Well this is scary has hell

I saw in the over the net today that the US government, not content with lying about sex and drugs to teenagers is now going to spread it’s abstinence only program to target Adults ages 19-29. Let me repeat that, ages 19-29.

Abstinence.

Jesus.

I have enough trouble with their hysterical lying gibberish about sex being poured into the ears of teenagers (Condoms don’t work is one of their evergreen whoppers) screwing their little minds up no end with guilt and fear, but now they want to start trying to shame grown men and women (and I am sure this will be aim mostly at women, cause boys will be boys) because, per some clod, unmarried women in this age group are having more babies.

Oh heavens fetch the smelling salts.

Okay – here’s one thing here – women that age, married or not are having babies. Sheesh if you want kids, it’s a pretty good time to have them, you’re young, typically in good heath, and the body’s systems haven’t started that long slow decline towards worm food so pregnancy isn’t as much of a strain as it is later on. So why not have kids if you want them?

And these are adults we’re talking about here. If a woman wants to have a kid or kids and not a husband, that’s none of the Government’s f##king business okay? Her choice, her life right? Even if as per some Victorian novel the man has in that unlovely phrase, knocked her up and then cut and run why is the woman the one who is the bad one? What kind of warped Cotton Mather world hating mindset do you have to have to start preaching Abstinence to grown people? With my tax dollars mind you. Bad enough they send them to Halliburton, never mind spend it on this gibberish:

‘If you have sex and you are not married you will get aids and die or get pregnant. Or you will feel so guilty at indulging your selfish shameful lusts you will gouge your eyes out with a pair of spoons.’
‘AiEEEEEEEEEEEE!’
‘Alice what happen?”
‘Helen ,just gouged her eyes out with a pair of spoons.”
‘Helen why why? Granted he was very handsome and hung like a horse but was it really worth it now Helen, as you lie here with your eyes gouged out?”
“AIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!”
“Remember don’t have sex unless you’re married and then only if your husband wants to make babies otherwise you’re just a slut, even if you’re married and guilt that comes from being a slut will be so bad that you’ll gouge your eyes out with a pair of spoons’
‘AIEEEEEEEE!!!”
“Of course if your husband wants sex and you don’t you’re just being a frigid bitch which will make you feel so guilty at disappointing your husband that you will gouge your eyes out with a pair of spoons.”
“AIEEEEEEEEEE.”
“This message has been brought to you by the Chastity council.”
“AIEEEEEEE.”

What makes this whole thing even more insane is that about 90% of the adults in that 19-29 group are sexually active or have had sex (i.e. making with the humpty hump) – Christ even I, The Lord God King of the Prolonged Dry spell, got lucky a time or two when I was that age –outside of marriage too. (Straight to hell I now but it was worth it. I’ll be standing on the line for hell and the guy in front of me will ask “what are you in for?” I say “Having sex and writing songs like ‘Stacy’ and “I’m sorry I ate your brain”. How about you?” “Murder.” At least I’ll have some good memories while demons play with my entrails.

I’ll get back to this after Halloween, this sex is evil and foul, I want to have sex, therefore I am evil and foul equation that has blighted my whole damn life – this treating sex like it is some evil outside impulse from the devil that must be resisted damaged me deeply. To see that being perpetuated and by government money is both deeply depressing and scarier than a thousand vampires.

Sometimes I wonder what’s the point & Happy Halloween!

Yeah like that should come as a surprise to anybody that knows me. And now that the Enemy Below and the Insect Girl are happily married and the hurly burly is behind us, a sense of malaise has crept over my life. Not Despair, not anything that strong, just a sense of I’m only visiting this bit, that I’m waiting for something to happen.

It could just be the time change of course, things like that have an effect on you, you don’t feel quite right

Per some spam e-mail that I got the other day, the reason is that my life is like it is that right now Mercury is in retrograde. Oh so that’s it. Gee I thought it was I didn’t have enough money to pay my bills, that my job status is in limbo, my romantic life remains moribund (everybody now: aaaaaaaaaw), We need more places to play and things just feel stuck. Well maybe it is mercury in retrograde, I will not spend the extra $20 bucks needed to find out exactly what that means so sorry.

Well anyway tomorrow is Halloween so Happy Halloween to everybody – I read somewhere that Halloween has become American’s second favorite holiday right after Christmas. It’s a wonder the holy ones worried about the war on Christmas ™ haven’t used that fact to start screaming The pagans are coming! The pagans are coming! To chop off you heads, gay marry your daughter and take you job.

It was so much simpler when monsters were the only things to worry about.

A weird thought here, going back to the other day’s comment about the underlying themes in monster movies, it could be that the plethora of Zombie films are a reaction to the rise of drug use in America and the resulting paranoia that brought on. (One minute normal teens the next, the living dead flesh eating potheads!). There was anti-drug one commercial that summed up the real fear smoking pot aroused in the powers that be. In that commercial the pot user didn’t crash his car, run over kids, shoot someone, cook his cat by accident, turn into a sex crazed deviant, no he just sat on his couch and did nothing. I remember watching that and going so? This is your big problem? That he won’t work? It’s his damn life what the hell is your problem with this? Is it because since he won’t work he won’t go to Wal-Mart and buy junk? Is that what’s scaring you? That he’s not going to be a member of the consumer society? I’m not sure but they didn’t run that commercial much, it was back to the pot makes you insane enough to gouge your eyeballs out with a spoon style ads right soon enough.

Voice over: Smoke dope and you’ll gouge your eyeballs out with as spoon
Other voice: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
3rd Voice; Dude you just gouged your eyeballs out with a spoon
Other voice: AHHHHHHHH!!!!
3rd Voice: That’s gotta hurt. You want another hit?
Voice over: Get the facts, rat on your friends, and just to be sure, stay away from spoons
Other voice; AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Hmmm might add that to the killer sheep play – which may turn into a musical by the time I get done with it. Still the idea of bizarre ads on the TV in the place of any real news about the killer sheep, or the robots or the Aliens is amusing.

Full disclosure I smoked pot about 4 times, the last time about 20 years ago, I ended up watching a movie, eating a box of Oreo cookies and deciding not to do this again. It was the weight gain potential that had me worried, that and the requirement that you became a Grateful Dead fan – you had to fill out a form and everything. While I’ve mellowed a bit about the Dead over the years I still say you can play them at my funeral cause then I’ll be dead and I won’t have to listen to the dullest band in the history of western music. To tell the truth, I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon than listen to them.

Well again happy Halloween – projected viewing – The Mummy, The Wolf Man, (I’ve already seen Dracula and the earlier Frankenstein films) Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (Bela plays the monster here), King Kong, Godzilla, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man, Them, Horror of Dracula, Frankenstein Must be destroyed, Curse of Frankenstein, the Werewolf of London, and so on – don’t know if I’ll get to all the them but hey it’s fun to do(it's a bit scarry that I HAVE all these films).

Music; Misfits, Black Sabbath, Macbeth by Verdi & Werewovles of London by Warren Zevon.

LAZY SUNDAY

Since I have an extra hour today with the daylight savings and it’s quite a while before opening day – figured I’d do a rare Sunday blog. No topic just what ever comes to my tiny brain.

Looks like we have at least two new songs (I think we’re up to putting things on the 3rd album now). As the Enemy Below said – okay two more to take off the set list. I don’t want to jinx us but we have surfeit of riches these days, what we have are more songs that we can stick into a 45 minute or even an hour set.

Trying to write, the Enemy Below is great here. I keep thinking I have writers block so what he does is push – he’ll play something and encourages me to just spout gibberish – hell it works “Ode to a Glock” , “The Porn Song” and a bunch of stuff came out that way. So much kudos to him.

One song is “The Legend of Bob Muir” and explains kinda why I am the way I am, except that it doesn’t. The other is a kind of Elvis do-wop piece of nonsense that is great fun to sing. Can’t tell you the title because that’s part of the joke.

We are still working out the plans for the 1st album. It looks like they way we are going to do this is a song at a time when we have the time and the money. We want the songs to be done right and sound right – which is a little more complicated that just walking in and singing.

Back at the open mike for the first time since the wedding. Don’t know who if anybody is going to come – it’s been a while since we had a good crowd and it’s windy and looks to be cold tonight. So we’ll see.

We’re talking about going out to comedy club open mikes cause well – we do make people laugh so maybe it’s a way to get other gigs while we wait for New York to discover the wonder that is Bob Muir and The Enemy Below.

As I am watching the old Universal Horror films I have to say – Boris Karloff was a much better actor than Bela – even in a hunk o junk like “The Invisible Ray” he’s much more believable as a tortured scientist. Bela is miscast as a good guy (he’s always so much better as a heavy – he can just ooze malice.)

Going to be putting parts of this sucker on My space as I think if it. I’m not sure if the snarky comments about W will make the cut. Thing is, I’m not too interested with getting into a slanging match with hard core Bush lovers – I have better things to do with my damn time folks – I already have enough problems with the “hi I’m a 20 year old collage student and I’ve just gotten a web cam” Riggggghhhhht like I’m the one they are looking for. As much as I’d like to fool myself into thinking that a 23 year old drop dead gorgeous bisexual woman who has a equally drop dead gorgeous Asian girlfriend with large breasts would be interested in a middle aged overweight singer in a comedy/punk band, I’m not quite that a) stupid or b) desperate.

It’s well and truly fall in New York, the wind is colder and biting, the trees are giving up their leaves. In about 2 weeks all the leaves will be gone and the city will take on its bleak look until April. Still I prefer having seasons that go by. Gives me something to look at pay attention to, something to watch for as the days go by. Someone once said creativity is about paying attention to the details and I think that has something to it. When I’m at my most blocked is when I’m too focused on me and myself and my problems.

Found out Robyn Hitchcock will been in town soon – he’s one of my top guys and I haven’t had a chance to see him in a while so off we go. Meantime Cheap Trick is charging 80 bucks a ticket for their show. As much as I love the Tricksters I think I’m going to have to give them a pass.

Well – off to watch Ghost of Frankenstein and a few others before dinner.

CREEPY

Tense and nervous today – I think the pressure of not worrying about things is starting to get to me. I want things to go away for a while. Or me to go away for a while. Not a good day I guess. I honestly thing the weather change has something to do with it. That and the calls from people asking for money I don’t have. That’ll put a crimp on yer day for sure.

Been watching the old universal horror films as we run up to Halloween – taking a break from the usual god-awful film fest that I typically run 24-7 365 days a year. I am again impressed with just how creepy the early 30’s horror films were, how there is a genuine sense of decay in films like Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Black Cat and the others of that era that is quite disturbing. You sense the monsters and killers in these films are not aberrations but the natural result of a sick dying world. These films were made in the depths of the great depression so it’s not that hard to see where this feeling came from, but it still lingers in the mind after the film is over. Even the erstwhile happy endings these films have something off about them. Yes the balance has been restored but real damage has been done, the survivors at the end of these films are like people who have lost a limb to gangrene alive but in shock and feeling the phantom pains coming from the limb that isn’t there anymore.

By the1940’s the sense of decay was gone and the films became more thrill rides than horror pictures – the killers and creatures come from outside not from inside society itself – gypsies bringing the werewolf virus with them, sinister Egyptian priests with walking mummies etc. Which again made perfect sense with World War 2 over the horizon. The 50’s brought their own dread, Atomic Apocalypse, and paranoia about communists (again the other but in a different form) add quite a odd undertone to 50’s sic fi films and not just in films that addressed it directly as Them, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers but even garbage like It Conquered the World has that sense of cold war paranoia.

Speaking of paranoid craziness the GOP and their enablers are going not so quietly nuts about the possibility of the Democratic Party getting control of one or both houses of congress. Panicked by the loss of their to quote Mel Brooks “phony baloney jobs” because a) the gravy train stops when they aren’t top dog and b) a lot of them will go to jail or be forced to resign since they are so crooked they resemble living corkscrews, the GOP is hyping up the ugly. Boiled down their message is that Gay Negro Mexican Islamofacist Terrorists will cross the border, take your job, marry you daughter and kill you after taking your guns and car away and then go on welfare if the Democratic Party wins.

It’s gotten so bad that even monkey boy has gotten wind that things aren’t that good.

LOUD CRASH followed by curses and more banging.
Aide: what the hell was that?
Clerk: the president just saw the latest polls.
Aide: you didn’t give him the real ones did you?
Clerk: well, er, yes.
Aide: didn’t they tell you we never let me see the real news.
Another crash
W (from inside office): No Like! Can not be true! No! HATE! KILL! No! I president! I loved! (More crashing)
Adie: The monkey is hard enough to handle under normal circumstances. Hell we can’t even tell him it’s raining outside sometimes.
W sticks his head out of the oval office.
W: I want the bastard who gave me this fired and sent away. Water board him until he tells us who he’s working for. Commie Bastard.
Aide: You mean terrorist not communist.
W: Yes. Head hurts. Need rest.
Aide: it is almost time for your nap.
W: Can’t sleep. Angry. Need….
Aide: I’ll be in a second – I’ll put the bombing tape on for you.
W: Boom Boom
Aide: yes boom boom
W shut door.
Clerk; I’ll get my things
Adie; don’t worry about it; he won’t remember any of this by tomorrow – just don’t give him the real polls. The ones done in crayon with the stickers on it are for him.
W (from inside): Need Boom boom!

The vice president has endorsed water boarding which they insist is not torture. Which has to piss the surviving members of the Khmer Roughe no end, they loved the water board.
“We weren’t torturing people? Damn what a gyp. If we had know it wasn’t torture, we would have used the rack or something.”

Maybe my sense of a society in sick decay isn’t coming from the 30’s movies I’m watching.

blooger hates pics for the moment.

No Time to loose.

No time for the usual gibberish – stuff to do. We’re not being sold but my department will be moving floors so I need to purge papers – I work with contracts we have a lot of papers – so there will take a lot of purging.

Random neural firings:

New Jersey court has ruled that Gay Marriages are not illegal in New Jersey but they didn’t say they are either. At least that’s what I got from what I read.

I’ve never been to hip on why folks heads spin around on gay marriage. Come on who cares. Granted it’ll make the waiting list on the best catering halls longer but still that’s doesn’t seem a good enough reason for people to get their undies all in twist over it.

Speaking of weddings, I’ve decided, after seeing three of them this year, that if I ever get married (not very likely but hell the Red Sox won in 2004) it’ll be in Vegas – there is a hotel/casino with a replication of the bridge of the enterprise from the original series and you can get married there. And that’s where I want my wedding to take place – On the bridge of the starship enterprise – by Elvis if possible. The Groomsman will wear Hawaiian shirts – the after ceremony music will be Miselou by Dick Dale and the Del-tones. Reception will include a performance by the band.

The Bachelor party will be simple – a nice stake dinner, a ball game, then bandy and Cigars and a screening of either Plan 9 from outer space or Manos the Hands of fate or Prince of Space depending on my mood.

While not likely it’s good to have a plan.

Yes I am upset the Mets lost Game 7 but this year was soooooo much better than the last few where the season was over in July. As a good sign I see people are complaining about Met’s fans again. Ahhhhh. Takes me back it does.

Another Diana Rigg pic – yes she’s one of my fantasy women. More on that later.

King Kong Lives almost Killed me.

I saw this in a Movie Theater – and it’s one all time stupid movies I have ever seen. With movies so expensive these days you really can’t do what I did then; just waste some money and some of your life to see a bad film. The proper place to have seen - by all accounts the mind numbingly hideous - Bloodrayne was in the theater where you shout stuff and can throw things at the screen - but with the cost of tickets so high it makes sense to have to wait for netflix to send it to me – same with Aeon Flux. But I digress.

I recently purchased (for about five bucks) a DVD of said film and watched it last night just to confirm in my mind how stupid it was. (why why why? I keep asking. Dear God why?)

The film was the unneeded sequel to the unneeded 1976 remake of King Kong and it starts whit the last scene of the 76 film where Kong (actually a man in an ape suit. Side note: nothing screams this movie will suck like a man in an ape suit – Bride of the Gorilla, written by Ed Wood has three men in gorilla suits, a record I think, and yes it is very very bad – end side note) falls off the world trade center to his death. (yes I got a pang – that never will go away) The screen fades out and comes back to show Kong lying some where in Atlanta (why who knows) in a coma with tubes and wires coming out of him. There is a caption that reads ‘Ten years later’.

There are long shots of big machines – it’s a heart lung machine or something and there is a doctor in scrubs walking about taking notes. It turns out that the doctor is the spunky surgeon who is played by Linda Hamilton fresh off her role in Terminator – She does not wear a bra much in this film – either cause she’s the spunky surgeon or to distract us from the nonsense we are seeing on the screen (the latter I suspect).

Anyway the Spunky Surgeon is upset because Kong has been in a coma too long and if they try and put the new heart (a Jarvic 7 Style artificial Heart the size of a VW bug) in Kong now it will kill him. He doesn’t have enough blood and there is no donor to transfuse blood from.

First stupid point: They are proposing to put an artificial heart into a fifty foot gorilla, let me say that again a fifty foot tall Gorilla – and the last time it was awake it killed and injured thousands and god knows what the property damage was. And yet not a single person in the movie asks “Is this the best idea we ever had?”

So Kong needs a miracle and in the tradition of hack moviedom he gets one – an Indian Jones/Jungle Jim type stumbles across a female Kong in the jungles of Borneo in Asia where with the help of some tribesmen who look like they are from the Amazon Basin (don’t ask, maybe they were on vacation) who just happen to have blow darts with knock out poison on them, captures it.

The blood matches Kong’s type so they take some and now the operation can get underway. It’s an absurd farce with the Spunky Surgeon making the first cut with an air powered circular saw. She guns it before she starts cutting (this drew laughs when I saw it in the theater) hell they didn’t need a surgeon to do the first cut they needed Leatherface. And then off they go – first they take Kong’s real heart out with a crane – Stupid point 2 – how the hell do you sterilize a crane? Just asking. And put in the VW bug sized Artificial Heart. Pretty dumb so far.

The female is kept about a mile away.

Later Kong wakes and smells the female and starts jumping around. Okay Stupid point 3 – he’s been in a coma for 10 years, he’s just has invasive open heart surgery which involved cracking his ribs to gain access to the heart – and he’s ready to jump around and he wants to do the humpty hump dance? Moving his fingers would be a more likely first step.

Anyway after some nonsense Kong breaks out and then escapes into the woods with Lady Kong. They are followed by the military led by one Col. Idiot along with Spunky Surgeon (hereafter SS) Jungle Jim (JJ). Eluding the military SS and JJ search for the apes who are in a clearing where Kong is courting his lady fair and anyone watching is suffering trauma because it is just that stupid (I keep using that word to describe this film but it fits). Meantime SS and JJ find them (the army has helicopters but they have the screen writers) and first monitor the courtship. Later they bed down for the night and SS invites JJ into her sleeping bag.
‘Are you sure?” Asks JJ
SS nods and says “We’re primates too’
I had a couple of reactions, One I wanted to kill myself right then and there to make the pain stop (It Burns! Mother! The stupid! It burns! It burns!) And the other was to I wanted to really act like a primate and fling my own filth at the screen.

Stupid point 4 - you’re deep in the woods chasing two fifty foot apes, the army is all over the area, it’s cold and dangerous – and now both of you do the humpty hump? This just doesn’t seem like a normal response. Somebody has issues.

The next day – Lady Kong is captured by the army and Kong goes over a cliff into a raging river – presumed dead.

He isn’t of course – otherwise the movie would be over and we have only begun to suffer. He drifts into swamp where he survives by eating alligators. No I’m not making that up. I’m not saying watch the film if you don’t believe me (I wouldn’t wish this on my worst foe) but I am not making that up.

Lady Kong meantime is being held by the military. Stupid Point 5 – I know it is easy to take potshots at the army and the like but really- what the hell would the US Military want with a 50 foot ape? I was wracking my brain the rest of the film to try and figure that one out. Anyway something is wrong with Lady Kong but Col idiot won’t let SS or JJ see her. She pines and moans.

And of course Kong senses that his lady is in trouble – and heads towards her, revealing to the world that Kong is alive. The world naturally panics. SS and JJ start to track Kong,
There is an incident with 4 hunters who are such clichéd drunken Southern crackers that I apologize to everyone who has ever breathed air. The crackers trap Kong but he escapes and kills them. Later seeing the wreckage and the bodies, SS says ‘Kong. Now you’ve killed. There is nothing to stop them from killing you” SS like everybody else in the film has completely forgotten Kong’s little romp some years ago in New York.

Kong manages to sneak up on the military (Well they are led by Col. Idiot who, let’s face it, didn’t get the lady Kong minding job because he was such a good soldier) and then rescues Lady Kong who turns out to be – ta da – pregnant. Excuse me I have to throw up in my mouth a little. I’m back. {God this is a stupid film}.

Then Lady Kong goes in to labor, the Military catches up with Kong, Kong is mortally wounded, Col Idiot is killed by Kong, Lady Kong gives birth to a man in a gorilla suit, Kong holds man in gorilla suit for a moment,. And man in gorilla suit coos – god it’s embarrassing. I’ve looked at the credits and we never know who the man playing baby Kong was – good move by they way maybe saved his career. (Stupid point 6 Ape babies, like human babies are pretty limited in what they can do and know at birth so it couldn’t know Kong was its dad and also it should have had a much bigger head and looked more like a baby than a man in gorilla suit.) - Kong dies and we are all sad. I’m sad because I’ve permanently damaged myself watching this thing (again) and I’ll never get those 85 minutes back.

Final fade out features mother and son in range in Borneo – which doesn’t explain how they plan to keep Lady Kong and Jr. on the preserve (50 foot apes go pretty much where they want to yes) and so the film ends and the credits roll and I try to smash a bottle so I can cut my wrists until I realize its plastic so I settle for beating my head against the floor.

Anybody wanna buy a DVD?

Adventures with teh dumb

Still plan to pan and oh god does it need panning , King Kong Lives, but first a quick adventure from this morning. I was walking to the subway station, and I stopped at the corner and since the light was red waited for it to turn – people drive like they are the driver for a bank heist in the morning, an excess of caution is not unwise.

So as I was waiting, there was a car not moving. I thought to myself, hey lady, the lights green. But after a while she didn’t move and I figured there’s no helping some people and I crossed the street behind the car and headed to the station. Now where she was waiting she had two choices; she could go straight or turn right. She couldn’t turn left (street name North Hoyt) because it’s a one way street, a three lane one way street, with the bank heist getaway drivers on it. So, of course, she turned left. I was dumfounded. This was a level of stupid I had not seen in a while. At first I thought she was looking for a parking space (drivers go crazy when they are tying to park around here) but noooooo she kept on going whenever there was a gap in the traffic.

I had too much at that point. I flagged her down,

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked/yelled.

She looked at me with panic in her eyes

“I have to get to the bridge’ she said. She meant the entrance to the Tribrough Bridge now about two blocks away. I guess here plan was to sneak up close enough and then make a break for the bridge.

‘You’re going to cause an accident’ I said, in less than a friendly voice. “Head on, bodies squished death, flames and delays for hours.’

‘I have to get the bridge.’

“okay then – here go up this road, the one you’re on, one block, then turn right and when you get to 29th Street turn right again. It’ll take you right on in. Look at all those cars, that’s how they do it.”

She didn’t move for a second so I, with hand signals showed her how to go. Had to do that twice. Sweet mercy. I’m willing to be she’s still lost, but at least she won’t be causing a head on collision near where I live.

How do they find me?

I HAVE RETURNED

I’m back from the wedding of The Enemy Below and the Insect Girl – I would like to be able to thrill you with sordid tales of my weekend of debauchery and wild sex fueled only by trail mix, rum and gin but I’d be lying. It was a lovely ceremony and reception and they looked very happy together. I’m honored to have been one of the wedding party.

The only real problem was that the wedding was held on the beach and it was oh about 170 degrees there. It was the hottest Oct 22 on record in Clearwater and the Groom the best man and I were dressed in tuxes – we were simply pouring sweat by the time the pictures and the ceremony were finished.

Had a great time at the gig – thanks to all the members of the Voyeurs and their fans for hanging around. And thanks to Robin for not pulling the plug on us when we started doing Someone Else. I love doing that song when people have never heard it before. Goes along oh so lovely and sad and mournful and then bang – there’s a pie to the face. Got the bass player on the Voyeurs to do a spit take twice during that song.

After the gig – Robin - bless her heart - said maybe we should explain where the songs are coming from before we perform them, specially mentioning “Ode to A Glock” – the idea being we wouldn’t make people as nervous. I’ll take it under consideration but well, part of us is, yes there is the joke, that this guy is waiting a week for his hand gun, and that the way it was done is like so many other folk songs, but there are people like this out there – like for real, so a getting little nervous is not unreasonable response.

It looks like the company will not be bought for now – good news bad news stuff – since they will keep looking for a buyer and there are some other things they want to do. So now we get to wait for a different shoe to drop – i.e. when the layoffs come. It’s the brave new world where you’re pretty much screwed no matter what you do.

One thing – whoever designed the automatic check in interface for U.S. Airways is an idiot. When ever I’ve used the automatic check in for other airlines or even Amtrak I d just pop the card I used to pay into the slot and the information would pop right up. Not a US Air – first I had to type my last name and then – the flight number – which pissed me off no end – what the hell do I look like a travel agent? Never mind that Expida said it was a United Airlines flight – there is some deal between United and US Air which not working in the travel industry I knew nothing about. Then they started in on seat assignments – again what the hell? When did this become my job? The end result of this gibberish was that instead of the automatic check in making life easier for everyone (which I should think is the idea yes?) check in at the US Air Terminal was a mob scene - a complete confused clusterfuck with nobody knowing what to do, the attendants sullen, people panicking cause airlines over book and there might not be enough seats and me just barely restraining myself from getting into a slanging match with the attendants – who, even as a New Yorker, struck me as staggeringly rude. But they are being punished; they have to work in Tampa Airport dealing with people like me. That is enough.

I wanted to do more but work is getting in the way. Amazing how while you aren’t very important while you are there, you leave and it turns out everything depends on you. I was greeted by stacks of paper and e-mails galore. Would that my social life was this full.

Plans apace for drummer, press kit and recording – we want to do it as right as we can so it’s gonna take some time to get her out.

Later.

Diana Rigg picture – cause I want one.

Tomorrow – maybe – King Kong lives. Plan to watch it tonight but I might have to turn it off if hurts my brain too much.

PACKING HEAVY

So my plan to get a decent night’s sleep last night was completely destroyed by the Mets. Short version – I was so wired by the end of the game I didn’t get to sleep until about 2. I wasn’t feeling that hot before that, so today I’m part Zombie – but as Warren Zevon sang, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

So the project for tonight is packing – I pack heavy under normal circumstances but this is the first time I’ve been going to a wedding, a rehearsal dinner and a gig. What worries me is the gig stuff especially the Alien mask and the Wrestling mask. The world being what it is, if my stuff is opened as a random search, no way could I explain them without sounding like a crazy person.

“This mask”
‘The Alien mask?”
“Yes, why did you pack this?”
‘I use it in the act.”
A pause here
“The act.’
‘Yes, my band mate wears it while I sing’
“For the entire act?”
‘No just the one song.”
“And that song is?”
“Ah….you want the title?”
“Yes.”
“The title is ‘You must not surrender to the Alien Agenda.”
Very long pause here.
‘I see’
“It’s a joke.”
“A joke. You know satire. The song’s a protest song about alien abductions.”
‘I see.”
Long pause here. The Airport security guard puts the alien mask down and picks up the Wrestling mask
“And this other mask/’
‘It’s a Mexican wrestling mask, you know Lucha Libre, and actually that is the Blue Demon’s mask”
“The Blue Demon.” pause “And your band mate wears this as well?”
“No I do.’
“While you sing.’
‘Well he does most of the singing on that song”
‘And that song is”
‘I’m sorry’
“I want to know the name of the song.’
‘Yes, it’s ‘I’m Sorry’’
‘Yes?”
‘I’m sorry I ate your brain”
Another pause here.
“I thought as much sir; I think you need to come with me.”

Horrible fantasies just come so easily these days.

Speaking of horrible fantasies the weather tomorrow looks like it is going to suck. I’m a rotten flier when it’s crystal clear – this is not making me happy. Well I can let it ruin my day and my flight or I can just assume that since millions of people fly every day even in bad weather and that airline pilots are not as a group suicidal risk takers – I’m going to be fine. And if not, well I won’t have to sweat the credit card debt anymore.

Random Neural Firings;

I’ve been using My Space (the band has a my space account –(http://www.myspace.com/bobmuirandtheenemybelow - which has some of our songs available for listening and even down load – and pictures – no blog though – that’s here, the blog, the one you’re reading) Anyway My Space has a bit of everything – including groups for every possible deviant sexual activity on the planet. If you like having sex dressed as Yogi the Bear while a dwarf shoves radishes up your butt, there is a My Space group out there for you. It makes my fantasy life look as wild as a Methodist Minister’s. My real sex life of course has less happening in it than said Methodist Minster (all together now again: ahhhhhhhhh). But as I like to say, the first three years of celibacy are the hardest – after that, well, you just go quietly nuts and feel like you’re forgotten something and go around assuming you’ve mislaid your wallet, or your keys or that you’ve left the lights on in the Apartment. Then you start a band.

Someone stole the Mayor of New York’s Car – a Lexus. I hope the Mayor (who is a billionaire) paid for that car himself. I don’t have a problem with a billionaire buying a Lexus, I do have a problem with a billionaire Mayor using city funds to buy a Lexus.

Fall is in full swing; the leaves on the trees that line 24th Avenue and Hoyt Avenue north have turned yellow and are falling off. I swear to god they were green yesterday. It a bit they will be bare and it’ll look like they never had any green on them.

Word flying about the office is that the deal will be announced Friday – and I will be out of the office. Good.

I don’t know how much blogging I will be able to do this weekend. Have a good one yourselves.

Later.

If Clinical Depression made a movie

Lord help me – I can’t believe what I did to my self last night – watched ‘The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and became Mixed up Zombies’

I mean Jesus I mean: AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

And this was with Mike and the Bots quipping away, even with them I got a sense that permanent damage was being done. My will to live was being drained by the minute as the film wound on.

The story such as it is involves a Gypsy Fortune teller (who looks like an insane version of the dark haired woman on Three's Company) She hypnotizes this guy named Jerry to kill people - why we are never told. She also splashes people in the face with acid after they have been zombifed again why is not addressed. It’s confusing and not very interesting.

The real horror in this movie are the dance and musical numbers – at least half the film is taken up with singing and dancing, but not good singing and dancing. There is comedian who isn’t funny. Sample joke: ‘My parents work in an Iron and Steel company. She irons, he steals’. (Kill me, kill me now please). Then someone will dance – One couple features a woman who makes Rudy Giuliani in a dress look feminine and a guy who looks like the Nazi’s ideal of the Aryan race. It was very depressing to watch. Really.

Then there were the massed dance numbers – I made a note to myself that if I ever do a film that features dancers and singers I will at least try to get people who can dance and sing to do them. They to were depressing to watch - at the end of the film there is a jungle dance number that manages to be racist and dull at the same time.

There was a young man with a guitar that sang …something…I found I was happy I live on the first floor cause otherwise I would have jumped out the window to just end it.

And then there is the movie itself – the color looks washed out which fits perfectly with the look of the buildings and people. The people all look lost and despairing and yet too beaten down to do anything about it.

i think the film is a good a picture of what the world looks like to someone who is clinically depressed as you can get. Or more accurately had clinical depression became a sentient entity and made a film:

“No no no more lifeless please, this is for posterity. Not that posterity will give a damn you know but there it is, nothing to be done, the ships taking on water and we are all going to drown like rats. Oh sorry, action.”
“Oh help help.’
‘Well that’s a good take but not great take, just a little flatter, no emotion but overall sense of what's the damn use weariness yes? Not that it matters by the time anybody gets this part of the movie will be thinking about suicide not the film. Oh yes, Action.”

I’m not even going to go into how the star looks like Nicolas Cage like if he was the product of generations of inbreeding or that the star was also the director which made sense cause then a) he wouldn’t have to pay anyone else for the part and b) the main character is a jerk we don’t really care much about so he probably couldn’t get anybody to play the damn role.

Or the camera work or the stupid zombies (three of them) or how all the women looked vaguely mannish in this movie or how the music was bad. Or how the location itself a fair somewhere in California was as depressing as Coney Island in the winter. But it doesn’t matter; every frame reeked of depression and despair.

As I watched, getting horribly depressed (the Mets’ news didn’t help) I found myself profoundly grateful for the Beatles coming to America. Cause if they hadn’t the lifeless junk I was watching in this film (made circa 1964) would still be what people would be watching for entertainment (I think they still do in Branson). The Beatles with the songs, energy and above all their sense of humor changed all that.

Bless them for that.

Anyway in a couple of days I’m off to Florida and the wedding of the Enemy Below. And that gig. More later. When my soul heals a little more.

INSANE BARBERS AND OTHER THOUGHTS

Much panic or something around this place – I am reminded of the scene in The Russians Are Coming! The Russians are Coming! Where the some of the crew of the Russian submarine that has run aground near an island in Maine are wandering the streets of the town saying in mass to anybody they see “Emergency, Everybody to get from Street.”

The place has that kind of feel. We’re trying to get paperwork together for a project for a State and they do need everything in triplicate – and typed – I haven’t used a type writer in years – or white out for that matter. Takes me back.

Anyway – last Saturday I went to get my hair cut – I needed one and I thought that if I got it now, it would grow out a little for the wedding if it looked like I had been attacked with a weed whacker.

Never much cared for barbershops – I well remember the one my dad would take me to growing up, the odd hair tonic smell and the combs in the blue water and the same couple of old guys sitting reading hunting magazines. (And no I don’t get hunting: shoot a deer, cut off its head and hang it on your wall – what the hell did that deer ever do to you?) The weird need the barbers all had to use their straight razors. I found it very creepy.

I had very long hair in the 70’s but not as a statement, I just hated going to the barbers, still do. But today the salon I normally use was booked up so there was no help for it. I needed a hair cut and had been putting off long enough.

So I walk in as ask for a hair cut, the barber has me sit down asks what I want –
“Just a trim please” I say.

So he starts then asks about the side burns, did I want them short?

“Yeah – it’s a bounce back from when I was young and had them long’

This led to a discussion of hair lengths and then the Beatles. I didn’t say much (I don’t like talking when I get my hair cut because that’s makes it go longer.) and then he said:

“Do you know why John Lennon got shot?” He asked (He had a Russian accent by the by so feel free to added that to your mental image)

“errr why?” I asked, I was puzzled- I should have kept my mouth shut.

‘Because he had said he was bigger than Jesus”

At which point I started sputtering “He said that in 1966, you telling me it took Jesus 14 years to arrange a hit?”

He wasn’t quite sure how to take my reply and then when I explained that John was trying to say “we’re just a band’ he started off on how Rabi Shankar taught the Beatles how to play guitar.

Well that’s it I thought – time to just hmmm and go “oh really” this fellow is a) gone round the deep end and b) has sharp things like scissors and razors, best just to go along with the lunatic and get out as quick as I can before he goes all Sweeny Todd/Monty Python (“Cut cut blood spirt, Pyscho murder”) on me.

Well of course the damn cut took forever and then, just as I was about to sprint out the door he wraps a towel soaked in water on my head.

“The Hell?” I said.

“It is a Russian thing, cools your brain.” He told me.

I was thinking that man needs to spend several days with towels wrapped around his head. And if I get out of here alive I won’t go back - I don’t want to know what he has to say about Jim Morrison.

The President has signed a bill allowing us to torture people and to toss them in Jail without charge forever. Do they hate us because of our freedoms or because we are hypocrites? More people for cold towels round their heads I'd say.

Scattered Thoughts & a little Godzilla

Busy times at BM&TEB World headquarters – I spent the last few days doing chores including getting a hard case for my guitar so it would be harder for the airline baggage handlers to break her into pieces.

Side note: Guitars, like ships, are typically referred to as female, especially by Male guitarists who need to get out more. I’m not sure if women guitar players do as well or they don’t bother with this kind of nonsense.

Side Side note: I know one woman who insisted that watching guys play guitar was arousing “because you start to imagine other things they can do with their hands”. However I can vouch that she never found my guitar playing, or me, arousing in any shape or form (all together now: ahhhhhhhhhhh) But since my style of playing is to pound on the damn box like Pete Townsend, cooked to the gills on a combination of crystal meth and crack, I suspect my playing lacks the manual dexterity and slow sensuousness required to be arousing.

News from the enemy below is that we have posters up for the Florida gig and that the owner of the club thinks we suck. Well she may think we suck, but she little knows what the absolute true suck is. She’ll find out when we take the stage (and never give it back). I think ‘The Bondage Song” is going to be the point which brains explode.

Speaking of hostile or actually indifferent audiences I saw a friend play in a bar opening for another band the first night of the Mets/Cardinals series (full disclosure: I am rooting for the Mets and they are going to kill me). My friend has a wonderful singing voice but her material was not really able to come across between the frat boy vibe of the bar and the sports fans yelling at the screen.

She seemed okay with it but after a while I could see she got bored with trying to compete with the noise and the game. It’s tough enough being an opening act without having to compete with 9 guys on the screen.

I personally find audiences like that a challenge, but of course when I’m on stage I am huge attention whore of the ‘All your base are belong to us” type, seriously if I have to wear a Mexican Wrestling mask and sing about brain eating to get your attention so be it. (I’m curious to see how that song goes over – it gets laughs but there is always one or two “sweet Jesus he is crazy’ looks in any new crowd when I do that.

Tonight I plan if, net flix and the post office cooperate I get to see The Incredibly Strange Creatures who stopped living and became Mixed up Zombies’ and utter Grade Z horror flick from the 60’s advertised as the world’s first horror musical. And I might add the last as well, if the Horror of Party Beach was the worlds worst beach party monster movie, this effort is about as bad, maybe worse. Report to come.

If the post office does not cooperate well, there’s always the bootleg King Kong vs. Godzilla – I’ve only seen that oh 15-20 times. I got the bootleg because the Japanese language version of the film has not and doesn’t look like it will get released in the US anytime soon. It’s interesting that KKvsG was the one that launched Godzilla as Monster Mega star, Godzilla was a hit, but the follow up Godzilla Raids Again wasn’t as successful and Toho went on to explore other monsters like Mothra (which hasn’t be released here in the Japanese language edition either – hello? Guys geeks with money are waiting.) before getting back to Godzilla but after this film, Godzilla became the star and the rest of the monster supporting players.

My favorite moment in King Kong vs. Godzilla in the Japanese version is when news has reached Japan that Godzilla has broken free of the iceberg he was imprisoned in at the end of Godzilla Raids Again. The prime Minster is walking to his car with a gaggle of reporters at his heels all asking about Godzilla his response is “Well he was bound to break out of that iceberg sooner or later’ delivered in a wonderful “come on people grow up’ tone of voice.

I live for moments like that or when in Godzilla 1985 the prime Minster announces on a huge view screen that ‘Godzilla has been sighted in Tokyo bay – this is no drill’ that always makes me laugh – I have visions of generations of school kids in Japan doing Godzilla drills. ‘Now class when the alarm rings, pour into the street and run aimlessly – thank you”

Luck to all – please leave comments - even ‘you just suck and you can’t spell’ would be something.

Tomorrow the insane barber who cut my hair. (not sweeny todd - he wasn't dagerous just a little nuts)

Cliches and Expensive Beer

So I spent all day running around doing this and that and then off to see “The Limit” at the Waltz Astoria. Hell they asked and it’s within walking distance so off I went.

Nice show good stuff all around – Still one song bugged me – in it’s rather, well, there isn’t a good way to say this, in its ham handed use of cliché. The song revolves around a couple who fight, reasons are not important here, he storms out and later she “realizes she was wrong” (actually the song starts there with her thoughts).

Okay right there Houston we have a problem - or I have a problem. In my, alas, vast experience with interpersonal conflicts, blame tends to fall pretty damn evenly between the two parties as long as one of them is not a sociopath. And even in the times I’ve dealt with crazy people (no I’m not going into the details) I know there were things I could have done differently that while, they wouldn’t have solved the problem, at least it would have kept things calmer before I was able to get out of that situation (being vague enough for you guys?).

Then there is some of the standard He’s looking she’s needing kind of language. It’s a cliché and it bothered me a bit, cause, well, these guys are good and they sound good so it bothered me to hear them phone the lyrics in. (Def Leopard I don’t give a damn what the hell they sing about, and it is painfully obvious neither do they).

Then they got the part that lost me – The guy is driving along and per the song he reaches into the glove compartment for a cigarette and he takes his eyes off the road” (these are not exact quotes I only heard this song once. And it was all I could to from yelling “Oh for god’s sake!” In a loud exasperated voice “beat us over the damn head why don’t you?”

Death via crash has a long history in rock and roll, Dead Man’s curve, Leader of the Pack et al but oh sweet lord you have to do it right, otherwise it comes across as just heavy handed and manipulative. Because we’ve heard this song before, that’s the thing, we’ve heard it a million damn times before. Again it was because their sound was so good that it cheesed me off to hear the cliché parade. And I couldn’t help shake the feeling that there was some passive aggressiveness in the mix, that ‘now she’s really sorry cause I’m/He’s dead.

Other than that the evening was very nice, the music and the singing top notch. Hell the guy running the Martz even talked to me about having the band play there one evening as a part of a trio of ‘different’ bands. It’s a poss, but I am not sure how our fans, who typically demand strong drink and lots of it before, during and after the set would react to the wine and cheese vibe of the Martz:

“What the hell do you mean there is no gin?”
“Stacy sing Stacy!”
“Some one Else!”
“Insect Heads!”
“What kind f—king place is this without gin?”
"Stacy!"
"Gin Woman, Bring me Gin!"

We love our fans, but they do scare us just a bit.

And I have to check with the Enemy Below before we commit anyway.

It could be that I’m oversensitive but I, we, the band, we live on clichés. It’s a part of what we are, we take advantage of them shamelessly to lead the listener in one direction and then kick the chairs out from under them – at least our best material does, some of it is just trying to sing about things you don’t normally hear songs about, porn, meetings, small yippy dogs, handguns etc. again there are millions of love songs, but not many about brain eating.

Have a fine day.

TAKING OFF

I’ll be home tomorrow so I can run about and get things that need to be done done before I head off to Florida, I won’t have time this weekend or next week so tomorrow it is. Then a slanging match with my cable provider.

Random Neural Firings:

Why does phrase recreational sex it sound to me like it’s something involving tracksuits? It’s very odd my head – tracksuits and maybe a trampoline and juggling.

Everybody in New York flashed on 9-11 the instant when they heard that Corey Lidel’s plane had smacked into a building but once we knew where it happened, things calmed down. On 9-11 planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, not some Park Avenue Apartment building.

You have to feel for the poor people in the Apartment – one minute they are just sitting there, the next moment there’s a plane crashing through their window and their world is in flames. It’s one of those moments that HST said “confirms my belief that your worst nightmare can come true any minute”

I quote a lot form HST cause he, before things got too much, was very very good in a words as blunt instruments way. To me, Thomson’s best writing came when he was tossed (or jumped) into situations where he was completely out of place (Los Vegas, the Kentucky Derby and the Presidential Campaigns) and utterly out of sync with the vibe of the scene and the people around him. The constant thread in his writing goes: “This is insane, what is front of me is babbling madness. But nobody else seems bothered. They are just going about doing insane things like it’s just normal. Jesus what the hell is wrong with these people? Is it me? Am I crazy? Or are they that crazy? Oh my god they spotted me!”

It is that sense of a man caught in the middle of an artillery barrage trying to get people to stop god damn filing the reports and take cover and being told “what artillery barrage.”

I always got the sense Thomson was a raw nerve ending whose emotions ran very very deep, which explains the drinking and the drugs and the thug like behavior. Numb that bastard down so you can at least function on a day to day basis. Act like a monster to keep the monsters away from you.

In the end he became bigger than the stories he covered and slipped into, occasional flashes notwithstanding, into self parody. It was a peculiar American Tragedy, this place gives you the chance to define yourself however you want, to make of yourself anything you want, the problem is, it never lets up.

Meantime we have W saying the study that says some 655,000 Iraqis have died since we invaded isn’t true because the methodology is flawed. This is rich, the man can’t even speak a complete English sentence hates to read and didn’t know anything about North Korea before he was elected and he’s now an expert on statistics? Right. And I’m Marie of Romania to quote Dorothy Parker. Basically his and his enablers complaints about the study boil down to "it makes us look bad so it can't be true".

The thing that truly sickens me about the mess that is Iraq is not just that W is just going to let people die for the next two years so that someone else will clean up the mess he’s made (something he’s done his whole benighted life) but that the whole DC establishment seems willing to along with that- hell they won’t even talk about it. They’d all rather let kids, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters die, like killed die, than embarrass the president or confront him with the ugly truth that the Iraqi war is the worst disaster in US Foreign policy since the end of World War 2. Can’t do that. We’d only upset the ape, better let things lie, the people dying aren’t our people anyway.

Killer Sheep thing isn’t going well – back to blank paper here – I like a challenge but really I can’t get the damn thing started. Trying to get the big reveal where the window is pulled back and – hell maybe a one act isn’t the right way – maybe two, with the sheep reveal at the end of the 1st? And the Bacon eating Robots at the end of the second? Yeah, that's it now we’re talking art!

Ever since I wrote the Red Shirt Diary of Ensign Ricky I haven’t been able to watch the Original Star Trek the same way – at least when I see a Red Shirt guy beam down with the away team I have to supress a giggle.

Counting Down

The days until the Enemy Below gets married and we get booed off the stage in Florida (not in that order). Still I want to get tossed off the stage for the right reason, i.e. that we completely blow their tiny little minds, not because we were bad.

Meantime – it looks like the Bomb in North Korea has finally taken the heat off of the GOP Congress. And I get the uneasy feeling that the President’s reaction to this news will be to bomb Iran:

Cheney (on speakerphone): I tell you it’s perfect it’ll take both the pages and North Korea off the news. And you get to bomb more.
W: Bomb! Bomb! Bomb them bastards in the press. Write bad things about me. I have to read them. Hurts my head. Bomb them. Bomb the Press.
Aide: No sir, not the press, Iran
W: Same difference
Adie: (sighs) In your mind yes
Kissinger: Did I ever tell you I once f#ked Jill Saint John?
Aide: Yes you did sir, more than once – highlight of you life I presume. Now do you have anything useful to add to the conversation before I put the monkey away for his nap?
Kissinger: I don’t like your tone of voice.
Aide: I’m not fond of it either sir, but in order maintain sanity in this madhouse, I’ve had to resort to crude sarcasm, which the monkey doesn’t get.
W: Sleepy. Hate this thinking. Hard work. Where’s Rice?
Adie: She’s away sir.
W: Bring her back, need Rice (giggles) cause you know, once you go black (giggles again)
Adie: As you say sir. You go on to bed; I’ll be by with a banana shortly
(W leaves – there is a pause broken only by Kissinger’s snoring)
Cheney: So is the monkey gone?
Aide: Yes sir, now which Secretary would you like to browbeat today?

Ah the horrible fantasies come easy to me these days. It makes one want to tear the tops off of several Ballantine Ale Tall boys and drink until you wake up on the floor with a pounding head, covered in vomit. Then at least for a moment you wouldn’t be so worried about the madmen running the government.

We have a new gig at Otto’s- Friday December 8th at 8 pm – since we’re the first band on we should be able to start on time, unless well Godzilla and the Smog Monster start fighting near Union Square..

Speaking of them, I have the DVD of said Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster – andit's pretty goodd for what it is, an early 70’s Godzilla film aimed at kids – although how kids were supposed to react to scenes where the smog monster’s caustic smoke reduces people to skeletons is problematic. It was the environmentally conscious Godzilla film (god help us).

The DVD has a lot of features but what it doesn’t have alas is the English language version of the title song. I only heard it once in the movie theater, the old Sands Point Theater – now something else, which featured kiddy aimed matinee’s every Saturday, but I can still hear the title song word it in my head –

“Save the earth”
“Save the Earth”
“We’re the solution to air pollution’
‘Save the earth”

Over and over again it went. The Japanese language version isn’t nearly as annoying. (Why do I want to hear the annoying one? Why do I watch Manos the Hands of Fate? – Hell I have a recording of the Mothra song on I-pod. Unimportant trivial note – the original mothra song was in Malaysian to make it sound exotic to Japanese listeners).

So every now and then I search out for a recording of that song, which, when I find I’ll put in list along with Leonard Nimoy’s version of “I had a hammer” and William Shatner’s frankly completely insane reading of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” as reasons you shouldn’t take drugs.

Picture is of the one and only Diana Rigg – cause the news has been ugly enough.

Later.

Down and Feeling Strange

Strange and eerie vibes walking around the job today – people around me are in a mood – and being me, I a) can’t help being caught up in the damn thing and b) feel it’s my fault somehow.

And the rumors are flying around here like, well things that really fly fast. Place isn’t a rumor mill, it’s now a bloody rumor assembly line – with a new one every 5 minutes like Ford used to build cars. Current Rumor says tomorrow is the day the deal goes down.

In Washington the news Korea has (or has tried to) explode a bomb has been greeted with equal parts ‘ yeah whatever’ and hysteria. Which does seem weird since they are a charter member of the Axis of Evil so you’d think it’d be more of a story. And its funny in a grim way that the people couseling manic hysteria are the same ones saying some years ago that Clinton’s attacks on Osama Ben Ladden were an attempt to distract attention from Monica. Karma’s a funny thing.

In band news we haven’t heard from Otto’s about a November gig– except a note that they are revamping things a bit – and they’ll get back to us. In these kind of moods I suspect that they are going to be giving up on live music and putting in video games in the back room.

It’s one of those days you know.

It’s days like this I feel like Daffy Duck in Duck Amok – that no matter what I do or how hard I try, God or Bugs Bunny is going to a) frustrate me and b) make me look like an complete idiot at the same time. About the best thing I can do is go to ground and plot revenge in the form of really twisted material.

And/or play punk really really loud – stuff like the Lllingtons who did a wonderful Ramones Road to Ruin era sounding album called Death by Television which had a picture of Ray Milan from “The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.” they did one other album which wasn’t as good but this one is spot on. From the upbeat first song were the lyrics go “War of the Worlds we’re all gonna die” to “A Black hole in my mind” to the last song it’s all good – yeah it sounds a lot alike but it kicks. Three Chords no waiting.

And there is always the odd Mexican wrestling films – which are like having a hallucination done for you with out the drugs and risk of permanent brain damage – or maybe not anyway they are very very odd films done for a budget of $11 and change – featuring El Santo the man in the Silver Mask fighting off pretty lame Wolfmen Zombies and vampires.

Later.

A Day off and Martians

Well I’m off today –which is a nice break from the underlying tension and morgue like atmosphere at work. It gets on your nerves waiting for shoes to drop. I don’t think I’m gong to be let go in the next round of lay offs but you never damn know. It’s all part of day to day living in the brave new world of everything’s going to shit faster than you can imagine.

Still, it’s a bright sunny fall day, I’m getting paid for sitting at home, I have surf guitar on the stereo (guilty pleasure number 35) and when I finish writing this I’m going out for pizza.

Some days life doesn’t completely suck.

While big news I don’t expect the North Korean bomb to take much away from the page gate frenzy, one – it was far away and two - we have no pictures – we have become a such a sub-literate people that unless we have pictures we don’t understand. Also – as far as I can tell, there was no sex involved. Now if it turns out that the dictator had sex with an underage page to set off the bomb well, then it’ll be news.

I don’t see how this is going to help W and the GOP, this is just something else they screwed up but I’ve been wrong before. I’m sure the noise machine will start yelling fear fear fear but I think we kind of jaded about that.

Meantime, it looks like the GOP House Hierarchy knew in 2000 that there was something wrong with Foley and the pages. No matter what they try to do it gets worse for them. If there weren’t such pigs I’d feel sorry.

Enough politics – I have to take showers and it’s hurting my skin.

Watched The Angry Red Planet last night and I’m not really sure why. It’s not as bad as some but it is a long long from being ‘good’.

It starts off with a lot of talking among military types – the talking is merely to tell the audience what the filmmaker couldn’t show – that there is ship coming back from Mars and it has been out of contract for six months.

A note, there is no way in the world to make a meeting dramatic unless there is a conflict or people are going to get into a fist fight or screw on the table. So many of the 50’s sci fi films feature endless talking heads yapping at each other to tell the viewers things they can’t figure out anyway to do otherwise, it’s lazy and it’s cheap and boredom sets in real fast here kids.

The ship is brought in (using the old old standby of showing a rocket take off in reverse – this is not a big budget film) and of the ships initial complement of 4 only two are left, one is doctor Iris something or other (the red haired female lead) and the Captain of the ship, the other two are dead.

The captain has something wrong with him (well get into what later) and is hustled off to the hospital and Iris is in a state of shock about the events on Mars.

The captain has something on his arm and they can’t figure out what. In trying to find out about the incidents on Mars, they get Iris to talk about the voyage. So beings the flashback.

And I start to really hate this movie.

First off, in the ship, they talk about their 1 g acceleration, it’s so they don’t float around the entire voyage, because it would have cost too much for special effects. I have to think that in the 50’s Hollywood writers took an especial pride in knowing as little about science as possible before trying to write a science fiction script. For their ship to keep accelerating at 1 g for the entire trip, they would have to have a fuel tank the size of the damn moon, which they would also have to accelerate. And then when got to Mars the amount of fuel required to slow them down would take another moon sized fuel tank. Okay not a big point but still.

Meantime the Captain shows us there is a fine line between cocky and utterly obnoxious by crossing over it in a bulldoxer. I presume he’s supposed to heroic and brave but he comes off as a condescending sexist jerk, yeah I know the world has changed but not that much. Let me put it this way, Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart, or Errol Flynn didn’t act like jerks when playing officers. Iris or Irish, which he keeps calling her because of her red hair, is obviously smitten with the jerk. When she says that she’s not sure if he’s calling her Irish or Iris he said “when I say your name, you’ll know it”. The camera cuts over to Iris who has some kind of open mouthed expression, I suspect it was supposed to romantic eagerness but it’s totally unreadable.

By the by having known Irish women all my life, I can tell you that Captain Jerk’s ham handed way would have gotten him a) the coldest shoulder on the planet and b) the nastiest most abusive tongue lashing the instant the voyage was over and they didn’t have to depend on the jerk to get them home. Iris you’re no Maureen O’Sulivan.

Some 20 minutes of daily life on the ship to mars is shown. We get to know the characters; we start to really hate them. There is the other scientist he’s a quiet fellow with very little to do so I don’t really hate him that much I just resent spending time with him. Then there is the other guy, he’s the comic relief on the ship, the guy from Brooklyn. He’s a jerk and dumb. He makes painfully unfunny jokes, he makes mistakes, and I’d have shot him out an airlock about a week into the voyage.

Well they land on Mars – there are far too many shots of them looking out the window – however we’re not allowed to look out the window at first – when we do well, it’s kind of weird.

The movies gimmick was that when they were on the Martian landscape everything is tinted a bright red, it was supposed to make the backround drawings look like 3-d what it does is make them red. It makes it look like you’re on drugs watching the movie.

So our valiant 4 go out and the first thing they find is what led to badmoives.org (which you should go look at if you like bad films at all) to post one of the rules of sci fi films “if it looks like a carnivorous plant, it probably is a carnivorous plant) the other thing that is a more than a little weird here is that it also looks a like a close up of a vagina (I’m not going into details just trust me on this). It’s strange in a disturbed Freudian way.

So of course Iris (or as I shall call her from now on “stupid”) is the one that gets attacked by the plant. Captain Jerk rescues her from the Lesbian killer plant and the Obnoxious Comic Relief from Brooklyn kills said plant with a “sonic gun” that emits a high pitched sound that gives you a head ache just listening to it. Again the budget was too low for a ray gun.

Later they run into the iconic monster of the film – the Rat Bat Spider Crab. It doesn’t make any sense as a real animal but it’s got the touch of nightmare about it. Still the way they encounter is another cheat. The 4 are out and about and they see what looks like trees to us, stupid, in her job being head of the biological part of this expedition, cuts a spine off the tree, it turns out it’s the leg of the Rat Bat Spider Crab. Now I have to think if they have looked up they would have noticed that these ‘trees’ all were connected to the big ass monster right over their heads. But they didn’t cause it wasn’t in the frame they didn’t see it. Only people in movies act like that.

Later they catch a glimpse of Martian cites and are then driven away from the Martian City by a giant Amoeba – this is the scene that sacred me as a kid – the whole getting absorbed stuff in the blob scared me but good. (and isn’t’ one of the other treats of global warming that the blob could be released? I smell Sequel here guys- and it’s topical, the global warming thing). But nowadays fake amoebas with rotating eyes don’t do much for me except provoke laughter. I was rooting for the Amoeba “come on get em” I was thinking (Yes I’ve seen the movie a lot but still you hope) Still the Amoeba gets the Comic Relief. One down, three to go.

After some “well we could do this or that” stuff, with the Amoeba around the ship trying to eat its way in, they drive it off with electric shocks, Stupid catches a glimpse of a 3-eyed Martian and faints, and the ship takes off. This is when the quiet scientist dies from the acceleration. Right like NASA is going toss someone with a heart condition into space, and Mars being much smaller than the earth, it takes a lot less to take off from it, so if he was going to have a problem with would have been the initial take off, not now.

And it turns out Captain Jerk has been touched by the amoeba and it’s eating his arm or just hanging out I can’t tell. He’s in bed helpless.

I guess the voyage home consisted of Stupid emptying the Captain’s bed pan and shooting the Quiet Scientist’s body out the air lock and making coffee. We aren’t shown any of it and I am grateful.

There is more toing and frowing as Stupid comes up with a way to cure Captain Jerk, it’s not that interesting, more meetings really.

There is final scene where the recovering Captain Jerk calls Stupid by her name, she gives us the same unreadable expression, then a tape is played which is a message from Mars and the message is to stay the hell off of my lawn in a cosmic sense. It’s pointless really, like this film.

Counting down to the gig in Florida, and waiting to hear from Otto’s – need to follow up with them on this.

Well I’ve gone on too damn long about a stupid film (again).

Later Droogs.

The horror of reality

That’s a quote from the dedication page of Louis Ferdinand Celine’s “Fairy Tale for Another Time” Now Celine was a complete bastard who hated most of humanity (in addition to being an anti-Semite and supporter of Vichy during WW 2 all fun stuff) but he a novelist of large influence, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, even Kurt Vonnegut site him as an influence.

I was going to do a bit more about the world today – how reality is so damn awful these days that there are millions of people who want god to end the world. How the news coming out of Washington makes you want to take another shower, this time after shaving off all your body hair and boiling your clothes. The most recent smear job coming from the usual suspects is that the pages somehow egged Foley on (oh Jesus Goddamn ick guys) .

So to defend the Speaker of the House who did nothing, except, judging by the look of him, eat a lot of sandwiches, while Foley was doing his thing, now you’re trying to make it the pages fault? Sweet Jesus on a stick, you bastards have no scruples at all do you? It tests one’s faith to watch these creeps get away with this kind of junk. It’s not when bad things happen to good people, that’s part and parcel of life really. “Man is born to trouble as sparks fly upwards” goes the quote from the book of Job. There is pain in being alive, part of the price you pay. That I can deal with. What I can’t deal with is when good things happen to absolute bastards. Why do the pigs of the world have rose pedals scattered at their feet instead of being spit out of the universe (to borrow Kliban’s phrase) “like a watermelon seed” or have magic flying camels shit on their head everywhere they go. “why do you carry that umbrella all the time” “Sppok” “Oh I see”

I was going to rant more but I discovered that there is a Turkish Star Trek movie. Turkey seems to be fond of ripping off movies and re-making them with a Turkish cast.
That’s what the picture is from. How can you despair when something so bloody weird exists? Go, like right now – to http://thismodernworld.com and look at the Star Turk post. You don’t have to watch all of it, just when the Turkish Kirk comes mincing in to the bridge of the Enterprise. I’ll wait.

Welcome back. Watching that healed me on some deep level. Not all of the world is evil; some of it’s just very very dumb. And that’s good. And boy do they love those mini-skirts.

Still, you have to wonder what “it’s worse than that he’s dead Jim” is in Turkish.

Random Note: Seeing Ms. Rice, looking very fetching in matching flack jacket and helmet, lecture the Iraqi’s about the need to get things under control (cause it’s embarrassing her husband boss) is funny in a grim and bitter way. I’m sure the Iraqis will now hop too it. Right.

I know this has to be an acid flashback – but I could swear I heard that Henry Kissinger has been giving W advice on the Iraqi war. That can’t be good. The man’s 83 and bound to get confused.

HK: Mr. President you have to win.
W: yes
HK: you must show will.
W: yes.
HK: You must impost your will upon your enemies
W: (getting excited) yes yes oh God yes!
HK: Mine the harbors and Bomb them!
Aide to the President: Ah Doctor Kissinger
HK: what do you want?
Aide: Well sir, the thing is, we control the harbors and we been bombing them
W: yes yes yes oh god yes, oh shit, I have to change.
Aide: Very good sir (turning to Dr. Kissinger) And it hasn’t worked, we, that is I, was wondering if you had any real advice you could give the monkey when he gets back
HK: Did you know I f##ked Jill Saint John?
Aide: I’m gay sir, had you f##ked Rock Hudson I would have been impressed

Oh the evil brown acid – I didn’t even take it and I’m getting flashbacks.

Plan to try and get something done on the killer sheep this weekend. I don’t have cable (long stupid story why not) so I won’t be able to waste time by staring at the third re-run of whatever second rate classic AMC is showing. You ever notice how they never come out and say “this film is a dog”, I know they can’t because they want you to watch but at least drop a hint.

Got the new Cheap Trick cd Rockford – and well damn the boys seem to have found their energy again. Their prior album was pretty flat this one, this is the best one they have done since the Red Ant Cheap Trick cd.

I know should talk more about music but hell between the meltdown in DC and the nonsense the world tosses at you – well, more this weekend –promise. Influences and rants and my take on the Angry Red Planet.

A rant - and other stuff

Good thing I am not singing tonight – no voice left after the Met Game. I don’t go much into my baseball/Mets obsession here because, well, I mean, dear lord I sound enough like a geek already. I start to go on about the infield fly rule and why it came into existence (Short version – people were cheating) and people will start sending me pocket protectors.

So short version, the Mets won and I forgot just how nervous I get during playoff games (it has been a while) and we can move on now.

More shower inducing news from Washington – a former Aide of the Foley Creep is saying he warned the Speaker about Foley’s chicken-hawk behavior around the pages Three (3) f##king years ago and nothing was done. Nothing. Let me write that again. Nothing. Bastards.

Meantime, and this is just too perfect, Senator Lieberman has come out and said that calls for The Speaker to resign because of this scandal are too “partisan”. Now this is the same man that waxed indignant about Bill Clinton’s extra marital sex and has time and time again voiced concern about the effect on America’s youth of violent video games, suggestive music lyrics, and naked people in movies (all fine things I have to say, while I strongly prefer naked women to each his or her own) - and was fond of making some not so subtle threats against the recording companies, the video game industry and Hollywood, all in the name of protecting children.

So okay – you are concerned about the effect on kids of all this. But the actions of people who covered up for a 50 year old chicken hawk who was making the moves on 16-17 year old boys (open head, remove brain – soak brain in hot water and bleach until image is gone – rinse – dry with clean towel, return brain to skull, close head) – those people are okay? Jesus if I had the money I’d move to CT just to vote against this bastard.

Hypocrite isn’t a big enough word to describe the skunk, it needs to be about 15 times longer and laced with contempt and obscenities. These swine need to be beaten, whipped and driven from the land (to quote HST).

The whole thing is enough to give sex a bad name. Now I like sex. (That’s a really wimpy way to put it but there you go, I’m kind of wimpy) not that I have often but it’s been damn fine when I did. (I’m thinking rigging my ceiling above my bed with a net full of balloons and confetti so the next time I have sex and we’re in the afterglow and she asks how was it for me, I will pull on the rope and the balloons and confetti will drop down like they do at a political convention. and a Sousa march will play. I’m sure it would destroy the relationship but it would be worth it to see her reaction. ) But this stuff has less to do with mutual desire and more to do with power and exploiting the fact that teenagers are seething masses of hormones. I remember when I was 17, not fondly but I remember, and I was a seething mass of hormones. If a girl had said to me ‘let’s have sex’ (no one did, all together now Ahhhhhhhhhhhh – okay now back to point) when I was 17 somewhere between her saying the s and the x, we would have been naked and screwing. (I’m a little slower now I like, dinner, candle light, wine, massed tubas – no that’s not right – it’s something just not massed tubas, and it’s not a trombone quartet either, that I’m sure. I’m never going down that path again let me tell you.).

On other notes weather is turning in New York, the skies are clearer, free of the late summer haze. It’s nice time to be in the city, just to walk around. The leaves are turning the birds are leaving the squirrels are frantic in their efforts to gather nuts. I yelled at a kid yesterday as he was poking a stick at a squirrel who was escaping by climbing higher up the tree.

“Hey” I said, “leave it alone, it’s tough enough to be a squirrel with you poking at it.”

So as you go through the day – remember not to poke people with sticks and make them scamper higher up their trees, we all have it tough enough without folks poking us with sticks.

I plan to honor Mr. Lieberman’s endorsement of shielding child predators by going home putting some gangster rap on the stereo and popping my favorite violent video game into the play station – “shoot anything that moves, except the naked women, those you have sex with.” Then maybe watch some super violent Asian porn cartoons. (These actually exist – The Japanese are a very very strange and twisted folk - in a good way.).

The pic is from "The Angry Red Planet". More about this one later.

NO TIME TO BLOG

Things at work are just nuts – it’s still the end of the quarter and we still are rushing to get things in. it’s the way things go around here. Nature of the business.

Still haunted, well not haunted, oddly amused is a better description, by the idea of the Robots who think we taste like bacon. It’s linking in my mind with the killer bipedal sheep project. Not quite sure how, but the world may yet see the awe inspiring battle between Bipedal Killer Sheep and the Robots who think we taste like bacon. I’m willing to bet money that the phrase “Bipedal Killer Sheep and the Robots who think we taste like bacon” have never been written before in the history of blogging.

“What is that noise?”
“It’s robots”
“What about Robots?”
“They’re attacking the sheep.”
“Attacking the sheep?”
“I just said that, have a look for yourself.”
“My god you’re right.”
“Well I wouldn’t make up something like that would I? The sheep were enough.”
“They’re eating the sheep.”
“Looks that way.”
“Then we’re saved.”
“Not quite, the Robots are eating the people too.”
Robot voices: Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! Bacon!

Fade out.

More Pics

Singing

This band has a thing for Masks

The Enemy Below in The Alien Mask - told you.

A moment from the Meeting Song

PICS FROM THE GIG

The Insect girl

rock on (Yeah right)

Our Fans - Lord Bless them

More rockin'

The Enemy Below in dramatic lighting

Another Shower and Robots

Will post pictures later promise.

News continues to make me want to take more showers. It’s bad enough this creep was trying to pick up young boys (ahhhh more hot water ahhh.) But the rest of the oh so traditional moral values people around him covered for him for YEARS. Time for some folks to be run outta town on rails.

The Japanese, who are crazy in a much more entertaining way than we are, have unveiled a robot that can do wine tasting. It works by using an infrared spectrometer to analyze the wine. Per the inventors it also works on other foods such as cheese. I’m reading this and thinking what the hell? Who decided that this was a good idea and something to spend two years working on? I mean with all the problems of the world building a mechanical wine snob should be pretty far down the list.

I imagined this scene in the lab:

“Siako I’m having some problems”
“What do you mean?”
“Well watch what happens when I ask the robot to analyze this wine.”
Robot whirrs, then there is short silence, then the robot snorts
“I wouldn’t serve this slop to my worst enemy. It’s urine.”
“It’s a perfectly decent California Chardonnay you bucket of bolts. Try again”
“You force me to analyze that bilge water again and I’ll kill myself.”
“Here let me help you”
Sound of glass breaking.

As a joke photographer put his hand up against the analyzer. The robot analyzed the hand as bacon. A reporters hand was analyzed as prosciutto ham.

I can see that this could be a problem in the future.

“Good evening, today government officials are still trying to put together the precise casue of accident the Xky robot factory. The few survivors report that robots in their thousands poured out of the factory tearing chunks of flesh off of their victims all the time going “Bacon! Bacon! Bacon! We love Bacon!”

That’s how I think the human race will end, not because we’ve done something evil like breed a plague or greedy and short sighted like ignoring the signs of global warming, we will be done in because we will do something absolutely insanely stupid like build robots with a taste for bacon.

THE GIG AND LATER

Tired shagged – at a grave like work place – piles of stuff that people are trying to get in by the end of the quarter. It’s funny in following the calendar, Business are linked in a remote way with the agriculturally cycle. This is the harvest season and the next full moon will be the harvest moon which is the first full moon after the autumnal equinox.

I’ll stop before anyone injures themselves by falling asleep and hitting their heads on the desk.

The gig went well, thanks again to everyone who gave us the gift of their time and came down and saw us (can you just gag?) everybody had a good time, once we FINALLY GOT ON at 12:45.

When we got there we found out that the 9 pm band had gone on at 10 and we were going to have to wait. Alas one of my friends somehow thought we were going on at 8 and had been at Otto’s since oh 4 pm or so, so he was hurting by the time we went on. We didn’t know the reason why everything was screwed up and I must admit I may have had a tiny tiny diva style hissy fit, actually what I was upset about was that everybody had to wait – it was late for folks that work during the week.

Meantime the Enemy Below was fighting off a sore throat by drinking more hot tea and water than I have seen in quite a while. This was adding another small stress factor – we were worried that by the time we hit the stage the Enemy Below’s voice would be a frog croak – and not a few of our songs depend on his voice to add the punch line or sideways commentary to the song. I’m especially fond of our vocal take off at the end of “Ode to Glock” it amuses me no end to tack that lovely coda on a song about a man who’s going to go on a rampage. Horrible things beautify sung could be one of the goals of the band truth to tell.

Anyway – so with these two ticking clocks – my tension level was pretty damn high, then someone from the band before us came up and asked if he could borrow a guitar – I said yes. I didn’t want to but we had a spare electric (my strat that I don’t play out much with seeing and I tend to bang on the box like say Elvis or Pete Townsend back when he was having all those wrist problems. So I lent him the guitar. I read somewhere your level of compassion is tested not by times when you are in love with the world (which happens rarely to me anyway) but when you are royally pissed off at the planet. Like I was. Part of the motivation was selfish; I figured once he got the guitar, he would play. Then we could play.

Well it didn’t quite work out like that – he had a drummer with him – a woman. Chick drummers seem to be a trend – There are the White Stripes, Deadboy and the elephant men and this band (whose name I forget) during the 80’s I remember a lot of bands had a woman bass player. It was a trend – same with the lady drummers I presume.

So the lady drummer took forever and a day to set the drum up and then guitar guy takes forever to tune – I was sweet mercy full heavens who did I piss off? And can I make it up to them.

Well finally after their set – I came up to the guy as they were breaking down and handed me the guitar “Thanks a lot” he said “Sorry I bled on it.”

The pick guard quite a bit of blood on it. “great” I thought, “just bloody Great” I put the guitar back in its case, remembering that the HIV virus dies after 24 hours exposure to air “I’m cleaning that tomorrow” I thought.

And then at 12:45 we did the set – grand time had by all except us, we were both convinced that people were going to be tossing shoes at us pretty soon. But like everything else that night – it wasn’t what we expected. We were shown very much love indeed. Thanks we needed that.

I’m going to post the pics either later today or tomorrow – I got no sleep last night and the damned camera wasn’t being nice to me – I have to do a weird dance to get things from the camera to my pic file so I can post and I couldn’t get it done last night. So I’m hoping to post tonight but, it’s also likely I’ll go home, pop some dreck in the DVD and pass out.

Band notes: We thinking of getting a drummer – nothing fancy just someone to keep the beat, fill the sound out more. It’s the Enemy Below’s idea and I think it’s a good one. Another reason I love having him in the band. I tend not to pay as much attention to details like that as I should, I’m always trying to write the next song but our presentation is as important as the songs. By the by after you see the pictures should I ditch wearing the baseball cap or no? Or maybe another style hat?

Other Band thoughts: we are in a position were we have to drop songs from the set, not because they are bad, it’s just we don’t have room. We have enough material now for a two hour set and none of it would be covers. We have songs that we know are going to be on the second album. It’s odd. Of course now that I said that, we’ll dry up like one of those pools in the desert that form after a cloudburst (which are then filled with short lived shrimp whose eggs can lie dormant for years then when enough water is available, the eggs hatch, they frantically mate then bury their eggs and die in a week. Seems a gyp to me. I think I have an existential crisis sometimes. Jesus try being one of those shrimp. “That’s it? That’s the whole deal? We screw and then die broiling in the sun? In a week or less? What’s the point of that? ”

And huzza the open mike Sunday went nicely – so nicely that it’s going to keep going for a while. We had new people and some regulars, a nice crowd. We all got to hear Emily sing again which is a great treat. O’Hanlon’s isn’t like a lot of open mikes, it’s just a bar not a regular music venue so on Sunday night only about half the crowd is waiting for you to stop damn tying to sing and let them get a chance to impress the rest of the planets with their superior artistry and musicianship, the other half is simply there to chat, watch the football game or drink themselves into oblivion to start the week off. And that’s the challenge, you get them to shut up and listen you’ve done something. Last night when Emily was singing the place went dead silent. She’s got that kind of voice. Me I have to have props and sing about insects to get folks to stop watching the ball game. No her. I suspect if she did an album of American Standards like Rod Stewart has it’d sell in the millions. (not that I like American Standard but Jesus if a brunt sell out like Stewart can do it, why not someone with the vocal chops to do the songs right?) Or maybe Nashville

Anyway it was a good night.

Meantime it seems Washington is going to hell in a hand basket. Every story I read about this Foley Clown makes me want to a take a shower. Real long one, very hot water, lots of soap and one of those loofa things to take every inch of old dead skin off your body until you are raw. That kind of shower.

Last comment: Last night at the open mike there was one guy who considered himself god’s gift to women and in a spirit of she might say yes, hit on just about every woman in the place. (He didn’t hit on one guy’s very scary girl friend but I could understand that, the anger waves coming out of that woman were causing ripples to form in people’s beer). I’ve never been able to understand how someone like that thinks. Of course my problem is a huge lack of ego, not a huge ego. Me, a woman could drag me home to bed, be putting her tongue in my ear while ripping my shirt off and I’d be saying things like “I don’t want to pressure you, if it doesn’t’ feel right you can stop” While thinking “why the hell is she doing this? It can’t be because she wants me. I mean come on this is me we’re talking about here.”

Ah low self esteem, the gift that just keeps on giving.

Well , later me oh me droogies.