Ten Quick Questions With Eddie Spaghetti of The Supersuckers
Today's question-answerer is a founding member of one of the most kick ass rock and roll groups to ever exist, The Supersuckers (we reviewed a Supersuckers albums here, and a show here).
1. Who are you?
Eddie Spaghetti. International ambassador of rock, co-creator of the Supersuckers, husband, father, actor, model, author, artist, renaissance man.
2. Zombies - undead monstosity or the next logical step in human
evolution ?
Or how 'bout "Yet another sustainable, renewable food source for todays free thinking carnivore". Let's turn the tables on these undead fuckers!
3. Young Elvis or Fat Elvis?
Yes!
4. If you were a superhero, what would your name be?
"Captain Apathy" or maybe, "The Gluttonous" or "Mr. Anonymous"
5. You are the last man on earth, and it is your job to perpetuate the
human race, whether you like it or not. Your choice of potential mates is
between Wonder Woman, the Bionic Woman, Super Girl or Hilary Clinton. Which
one do you choose?
Wonder Woman. Does anyone ever choose anyone else?
Or: You are the last woman on earth, and it is your job to perpetuate the
human race, whether you like it or not. Your choice of potential mates:
Batman, Superman, Wolverine or Stephen Hawking. Which one do you choose?
My wife says Stephen Hawking. Go figure...
6. What was your first car?
'72 Volkswagen Squareback. Tan. "The Toaster Machine". Saved up two years of paper route money to buy it when I turned sixteen and quickly totaled it. Sad.
7. If you were going to show me around your city/town, where's the first
place you would take me?
To your hotel. Where I'd leave you until it was time to go out. Then I'd make you meet me at my favorite local bar, The Sunset Tavern where we'd get hammered and I'd walk home, leaving you to figure out how to get back to the hotel on your own. I'm a terrible host.
8. What's the last album you bought?
Jerry Lee Lewis - "The Last Man Standing"
9. Do you have an arch enemy? Would you like one?
I used to, but I defeated him. I reckon I could use a new one. They're kinda fun.
10 What's the title of the movie they are going to make about your
teenage years?
"A Staggering Waste Of Potential" or "How I Killed My Parents' Hopes And Dreams: A True Story"
Thank you, Eddie, for participating in TQQ. We are kinda big, big fans of Supersuckers here at FTTW and if you are back in NY anytime soon (looks like Nov....), we'd like to buy you a drink.
The Supersuckers are currently on tour with the New York Dolls as part of Little Steven's Underground Garage Rolling Rock n Roll Show.
The Clash, Misfits, Bowie, Blondie - they like it all, which makes me swell with pride. I try not to get my hopes up too high, though, since they also dance and sing along to a purple dinosaur as if he was the second coming of Elvis.
I was slapped in the face with a cold case of reality when I realized that I had made it more than half way through the song without turning it off. And not only was I listening to it, but I was into it. There I was, with no children in the car, singing along, clapping my hands, stomping my feet, and, had it not been for the fact that I was strapped into the driver's seat of a vehicle going 70 along the highway, I'm quite certain I would have been jumping in the air.
Tonight the family and I were wandering around the neighborhood, checking out the Halloween decorations on peoples homes and dodging kids hopped up on sugar and anonymity. We tried to take the boy trick or treating, but he lost interest not long afterwards. I guess he’s just used to people telling him he’s adorable and giving him candy. We ended up back at the house fairly early and I ordered a pizza from the place up the street. A few kids came to the door and I asked the boy if he wanted to give the kids some candy. I can’t tell you how excited he got by the prospect, so the family and I sat out on the front porch as the steady stream of kids came through. The boy got to give them candy and I honestly think he enjoyed that so much more than trick or treating himself.
He was also in a foul mood, because two nights earlier he’d gotten into a fight at the train station. Another guy on the platform had been fighting with his wife for a bit when he finally hauled off and smacked her, knocking her to the ground. The kid had stepped in between the man and his wife, telling the man to knock it off or he’d call the cops. As payment rendered for his Good Samaritan services, the man socked him in the mouth, breaking off one of his front teeth at an odd angle. It’s been digging into his bottom lip for the last two days and generally fouling his mood. With no bartender to flirt with and a grill that looked properly broken, the kid decided to drown his Halloween blues in Specials all night long. 
“You scumbag little motherfucker!!” he yelled. I whipped my head around to see what was going on. The Vest was three quarters of the way over the bar, and about to land on what looked like a prone figure on the floor. Then I realized that the prone figure was wearing the same shoes as the kid. At first I thought that maybe The Vest had popped him one and the kid was on the floor as a result. But The Vest was a big guy and one shot from his meaty paws would’ve killed the kid. So the kid had to have already been on the floor when The Vest yelled at him. Just then I noticed that the table next to the jukebox contained nothing but young, pretty girls. In long skirts. On barstools. 
He came down hard after he came over the bar and picked the kid up by his neck. I bid the cook a hasty farewell and headed down to the other end of the bar. Not terribly fast because if the kid got socked, he deserved it. But he didn’t deserve a serious ass kicking and I now I’d have to talk The Vest into putting the kid down so we could get the hell outta there. “I’ll oughta fucking kill you,” The Vest bellowed, “right fucking now!” I walked a little faster. “Hey,” I yelled, just to get his attention, “He hasn’t wronged you. Let your girl take a shot at him if you’re both that pissed off. But put him down. He can’t breathe.”
1. Do you daydream about being interviewed for your favorite music-related magazine? Like, run the interview through your head...
One night while playing a gig in Idyllwild, Ca., the waitress walked up to me and said "Billy wants to play now". I said "And…" She said "Just ask Billy to come up and play". Ok, whatever, I thought. "Ok, Billy, it's time for you to play" and Billy proceeded to come up to the drums and sit down and just started rippin on the drums. This is cool I thought. When does someone ever play well that you call up from the audience. Not very often. Anyway, he says "Do you guys know Sunshine of Your Love?" Oh, hell yes. So we rocked it. We had people standing right up in front of our faces screaming and singing and shit, it was awsome. A total rock and roll moment. The harmonies were perfect and nobody screwed up the lyrics. It was cool. I was really impressed by how well this Billy guy knew this song on the drums and so, of course, I had to look out into the audience with that "Wow, he's really good" look on my face. So we rocked and everybody cheered and we got off the stage and somebody walked up to me and said "Did you know that was the drummer for Steppenwolf?" I, of course, said "oh bullshit!!" And they said "No really, he comes in here once in awhile". Then I got thinking about it and while we were setting up he came in, sat at the front table and bought the whole band a drink. Hmmmm....I thought.....holy crap.....that was the drummer from Steppenwolf!!!. You can imagine how embarrassed I was. I felt like a true moron. The only one in the place that didn't know who he was and I was singing with him! I appologized immediately, over and over. Although, I think he got a real kick out of it! He autographed the snare and accepted my apology, I still felt like an idiot, but it was so cool! So my real retard moment on stage was accomplished by me you could say!! 
As I waited in line with two friends, I began peering at our line companions. I realized that this was not the same sort of crowd as my other concerts. Those were dominated by people in their twenties and younger. This was a line dominated by people in their forties and fifties, with a small minority being in their twenties and thirties. This was not my home crowd.
Young, competent, confident, he and his band launched into a set of soft rock, soul-tinged love songs that bordered on easy listening. And the crowd loved it. At this point, there were approximately ten to twelve people hovering up by the stage. I watched the band as they started their first song, but then my eyes were drawn down to the base of the stage and two of the middle-aged women who had been standing up front.
A hipster in his thirties rushed onto the dance floor, grabbed his temples and started swinging his head back and forth, as though the sheer brilliance of the music was tearing apart his mind, shredding his very sanity. Another woman with a mullet started swinging her arms back and forth, snapping her fingers, dipping and twisting in a manner that could snap bones.
This is one of the most obvious so let’s get it out of the way first. Made in 1973 and still scaring the hell out of viewers, it’s on everyone’s list of classics. There must be a reason for it.
characters. This movie is hardly regarded as a great one, and I’m inclined to agree with that, but there are scenes in this movie that are definitely worth watching if you can stay awake long enough. There is a shock value to this one that makes it a contender. For example, there is one scene that was cut to avoid a complete banning of the movie – don’t worry, they put it back in later.
I haven’t seen the remake yet so I ain’t going there. Suffice it to say that although this movie has been slagged over the years, it was one of the greatest movies to present the devil incarnate to the people of this earth. Not exceptionally gross or disgusting, it has held its place because of good direction and a good story. We all know it.
This movie hardly ranks as a horror movie at all. At all. It’s more like a mystery, like an X-Files or Millenium episode. Having said that, I know you’ll like it if you want more from a horror movie than bloodnguts – yes, that is a word.
This one was directed by Alan Parker, whose credits include Pink Floyd: The Wall, Angela’s Ashes and Mississippi Burning. All good movies and all different genres, so you know this guy has his head screwed on right. He makes his mark with this one and I don’t understand why it’s not a lot more popular. Angel Heart stars Mickey Rourke (who does a fanfuckingtastic job, I don’t care what you think of him as a person), Robert DeNiro (as Louis Cyphre, also doing an excellent job) and Lisa Bonet (from The Cosby Show, but only for a while after this movie was made. Seems Bill Cosby wasn’t exactly enamoured with Lisa doing a nude sex scene with a white dude while blood rained on them from the ceiling - yeah, that’s a different world alright.
22. Big day! your mom will call and guilt you into spending the holiday with her instead of your spouse's family. She has volunteered you to host the holiday.
That's a lot of sacrfice to make. It's a lot to take on. The drive here, the moving into a place sight unseen, the starting over with a new job, the two teenage kids I have. Not to mention the cat. The cat's a pain in the ass.
We walked around South Philly for hours stopping at all the spots where CJM and Jane might go. “Maybe they went home…” CJM lived right around the block from my house but I knew if I went back home now my mother would either lock me in my room or have my bags packed on the front step, “I can’t go home right now dude…..Yo, is that Ickie?” 
Adam and Justin were two skins you needed on your side; they had so much loyalty they would kill anyone who fucked with one of their own. Justin, a tall good looking skin of obvious Nordic decent, always wore a black U.S. Army beret and carried a cane. The cane didn’t help him walk, it helped him beat people. Adam was a real ‘clean cut’ skin; all about the Fred Perry’s and polished 14 hole Ox Blood Doc’s. He was a union steel framer in the city who very much looked like he threw steel around all day. Justin initiated CJM a few years before so he kinda treated him like a younger brother. 
Butcher looked right at me, “Fuckers tried to take my boots! They’re not even Docs!!” He kicked India’s still, bleeding body, “Fucking whore….” John had no problem trying to get the rest of the story, “How did you find her alone….Where are her boys?” Butcher looked at John like he was next, “Fuck you John, you think I can’t handle a couple of pussy DC skins?” John actually looked worried, “No dude, I just don’t see-“ Butcher cut in, “I’ll go the fuck down there right now and kill every fucking one of them!” 
Favorite Album:
Album Least Like My Expectations:
Best Surprise:
He was gearing up to whiz past when, suddenly, a small, pink form darted right into his path, followed by a snot-nosed Gypsy boy.
What the hell. Wait. No power strips. We had no power. What the fuck now? I stopped the whole set up. I was on a beach and had nothing to go on. We didn't know it was a beach. We just didn't know. We were billed on the wedding and we couldn't fuck it off. We just fucked up. This show stopped. Walking up to groom to tell him we couldn't play because, well because he was on a fucking beach. Some girl came up with a guitar behind me and listened to me talk. She pulled me back. She said she could do this. I looked her up and down. I asked her if she was sure she could do this. I mean fuck, this was getting bigger by the second. This was getting out of control.
But honestly, I'm going to blame this one on my neighbor. She forced me into it, in much the same way UNICEF forces kids around the country to co-opt Halloween. It's supposed to be a day about grabbing fistfuls of candy and greedily shoving them in your mouth. Not about poor, hungry kids who need their shots. How dare the UN ask us to beg for loose change on this one time a year when we are allowed to beg for candy.
What you are gonna feel instead is even more stress trying to balance your mistress with your wife and kids and job and everyone will feel it and get suspicious and pissed and your old lady is likely to pull a Bobbit on your ass.
This guy is a rock with lips. Sharp as a bag of marbles. Just plain dumb. Fortunately for the guy, the receptionist laughed him off and walked away, telling no one but my wife of the incident. Besides being dumb, this guy is very lucky. A good rule of thumb: If she works in the same building, don't try to pick her up. Of course, that means trying to score somewhere else.
I have another married friend who was sitting down with his wife when the cell phone rang. It was the husband of the girl he was shagging. The guy made it sound innocent, and asked for the wrong name, explained that he found the number 'cleaning out his boss' files' and thought he may be a potential customer. Turns out his little fling was foolish enough to leave his name and number programmed into HER phone and hubby got curious. This brings up two other points: 1) if at all possible, find a married woman to diddle with- she has as much to lose as you, if not more, and is less likely to try to destroy your life: or 2) find someone who is content being the other woman because she is fucking several other guys at the same time she's fucking you.
It's just what I do. When I was little I would worry about the Russians and plane crashes and my parents dying in a horrific fire at the drive-in while they were watching Mothra. Yes, a fire at the drive-in. I was little. Even then, my imagination soared. I worried about school. I worried if my stuffed animals could breathe in my toy box. I worried if people liked me. It was pretty easy to let go of that worry once I realized they didn't. If only the Russians would have had the decency to ease my mind like that. 
I know when someone says "I'll call you in five minutes" and seven minutes later I start worrying about them, it's ridiculous. But they have to understand. My anxiety has a mind of its own. It does what it wants. I can argue with it and talk it down and tell it that it's being an ass, but its a force that will never give in. And then like a mental Ultraman, all these anxieties and worry and panic join together to form the most formidable opponent that serenity, peace and reason have ever known. Worst Case Scenario Girl has arrived.
You know, I really dislike winter for a few reasons, one is the cold. Brrrrrrrrr! And the other is the snow and ice… Hazardous driving isn’t it? Don’t you just hate having to scrape the windows in the mornings? I know I do. You know my poor car has been through snow banks, ice skids, collisions, and all manners of abuse. (Those car crashes were not my fault I swear!) The clunky boots, the multiple layers, Oh and WET MITTENS! These just make for bad winter seasons.
check and see who’s online when you are, see if they are cute and if the profile is something you’d be interested in, send an e-mail expressing your curiosity in who they are, just don’t harass them if they don’t get back to you. People frequently have no courtesy in returning e-mails to parties that are unappealing, so leave it at one e-mail, and leave it at that, there are plenty fish out in that great big ocean, don’t spend your time going after one white whale, we all know how that story went. Try to keep in mind that the idea of these places are to be fun and interesting, one or two bad encounters isn’t the end of the line, there are assholes everywhere, they‘re just harder to spot online than when you’re in a bar.
I look both ways. Then a cop comes up behind me. I’m ok - I’ve been legal to drive again for three years, I got nothin' in the car I shouldn’t have, I’m insured. Bitchin. Tags are good on the plates. But I’m in a quandary as to how to proceed up the hill with this cop behind me. 
I mean, I compare vanillia ice cream to a woman's menstruation cycle and you guys are telling me about some kind of Napoleanic type of war over apple pie. Fuck man. I can barely brush my own teeth much less spell Napoleanwhateverthefuck War.
Ok, ice cream. That's where I was headed with this.
Yes, these four simple sentences can be the key to getting a better job.
I was like, “No, but my husband is.” All innocent right? Inside I’m screaming at this wench and imagining wringing her neck. Sure, she was being nice, but I almost barfed all over my Antonio Milani black pumps. By the way, if you don’t have a pair of great four inch black pumps, stop reading this now and go buy a pair. Really, go NOW! Anything stupid you’ve done as a woman is totally null and void if you have great shoes. So this lady says to me, “No, silly, if your husband is in Z367, that means you are too.” By this point, I’m feeling really sorry for her and wanting to educate her on how to be shrew, but I realize this woman is totally happy with her life and why should I make her husband’s life miserable by informing her of the women’s rights movement? He’s a lucky bastard. I wish I had a wife like that. Who am I to mess that up for him? Haven’t we all heard ignorance is bliss? Bullshit concept, by the way, but whatever works for you.
So I was thinking about what I was going to write about this week, and had writers block all week long. I couldn’t write anything. All these ideas and then the old hard drive freezes. So then I went over a few notes I had made and couldn’t make anything out of them. What the fuck was I thinking with notes like:
Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl Back.
You have seen the one where the cute animals makes that journey across the country to get back to little Timmy. Yeah, right. Tell that to the poor kid in Louisiana trying to get his dog back from some asshats in another state who ended up with his pet, but lost him because of the worst fucking natural disaster in history. That dog isn’t trying to go anywhere but to sleep all day. Google it. True Story.
Taking a shower in the boys' locker room was bad enough.I mean hell, there only 20 guys saw your lack of manliness (is that a word?) but to drive one of these cars around, you showed everyone you were going out to buy tampons for your girlfriend or that you like to watch TV court shows. While I might be admitting I have done both, let me swear to you that My Cock is massive and thinks ahead. It is a massive cock. It is so big I fear My Cock will sprout legs one day and leave me. After all, My Cock can do anything. It has been talking lately about running for President because My Cock thinks things are going down the shitter in this country. My Cock has a seven point program to turn this country around and My Cock is the one to do it.
The defense as a whole and their vet Numminen in particular, have been outstanding. Goal production across all lines has sealed the deal. It’s textbook hockey and it gets the adrenalin pumping. 
Redd Foxx parties became something of a legend in the houses Jonny D. and I lived in. All in all, we only had five of them. And honestly, I think we might have had four too many. Because sometimes you’ll end up at a party that you remember forever, and some parties end up living in infamy. A Redd Foxx party was different though. These things took years off your life and left you a huddled-in-the-corner mess for a week afterwards. Something that much fun and physically devastating could only be sprung from the mind of Jonny D. 
one by one, the rest of the people I lived with would disappear into the crowd and I knew I wouldn’t see them until the morning. Near the end of the evening, when it was just a few people hanging out and I was wondering where the rest of the housemates had buggered off to, Jonny’d put on the Redd Foxx standup albums that he’d copped off his old man and we’d sit on the floor and howl. The handful of people would eventually shuffle off and Jonny and I would survey the damage. Which was usually considerable. 
Those songs you sing in your car when you think no one is listening. The songs that make you think back to the days wearing your checkered Vans and six tons of hair spray and thinking that Thomas Dolby was somehow intellectual. 
Waiting for signs of the afterlife. Maybe the moans of the dead coming from inside the house, or a floating pig to appearing at the window. If the house was a freak show in itself, the kids roaming around outside it were just another ring in the circus. Drunk, loud and curious. Not a great combo there. Most kids would try to get into the house or vandalize it or pee in the bushes just for the hell of it.
I don't know. I just know that when I went to mom's house to check out her setup and I walked by the styrofoam headstone that had Cobain's name on it, I felt weird. I tried to explain it to my mom, but I couldn't really articulate it. "Gee that makes me feel creepy, mom," just doesn't cut it. I mean, she had her hero Elvis in there. She certainly wasn't going to care if I didn't like Kurt's pretend grave. So I let it go.
One day in early March, long after the divorce but not long before I’d decided to kill myself with the drink, my father rang me up. He and I hadn’t seen much of each other in the last couple of years and we were never real big about talking on the phone. We’d chit chat here and there but for the most part we’d only talk when we were around each other. He caught me totally off guard with the phone call and when I heard the tone in his voice, I immediately thought that something was wrong. He sounded really upbeat, cheerful in fact. My father, even in a stellar mood, never sounded as happy as he did on the phone that day. 
The week goes by in a mostly drunken stupor and late on Friday night I straggled in and packed up what I’d need in my old frame pack. That poor thing hadn’t seen the light of day in years and it felt really good to break it back out and fill it with everything I’d need for a week in the woods. The old man figured that we could cover the whole trail in the time we had and while I disagreed, I knew we could get through most of it. The simple fact was that it was 70 miles of rocky, mountainous terrain and I knew the old man wouldn’t be able to keep up as well as he thought he could. His emphysema had gotten worse over the years and there were some days when he just couldn’t go as fast as he had in the past. I didn’t want to rain on his parade, but I mapped another route, just in case. 
For some reason, my brain jumped from there to one of my other favorite films. Something I saw a dozen times when I was a kid, but really holds an entirely different meaning for me now. Most of you know how I met my wife. But nobody knows about the first date. 
We grabbed a couple of beers and tried to make small talk, but the simple fact was, I had no desire to make time with her in a meaningless, let’s shoot the shit kinda way. I wanted to kiss her and smell her skin and talk to her about records and music. If you know me at all, you’ll know that the last is very important. If I’m willing to sit and talk to you for hours on end about music, I’m trying to get you attention. It’s the only thing in my life that ranks up there with my wife and kid, so don’t try and bring that Rick Springfield shit. So we sat and made small talk until I mentioned a show I wanted to go to in a couple of days. And she immediately caught on. Band names started flying, guitarists we respected and lyrics we thought were cool. Serious nerd shit, but I live for stuff like that. We almost missed the beginning of the movie. 
Like atmosphere and story, for example. John Carpenter takes his time and builds up the suspense and tension so that you’re biting your fingernails down to the second knuckle by the end. There’s not really anything disgusting in this one, but again, they hold you by the throat until the end of this movie and that’s what it’s all about. As a matter of fact, they hold you by the throat after the movie ends, because you don’t know where the hell Michael Myers went! He should have died from his injuries, but he got up after that fall and walked away. Where did he go? Well, you’ll have to watch the sequel to get the answer to that one. 
We were to start playing at 9. So I met Djeef and his soulmate down there and we got our stuff unloaded and set up. That was about 7. We were usually the first people at a gig out of the band. So we sat down and had some drinks with everyone and went out by the bonfire and got social. About 8, one of us got up and went looking to see if Tam and the Kook had arrived. No luck. So Djeef and I goofed on some metal rhythm stuff, like Breadfan and Jump in the Fire. We both had a nice buzz going. This was because of the sheer amount of alcohol at the place. Someone had made a giant cooler full of Jungle Juice. Now, Jungle Juice seems to be different no matter where you are, but at this party, it was a bunch of liquor that was mixed with a bunch of fruit and left to marinate for a couple of days. There was also beer and whiskey and herbage. So, yeah, we had the smilies. 
We played for about 45 minutes, and then someone yells "The cops are here!" We stopped, right in the middle of the solo for "Comfortably Numb",. which actually had been going surprisingly well, because we were... comfortably numb by then. Someone pussed out and told the cops the band would only be playing for another 10 minutes. Total letdown, and then i was pissed, because if the Two hadn't been late, we'd have gotten our full time in. And I don't think i said much of a civil word to the Two for the rest of the night. I went back to drinking though, and my Li'l Bro and I headed out to the bonfire again and nursed our pints. Djeef retired to his truck with his soulmate after a while. Sometime around 3, I staggered out to the trailer i was going to sleep in, showed Li'l Bro his bed, and then I fell into mine and was out. 
Young Elvis, of course. I don't see him as some sort of kitsch icon, but rather as one of the vanguard of early rock and roll, the blend of Chicago blues and Honkytonk country that revolutionized American music.
Hell, you’ve probably been to one - too many people, too many strollers with screaming, crying, cranky kids hyped up on candy from any one (or several) of the 50,000 candy stores (with homemade fudge, of course!) in the one square mile the touristy party of town encompasses. I’m sure there is a city ordinance or something that there must be a candy store every 200 feet and every 600’ there have to be one with fudge. Ugh. I hate these places. Detest them. These are the towns that that also have a bunch of those t-shirt shops where you can get anything pressed on. Oh! And the trinkets and Christmas crap shops. Criminy. I just want to walk in and smash every little feel-good glass dragon or glass Christmas globe or Christmas bulbs. I think you’re there now, in your mind, and you’re able to envision these little towns of sugary, money goodness that pretty on you with their trinkets and t-shirts and hand-dipped ice cream and putt-putt golf and ma-and-pa pancake houses. 
Some were scared but they all knew that no one was going to make it out of this alive. There's no going back and there's no getting out. The feeling at looking at someone and realizing this is going to be it, you know, that's a powerful feeling. There's just something to having someone look back and know this will soon be over for us and them looking at you agreeing. This is the end. It's just a matter of time now.
Maybe breaking a few windows, stuff like that. But in this community, that’s almost like destroying Aalderan. Parents looking at their kids like “why the fuck did you do that? We gave you everything you wanted!” And the kids looking at their parents like “But we just wanted your attention, man!” Yea, that screws up my Star Wars analogy, but I’m really fucking tired tonight. Insomnia is a bitch. It makes me screw up my metaphors and it makes me remember scenes in movies that weren’t really there, like Matt Dillon standing up at the meeting in the rec hall and saying DO IT FOR JOHNNY!
These days we get a couple of releases from friends in bands or from readers here and there. Like many people we steal music off the internet, to the tune of billions a year. I'm speaking just about ourselves, we stole about forty billion dollars worth of old novelty records off the interweb this year alone. Actually, I just listen to WFMU a lot. And steal records from thriftshops.
costumes without the teachers worrying that we were creating a hostile environment for any children who may be proponents of peaceful mediation of conflicts rather than the old “I’ll fucking cut you, asshole” way of doing things. We were bums (sorry, "displaced residents") and hobos (sorry, "frugal travelers") and witches (sorry, "alternative religion worshipers"). Now you can't even be a freaking ghost without the principal accusing of you being insensitive to Jenny, whose grandmother passed away four weeks ago. I'm just betting that somewhere in the student body is a person whose ethnicity is Transylvanian.
“Brody! Where the fuck are you man??” John was too busy looking for floaters, “Yo Brody!” – 
I wore heavy leather gloves and I was "on," that state where you hear, see and feel everything. See, not everyone who gets their house repossessed is happy about it. Some people are pissed and they trash the place, shit and debris everywhere, broken windows and furniture. Some showed attempts to burn the place down. Other people were really pissed that we were coming and set booby traps.
Years of receiving electric shocks teaches you not to react. If you make a fuss of getting a shock while at the top of a ladder, you've a whole world of hurt coming very soon.
The dead girlfriend zombie thing I could do without, but the rest of it was cool. Who wouldn't love waking up in the morning with a shotgun by your side. I'm lucky enough to find my shoes, much less a 12 gauge sitting on the floor. Maybe one day things will change, but for right now, I have to be happy with my chainsaw and 2x4 and non zombie girlfriend.
This is the thing about Gauntlet. It’s a cooperative game. You play with someone else and you depend on that person you are playing with to help you through the levels. Cooperation. Working together to meet common goals. Food, health, ways to escape. If the person you are playing with doesn’t have your back, you die. Simple as that. So you work together, looking at what your individual strengths are and figuring out how to best use each other’s skills to stay alive and move on to the next level. You don’t give up on each other. You don’t bail. Because you depend on each other. 
WHO EXACTLY TO CHEATERS THINK THEY ARE FOOLING?
I used to dream as a little queer that life as a grown up would be like that, civilized, respectful and ultimately rewarding in the most fantastic way. Today life is sadly not so civilized. perhaps one might even go so far as to say that sexually, and possibly socially, we are going the way of the savages. Conversation usually turns sexual at one point or another during dates, and frequently I see people in bars who say "Hi my name is_____" and twenty minutes later have their hand down that persons pants or a tongue down their throat, or both! like I've said before, I’m all for any kind of love, but if you really feel that strongly about the person after twenty minutes, it's not love, it's lust. Most likely 48 hours later, you'll find that this person is not all you dreamed him to be, rippled pectorals or not.
My dad would be in a nice sports coat, my mother a nice dress. (Usually I helped her pick it out!) What ever happened to those days? Why do I see nothing but jeans and tee shirts at the local steakhouse, or the local "upscale" places around town? Do we always dress the same when going to McDonalds for a bite as we do when attending a fancy place that charges thirty to forty dollars a plate? Where has our dignity gone? 
Why don't you call them instead of blaring the goddamn thing at 5 in the morning. Am I supposed to sit here and go "Hey wait! That one is for me! I need to go!" For christ sake, if you have 6 people beeping their horns at an apartment complex when you don't even remember your cell phone, how the hell are you gonna accomplish anything but waking me up?
I mean, if your car is so fucking big that you can’t maneuver it into a single parking spot, then maybe you should be thinking, hey this car probably wasn’t made for trips to Shop Rite for a quart of organic milk. Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look driving through suburbia in a fucking Hummer? Because I’ll tell you, when we see you taking fifteen minutes to get into a spot and you end up just giving up and parking diagonal in two spots instead, we are mocking you. Hard. Especially when you need a fucking stepstool to get out of the damn car. 
Sure, the list of possible answers are like this:
Needless to say, I was impressed with the normalness of it all. These folks do the lord's work in my opinion. They have sex for our viewing pleasure. They make us believe that being a pool boy will lead to a life of hot sex with some dude's wife all the time. They, do, in fact, make dreams come true. After all, how else would we know who was the world's very best at anal. 
Eat the dots. The dots will get you to the next level. The fruit will get you killed. I mean, who doesn't like fruit? Everyone likes fruit. But that's the problem!! You start chasing fruit, you lose your focus. Bottom line: if you happen to be in the neighborhood, by all means, count your blessings, eat the fruit, and move on. But seriously, don't chase the fruit.
Being a military brat raised in Europe, I thought I’d be an old hand at the lifestyle. But now, being a military spouse has opened my eyes to the true meaning of how to deal with shit that I’d rather not. My husband and I have been married for two and half years, and while we consider ourselves a strong couple, oftentimes there are situations where we have to remind ourselves that we both dedicated our lives to the military. He dedicated his life by signing up and fulfilling his dream of being Goose from the movie Top Gun. And I dedicated my life, thinking, “Its not so bad, I’ve done this before”. What the hell was I thinking?
I kind of laughed at the sight and continued on past the club. Time to get something to eat. 
The Supersuckers came out to a lot of cheers from the Monday night crowd. It was hard to tell how many people there actually knew who they were, but when lead singer and bass player Eddie Spaghetti walked up to the mic and said, 'Hey everybody, we're The Supersuckers, The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World!' the cheering ensued. And with that, it was on and they proceeded to rock Boston's ass with the appropriately named song, 'Rock Your Ass'.
Now I work like 15 hours a day trying to get as much dough as possible - What boss works that fucking much? My hair... I said before how much I miss my hair. I'll say it again -I miss my hair! I do have to say, I don't miss school. I miss the parties that came from knowing people at school but I don't miss school itself. I remember my parents always saying how much harder the working world will be - WHATEVER! They obviously didn't have my teachers and administration officers! I don't know how it is now but in the eighties if you looked different than the 'norm' they made your life hell. 
I was working on software at the time and the people in my office figured out it was a weekend warrior after the car showed up on a Monday morning with race tires still on since I was too tired to change them back on Sunday night. 
Sure, we would get on our buses or into our cars and act like we were going to school. In fact, we actually showed up at the school. Met in the parking lot, separated into various cars and took off for the park.
Everyone is looking at me now. It’s one thing when you’re sitting in the classroom and there’s a knock on the door and the dean comes in and calls your name. Everyone looks at you, but eh, they’ve been there before too. Yea, you are about to get your head chewed off for cutting class, but everyone’s been there before.
Click. Clack. Click. Clack. Typing furiously while the slug in a cocoon talks to me. Her voice drifts in and out of my head. The timer ticks away on the desk. Type. Tick. Click. Lecture. 
The teachers circled the campus at 8:05 looking for kids making a break for it off campus. Seriously. They would circle the campus in trucks picking up stray kids who made a jailbreak. Wagons of kids would come back into school and be dumped back off after they were caught.
That’s why it was a little odd when my baby sister called to tell me she was coming up for a visit. I’d always made it known to the family that they had an open door policy to come and visit. My baby brother had been up to see me every time he could get leave from the Marines and whenever he had come up we made it into “Boys Time”. Drinking for hours in my favorite bar, hitting up the casino’s in Atlantic City and being generally sleazy individuals. All in good fun, of course. When my sister called me and told me she needed a little downtime, I told to come on up. We’d hang out and I could show her the town and she could relax.
Once again, I woke up before her, so I made some coffee and turned on the news. The Today Show, I think it was. I distinctly remember sitting on the couch, watching my breath and the steam from the coffee mingle when I first heard the words. “We’re just getting word that a plane has struck one of the two towers of the World Trade Center.” I was pretty dumbfounded as they kept showing the footage over and over, speculating about what might have caused the crash. Watching several floors of the building disintegrate as the jet fuel ignited and obliterated everything in its path. I started wondering about Danny and Paul, two guys I used to work with and hoping for their family’s sake that they were in the other tower. I sat there mesmerized for about fifteen minutes when my sister woke up and asked what was going on. We sat on the couch, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes as the second plane hit. And as the speculation continued, I saw her face grow more and more worried. William. 
Once we left the apartment, we were stunned by how quiet the city was. No cabs, no pedestrians, no nothing. Everyone was shut up in their homes, trying make sense of what happened. Every street we walked down was deserted and most everything was closed up. I knew the Living Room wouldn’t be, because the crowd on a Tuesday night was a hardcore drinking crowd. And since the world was ending, I knew it’d be open to give them a place to get loaded. We got to the bar and were greeted immediately by the Ramones on the jukebox and a mostly empty bar. But Mikey the bartender was there slinging drinks and we managed to have a good time despite the fact that no one knew what tomorrow would bring. 
There are as many styles of coasters as there are styles of music. Let's discuss that a bit, shall we? SHALL WE?
Think about all the rides you've ridden, be they ferris wheels or coasters or scramblers. They all have some form of restraint, don't they? Lap bars, straps, seat belts, shoulder harnesses. Even Carousels have straps for the kiddies nowadays. Have you ever ridden a coaster without at least a lap bar? 
I pointed out earlier that Roller Coaster has no restraints. That's a bit misleading. It HAD no restraints. It now has seat belts, though they're mainly for insurance purposes. The only thing they will do is point out deliberate rider misconduct.
The responsibility! I can't take it! The next, you're staying up 'til 3:30AM trying to cool down the bottle that you overheated as quickly as possible so that your new bundle of joy will stop piercing your eardrums with the blood curdling scream that he/she has already mastered, only to wake up 2 hours later to work your ass off to pay for diapers, onesies, college funds, and (sometimes) anti-depressants, while your CD/vinyl collection collects dust and your friends call you from the bar shouting, "Come out! How hard can it be to get a babysitter?" You often contemplate punching yourself in the face for even remotely considering the fact that Yes, a minivan probably would be more practical and you think, Responsibility?! Gah!! Someone should have told me!!
Then, a friend of a fellow blogger, who I’d met, told me he had gone to the jam and they desperately needed bass players. So the next week I called him up and checked to see if he wanted to go. Smart Half didn’t, and I was having a sort of “I’m not worthy” attack and didn’t really want to go alone. He didn’t want to go. So I dicked around the house a little bit, and then threw the Harmony into the truck and headed down. Kind of late. I was used to kind of crummy treatment at some of the coast blues jams and in a way expected it again. Granted, when I was going to the coast jams, I really, seriously had no idea what I was doing on my bass. Not a clue. But I kept going back and irritating them. It’s how I got better, really.
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He was inspired by Dawn and came up with a semi-sequel. Some people hated it but some people love it. It’s on my top ten list for unnecessary nudity, extreme gore and a dead cop. It’s almost too good. It’s so good that I want to save the details for another day. This is about you finding something good to watch this month, and I gave you that right here.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension sent me spinning the first time I saw it…. Words almost fail me when I try to describe to other people how cool this movie is. “See, there’s this really hot car,” is usually how I start, “and this guy drives it through a mountain, immediately after performing brain surgery and just before he has a show at the hottest rock club in Jersey City… And then the good aliens come to contact him because the evil aliens are trying to destroy the world, but he’s all wrapped up in his newly found dead wife’s twin and….” And I usally come off like a blathering idiot. Which isn’t unusual when I’m trying to describe the convoluted plot of one of my favorite sci-fi movies.
The owl talks to the mouse in a soft, melodic tone, offering innocuous words about the weather. The mouse hesitates at first; it senses something, something not right, but the mouse, as always, pushes the feeling of foreboding to the back of its brain, where it can hide among all the other senses it discards so easily; danger, disaster, defenselessness. Those are not things to be dealt with. Those things get in the way of pursuit. And the mouse is pursuing a dream.
Instead, I ended up having some powerful panic attacks in the middle of the night while we were up there. I think it was all that quiet. The complete darkness. Kind of suffocating. 
Sticks these electrode pad things all over me. 
Oh man, I would get with Wonder Woman all the way. I used to have a WW costume back in the day and I wanted to be her with all her sexy super powers and stuff. On that note, it would probably turn into an awesome role playing fantasy thing. So by all means, LET'S QUIT FUCKIN AROUND AND GET DOWN TO SOME SWEET PROCREATIN'!
A bunch of sandwiches and beer. Big fucking deal. Have fun here cause I am going to go talk with the other band. Before I knew it, our set was coming up. She was drunk. I was getting drunk. I looked at her and just wondered if it would be a good idea to leave her back here. I mean she was young. A fucking kid. I brought her back here. Maybe I should kick her out in the crowd and forget her. But, I couldn't. I didn't care, remember?
A boy, his tiger and a chance to see the world through the imagination of a demented but loveable child. Was Hobbes really alive, but only Calvin could see him? Or was Hobbes just a stuffed animal given a fantasy life with Calvin’s incredible imagination? Or maybe it was a whole Fight Club type scenario where Hobbes existed in neither real nor stuffed form, but was just an extension of Calvin’s personality. Maybe Calvin was a schizophrenic. 
She spends recklessly, probably buying handbags and hats she can't afford and justifying those expenses with phone calls to family members who will just agree with her justifications. She complains constantly about the little things she has no control over. 
On the road to maturity we lose sight of instant reaction and stop really looking. We tend to concentrate on looking for a Relationship with a capital “R”.
things when the wood falls into your hands. Someone had a plan. Something happened. One of the things I think about alot when I go thru life. Somehow this place got from point A to point C. The question to me was, and always has been, "What happened in point B?" I thought about it for hours walking around and looking up at the sky. I had no answer. I never do. I’m no historian. I never will be. All I knew was something happened there.
I have been performing in drag as Ms. Alexandra Chase, since I was about 18 years of age, the debut of my alter ego as a performer was at a gay club called "Club 240". it was billed as the first annual drag contest and show, and funny enough it wound up being held the last night the club was ever open! I was the Dee Jay, a performer and also one of the hosts of said show. (At 18 I was already a back stage maven!) I lost the contest portion to a wonderful Drag King By the name of Jason Wolf, whose rendition of "Piano Man" By Billy Joel totally wowed the audience. The winner was gracious enough to actually give me the tiara and wand that we had for prizes. It was a great time had by all but one. I recall going into the back stage area where one of the performers by the name of "Crystal Balls" was getting out of costume for the night. She looked at me and then told me that the whole thing was a farce, and that no "Woman" should win any drag shows. I recall responding to Crystal with “Jason did a wonderful job and was dressed in the opposite gender. This qualifies him/her to win any drag show!" This brings me to my first real gripe about the world of a drag queen.
growing wardrobe of dresses and jewelry, heels and makeup, music and themes. Ms Chi Chi Rodriguez also used my things; however she would use them and insist that no one else use them ever again except her! Going as far as to have stolen a wig, one of my best dresses, and my favorite "Little Black Shoes". Due to scheduling conflicts, and new management, the show was put on the shelf and my alter ego was put to rest for a while. But it was during the time spent on "Diva!" that I met members of an organization known as "The Barony Of All Vermont" At the time, a lovely group of fantastically dressed drag queens and kings that belonged to a larger organization known as the "National Imperial Court" Or at least something like that. The premise of this group is to perform and collect money for non-profit organizations, like a battered women’s shelter or my personal favorite, any local humane society. There are dues to pay to belong to this group and there are rules that must be followed regarding performance content and appropriate material, etc. I was asked to join this group, and after reading the information I became hesitant and declined the offer. Among these restrictions were rules of conduct for other members based on station, standing, and title. This brings me to another little gripe I have.
participate in the show. Now for those of you who don't know how it works at one of these events, it kind of works like a strip show, the performer gets onstage and lip syncs, sings and/or dances to a song playing overhead. Fabulous costumes and raunchy jokes may even be a part of the spectacle too. During these numbers, the audience "tips" you, waving bills for you to take, or suggestively sticking a five dollar bill in your bra or wherever you deem necessary, so while you sing and dance you also get to collect cash! 
Being in California stopped being crossing a line in the sand along time ago. California became a state of mind along time before any of us were born. Something that is in all of us yet is buried in some. 
The "we can do this better than you" attitude. As I said, sometimes it fails miserably, but at least we tried. 
Yea, we have laws against driving while talking on the cell phone and we have too many strip malls and no good radio stations and my hockey team might as well play dead and roll over. We’ve got high taxes and ridiculous housing prices and the trees and grass are slowly disappearing from our landscape as the suburbs become little cities. 
I have a few things started, never finished for one reason or another. I thought I would throw some of it out here and see what people thought. Wait, I normally don’t give a rat's ass what people think, but then again, I’m going to be that old man in black socks and plaid shorts yelling at the neighbor kids to “get off my lawn.”
Is that a movie opening? Is that a good lead in? Well I just flung that outta my head while I was trying to get to my article. Jebus H, talk about stream of consciousness… So here I was going to post a thing from some old scripts that never took off and one clever set of words later, “Unfinished Things” I think it was is taking up space in the world directly from my head. Hey it might suck, who knows. But don’t ya wanna know what happens to regular guy Alec Baldwin in a beard? What becomes of him? Did he fight with Sarah before work and never said he was sorry, or did he buy the ring that morning with plans to ask her tonight. Infinite possibilities I guess. 
I drove a mini (not the BMW kind!) with big fat (for a mini) street/race tires that just kind of floated over the snow. We slid around corners completely sideways, did 360's in the streets, spun out and had a blast. But you know how it is, it's only so much fun if you're not the driver. 
He puts on a coat, we all traipse out to review the wreckage. He looks at the patch of sidewalk with only a thin covering of snow, where his van was left. Confusion creases his brow. He slowly turns his head following the gouges carved into the snow by eight tires. 
I think it is just the flavor from the Commies that get me. Sure, I'm not too political, but everytime I inhale, I feel as if I'm knocking down a piece of the Berlin Wall. Kinda like when you have to explain to girls why they are all bi-sexual separated by two vodka shots and a hotel room. That confused looked they give you as the shots go down. God, I love to watch girls kissing. 
My fond memories of the Olsen twins all revolve around that underrated, misunderstood Kirstie Alley/Steve Guttenberg masterpiece, It Takes Two. 
A not so famous person born on Friday the 13th
That’s up there with Jaws and Halloween in terms of memorable scores. A hell of a lot better than the stupid ass song they’re singing around the campfire in the opening scene. Summer camp movies are the best, aren’t they? Anything set in the woods has potential.
So, okay. Jason was picked on as a kid because he was a deformed little reject who couldn’t swim very well. That explains the mask. Cool. We know that his Mom went nuts because she lost her special little boy. It’s easy enough to figure out that, well, the kid probably wasn’t that well adjusted to begin with. Losing his Mom and growing up in the woods on your own has got to make things worse, especially with your genes predisposed to murder like that.
Today I’m going to talk to you about the most beloved man in hockey. Nope, not Walter Gretzky and it’s not Jim Balsille* either. I man I speak of is strong of mind (even if he’s wrong), has a will of steel (but no brass balls), and is dragging the NHL kicking and screaming into the future...
BON THINGS...
It was getting to the point where you couldn’t tell the players hockey skill level, only their interference skill level. We actually get to see passing, playmaking and, yes children, some great fights. The only rule I am having a hard time loving is the shootout. It seems cheap to me. If a goalie has had a great game, bringing it to a tie at the end of the third, all the weight now rests on his shoulders; it’s no longer a team game.
First things first, Nikolai Valuev is a joke, a circus act, a sideshow barker's wet dream, he will never beat a true heavyweight champion, the man cannot throw a true punch, move laterally, or throw in combination. He incessantly throws arm punches, he doesn't seem to have the ability to throw a punch with conviction, or the ability to turn his hips through and throw a punch with his full force, nor can he seem to turn a punch over, these are the things you are taught to do before you even get into a ring, and he cannot do them. He uses his extreme size to overpower smaller weaker opponents, guys like Monte Barrett, who weighed in at 233 pounds, yet was out weighed by 105 lbs, Valuev outweighed his opponent by the average weight of a 10 year old. Sure that works on fringe contenders like the Barrett's of the world, but what happens when the "Russian Freak" has to face a real heavyweight champion, someone like Wladimir Klitschko, who at 6 foot 6 inches, and 240 pounds, is just six inches shorter and weights just 90 pounds less then Valuev. Yeah, that is still a very large disparity in height and weight, the difference is Klitschko can fight, he moves laterally, works behind a huge jab, and knows how to throw a true punch. 
Secondly, I truly am a Diego Corrales fan, I love his heart, his desire, his ability to entertain, what happened last Friday when he couldn't make weight doesn't change my feelings for him in anyway. For those who don't know, or care, Corrales could not make the weight of 135 pounds for his title defense against Joel Casamayor, so in essence Corrales lost on the scales, he lost his world title and to a degree some of his reputation. After some negotiating with the Casamayor camp, they agreed to fight at the 147 pound weight limit, and according to the rules Casamayor was the only one who could walk out of the ring a champion, which was what happened, some fighter's just have another fighter's number. We have seen it before, most recently with Vernon Forrest and Shane Mosley, Ricardo Mayorga and Vernon Forrest, Antonio Tarver and Roy Jones Jr., there are just some fighters who you are not going to beat, and Casamayor is that to Diego Corrales. Corrales spoke of retiring after this lose, I hope he doesn't, but like they say, "if you're talking about it, you already have done it", good luck Chico in whatever you decide.
When I see one on the road, I turn off the stereo and open the window. I explain to my son that this is what a motorcycle sounds like. He's two years old, so I figure it's time he learns. You might say I have a "problem". 
We walked out. He fired it. At idle there's a layer of dry clutch jingle and airbox gulping for air. The idle was like a serious of shots going off rather than a cooperation, like one cylinder wanted to get in line in front of the other and they were both pushing and shoving and elbows to see who fires first. He had the factory clutch cover but with no gasket, which made the clutch a little louder. If you've not experienced it, most Ducati bikes have a "dry clutch". This means that instead of being encased in a nice little sealed compartment of oil inside the engine cases, the clutch is just a basket with a bunch of dry plates rattling around in there. Because of the intense heat it generates, these plates have to fit loosely when it's cold because they expand quite a bit when heated up. I've heard the sound described as "shaking a bag of nickels" but I think it sounds a bit like rapping on a dinner plate with a butter knife. It's a clatter. It's metal on metal. Staccato. It goes in time with the engine's firing pulses, so it's like a ting ting ting ting kinda noise. Some people find it really annoying, while others wear it as a badge of honor. Either way, it's unique. 
This is one cracked-out muppet that is not right in the head. I can imagine him being brought into some psych ward, screaming and roaring and making the orderlies mumble things like “lobotomy” and “shock treatment” and other pertinent Ramones lyrics. Whatever the hell was wrong with him, it made him a bit endearing to me. What can I say, I like troubled guys. 
Unsociable, mostly misanthropic, mean, obnoxious, sarcastic and a total slob. Hell, that’s what my last personal ad read like.
Bugs – Every little boy likes bugs you’re thinking to yourself, right? Not this kid. They had too many legs and way too many eyes. They wore their skeletons on the outside and the damn things were everywhere. I think I was six or seven when I read that the insect population outnumbered the human population 150 million to one. And I immediately came to the conclusion that if they ever decided to feast on human flesh, it’d take about two weeks for them to take us all out. As a youngster, the thought of a swarm of insects pulling at my flesh and tearing out my eyes just to make a meal of me terrified me. For weeks after I learned that nifty little nugget, I was convinced that every bug I saw was an advance scout for the coming Insect Invasion. I wanted desperately to kill them all, destroy every damn bug I came into contact with, just in case they decided to turn on us. Because what’s the use of being part of an Insect Invasion if I don’t have my eyes to watch it with ?
A while after the first movie came out, I got a Gryffindor house scarf as a gift. It was nice, but I like long-assed scarves. This one was pretty short and the colors weren't as bright as the ones in the movies. So I decided to knit one for myself. It couldn't be that hard, could it? 
Even that ideal victim, the blind, mentally challenged child (remember him?), would have spotted this blunder.
That's cool. Letting someone know that someone in here fucked up and it was up to them to tell him what was going on because no one here is walking away without their knees scraped. Everyone just kinda stopped and listened to him. Except for Paul Newman. Who just stopped caring at that point. 
I ended up inviting a guy friend of mine to meet me there since he’d been there several times, knew what to go and where, and which hookers were the best and mostly disease-free (or at least had only those ailments that could be cured by a round of strong antibiotics). There were also some potential fringe benefits that would come along with the visit, if you catch my drift. We’ll call this friend, "M–."
I look through the peephole, and my next thought is just absolutely nothing. Literally, nothing. It’s like a black hole opened up in my brain and that’s all I could see. Nothing. I open the door, and there the bellman stands with a dozen red roses. I’m thinking, aw, M– is so sweet. He sent flowers but arrived later than they were supposed to. I look at him, kinda confused but ready to thank him.
The first thoughts that went through my mind were not very clear. I couldn’t tell if I was being mugged by Roscoe P. Coltrane or if I had somehow incurred the wrath of another southern sheriff. I knew there was a taser in the back of my neck, because after a while, you just get used to these things. What I didn’t know was who was on the other end of it. “You gonna turn around real slow now,” he continued. “And you’re gonna put that thing back in your pants and hand me your identification.” It seemed to be an odd thing for a mugger to say, so I replied with the first though that came into my head. “Can I… um, finish first ?”
Are we jaded now or were we naïve then? Doesn’t matter if the movie’s good.
Sorry to have stolen so much of your hash and weed over the years, by the way. If it makes you feel any better, we pinched off your ex husband too.
My favourite part in the whole damn movie, the part I never miss, is when the biker chick is wandering around in the barn. She stumbles across an old canteen hanging on the side of a stable; she picks it up and looks at it for a second, shakes her head with a “well I’ll be damned” look on her face and slaps the canteen to confirm its existence. Yeah, believe it baby, a real live canteen. She dies soon after that. 
This is magnified by 100 if you’re in a band and do a lot of playing. 
It’s October and my thoughts turn to horror movies.
‘Salem’s Lot - Oh, you know which scene. Face in the window. My sister used to try to scare me by going around to my bedroom window and scratching on it. That’s a good way to get yourself killed. By my hands.
I was only ten at the time. What the hell was my mother thinking taking me to see that? Eh, I should probably thank her.
My entire childhood was one long string of horrible Halloween costumes. The last good one was when I was -what?-Five? I was He-Man. That was cool. Then I became a little fat kid and it all went to hell. 
I've slept 3 of the last 36 hours, so let's just say I'm a man of few words at this point. But what do you care? You're only reading this to be jealous of my cooking skills and to look for new music with which to offend your neighbors. I know my place.
The underground Swedish metal scene is a hotbed of musical incest, and Witchery is no exception. I swear to god there are 1500 Swedish metal bands but only like 13 people that can play an instrument in the whole damned country. Put on hiatus since 2001 because of 3 of its members' other bands' grueling tour schedule (guitarist Patrik Jensen is in the Haunted, bassist Sharlee D'Angelo is in Mercyful Fate and Arch Enemy, and Martin Axenrot is in Bloodbath, as well as currently sitting as drummer for Opeth), they're back with an album that, despite its name, doesn't really need any more cowbell. The album is full of catchy riffs and fantastic drum work. With Jensen in the band, though, a lot of the riffs sound like The Haunted rip-offs. In some cases it's because of Jensen's unique guitar tone, and in others it's because they're really just self-plagiarized. Still, it's a combination of quality and anticipation, as this is their first album in 5 years, but
Funny how things work out; The other day CJM and I were having lunch at this cool little bar in South Philly where the bartenders basically play whatever they want, and it's usually very good Punk - old school, local and some newer (accepted) stuff... that's right, ACCEPTED. You think I'm a snob, you should meet some of these old school Punks in town! We were talking to one of the bartenders and I said to him, "you look familiar as hell..." He returned by saying that he knew who I was the first time we came in last summer but he remembered me not being very nice so he didn't say anything to me... I've always been a dick!. He said his name and it all came back to me. After a lot of conversation about old times, that CJM stayed out of for some reason, I started thinking... 
Denim jackets, hair feathered and parted in the middle, mullets and cheesy 70's metal was the way... not a couple of Punks with torn bondage pants and colored hair. I jumped right in and few kids back then did the same... most of the ones that did, did it very cautiously. One kid, who became a very good friend later in life, tagged along with our group doing anything we did, trying so hard to be radical but never really pulled it off. We never took him in. He was younger (and we were fucking young, 13, 14) and was more a pest always trying to hang out and stuff. We had enough trouble trying to get drugs and alcohol back then without some 'kid' following us around.
She'll make point five past lightspeed...
Who's scruffy-looking?
My mom almost had an orgasm watching Mr. Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore kissing before I told her it was really Whoopi Goldberg kissing her. A few rewinds of the tape and Mom turned white. I mean yeah, it's Whoopi making out with her, but hey, I'll fucking take Charo kissing Aunt Bee from Mayberry as long as my snake spits at the end of the night. You see, I have a very vivid imagination and can make anything into a fantasy. Too bad Aunt Bee is dead or we would have a cool reunion show on the Love Boat. Charo and Aunt Bee. On the Love Boat. Licking nubbins. I would have sticky socks for a week.
. Bronson Pinchott in an absurd scene with cocaine. Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken in one of the most intense scenes every put on film. Samuel Jackson. And Gary Fucking Oldman out villain-ing even himself. 
That boredom mixed with the pressure of being there mixed with the feelings of out right hatred mixed with sleepiness mixed with drugs will fuck you up unless you can get it down. A simple formula to keep your head together. 
You can make the call cause I really don't care. Something went wrong tonight. I didn't think we sucked. I think we played pretty well. I don't know. And that's the bottom line. Something happened and I don't know. Taking a drink off a beer I just watched the headliner destroy the set. Maybe we did suck. Maybe we were off. Fuck if I know. I lit up another cigarette and walked out back to just watch the night. Crappy dirt alleyway like my hometown. Dust as cars drove by. I rose my head up. Great. Not only did we suck, I am sitting in a fucking dirt alley like I did when I was a kid. 
Listening to "Little Wonder," you wonder at some of the sounds that Reeves got from his guitar. If you happened to see Bowie perform on Saturday Night Live in this era, you got to see Reeves rip out some wild guitar work.
I also learned that tomato soup can talk to you when exposed to radiation from nuclear plants, and that if you buy a copy of The Peanuts Collection Vol. 3 by Charles Shultz, the FBI will track you as a terrorist because of the section where Snoopy (as the Red Baron) crashes his plane into Snoopy's (just regular old Snoopy) doghouse in a kamikaze attempt.
So who's more masculine? The big guy who can't understand audio visual instructions, or the little guy who can change your oil and whip up a makover in under twenty minutes? It is possible that because I gew up in Vermont farm country with two wonderful brothers I am a very anomalous person in the gay world. Treading a fine line between both sexes, or maybe I am masculine because I accept who I am and make no bones about it. When did "masculine acting" enter the scene? I'm sorry guys I don't have to ACT masculine, because I am. So get over it already.
Never, because he loves his wife and the time that they have had over the years has gotten them the chance to really know one another; every inch, every millimeter, every nuance. Now I shudder to think about this because we're talking about my folks here but I bet no one can please my dad like my mom, and vice versa. Because she knows him so well he just has to look at her and she just knows right what's on his mind.
What happened to just getting to know a person? Has sex become so impersonal? It's the new fad! Everyone jump on the party train! I'm still of the opinion that sex should mean SOMETHING even if it's so simple as "God you're beautiful and I like what you have to say about ethics in dating" Now it seems that sex has been cut down to mean nothing more than a glorified handshake. "Nice to meet you, Here's my ass, do your thing!" Is that really sexy?
hoping to see a win next to their names. These are the teams that, if your team suffers a loss, you can at least feel a little better knowing that your backup team got a win. If your favorite and your backup both lose, well that just blows. Move on to backup number two if you've got one.
Quick story before we start. Everyone likes getting gifts. I know I do, because I’m a total whore about it. Well a few Christmases ago (not the one I ruined, I’ll tell that story another time) I got what is likely the coolest gift you can buy another person. I received the entire Far Side Collection. TWO, count ‘em, TWO ginormous tomes of the greatest works to ever grace a newspaper. These had every single frame ever drawn by Gary Larson, and weighed, no kidding, like 25 pounds. Anyway, the bearer of said gift was none other than my friend, 
A: It's a toss up between the producer who gave us a piece of his gross profits but then reneged when the movie actually came out and made money, and the producer who tried to get our credits shot without the card saying what it was we were actually being credited for.
A: "8 1/2"
First, we would like to remind you of the FTTW Halloween Fiction Contest. Details can be found 
If they had made SG-1 a Marine or Army team, it just wouldn't have been the same. There sure as hell wouldn't have been any dramatic tension, nor any wise-cracking.
For all the muted colors, shaky-cam action and tribal music, it's still a primetime soap opera, albeit a very good one.
This Saturday we have dueling fight shows on HBO and Showtime. Showtime has the rubber-match between lightweights (130 lbs.) Diego "Chico" Corrales and Joel "El Cepillo" Casamayor, their first two fights were all action affairs with each taking a win. I expect nothing less of this, Corrales and Casamayor do not like each other, hate is not to strong a word for the feelings these two have for each other, Casamayor in general hates everyone anyway, so it's no surprise he hates Corrales, why shouldn't he, Diego "Chico" Corrales from Sacramento, Ca. is everyone's favorite type of fighter, a true warrior willing to go toe to toe with anyone anywhere, even after doing two years for spousal abuse everyone still loves him, because Diego Corrales is truly a nice guy, he made a mistake as a kid and he has been forgiven. Casamayor on the other hand seems to just be a whining prick, he likes no one and no one likes him, he tells his sad story of fleeing Cuba after he was given the gift of a bicycle from Castro for winning the 1992 Gold Medal. Anyway, their first fight ended in a 6th stoppage for Casamayor who had Corrales down twice before the doctors stopped it due to cuts Corrales had sustained throughout the fight, the rematch ended in a split decision for Corrales, who again was down in the tenth before pulling out the slim victory. Though Casamayor is a very slick boxer, he tends to stay on the inside and slug when he really has no need to, he did it in the previous two fights with Corrales, as well as with JL Castillo and Popo Freitas, Casamayor has the pop to trade with Corrales, but I think he is better off trying to out box the bigger stronger fighter, but pride or plain meaness won't allow for that, I see Corrales ending this with a big left hook, Corrales by KO in the 9th round.
On the supposed "Home Of Boxing" HBO, the circus coming to town in the form of 7 foot 325 lbs "Russian Giant" Nikolai Valuev versus Monte "Two Gunz" Barrett, good name Barrett, 'cause that's what it is going to take for you to even come close to winning this fight - TWO GUNS, two very big guns. Now, America finally gets to see if the latest Don King discovery can fight, we have seen fighters this size before, and mostly they are freak shows, all size no talent, but we'll see if Valuev can throw more than one punch at a time and if he can move with any kind of grace or fluidity, if he can, he might be dangerous to anyone in the heavyweight division, anyone that is, not named Wladimir Klitschko. If Valuev proves he can fight and can KO a true heavyweight contender than I fear Klitschko will be the only one who will be able to stop him, Klitschko has the size at 6'6" and skill to beat anyone in the glamour division right now, including Valuev.
Well, Sunday is just around the corner and my Buccaneers are staring down the barrel of 0 & 4, this is not good, but maybe all is not lost. With Chris Simms out for probably the season and maybe forever as a Buccaneer, we get to see the future in Bruce Gradkowski, a sixth round pick from Toledo, he looked good in the preseason, but that was against teams number 2 and mostly number 3 defenses, luckily we are facing New Orleans, who after that Monday night against Atlanta have come back down to earth and are as mediocre as always. Hopefully "Chuckie" Gruden has come up with a plan to win, word is he is not scaling back the playbook which is good, give Gradkowski the tools
The neighbor is a young, dirty hippie who has a young, dirty hippie boyfriend. They tell the hippie couple, "hey, think you could throw this turkey in the oven for us at 4:00? kthnxbye." And they go out. And the dirty hippie teenagers smoke some of that evil wacky weed and get really, really stoned. At 4:00 they remember about the turkey and put it in the oven.
Unlike today, where there's a 7-11 on practically every block, there was just a lone store back then. Meaning if we wanted Slurpees we had to cross into Shelbyville. We had Murray's candy store on our side and we might have gone their instead of 7-11 if Murray didn't have a a vicious German Shepherd that left teeth marks in the candy. You'd pick a Bazooka gum out of the bucket, open it up to read the comic and see canine imprints in the gum. And drool in the bucket. So fuck that. We went across the street. 
But where to go ? The city was littered with my castoffs. You couldn’t walk two blocks in Old City or Uptown without running into a bar I’d been to a couple of times and decided I didn’t like it for one reason or another. Either the jukebox sucked or the service was bad or there were too many college kids or… Hell, sometimes I think I just made up reason not to like a certain place. As a result, I’d become a connoisseur of the “Old Man” bar. The quiet joint where there were three or four old guys who were always at the bar. They didn’t talk to each other, much less the bartender. They would just sit and watch the TV and sip their beers. A little quiet and solitude in a very busy city. And they were fantastic. The bad TV, the lack of anyone coked up and talking about how they could change the world and the complete and total anonymity. The “Old Man” bars were hidden all over the city and it became sort of a mission to find them all. I thought about writing a book once about them, just something to put into my bag. A quick ref for all the quiet places in the city to get a beer. As a matter of fact, I may still do that. 
Whiskey down and about halfway through my pint and my thoughts started to turn back to her. It was gonna be weird without her particular brand of madness. We’d bonded almost instantly, just before Christmas. Before the blow and the lies. I ordered another double, cause it was gonna be a long night. We’d seemed like we had a lot in common, before the truths started coming out. She liked punk rock and fast cars and pinball. She wasn’t afraid to go to shows and push back when she got shoved. She made me smile immediately and if you know me, that’s no mean feat. I ordered another beer and a double. All these things she told me, and they were all lies. The things that were bouncing around in my head were the things I was trying to erase. Memories like beans rattling around in a can. They needed to go away. 
use of a chainsaw. There’s this one guy who is way more bad news than any horror villain who has ever appeared onscreen, including some prepubescent chick who pisses on the carpet at parties and stabs herself in the crotch with crap from the parish gift shop. That act was, like, so 1973.
Franklin takes a spill on the side of the road? Sure thing! Should we laugh when the poor crippled guy in the wheelchair goes ass over tits down a hill and spills a jar of piss all over himself? Of course not. Wait, that’s the same scene. Mom always told me not to laugh at people with physical handicaps but Franklin was fucking asking for it, okay? Who the hell starts poking at a van’s interior with a knife for the hell of it? Who the hell thinks that the best way to find a lost person is to wait for them to find you? Who the hell thinks that a wheelchair will work as well in the woods as it will on pavement? Who exactly had a few things in common with the hitchhiker, such as knives and an interest in slaughterhouses? FRANKLIN! I’m not laughing at Franklin because he was handicapped, I’m laughing at Franklin because he was a fucking dolt. That chainsaw in the chest was long overdue and a welcome relief from the hell they call The Life Of Franklin Hardesty.
much means you are gonna have to turn a trick tonight to pay that cash back. See, people ask why I don't gamble anymore. Try being spun on the top of a Chester for cash to pay back the neighborhood bully and you will hate the 49ers too. But once again, I don't really think that’s a rivalry.
To roast it, take a 3 pound pumpkin and cut the stem off. Cut it right down the middle and scoop out the seeds. Save those for later! Rub the cut side with some vegetable oil and place it cut-side down on a cookie sheet. Put it in a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes. It's done when you can put a toothpick into the cut side and it goes in with not much
I mean, it's great when you're 17 and stoned and sitting around a campfire at the beach and your friend has an out of tune acoustic guitar and starts strumming and you all start singing "bye, bye, miss American pie...." but come on. It's just too god damn long. By the time the last verse came around, I was always halfway down the other end of the beach, looking for a private place to pee.
But if you’re over 18 and not hindered by drug addiction or alcoholism that may cloud your thinking and you still believe these words are the most powerful thing you ever heard, you might want to find the nearest bathtub and emulate your idol.
When I talked to people face to face, they would come to the show that night. Talk to someone for ten minutes in a coffee house and tell them you were in town, they would show up. They might be the only people there, but the next time around they would bring their friends. This was something you had to see. It's really like some bad growth on your arm. It started, now it would grow. Who would be the first to say, "I saw them first." Sure the first people all got free CD's and shirts, but their friends had to buy them. It really didn't matter to me as long as we weren't playing to empty halls anymore. I would do anything for you to look at me. 
Savor the moment.
Then the wondering where I am at. Yes, I do that. I still need about 20 minutes to remember where I am at when I wake up. You should have seen me at Michele's house. That was a mind fuck.
Here are a few of mine, and just so you know, they are not made up just to make you laugh. These are all real and I believe in all of them, crazy as it may be, I believe in all of them.
New Orleans at Carolina - New Orleans is one of the nice surprises in the league so far, sitting at 3-0. How about that? I like it. I always like the underdog teams to do well, so I'll take The Saints.
