'Ello Kiddies
Shoot, so I guess now that I'm inextricably embroiled in a life of domestic tranquility and all, I'm reduced to doing pallid, hackneyed Bobcat Goldthwait-style observations on life and what-have-you. I actually saw Bobcat perform a couple months back at a comedy club here in Denver. Hey, there's a discussion topic!
Okay, some friends of my woman were getting married, so we had us a night on the town with them and another couple. See kids, when you get older and you're in a romantic relationship, you things as a couple and you do them with other couples. Usually conversations don't stray far from one member of the couple talking about the other member, to wit:
Couple #1 Wife: Well, we won't be getting Kung Pao tonight; Brian doesn't eat bamboo shoots.
Couple #2 Wife: Oh, I know! Bernard is the same way, aren't you honey?
Couple #1 Husband (to Husband #2, not wishing to participate in the ladies' conversation): So, didja see the Broncos take it in the ass last night?
Couple #2 Husband: Yup.
Not that this particular night resembled the above, but I just thought I'd explore that tangent a little. Anyway, we went out to dinner before going to the comedy club. In the foyer of the restaurant, I espied a fellow in his mid-20s wearing a rumpled suit and he used mousse in his hair, trying to achieve that tousled, unkempt look, and he had those rectangular glasses on that everyone wears nowadays. I remember remarking to myself, "I bet anything that guy is either a radio personality or a condo salesman." Turns out he was the comedian opening up for Bobcat Goldthwait, and he was actually pretty funny. So was Bobcat. Now, I'm not really a fan of stand-up comedy for the most part. Comedians tend not to stray too far from a particular style; you know, that self-deprecating band-fag thing that they all do. But it was all somehow a lot more amusing when it's right in front of you. You know me; I'm as cynical as an elderly peacock. But I was laughing my ass off, almost in tears. Bobcat, aside from being much smaller than he looks on the "Police Academy" movies, is a fucking laugh riot.
But I'll have you know that most comedy clubs have a two-drink minimum. They want you good and sloshed by the time the headliner comes on. I take absolutely no issue with a drink minimum; hell, I'll drink seven beers if they insist. But the waitress skipped past me every time, so I only ended up having one beer. It's also really fucking packed in those places. I'm the type of guy who insists on sitting in the aisle seat at movies, but things happened so fast at the comedy club that I ended up getting sardined next to a stranger. And friend, we were so close together that I could just about feel the lighter in his pocket. Oh, and it's really expensive too. I think it was $33 a person. But hey, it is Bobscratch Goldfart (as he kept referring to himself) after all. Discuss.
Item! You know how there's just certain things in life that you're just supposed to know? Like how you're not supposed to leave your car running in a closed space because you'll get carbon monoxide poisoning. Nobody really ever tells you that you shouldn't do that; you just read about some poor goombah getting killed that way, and that's how you know not to do it. Well, here's another one: if you have a teacher you really like and you want to give him or her a gift, don't get them coffee mugs. My woman is a fifth-grade teacher, and she has a whole cabinet full of coffee mugs that tell her that she's the world's greatest teacher and all that shit. This past Christmas, she got like seven coffee mugs as gifts. This Valentine's Day, she got like five more mugs. I guess that's just the natural inclination when people are trying to think of gifts for teachers. But this poor woman has maybe 30 mugs amassed in her kitchen cabinet, and the cruel irony of it all is that she doesn't even drink coffee. Myself, I drink a lot of coffee, but always out of travel mugs, i.e., ones with lids.
So what is a good gift to get a teacher? I asked the old lady; she says anything that can be used in the classroom is the best kind of gift. Like a dictionary or some markers or something useful like that, 'cause the teachers have to buy a lot of that stuff themselves. She also said that their science textbooks are copyright 1968! Can you believe that shit? I don't think I'd be going out on too fragile a limb to state that there may have been a scientific advance or two worth noting since 1968. Discuss.
Item! I saw two concerts recently that were, as the youths say, "kick-ass." The first was Fu Manchu, who've been one of my fav-o-rite bands since around '97. I was even in a Fu Manchu tribute band a couple years back, as you may know. In my hometown of Missoula, MT, Fu Manchu is like the biggest thing since two-ply toilet paper. They're right up there with AC/DC in the Albums That Get Played Ad Nauseam At After-Hours Parties canon. But here in Denver they don't seem to be that huge. Well, that's hard to say, because I don't think I really have my thumb on the pulse of the Denver Scene, but my instinct told me that, generally speaking, Fu Manchu is held in higher regard in Missoula than here. But the show was packed like a Tijuana outhouse. It was at the Bluebird, which holds maybe (fuck, I'm real bad at this kind of estimation) 3000 people. And they were really fucking good. When they played "Wurkin'" off of the "Daredevil" album, it was so shit-baggin' awesome that I thought I was gonna download in my pants. We were standing behind the soundboard, and the sound guy had a set list, so I was counting down the number of songs until they played "Boogie Van." Then main Chu guy Scott Hill said, "This next one's called 'Boogie Van,'" but then the drummer (who was not Brant Bjork) went into "Weird Beard" instead. I wouldn't have minded waiting around for "Boogie Van" but they never did come back to it. That sucked dick. Then some skanky looking girl walked out onto the stage (mid-song mind you!) and said something to Scott Hill and he looked really pissed. After the song was over he said, "We just got told to turn down. Fuck that ; we practice louder than this, goddammit!" But the weird thing was that I thought it was plenty loud. By the way, the bass player is a really freaky looking guy. I think my buddy Jimmy put it best by saying that he looked like something out of Middle Earth.
In a odd little bit of happenstance, just moments ago I found myself at a Super Target (Target + grocery store) down in Littleton. Pensively browsing their array of dry goods and trying hard not to let the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue catch my peripheral vision, I glanced over to the wall of TVs. There was a Fu Manchu video playing. The feeling that came over me was similar to when I first heard that Minutemen song "Corona" being used for that show on MTV, and similar to when they started playing Southern Culture on the Skids tunes on the local classic rock station. That sinking feeling that happens when your culture, the one you thought was so secretive and superior, gets co-opted to sell shit. The video was kinda cool, though.
Oh, but that new Fu Manchu ("California Crossing") album BLOWS! It doth blow! I copied it for my friend Scout and he e-mailed me from his workplace asking if I'd accidentally burned him a Ratt album. Indeed, I think if given the choice between being forced to listen to "California Crossing" and "Out of The Cellar," I could state with a fair amount of certitude that I'd take the latter, and I imagine you'd say the same for yourself, friend. Yeah, I'm all for bands progressing or maturing or whatever they call it, but in the case of Fu Manchu, I think I'd be happy if they just kept re-releasing "Daredevil" or "Eatin' Dust" over and over again. What hurts the most about this record stinkin' up the place is that I fucking KNEW it was gonna suck! The latest theory I got going is that Fu Manchu have unwittingly fallen victim to their own persona. It happens fairly often; bands put out the best shit when they're not really aware of whatever aesthetic void they're filling. Once they get hip to it, they feel pressure to live up to it, and almost invariably, they fail. Great live band, anyway; I'm glad I finally got to see them before they morph into an all-Deep Purple revue or somesuch. Discuss.
Then just a couple days ago me and my buddy Scout went to see Guided By Voices in Boulder. Oh mercy, that show was top-drawer. I think GBV is here to rescue rock and roll from the bloated pus-sac of mediocrity that it's become. Well, maybe not, but it sure as hell is refreshing to see a guy like Bob Pollard up there doing what he loves doing. Fuck, that guy kicks some major ass. They played like 50 songs! One of the best shows I've ever seen, hands down. However, I would like you to permit me to pass along a couple of non-music-related observations. First, there seemed to be some sort of onstage homosexual love tryst between the bass player and one of the guitarists. The bass player is kind of a little guy, and I'm not kidding when I tell you that he couldn't go five minutes with out touching the guitarist! He kept walking over and kicking him in the ass, or poking his ribcage, or leaning on him. It was kind of distracting. Then the main guitarist, Doug Gillard, is really serious and hardly drinks onstage (Bob, by contrast, had a cooler full of Bud Light on the drum riser and probably drained ten of 'em while they played) and looks like he used to be in the Ozark Mountain Daredevils or something. But I'm telling you, that Bob Pollard is a fucking hero. Guided By Voices rule. Or is it "Guided By Voices rules"?
One funny thing happened at that show. I was standing at the bar with Scout's woman while he was taking a shit. Some girl came up and apparently knew Scout's woman. The girl was extremely voluble, but was black and had an aristocratic British accent, enough to make her fairly intriguing to most people, myself included, and enough to separate her from the legions of other voluble obnoxoids one finds in Boulder, Colorado. Well, she prattled on at some length about how much it sucked that nobody would take her green card for an ID, you know, like to get into a bar. She kept saying how much she hated America and was waving her arms around in a fit of righteous indignity. I agree that it's weird that people wouldn't take a federally-issued green card as a valid ID, but anyway I asked, "Can't you just get a driver's license?"
"No," she replied, "I just got a DUI."
"Oh, so it's America that sucks?" I thought to myself.
But she's right; America is pretty much a bunch of couch-bound losers, and if you'll kindly proceed to the middle section, I'll tell you why.
The Greatest Photo Ever Taken
Someone somewhere sometime was wise enough to document this meeting of the minds betwixt David Hasselhoff and Gary "Want Your Ass Kicked?" Coleman.
This photo is nice and big, suitable for use as computer wallpaper, or, if you're especially ambitious, you'll take it down to your local screen printer and have him make a pillowcase out of it.
The above is my pal Jimmy's guitar setup as documented by Hank Donovan for the Guitar Geek website. Guitar Geek is a pretty bitching site that shows such diagrams for all your favorite axesmiths past and present. Jimmy recently typed up a description of all the gear he uses and a very interesting explanation of why he uses what he does and in what order. It's interesting to read it if you're interested in that sort of thing.
I also dig this photo of Jimmy's corral of pedals. Nels Cline, my all-time favorite guitarist, has a similar looking pile of pedals, and he refers to his as Pedal Dachau. I think that's awfully clever of him.
My woman has a chinchilla named Gidget that lives in her classroom. A couple weeks ago Gidget got an eye infection from having her cage too close to the chalkboard (chalkdust, see). So I took her to the vet and then she had to come stay at home for a couple weeks to recuperate. We let her out a few times and I don't know if you've ever had a chance to see a chinchilla in action, but they're pretty entertaining. They run up to a wall at full speed, jump up like eight inches, bounce off the wall and turn around and run the other way. Sort of like a skateboarder doing a method air. They're native to the Andes Mountains, and in the wild they bathe by rolling around in volcanic ash. You can make a bath for your chinchilla by getting some ash at the pet store and putting it in a shoebox. When you put them in the ash they roll around spastically; it's pretty hilarious.
It's also the softest creature I've ever had occasion to touch. Her fur is like velvet, so no wonder people want to make coats out of them. They really make great pets since they don't stink or make noise. Well, actually if you corner them they make a little chirping noise, but hardly ever. And they do crap a lot, but it's odorless and real easy to clean up.
Is that not the cutest thing you ever saw in your life? Those huge Dumbo ears crack me up.
Stealth Queeb
Sammy Splotch and the Unrepenant Stains
The Lollicocks
Hella' Hoochie
Stupid Business Name of the Week
This shit has plagued me for a good five years now, this latest annoying trend in business nomenclature. And to the very extent that it bugs the living shit out of me, I'm wholly unable to articulate exactly why it sucks so much, nor am I able to form cohesive definition of what sucks and why. Well, part of it is that retail stores take an item that's central to whatever it is they're peddling, and just name it that. Like a laundermat called Suds, you know, or a car wash called Bubbles. But it seems like in the past few years people starting new businesses have gotten extra stupid with this shit. So just today I saw this place, and it inspired this section:
Pasta's Italian Restaurant
Pasta's Italian Restaurant? You gotta be shittin' me, Sparky! It's an Italian restaurant and all you can think of for a name is Pasta's? Oh, I'm sorry- is your last name Pasta? Ron and Patsy Pasta, Owners.
I guess what's going on is analogous to the fact that everthing nowadays has a superstore affiliated with it. You know, like Golf USA, or Mailboxes, Etc. Every industry has become warehouseable, and people, I assume, are too busy kibbutzing on their cell phones and don't like to have to figure out what kind of store it is. Or maybe the owners of Pasta's reasoned that when people think of going out to dinner, and a consensus is reached that it should be Italian food, the first thing they'll think of is… ta-da! Pasta's! I'm telling you, spend a couple days in suburban Denver and it shall become abundantly clear: the vast majority of Americans have been browbeaten so conclusively with consumer stimuli that you can pretty much lead them around like cattle. "Oh, look honey, there's a new Mel Gibson movie out! I guess we have to go see it, lest we fall behind on the cultural happenings of the day…" And then they'll be genuinely surprised that the movie sucks. People in Denver (and I'm sure where you live too) clog up the freeways every Saturday bumbling aimlessly from one big box store to the next.
There's another couple of trends I've spotted lately. One is the retail store that's aimed toward housewives with too much dispensable income, and the syntax is as follows: The Somethinged Something. Like, The Gilded Lily, The Potted Plant, The Hanging Fern, and so on and so forth. You see a lot of these in the pre-planned upscale shopping districts. Then there's the specialty cuisine trend. Since Americans are generally a pretty stupid lot, if you want to get them to come try some exotic cuisine, you have to dumb it down a little bit for them. So the trend with naming these places is to just name it after the capital of whatever country's cuisine you're serving. So for example, in Denver there's a Hungarian restaurant called Budapest. There's a Nepalese place called Kathmandu. I ate at an Afghani place in Madison, Wisconsin called Kabul. There's a new German place in town called the Berlin Café. There's a Cuban place opening up called Havana. There are numerous Japanese places here with "Tokyo"in the name, including Tokyo Bowl, which I call "Tokyo Blow," although their food is actually pretty good. What about a place that served Canadian cuisine, if there is such a thing (actually there is; it's gravy fries. That's their national food)? What would it be called under this particular rubric? Yeah, keep scratching your head because, hey, just admit it: you don't know what the capital of Canada is, do you? Don't feel bad. Well, do feel bad, but feel free to console yourself with the fact that, if you took a poll, I'll bet 8 out of every ten people couldn't tell you what the capital of Canada is. Not that it really matters anyway, but isn't that kinda weird?
Yet another topic that is verily begging for an essay to be published in Atlantic Monthly, is the phenomenon of stores like Wild Oats. I don't know if they have them where you live, but here's the deal. Wild Oats is a chain of grocery stores that caters to the health freak, the person who only buys shit if it has the magic word "organic" stamped on it, or to the person who fancies himself as having evolved farther along than your average American. You can smell the arrogance on people as they flit throughout the store, congratulating themselves with every purchase, content in the belief that they're performing some sort of grass-roots subversion of traditional American grocery-ism. Of course, as longtime Yalestar.com readers, you are additionally endowed with a healthy cynicism for such horseshit. You know well and good that Wild Oats is as ruthless and fat-fingered a corporation as Snapple, Qwest, or even AOL Time-Warner. They're perfectly happy to sell you shit at an additional markup because they prey on that guilt of being human that curses most sentient beings. And what does "organic" mean anyway? Anyone who's taken an introductory chemistry class knows that it means that it contains carbon compounds, which, as you readers well know, includes all food. So what's to prevent someone to stamp "Organic!" on every bag of tater tots, every whole chicken, and every Snickers Cruncher bar? So there's a nice l'il consumer caveat for all y'all.
Interesting Whatnot
Mike Watt Translation Dictionary
One of my very favorite things in the whole world is when Mike Watt goes on tour, because him and his current lineup of bandmates all keep journals on the road, and then Mike Watt posts them to his web page, the Mike Watt Hoot Page from the road. It's some of the most interesting reading I've yet come across. Anyway, Mike Watt has a very idiosyncratic way of talking, a slang that's his and his alone. I've collected a bunch of Watt-ism for your perusal, and please try and work them into casual conversation as you see fit:
- Chimp: to type
- Suits: underwear and socks
- Pop: wake up
- Wrestle: play, as in an instrument
- Stench Scrub: doing laundry or showering
- Ho: hotel
- Pilla: hotel
- Plug: traffic jam
- Fartist: Watt puts an "F" before the word "Artist" on laminates
- Dave It Up: add Dave's Insanity Sauce to food
- Blow-by: to miss, as in a freeway exit
- Walkie-talkies: cell phones
- Donate: lose, forget, leave behind
- Fart: amp blowout
- Hatch: door of a van or rock club
- Mime: when you can't hear yourself in the monitors
Untamed Youth: Youth Runs Wild!
Man, why am I always so behind on hip shit? Believe it or don't, I had never heard of Untamed Youth until the second time I saw Deke Dickerson live. How can that be? They're only like the coolest fucking band that ever walked the earth, complete with humble origins in Columbia, Missouri; rampant male pattern baldness, all the things that make bands great. But I can't really think up to much interesting shit to say about them other than that they rule, and you knew that, so I'm going to review a couple of books I read recently instead.
by Dan Baum
This book came recommended to me by a couple of different Missoulians, due in part to the fact that the author used to live in Missoula and was a frequent contributor to the Missoula Independent newsweekly. For some reason I chose to ignore their recommendations. I suppose I was thinking that it was probably a long-winded treatise on organized labor and so forth, and I don't really drink much Coors, so what do I care about the Coors brewery?
So I checked it out from the library recently on somewhat of a whim and it lay dormant for days 'cause I didn't feel like reading it. Then one night I couldn't sleep and so I picked it up and begun reading it. Shit, it sucked me in like a vortex; I couldn't put it down at all. Why? What's so fascinating about the Coors company?
It's the Coors family that makes for such fascinating reading. What a fucked up and delusional group of people they are! Adolph Coors came to Colorado to escape being conscripted into the Kaiser's army in the 1860s. Having worked a couple of the plentiful breweries in Prussia, he pursued that line of work when he got here. The quality of his beer was so far superior to what Americans had been used to drinking that he became a millionaire within a few years of opening the Coors brewery, quite a feat in the 1870s.
During the Prohibition, he kept Coors alive by manufacturing porcelain for the US government, something Coors does to this day. After the Repeal, Coors nearly tripled its business, even though it was only available in a handful of western states.
Meanwhile, Pop Coors was grooming his son Adolph Jr. to take over the brewery. Junior was forced to earn a degree in chemical engineering so as to be intimately familiar with the alchemy of making beer, a requirement that was passed along to each successive generation of Coorses. The Coors family is extremely old-fashioned and does not allow its sons to engage in any other line of work, requiring them to devote their entire lives to the brewery.
By the 1960s, several scions of the Coors family, especially Joe Coors, started becoming large benefactors to extreme right-wing causes and it's revealed that they administered a rigorous polygraph test to employees to weed out subversives and homosexuals. Being rather arrogant people, the Coors family insisted that it can treat employees and beer consumers however they wish, and that they will keep coming back for more delicious Coors beer.
All this was doubly fascinating to me because the Coors brewery, where it has been since 1875, is right up the road from me in Golden. After I finished the book, a book which I deem as required reading for all Yalestar.com readers, I drove out to Golden to wander around the Coors plant and take some photos.
So that's one book I read recently. Another was...
by James Howard Kunstler
This one's a little more esoteric, but essential nonetheless if you, like many thinking persons in this country, feel slightly sickened and disquieted about your physical surroundings and how they've taken shape over the past couple of decades. You know what I'm talking about, Sparky. Nobody just builds one house anymore; it's always 100 or more at a time in what a writer for the Westword* here referred to as "a sea of beige puke." And then your strip-style retailing; aimless, meandering cul-de-sacs; big box outlets, everything with a superstore associated with it. This hyperreality we live in these days and the attendant decline of urban centers and the resulting psychological effect it has on our psyches- that's the gist of Home From Nowhere.
Mr. Kunstler does a much better job of describing it. Good ideas, and well written too. Oh, I forgot to mention that he calls for the destruction of all zoning laws! Yeah, these zoning laws we've put in place are the main reason sprawl is so ugly. It causes a need for cars, it separates neighborhoods into a bunch of people in the same socioeconomic bracket. You know, as a Geography major, I took a couple-three classes in which zoning was discussed at some length. But never, I say never, was the idea that zoning=bullshit ever propounded by any of the professors, nor had the idea ever occurred to me. Zoning's just something we take for granted- I mean, who gives any thought to zoning? What is zoning, anyway?
Zoning laws are what prevents new neighborhoods from being as cool as old neighborhoods. Think about your favorite neighborhood. In Missoula, I like the University area (except for the fraternities) and that riverfront area along Front St. between Higgins and the Madison St. Bridge. In Denver, I like Capitol Hill, Washington Park, Congress Park, and Cheesman Park. And what makes these 'hoods so appealing is the fact that the buildings are old, they're ornate, which is to say they honor (or at least acknowledge) their place in the temporal continuum; and most of all, there's store within walking distance from your house. Stores mixed in with residences; that's the key right there, I think. It also obviates the need to have to drive every fucking place you go.
Now I think of neighborhoods that suck: In Missoula it's that whole pile of shit out on Mullan Road; lower Grant Creek (where my parents unfortunately live); In suburban Denver, it's everywhere you look: miles upon miles of cookie-cutter shitboxes where you have to check your address every time you come home because your house looks exactly like the ones next to it; confusing cul-de-sacs which require traffic to all spill out onto (and thusly congest) one "collector road" (e.g. Grant Creek Road/Reserve St. in Missoula). Disconnectivity, y'all.
So that's another book I recommend to you.
* I recently wrote a letter to the Westword, the local independent newsweekly, telling them that their readers would be more loyal if they asked me to write music reviews for them, since it seems like the people they got writing for 'em now have some sort of grudge against any and all music. They write like they're doing me a public service by favoring me with their reviews. I say get someone like me in there that really digs on the rock and the roll and who makes it (I dare say) fun to read music reviews! But that was a week ago, and I haven't heard from them yet, so I imagine they have in tacked up in the bathroom for yuks. We'll see.
HIDE
