Three Great Tastes

There seems to be a lot of kvetching on the Interweb, especially here, concerning the impending Don Caballero reunion tour. It seems that it isn't really a reunion at all, but rather Don Caballero drummer Damon Che and some members recruited from the Pittsburgh band Creta Bourzia to recreate old DC songs. And it isn't clear whether the other former Don Caballero members have sanctioned this thing or not, though it's hard to imagine that they would. By all accounts, Damon Che is a major asshole and prima donna and being in Don Caballero was a constant agonizing struggle.

Then there's the infamous debacle surrounding Bellini, the band Damon Che formed post-Caballero, in which he walked offstage three songs into the set in Athens, GA, got in the band's rented van, and drove all the way home to Pittsburgh, leaving the other three members stranded in Athens. This is about the most colossally asshole thing I could imagine doing, and anyone who pulls something like this deserves to be fully quarantined from society for the remainder of their life.

In any event, I would agree that Damon Che re-forming a jukebox version of Don Caballero is pretty god-damn cheesy and lame, but I would nonetheless attend the show if I were in one of the nine or so cities they were playing in.

Speaking of reunions, Mike Watt has been playing bass for the reunited version of the Stooges, and in that setup, Watt is the only non-original member, so it ain't like Bud Light Welcomes The Stooges Featuring Iggy Pop. Not like when I saw Steppenwolf at the Missoula County Fair circa 1990. It was billed as Steppenwolf Featuring John Kay, because he was the only original member; the rest were a bunch of hired guns that look like they just got out of the Fontana Guitar Institute or something. It was really kind of pathetic to see, you know, that kind of thing where they try out some new material, but nobody gives a shit about anything but "Born to Be Wild" and "Magic Carpet Ride" anyway, especially at a county fair.

Anyway, this Stooges reunion seems to be limited to European festivals (and a couple in the US), and somehow seems a lot less eminently cheesy than the typical reunion tour (like the recent Sex Pistols tour&emdash; got cancelled in Denver due to lack of interest!). Plus I like to think about what old-school Stooges fans must think of Mike Watt up there on bass. Well, I imagine Iggy is the primary spectacle onstage, but I wonder what it's like for someone who's never heard of Mike Watt to look away from Iggy and see this goofy looking guy with a three-foot thread of drool dangling out the side of his mouth, swaying to and fro in the breeze.

Also back at it: RadioZero! Rick and Rose are back to doing their Internet talk show once a week, after a long hiatus. If you're not hip to it, RadioZero is essentially a husband and wife (who also play in the PosterChildren) who sit in their Champaign, IL basement and bullshit with one another for an hour or so and offer a recording of it online. It sounds really mundane and uninteresting, but if you're like me and you are intrigued by the more mundane, everyday aspects of the lives of total strangers, it's incredibly good listening. Of course, it helps if you're interested in what they're talking about on the show; music, politics and computer programming are some of the recurring themes, but either of them are likely to expound on any number of topics great and small. Kind of like an audio blog, if you will. You're a dumbshit if you don't check it out.

Which reminds me: does this website seem like a blog? People occasionally refer to it as such, but I don't think of it that way at all. I like blogs and I like the idea of blogs, but goddammit, I hate that term "blog" so much that I feel a preternatural compulsion to avoid being associated with it. Well, I don't know if it's the the actual word blog so much as it is the annoying subculture that goes along with it. Shit, I don't know.

This site does look a lot like a typical blog, but there's got to be some ineffable thing about it that sets it apart from a blog. Well, for one thing, most blogs tend to be kind of extemporaneous jottings-down of whatever thoughts happen to be flitting through the blogger's head at the moment, whereas I like to think of these more as essays. I mean, I don't research them or do rough drafts (I always wanted that phrase to be spelled "ruff draught" for some reason) or anything, but I think I put more thought into it than just spilling my guts on a keyboard. I mostly just want to give a nice, thought-provoking diversion to people who work in front of a computer all day.

Or maybe I should just quit bullshittin' myself and admit that it is a blog.

To direct this in an infinitely more interesting direction:

You know how sometimes you just happen to combine things in your mouth that you would never have thought would taste so good together? When I was a kid, I was at a movie one day and discovered that Hot Tamales and popcorn taste really goddamn good together. Later in my childhood I found that chocolate chip cookies and potato chips, when combined in one's mouth, make for a most pleasing gustatory sensation. My friend Rusty used to say his favorite thing was smoking a cigarette on a crisp morning after having just brushed his teeth. And though I found that interesting, I could never really identify with that, on account of even when I was an official smoker, I felt that cigs pretty much fouled up everything that entered your mouth for the next half hour. Except, you know, beer and so forth.

I've come across a few new rad taste combinations lately. The first one is pretty weird: sunflower seeds and coffee! Oh yeah! You eat about three successive mouthfuls of sunflower seeds and then take a swig of coffee. It's like an orgasm in my mouth, y'all!

Also I'm really into making these fruit smoothies in the morning, with frozen strawberries, blueberries, a banana, a packet of Emergen-C, and orange juice. Recently I happened to switch up my routine and brushed my teeth BEFORE having the smoothie, and sweet merciful shit, the taste of all that fruit combined with residual toothpaste is an overwhelmingly zesty hit.

Glenda The Good Wife, however, has some combinations that are kinda gross, I think. She puts tuna in mac-n-cheese, and she eats pickles with chili, both of which I just find totally repulsive. She's also big on the Suicide, where you get a fountain drink and mix six or seven different kinds of soda together, like Fanta, Cherry Coke, etc. Icky. But we're married now, so I guess I'm more or less contractually bound to live with it.

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C Average- Self-Titled (Kill Rock Stars, 1992)

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