Archive for January, 2010

Palindrome.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      ” a word, line, verse, number, sentence, etc., reading the same backward as forward, as Madam, I’m Adam or Poor Dan is in a droop.” -dictionary.com

So much attention being paid to an ass whooping that hasn’t happened yet.  Think if we got proactive and started coming straight at some of these douchebags, we might do a little better or at least not look like such pitiful invertebrates.  If you’re gonna piss and moan, save it for after you’ve marched and fought and then just walk away if your vagina hurts that bad.  Democrats are eying the back door, the party is crumbling.  Some already slipping out the rear.  We are such pussies.

For six months they talked about the deep fractures inside the Republican machine.  Teabaggers vs. Moderates.  Religious asstardian zealots vs. mouth breathing gun huggers.  Nazis vs. the Undead.  A big chunk of the GOP was looking to bend McCain over.  They still are.  None of it has left the building.  Both sides of idiot still think Palin is one of them.

They are three things.  Disciplined, organized and stupid.

See, it’s really easy to scare stupid people into organizing.

We are smart.  That’s it really.  Yeah, we participate and organize a little.  Brains never won an ass kicking contest though.  Part of the problem is we’re not so conveniently incensed as the dumb people.  “The 1/4 Paradigm”.  The great unwashed.  We’re not like them at all.  I could visit any house of worship on any given sabbath and have them lighting torches in twenty minutes.  I’d start by talking about the baby killers in our midst.

Then I’d tie gays and pedophiles together without mentioning the Catholics.

Now the independents vote for Darkside because half of them are Republicans anyway and the rest of them have been inculcated with a fear of Democrats.  You know, baby killers?  Homosexuals preying on young boys?  That sort of thing.

How the fuck did that happen in less than a year?  Sheezus.

Don’t forget “The 1/4 Paradigm”.  25% full blown and incurably stupid for life.  Can’t fix or cure double digit IQ’s.  Can’t keep them outta Baptist churches or the Klan.

“Look at ’em, ordinary fucking people, I hate ’em.” -Repo Man

Way too many of them believe we want to take their goddamn guns away.  If I can just impress upon you varmint eating woodsmen and you crank snorting lumberjacks one thing, it would be that we liberals, progressives, socialists, whatever you want to call us, are just not that panties in a bundle over your particular method of compensating for a less than grandiose dick.  We just don’t want you getting your shaky hands on explosives, canons or missiles.

Collect your guns and be yourselves.  Fingerpaint.  They’re yours to have and keep with our blessing.  Try really hard not to bring them with you.  You don’t need one at Walmart or at a campaign rally for a candidate you don’t like.  No family picnics.  Other than that, we’re cool.  When you do bring them with you, we hope you bring them to a place where it’s unlikely to shoot another human.  Not anywhere around here or me.

I did just hear that Teabaggers are chuffed with Sarah for supporting Doubtfire.  How tough is McCaine’s race?  This guy is really starting to have bad days and say stupid shit.  He’s a bullet dodged by a nation.  She’s a prideful primate.  We rolled our windows up in time to keep her out of the rented sedan.  Together they are anti gravity.  They do not like each other.  There was two or three weeks, in the very beginning where it was mutually beneficial.  Since then, it’s been nothing but more harm than good.

Codependence.

Like two cinema villains, they cancel each other out.  I like to watch.

I don’t know where I’m going with this but to point out the Big Top.  The drama.  The vaudeville.  If I could just be apolitical, it would be entertaining because it really is melodrama.  High concept, low expectation comedy.

Let’s run with that shall we?

It is the carnival that concerns me.  Don’t hate the player…..  Forgive me but I can’t help but think of politics in America as the WWE.  It’s just so absurd.  It’s scripted and the fans know it yet they lust for suspension of disbelief so hard, they become the willing fools.  I’m having a crisis of faith.  I fear politics has become my soap opera or my reality show.  If that’s the case, surely it matters just as little.  My go to impetus, my welcome catalyst, looks more and more like bullshit.

I’ve been observing this process closely for some twenty years.  What I see now, I can’t help but think is hopeless crap.  Roll your eyes and piss in the sink because nothing matters.  I can’t help it.  My cynicism is calcifying.  I’m going to pass it as a stone and it’s gonna have me on my knees.

Drinks for my friends.

The biggest bitch in contemporary American politics is the money.  The filthy lucre grows the machine.  Mucus and puss in it’s wake as it slogs toward inevitable conclusions.  Blistered and listing, it creeps with the powerful momentum of a slow swinging, giant iron gate on it’s way to slamming shut.

Inevitability is acrid in the thinking person’s nostrils.  Like brimstone.

Ha!

The 5 to 4 SCOTUS decision today is a fundamental betrayal of the 1st amendment in that it severely compromises an individual’s voice, right and access to free speech.  A seemingly venal verdict that in due course, will prove to be as cloying and stifling to the opinion and intention of everyman as any opinion yet rendered by the highest court in the land.

One impetus for the First Amendment was to protect the individual in the face of a collective.  The majority does not automatically rule.  Back then it was to discourage mobs of idiots.  Pretty much the same thing these days.

Are we not yet enough of a plutocracy?  Avarice and lust for power have not already eclipsed the voice of the individual enough?  What new devilry is this?

We are not men.  We are Devo.

Chief Justice John Roberts…..in his own separate opinion, said that upholding the limits would have restrained “the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy.” -CNN Ed Rollins.

I’m calling bullshit on that and if Roberts is sincere he’s a goddamn fool.  It doesn’t take a genius to understand what unrestricted, unregulated spending and therefore influence by humongous lobbies and corporate conglomerates will have on truthful discourse in this country.  One need look for proof as near to hand as any election within the last few months.  Money walks.  Bullshit talks.

This is exponentially worse.

What we have here is a wedding in hell.  The groom is bullshit and the bride is money.  The offspring are of quid pro quo corruption.

Truth is relegated to cleaning up for the funeral scheduled for the next day.  Then Truth will take a sick day.  Truth will be on holiday.

Care to guess how the vote fell?  Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy and of course, the ever pompous Scalia, all voted in favor of taking away your last bits of clothing in a shitstorm.

We can impeach a Supreme Court justice can’t we?  Let’s start with the Boy Scouts.

“Government may not suppress political speech on the basis of the speaker’s corporate identity,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the 57-page majority opinion. “No sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit corporations.” -The Christian Science Monitor

Fuck that.  Not based on it’s identity, but on the basis of identities who bring undue influence and advantage to bear on both process and individuals via media saturation because they’re loaded.  It amounts to the brainwashing of the great unwashed.  Trickle down stupidity.

I prefer to scrub the brain.  I most like to spank it.

Chuck Schumer:  “The bottom line is this: The Supreme Court has just pre-determined the winners of next November’s elections,” Schumer said. “It won’t be Republicans, it won’t be Democrats, it will be corporate America.” -the Hill.com

President Obama called it “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.” -The New York Times.

“Joined by the other three members of the court’s liberal wing, Justice Stevens said the majority had committed a grave error in treating corporate speech the same as that of human beings……….. “The difference between selling a vote and selling access is a matter of degree, not kind,” Justice Stevens wrote. “And selling access is not qualitatively different from giving special preference to those who spent money on one’s behalf.” -The New York Times.

Stevens pretty much nails it there.

Unconscionable.

Drinks for my friends.

So, the Democrats run a lame candidate for Senate in Massachusetts while turning their backs on a nest of Republican snakes.  So, the Republicans simply cater to the lowest common denominator.

Meet Scott Brown.

He posed.  Hairspray on an empty corn cob.  He’s a goddamn lead singer.  How new are you?  Look at my thumb, gee you’re dumb.

Maybe, just maybe if he wasn’t up against cardboard.

I should be angry.  I suppose I am.  Should I be angry at Republicans for being such ignorant, obstructionist asstards, or Democrats for being such paper tiger pantywaste losers?  I feel like being confused, but I’m not.  What I am is disgusted.

“The Republicans are playing chess and the Dems are in the nurses office because, once again, they glued their balls to their thighs.” – Jon Stewart.

Teddy Kennedy held this office for forty seven years.  The lion of the Senate.  I admired Ted Kennedy.  Comity no longer exists anywhere in the Senate.  It went from solid to gas.  The way of the Dodo.  What we have here, is piss all over his grave, equal parts Democrat and Republican.  It will freeze and eventually evaporate come spring.  It will still stink for summers to come.  Them with more mild sensibilities and weaker constitutions will wonder if the reek is merely rotting vegetation.  The dying foliage of deciduous urban landscaping.   Only in the fall.

You and I, along with the forest rodents will understand it to be the odor of personal weakness and the strength of filthy lucre.

And the shit of urban rodents.

No equitable, compassionate health care for the richest nation ever.  Health care is a right, not a privilege.  Yet this crap persists to blow in our faces.  Tens of thousands die here every year because of greed and cowardice and/or no health care at all.  Then there’s them that go broke.  Hundreds of thousands dead in Haiti, not because of an earthquake, but because of decades of poverty and neglect.  Wait til you hear how complicit we’ve been.  Hundreds and thousands die every month in the various wars we conduct.  Plenty of funding there, but no conscience.

We are getting sucker punched every morning out of bed.

I need to remind you that by shaving one tenth off our budget for the military industrial complex, we’d all have health care and groceries forever. Higher education would be free.  No potholes.  No collapsing bridges.  We’d all have enough for the fruit of the month club.  We’d be excited about the pears.

Pete Townshend once said something about ending The Who before they became parodies of themselves.  He was anxious for them not to become a joke.  It’s too late for America.

Since when did a party have to have 60 out of 100 votes in the Senate to scratch their own balls?  How is it that after barely a year under a new administration, a twisted referendum is allowed to hold sway in state like Massachusetts?

This is profoundly and spectacularly ridiculous.

I’m not sure I give a mad fuck.  The only option now is to ram the diseased phallus that is the Senate health care bill down the blistered, milky, puss oozing upper gastrointestinal tract of the house.  It’s a shitty bill.  A mandate to buy but no mechanism for controlling cost or avarice.  A non starter for me.

I’m having a hell of a time giving a shit.  Whatever happened to hope and change?  Does anyone remember laughter?

I am disgusted.  I’m romancing apathy.  Sure, there’s been progress, but on such an infinitesimally incremental level that I’m struggling with what appears to be a wish sandwich.

“Have you ever heard of a wish sandwich? A wish sandwich is the kind of a sandwich where you have two slices of bread and you, hee hee hee, wish you had some meat.”  -The Chips 1956

This really is stupid.

You give me twenty, maybe twenty five bucks, I’ll make you the best salad you’ve ever had.  I have skills.

Drinks for my friends.

What the hell?

A thoroughly embrocated, hallowed chair and institution of itself, was became the Senate seat occupied by Mr. Kennedy for decades until his death.

Now threatened by an “independent” Republican goddamn teabagger.  I stumble over the last sentence more than once because it sounds so dirty.

In Massachusetts for fucks sake.  He posed nude in Cosmo for crying out loud.  Show me a politician with some juice and I’ll show you a lead singer wannabe.  Even Ashcroft had pipes but he was ugly, stupid and mostly evil.

A bitch.  A diva……

A frustrated cross dresser like Guiliani.

Scott Brown claimed to not know about the tea party movement but took their money after attending a fund raiser this very month.  He supports Roe v. Wade as “the law of the land” but pledges to be the the 41st vote against virtually any health care reform.  He says he drives a truck with over 200,00 thousand miles but is by any contemporary standard, at least somewhat wealthy.  What and who exactly is this guy?

According to his own website he favors lower taxes.  Forgive me, but a Republican never says that without meaning lowering taxes on the rich and to hell with the rest of us.  Trickle Down Economics is pure crap and anyone in favor of it is either ignorant or not a friend of the middle class.  The middle class used to be our moral, ethical and intellectual ballast.

Now that it’s in atrophy, we’re having an identity crisis see.

“Israel has made enormous sacrifices in an attempt to secure peace – including unilateral withdrawal from Gaza”  -from Scott Brown’s campaign website.  And yes, that is bullshit.

What we do know is that a health care bill is on a very steep hill if we lose this seat.

I’m having a tough time giving a mad fuck because the last one out of the Senate was prime swampland.  No public option but a mandate to buy with fines if you don’t.  Fines that go directly to the insurance companies.  There’s more but that’s enough.  Blow me.

Other than that, I’m real worried about Sarah being a contributor to FOX tie me to the bedpost News.  Not.

I gotta find that O’Reilly interview.  This shit is gonna be great.  What I’ve seen is already good.  Pray she doesn’t wig to early because the longer it goes on the more spectacular the flame out.  Don’t be afraid.  Embrace the Palin.  Encourage her celebrity.  Don’t buy any of her books though.  Make sure you don’t end up providing her with a dime.

The best part of this circus is about to be free.  Jon Stewart and the like are pants shittingly gleeful.

Cirque du Palin.

It works if you make the ‘a’ long……like Pawlin……accent second syllable.

Make the ‘a’ long….see?

Another thing that is bothering me still:  How much faster our black President responded to an international disaster of enormous magnitude than did our white president to a domestic disaster that was allowed to live up to most of it’s potential as a direct consequence of neglect and egregious incompetence.  Maybe it’s genetic.  Dudes from Hawaii with big ears are smarter.  Dudes from Texas by way of Connecticut with big ears are charismatically retarded.

It’s not racial at all.  Despite Limbaugh, The Human Shitsmear’s assertions that our current President has hopped and skipped to because of the color of your average Haitan’s skin.  Without a nod to any other megalomaniac with media access, it’s not racial at all.  Don’t forget that.

Understand, Rush Limbaugh is a racist.  For those about to rock, we salute you.  He’s a turd in the punchbowl.  He’s a bloviating, pontificating, make shit up as he goes, racist, bigot fucktard that I would debate or play chess with or both in a heartbeat so I could pull his limbs from his body after spanking his brain with the brick of my own.

Sincere political debate pivots on policy and reason and a modicum of comity.  That there’s a dialog here about Haiti beyond what to do, is proof that the conversation is in the woods.  Proof that a lot of us still aren’t paying attention.  Let me say this, 25% of Americans are incurably stupid.  This is a long standing theory of mine that consistently bears itself out.  Proof can be had on this very show.  It will now be known as “The 1/4 Paradigm”.  You will think of it often as one of every four people you meet is a dumbass.

That’s all you need to know.

Drinks for my friends.

Nine million people.  At least a third in serious trouble.  Pitifully poor country.  These people were miserable before this happened.

Big surprise.  They’re fucking Catholics.  They believe in God.  Spell check compels me to capitalize them and it.

I’m in a bad mood so I just want to point this out.  The Vatican could sell a painting or two and pay for the incredible gathering of forces converging on this microscopic nation to save as many lives as possible.  It’s kind of amazing the relief effort being mounted.  Specialist teams from a dozen countries with dogs and literally tons of equipment and supplies.  Various militaries steaming toward.

I’m thinking this is gonna be horrifying but kinda dramatic.

Anybody heard from the Pope?  I’m sure he had something to say.  Anybody?

Meanwhile Limbaugh the Human Shitsmear and Pat “I wish God would fuck him in the neck” Robertson both busted a nut today.

Robertson: “Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about. [Haitians] were under the heel of the French…and they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said, ‘we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’ True story. And the Devil said, ‘OK it’s a deal.’ Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another.”  -collegenews.com

“On his radio program Wednesday morning, Rusty [Limbaugh] said that President Barack Obama and company would use Haiti to get closer to the “light-skinned and dark-skinned black [communities] in this country” while adding that the U.S. has “already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”  -collegenews.com

Al Franken wrote a book once called “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot”.  It was all true.

Shitsmear then endeavored to compare Obama’s reaction to the Fruit of the Boom bomber to what he’s doing for the people of Haiti.  Huge mistake to measure your response about a man who failed to ignite his underwear on a commercial airliner.  A man who’s in custody and no longer a threat to anyone.  A man who may know things above and beyond how to detonate his fucking diaper or not……………..

But shame on you for acting so quickly when three million people are in real trouble right now.

Man I hate these guys.  Robertson blames everything on the Devil and Fags.  Limbaugh blames everything on everyone smarter than him.  I hear the latest thing is three dimensions.  Math check.

This shit is killing me.  I gotta bug out.

I mean really.

Let me say this: These guys are dicks.  They really have nothing to do with any of us.  Filthy rich whores who have opted to trade soul at the crossroads quite some time ago.  Notice how large their heads are.  How the noggin seems to float above the torso and shoulders like a balloon, bobbing and jerking to the random currents of air.

Think of others who appear this way.  Discuss.

Drinks for my friends.

I wake and I’m blank.   I’m alone.  I understand that’s wrong, but it’s all I know.

Hanging over the opposite side of the bed I sleep on.  There’s a tiny smear of blood on the bed skirt.  I dab at it.  It’s sticky.  Not yet dry.  I check my mouth.  Not sure what I expected.

I’ve seen the last of Shirley.  I begin to think about that.  I’m sure it was brutal.  A bird of prey on a rodent.  I want to shit myself.

Nope.

The bathroom door clicks and she’s in front of me in my robe.  Beaming with self satisfaction, she holds aloft a platter of steaming pastries. Ever seen the album cover for Breakfast in America by Supertramp?  There is fruit and juice.  The aroma of cinnamon and sugar.  Her cleavage strains against the robe as it becomes the uniform of a diner waitress.  Sun bangs through the window and it’s warm.  She feeds me pastries from the platter but I can’t taste them and I’m thirsty.  She is matronly and jolly.  I grab for the fruit but it’s dry on my tongue.  Cardboard, styrofoam.  I gulp the juice but it’s air.  Everything looks cloudy.  Everything feels cloudy.

Blood begins to leak from her eyes.  Her face panics while it folds and creases.  She screams.  Snot erupting from her nose and streaming off her quivering chin.  Thick black whiskers sprout and curl as though fertilized by the blood and mucus.  She’s a lumberjack and she’s not okay.

I recoil into consciousness.  It’s violent.

Like I’ve been wailed on until I open my eyes.

I’m awake, still wearing this beautiful watch.

You fucking A!  I’m awake.

Here it comes.  All of it.  She’s gone.

I gotta piss like a racehorse and I’m shaking while it sinks in.

The mirror above the sink confuses me because I mistake it for blood at first.  It’s lipstick and the message is incomplete.  My name and Shirley had a lovely time, then a smear that trails to the bottom of the mirror and her lipstick is in the sink along with the clear plastic cap.

I look like a chicken fucking McNugget.  What we have here is a deep fried and greasy countenance.

I must have gone down after the blowjob.

She wiped me off with a warm wet towel.  There it is, still damp between the bed and the bathroom.  It’s orange.  There’s no condoms, my junk isn’t sticky and there’s orange lipstick on it.

He killed her right there and then.

Right after my righteous hoovering.  She went to freshen up and maybe spit?  Did she already have the towel?

There’s blood, viscera and hair in the shower.  Blond hair.  His knife is there too.  No batteries in the waste basket.

Housekeeping can change the linens, I won’t ditch the bed skirt.  Absence being more conspicuous than a smear of blood I figure.  We’ll see.

Carlo hammers at my door, calling my name.

I’m freaked out all over again.  I don’t know anything about this dude except he’s fucking odd.

Man I’m in trouble.

“How bad is it?”, he barks when I open the door.  He hasn’t slept, he’s pale and a little bug eyed.

I wonder how he got on the boat.  Carlo probably boards airplanes at will.

I wonder how he knows.  I wonder how he knows what he knows.

I tell him what I know, and what I think I know.  Somehow I’d managed jeans and a t-shirt.

He folds his hands and rests his forearms on his knees, looks up at me from the corner of the bed.  The watch he wears is identical to the one he gave me.

He bows his head, then comes up with a grimace.  He goes to the closet and pulls out a plastic bag for shoes to be shined.  He doesn’t look at me as he collects the evidence, the bloody viscera, lipstick, knife and hair into the bag.  He starts the shower, hands me the shoeshine bag and tells me to lose it while indicating the balcony with a nod of his head.

I’m outside and it’s chilly, I look both ways before letting it drop.   I wait for it to hit the water.  It seems too loud, but I probably only imagined hearing it.

I slide the door shut behind me and he’s back in the bathroom methodically cleaning the mirror with toilet paper wrapped around his open hand.  His hat is off, he sweats a little.  It is here I begin to trust the man.

I need a cigarette.

Holding up a finger he disappears out the door.  As quickly he’s back with paper towels and a spray bottle of blue he’s lifted from a cleaning cart.  I now understand that lipstick is very greasy.  The blue liquid is a minor miracle.  I’m able to make short work of everything.  I consider dousing my genitals with it.

This is some bullshit.  No fair.  I’m just not equipped for this.

I can’t help it.  I sob.  I choke.  I dry heave into the tiny sink hard enough to bleed.  I’m aware of stomping my foot as I convulse with anger.
He’s behind me in the mirror all about sympathetic chagrin.  “Shower, but be quick.  We need to get you out of here.”  He points at the floor.

I am grateful to hear it.  I need to wash this off of me.  I need to be told what to do.

I’ve no idea where to go from here.  It’s all way too much.  A woman has been murdered.  An innocent woman.  She was nice and she smelled good.  She didn’t deserve to meet anyone like me.  It wasn’t her fault but it was mine.

She suffered a violent dissection with a a dual D-cell powered, serrated knife.  Not fair.  It’s not fair and I’m in the middle of it.  It’s entirely my fault.

I knew what would happen.  I knew it absolutely.  I fucking saw it.  Now I’ve gotten more than an eyeful.  Now I am guilty.

I’ve just dropped evidence into the ocean.

Mr. Tarcisi hands me a towel.  He is anxious for us to leave.

Before we leave the boat, we stop for eggs, coffee and a muffin with butter and jam, Carlo insists.  I can’t eat.  I’m numb.  I can’t take most allergy medicine because it traps me between wanting to catch a frisbee in my mouth like a dog in a commercial or napping until the solstice and this is exactly how I feel right this minute.  I seem to be vibrating with a low frequency panic and something octaves up that would make for excellent surveillance camera footage.

By the time we’re in his car his impatience is obvious.  Fuck me.  Fuck him.

“I need to take you to my home for a bit”, says Carlo through a smile and a brown cigarette.  He looks out the window when I look at him.

Drinks for my friends.

This fucking Harry Reid as a racist thing is comedy.

Harry Reid will never be caught in an ethical or moral scandal.  My Mother was his secretary and he is at least an honest man.  I will take your money over this.  I simply know it to be true.

I blame society and the media.

Really, I do.

I haven’t always agreed with him and he’s pissed me off.  I understand he’s not polling well.  I dare say it might and maybe should come down to the Devil you know versus the one you don’t.  Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader is a big deal for a state with our meager population and vast tracts of irradiated desert that Washington wants to turn into the nation’s toxic nuclear septic tank.

Fuck that shit.  No more nuclear energy until we figure out what to do with the waste.  Thanks be to Harry thus far.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described in private then-Sen. Barack Obama as “light skinned” and “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” -Yahoo

Sounds a little rough.  Context kids.  Biden said something like clean and articulate.  A far poorer choice of words and he’s Vice President.  See, Mr. Reid was speaking with candor among colleagues.  He was assessing the candidate’s chances of success in light of how racist America remained.  Remains; because, bear with me here, we’re really finding out just how racist America still is.

You must admit it’s really reared its ugly head.

Mr. Reid was guilty of being matter of fact in light of what the stupidest quarter* I’ve alluded to before would end up thinking and doing.  For the record, the stupidest quarter have behaved exactly as we all thought, thus vindicating Senator Reid.  They didn’t make fun of how he talked and only accused him of being an Arab or maybe Muslim.  Turns out Harry was exactly right.

Senator Reid apologized immediately and our President said, “I’ve seen the passionate leadership he’s shown on issues of social justice and I know what’s in his heart,” Obama said yesterday. “As far as I am concerned, the book is closed.”  -Yahoo

More than enough for me.  To be fair he also characterized the comments as “unfortunate”.  Who knows what he meant exactly but I agree.  Unfortunate.  Yes.  It shouldn’t be an issue, but it is, and you’re an idiot if you can’t see it.  I’m not here to apologize for ignorance or stupidity and I don’t believe that’s what has occurred here.  What we have here is a truthful man speaking privately in support of a man who would become our first black President.

I know it’s awkward but Harry Reid was being honest and I admire his prompt contrition.  He knows what he he meant but he’s humiliated by how it sounds.

Michael Steele called for Dirty Harry’s resignation today.  Didn’t see that one coming.  Let’s politicize racism and who better to foment than a black Republican?  He asks rhetorically.  Somewhere Gomer Pyle chuckles with abandon.  Surprise, surprise, surprise.  Michael Steele should be the titular Head Douchebag of the Republican party forever.  He’s as good for the world as Sarah Palin because they’re both the same caliber of stupid.  The somewhat sociopathic kind that is relatively rare in most walks of life but prevalent in low IQ conservative, ideological and fucktardian political circles.

You know, the kind that fail up.

Is this racism?  You bet.  Is Harry Reid a racist?

Piss up a rope.

Drinks for my friends.

*When Nixon was forced to resign, his approval rating was about 25%.  When George W. Bush left office, his approval rating was about 25%.  I can think of no better proof that one in four Americans is a dipshit.

So I made fast friends with this guy named Hunter Oswald.  The drummer.  He played drums.  Like a motherfucker.  As soon as I heard him I was happy to work with him.

The experience of making this record was daunting and cardio pulmonary.  It was hard and I complained.  I whined.  Mark Harvey reminded me that if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.  I wonder what he thought that day.  A mere few years earlier he told me I lacked confidence while I stood in front of the same desk and he was absolutely right both times.

He told me to shut up and get on with it.  Both times.

Mark charged us next to not a damn thing for Studio C while we had it locked out.  I think our bill might have been as low as $17k.

Best boss I ever had.

So this prick’s name was Hunter and he was a fucking punk.  He celebrated his 21st birthday during the making of, and I threw him out of the control room for participating in record making while drunk and surly.  It wasn’t really hard to do because I liked him.  He was a cynical, mocking, steps ahead little bastard.  Barely corrigible because he was so smart and so reckless.

Great goddamn drummer.  I don’t know how he plays now but when I recorded him he was Keith Moon meets Phil Rudd.  Really.  A buck twenty five maybe, but he’d chop up cymbals and burn through a snare head in two takes.  He had a way of looking at you and mocking you with a shit eating smug fucking grin that warmed the cockles of my heart.

Toothsome.

It was like I saw him and he knew it.  Plate of shrimp.

He told me once that he thought of me as an older brother.  I don’t flatter easily but that blew my skirt up.  I had the privilege of doing another record with him and it was just the most entertaining and somewhat nuclear of experiences.  Do yourself a favor and read it:  http://brainspank.org/wordpress/?p=102

We’d been in rehearsal for a few weeks.  We had no name for the record.  Half the songs didn’t have titles.  I knew what they sounded like and I had some ideas but this was seat of the pants for me.  I was totally winging it.  Alex took the wheel while I swam around and figured out what I needed to do.

We hung some huge poster board at the entrance of the control room for possible album titles.

They had this roadie they were all fond of.  His name was Jimbo.  He contributed “Whiskey Dick Chaos”, “Fuck & Suck Circus” and “Ebola Ain’t Shit” to the conversation.  The album was eventually to be called “Punkrockacademyfightsong”.  He could drink a 16 oz. Guinness in like three seconds.  After four of those, the power of Christ compelled him out of the control room too.

I may have told this story before.  Hunter is on the couch to the left in the very front lobby of A&M.  He knows The Stones are across the hall and he spends his off time making friends out front because he knows that’s where everyone comes and leaves from.  He doesn’t have a lot to do because he’s the drummer and he’s barely post adolescent.   And It happens.  One night Hunter is hanging out and in walks Keith Richards.  I was there.  Hunter was off the couch lickety split and he said, “Keith Richards” while pointing………

and Keith said, “Funny you should say that, that’s my fucking name.”

I eventually figured out what to do with the record.  As soon as I did, it was over and time to mix.

I was seeing Jules Bergman’s daughter.  Beth.  He was the science correspondent for ABC when I was a kid and covered all the cool stuff during the seventies including the Apollo Soyuz link up.  She had a great rack some freckles in her cleavage and rosy nipples, a moon rock, webbed feet, great lips and a beautiful blue eyed Sheppard Husky mix named Girl.  She was a lawyer and played violin and she was interesting.

I showed her the difference between tube and solid state amps.  I made her her a tube girl.

I’d recently stopped seeing an international Penthouse Pet I met in traffic court while bargaining with a judge over my shitbox VW Bug and the boot on it.  She was so hot I was intimidated.  Damn.  Her name was Olivia and she had a trust fund and a condo.  Damn.  My vagina was huge.  She was in AA but kept cognac in the cupboard for me and she made heaping steaming bowls of pasta.  She lived in Brentwood.  I knew she was older but she never let on how much.

I imagine coke was her vice.  She told me George Carlin was her sponsor.

When she wanted sex, she invited me into the bedroom to watch a movie.  She was hotter than Georgia asphalt.  She would remind me the VCR was in the bedroom.  She’d smile and ask me if I wanted to watch a movie.  Olive skin, tan lines, silk bras and lace panties.

I was about to mix the first record I’d ever recorded and tried to produce and my head felt like it was consumed by bees and ants.  We started in D.  Arguably the worst sounding console at A&M.  Beth was with me that night I pushed the faders up and began to listen to what I had.  The working title of the song was ‘Sam Police’ but it became “Minusame”.  We ended up remixing most if not all we did in D, manually in C.

Beth was wearing a Stones T-shirt that night and her tits were a major distraction.  Beth once got me drunk and fooled me into boning her while she was menstruating.  It was dark and she kept telling me not to look down.  One morning I woke up and she’s already been to the store and returned with raisin bread, orange juice and condoms.

She called cognac “wood drinks”.

I did know when I pushed those faders up that we had a record.

Somewhere in there was this adorable young black woman.  Lexi.  I really don’t remember where I met her or how we knew each other but she gave me a pedicure and a blowjob for my birthday.  It was dark and rained hard the next day.  She had small but perfect breasts and had just pierced one with a tiny silver hoop.  She spent the night at my place in Hollywood.  I drove her home past collapsed apartment buildings in the Valley.  She was beautiful and I don’t even know her full name.  We saw each other only a handful of times probably because I was a mess.

Drinks for my friends.

Listen up, this story is important.

Promise it’s a good one.

My first time engineering and producing a record.

I had no idea what I was doing.  No shit.  I really didn’t.

There’s no rhyme or reason other than right place, right time.

It’s gonna be more than one chapter.

It was pretty cool.

So I think I was twenty six or twenty seven years old.  I’d gotten a pretty good grip on most of the A&R department’s business.  Enough so that when another engineer appeared on the schedule, I could get proactive.  Sometimes I was actually able to take the gig away.  Other times I was at least able to insert myself as an engineer and avoid some full orchestra AT&T jingle or some ridiculous nine day mix of a single song with a total of 10 tracks of music with Don Smith and Shelly Yakus.

Some dog and pony fiasco by some major superstar or not that I didn’t give a mad fuck about either way.

It’s always good to work with others, share ideas and interact but you could check out the set up, talk to the staff guy, survey the gear, the mics and their placement without anyone bothering you.

I ended up under some dipshit named Graylin (sp?).

The band was Down By Law.  An Epithaph band.  This guy Graylin was a piece of work.  He thought himself some sort of wizard.  He wanted to meet me and talk production beforehand.  We had drinks and he told me he liked to sometimes bring a ladder to a session and sit on top of it while the band played.  Just to throw them off, he said.  I told him that was fine by me but I warned the ceiling in studio C was only about eight feet.  I ended up paying for drinks.

He was an idiot.

Turned out to be an excellent band and Graylin was the turquoise cummerbund.  Mouth breather.  We left him behind the first day.  I did the best I could.  I liked these guys.  They could play and they had passion and this producer they had was full of shit.  He had no idea what he was doing.  He had no idea what he had and he didn’t understand his band at all.  He showed up the first morning of the gig and burnt a wad of sage in the live room.  We were setting up mics and it took less than two minutes to smoke us out.  Studio C had a very small live room.  I tried my best to be nice when I asked him not to take it into the control room after kicking him out of the live room.

Before I ever pushed a fader on this session, I understood this guy Graylin to be a douchebag.

He was getting all bullshit native American spiritual for a punk rock demo.

Nobody cared.  Dumbass.

Graylin ended up being quite enamored of my capabilities.  Why not double the rhythm guitar?   Why not do so with a different guitar and amp as long as you can make them compliment each other?  Why not check the snare head between takes especially if the little fucker plays as hard as this one does?  Why not check tuning constantly?

Why not pay attention?

Why not wear your sunglasses in the control room?  Really, and a fucking trench coat.  What a dick.  Rock stars and wannabes wear shades in the goddamn control room.  I really can’t blame the rock stars sometimes.  The only time I ever wore my sunglasses in the control room was for a photo shoot.  I looked like a smug dick.

The session went well.  Good songs.  Great band.  Full of personality, humor and heart.  I got excited.

We let Graylin have the couch.

They could play.  They could really play.  Different tempos and sensibilities than I was used to.  I’m big on dissonance and the way Dave played wasn’t always tonally congruent with Sam and Angry John.  Usually worked out pretty good though.  Lovely dissonance.  I like when rhythm guitars rub a little.  Punk rock is a good venue for dissonance.
Oh, and Hunter.

Hunter has become one of my best if not closest friends.  Geographically inconvenient.  He’s a cracker and I’m white trash.  He’s upper Florida and I’m LA by way of trailer in Carson City.  We’ve both crossed the country to work together.  For years when Hunter was on my side of the continent he left a simple message: “plate of shrimp”.  Whereupon we would drink and such.  One night he was at the Roosevelt and we ended up with this group of high school girls from out of state on meth, seriously.  They were some kind of team.  They were tagging each other until sun up to do drugs in the bathroom.  I woke up among them.

Creepy.

I think I walked home.

I adore Hunter.  It’s a man crush but I’m not looking to give him the business or anything.

There’s no mirror that reflects half of what everyone needs to know.

I made sure, I did my damndest, to make sure they left with good rough mixes.  Graylin would be taking his vagina along with the rest of himself, to mix somewhere else.  What kind of an asshole takes his demo to another studio to mix when he has free time at a place like A&M?  When the band is being considered by a major independent label like A&M as opposed to a minor independent label like Epitaph was at the time?

I didn’t have much time but I spent every minute left to me on good aggressive punk rock mixes because Graylin thought he was working on prog rock.

I’m sorry Graylin, wherever you are, but you were an ass.  I’m sure you’re not a bad guy.  I hope not anyway.  I could be wrong.
It was alarming and depressing to know that such a poseur could somehow infiltrate this level of things.  Whatever.  I’d already seen this movie too many times.  Another day in the life.  Never expected to hear from Down By Law again much less Graylin.  Dave Smalley called me three weeks later and asked me to produce his next record.  I told him yes.  I told them all yes back then.  I had nothing to lose and didn’t believe a single one of them.

So many so willing to kiss without even touching.  I was already a whore.  What were they waiting for?

I was giving it away.

Long story short.  Six or seven months later, Dave came back around.  There used to be a diner on the corner of Sunset and La Brea, I honestly can’t remember the name but it was a very faux Hollywood/Fifties, suck my dick, touristy kinda deal.  They had pretty good milkshakes.  It may still be a Boston Market.  A family restaurant two doors up and across the street from a titty bar.

Crazy Girls.  Eh hem.

I can’t remember the exact sequence of events, but Dave contacted me at the studio and asked to meet me.  We met at that diner.  I think he told me he wanted to talk to me about making his next record on the phone.  I think he said that but I didn’t believe it so I don’t remember it.

We order fries or onion rings or something and he asks me, with his lovely wife Caroline present, if I would make his next record with him.  He said he didn’t have a lot of money to spend and he might not be able to pay me anything up front but he said there was money for the studio and points available and I didn’t care about money.  The offer was to produce, engineer and mix a record for Epitaph, for a band I already liked, had already recorded and sort of understood.

In the intervening months I’ve become a much better engineer.

My ass puckered because I didn’t really expect to hear those words.  Even at that young age, I was used to allusions and promises.  I’d heard it all before.  I thought maybe, maybe, I’d get offered this record but I didn’t own it at all until Dave Smalley actually asked.  I’d kinda forgotten about it.  I remember smiling and and answering.  I walked back to the studio wondering if it was real and what I had agreed to.

I barely understood what it was to produce a record and I would be engineering too.
I took the gig.

I accepted Dave Smalley’s magnanimous offer.

Al Reed was in front of my lobes.  Al and I had begun to work together but he probably still thought I was some kinda dick.  I couldn’t be positive he’d take this on with me.  I’d thought about explaining that I’d never produced a record before and that I really was relatively inexperienced as an engineer……..I thought about it, but Dave knew it, and it just didn’t bear repeating.  We were on the same page.

He wasn’t just willing, he was enthusiastic about taking a chance on me.  Turned out to be the best selling record Down By Law had ever or would ever release.  We really did see into and understand each other enough for us both to know I would do my best.  I did.  I did do my best.  Alex Reed did his best and helped me and the band to do our best.  We honestly all did our best.

It was fucking swell.

I struggled.  I lost and regained my confidence a half a dozen times.  Alex was amazing while he worked to define his own role.  We had a blast.  I melted down a couple times but not in front of the band.  I was sure I didn’t belong there, either as a producer or an engineer.  Al would shove some sturdy lumber up my ass and I’d be back the next morning and so would he.  The band embraced Al because he was so smart, organized and intuitive.  I’ll forever be grateful.  I made up my mind that I would never, if it were up to me, share anything but equal billing with Alex Reed ever again.

Once again, Alex would teach me, sometimes by example, what I needed to know.  An early symbiotic relationship.

He brought everything I couldn’t.  That smacks of melodramatic but I’m here to tell you it’s not.  We share a birthday but that is almost all we have in common.  Very smart guy.  Way more musical than me.

Could not have done it without him.

Much more to come, and it gets better.

Drinks for my friends.