Stop spitting blood in my eyes - revised

Not to scale...so screw you.

It was a redneck classic rock table smashing, tooth losing, blood spitting, cop car squealing good time last night at the old neighborhood bar. Oh yeah. Thankfully I was not there by myself so all of this can be corroborated by someone who can actually read and write (basic literacy usually being in pretty short supply amongst the patrons).

I went up to ye old watering hole as I have on so many journeys before to be joined by my jolly friend Marc. He was complaining of fatigue and general malaise but I guilt tripped him into going up for some drinks anyway. Y’see, I’m good like that as it’s all about me and my needs and I can employ nefarious methods to get what I want. Like many other times at the bar Marc and I were just chittering and chattering away while stuffing our faces with bad bar food and beer. After a bit we were totally riveted into silence by the FOX show about celebrities with no makeup. Honestly some of it was pretty frightening but mostly the “shocking photos”, just looked like bad pictures of good looking people. I can sympathize with the celebs because I myself am drop dead fucking gorgeous to a shocking degree and even I take a bad snapshot every now and again. But I digress….

During the commercial breaks we were talking about work while being glared at by two sloe-eyed mongoloid bikers who wanted to kill us. They were getting sorta kinda unnerving until the booze they were consuming intermingled with the gallons already in them and they pretty much forgot about us as they slipped into a semi-comatose state. With a huff and a cough and hack and a gag they wandered out to their piece of shit pick-up truck to try and drive home and most likely slaughter innocent families on the highway during the course of their travels.

After a bit Jamie arrived who I had also guilt tripped into joining me. He gave me some lame excuse about not wanting to come regarding the state of his liver and some severe misgivings about long-term alcohol induced dementia but that was all pish-posh and fiddle-faddle to me. He was no match for my powers of persuasion and promises of beer buying and soon he was there with Marc and I and the three of us watched the snow and the shows and had beers and it was all holly and jolly and well. Seeing that I was in good hands Marc bade farewell (that pussy) at just the wrong, or I guess right depending on how you look at it, time and dammit did he miss a show.

Shortly after Marc took his leave a gaggle of young, stupid, loud rednecks (GROUP A) that I had never seen before invaded the bar and took roost in a couple of booths against the wall. If you look at the map above you can see where we were sitting and where they were ensconced. One of their order who goes by the name of Jeff was getting his hackles up and feeling quite randy and lively. I know his name is Jeff by virtue of the bartender repeatedly yelling, “JEFF SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!” across the gloom in the room. Young Jeff had decided that he had to start up some sort of a blood feud Hatfields and McCoys with another group of rednecks (GROUP B) further down the rail of lunacy and expressed his feelings on the matter with a well thought out and brazen war cry of “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT???” Jeff filled the air quite frequently with his pithy missive but it garnered little to no reaction from Group B from what I could tell. With these kinds of folks some drunked up stranger yelling shit about kicking their asses over cocktails is about as surprising as cousin screwing or missing Xmas for a third DUI conviction…..it’s just the life that they live….bro.

It should be noted that Thursday is supposed to be Karaoke night for the dimwits but on this night Karaoke was cancelled along with school and general life due to the weather. That hole in the social calendar left a sizable number of drunks with nothing to do but get good and pissed off without the release of bellowing Toby Keith and Duran Duran songs. While Groups A and B nudged and glared at teach other another large murder of dopes (GROUP C) had taken roost in the tables near the door and were busy being dicks about not being able to sing Karaoke and everything else under the sun. They all had dinner and drinks and unfortunately none of them choked to death while they were cramming calories down their gaping toothless mastication factories.

So at critical mass you had Groups A,B, and C, random idiots, me and Jamie, the bartenders, the Karaoke guy who didn’t bring the Karaoke and tons of booze flowing. Things were pretty under control aside from Jeff and his non-stop call to arms and probably would have stayed under control until the spark that lit the powder keg showed up in the form of one of those annoying bastards that walks around bars selling roses. He was like the Archduke Ferdinand for the retards in the bar, not really a central player in the general conflict but history will reveal him to be the linchpin to the insane explosion of violence that was to come.

Jamie and I found out what happened to blow things up after the fact. It seems that one of Jeff’s crew from Group A bought a rose for the old lady of a hammerhead from Group B and as the bartender told us during the aftermath – “Dude, that shit just ain’t right buying flowers for another dude’s old lady!” Indeed not I say!!!! Well, dude from Group B got righteously pissed and raised his fists and went after dude from Group A with a banshee yell of, “FUCK YOU FUCKER” and the bar pretty much exploded. Jamie and I had the best seats in the house as the maelstrom of bodies flew right past us and landed where X marks the spot on the map. It was a moving mass of fat stupid gross bodies being led by the dunces doing the keep yer hands off my old-lady two-step from where Group B was positioned up the bar to our location.

They swarmed past us and the dude from group A that started all this shit somehow got on top of dude from group B. As they tumbled towards the ground succumbing to the laws of gravity and inertia the dude from group B hit his head on the wall and was instantly knocked unconscious. Being wholly unable to defend himself he was summarily fucking pummeled with shots to the face by the idiot from Group A who had caused all the trouble in the first place. Said pummeler was pulled off after a few rounds of unrestricted blows to the face of his enemy by members of groups B and C screaming “DUDE YOU GOT KNOCKED THE FUCK OUT!!!!!”, whilst thrashing about awash in the glories of his victory. That party was short-lived however as karmic justice prevailed and he was sucker punched in the face by a group B member effectively turning his nose into strawberries n’ cream oatmeal. One of the bartenders (female) threw her poor self gallantly on the ground during the melee and when she was pulled out of the fiasco started yelling hysterically, “I ALREADY CALLED THE AMBUALANCE”, when, in fact, she had not. She did call the local rescue squad shortly thereafter as well as the boys in dark navy blue from the Fairfax County Police Department who were soon to arrive with their whacking sticks and manacles at the ready.

Meanwhile back at the lunatic asylum the fellers and hags from Group B who were not willing to stand for this kind of behavior from their mentally challenged antagonists AT ALL NO WAY NO HOW basically started punching the shit out of anyone they didn’t know. The table behind me and Jamie was flattened to the floor by two greasy denim clad bodies crashing headlong into and on top of it. There was a solid dust-up directly to my left and another to Jamie’s right. Some stupid dope named Spanky got his misshapen bald head punched in while screaming “I DON’T HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS SHIT, MY SISTER IS AN ASSISTANT MANAGER HERE!!!!!!” Even with that kind of clout he still managed to get thrown out the door by his neck, (some people just have no respect for authority), and received further beatings out in the parking lot. The guy bartender big Alex, (who is big enough that his redneck nickname should be Tiny), started seriously clearing house and tossing lunkheads to and fro and we watched in delight as they crashed into each other in mid-air along with the furniture that was flying hither and yon through the smoky veil that hovers near the ceiling of the bar at all times. It was about at this point of the fracas that the old ladies got involved in the proceedings. Their strategy pretty much consisted of reaching in to slap the shit out of whoever was not in their group that was being held back by others, thus unable to defend themselves from the stinging retribution of bacon fat hands tipped with press on nails from the Dollar Store. I remember the look of total insanity on one of the harridan’s faces; a mixture of hatred, adrenaline, drunkenness and pure and total excitement that I will never forget. That damn goblin face has been burned into my brain forever.

You might be wondering what Jamie and I were doing during all of this and the answer is not much of anything. We were sitting right in the middle of the action and were never touched even by accident. We just spectated and laughed our asses off the whole time like the old dudes on the Muppet show, just being dicks for dicks sakes somehow never pulled into the fray. It was awesome.

Not long after the whole thing started a gang comprised of groups A,B and C ran out the door to beat each other up in the snow. As they were doing so the cops arrived and started clubbing them in their skulls and arresting their stupid asses. Between the cops rounding up the maniacs and the migration to brawl coolly in the great outdoors things had subsided inside the bar and the aftermath was coming into focus. The dude from group B that got knocked the fuck out was up and semi-alert talking to one of his bros about what happened and his bro kept telling him, “DUDE, I NEED YOU TO STOP SPITTING BLOOD INTO MY EYES.” His face was ripped open, his ear was bleeding, he was missing a tooth and after getting checked out by the paramedics and refusing transpo to the hospital he went back to the bar and ordered a cocktail. Oh like you wouldn’t!!!!

I figured the coast was clear to take a piss so I scooted back to the can and found a bloody wifebeater wadded up on the sink, (the sink-bowl was full of blood), along with a tooth. Really, a tooth…just sitting there….on the sink. It was very odd and I damn myself for not having a camera. Needless to say I ignored the sign imploring me to wash my hands. The cops were canvassing the bar after making several arrests and were taking statements (they didn’t take mine but I think I might send in this recap anyway). One weary officer just barked, “alright is anybody else in here hurt?” which struck me very funny. A couple of the combatants took up a perch next to me and Jamie and complained about the fact that, “thissssh isssh Amuricah and who are they to shell me I can’t whalhk home if I wanna….well thassssh FAIRFUX fhucking county for you…fucking bassshtards….take a cab….fushk yewwww piggy…..OINK OINK OINK!!” and shit like that. They started to stumble home anyway and I can only hope they either got arrested for dunk in public or run over by the mongoloid bikers.

As the cops were taking folks away to the hoosegow Group C cleared out to go do whatever atrocious things they do at their homes. One of the bar patrons was kind enough to chip in and clear the dishes seeing as how the bartenders had more pressing things like blood and body parts to sweep up. Later it became apparent that he had tipped himself for his labors to the tune of all the money left on the table to cover the bill but we can’t all be perfect at simple math now can we? At least he bothered to get involved! Somehow battle-cry Jeff managed to avoid getting arrested and came stalking back into the bar with one of his gang of fools. He sat down and yelled at Alex the bartender (who amazingly had not killed anyone throughout this whole ordeal)….I NEED LIGHTS!!!!! Alex says, “Marlboro Lights” and Jeff slurred back, “NO…MILLER LITES!!!!!”

He was, of course, served his beers post-haste and forthwith.

Jamie and I started talking to a guy who was a fringe combatant for a while. We’ll call him Mellow Tom. He wasn’t part of any of the groups but he was in there busting some asses around for fun. Tom was a pretty cool cat and he thought about not getting involved but as he thinks the bar is a nice place to hang out and there were no bouncers he figured it was the right thing to do to kick some heads in, you know, for the good of the community. Who says there are no role models for kids these days?!?!?!?! We talked to Tom and his buddy for a bit and waited for the cops and the firetrucks and ambulances to clear out before we called it a night. The bar was totally in shambles which is quite a statement as the place looks pretty much like shit all the time regardless. There was broken glass and broken furniture and broken rednecks strewn all over the place. The bartenders were pretty much over it and started telling people to get the fuck out, (not us, they like us. We didn’t try to kill anybody). As the night wound down and the Neanderthals went back to their hovels to lick their wounds and tell stories of their badassedness we paid up and tipped very well and went out laughing all the way to the door. On my way past the door I saw the female bartender standing out in the cold smoking a cigarette. I asked her if she was alright and she said, “Aw you know, shit happens when dudes start acting all stupid and shit. I just wish they wouldn’t have broken the furniture.”

And that pretty much sums it all up.

Updates from the bar

Updates from the bar.

More profiles of desperate hammerheaded idiots that haunt the shitty bar up the road from my house.

Jack o’ Lantern the Stones Fucker – Starts conversations by leaning over and bumping his shoulder into whatever unwitting dupe happens to be unfortunate to be parked alongside him, (me quite recently). Has no front teeth on the top or bottom rows which leads to a big gaping hole in the middle of his mouth and a non-stop line of alcohol drool going down his bottom lip. A bad drunk and a loud one he grabbed me around the shoulder, looked me square in the eye and yelled, “I FUCKED KEITH RICHARDS IN HIS FUCKING ENGLISH ASS!!!!!!”, chuckled to himself and then lit the wrong end of his last cigarette. Jack is one of the only people so severely fucked up and retarded that he gets cut off at the bar. Jack is scary and I hope he gets hit by an armored truck before I have the decidedly bad luck to run into him again.

Roweena Emphysema – One of the only black women I have ever seen at the bar. She drinks Gin and Sodas (ewwwww) and smokes her “Misty” cigarettes one after another only interrupted by horrendous, LOUD, hacking up big chunks of lung matter style coughing. If there were to be a Tombstone II she would be a lock for the role of Doc Holliday’s black tubercular sister. I don’t really wish anything bad upon Roweena (her real name or at least what she uses for her tab) and even if I did she’ll be dead soon enough anyway.

Billy Jack(off) – Sullen native American sits and broods creepily until the alcohol kicks in and then he becomes belligerent and horny, (great combo). Last time I saw Billy he made the same pithy comment whenever the haggard bar maiden walked by – “hell…..I’d eat it!” Probably the less said about Billy Jack(off) the better.

Aladdin the Gay Basher – Homophobic, moronic weight lifter with a fu-manchu mustache that comes in after strenuously working out at the Gold’s Gym a few doors down from the bar. Constantly sprinkles his banter with lots of “damn faggy faggoty faggots being all gay and faggoty” kind of shit. Wears big puffy workout pants, I’m 100% convinced that he is a raging homosexual. Will probably someday end up getting a BJ from Jack O Lantern in exchange for a pack of smokes and then go kill Jack and himself while crying that he will never be free to love. That would certainly be a good day for the rest of us.

Cigar Joe – The asshole that smokes the cigar at the bar. Every bar has them and I detest them all equally. If you smoke cigars in a bar you’re a fucking nitwit and a douchebag, even if I like you for all other reasons in this I will wish you great ill will and possible destruction. I wish Cigar Joe would choke to death on one of those pieces of shit he has crammed in his mouth all goddam day. Cigar Joe’s wife/girlfriend/whatever is so astonishingly ugly she makes me double-take every time I see her. Someday soon I’m afraid she’ll actually turn me to stone.


There’s more, lord there are always more.

The happy egg says "Why don't you kiss my brightly colored ass?"  

White Washed

Artist's rendering of White

So anyway……

I had never really met the folks in exitClov before and to be truthful I didn’t know what to expect as they are beloved by the most fantastical pussy on the face of this planet called ME and I despise said pussy pretty well. Yes Carlton, I’m talking about you. What are you going to do about it, make mean faces at my picture while you’re rubbing one out and wishing you were me?

Sorry, inside loathing there, not polite of me at all.

So I was sorta up in the air as to what to expect from them that are exitClov. I had listened to their stuff online and Philito had told me that they were all excellent people but me being my glorious self I had to make up my own mind. Post show and mind being fully made up they are for the record seemingly excellent and really, really cool people who can all play the holy hell out of their instruments and deserve whatever credit they get. Their recorded stuff is cool but the dynamic of the band live really adds to the allure of the whole thing. Aside from the visual aspect of two mega-watt lovely twin girls and a band of doodes playing with them the hits and hops and intricacies in the songs really are punctuated when you see the band performing them. In a word they are tight. I dug the set very, very much and would be a fan of the band regardless of whether I was a fan of them as people….which I now am….so there.

As exitClov was rocking away and I was digging the music the most odd and bizarre thing was happening. It’s rare enough when someone watching a live show actually exhibits a pulse in this town unless it’s a gang of behatted idiots starting some dumbass mosh pit as a weak excuse to rub each other’s wieners. Mostly playing live around here is like jamming to the statues at Madame Tussaud’s…they look real, frighteningly real, but there is no spark of life in the eyes. During the exitClov this paradigm was challenged and destroyed by one brave and altogether odd soul. I’ll call him….White.

When exitClov was playing I started to notice this movement up by the stage and a set of hands (remember, I’m short), waving to and fro and going left to right and right to left above the sea of heads at breakneck speed. It took a minute to get close enough to see what was going on but when I did…..wow. White looked like the kind of guy that might be able to bore you to death at a bar. Sorta thin beard, glasses, mousey hair, intellectual, maybe kinda. Just a sort of a normal non-frat dude wearing a VERY white shirt with a very bad sweater tied firmly round his waist. You might see White or his doppelgangers at any bar anywhere in the world boring someone to death with some theory on government or the movies or some such thing.

But at iota White was DANCING!!!!! Actually it was more like running back and forth with his arms upraised and his mouth wide open and head back like he was waiting for a beer bong. Not a poster child for maniacal wackiness by the looks of him but as they say, looks can be deceiving. He would break out the Napoleon Dynamite stylee moves every once in a bit but from what I could tell his de rigueur dance routine was pretty much resembelant to that of a hamster on a wheel, the same cardio exercise over and over and over and over and over again. Back and forth back and forth, hands up….JUDO CHOP!!!!! It was pretty wild, pretty scary and although he was shit-talked and laughed at I bet White had as much fun as anybody in the whole damn place.

So that went on and exitClov kept on rocking until they were done and then we got up to do our thing. Our thing was joyous and we had a blast. Wesley had concocted some beast of an amp that was taller than me, (but not him), and it sounded magnificent. Philito’s hair was glorious as always and I hope I cut a mean jib in the middle with my fancy-schmantzy new guitar that Wesley put together for me. The always lovelier than lovely Ms. Claire sang “Figurine” with us and I gave Mrs. Castor a big wink as it’s a song I wrote for her about her kick-ass nature and simply beautiful self.

As per usual I’ll leave the nitty-gritty details of the rockingness to others but I felt good about it and had a great and wonderful time. Lots of folks I knew and lots of folks I didn’t came out. We gave away a bunch of the “Tired Boy” singles which came out looking pretty cool. I guess mine and Philito’s do-gooderness regarding the boozing paid off but man it was a mighty bitch of a time to get through. The night went long and we got paid and bade farewell to the exitClov as they were heading out to Connecticut for a gig on Friday. Intrepid travelers they are indeed. I finally got to drink some beers and lord were they delicious. A good night it was and I’ll remember it fondly.

JUDO CHOP!!!!!

Rockness Delicioso  

Piiter patter flopping fish what the hell is that you wish?

Well……

My head and body are very, every, very tired but I’m feeling good about the show last night. Getting 150 people to pay ten bucks a shot for all original music on a Thursday when it’s about one degree outside is a pretty tall order and it all came together. Power to the short people.

We all drove separately to Iota and arrived somewhat close to on time with the customary understanding that our drummer lives in a parallel but slightly skewed plane on the time-space continuum. That’s a fancy way of saying he’s always late for everything at all times. We live, we learn as Alanis once mercilessly bleated in our ears.

Philito and I had made a blood pact that we would not engage in any tomfoolery or shenanigans of the alcoholic variety until it was Showtime. After that all bets would be off, rockets full to the tip and blast off we would go (and did). What this amounted to was manic drinking of cup after cup after cup of water until my legs were shaking from the intensive hydration. I think I only had to piss about 471 times so my bladder is working pretty good. Very very weird being in one of my favorite bars with my favorite drinking partners and drinking nothing but water. Not a fan but we all have our crosses and burdens to bear alas….

Set-up was cake and we had plenty of time to fart and futz about and drink more and more and more water. Right on time Brother Seamus went on and grooved away groovily for 40 minutes. I have not one but two of my old drummers in Brother Seamus and kookily enough neither of them play drums for that band. Crazy, eh? They’re all just the most hellaciously cool guys and I enjoyed their set and grabbing their asses throughout the night.

Goddamit I’m sorry but I have to go sleep for a while. I’ll finish later I promise. There’s a great tale to tell about some spasmodic maniac flailing to and fro like he had an electric eel stuffed in his drawers that was speaking in tongues and juicing his beanbag at maximum voltage. Some might call it “dancing” but not me. I think he was posessed by the devil.

More to come….

You've got an ass you might as well shake it

Boohoo...

But it's a weeknight and I'm tired and it's cold and my private parts are dry and scratchy and rock and roll is dead and I kinda like Josh Groban and my testicles and uvula are all in an uproar and a pirate ate my babies and regurgitated them to an albino dingo like a mama bird and besides that it's ER and this acid reflux thing combined with my miserable bowel syndrome....

ENOUGH YOU FANTASTIC PUSSIES. SHAKE IT OFF...and shake with me...

The story goes like this.

and as the boy was lost and had been for some time he approached the first man he saw on the road he said he said and said once more, "sir can you help me find my way home" and the man said, "my son you are not lost...can't you see that the world is simply going in the wrong direction for you."

the boy started to cry and look to the sky and said "but i want to get home to my mother and tell her where i have been and rest my weary head." the man said back with a chilling smile "oh my son being a good boy is not the hand you were dealt...in this life somepeople like you and some people like me, well, we are of the dark and get lost in the brightness of day. he said "my son my son……to get home you have to stop worrying about the light of day, to find your way boy...."

"You just have to let your black heart shine."

Tomorrow night the Pharmacy Prophets return to Iota
2/17/2005
w/ exit Clov and Brother Seamus
2832 Wilson blvd
Arlington, VA
703-522-8340
Show starts at 9:00

People get ready for a shit train's a coming

I have been witness to and indeed been involved in many musical trainwrecks throughout my glorious existence. Sometimes you can see them coming… slowly building in an every increasing wave of desperation and awfulness until the destructive force encapsulates any unfortunate in its path. Others explode suddenly in a single flash of inspired crap and bile that in an instant takes your breath, but sadly not your auditory function, away. Either way, the trainwreck is really something to behold and witnessing how the conductors (performers) handle the crisis is pretty interesting.

The trainwreck is different than just a shitty band with a shitty show embarrassing themselves with shitty songs, that’s called 99.9% of local music everywhere on the planet. The trainwreck is more of a happenstance of circumstance and ego than it is lack of talent, (although that always adds some nice fuel to the fire). Last night I saw a glorious trainwreck; one that included blank stares, grimaces, out-of-tune singing, lyric fudging, glaring, lithium driven psychosis and general awfulness exhibited by a cadre’ of the “superstars” of the music business.

The All Star Tsunami sing-along at the Grammys (available now on iTunes under the title – “greatest piece of totally atrocious shit ever recorded in the history of creation."), is a trainwreck of royal proportions. A chorale of luminaries singing the Beatles “Across the Universe” backed up by Velvet Revolver (in theory possibly good….heavy on the possibly).

First off covering the Beatles is rarely a good idea and more often than not a very, very bad one. Neil Young did an admirable cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” at the 9-11 tribute and love it or hate it GnR did a rousing take on McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” years back but the actual Beatles songs while painstakingly replicated and reconfigured by zillions have mostly been mangled more than massaged. To pull off a Beatles cover that’s as at least as good or (rarely) better than the original takes some subtlety and lots of practice, neither of which were in any supply last night.

The Grammy folks assembled a Superfriends line-up for the chorale. There was Bono and Billy Joe, Norah and Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keyes and Scott Weiland, (they had to let him sing, he was part of the house band), and all the way on the end looking like a homeless guy about to rub his wiener against your leg and start screaming about the Lord was my man, Brian fucking Wilson.

Let me get this clear for all of you out there. I do not think Brian Wilson is a genius….at….ALL. Putting a Theremin and clicking spoons together 35 years ago on some namby-pamby pop songs does not make one a genius no matter what the roundheads in the alternative press and at the bar at the Galaxy Hut want you to believe. “Have you really LISTENED to Smile?” Well no motherfucker and neither have you. Smile is a record for pretentious twits to profess their love but if they were 100% honest for two seconds they would admit they 100% can’t stand to listen to it and would rather be jamming AC/DC. Brian Wilson was trying to out George Martin the one and only George Martin and simply succeeded in being weird for weirdness sakes. So please Mr. Wilson, go back to the isolated loner shtick so I don’t have to watch your pathetic shamblings and listen to your sonorous off-key voice anymore. Ok...thanks!

Phew……

But back to the trainwreck. The song starts and Slash is looking like “Prom Slash” in his fanciest hat and velour smoking jacket, Matt Sorum is banging away like a gay steroid abuser, Duff is old crack-head Iggy Pop body looking Duff and they sound…..OK. The band sounded like a heavy metal band trying to play the Beatles true to from which, in retrospect, was exactly what they were. The result was a sound that was timid as the guys playing it probably had to be helpd back from cranking up the walls of amps by electro-shock collars. It would have benefitted from some rocking, at least that would have provided a filter for the shit soon to come.

After the intro the round robin singing begins and the wheels quickly start coming off the track. There’s something about Beatles songs that makes them (it seems) very hard to sing on-key. This was evidenced by one gazillionaire after another starting flat and half-ass mumbling their way through their “section” of the verses. Finally the RnB contingent got their turns and went 180 degrees in the opposite direction all a woah-a-woahing away and bludgeoning any sense of melody out of the song like a drunken New Foundlander with a Louisville Slugger and a room full of baby seals. I don’t know when this particular style came into vogue on the RnB “tip” but could we mercifully put it to rest? Let's just leave the gospel singing to mama Reefa and your local Baptist church. The Star Spangled Banner would appreciate it very much.

So the song goes on interminably and even Stevie Wonder sounds like total shit. An amusing moment was when Billie Joe from Green Day had his turn at the mic and just had a total “I’m going to fucking kill my manager for this” look in his mascara’d eyes. Weiland looked completely retarded, Bono looked bored, Brian Wilson still looked manic and panicked and the band looked like they were reconsidering putting up with Axl’s shit and getting back to where they belonged. The train was off the tracks and roiling towards destruction but it was pretty much just bad, not trainwreck status worthy, until about the last 30 seconds.

I guess the egos on the stage couldn’t resist being a part of a greater whole so everyone had to get in their last word. This led to 12 people all “yeah yeahing” and “whoo a whooing” and “sweeeeeet lawwwwwding” all over each other while Brian Wilson, Billie Joe and the fucking DRUMMER tried to hold the song together by monotoning the actual chorus to the song. All the superstars were looking around pissed off that they were not getting the spotlight so they just tried harder and harder to get it. It was stunning in its terribleness. Forget the fact that this song was ostensibly being put together to help the Tusnami victims because we all know that wasn’t in anyone’s minds at all while performing this lumbering turd. At the end it was heavily vested egos all one-upping the crap out of each other as the train went off the tracks, down the hill, over the cliff and into a fiery ball of wreckage at the base of Rock And Roll Mountain.

I think it was Alicia Keyes who was screaming…”LAWD LAWD LAWD” over and over again as I didn’t see Al Sharpton anywhere up there. Having reverand Al up there would have been cool, like when Dan Akyroyd sang on USA for Africa (and he’s a fucking Canadian comedian which should exemplify where the actual concentration on the music with these things stands).

Tim McGraw looked like a dipshit straight out of Kenneth Cole’s Country collection, Weiland was focused on by the camera RIGHT when he went bizarrely out of key on a yeah, yeah. One of the most egregious evildoers was Stevie Wonder who seems to be drifting into more of a Nipsy Russell character motif every time he gets on stage. Who knew Little Stevie would be so damn whacky?

As the song meandered to an end Slash hit the final note with a shrug. The perpetrators of the carnage all gave each other half-ass hugs and handshakes and left the stage except for Nipsy Wonder and Methadone poster-child Norah Jones who is almost as exceptionally bland as a presenter as she is as a performer. Stevie continued his shtick and I turned off the TV.

I can only imagine that if somewhere John Lennon got to watch it he would be laughing his ass off.

P.S. – Can someone explain to me the deal with modern country lyrics? If that’s the voice of everyman as evidenced by Tim McGraw’s opus to dying young we’re in bigger trouble than I thought.

Hell is a hotel bar

Yeah so I’m still in Charlotte as I tip and type this, in the airport actually waiting for a delayed plane and pondering the trip I just went on.

If any of you ever travel for work I’m sure you have been privy to the real and absolute phenomenon of extremely (painfully) normal people with extremely (painfully) normal lives turning into binge drinking adulterous sex maniacs upon breathing in the stale, smoky air of the hotel bar. It’s amazing. I have watched the bold and the beautiful, the young and the restless and mostly the ugly and the desperate shamelessly make out in front of colleagues and customers with people that are married but not married to them. I saw it Sunday night, a troll faced bottle blonde Sherman tank of a hag pawing all over some hick who was in town for a plumber’s convention. It was pretty fucking gross but fantastically entertaining.

What I have never witnessed but I am absolutely sure happens all the time is the married dude hooking up in the hotel bar for some freaky shenanigans with another dude. To wit; I was at the bar watching the aforementioned Jabba the Slut crotch rubbing and ear licking Schneider the Handyman and really trying to ignore the boring creepy dope sitting next to me. Creepy as he shall now be known forever and for true was attending the same conference as I was. I had the misfortune of having somehow given him the impression I wasn’t repelled by his very being and further wanted to actually talk to him and not spray him with kerosene and light him on fire which is really what I would have liked to do. When he was sober he was pretty shy and nerdy and fat and kinda creepy (good moniker, huh?) but as he got drunk he got more expressive and progressively weirder. Still I was using my incredible mind skills to blatantly ignore him until I felt a fat bacony hand on my shoulder.

EEP!!!

I had to acknowledge this completely fucked intrusion into my personal shell of awesomeness so I shrugged off the pork-like proboscis resting on my sexy ass broad shoulders and fixed a stern and manly glare on Creepy McFathands. This next exchange scared me more than a car accident and watching Fright Night in the 5th grade all rolled into one.

CMcF – It’s SO smokey in here!
Me – Yeah well that’s North Carolina. Welcome to tobacco country.
CMcF – I don’t think I can take it much longer.
Me – Well, every man has to make these type of decisions sometimes.
CMcF – Well what are you doing?
Me – Sitting here and getting drunk. It’s both a hobby and a lifestyle.
CMcF – We can get drunk in my room.
Me - …..what did you say?...
CMcF – We can have drinks from my mini-bar….

(Here’s where it gets really scary)

CMcF - ….and we can order…..(eyes get wider)…movies! (grins)

I just about crapped myself there on the spot. I mean I was attending the same conference as this guy and while he was not a co-worker or anyone that really had any sort of direct impact on me or my company I still couldn’t drill him in the eye with a broken beer bottle or just run screaming out of the bar (I had a tab open and I was determined to see if Jabba and Schneider were going to start doing the neutron dance right there next to the cigarette machine). Creepy was just sitting there giving me the hairy eyeball and a goofy drunken predatory smile that stretched across his fat greasy face like a rotting eggplant. It was by far the most confident demeanor that Creepy had ever displayed in our brief time of knowing each other and I was really at a loss.

And for all of you., “well what it was a girl…..” naysayers let me say this. It’s not like I have never been hit on by a guy before as hard as that might be for you to believe knowing how totally macho and badasstically hetero I am making babies and all that. I really have never minded it before as I crave attention of all sorts that doesn’t involve cops taking my I.D. or some douche with an internet connection talking out of his ass about what my motivations are. The difference with this Creepy situation was somewhat that I was in a hotel bar in North Carolina and not some club where hitting upon my sexalicious self could (and should) be expected but mostly that it was in an overall quasi-work setting. In that piece of the delicious pie that is my life that tastes like a job I tend to shelf the weirder and entertaining things and focus on staying employed and making cash to support my Hanoi Rocks t-shirt collecting habit and maintain the mansion on the hill and it’s occupants in the manner that they deserve. But to Creepy this evening at the conference was party time half-price burger day at the Castor Oil lunch counter and he was ready to chow down. My usual witty repartee of “get the fuck away from me” and the like just wasn’t geared for the time and place where I found myself and for one of the only times in my life I found myself with very little to say.

I was good and freaked out and also honestly a bit miffed because Creepy wasn’t even a remotely good looking man and who the hell did he think he was perpetrating on me like I would go get all liquored up and watch pornos with his busted ass? I got standards to maintain y’all!!! Still not sure how to handle the situation and with this leering monstrosity way too close for comfort I took the diplomatic (and admittedly wussy) high road and told him that my coworkers were going to be meeting me there to go to dinner (this was at 10:00, thank god Creepy was as stupid as he was drunk and scary). His eyes lowered and his face fell and I had the feeling that this kind of thing happened to him pretty often. If it wasn’t for the fact that I wanted him dead I might have felt sorry for him. He left his drink and just walked out, no goodbye no nothing.

I got good and shitfaced as was my primary intention all along and got back to focusing on Jabba and Schneider going through their cholestoric mating ritual. Schneider was rebuked by the bartender for openly sticking his hand in Jabba’s bra and shortly thereafter they toddled off to the elevator banks together. I’m sure that they’ll both not think one whit about it at all when they go to church on Sunday with their maniac kids and suicide craving wholly depressed spouses to profess horror that the Sodomites want to intrude on the sanctity of marriage. When’s judgment day again? I want to mark it on my calendar.

The next day as I was drinking my 87th cup of bad hotel coffee I saw Creepy peering across the room at me. Actually it wasn’t really peering but more glaring with a hateful gaze. I thought this was totally unfair, I mean it’s not like we were even serious or anything and I had a twinge of weirdness panic that he might actually want to talk about our “misunderstanding” at which point I might have had to knock his head off with a flying spin kick and totally freak out the entire place. Luckily he simply shuffled his way that way and I strolled this way mine and our paths never crossed again save for later that night when I was walking past the hotel bar with a friend and glanced in.

Same bar, same bartender, same smoke…..Creepy was chatting up some 47 year old dude in a polyester tie and looking as creepily carnivorous as he did the night before and Jabba was back all alone and distinctly sans Schneider looking serious and Republican over a big red Cosmopolitan. She wouldn’t be that way for long though, it was early on a Monday night and a convention of textbook salesmen had come in earlier that day so Jabba was sure to get her sex on with some fuckfaced Baptist from Pensacola or one of his ilk. Jabba obviously knew the ropes well and she was sure to tie one on with them again and again to warm her pasty white blue veined and ample to her waistline bosom.

Another round for the bar indeed.

Nascar nation is pretty boring

I’m in Charlotte North Carolina at the moment cooling my heels at a conference. Everything here is really new, it’s nice and all but it seems like a city without a soul. Thank the lord that I love my own company so much, it helps being my own best friend to get throuh the malaise. I think me and myself will hang out and watch the Wizards game tonight. I'm sure I'll have a great time with me as I'm totally funny and a blast to spend time with. This place is like the centerpeice of Nascar nation which is about as cool to me as being the dry finger prostate exam capital of the world. Nascar sucks.

I watched the Superbowl with copious amounts of whiskey last night. I would have won $300 in one of those grid pools if Andy Reid had gone for two after that last touchdown but he didn’t. Goddam mormons.

I'm really looking forward to Iota next Thursday which should be a swell as hell rocking affair. One of the bands we’re playing with, Exit Clov, had a CD release at the Black Cat on Friday and the word is that the sound was just atrocious. That’s really frustrating and something that once you start playing you have very little control over. So hopefully they have a good mix and a good show next week. I have never met any of them before and I think it will be cool to play a show with strangers.

Anyway, three hours till I’m done for the day and back to floating down the whiskey river. Anybody down here that wants to grab a paddle and join me please come bob along.

I've got something (atrocious) to say

It never ceases to amaze me how non-amazing musicians are. Just the other day I got roped into yet another conversation with some tough-guy wannabe windbag musician blowing bad breath in my face about what a hardass he is and how his music is his life and all the sheep around us have no souls and blah dee blah dee blah. Seriously, I have conversations like this ALL the time when I am simply trying to watch TV and get drunk in a bar. It’s like the dudes who think Drowning Pool are deep thinkers see me as their spiritual pocket watch and they need to tell me “WHAT TIME IT IS!!!”

Regardless…….

So I get the nauseating life update while I’m looking over Rockface’s spindly shoulders watching Juan Dixon spark another heroic 4th quarter charge and thanking god for hanging plasma TV’s while wishing he would just evaporate (Rockface….not Juan. I love Juan) and then Rockface says something that surprisingly (especially to me) made me take a wee bit of notice.

“It’s all in the lyrics man, everything I have to say…it’s there. You want to know what I’m about……fucking listen man…I put it all on the line. The things I have to deal with man, I get it all out there in my words. ”

OK imagine you’re me and you’re trying to listen to this stupid shit with a straight face. I have a wife, two kids, a cat, a dog, a mortgage or two, a hefty case of narcissism, (my hair looks adorable today by the way), a job, adoring fans like you to placate, an ever expanding weight to height differential to contend with, my own band, my Grandfather in the hospital with a broken hip, my trying to be better than me neighbors and their damn auxiliary basement and 50” TV and a zillion other things that functional members of the human race have to deal with and this fucking dimwit wants me to give a rat’s ass about his travails? He lives with his MOM and drives his Daddy’s Audi around for fuck’s sakes!!!!!! But due to his card-carrying membership in the local music militia he is absolutely convinced that I, just like all of you, HAVE to feel his pain as it’s oh so very very special and he conveys it so poignantly via his drop-tuned piece of crap guitar and nasally voice.

So as not to be rude and needlessly prolong the conversation I steeled myself (the Wiz won by the way so I was free to chat) and said – “That must be some pretty hefty lingo you’re laying out there.”

“You know it……. (here it fucking comes)…..Bro!”

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bro’d again.

Over the last few days I have been listening to his insufferable CD and mp3’s to discern from said lyrics the weight of the burden that an unjust and cruel world has placed upon his spindly back. Lemme tell you, this motherfucker needs to take some Pilates classes or buy a wheelbarrow or something because the angst pickings are pretty slim and if he has trouble carrying them around I can guarantee he throws a baseball like a girl. It all pretty much comes down to the “blindness” of everyone else in the world, (you know, those of us that work), some amorphous woman who severely hurt his feelings and the obligatory dopey screed about how bad a world it is for children these days.

Well guess what motherfucker I have kids and while they still have to look both ways before crossing the street unless you live slightly outside of Fairfax, like say in the THIRD FUCKING WORLD, the Middle East or in the path of a Tsunami being a kid is pretty much a stroll down easy street these days as is being an adult. You know why I piss and moan about nothing on this blog (like this shit)? Because I don’t really have anything of import to piss and moan about you feeb nor do you and if we did we certainly wouldn’t be talking in bars about how tough it is we’d be trying to live, (as in not die).

Please, I beg of you and all your sad brethren write about something real for a change. Write about how your finger oddly smells like tacos when you stick it in your buttcrack or how you get a boner over Doreen Gentzler or something, anything, that has some basis in reality but PLEASE unless you’re going to be creative about it STOP WRITING ABOUT YOUR POOR LITTLE SAD HEART BECAUSE NO ONE CARES!!!!!.

The worst part is Rockface is in the vast majority of “lyricists” out there. I mean sure the subject matter isn’t all that different than it was 40 years ago but can you really compare “Heartbreaker” by the Stones to this –

I gave my everything to you
And you took it away from me
And now I have nothing left to give
I am empty and feeling crazy

Could you at least fucking try?!?!??! Just a little? I was starting to play a game called “guess what stupid lyric comes next” and it would have been fun if it wasn’t so retardedly easy.

Take any combination of these words and you can pretty much write 99% of bad (which is most) rock music these days: soul, hurt, heart, give, take, memory, memories, dark, ceiling, back, remember, fire, desire, rain, pain, remain, drain, mirror, fear, clear, hear, here, there, everywhere. It’s like Dr. Suess for morons with a myspace account and a digital camera but a severe lack of cranial function.

So who am I to say this shit you say? Are my lyrics any better? Well boys and girls I can answer that very simply.

Yes they are.

And gee, my hair smells terrific.

Here I am like Ken Norton (sega reference)

OK here we go. I have been totally lax and I’ll blame it on the goddamn weather.

First up I did not make it to New Orleans due to a damn ice storm that blasted Atlanta’s airport. What are the chances of that? God hates me but it’s just because he’s jealous of my hair. Anyway…so I got into it with a large mouthed bitchy gate agent who had bumped me off my plane to New Orleans and will gleefully listen up for Delta Airlines to lay off assholeish twits named Lovie that wouldn’t know decency if it was driven up their massive asses by a front-end loader.

That bitch.

So I got home in the middle of the night on Friday/Saturday (no luggage, my luggage made it to New Orleans just fine. I think my shaving kit picked up an STD from a tranny down on Bourbon Street) and promptly picked up a sweet cold that was eclipsed only by the Mrs’ Flu. Mine morphed into puking which gave it its own hellish little twist and we wallowed in our respective miseries for a couple days.

Adding to my misfortunate and mood was my damnable neighbors buying a sweet ass 50” TV set. I already hate them for their extra basement and now this? Just wait until shoulder fired missiles go on sale at the Armory……then we’ll see who’s laughing DAMN YOU!!!!!

Let’s see, tomorrow we record more of my awesome and beautiful vocals for the EP and then Philito gets to work. It will be sexy, how could it not?

I’m heading to Charlotte on Saturday and will see what that town has to offer up these days. After that it’s back home for more recording and jamming and awesomeness culminating in a blast of Mayor of Deityville style rocking at Iota on the 17th.

Lovely.