price was crazy. We bought one in Amherst and have run that piece of shit to death. (By the way, Subarus - at least our's - are worthless electronically, which sucks because regular dudes like me can't fix electronics since I'm not a robot.) That shitty aqua-green Subaru is still sitting on that old guy's lot. He also has a cardboard cutout of someone peeking out of the window of the sales trailer, as if that was gonna scare somebody off who really wanted to steal his ragtag crap.
A second camper home, this one with nice '70s colorings, a grizzly bear spare tire cover, and a Jesus pseudo-license plate. I would have mad crazy nasty sex in a thing like this, but then it wouldn't look so nice, because after a couple of months of my swirl of chaos, the shit would be all fucked up and half-broke. People like me can't have nice things.
Hot rods in the Farmville Christmas Parade. They did weird cobblestones right at the courthouse in Farmville, which changed the dynamic of the parade. A few years back there was a hot rod Nova with a crucifixion scene on the hood, and the church was handing out Jack Chick pamphlets. Nothing like that this past year, but I fired up the Polaroid on a warm Sunday in December to capture a couple of hot rods, parading down Main Street, in honor of capitalist frenzy.
NFL: Preview of Impending Previews
One of my most amazing accomplishments of the past couple of years is making it through the entire 2007 NFL season doing my weekly updates ranking a quarter of the teams each time. I even made it through the playoffs! Well, of course, this has given me confidence that I can do it again, and I have listened to enough of the NFL channel on Sirius satellite to pretend I know what the fuck I'm talking about, so I will be doing it again. I had briefly started a football blog where, ideally, it was gonna be 32 dudes, one for each NFL team, all of whom were rabid fans of their one team, and all anybody did was post about their favorite team. But like only one other guy regularly posted, and instead of just posting about his team, he posted about all sorts of NFL shit, so I lost interest. It's out there somewhere though. Google "armchair linebacker", which I thought was a killer ass name for a blog.
Anyways, through the preseason, I will be dropping previews of teams in batches of eight (meaning one a week), to sort of get into the habit of doing this again, and to get us all hyped the fuck up for the footballs to start bouncing awry. What I am gonna do right now is lay out what I'll be laying out in those previews, and then I'll tell you how I do my rankings, which are like half Rainman genius and half hobo retarded. In fact, in explaining the previews, I will embolden the text just like I will next week when we get to know the lowest quarter of the NFL.
PERTINENT DATA: This will be the team's record last year, as well as the preseason odds they will win this upcoming Super Bowl. My initial 1 through 32 rankings have nothing to do with any prognostication on my part; I simply go by the Vegas odds, since they have old Jews whose nephews actually book the NFL, and they really know what's going on, more so than some half-literate hillbilly from southside Virginia ever could. But I will use their data as a springboard for observations.
ALL-TIME GREAT: That title is slightly misleading, because it's not so much the All-Time Great of the franchise in a traditional sense, so much as what one former player personifies the positive football aspects of that team to me personally. I am heavily into the balance of yin and yang, permeating all existence. But I am also into crazy North Dallas Forty hunting party style fuckers having and instilling character. All too often when people get into eastern religions, they get all organic vegetable and sterile about it all, as it's not so much they believe in the different philosophy as they are weak and just hope everybody can get along so they don't get their asses kicked. I believe in eastern philosophies, but I also believe ass kickings need to be doled out at times. To myself as well. There are times when I feel out of balance and overpowered by my ego and those are good times to go out, get drunk, and pick fights with big dudes, who will kick my ass, and thus put me back in check. Balance. So basically, the All-Time Great will personify the positive side, according to my mutant belief system, of the team he represents.
TEAM HOSS: Man, I don't think I ever use that word "hoss" at all. But I couldn't really think of a different word, so I guess I'm going with a football talking head cliche on that one. But basically it's the current player on the team roster who most personifies that same positive bullshit I was just talking about on the All-Time level.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: I was gonna say "LOL-TIME" or something along those lines, but that seemed so internetty of me. I was just making fun of the dude who works for me because he's always texting people when I have to go in the store, and we were talking about how people my age don't text, we just look like hipster fuckwads. We made fun of people typing "LOL" together, but then I said, "Don't front, you know you type that shit." And he laughed and said, "Yeah, actually I just did." So let's just call it All-Time Suck Ass, since "lol" ain't from my generation. (Maybe I should make it something about PBRs, to further tie it to my generation or fuckfaces.) The Suck Ass is the negative opposite (or balancing power) to the All-Time Great's positive influence on the franchise. All of these things are subjective, so if you expect science, you should probably google "expanding earth" instead.
TEAM ASS: Oh yeah, that's why I did "hoss", because hoss and ass sound alike, and are two words old farmer wannabes who sit inside the country store at the end of the next road over would call animals as they sat in the air conditioner beside the lottery stand all fucking afternoon long. Shouldn't they be fixing tractors or pulling calves out of heifer ass or something? Obviously, the Team Ass is the opposite of the Team Hoss, and is the team's current most piece of shit dude.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Originally, I was gonna do Jock Geniuses, for super coaches, except it's hard to give a fuck about that many coaches. So what I'll be covering with Team Trendsetter is the one player or coach or managerial type or whoever that mostly holds the future of the team in his (or her... hahaha, yeah right) hands.
SENIOR PLAYER: Very simply, this will be the guy on the team with the longest continuous tenure there. Not the oldest guy, but the one dude who's been on that team without leaving for the longest amount of time.
THE RUDY: This will be a guy who wasn't drafted out of college. I'm aiming to find guys on each team who weren't drafted out of college and came to this team originally as a free agent trying to make the squad, but some teams don't have that, so I'll wing it in those instances. Mostly, these are long snappers and special teams linebackers and fullbacks - very blue collar positions. Guys who come from nowhere and make hundreds of thousands of dollars to destroy their knees for a couple of years. Also, I would like to note that I have never actually watched the movie Rudy. It always seemed gay to me, because I don't like Notre Dame football, nor do I like little homo-looking dudes named Rudy whose one ambition in life is to play Notre Dame football. I accidentally watched like ten minutes one time when I had cable and lived in Richmond, but once I realized what it was, I changed the channel.
FORMER HURRICANE: I've done lists like this, or in similar manners, for a couple of years now, either inside the internets or for zines I did or didn't do. And the Miami Hurricanes have been the pre-eminent power when it comes to making burly NFL players for a long time. But honestly, when I was going through my Lindy's NFL handbook this year, I realized USC is probably about to pass them. Which is sad, because USC players lack the thuggish pride of Miami players. There's no Luther Campbell-type throwing stripper parties for USC players. And Pete Carroll is pretty discreet about paying and privileging his players, unlike Miami's heydays. So this might be my last run with the Hurricanes, and next year I might have to refocus on stupid boring ass USC Trojans.
VIRGINIA BOY: I'm from Virginia, where ain't shit to do but lounge, and give that weed smoke a puff and them cold beers a pound. I was born in V.A., raised in V.A., and when I die, I'll probably die in V.A. Virginia is a funny state because it's easily the least southern of any former southern state, and it would be a complete embarrassment to hail from if we weren't lucky enough to have Maryland right to the north of us, which is like the most personality-less state in the union (which I think means America). But I was raised, for better or worse, by my drunken father to have Virginia pride ("go an hour one way, you're in the mountains; go an hour the other way, you're at the ocean," he'd say), so I do, sort of. The Virginia Boy will be the most noteworthy (in my mind) player on a team with Virginia collegiate ties.
WILD SAMOAN: I read some crazy article about how kids in Samoa don't have regular high school rules, so they play football year-round on ragged fields with volcano rocks and shit, and that's how they get ultra-tough and crazy and awesome. This is also why there's so many damn Samoans in the NFL now. The Wild Samoan is called that because professional wrestling taught me that just twenty years ago, all Samoan people were primitive, violent, and wild-haired. But in the past two decades, rap music has taught them to braid their hair and be gangsta as fuck. This ethnic combination of gangsta/primitive is very beneficial for the hard-hitting sport of the football. So most teams have a Samoan nowadays. If one doesn't, most likely I will list somebody with a wacky traditional African name instead for this spot.
THE ICKY: This is the guy with the funniest name on the team. Funny names are great because they help us laugh at other people in a hurtful way over things they have little control over. Named for Icky Woods, except his name might be Ickey, but I don't feel like looking it up. I know how to do his dance, kind of, so that's enough for me. He wouldn't give a fuck if I knew how to spell his retarded ass name, and he probably couldn't spell mine either.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: This is a sub-set of The Icky, listing someone on the roster with a name that sounds like he might've been a rich businessman during America's Industrial Age. Maybe there will be accompanying fantasy scenarios where I school you on a franchise city's local industry, but more likely I will just say something stupid and leave it at that.
FANTASY JERSEY: I love football jerseys, mostly because I never had any as a kid since we was broke. My wife and moms have bought me like three Redskins jerseys (no active players though - a #28 Darrell Green, a #56 Lavar Arrington, and a custom #72 Conmack), and then I found this store that sells like misprinted or fucked up pimp ass clothes, perfect for balling on a budget. So I usually get two or three jerseys each year, missing a number on one side or with a slight kink in the edge stitch or something. Last year, the NFL jerseys were undesireable, so I ended up getting a powder blue UCLA Bruins one and a shamrock green Notre Dame one. I hate Notre Dame though, but I sure do love bright green. It's funny when I wear that shit and people think I care. Anyways, this will be the jersey, were I indiscriminantly rich and wasted money on overpriced NFL merchandise, I would get related to each team.
So that's how all this shit will break down. And I was gonna explain my mathematical method for devising the rankings, but it's too much trouble. Basically, the higher ranked a team is you beat, the better it is for you. And road wins are like double compared to home wins. Plus some other shit, but nothing complicated. Fuck, if it was complicated, I wouldn't be able to keep up with it. It never involves a calculator, nor conjecture, so it is what it is. So if you read these and you're team ends up ranked low and shit, don't complain to me. It's out of my hands.
Anyways, through the preseason, I will be dropping previews of teams in batches of eight (meaning one a week), to sort of get into the habit of doing this again, and to get us all hyped the fuck up for the footballs to start bouncing awry. What I am gonna do right now is lay out what I'll be laying out in those previews, and then I'll tell you how I do my rankings, which are like half Rainman genius and half hobo retarded. In fact, in explaining the previews, I will embolden the text just like I will next week when we get to know the lowest quarter of the NFL.
PERTINENT DATA: This will be the team's record last year, as well as the preseason odds they will win this upcoming Super Bowl. My initial 1 through 32 rankings have nothing to do with any prognostication on my part; I simply go by the Vegas odds, since they have old Jews whose nephews actually book the NFL, and they really know what's going on, more so than some half-literate hillbilly from southside Virginia ever could. But I will use their data as a springboard for observations.
ALL-TIME GREAT: That title is slightly misleading, because it's not so much the All-Time Great of the franchise in a traditional sense, so much as what one former player personifies the positive football aspects of that team to me personally. I am heavily into the balance of yin and yang, permeating all existence. But I am also into crazy North Dallas Forty hunting party style fuckers having and instilling character. All too often when people get into eastern religions, they get all organic vegetable and sterile about it all, as it's not so much they believe in the different philosophy as they are weak and just hope everybody can get along so they don't get their asses kicked. I believe in eastern philosophies, but I also believe ass kickings need to be doled out at times. To myself as well. There are times when I feel out of balance and overpowered by my ego and those are good times to go out, get drunk, and pick fights with big dudes, who will kick my ass, and thus put me back in check. Balance. So basically, the All-Time Great will personify the positive side, according to my mutant belief system, of the team he represents.
TEAM HOSS: Man, I don't think I ever use that word "hoss" at all. But I couldn't really think of a different word, so I guess I'm going with a football talking head cliche on that one. But basically it's the current player on the team roster who most personifies that same positive bullshit I was just talking about on the All-Time level.
ALL-TIME SUCK ASS: I was gonna say "LOL-TIME" or something along those lines, but that seemed so internetty of me. I was just making fun of the dude who works for me because he's always texting people when I have to go in the store, and we were talking about how people my age don't text, we just look like hipster fuckwads. We made fun of people typing "LOL" together, but then I said, "Don't front, you know you type that shit." And he laughed and said, "Yeah, actually I just did." So let's just call it All-Time Suck Ass, since "lol" ain't from my generation. (Maybe I should make it something about PBRs, to further tie it to my generation or fuckfaces.) The Suck Ass is the negative opposite (or balancing power) to the All-Time Great's positive influence on the franchise. All of these things are subjective, so if you expect science, you should probably google "expanding earth" instead.
TEAM ASS: Oh yeah, that's why I did "hoss", because hoss and ass sound alike, and are two words old farmer wannabes who sit inside the country store at the end of the next road over would call animals as they sat in the air conditioner beside the lottery stand all fucking afternoon long. Shouldn't they be fixing tractors or pulling calves out of heifer ass or something? Obviously, the Team Ass is the opposite of the Team Hoss, and is the team's current most piece of shit dude.
TEAM TRENDSETTER: Originally, I was gonna do Jock Geniuses, for super coaches, except it's hard to give a fuck about that many coaches. So what I'll be covering with Team Trendsetter is the one player or coach or managerial type or whoever that mostly holds the future of the team in his (or her... hahaha, yeah right) hands.
SENIOR PLAYER: Very simply, this will be the guy on the team with the longest continuous tenure there. Not the oldest guy, but the one dude who's been on that team without leaving for the longest amount of time.
THE RUDY: This will be a guy who wasn't drafted out of college. I'm aiming to find guys on each team who weren't drafted out of college and came to this team originally as a free agent trying to make the squad, but some teams don't have that, so I'll wing it in those instances. Mostly, these are long snappers and special teams linebackers and fullbacks - very blue collar positions. Guys who come from nowhere and make hundreds of thousands of dollars to destroy their knees for a couple of years. Also, I would like to note that I have never actually watched the movie Rudy. It always seemed gay to me, because I don't like Notre Dame football, nor do I like little homo-looking dudes named Rudy whose one ambition in life is to play Notre Dame football. I accidentally watched like ten minutes one time when I had cable and lived in Richmond, but once I realized what it was, I changed the channel.
FORMER HURRICANE: I've done lists like this, or in similar manners, for a couple of years now, either inside the internets or for zines I did or didn't do. And the Miami Hurricanes have been the pre-eminent power when it comes to making burly NFL players for a long time. But honestly, when I was going through my Lindy's NFL handbook this year, I realized USC is probably about to pass them. Which is sad, because USC players lack the thuggish pride of Miami players. There's no Luther Campbell-type throwing stripper parties for USC players. And Pete Carroll is pretty discreet about paying and privileging his players, unlike Miami's heydays. So this might be my last run with the Hurricanes, and next year I might have to refocus on stupid boring ass USC Trojans.
VIRGINIA BOY: I'm from Virginia, where ain't shit to do but lounge, and give that weed smoke a puff and them cold beers a pound. I was born in V.A., raised in V.A., and when I die, I'll probably die in V.A. Virginia is a funny state because it's easily the least southern of any former southern state, and it would be a complete embarrassment to hail from if we weren't lucky enough to have Maryland right to the north of us, which is like the most personality-less state in the union (which I think means America). But I was raised, for better or worse, by my drunken father to have Virginia pride ("go an hour one way, you're in the mountains; go an hour the other way, you're at the ocean," he'd say), so I do, sort of. The Virginia Boy will be the most noteworthy (in my mind) player on a team with Virginia collegiate ties.
WILD SAMOAN: I read some crazy article about how kids in Samoa don't have regular high school rules, so they play football year-round on ragged fields with volcano rocks and shit, and that's how they get ultra-tough and crazy and awesome. This is also why there's so many damn Samoans in the NFL now. The Wild Samoan is called that because professional wrestling taught me that just twenty years ago, all Samoan people were primitive, violent, and wild-haired. But in the past two decades, rap music has taught them to braid their hair and be gangsta as fuck. This ethnic combination of gangsta/primitive is very beneficial for the hard-hitting sport of the football. So most teams have a Samoan nowadays. If one doesn't, most likely I will list somebody with a wacky traditional African name instead for this spot.
THE ICKY: This is the guy with the funniest name on the team. Funny names are great because they help us laugh at other people in a hurtful way over things they have little control over. Named for Icky Woods, except his name might be Ickey, but I don't feel like looking it up. I know how to do his dance, kind of, so that's enough for me. He wouldn't give a fuck if I knew how to spell his retarded ass name, and he probably couldn't spell mine either.
INDUSTRIAL OVERLORD: This is a sub-set of The Icky, listing someone on the roster with a name that sounds like he might've been a rich businessman during America's Industrial Age. Maybe there will be accompanying fantasy scenarios where I school you on a franchise city's local industry, but more likely I will just say something stupid and leave it at that.
FANTASY JERSEY: I love football jerseys, mostly because I never had any as a kid since we was broke. My wife and moms have bought me like three Redskins jerseys (no active players though - a #28 Darrell Green, a #56 Lavar Arrington, and a custom #72 Conmack), and then I found this store that sells like misprinted or fucked up pimp ass clothes, perfect for balling on a budget. So I usually get two or three jerseys each year, missing a number on one side or with a slight kink in the edge stitch or something. Last year, the NFL jerseys were undesireable, so I ended up getting a powder blue UCLA Bruins one and a shamrock green Notre Dame one. I hate Notre Dame though, but I sure do love bright green. It's funny when I wear that shit and people think I care. Anyways, this will be the jersey, were I indiscriminantly rich and wasted money on overpriced NFL merchandise, I would get related to each team.
So that's how all this shit will break down. And I was gonna explain my mathematical method for devising the rankings, but it's too much trouble. Basically, the higher ranked a team is you beat, the better it is for you. And road wins are like double compared to home wins. Plus some other shit, but nothing complicated. Fuck, if it was complicated, I wouldn't be able to keep up with it. It never involves a calculator, nor conjecture, so it is what it is. So if you read these and you're team ends up ranked low and shit, don't complain to me. It's out of my hands.
Monthly O.C.D. Index Intro
So I, like all of you, am bedazzled by seven million myriad ways to waste my life. I used to have sharp focus, and I think I still kinda do, but I tend to get all obsessive over retarded things and focus so intently on that one thing that I abandon all the other stuff in my life, as well as the more important lasting creative endeavors I could be working on. But whatever man, I'd rather waste my life than not live my life. Or something.
Not really. I often wish I had better focus on certain things instead of this laser beam puppy dog mind that just shoots at specific things for quick blasts of indulgence. But I'm not alone. Shit, the internet is pretty much based on very in-depth analysis of the most minute aspects of life or pop culture or olden day nonsense or whatever. So what I'm going to do, monthly, hopefully around the first week, is start laying out my top five obsessive compulsive indulgences of recent note, for you to enjoy how reflicted my mind be, but also thinking of this blog as something my children can look at and be completely embarrassed about ten years from now, detailing my ups and downs with all the nonsense that swirled around them in their formative years. It will either bring a smile to their face at best, or help them get through their inner conflicts at worst. But it will be here. I will start tomorrow. I'm basically telling myself that, or I'd like to think that. There's a strange dichotomy to doing this blog where I like to think nobody at all ever looks at it, but I know that like a handful of people regularly look at it. So it's hard to pretend you're not there because I know you are, but most of the world has no clue.
Whatever. Too much thought. The weed be clouding my visions.
Not really. I often wish I had better focus on certain things instead of this laser beam puppy dog mind that just shoots at specific things for quick blasts of indulgence. But I'm not alone. Shit, the internet is pretty much based on very in-depth analysis of the most minute aspects of life or pop culture or olden day nonsense or whatever. So what I'm going to do, monthly, hopefully around the first week, is start laying out my top five obsessive compulsive indulgences of recent note, for you to enjoy how reflicted my mind be, but also thinking of this blog as something my children can look at and be completely embarrassed about ten years from now, detailing my ups and downs with all the nonsense that swirled around them in their formative years. It will either bring a smile to their face at best, or help them get through their inner conflicts at worst. But it will be here. I will start tomorrow. I'm basically telling myself that, or I'd like to think that. There's a strange dichotomy to doing this blog where I like to think nobody at all ever looks at it, but I know that like a handful of people regularly look at it. So it's hard to pretend you're not there because I know you are, but most of the world has no clue.
Whatever. Too much thought. The weed be clouding my visions.
Homemade Song of the Week: "Still Gonna Have Music"
I'm gonna start upping one song a week from the vast archives of retarded pseudo-hip hop/alt.country bullshit me and my wacky crew of whiteboys be making along the back roads of Virginia. Actually, it's not as wack as that sounds... just dudes doing some shit they enjoy doing, no delusions of grandeur or even desire for blowjobs from college town sluts.
I figured I'd start it off with one of my favorite Prolo songs. Prolo is one of the two (I guess three now, actually) groups I'm in, all of which are basically two dudes. Prolo is me and Boogie Brown, who is one of my oldest holmes, and we actually made very generic boom bap rappitty musics all the way back in college in the early '90s. I often wish I had that shit still, because there were a couple of songs that were great, and it's hard to imagine rapping that fast nowadays. Anyways, "Still Have Music" is off our self-released Dread Headed Stranger/Long Haired Lounger CD from last year, which was a step towards realizing our ultimate goal of fucked up country/hip hop hybrid, except whenever you say "country and hip hop" together, it usually - and rightfully so by the examples set thus far - conjures up groans and disgust. Fair enough. The song is about making music, and how Brown taught me a lot about music. Before his influence, all I did was write words that rhymed. Back then, I used to buy crazy amounts of records, and I'd make 60 minute tape compilations of samples for Brown to use, just raw samples. There's something about making beats with no knowledge of where a break came from on a record or a song, I think it loosens up the dude making the beat from being stuck in certain things that you get stuck upon when you know all the details of a sample. I dont' even remember what this is from, but I think it's probably one of my stupid Soul Train LPs which were single compilations for the most part, because I vaguely remember hearing that song recently on AM radio or maybe Soultown on the satellite. I don't know. But here is "Still Have Music" by Prolo, which is short for professional loungers, except professional doesn't mean we get paid to do it, just we're very good at it.
I figured I'd start it off with one of my favorite Prolo songs. Prolo is one of the two (I guess three now, actually) groups I'm in, all of which are basically two dudes. Prolo is me and Boogie Brown, who is one of my oldest holmes, and we actually made very generic boom bap rappitty musics all the way back in college in the early '90s. I often wish I had that shit still, because there were a couple of songs that were great, and it's hard to imagine rapping that fast nowadays. Anyways, "Still Have Music" is off our self-released Dread Headed Stranger/Long Haired Lounger CD from last year, which was a step towards realizing our ultimate goal of fucked up country/hip hop hybrid, except whenever you say "country and hip hop" together, it usually - and rightfully so by the examples set thus far - conjures up groans and disgust. Fair enough. The song is about making music, and how Brown taught me a lot about music. Before his influence, all I did was write words that rhymed. Back then, I used to buy crazy amounts of records, and I'd make 60 minute tape compilations of samples for Brown to use, just raw samples. There's something about making beats with no knowledge of where a break came from on a record or a song, I think it loosens up the dude making the beat from being stuck in certain things that you get stuck upon when you know all the details of a sample. I dont' even remember what this is from, but I think it's probably one of my stupid Soul Train LPs which were single compilations for the most part, because I vaguely remember hearing that song recently on AM radio or maybe Soultown on the satellite. I don't know. But here is "Still Have Music" by Prolo, which is short for professional loungers, except professional doesn't mean we get paid to do it, just we're very good at it.
Wednesday, July 23
MNZ: Juxtapoz June 2008
Again, I’m behind, and this was last month’s issue, and not that great of one at that. Too much of the stuff is too much like the other stuff in mag’s like this, so usually I only like about one in four of the featured artists’ shit. Then I’ll read those interviews and hate the fucker for being so artsy, even about street-style art, about what they do. There was a chick in this issue, an ink artist named Lucy McLauchlan, whose stuff was pretty cool, so I made sure to not the read the interview to find reasons to hate her. And for some reason Lil Jon was in this issue. I guess he’s got some art connections, which makes sense from his yearbook photo from way back then.
Tuesday, July 22
MNZ: JPG Issue 16
This one was all about HUMAN IMPACT upon the earth. As always, JPG is good eye fodder, but I don’t understand the whole SAVE THE EARTH mentality that seems to be rifling back up since the inconvenient truths Morgan Freeman warned us about in that one movie are coming true. Fuck it man, we couldn’t blow up this hunk of rock if we wanted to; all we can really do is fuck the surface of it up so bad we no longer survive, which honestly, who cares? We could use a lot of thinning of the herd because, as anyone who interacts with more than five people on a daily basis can attest, there’s far too much fat out there. Trim it down to muscle and cunning and let those who can find a new way. I do find it amusing seeing it summertime and everybody riding around in air conditioned creature comfort in their cars to their houses, fighting ever feeling the burning sunball too much at once. That shit’s gonna give at some point to where our electrical grid is finally blacking out, and there’s gonna be some hot motherfuckers who spent all their time stepping out the temperature-controlled environs on mild days to spray herbicide on everything that wasn’t golf course grass or a planned plant wrapped up in wood chips. Y’all motherfuckers should’ve grown a shade tree.
Monday, July 21
MNZ: Architectural Digest May 2008
Another free bin score, and I was interested because I guess this is one of the standard bearers for fancy fuckers to get ideas for their fancy assed shit from. Seemed weird to me to want to just sit around and look at other people’s really nice shit and want to bite their style. There was one cool as fuck looking house, all simplified stucco walls and painted like banana and orange colors, with a pimp ass pool with a secret ninja access path from the master’s bedroom, but fuck man, I have three kids. You can’t have nice shit like that with three kids, unless you’d rather your Liberian house servant raise the kids elsewhere during the days. I just bought my wife a painting for her birthday and it’s really funny to have shitty trailer park wood panel walls in our living room, a ceiling with buckles at parts from the shitty drywall job someone before us did, and then this $1000 painting on the wall. Ideally, it would be interesting if someone did a fucked up 30/20-something type of magazine like this, but I’m also more than sensible enough to realize that would be ironic hipster douchism times two thousand if it was actually done, nothing but gay dudes showing off their rare Motown singles and Indian grad students (“thank you come again” Indian, not “on the rez” Indian) pimping PBR paraphernalia. By the way, I was in a junk store today and there was a plug in light display of a Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull with the words ON TAP. Like it was big, for bars. First off, I feel bad that Red Bull has been completely forgotten in regards to the Schlitz malt liquor bulls, and will probably not be remembered at all since Red Bull is an energy drink now very popular with frat boys and Britney Spears types. But man, what kind of world existed at some point where they had an actual bar with the Schlitz Malt Liquor bull not only tap, but proudly on tap with a big fucking sign to brag upon it? Holy fuck man. I’m a pretty burly and reckless individual, but I’d think I’d be afraid to go in a joint like that. Or I wouldn’t, hard to say. Honestly, I’d probably go in, sit around uncomfortably while drinking two beers, maybe talk to one dude closest to me at the bar, soak it all in, then leave. None of my pussy friends would ever do that much, so then I’d make up some bullshit bedazzling garnish to it all and let it be part of my steady rotation of stories I tell to show people who I’ve done so much more wackier shit than they could ever hope to do.
Sunday, July 20
MNZ: Blender July 2008
This was in the Scottsville library free bin, and I guess it’s supposed to be a credible musical review magazine so that people who steal music from inside the internets know what’s worth using their bandwidth on. This is a really stupid magazine though - reads stupid, written stupid, stupid pictures - but I guess we live in stupid times. Back page interview was Perez Hilton who, as if I needed another reason to think he was completely useless, goes off on some tangent about how he hates people that glamorize drugs. Just in case there are any young, impressionable teens or tweeners or whatever reading this, if doing drugs makes you less like Perez Hilton, I’m sure your folks have some weed or pills you can pilfer. But if not, just buy cough syrup at the grocery store. In fact, steal it so you don’t hit that four a week limit they put on you. People like Perez Hilton in our modern open-minded society unfortunately feel like, beyond not being fucked with, they have a right to be respected. Now I understand I can’t throw beer bottles at a stupid fuck like him when I pass by on the street - that’s not right and I know it. But I don’t have to respect someone who is obviously, visually intellectually the whole deal, a fucking fool. And when they get to mouthing off about their dumb shit, then I have the right to throw beer bottles at them.
Friday, July 18
RETARDAR: the East African dude who owns the Columbia Country Market
Columbia, Virginia, is like the most dilapidated part of my home county of Fluvanna, Virginia, the one place I’ve seen in my life that most reminds me of the Bottoms in In the Heat of the Night, the series not the movie. There’s tons of drugs going on around there, yet decades ago it was a prominent town that they briefly toyed with moving the capital of the South to during the war. But floods and neglect have left a dilapidated piece of shit town. There’s one little bobo ass store with barred windows, and when I used to have to commute to Richmond a lot, I never really stopped much because his egg sandwiches were expensive and not as good as up the road in George’s Tavern. But last week, I had spent a hot morning fixing some leak I created with my big ass in a fancy lady’s ceramic shingles on her roof over her bedroom, and once I slapped tar on like half the roof, finally the leak was gone, though no logic followed where it was at whatsoever. But she gave me my check, and I figured, “fuck it, it’s lunchtime already, I’m gonna go cash this bama.” Except my wife called me and her car was broke down, so I had to go to Charlottesville’s 29 commercial district and fix the connector to the solenoid like a fucking chump (though I saved a ton of money in doing so). After all that, I finally went to Richmond to cash the check and put it in my bank, and only putting on a shirt to go inside the bank. I often try to spend as much of a day without a shirt on as possible, because to not have to wear a shirt all day long from waking up till bedtime, that’s like vacation but on a regular work day, and something I am proud to do sometimes. (One time, I even left the house without taking a shirt to force the issue.)
Anyways, on the ride home, it was pouring rain like the apocalypse was a-coming, and I wasn’t wearing a shirt and listening to shitty classic rock really loud since my satellite radio was broken, coming into Columbia, and it just felt like a double deuce was appropriate. So I stopped, expecting the old white asshole who had always owned that joint, but instead it was some older, oddly dressed black dude. I got myself a double deuce of the Corona, in honor of the Beatnuts, and went to the counter.
Now I don’t know how long it’s been out there and if it’s been everywhere and I just started noticing, but I came across an article on Hollywood (the Nigerian film industry) a couple months back, and have been wanting to get some ever since. Actually, it was an old issue of Raw Visions and their flour sack paintings from Ghana of Nigerian movies and the weird moral themes contained that got me intrigued. Well, the dude behind the counter was watching an African flick on a portable DVD player, and Galavision style wacky antics, but with really black people was going on. I asked him what it was and he said east African movie, from where he was from. I got confused and said, “Like Nigeria” before my geographic nerdliness kicked in immediately, so I felt like a chump while he tutored me on African geography. I asked him where he got it, and he said the African stores in D.C. had a ton of movies like this. So now I know where to get some Nollywood, although there’s actually a couple of Africa stores in Richmond too, so I should probably check that out before I go to D.C. and the MS-13s chop my hand off with a machete. Still, I find it odd that African movie meme triggered in my head a while back, then was fulfilled with the wacky dude who for some reason owns the country store in shit ass Columbia, Virginia, now. Perhaps this has all happened before and I am a monarch slave about to open up into whatever I was pre-programmed to do.
Anyways, on the ride home, it was pouring rain like the apocalypse was a-coming, and I wasn’t wearing a shirt and listening to shitty classic rock really loud since my satellite radio was broken, coming into Columbia, and it just felt like a double deuce was appropriate. So I stopped, expecting the old white asshole who had always owned that joint, but instead it was some older, oddly dressed black dude. I got myself a double deuce of the Corona, in honor of the Beatnuts, and went to the counter.
Now I don’t know how long it’s been out there and if it’s been everywhere and I just started noticing, but I came across an article on Hollywood (the Nigerian film industry) a couple months back, and have been wanting to get some ever since. Actually, it was an old issue of Raw Visions and their flour sack paintings from Ghana of Nigerian movies and the weird moral themes contained that got me intrigued. Well, the dude behind the counter was watching an African flick on a portable DVD player, and Galavision style wacky antics, but with really black people was going on. I asked him what it was and he said east African movie, from where he was from. I got confused and said, “Like Nigeria” before my geographic nerdliness kicked in immediately, so I felt like a chump while he tutored me on African geography. I asked him where he got it, and he said the African stores in D.C. had a ton of movies like this. So now I know where to get some Nollywood, although there’s actually a couple of Africa stores in Richmond too, so I should probably check that out before I go to D.C. and the MS-13s chop my hand off with a machete. Still, I find it odd that African movie meme triggered in my head a while back, then was fulfilled with the wacky dude who for some reason owns the country store in shit ass Columbia, Virginia, now. Perhaps this has all happened before and I am a monarch slave about to open up into whatever I was pre-programmed to do.
MNZ: New York Magazine April 7, 2008
I have been saving a big stack of stupid magazines of note and completely unnoteworthy but in my possession for whenever the internets bloggish pussy enticed me into wasting little chunks of my life again. This was one, which had a big stupid story about how some kids in a high school talked a bunch of shit on Facebook about their teacher, and all the messy bullshit that entailed. I have never even logged onto Facebook as it seems to me to be the new Myspace in the “pink is the new black” analogy, and Myspace is one of the stupidest fucking things I’ve ever waited to upload bullshit on my rural dial-up internet welfare machine.
There was also an article on the New York Mets starting rotation for this year, which was hilarious. You know, as much as I hate baseball and baseball players and baseball fans, it’s really hard to not like Pedro Martinez. Manny Ramirez too. That must’ve been some team when those two and David Ortiz were all kicking it together in the locker room… chicken fights and jobu sacrifices and midget mascots galore. It’s enough to help me forget what a bunch of stupid cockfuckers Red Sox fans usually are. Whenever I see some dumbass walk by in the grocery store (in fucking central Virginia) wearing a Boston hat - and it’s always the uber-fan alternate red hat with blue B on it - I know that a complete fucking asshole is walking past. Used to be I would think hateful things about them, but I’m mostly a peaceable man at this stage in my life, and I’m sure they’ll get it all back in spades when they raise their kids to be stupid fuckasses like themselves.
Saturday, July 12
RETARDAR: White Halfwit Town Sweeper
I have a special magnetism called Retardar that draws me into odd interactions with other people. I am not sure what it comes from, but it's always been a curse/blessing on my life. Well, I was painting this building on the main intersection of my hometown, and seven thousand people a day would ask me if the store was opening again, but it wasn't. After a while, I'd do that old man thing where I'd go, "If I had a dollar for everybody that asked me that, I could open the store myself." If I had a dollar for every time stupid cliches pissed me off after passing my lips, I'd have hellafied Ben Franklins in the bank coffers. Anyways, there's this guy who always is sweeping up around town near the old post office (the hefty white dude not Jesse, if you know the area), and he got to chatting me up. This was before the Chinese earthquake, but after one in Nebraska or somewhere weird like that, asking me if I knew about plate tectonics and all. He said, "If God starts shifting those tectonic plates against each other, it could make a earthquake that could swallow a city the size of Dayton, Ohio. What are we gonna do if God starts doing that?" And I was intrigued by his combination of belief in god with an understanding of science, and how they combined together, and though he seems to most probably like a dim-witted big guy from Of Mice and Men type town character, I was glad to talk him up, though I was also ready to break the conversation so I could finish loading my ladders and go home. I got all my shit strapped down, climbed in the truck, yelled at him across the parking lot a friendly, "Take it easy." He raised his hand into a thumb's up sign at me, very friendly like. I waved back, but he jabbed the thumb's up towards me emphatically. So I gave him a thumb's up back. I think that's the first time I've done a thumb's up since I was like six years old. It was empowering.
Thursday, July 10
RETARDAR: Hippie Vagrant
[This also is from an unpublished zine from like ten months ago.]
The next day, I had band practice for our big first show of the stupid rap group that weekend, and I knew I'd want a giant cold beer to hold in my hands like a microphone as I ripped through the 3000 lines of handwritten text I'd memorized in the past two weeks, so I dug together $3.50 in quarters from the floor of the truck, for a pair of Miller forties, ideally. Drove the wife's car since my truck's service engine light was harshing my life buzz, and of course, there was no gas in it, so I was gonna have to put the drinking quarters into the oil industry's coffers instead of my decrepit shriveled liver. But then it occurred to me that our lone credit card's finance charges hadn't went through, so even though it was near the limit, there was that brief touch of under-limit to use on gasohol so I could use my quarters for gassing myself up. Which I did, but since the only gas pumps in Palmyra are full serve (meaning over-priced) run by a big fat dude who always acts like I'm some sort of freakish albino not-from-around-here monster (it's the dreads) where if you had to pay with a credit card, he'd grumpily waddle his way into the tiny office area of his establishment (one of them old school gas joints with the single pair of pumps under an overhang that comes off the front of the building), sighs as he sits behind the thrift store desk and runs through your card, internally cursing the five percent he's losing because I wasn't from around there, then struggles to get up after it takes nine minutes to process through his phone line, on and on and on and none of it comforting. So I rode to Zion's Crossroads to the big interstate intersectional trucks top gas joint by the Wal-Mart distribution center, knowing that even if I couldn't buy any, I'd get to sniff at those lovely fried chicken thighs. Got my gas, and knew I could even get my forties on the credit card, but only got one because buying ten bucks of gas and two forties on a credit card seemed a little too scummy a Thursday evening thing for me to do that week, even if it technically was Little Friday. Some road dog ragged straggly haired hippie dude was sitting there with a patchwork backpack, flashing me a peace sign (which always makes me laugh; who the fuck believes in peace anymore after all the diseased brains we know exist parade around us all day long?). As I walked to the store, he said, "Can you spare any change, brutha?" I said, "Catch me on the way out, man." Got my forty and gas squared away, at least until the finance charges come due over the course of the next nine years of my life, came out and went to the car and got the dude the $3.50 in quarters, figuring they were probably gonna be drinking quarters for him too (or maybe smoking quarters if he feared the local authorities of central Virginia). He told me he had just come from a Rainbow gathering up in Maine, hung with a bunch of college kids who took him back to New York City and styled him out in bars and all, but he had to roll because he, like any sensible person, figured out New York was straight devilry. I asked where he was going. "California." I told him to tell California I said hey, and then he asked if I had any nuggets.
The next day, I had band practice for our big first show of the stupid rap group that weekend, and I knew I'd want a giant cold beer to hold in my hands like a microphone as I ripped through the 3000 lines of handwritten text I'd memorized in the past two weeks, so I dug together $3.50 in quarters from the floor of the truck, for a pair of Miller forties, ideally. Drove the wife's car since my truck's service engine light was harshing my life buzz, and of course, there was no gas in it, so I was gonna have to put the drinking quarters into the oil industry's coffers instead of my decrepit shriveled liver. But then it occurred to me that our lone credit card's finance charges hadn't went through, so even though it was near the limit, there was that brief touch of under-limit to use on gasohol so I could use my quarters for gassing myself up. Which I did, but since the only gas pumps in Palmyra are full serve (meaning over-priced) run by a big fat dude who always acts like I'm some sort of freakish albino not-from-around-here monster (it's the dreads) where if you had to pay with a credit card, he'd grumpily waddle his way into the tiny office area of his establishment (one of them old school gas joints with the single pair of pumps under an overhang that comes off the front of the building), sighs as he sits behind the thrift store desk and runs through your card, internally cursing the five percent he's losing because I wasn't from around there, then struggles to get up after it takes nine minutes to process through his phone line, on and on and on and none of it comforting. So I rode to Zion's Crossroads to the big interstate intersectional trucks top gas joint by the Wal-Mart distribution center, knowing that even if I couldn't buy any, I'd get to sniff at those lovely fried chicken thighs. Got my gas, and knew I could even get my forties on the credit card, but only got one because buying ten bucks of gas and two forties on a credit card seemed a little too scummy a Thursday evening thing for me to do that week, even if it technically was Little Friday. Some road dog ragged straggly haired hippie dude was sitting there with a patchwork backpack, flashing me a peace sign (which always makes me laugh; who the fuck believes in peace anymore after all the diseased brains we know exist parade around us all day long?). As I walked to the store, he said, "Can you spare any change, brutha?" I said, "Catch me on the way out, man." Got my forty and gas squared away, at least until the finance charges come due over the course of the next nine years of my life, came out and went to the car and got the dude the $3.50 in quarters, figuring they were probably gonna be drinking quarters for him too (or maybe smoking quarters if he feared the local authorities of central Virginia). He told me he had just come from a Rainbow gathering up in Maine, hung with a bunch of college kids who took him back to New York City and styled him out in bars and all, but he had to roll because he, like any sensible person, figured out New York was straight devilry. I asked where he was going. "California." I told him to tell California I said hey, and then he asked if I had any nuggets.
Tuesday, July 8
RETARDAR: The French Winemaker's Assistant
[Actually, this was from like ten months ago and a zine my zine hook-up never remembered to print, so I figured I'd post it up since I wanted to start doing Retardard's on here anyways.]
I have, most of the time, had a strange ability to draw interactions with oddball people in passing, perhaps due to my trustworthy eyes or my naive desire for conversation with people lacking the normal sterilization of personality that 99% of the humans I come in contact with suffer from. Anyways, my retardar, as I've come to affectionately call this ability (or curse) of mine, has been kicking once again, which to me means that I'm making the correct decisions on the direction of my life.
Last week, we had like $45 and I was to spend $30 on groceries at the vegetable store and all, which I did like a rainman on The Price is Right, calculating everything to the quarter dollar. I had thought about blowing the last ten bucks on shit to make hamburgers, but decided against it, going for the responsible long-term fridge-stocking decisions of eggs, butter, that type of stuff. Except the wife is pregnant and craved burgers, that being all the goading I needed to go back to the store to get the necessaries. Usually in this case, I'd go to the Food Lion for the more edible hormone-infested meat products, which is like a 20-minute trip one-way, but that day I decided to go to the IGA in town five minutes away (which is gonna be replaced by one of those Food Lions in the coming months anyways), to buy their half-rancid cow products. Some dude was outside standing by a minivan with jumper cables, looking lost. I asked if he needed a jump and he answered yes in a voice that made me think he might be a gay Mexican. I tried to jump it, but it just clicked, showing his starter was dead. We used broken language to figure out this was his second time his minvan needed jumping that day and I tried to explain it was probably the starter, but he didn't get it. I asked him how far away he lived, he told me 8 kilometers, so I said if he couldn't get someone else to jump it successfully by the time I got done in the store, I'd give him a ride home. No one did, so i did. Turns out he was a French dude working at a local vineyard, really nice guy though I had a hard time understanding him sometimes. But we went to the vineyard, I drove him to the trailer they gave him for free to live in since he was assisting in the making of wines and all. He offered me a bottle and I tried to turn it down, but he insisted. So I took it, which reminds me, it's in the fridge nwo, right next to a big bag of greens I bought at the vegetable store that day. He also asked if I knew where he could get some weed, as he hadn't had weed the whole four months he'd lived in Virginia. But talking to the French dude and being able to help him, it made my day. It made dinner alte, and also the service engine light suddenly flashed on unexplainedly on the way home. But fuck it.
I have, most of the time, had a strange ability to draw interactions with oddball people in passing, perhaps due to my trustworthy eyes or my naive desire for conversation with people lacking the normal sterilization of personality that 99% of the humans I come in contact with suffer from. Anyways, my retardar, as I've come to affectionately call this ability (or curse) of mine, has been kicking once again, which to me means that I'm making the correct decisions on the direction of my life.
Last week, we had like $45 and I was to spend $30 on groceries at the vegetable store and all, which I did like a rainman on The Price is Right, calculating everything to the quarter dollar. I had thought about blowing the last ten bucks on shit to make hamburgers, but decided against it, going for the responsible long-term fridge-stocking decisions of eggs, butter, that type of stuff. Except the wife is pregnant and craved burgers, that being all the goading I needed to go back to the store to get the necessaries. Usually in this case, I'd go to the Food Lion for the more edible hormone-infested meat products, which is like a 20-minute trip one-way, but that day I decided to go to the IGA in town five minutes away (which is gonna be replaced by one of those Food Lions in the coming months anyways), to buy their half-rancid cow products. Some dude was outside standing by a minivan with jumper cables, looking lost. I asked if he needed a jump and he answered yes in a voice that made me think he might be a gay Mexican. I tried to jump it, but it just clicked, showing his starter was dead. We used broken language to figure out this was his second time his minvan needed jumping that day and I tried to explain it was probably the starter, but he didn't get it. I asked him how far away he lived, he told me 8 kilometers, so I said if he couldn't get someone else to jump it successfully by the time I got done in the store, I'd give him a ride home. No one did, so i did. Turns out he was a French dude working at a local vineyard, really nice guy though I had a hard time understanding him sometimes. But we went to the vineyard, I drove him to the trailer they gave him for free to live in since he was assisting in the making of wines and all. He offered me a bottle and I tried to turn it down, but he insisted. So I took it, which reminds me, it's in the fridge nwo, right next to a big bag of greens I bought at the vegetable store that day. He also asked if I knew where he could get some weed, as he hadn't had weed the whole four months he'd lived in Virginia. But talking to the French dude and being able to help him, it made my day. It made dinner alte, and also the service engine light suddenly flashed on unexplainedly on the way home. But fuck it.
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