7 Songs I Would've Wrote About Were We Still Doing The Monthly EWA Thing

Sometimes I get bummed the Expert Whiteboy Analysis thing died down, but as we tried to add people to pick up the slack, we only ended up adding far more slack. And it's hard to get four whiteboys (well, one is only half-white, but it's the half with his opinions) to keep agreeing enough to do something like that. I'm also glad I don't have to listen to so much shitty music, although I try my best to keep listening to as much shitty ass music as possible, through the use of local mix shows and the stupid Sirius satellite radio.
The hip hop whiteboy is nothing now. It used to be that was a remarkable feat to be a down ass whiteboy (don't get a twisted face and think I rocked that style, in full on Vanilla Ice mode, as I've always just been whatever the fuck I felt like being, so that I could get along with as many people as possible, to increase my chances of free weed). I was coming out the Food Lion yesterday, and a weird cross section of wigger culture hit my vision all at once while I put the groceries into the back of my wife's Subaru. First off, across from me was this guy, probably my age, with a big ole fat potbelly, and a normal white man's haircut with bangs, getting into his work truck which had been running the whole time (most likely because he wouldn't be able to start it again easily), yet you could tell he used to be some sort of hip hop whiteboy, even if he looked like every doughboy racist within fifty miles of here, because he had cursive neck tattoos and shit. Usually prominent tattoos like that mean either hip hop or metalhead, but no metalhead has ever gotten cursive letters tattooed on his neck, because no metal band has ever had a cursive letter logo. Metalheads might get their mom's name on their neck, but it's going to be in Slayer font or look like dripping blood or some shit, no matter how sweet the sentiment is. Only a wigger dude would have cursive shit on his neck.
But that was just the first guy. Also standing nearby was a teenage wigger kid who I had seen walking with his mom inside, short hair (to trick you into thinking he's Puerto Rican or at least a yellowbone motherfucker) looking hard with his baseball hat matching the color of his basketball shorts, shorts oversized and hat cocked slightly off-kilter, and he was drinking a Mountain Dew as if it were a blunt, oozing cool. It was and always is to see some teenage boy doing that shit.
And third of all out comes one of the manager types at the Food Lion (you can tell because he doesn't have to wear the same standard shirt the rest of them do) to collect up shopping carts, and he's got the close-cropped crewcut and attended to styled beard of a wigger dude, but he's also at that age showing he's about five years removed from his wigger heyday of high school, where he was the star whiteboy on the basketball team (and thus about the seventh best guy on the basketball team), but he settled down with his boo and got a job at the Food Lion and now he's a manager and he's taken business classes at the community college and in a few years he's going to really love the latest Jay-Z/Nas download even though it will suck a fat dick.
So it's everywhere. Expert whiteboys every fucking where. Including all over the internets, so I thought I'd throw my bullshit unnecessary remarkings on seven recent (somewhat) songs that I would've expounded upon, breaking down to organic compounds, inside the monthly EWA were we still rocking that style...
#1: "Lollipop" by Lil Wayne - I was painting at the main intersection of my stupid little town last week, and I heard the annoying tweaky sounds of this song come by at least once an hour, so I know that beyond the realms of my music interaction, this is some sort of mega-hit. That bothers me so immensely, mostly because I've seen already too much "Lil Wayne = retarded genius" explications after Da Drought 3 mixtape leak. And although there were a couple of things I enjoyed off that particular joint, the fact he released a new mixtape every 23 hours last year did not trick me into thinking he was brilliant. Some fuckface with a rotating crew of ghostwriters and an endless access to studio space does not equal proficient brilliance. And as everybody asked Wayne to do the guest spot on their remix in recent months, that became fairly obvious. There were a couple of songs ("100 Billion" I think was one, and maybe the remix to "Dey Know") where he was downright terrible. I mean, not even close to good, but repeated the same two vowel sounds at the end of every line, often times just rhyming the same two words with each other, yet with far less idiot savant style than Mike Jones, and you could see through his greatest rapper alive gimmick, easily. One of those songs, he did the T-Pain vocoder deal, like everybody seems to be required to do for some reason, all of them sounding even stupider than T-Pain, so I guess that gave him the idea to do a whole song that way, which is this song. Which is terrible. Third graders with access to nothing but the UPN network could come up with better metaphors. But the electronic voice is catchy, and everybody seems fixated on oral sex nowadays, so I guess a hit is born.
It's sad because Lil Wayne will never make a good CD's worth of stuff, especially if his recent contributions are any sign of the direction he's heading. Whereas most people have that commercial peak, even if it's just one release, where people will reminisce and be like, "Man, I remember that Lil Wayne shit was big back when I was fucking those two chicks that lived in the same apartment building and I would have to go up the back steps and then walk around the block to the front door to hit up the other chick. Texting one bitch 'in your hood, can I stop by?' after fucking the other one, with that Lil Wayne joint on all the time when we sat on the porch drinking tall cans." Instead it will be people cleaning out their ipods of old useless shit and maybe keeping like two songs off the stolen mixtape or finding it on a hard drive of music they forgot they had. You were behind your time Lil Wayne.
#2: "That's Gangsta" by Bun B featuring Sean Kingston - For some reason, probably from one picture I saw one time, I think of Sean Kingston as that black guy from Saturday Night Live, who I in turn think of as a kid on Nickelodeon. So whenever I hear the hook from this, I chuckle to myself at a Nickelodeon kid acting so gangsta when his little ass was coming on right after they were doing the noodle dance on PB&J Otter. But that doesn't take away the fact that this is probably my most favoritest song that's been on the radios thus far this year. It's a catchy as fuck song, and Bun B has always been the cream of Texas MCs. I think Pimp C as the occasional palate cleanser was a good combo, but that equal parts of MCing shit they did once he got out of jail wasn't right. Really, U.G.K. ultimately was best as a Public Enemy style partnership where Bun had most of the lyrics and Pimp C broke up things within songs or maybe had a few songs of his own. But they shouldn't have been splitting duties half-and-half, or you end up with shit like Pimp C talking about his dick's myspace page.
I am intrigued to see what Bun B does next, because he has no more Pimp C, no more Free Pimp C (with the purchase of a Pimp C of equal value), so it's all on him. But between this track and the original non-remixed version of "Draped Out", he's got two solo classics already to go with the official U.G.K. classics. Hopefully he's not still signed to Rap-a-Lot, because they tend to put rather underwhelmingly awesome albums, albeit awesome. Rap-a-Lot never seems to get that all-time classic out, because even on something like the Geto Boys' We Can't Be Stopped, you'll have some nonsense like Willie D giving out awards to the Grateful Dead and Elvis Presley.
#3: "Royal Flush" by Outkast and Raekwon - I guess this is supposed to be a reunion of sorts from that one single off of Aquemini, but man holy fuck does Raekwon always sound so fucking bored lately. Did he quit doing cocaine? He should start again. It's like stories of multi-ethnic criminology but delivered with the excitement of the taped message telling you movie times at the cineplex. I am most intrigued by whatever it will be that Outkast will come up with next time they put out an actual CD. Andre 3000 has been on some strange lyrical kicks this past year, probably one of the best MCs going, as much as it pains the hipster contrarian in me to say that, and this is not his best verse, but it's still about twelve years ahead of what everybody else is doing. And Big Boi seems to be trying to keep pace with the experimental styles. I don't think his concerned crackhead style of this song is the best he's come up with in the past year, but it's good to see the both of them attempting to push the envelope. Now hopefully they deliver with a retarded crazy album and not just 27 guest spots on an album produced by Jazze Pha, Dangermouse, and Polow da Don, with a beat kicked in by Pete Rock and one by DJ Premier, plus like three token ones from Dungeon Family.
#4: "My World is Empty Without You" by Prodigy - Man, I really dug "Mac 10 Handle" from last year too, as it was a throwback track. This is even more of a throwback track, back to when motherfuckers would talk metaphysical shit about the Original Black Man building pyramids on Mars while drinking 40s and smoking blunts. What the fuck happened? Everybody's dreaming of diamonds and champagne and shit, wearing bedazzled hoodies with super swollen Ben Franklin faces, when we all could just be standing around on the porch drinking a cheap ass 40 or three, smoking a couple of communal fat blunts, and we'd still have money to make rent by the middle of the month. I hope Prodigy's whole new solo tape is all like this, but I also understand rap music is fucked so it won't be at all. He'll probably have a song right after this one on the official tape where he's selling kilos of cocaine off of private jets with 50 Cent mumbling the hook.
#5: "Superstar (remix)" by Lupe Fiasco featuring Young Jeezy and T.I. - First off, I do not get into Lupe Fiasco, and this was a source of soreness amongst the EWA Clubhouse at one point, I guess because I couldn't recognize Lupe's brilliant creativity because he was a skater kid or some shit. And for the most part, I still can't stand him, including the original version of this song, which is the soundtrack to a recurring Eurotrash men with hair like Dirk Nowitzki and Adam Morrison trying to rape me with the help of GHB in a dance club bathroom nightmare I've been having. The bathroom has one of those long urinals with the sprinkler pipe above it where everyone just pisses in this big tub together. (In the dream, Charles Barkley always ends up saving me, except for once when it was Rafer Alston.) And whatever song it is I heard recently ("Tokyo, Paris"?) where Lupe says "pass-purt" to make it rhyme his previous line really pisses me off. Like he's ever said "passpurt" in his life. That's some weak shit.
But his fifteen minutes of fame metaphorical basis for his verse here was enough for me to forget the rape nightmare guy's chorus, and to ignore Young Jeezy half-heartedly ad-libbing through another $10,000 check. I get caught up in T.I.'s verse, because he does some crazy shit linguistically, but it's a lot like how Busta Rhymes is awesome in that it's very rhythmic gibberish and might not actually be saying a fucking thing at all, although occasionally you hear something you recognize as complete thoughts to make you think maybe all of it is complete thoughts. But it's probably not. I doubt T.I. ever would've mentioned Cirque du Soleil before he was at home on house arrest watching a lot of TV though.
#6: "Louie Bags" by Blood Raw featuring Young Jeezy - I know, I see the progression from "Duffle Bag Boy" to Jay-Z having shoeboxes with money, to this theme, where you stuff expensive handbags with money. But what the fuck? Why are rappers bragging about shopping for designer brands and wearing certain cuts of diamonds? When did it turn cool to be an old rich Jewish bitch? I mean I guess basically old school big dooky gold chains with Gucci sunglasses was like an old rich Jewish bitch too, so perhaps rap music is an elaborate joke amongst Zionist elders to see what kind of ridiculous shit they can get urban black culture to cherish beyond life. I guess that would make it slightly funny, but not too much since I'm the outside of that inside joke. It is funny how dudes are coming up with elaborately more elegant ways to store their excess money. Me, I usually opt for certificates of deposit.
Also, Blood Raw is the stupidest fucking rap name in forever.
#7: "$20K Money-Making Brothers on the Corner" by the Re-Up Gang - Basically, I needed one more song and they play this every hour on Shade 45 and I'm still not completely sick of it. I like to highlight The Clipse because other than them, most rap notoriety Virginia has gotten has been for things of questionable sexuality (Timbaland, Missy Elliott, the Neptunes). I meant to get this mixtape off the internets, but I forgot a whole lot of times to do so. And now I mostly don't dl shit, even if my former physical mixtape connection shop got busted for selling crack like a block from police headquarters in Charlottesville. Usually, any shop that has a good mixtape selection is going to get busted for drug sales, unless it's a ghetto beauty shop too. I guess those godawful wigs must pull in plenty of loot to keep a business legit.

S14: NFL Draft Concerning UVA Cavaliers

The NFL draft goes down this coming weekend, so I wanted to nerd out upon that theme this week in preparation, and came up with a couple of lists in relations there of. The draft this year's is pretty big around here (I live about 20 miles south of Charlottesville, VA, where University of Virginia is located) because defensive end Chris Long is going to be a very high pick, perhaps even number one overall. Which makes sense because I don't think in my short time on this earth I've ever seen where a defensive player actually was the gamebreaker in helping a team win a couple of their wins at the college level. But Chris Long did that this past season. He took over games, getting safeties for the win, or causing fumbles singlehandedly. The dude was beyond the college level, so it will be fun to watch him in the pros, especially considering he's a fucking weird ass dude too.
Anyways, what I did was go through the drafts in a reminiscent mood over the past decade's drafts, and figure out the top 14 (by overall pick) draftees to come out of the University of Virginia Cavaliers family in that time. I was raised a Cavaliers fan, and the longer I live near the university, the harder it is to root for them, but I still at least hope they do well. I have a feeling Al Groh is on a short leash, and that's probably good because they have not gotten above high mediocre under his tenure, even with some pretty high caliber recruiting classes and players (like Long). But here are the top 14 picks out of UVA in the past ten NFL drafts...
#1: D'Brickashaw Ferguson (tackle, drafted 4th overall by the New York Jets in 2006) - Jets fans of course think D'Brickashaw is a bust, but the Jets could draft Tom Brady and Ladainian Tomlinson with the same pick and Jets fans would bitch. But it's hard, no matter how good they do, to really feel good about an offensive lineman being taken that high. Offensive linemen never make the highlight plays or really break a game open in an obvious manner. Still, Ferguson was a monster and I'm sure he's doing well enough, but I try to avoid ever watching the Jets.
#2: Thomas Jones (running back, 7th overall pick by the Arizona Cardinals in 2000) - I think he's in New York now too, though I ain't sure. I know he underachieved in Arizona, which is shocking because they have a long history of people playing up to and beyond their potential, and was sent to the Bears, where he was obviously better than Cedric Benson. But the Bears are for some reason brilliant when it comes to personnel moves on the defensive side, but retarded when it comes to offense. So he was gone. And Cedric Benson was left to take the reins, which I think crippled him last year. So Thomas Jones never lived up to this 7th overall pick status, but he's still collecting millions of dollars for carrying an oblong leather egg around fancy grass fields on Sundays.
#3: James Farrior (linebacker, 8th overall pick by the New York Jets in 1997) - Farrior actually played at a high school that was in the same district as the county one county over to me, and back then he was like bigger than all the other kids. It's funny because once these guys get to the NFL, they are the same size as everybody else, but basically at a younger level they were terrorizing motherfuckers. I think he played linebacker in high school, even though he was larger and more intimidating than any defensive or offensive lineman to be found. And now he's the latest in the Steelers thirty-year rotation of bloodthirsty veteran linebackers. It also occurs to me that I went beyond the past ten years back to the 1997 draft for UVA since that was the all-time best draft class for one year out of one school for the state of Virginia.
#4: Jon Harris (defensive end, 25th overall pick by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1997) - I shouldn't have gone back that far because I have no idea who this dude is. I would look it up online but I'm off-the-internets-grid right now, kicking it in my camper, listening to Screw tapes. If I had a tape player in the house, I'd go inside and look it up, but I don't. So if it's important to you, you can look it up.
#5: Heath Miller (tight end, 30th overall pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2005) - Heath Miller is a monster, and an all-around wacky white dude, just the kind of guy you'd want to be a tight end. I don't play much fantastical football, and when I do, I don't play favorites, swearing off all Redskins and Cowboys players so as to not confuse my head with heart issues, but I usually always try to snag Heath Miller. He's my good luck charm. Except I couldn't tell you honestly if I've ever done well at fantastical football.
#6: Patrick Kerney (defensive end, 30th overall pick by the Atlanta Falcons in 1999) - Stupid ugly whiteboy d-lineman for the Seahawks now, making Pro Bowls and crushing the Redskins' playoff dreams last year. So fuck him. I hope he gets Rain AIDS in Seattle.
#7: Jamie Sharper (linebacker, 34th overall pick by the Baltimore Ravens in 1997) - I can't remember if Sharper is still with the Ravens or he's been sent elsewhere as they purge their eldest least-named Ray Lewis guys from their aging defense or not. He's had a monstrous NFL career though, and was the third guy drafted that year off the Cavaliers team, and we haven't even gotten to the Barber twins.
#8: Tiki Barber (running back, 36th overall pick by the New York Giants in 1997) - Tiki, unfortunately, took over the Emmitt Smith role of being able to rush for 150 yards against the Redskins even if he was crippled at the time. Tiki is maybe the only black man more acceptable to white people than Barack Obama, and he often comes back to Charlottesville to raise awareness about things I don't pay attention to. It's also amusing to me the Giants and Tom Coughlin won a Super Bowl without him, although now that he's retired, I have no ill feelings towards Tiki Barber. In fact, with him being part of that Sunday Night Football players panel, it's hard not to like him, because he's not fucking retarded and as disease-worthy as Cris Collinsworth is.
#9: Germane Crowell (wide receiver, 50th overall pick by the Detroit Lions in 1998) - He was the Cavs big wide receiver after Herman Moore, and I guess the Lions drafted him hoping he'd serve them in the same capacity. Except Crowell never translated to the NFL like Herman Moore did. Of course, being Herman Moore played in Detroit, probably nobody remembers him.
#10: Ronde Barber (safety, 66th overall pick by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1997) - Six draft picks in the first 66 picks... no wonder UVA felt they could overtake Florida State in prominence back then in the ACC. The Tiki/Ronde parallels are interesting, because Ronde won a Super Bowl, but has been far less controversial, most likely the difference between being in Tampa and being in NYC. Of course, Tiki's post-football options are far more numerous because of that same difference, although honestly, they could switch back and forth and I wouldn't know. It's odd that a pair of identical twins would end up so physically gifted, baldheaded, and large-mouthed. Both of them could catch apples between their teeth.
#11: Matt Schaub (quarterback, 90th overall pick by the Atlanta Falcons in 2004) - Michael Vick heir apparent traded to the Texans right before Vick got busted on dogfighting charges in one of many hilarious blunders the Falcons committed the past two years. He's a solid quarterback and should do much better than David Carr, but he's not a superstar MVP type quarterback. Still, the playoffs won't be impossible for the Texans, although hopefully they change their uniform colors before they get to that level.
#12: Angelo Crowell (linebacker, 94th overall pick by the Buffalo Bills in 2003) - Honestly, I do not know if he is still kicking it with the Bills or what. If there is one team I completely tune out, it is the Buffalo Bills. They are boring and suck and are really boring. So if he is there, I have been unable to see him in between Andy Capp-style snoozes on the couch on Sunday afternoons whenever they sneak their stupid asses onto my local television coverage.
#13: John St. Clair (center, 94th overall pick by the St. Louis Rams in 2000) - I vaguely remember this guy, but I think I remember him from playing Madden '03 a whole lot and not from real life memories. So I can't speak upon his prowess or lack thereof in the adult footballs gaming.
#14: Darryl Blackstock (linebacker, 95th overall pick by the Arizona Cardinals in 2005) - He's still with the Cards I'm fairly certain, and he played alongside Ahmad Brooks, which was supposed to be this punishing linebacking corps that was gonna put UVA over the top in the national football scene. Except Brooks had all sorts of coaching problems and ended up bailing out halfway through a season and getting picked in the supplemental draft, by the Bengals who he still plays for I think. Blackstock was the more coachable, less gifted half of that twosome.

MNZ: The New Yorker March 31, 2008

I will admit upfront that I don't get why the New Yorker is considered such an intellectual rag, other than it doing exactly what you'd expect a pompous intellectual to do. But whenever I come across a recent issue in the free bin, I'll grab it and force myself to read at least three articles. The most intriguing one to me, before reading, was about the newspaper industry's dying throes and how it had to change, using the Huffington Post as an example. It was ridiculous.
Now I am someone who buys the newspaper at least five days out of seven, every week. It's standard practice for me to read it on my lunchbreak and finish at night. My wife reads part of it every time I bring it home, and I have my 9-year-old daughter into reading the comics and kids section, which is exactly how I started reading the paper as a kid, that my 7th grade educated dad brought home and read every day, regardless of his 7th grade education. At his death, he was probably a lot smarter than most people with his education level, and the fact he read the paper daily I'm sure was a big part of that. Once newspapers die out, I'm not sure what will replace it. I don't really see the internet as a replacement, because what it gives you for news is a very different beast than reading a newspaper. Even with google's new shit where you can customize the news page with things you like and local stories won't replace it. The great thing about the newspaper is how shit you never would've invited into your house came into your house. I think when you set the parameters for what your news is, you lose a certain amount of that. Everybody will get the weird news from Chuck Shepherd stories, but nobody will know that oddball local lore shit.
Oh well, fuck it. Newspapers will die, and the New Yorker sucks. I automatically think anybody who feels they must have the .pdf set of every New Yorker ever is a fucking pretentious fool. I bet they all vote for Obama too. My racist landlord was hanging out the other day, and I found it very interesting how he referred to Obama as "that thing" and how "all the coons" were gonna vote for him, yet he also hated him some George Bush and how he's fucked up the country. That's why I never understood how the democrats could've fucked up the 2004 election, because I've ran across a handful of elderly racist people who hate Bush as much as they hate "all the coons", yet Kerry lost. I know there's rigged election conspiracies, and as someone who loves and believes in many retarded conspiracies, let me tell you there was no rigged election. It's like a shitty call in a football game - you shouldn't have let it be that close. And Bush was begging to get blown out.

100 VINYLZ: #99 - Santo Swings! 2x7-inch by Southern Culture on the Skids

(1996, Estrus Records)
Having grown up in Shitsville, Southern America, afflicted with the genetic shortcomings of those disdainfully referred to as "white trash" (shortcomings include but not are limited to: embracing poverty as nobility, affinity for cars more than homes, a love for alcohols either held in aluminum or cooked up in copper, fried foods especially assorted parts of the chicken, and a hatred of urban things), I have a giant amount of prejudice towards people who seem to have that campy kitschy pseudo-redneck thing going on. And it gets more and more prominent. The spread of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, as well as the growth of roller derby teams are just two examples of this. I automatically hate both, not that I'm above drinking cheap ass beer or finding some tattooed thick-legged slut hot, but having lived in Richmond, Virginia, in a college environment long enough to see how many people swear off their successful suburban upbringings to slum it up as pseudo-rednecks, I can't trust these things when I see them.
First off, when slumming it up, people either don't give a fuck about what they are pretending to be (which means they don't give a fuck about how I grew up, so I should fight them) or they have chosen, at least in terms of personal image, something less affluent than what they were born into (which is retarded to me, because I have spent a good part of my life trying to escape the retarded lines of thinking I was seemingly poisoned with upon birth).
Of course, this is a cancerous way to think, because just by having a stupid blog, anyone who reads this who feels themself white trash will assume I'm a fake ass because I put words together inside the internets like someone's supposed to give a shit what I think. I can say that I've been to multiple funerals inside junkyards, multiple funerals with confederate flags on the coffin (including one where a good third of the people in attendance were black, and not shocked at all), where "Freebird" was played unironically. Shit, I just had a moment like this the other night, as last week I had two family funerals come up. One was my aunt's boyfriend, who was a truck driver, and his funeral was beautiful. Standing room only in the church I'm sure he only went to twice a year, but the preacher did a good sermon, and we all went graveside, and as is the norm, they opened it up for people to speak on his behalf. That's my favorite local tradition at funerals, because you get to hear the non-preachy shit about how someone was a good ass dude. Anyways, one lady said they always sung some song at the end of the night when they were all drinking and doing karaoke at this bar, a gospel song, but she couldn't sing it. But this old school looking country dude in one of those dress jackets with the leather part at the top like an old bluegrass musician would wear to court with two ladies said, "How about 'I'll Fly Away', will that one work?" And the other lady across the funeral said, "That'll be nice." And the fancy country dude and the two women with him busted it out. And I ain't gonna lie, I cried. Of course, being raised in Shitsville, Southern America, I didn't make a sound and I, in macho mode, wiped my eyes one at a time in a strong sweeping motion, almost like a punch, to show I was in control of my uncontrolled emotions. Well, we (meaning my family and me) were at a cookout the other night, and most of our friends aren't that wild or wacky, but this couple is. But most of the people we know are uptight ass white people, which is why I stay to myself a lot of times, and a couple of them, while bluegrass music was playing on the radio, busted into an oversung rendition of "I'll Fly Away", their little Whole Foods fed lungs working as hard as they could in between sips of $8 a 6-pack beer. (Haha, it's funny how many of the stupid things I said above I was trying to get better about I've still done in this paragraph.) They had no idea how real that song was to me, fresh in my head from seeing old country suave dude sing it at a truck driver's funeral in bumfuck Charlotte County, Virginia. Oh well. Fuck it.
Anyways, Southern Culture on the Skids is popular with the college town fake-ass redneck set, which would automatically seem they would be that way too. And with the overdone hillbilly stereotypes and songs about Little Debbie snack cakes and them throwing fried chicken into the crowd, it's hard to argue there's not a ton of posturing going on. But you know what? I have been able to overlook this because Southern Culture on the Skids has always been this way, for a long ass time now, and it's not like they've gotten rich off it. Maybe their trust fund kids all of them, and instead of having some retarded green building carpentry crew, this is their post-rich family hustle. But I am able to enjoy them.
When my wife (then not my wife) first got pregnant, we hadn't even found a house to live in together yet, and the first thing we did was tag along with my mom to the beach (northern Southerners go to the Outer Banks in North Carolina), and we saw Southern Culture on the Skids play at whatever that gaudy ass club is in Nags Head. It was my wife's first time going to a show sober, and having just quit smoking since she was knocked up, it was interesting. I don't think I even drank to be honest, but that's kind of hard for me to imagine being true. But it was a good show. And then again a few years back, she took me the night before my actual birthday to see them at Starr Hill (R.I.P.) in Charlottesville, and that was a great ass show. When they called for a volunteer to sing along with "Viva Del Santo" my wife tried to push me into the role, being it was natural for me, what with my retarded affection for Mexican wrestling, and actually owning the single, but some fratboy chump did it instead. Which was fine, because he was afraid after the second time he said it, hiding behind his Faggotland Lacrosse baseball hat which he most likely wore in the shower for a week to get that perfect curve to the bill.
Anyways, this double 7-inch is one I keep in good shape, and most likely if I ever get my never-fixed jukebox actually fixed, both singles will go into the mix, being Estrus Records was nice enough to have them be actual 45s with actual big holes. (It is worth noting here that when it comes to good shitty rock-n-roll in cheap vinyl format, Estrus Records was the standard at one point in my life. A lot of punk-ish labels are pretentious beyond their archaic format, but Estrus was always heavily steeped in drunkenness.) They came on colored vinyl as well (one red and one green), and as I've grown and minimized the collections, and been annoyed by others who like Southern Culture on the Skids, this double 7-inch has become my lone survivor of their music. I mean, you get the basic wacky song with old blues/funk chicken picking guitar solo idea they always do, and this one has that all covered in spades.
It's funny, as I try to pretend I'm some well-grown non-piece of shit, I looked up to take the last sip of this bottle of Yuengling, and realized that although I'm typing on a fancy assed new-fangled (but cheapest model available) laptop, I'm playing shitty records in a shitty camper (that some gypsy lady left on my property and may come back to retrieve at any point, which is going to be a tough day since I've trashed it, again due to genetics) looking at a picture of El Santo (which is really just a picture of his son, El Hijo Del Santo, behind a piece of glass, taped together with green tape that barely bends around the front to create a "frame"). So as much as I hate people faking the redneck funk, I'm as fucked as ever. I don't have a working satellite anymore, so I can't watch the Mexican wrestling anymore, but the non-working dish (a small new school one, not one of those old West Virginia state flower ones) is still mounted to my house, holding an empty bird feeder. And it's moments like this where I look around and realize no matter how many steps I've taken to improve my lot in life, I am seemingly as fucked as I was the day my 17-year-old parents popped me out into this world.

100 VINYLZ: #100 - Tattooed Beat Messiah LP by Zodiac Mindwarp & the Love Reaction

(1988, Vertigo Records)
This is a replacement vinyl, as originally I had this on one of many yellow shell Sony 90 minute dubbed tapes I made from my boy Evil Ed back in high school, back when tape dubbing was the RIAA‘s piracy threat of doom. It was always a favorite tape of mine (I think Faster Pussycat’s first self-titled album may have been dubbed on the other side), and while in the college, I saw it one time in the used record store of note in Richmond, which would be Plan 9 in Carytown. (I am sure I will get into a long explanation of that place during this project, but the first entry is not the time for it yet.)
Zodiac Mindwarp, by today’s standards, would be lumped into the “hair metal” movement, which is why I have always hated that hair metal label. As a dude (haha, I said “dude”) who was listening to music back then, it wasn’t as black and white as “heavy metal” and “hair metal”. Lots of music was being made that bridged that gap (Guns’n’Roses most famously, but also shit like Circus of Power, Armored Saint, Accept, L.A. Guns, The Cult, etc.). Most of what I’d consider to be bonafide hair metal was designed for pussies (either girls with actual pussies, because they need music too, or dudes who acted like pussies and worked too hard to fit in, not drinking too much nor smoking homegrown at the local arcade, and just fitting in pussy-getting skills around such delinquent behavior, which is also funny because us delinquents usually got more pussy - or at least more awesome pussy - than those pussy dudes with the watered-down rock-n-roll ever could). Hair metal makes it seem so fucking gay and stupid, and a lot of it was (insert standard VH1 learned music critic meme of “Nirvana changed everything blah blah blah” right here). But there was a lot of shit that was straight up rock-n-roll, fuck the bitches (both figuratively and literally), let’s get fucked up as fuck and fucking fuck, you fucks.
The one and only Zodiac Mindwarp record (that I know of) is this, but even better. A lot of these guys have their mental faculties, and for as crazy as everyone says Axl Rose is, he knows what he’s doing. Zodiac Mindwarp (real name Mark Manning) was a drugged-up space cowboy who could think 3000 words a minute and make them rhyme and have sort of a reason, but like a paranoid schizophrenic handing out homemade Jack Chick-style pamphlets, he didn’t really “know” what he was doing. This, of course, makes this album way better than others like it. He uses big words and combines shit that doesn’t really make sense (for example: Zodiac Mindwarp), but pulls it off, because in his personally warped mindstate, he believed it. You can see those aging fags on VH1 playing washed-up rock star talking about “hair metal” all the time, but those guys were playing a role, waiting for the gimmick to die so they could move on to some other stage of their life. Zodiac Mindwarp was all-in from the get-go (double-hyphenated cliché word score internet Scrabble rules - 153 points!).
For further proof of all this, consult your local library for Fucked By Rock by Mark Manning. My wife got it for me for my birthday because a guy I internet-know who was involved with GNR at times highly do-or-die recommended it to me. And it’s a crazy fucking book, with full insight into an acid casualty rock star two decades behind the well-known wave of hippie fuckers who you’d expect to be acid casualties. Manning was going to be the singer or was the singer or some shit for The Cult at some point, but ruined the gig by being... well, by being himself, so pretentious ass Ian Astbury was the singer instead. If you are a fan of reading books by semi-famous people who tell you how debaucherous their life was (European brothels where underage girls were duct taped into position ass-up for your personal pleasures, for example), then this is a book you probably ought to try and check out.
In the dilapidated camper behind my house where I do most of my compound-related quality lounging, there are three album covers with the albums removed taped up to the walls - The Coup’s 12-inch single cover for “Not Yet Free” (which is a highly-stylized drawing of a woman with her baby in a sling on one shoulder and a machine gun strapped over her other shoulder), the recalled cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Street Survivors with guitarist Steve Gaines wobbly-eyed and engulfed in flames (which became poor taste soon after when he died in a fiery plane crash the band had), and the cover for Tattooed Beat Messiah. It inspires me, like a motherfucker.

100 VINYLZ: The Introduction

My favorite material possession, if you can count it as only one thing, would be my record collection. It is the one thing I have accumulated through the wasteful spending of money that has given me the most joy, and the one thing that if I don’t mess around with for a while, I get all weirded out and need to just hole up with it for a few hours, immersing myself within it’s oddball variety. It has been alphabetized, but within the subset of categories at one point (I think the basic categories were “white people’s music”, “black people’s music sans hip hop”, and “hip hop” in it’s most categorized days), but nowadays is all sorts of hodgepodged and broken into parts. First off, when me and my wife moved in together ten years ago, we combined our records, which was more of a difficult situation for us to accept than us mixing our DNA into a child. Over the years, with there being no real set record playing part of our home, the precise alphabetization has long been lost. I used to have this wood shelf I took out of a rental house I painted years ago that all my records fit in for the most part, with a bit of overflow running into the bottom two rows of a bookshelf from Target. When we moved to this current house like eight years ago, I cut my record collection down from around 3000 to what would fit into the old rental house shelves (spraypainted black with gold trim by me) - roughly 1500 or so. Of course, it has grown since then, but there is no alphabetized nothing about it. At the far right or left ends of the two shelves, you can run into pockets of things still in alphabetical order, that obviously have never been played in five or six years, but for the most part, it’s all fucked. More than half of it is in the house on that shelf, but as I pull things from it, I push what’s left to the far left and right, leaving empty space in the middle, which I refill when too many records are left sitting out by one of the turntables (we have three working ones right now, but have had as many as five at a time in different parts of our compound for this or that purpose) and need to be returned to Raven’s vinyl homeland.
Except I do a lot of quality lounging out in the borrowed camper behind my house (which is where two of the working turntables are located, although one is a tweener, carried back and forth between the house and camper fairly regularly as necessitated by my own personal brand of mad scientifics), so a good amount of records are now out there, including just about all of my 7-inch collection (at least the ones with big holes that would work in the unfixed jukebox doubling as a hangerless coatrack in my unfinished hallway). So my shit is everywhere.
I have always been a budget-minded record collector, which is probably where the $20 record challenge came from. I do not go into a record store and think, “Oh shit, awesome, a $25 record I’ve always wanted.” I think, “Man, this sucks. I’ve always wanted this record and these faggots want $25 for it. I wonder if I can stuff it into my hoodie?” This is difficult, because record collecting is a very well-known faggot science now, and the sharp-faced guys who price records at used record stores are aware of this, and price accordingly. Also, the ebays fucked everything up for everybody, because if some schmuck in Illinois is getting $23 for his old Voivod War and Pain record, every asshole everywhere thinks they deserve the same $23 for their copy. Except that ain’t the way it works, at least not the way I think it should work. I have wasted tax return money once or twice buying things inside the ebays, but I’m too budget conscious, which means I lose most every auction unless it’s to some disreputable fucker from Australia who ends up ripping me off too. Plus, shipping is the jew’s magic touch to the ebays, and that’s where you make, or lose money, depending on your end of the globalized flea market bargain. I am to this day more of a “let me dig through the endless uncategorized crates of dollar records” type of guy than a “let’s dig through this well-labelled section of top quality records”. Music is meant to be used, not accumulated, and I would say a majority of what I still have is here for a reason, meaning it has use at one mood or another to actually be played. I do not deify the records, and through the years have used various methods of marking them as played or most recent. I used to have a roll of like 5000 little alien head stickers that I’d put the ascending number of and slap on an album side when I played it all the way through, and some of my records are peppered with these, like college football helmets. For a brief time, when I had a bunch of my old rapping 12-inch singles in the camper, whenever I played one I would put a silver Sharpie mark on the sleeve, like I was counting days in jail in an old western flick. All sorts of stupid shit like that. These are not keepsakes to sell later. The perfect example of that is the first MF Doom single, which I have on 12-inch, that Mike Dikk and John Dawson told me might be worth some money. I looked it up inside the ebays and it was worth some money. But I didn’t feel like selling it. Since then, it sat in a pile of records one time near where I had a Tupperware cat bowl for water and food in the camper because the cat was in heat but we couldn’t afford to get it fixed so I trapped it in the camper instead so it didn’t annoy us in the main house with it’s incessant cat-slut cooing. It knocked over the water bowl, which dripped under a sideways stack of records, and just a couple of weeks ago I was digging through them, pulled out the MF Doom single, whose sleeve was stuck to like a BDP single or some shit, and I had to rip them apart. The MF Doom sleeve is all mildewy, but the record is finer than fuck. I played it three times that night.
It’s funny too, because my folks had a good record collection (in fact, parts of mine are just sneaky embezzlements on my part when they split up when I was 16 and my dad lived in a trailer too small for too many possessions and my mom could give a fuck about all that fucking music my drunk ass dad always played), so I was always into records. I remember compact discs coming out (I don’t call them “CDs” because CD is a nickname and nicknames are for friends and I’m a giant hipster fag who thinks Mr. Show is hilarious) and some of my boys being all like, “Man, CDs will last forever but records scratch.” Except CDs felt like a transitory thing even then. I mean, yeah, 8-tracks died out, and cassettes I could envision dying out as well, but records had been around for decades. Compact discs were the same shape and idea, just digitized and mysterious, but in an evil way. Like Third World tribal religions are mysterious, but in a fun “shouldn’t kill me but even if it does it’ll be an awesome story” type mysterious. Compact discs had this ominious futuristic soylent green nature to them. I wasn’t down. And to be truthful, until I was 25 (which was 1998), I had stolen more compact discs in two burglaries than I’d ever bought, new or used. I think in ‘98, I used a fake name (C.R. McClellan) to join Columbia House, and that probably put me over the top for buying more than I had stolen, to that point in life.
Now, it’s gotten even worse, with MP3s (I couldn’t remember what that stood for, to further sell the Mr. Show David Cross as Allen Ginsburg character reference) and people downloading shit, CDs became obsolete quicker than fuck, but people became more removed from the music as something in their house. As opposed to a giant collection of records to look at and feel and peruse for whatever info you can, or better yet to cut the stems and seeds out of a half ounce bag, all your music is inside this tiny little robot that can just disappear. Or you can click a couple of buttons and make it all go away. I know dudes with like two and three external hard drives just full of music - a million billion gigs of shit they’ll never have a chance to listen to because they use all their free time acquiring more music. It is the new CD, because people can get it so easily, and now records are more relevant than compact discs. (HA! What’s up now, my boys from high school? I’m talking to you Dave Jenkins.) We are so far removed from our music as a part of our life, and it’s more part of the background clutter. Theme music has been replaced by ringtones... sigh.
For me, each and every record I have has personal experiences attached. How I got it, what happened while it was playing, what it’s been through with me... Shit, my record collection, during extreme bouts of self-created poverty, has suffered a number of genocides, wiping out entire genres or cherry-picking classics that I’ve missed intensely almost immediately after selling and ever since. The current record collection is almost a conglomeration of survivors - those things too important to me or lacking enough value to others to ever be abandoned into another weird fucker’s hands.
Well, what I decided to do was go through what’s left, what I have here and now, on my five acre compound of chaotic, blemished perfection, and compile this list of my 100 Most Valuable to Me Vinyls. It is highly subjective, and I could probably, once done, immediately do it again and it’d be entirely different. (And I do plan on revisiting this list again... in four years. My record collection always fluctuates and is far more important to me than some fake ass rich fucker trying to be my political figurehead, so I imagine this will be a good way for me to occupy myself during Presidential election years - sitting in my dilapidated camper with no TV and no computer, listening to old records.) But this is the list.
I will forewarn you though, I am going to be long-winded and highly detailed to an almost retarded personal extent. There will be no google searching or wikipedia consultations for historical facts behind the records in question. But there will be entirely too much information about myself, almost to the point of this being a memoir. Which is great, because I’d like to remember a bunch of this shit one more time. There will be no download links for you to see what I’m talking about musically, because blip blooping the sound wave patterns into your own personal robot won’t include attachments for the activities connected and the things that make it special to me and probably only me. That is your forewarning. And that is your introduction to my 100 Most Valuable to Me Vinyls for 2008.

MNZ: The Oxford American Issue 59

You know, ideally, this is one of my favorite magazines. But in execution, I end up hating it. The writing is not nearly as good as it perpetrates being a lot of times, and the content borders on goofy hipsterism too often as well. Like this is the sports issue, so you think a great idea would be cockfighting, being it’s “the southern magazine of good writing”. Except rather than anybody actually getting immersed in anything to have a good basis to ramble a thousand words off about the wonderful sport of the chicken fights, some dude just whips out a thing real quick. All possibility and little delivery. That’s what The Oxford American seems to be a lot of times. Still, there’s usually a good article or two in it, to make it worth the five bucks. I guess. It holds a spot in the toiletside peach crate of reading material for a long time each issue though, which is probably more important than it actually being good. I think the longest thing in that crate is my copy of The People’s History of the United States, which has become a played-out ass book to talk about, but it’s fun because it’s reverse history and you can just pop it open while taking a shit and read about something for two pages. Then you can talk about that thing you read the next day and look like you know what the fuck you’re talking about. I often wish conspiracy websites put out a book like that every couple of months, collecting their best bullshit, because I’d enjoy reading about Obama being Cheney’s eighth cousin and how there was already in place a contingency plan to assassinate Ron Paul had he been elected, just in case, much more on the toilet than online, where everything has way too much self-consciousness and anything you read, you can already imagine 7000 other people making fun of it, which kills it’s possible truth for you automatically from jump.

MNZ: Wrestling Observer Newsletter March 24, 2008

I get this still through a bootleg hook-up, although I have very little if any interest in the professional wrestling anymore. Putting all these old 12-pack reviews I did in previous years on different websites has been sort of embarrassing, but it is what it is. I used to love wrestling as a kid, and then again as an adult once I first discovered tape trading and I could acquire all the retarded shit I could conceive, usually by just exchanging other retarded shit I already had. But wrestling has gotten harder to digest, especially when filtered through the internet and it’s inherent overly critical home experts (which, to be fair, seem to pop up regarding anything, not just wrestling; basically the internet ruins everything). But when an older dude in wrestling dies, I enjoy the fuck out of Dave Meltzer’s (he’s the guy that does the Wrestling Observer) collections of half-truths, legends, and alleged historical facts. Mr. Meltzer very regularly condemns the rampant drug use of many wrestlers, but I often find myself wishing he told the life story of people with the gradual build-up and final moment of a good well-drugged drunken shit-talker. In other words, Meltzer tells a shitty story, but he knows more than any other wrestling dork, like a microfiche machine of grapplefighting minutiae, so it’s always an enjoyable read when someone has died and you get to hear all the wacky stories.
Anyways, this issue is about dead Gary Hart, who I had seen in some wrestling documentary a while back, and my wife was laughing at him not having teeth, and then we realized he looked just like my dead father in toothless face factor, just having a baldhead instead of a ponytail like my dad did. It was weird, like watching my dad resurrected talking about how many wrestlers died so young. Well, in reading the story of his life, I found out all his teeth had been knocked out in a plane crash, and according to Dave Meltzer’s obit, Hart was basically half-crippled and naked, but he swam back and forth and saved two of the other three people on the plane crash. Of course, most older wrestlers did lots of drugs and drinking and spent lots of time telling stories to each other, so in actuality it might not’ve been anything like that. But Dave Meltzer respects the wrestling business and believes these old-timer’s stories to a tee, and repeats them posthumously. I enjoy them, but also feel like the old carny-assed wrestlers are still working us from the grave, with Dave Meltzer being an unknowing mark accomplice in the process. But whatever, I enjoy the obits, so I’m thankful so many wrestlers die. I think Meltzer has like a couple of Tributes books available like he’s a real writer at bookstores, collecting all his disorderly obituaries. I’m sure it’s like $150 or some retarded overblown price though, because his stupid newsletter is overpriced and obviously never proofread outside of clicking spellcheck before he hits print.

MNZ: Rebel Rodz December 2007

You know, I almost actually bought this at the grocery store back when this was on the magazine rack at the grocery store, because it had this weird rust-colored ride with pinstriping and shit, and I was intrigued by the fact someone did a faux rust finish, which seemed all sorts of awesome to me. But I think I bought some sliced turkey breast with that four dollars instead. Which was a good call in the long run, because I found it for free eventually in a box of what is basically trash at the dump. A lesson is to be learned from that - fuck buying new shit because it's only the feeling of newness you really crave. If you wait, you'll get that shit eventually, and have everything you need plus a bunch of shit you wanted, just you wanted it a while ago. But fuck it.
The rust finish thing was far less impressive when I saw that EVERY OTHER FUCKING PSEUDO-ROCKABILLY DEVIL DUDE'S HOT ROD IN THIS MAGAZINE HAD A FAUX RUST FINISH! It went from awesome to played the fuck out forever by page 32. Also, my contempt for tattooed hot rod dudes in college towns cannot be contained. As someone with class issues, I have even more severe hatred than my unexplainable hatred for rich people to lay upon people who are basically born rich, but like to slum it up as fake white trash or fake workingman dudes. They always have full sleeves of tattoos, really gay short hair, and wear work shirts with someone else's name on it. Being born and cursed as a poor fucker from birth, I am genetically inclined to do really stupid and self-destructive things at times, mostly just to see if I can do it, but also for laughs, even if the laughs are only eventual after time has allowed me to filter the experience into a funny story. When dudes with full sleeves of tattoos try to talk me out of doing such stupid things, it shows that they are full of pussy DNA never meant to be a broke ass like me and they're whole pseudo-culture of hot rodding and half-naked Betty Page wannabe bitches is a sham. Then again, they're probably afraid while doing something stupid I'll break their gay-assed collectible Ed Roth toy car from Japan they got on ebay.
Anyways, other than it sucking, the most notable thing was the bitch on the cover, who is your regular hot rod doofus dude rockabilly Betty Page wannabe slut with the ugly face of a 1960s diner waitress, a bunch of goofy tattoos with far too many bright colors, and a continuous pout of her lips and poking out of her flatland ass cheeks. But she had a cursive letter tattoo on her lower belly that said DIRTY SOUTH, and as ugly and unattractive and obviously annoyingly stupid as she was, I still wanted to eat the fuck out of her pussy. Used to be belly button rings did that shit, but that style for chicks got played out like rust finished hot rods, and means nothing to me now. But obviously, trashy cursive letter tattoos have replaced them in my retarded mind as triggering a strong desire to perform cunninglingus like only a stupid white man with repressed penis size issues can perform. So if you are that retarded model, understand I would gladly eat the fuck out of your pussy (hopefully not literally though, because I would be sad if your pussy ran out of fuck), but I will probably also end up grudge fucking you in the ass as well. And why the fuck did you have to bring PBRs? Fucking mix in a six-pack of Yuengling or something. Not everybody wants to pretend they're a redneck in 1972 southern Illinois.

MNZ: Street Thunder assorted issues 2006/2007

These were in a box at the dump, and I love car magazines because I have it in my head, like every chumpy white guy of brittle success before me, I will one day tool around in my garage, drinking non-alcoholic beers all day long, tinkering with the gear ratios and chrome accessories and suspension of a project car, which is really my girlfriend I use to escape my wife and kids, but also not really a girlfriend so much as what I put my energy into so that I don't actually start fucking another woman, as if any attractive woman would screw my bloated middle-aged ass. So I get these magazines to look at the informative articles and learn myself through psychological condensation how to do all these things.
Apparently this magazine is to paid members of the National Street Machine Club, and there's lots of pinstriping going on in these pages. But the greatest part is at the very back of every issue, there's a two-page feature on an old classic drag racing car, most every one of which I remember my uncles having pictures of when I was little. They were crazy gearheads. Obviously, as I have a blog, I was much more of a stupid fag. But I've got my middle-aged years ahead of me yet.

SURVIVAL: car ramming

If you are trying to take out a car doing long-term chase with you, the best destructive spin out debilitating method is to hit your front passenger side fender, turning to avoid your own radiator, into their rear wheel, either side. Ideally, this will crush their wheel well, making the car not driveable. If you are a super car ninja, you can do the same in reverse to avoid your own radiator being fucked up, but most people can't do that outside of demolition derby drivers and whoever was the stunt double driver in that one Notorious B.I.G. video.

MNZ: American Iron Magazine October 2007

Took the recycling with my middle kid to the dump today, and they have a big long open trailer (tractor and trailer style trailer) where you dump your old newspapers and magazines. I dumped a ton of old magazines and found a box towards the front where people put shit they think shouldn't just be dumped in the mix and automatically recycled at. It was full of organic gardening and hot rod magazines, which must be a strange household. I pilfered the mechanical shit though. This was the only motorcycle one, dedicated entirely to Harleys (aren't they all though?)
I don't know, I don't dig the new school Orange County Chopper style bike culture. The bikes are over-the-top and kinda faggy a lot of times, and I remember watching that show a couple of times and it was basically a bunch of stupid yankee fuckers, but with big mustaches on the old guys. I grew up with young and delinqent parents who sold and bought drugs from actual bikers. We used to go to this one dude Winkie's house (I was like four or five) and he had a giant poster like as big as his living room of a dude and a chick both riding choppers across a bridge and the chick was topless and I didn't know what the fuck it all meant but I knew it was gonna be awesome once I figured it out. Digging with other kids through their dad's hidden stash of awesome magazines would have Easy Riders mixed in with the Penthouses, so bike magazines to me are more like that - full of titties, mean-looking dudes who are proud of their manslaughter convictions, and racist jokes. So American Iron kinda sucked because it had none of this.
I don't know, biker culture was better when it had that whole 2% mindframe, where they basically single-handedly supplied methamphetamines to all of America, and would occasionally maim or rape people for fun, but all in a good-natured scary biker sort of way. Today's bikers seem like wannabes too infused with rap videos and too apt to park outside of Starbucks than some dive bar with bulletholes in the front door.
I remember being a kid at a party this one dude Tip had (who was like my second dad eventually) and this biker gang showed up, most likely Pagans since that's who used to seek and destroy southside Virginia, and us kids were running around and I was also a wrestling fan, but there was this giant bald-headed dude with a bushy beard, in dirty jeans and scummy leather vest like everyone else in his gang, and he had like a 14-inch knife strapped to his belt, looking very ominous. I thought he was Ox Baker. Tip's old lady had told us kids to stay inside but of course we just kept running around everybody, out to the garage, because them dudes were crazy looking, even crazier than all the wacky redneck hippie freaktards who were raising us in very corrupting ways.

12-Pack Review: ECWA 03/02/02

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SURVIVAL: sea weed

Sea weed is the best defense against radiation exposure, so getting a big bag of it to chew on or mix in soup or whatever is not a bad idea. Don't get it at the froufrou health food stores where you get like five sheets for $8 though, because you can get big pound-sized bags for a third of that at the Chinaman's grocery stores, usually found in better steel-building based strip malls in any decent-sized town. The Chinaman's grocery store also has mysterious freezers full of foreign-labelled foodstuffs, which are always fun to try.

MNZ: Waxpoetics Number 27

Waxpoetics is the most expensive magazine I purposely buy in my life. It's a record nerd style magazine but written with the long-winded know-it-allness that you'd want if you dropped ten bucks on a fucking magazine that's not even reguar-sized. Back cover of this issue is Eddie Harris, and I was glad to read about him, because over the years I've found some great samples from Eddie Harris records, and when I used to smoke mad weed and would buy tons of records out the used jazz bins, I always knew an Eddie Harris joint from the '70s was gonna have some good stoner mind wrapped in headphones tangent-inducing shit in there somewhere. Being this is the internet, I have always been afraid to admit my love for Eddie Harris, as I don't want other music fucks to know a lesser-known source of good samples, but I guess if it's in Waxpoetics, everybody already knew. I ain't gonna tell you my two must-have Eddie Harris records though.
Anyways, it was interesting to read what a weird fucker he was, and how relentlessly musical. It was nice to learn something about a dude I've spent a lot of time listening at. The article on Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five though, I found kinda boring. But I guess it's hard to live up to that Latin Quarter article they had a couple issues back. Still, Waxpoetics is the only ten dollar magazine I'll ever endorse. Mike DIKK told me they have a book out now, and with keeping in their overpricing methods, it's like $40. I'll have to save up my allowance for two months to afford that.

12-Pack Review: ROH 02/23/02

BEER ONE: It is the opening Sunday of football season, but I am bored and need an excuse to drink beer and watch the wrestling, so here I am. On paper, it would not look good for Ring of Honor. It was hot today, so we shut the doors and had the machines that condition the air on, and I was watching football, so I sat there looking at the television for like five hours, which is more than I usually watch in a week, or transmitted TV rays, as opposed to videotaped rays. It is easier to turn your head from a tape playing, the brain-sucking rays are not being emitted. That’s why you flip endlessly on TV without finding anything good, then you say some shit like, “Man, we’ve got 100 channels and nothing fuckin’ good to watch,” and you flip for another hour, or settle for Press Your Luck reruns or Trading Spaces so you can hate that cocky fucker who turns people’s rooms into Pullman cars or some shit. Same thing at malls, they transmit those rays, so you just wander, even though you don’t really like it, you just wander, and think, “Man, we’ve got 100 stores, and there’s nothing fuckin’ worth buying,” but you keep walking and looking, and settling on a pair of clearance painters jeans from Old Navy because you saved ten dollars by spending twenty. So my brain is tweaked by TV and AC, and my bones are brittle and aching from the conditioned air as well. I live in the country and have no need to have my doors shut unless it’s cold outside. When I do, there’s no neighbors to hide from, so I’m just shutting my doors to the fields. This leaves me feeling weird and boxed in. With the anniversary of September 11 coming up, I hope you’ll take time to think how fuckin’ unfree you are, living in your shitty square house driving in that shitty car to your shitty job all the fuckin’ time. Take the day off, sick, and go get drunk at the river, or go play putt-putt, or go to the local gay park and let a gay guy suck your dick for twenty bucks (they pay you; that’s the greatest deal ever; and every town has a gay park). That brings me to the second thing going against Ring of Honor – Rob Feinstein. In an industry chock full of annoying assholes, he’s above and beyond the call of duty. The thing is, he’s the New Breed of Asshole, hip to internet message boards and tape trading and puro-influenced booking and all that shit. He has often been accused of being gay, and I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I do know this much – he plays a terrible stereotypical fairy gay with terrible stupid homophobic angles. So if he is gay, gay bikers should stab Rob Feinstein, for doing more to hurt gay people, at least in the little subculture he’s immersed in, than a thousand fagbashers could do. Only recently have I understood why gay people would want closeted gays to come out, and it’s to combat the negative effects these buffoonish “homo” characters like Rob Feinstein portrays bring about. There’s nothing wrong with being gay, except you don’t get to fuck pussy, unless you’re a gay girl, then you don’t get to get dicked by me. But to each his or her own, as long as you don’t bring the heat down on your compadres in whatever. As a teenage stoner, it was instilled in me, by my adult stoner dad and my teenage stoner friends, that you never snitch if caught, as it brings heat on somebody other than yourself. Feinstein’s antics cause people who have never met him to yell “Fag!” and “Cocksucker!” and post terrible homophobic things, and all just to get himself over in front of a small group people that will never amount to anything. Fuck Feinstein, fuck him and his northern con-man tape selling activities, which reinforces my hatred of all things yankee, and fuck his goofy fag character, which reinforces my hatred of people pretending to be gay in wrestling. There are many quality wrestlers out there who are bonafide gay, and they should come out and make it so people don’t have to hate the gays so goddamn much. I don’t think if Vader came out the closet, anybody would chant “You suck dick!” Anyways, wrestling. I’ve heard Ring of Honor is the shit, and I’ve never watched it before. I’ve also heard CZW is the shit, which I know to not be true, so time will tell. I know from spending too much time on the computer that ROH is chock full of all the little dudes that the dorks are gaga over nowadays. It’s a weird paradox with me in the last ten years. I used to hate how you had to be a steroids-laden monster to get over, as in the WWF’s heyday where if you weren’t six feet tall you couldn’t get a contract. It seemed stupid, and made everybody very slow and stupid in the ring. Now, all the indies are crazy over the lightweights, which is great to an extent, but where’s the balance. If all you have is little dudes doing little dude shit all night long, there’s nothing to cleanse the palate. Seems to me the proper wrestling company would have a mix of big guys, little guys, flyers and technicians and rednecks and black guys and the whole deal. A healthy mix of styles encourages a healthy mix of fans, and a healthy mix of fans encourages a wide array of asses in the fuckin’ metal chairs. Da Hit Squad is talking dumb stuff and going on a tour bus of wrestling fans to cut a promo. If you ever see me on a bus tour to an indy wrestling event, let me tell you, if you stab me seventy-three times in the back of the head with a flathead screwdriver, I will not press charges; I will deserve it. Tour buses do have the nicest carpet designs on the ceiling though. I do like Da Hit Squad talking into the bus driver’s CB thing to cut a promo. I also like Da Hit Squad yelling “Stand the fuck up!” at all the scrawny white guys on the bus to make them chant “Hit Squad! Hit Squad!” Mafia is a great hype man.

BEER TWO: Now Da Hit Squad is over to meet the dorks from Boston, a healthy mix of wannabe gangsta white kids, a couple black dudes, and one old white guy who is probably somebody’s uncle or dad. Mafia is the greatest hype man ever. When I get rich, and that’s when motherfucker, not if, I’m gonna hire Mafia and Monsta Mack to stop wrestling and just travel with me to hype people about me beign there. Oh fuckin’ fuck, the Christopher Street Connection, in full-on Feinstein terrible gay gimmick, a wrestling Men on Film skit. I also like the chain link ring barrier for this, giving it a sweet touch of old school, since cages used to be like that. Allison Danger does what a wrestling valet should do, wear a tiger-print skirt and make you wanna fuck her, even though she’s not a good girl. “I may be gay, but you’re queer,” to the crowd. Wow, these guys are frenching in neon boas; now that’s selling the angle. Da Hit Squad storms in, and drops dudes on their heads. Mafia and Monster Mack are good enough, and had ECW continued to exist, I could see them succeeding as the eighth and ninth members of Da Baldies. Da Hit Squad goes over in a squash, and is no free to hit a Chinese buffet. Wait, now, as is law by Philadelphia indies, they have the Allison Danger chick and will kill her. What is it about Philly and violence against women? One time, my wife and I went to an ECW show, and she made a sign that said “A WOMAN GAVE BIRTH TO YOU”, and every time a guy beat on a chick, my wife would hold her sign up. I love that woman of mine. The chick gets powerbombed through a table and is wearing a very un-slut valet-like leotard underneath her tiger-print skirt. Fuck Allison Danger, at least show your ass whore. It’s all about honor, over and over, it’s all about honor. I’ve heard that like seven thousand times already. I think I am being programmed. Man, the Briscoes and Red cutting promos in front of lockers makes me think pro-style wrestling became a high school competition thing like debate, with judges to tell you who does better. They all are so bird-chested and young and riding four deep in an Escort to go rent porn movies to watch with the pizza money Red’s mom left while she is out of town for the weekend. I like how Jay Briscoe has grown a goatee to differentiate himself from his brother, and from every other 17 year old wrestler in the tri-state area. If wrestling had any class, like lucha libre does, the Briscoes would drop the e from their name, and pretend that Jack Brisco was their father. If you could make all the red and black trunks disappear from tape for the last ten years, there’d be a shitload of naked fuckers wrestling, from WCW through ECW all the way to indy today. The red, white, and black is very common, which is okay, because it’s the three colors that represent heaven, earth, and some other thing in Hindu thought. I don’t care about the third thing, just heaven and earth. YIKES! My first beer slam causing maneuver, as Briscoe has Red up with his leg hooked and drops straight down into some sort of neckbreaker fisherman’s suplex combo.

BEER THREE: I also commend the fact Jay Briscoe doesn’t shave his underarm. Why the fuck do wrestlers do that? I cannot tell you how much it fuckin’ creeps me out to think about a drunk Dick Murdoch in his home bathroom, shaving his fuckin’ underarms before flying off to Japan. Fuck! Briscoe just broke Red. Red throws his leg on the bottom rope, playing the unpinnable pin cushion of pain. Briscoe has hit two terribly ugly looking maneuvers, not aesthetically, but realistically ugly. I hope they don’t go for more. Actually fuck that, paralyze the Amazing Red. I mean, that’s what we’re here for, bloodsport, and potential maimings. I’d probably have more in common with a shaved head white kid from Delaware than from a miniature Puerto Rican from NYC. Briscoe misses that move that Dick Togo always does, whatever it’s called, and Red hulks up for a twisting senton somersault legdrop flippitydoo for the win. Low-Ki kills me by trying to be so fuckin’ hard. He’s a fuckin’ tiny dude. Ahh, Homicide and Boogalou are dropping the “this is where I’m from” promo in a vacant lot in the middle of the ghetto, talking about selling drugs and eating chicken. I would love this promo so much better if Schoolly D was playing in the background. I love gutter ghetto wrestlers. They’re ultimate moment was when New Jack threatened to pawn the Smoky Mountain tag belts. Scoot Andrews is cutting a promo, and he talks like the type of black guy who has a lot of Dave Matthews Band CDs. It’s time for Xavier and Scoot Andrews. I really want to love Scoot Andrews, because he’s the Black Nature Boy, and just being called something like that makes me like you. But goddamn, his voice I just heard. There’s nothing worse than a black guy who likes the Dave Matthews Band and I can’t shake that thought from my head.

BEER FOUR: I just realized that’s Steve Corino on color, which is great. Perfect use of that fucker. Xavier punches the fuck out of Scoot, causing Scoot’s hair to go up and make him look like Buckwheat’s balding cousin with a regular job he has to keep his hair trimmed for. Hey, I dug Xavier going for the bulldog, and Scoot just twists into a hard clothesline. That was original, and I drink to that. Xavier takes a Force of Nature on his brain, but his foot is under the bottom rope, so the ref, John Finnegan, who is bigger than every wrestler on the card, stops the count at two. I’ll be honest here, I have only seen a few Xavier matches, but his matches always keep my attention. He is an underrated lightweight fuck, as folks don’t push him in their self-congratulatory smart opinions like Ki and that Christian shithead A.J. Styles. Xavier wins, and well he should. Scoot looks perfectly pissed off. I’m glad Scoot didn’t shake hands afterwards, you can’t do that shit every match of the night. Oh fuck, he comes back in the ring and shakes hands and raises Xavier’s arm, because “it’s all about honor.” The Boogie Knights are out, and their opponents are Homicide and Boogalou, the Natural Born Sinners, who are wearing a Jason mask and a the other carrying a chainsaw. If I had ten bucks for every indy match I’ve seen with a tag team doing a Jason and Freddy Krueger take-off, I wouldn’t have to pawn my DVD player tomorrow to pay the light bill. Man, that rocked, Boogalou did the suplex thing where he held onto it and rolled to the edge with one of the other guys, then Homicide came off the top with the Mack-favorite, the double boot stomp to the gullet.

BEER FIVE: I finally heard the name of one of the white guys, Danny Drake. “Homicide is self-trained; trained a little bit with The Raging Bull Manny Fernandez…” I have never heard a better commentary about a wrestler. Homicide is my new favorite wrestler; plus he’s beating people with a rubber chicken. He should use a real chicken, and call it the Natural Born Sinna Salmonella. Trust me, there’s been stupider shit in wrestling. They were dq’ed for using the rubber chicken, by H.C. Loc, who I expect will get fucked up now. Homicide cuts H.C. Loc the dumb ref the hard way, then picks him up to drop him on his brain. I hope that RF didn’t pay H.C. in videos. You know, for a fucked-up gay gimmick, The Christopher Street Connection is entertaining enough. Maybe they should do a Piper’s Pit thing. Mikey Whipwreck is your special referee and he’s wearing a flame Hawaiian print shirt over his white and black striped deal. Well well well, you’ve got Brian XL, Chris Devine, Quiet Storm, Jose Maximo, Joel Maximo, and Red, in a Big Fat Six-Way Aerial Chicanery Ciudado D’eliminado Death Match. Mikey has the best special ref outfit ever, and he trained all these fuckers except Brian XL. I imagine this will be much better than Boogie’s Wrestling Camp’s graduation card. Corino brings the insider nonsense, and says whoever wins gets to pick what radio station they listen to since they all ride the roads together. I like the Maximos better when they are dressed like Super Crazy. All these guys should go to Mexico; Virus needs partners. This rocks so much, pure nor’easter lucha. I wish all S.A.T. matches were this way. Red hits the crowd-pleasing sixth move to the outside; the main event move. Brian XL fuckin’ rips it. Red and XL are the first two back in the ring, and somehow I think they’ll be the last two left. These guys could go to Mexico and put their insane triple team moves into the mindset of lucha; they just need beer guts to fit in down there. Even fuckin’ swank ass dudes like Rey Bucanero have the weird Mexican wrestler beer gut. They are dropping shit in there I can’t even try to explain to you, but I do wish Satanico was there to smack the fuck out of them as well.

BEER SIX: Jose pins Red, and I’m sure we’ll see like three more pins real quick to narrow it to two dudes. Yes, Devine pins Brian XL, so the two I thought would be there at the end are gone first. Devine got clocked with the Spanish Fly and got pinned, but Quiet Storm snuck in with a German suplex to pin Jose Maximo simultaneously. Joel Maximo and Quiet Storm are left to try and impress Mikey Whipwreck. The only submission move a lot of guys do is the fujiwara armbar; give it up. Learn another weird submission move. Hell, you don’t have to watch foreign shit, watch Arn Anderson or some shit. Goddamn, wrestling pisses me off sometimes. I took a break there to make a fried egg sandwich. Where I’m from, a fried egg sandwich has to have mayonnaise on it; and a fried egg sandwich is part of this complete breakfast. Part of the weird influence wrestling has had on my life, is instead of cracking an egg on the edge of the pan, I take two out and smash them against each other. One breaks, the other doesn’t. The non-breaking egg gets the first position in the dozen, and gets to defend his smashing title against the next egg next time. The best one ever went like a month and a half, and when it finally broke and I fried it and ate it, it sucked. Quiet Storm won. Now we have the ultimate shitty match with Prince Nana vs. The Towelboy. Nana is a guilty pleasure, but Towelboy wiping the ropes before his match, that sucks. Prince Nana wins in a squash, and is way cooler than Scoot Andrews. Nana shakes the lifeless hand of the Towelboy. Next up is the Shawn Michaels school tag match, with Michael Shane and Oz vs. Spanky and Ikaika Loa. Spanky and Shane are proof positive that the Heartbreak Kid has taught his stupid homoerotic dance moves as well. This is my first viewing of Spanky, and I dig his stupidity. Now we finally get the tag to make Spanky and Shane in the ring together, two longhaired confident talented wrestlers. Young and good-looking, and kicking the homoerotica.

BEER SEVEN: “Memphis, Tennessee, will make a man out of the smallest boy,” says Steve Corino. I will drink to that cryptic comment, considering Michael Jackson had a kid with Lisa Marie Presley. The winner of this match, the guy that gets the pinfall, gets a Ring of Honor contract, which comes with a few Buff Bagwell t-shirts, some firefighter porn, and old fairy wings autographed by Feinstein. I hate a fuckin’ double clothesline. The announcers are so pumping up Michael Shane and Spanky, that I could care less about the Hawaiian and Oz. Spanky takes a great backdrop off of Oz; and there’s something to be said for a heel who can take a great backdrop. It makes the crowd happy, much more than Stone Cold license plates or puro videotapes for sale in the lobby. Spanky wins, and though he’s a wonderfully overconfident flamboyant heel, he’s fuckin’ small. Why can’t there be a fuckin’ wrestler bigger than me in this world of indy wealth? Spanky and Shane make me think Shawn Michaels found students at gay parks, like I was mentioning earlier. And I really don’t let gay dudes suck my dick for twenty bucks, not during the regular year. That, plus giving plasma does make the Christmas tree a little brighter, though. H.C. Loc is talking to somebody who doesn’t exist on a cell phone that ain’t activated. Hey, your next match is for the IWA (Puerto Rico) Intercontinental title. It’s between Super Crazy and Eddie Guerrero, and the winner will get a convertible and backrubs from a rich Puerto Rican guy named Victor. The thing that makes Eddie Guerrero great is he’s just as much a cocksucker heel in a gym in Philly as he is on a pay-per-view for WWE. His mannerisms alone make him heated. Goddamn, if Art Barr hadn’t have died and he and Eddie were still together, they would be so fuckin’ sick I’d have to beat up wrestling nerds who didn’t think they were the greatest. Super Crazy is great, but goddamn, Eddie he ain’t. As the camera scans the crowd who chants something or other after an Eddie pin attempt, I notice they have ROH banners over two of the three visible basketball goals. That’s weak. Get a third banner, motherfucker. Two brainbusters, spit at the crowd, and tease the frogsplash but do a dive. Crazy moves, kicks, rolls up, and schoolboys his way into blowjobs from Victor Quinones, as long as Ricky Banderas doesn’t get too pissed. Low-Ki talks like a fuckin’ mongoloid. American Dragon hits the ring first; Low-Goloid second; and the great evil Fallen Angle third. Three is the lucky number, motherfuckers, plus he has metal riffs in his entrance music, plus a dark hood.

BEER EIGHT: Daniels, as I start paying attention, brings the boston crab/camel clutch combo, putting the imagined hurt on both opponents at once. Low-Ki’s stiff kicks are great, so is his ape-like jaw pout he does, I hope he gets stabbed with the same flathead screwdriver I do on that tour bus. So Dragon has Daniels in some shit, and Low-Goloid starts kicking on Dragon, but AD still has Daniels in a Scorpion-like hold, then finally AD catches Low-Goloid in a suplex, still with the hold on Daniels, and it was sick. I do dig how the announcers are pushing the overall booking of the show, though I could do without anybody else telling me it’s about honor. Low-Goloid and AD are going through a “who kicks harder” thing, then they both take turns on Daniels to prove who’s the better Grammatica. Wow, Daniels ducks from like the third double sided kick by the other two, and they kick each other in the shins, hard. I hate Low-Goloid, but this is probably one of the best three-way matches I’ve ever watched. So great, so great; Daniels’ crab on Low-Goloid is great on multiple reasons. I’m not one to love the indy fanboy favorites like many, but there’s so much about Christopher Daniels’ delivery to even the simplest of moves that makes him worthy of the fanboy love. Daniels hits an abdominal stretch on the top rope on AD, only to be broken up by some shit by Low-Goloid, another great trading series. Wow, Daniels broke Low-Goloid’s jaw with a tight uppercut. They do a big double suplex angle thing off the top rope, and the white people in the crowd chant “HOLY SHIT” because they’ve been trained to do so in their internet lives. Low does a “dragon clutch” which I’ve never seen before that I can remember; that’s a great move. Usually, I hate triple threat matches and would always prove a three-way, but mostly because most triple threat matches lack the proper attention to the triple threat stip. This match is fuckin’ great, and all the pin attempt break-ups make sense, and the match makes sense, and there’s multiple subplots going on. Daniels clocks a twisting phoenix splash, to be the rock star of the night, but then gets caught in a Goloid-crusher, and loses the match. Low-Goloid is your winner and your hero of the day. That beer is gone, way gone, like a crazy beautiful Greek chick with big titties you love and live with throwing your clothes out the window, way way gone.

BEER NINE: Figured I’d open another and drink on it while they talk their post-match shit and shake hands. AD talks first. HAHAHA! Great, Christopher Daniels is great. He says it took both of them to beat him, and he could beat each individually singles match style, all this echoing the announcers mentioning how Low-Goloid and AD worked together a number of times in that match. They also bring together Daniels staring at Super Crazy after Crazy’s win. Wow, usually shit that nerds says rules end sup sucking, but this didn’t. Wait, an end of tape interview with Eddie Guerrero in the basement. Eddie Guerrero is the best Mexican ever. I went ahead and finished that beer off during the highlight montage. Wrestling, if you read this, I will always love you, in one form or another (Go Virus!). RF, if you read this, I hope gay bikers stick their fist up your ass while holding a knife.