No Trespassing, Dickweed!

Well hello there dear readers, hope you are all well, hope you had a good weekend. I almost didn’t even get out of bed this morning. I’ve been down and out with a terrible malady (I feel like shit) for the past three days. It’s some kind of stomach bug that has brought to my life nausea and cramping.

The weather in the Northeastern U.S. was incredible, eighties and nineties, low humidity, nice and sunny. We live on a lake, so I had the pleasure of watching my friends stop over by boat. They were having a great time, invited me out to the bar across the lake (two minutes by boat!) and left three minutes later when they realized there was no fun to be had our lakeside hacienda.

Balls.

It’s going to be fucking winter before we all know it and the summer of ’10 will be a faint memory. I had great plans for this summer but things didn’t pan out as usual, for me anyways. This lack of productivity is mostly due to permanent health problems that keep me a virtual recluse. No traveling journalism anymore for this intrepid writer. But there will be no whining or lengthy ruminations of my woes because no one wants to hear that crap, so let’s talk about seclusion, or even cooler, reclusion.

Being a recluse is obviously not for everyone. It usually starts because of some sort of illness, being mental or physical. But we’re past the health issues so what does a recluse do all fucking day?

Let me tell you, in this day and age it’s a lot easier to hang around the house than ever before. Literally dozens if not hundreds of channels of crap on the T.V. Surfing the internet has taken reclusion to new heights. Hours upon hours, turning into days, are spent experiencing every “E” activity that can be found.

Online dating is one thing I just don’t get. Encountering a complete stranger through what is, more or less, live interactive television. People have conversations that last for hours by typing onto a keypad. The most intimate details of their lives are exchanged in an online chat room.

I guess it would be easier for people that have a real problem with shyness to converse this way, but if you want to do the nasty you got to meet! I can’t imagine how incredibly awkward these first meetings would be. What the hell do I do now? I really fucked up! She actually wants to meet me!

A recluse can’t leave, that’s not very “reclusive”. You can’t invite them over to your hideaway, God forbid anyone invade your comfort zone, your safe place.

There’s a difference between being a recluse and just being a lazy sack of shit. A recluse would like to be social but is hampered by having bad experiences while out in public.
Things like being accosted out on the street can cause people to retreat into their safe places. People from bad neighborhoods often run into this type of situation. Also, if you’re in a situation where you have to live in a strange place like accompanying a spouse on a foreign assignment where you don’t speak the language and the natives are not welcoming would cause some people to just retreat.

We were living in a place I like to call Shithole, New Jersey, right on the Hudson river across from NYC, where there was a lot of transient automobile traffic. By transient I mean the commuters would have to pass through our town to get to a ferry boat system that takes people into New York City.

These were a bunch of angry-ass motherfuckers, and this was not their town. Road rage to them was proper etiquette. There was a time when I wouldn’t even drive to the supermarket that was less than a mile away. During certain times you could not even get out to the main street without some asshole cutting you off, running lights, tossing trash and just plain disgusting offenses for people of their age.

We got to the point where we would have just about everything delivered and I wouldn’t go out unless I absolutely had to. Once again the internet enabled me to order groceries, beer, liquor, clothing, and anything else I really needed. It finally got so bad we were starting to think it was time to move out of Shithole and find someplace more civil.

At this time the housing bubble was in full swing to the point where we received offers to sell our house (it wasn’t even on the market). It looked like we would make a tidy profit and when 9/11 ripped through our collective psyche it was time to go.

The eleventh day of September in 2001 created a lot of reclusives. People wanted out of the city. There was constant talk of buying land in the middle of nowhere, arming your family to the hilt, and live behind a great big fence. It sounded good to me (still does…).

This led us to our current domicile about an hour north of NYC. We’ve never regretted the move, but for me, the damage was done. I’d had it with the general populace and being a rather cranky fuck in the first place didn’t help much!

So my house now is my sanctuary. The only real complaint is that of the harsh Northeast winters, when the lake freezes over it looks like Siberia in my backyard.

We still have neighbors and that’s always a drag, you just can’t seem to get rid of them (especially now with the DNA testing…). I always wanted to live in a place I could do work outside my house without any nosy dickweed staring at me like I’m his favorite T.V. show.

I like to talk to myself while I’m working in my yard. I use foul language and like to throw shit when I crack a knuckle or cut off a toe accidentally. I also like to be comfortable, so I prefer not to wear a shirt if the weather is hot and/or humid. And because I own a mirror I realize that this is not a sight I wish to share with the world.

We live on a road that is a popular walking path. It leads right long the lake and ends at a glorious castle, a real one that is owned by one of the New York Yankees. And this too pisses me off to no end. Meandering slowly out of my way when I’m driving on my road going to my house is a good way of getting yourself killed. When I’m driving my Lincoln Navigator, the biggest most obnoxious vehicle known to man, I could take out a half dozen wandering idiots without even having to switch to four wheel drive.

I know this sounds extreme but they can find another place to walk, I however have only one way to get to my home. Standing in the way of a recluse and his home is what we refer to as a “bad idea”. Standing in the way of a crazy recluse driving a bright red Lincoln Navigator is downright suicidal. I warn my neighbors about myself by flipping them off whenever they wave at me. Who cares? They’re not stopping over for cocktails – I have friends for that.

Neighbors do not make for good friend material. What if they turn out bad? You can’t take them back, they were already there. One of my neighbors sits out on his deck and stares at me whenever I’m outside working on a car – or working on anything within his range of sight for that matter.

I’ll be out there working away, talking to myself, swearing like a truck driver, scratching my ass – whatever. Then I suddenly hear a cell phone conversation that sounds like it’s taking place ten feet away. This is when you realize this guy has been watching you the whole time. And he’s done it every fucking time I’ve ever been out in the front yard for more than five minutes.

If that’s not bad enough, then there’s his fucking cell phone that not only reminds me that he’s watching and listening to everything I’ve been doing, now I have to listen to his goddamn, mundane, motherfucking, shoot-myself-in-the-fucking-head conversations! This is the same guy that asked me if it would be okay to use my dock for fishing with his four year old nephew, two seconds after introducing himself. Literally two seconds!

I guess he figured that trying to manipulate me by mentioning children and fishing would form a bond. A bond that would allow him to freeload off of my dock giving him access to the lake through (and in) my backyard. He couldn’t have been more wrong. The only thing I hate more than fishing in my backyard is children!

He then tried the same shit again but he went behind my back and asked my wife. His little trick this time was asking if it would be okay if he docked his boat on my dock when his girlfriend had to “run in the house to pee”. Oh sure, every woman can relate to that! His mistake was thinking my wife would actually believe he had a real girlfriend. Or fall for his bullshit for that matter; the wife is one smart cookie.

Now this is crap I ran into just minding my own business in my own fucking front yard!
Can I use your dock? Can I stab you in the face?
I like the side of the house that faces the lake much better. It’s just safer for everyone involved…

So here I sit, happily typing away in order to try to entertain you, my dear readers.

Oh beloved Sanctuary!






Selah.

The Lighter Side of Mental Abuse

One of the most profound moments of my life happened when my father made a comment to me about going to college. The year was 1974, we were traveling in my mother’s car, Mom was driving. My sister that is a year older than me was sitting in the backseat next to me. I was the youngest of four kids, the other two were eight and ten years older, an older brother and a second older sister.

My sister next to me was very advanced in High School. She was always an honor student, etc, etc. They were discussing my sister finishing High School a year early (which she did) and what school she wanted to attend for higher education. She was talking about her chances of getting into George Washington University in Washington, D.C. – a very good school (she did get accepted and did go to G.U.)

I was kind of daydreaming about southern California right about then. Our next door neighbor had just moved back from southern Cal. He was a graphic artist, about twenty five years old, and he was teaching me how to play the guitar. His tales of California made me want to experience it for myself. He spoke of how genuinely friendly people were out there, the beautiful people, he would say. I thought everyone in California was gorgeous when I was thirteen.

This made me think of attending college on the west coast, and knowing abso-fucking-lutely nothing about California, or college for that matter, I thought U.S.C. would be a just a great location (remember I had just turned thirteen).

So getting back to the conversation we were having in my Mother’s 1973 Royal Blue Cadillac Sedan de Ville on that fateful day, I made an off-hand comment that I wanted to go to college at U.S.C.

My father then said “Patrick’s going to the gutter college, that’s where he’s going.” My mother was horrified and castigated my father immediately. With about five whole fucking words. Then we sat in an uncomfortable silence until we got home.

My “uncomfortable silence” would haunt me the rest of my life, so far anyways. At the ripe old age of thirteen for no reason at all my father let me know he thought I was a piece of shit. That was a moment in time that changed my life, in a very seriously negative way, and is imprinted on my psyche like it happened an hour ago. I can remember the weather, time of day, what I was wearing, and of course how stunned I was by hearing something so brutal come out of nowhere. I would have been devastated if a stranger had said that to me.


Oh quit your fucking crying! Boo fucking Hoo you pussy, we all have problems with our parents. Some of them make that bullshit look like a vacation in the Caribbean.
Of course some people can put up with years of physical abuse from poverty stricken parents and survive with their mental health intact. Then there are those that fall apart mentally with disastrous results as a result of simply being yelled at. Or simply ignored. Or loved too much, who knows.

That’s the point – who knows? Who knows how strong a person is mentally, do you know if you yourself are strong mentally? Probably you do. Most times if you are so far gone you, yourself do not know it, shit I can’t even figure out how to end this sentence.

The confusion my father instilled in me that day with that one fucking comment really opened my eyes to human nature. The fact that your parents are not perfect, that they too can have personality faults. The same ones they are constantly berating you for having. Anger management issues, spousal fidelity, selfishness, greed, sloth, envy, and all kinds of other poodle shit thrown in for good measure. I found out my father, Mister Fucking Perfect Himself, was guilty of all of these things.

But I just wish I didn’t find all this out when I was thirteen. Thirty, maybe, but thirteen is just too fucking young. What did my father expect of me at that age? One of the worst parts about this whole thing is I thought my father might actually be proud of me for even thinking about taking an interest in college at that age.

This whole thing came as a real surprise for me that day, I sure as hell never thought my father felt downright contempt towards me. Why would I at that age? Or why would he is the important question.

Well the son of a bitch died before I could ascertain what his fucking problem with me was. I never got to the point where I was old enough, big enough, strong enough or had enough support from the rest of my family to confront him.

That day started a torrent of physical and mostly mental abuse from my father that lasted until the day he finally left me alone, the day he died. I’ve always searched for answers, especially from the people that were right there at the time. I guess my mother made some cursory attempts to get him to leave me the fuck alone, but those are things that they would never, ever tell me about, even to this day.

My older sister and brother did nothing, by this time they were pretty much on their own, my brother was given a bar/restaurant on his eighteenth birthday and my oldest sister was attending the University of Connecticut. Not too shabby. I don’t know if they knew what was going on, they certainly didn’t care, I know that for sure. Should they have? I would have if I were them, but they had a lot to lose if they ostracized my father.

My sister that was one year older than me took great delight in pitting my father against me. She certainly knew what would happen to me if she ratted on me or fought with me in my father’s presence. She never “had my back”, just the opposite. She ratted me out every chance she got and going to the same school just a year apart, in a small town, well, it’s hard to keep some things private.

I’ve given up my search for the truth about my father’s animosity towards me. It wouldn’t matter anyways, and that’s the problem I have been dealing with my entire life.
Even if I had found out the answers to my questions thirty-five years ago my father was dead before I could ever “address” whatever his fucking-asshole problem was. No chance for closure there.

As I mentioned earlier this is a mild example of improper childcare and it fucked me up pretty bad. I never wanted my own children because I was always afraid I’d turn out to be like my father.

People, my dear beloved readers, be careful what you say to your kids. Just the responsibility of “watching your mouth” can be staggering. These days the wrong words will probably get you thrown in jail. I guess the children of my era were finally able to put their foot down when it came to trying to enforce proper mental well being for the generations to come. At least we got the ball rolling on that one.

You can probably tell at this point that this isn’t one of my funnier columns. If you have been laughing at this the whole time you are a complete sick fuck and I’d really like to have a cocktail with you. If you haven’t been laughing, if you can relate on any level, my heart goes out to you...



Selah!

What Is Hip

The following is a master list of just who is “Uptight” and who is deemed “Laidback”. I wish I could take credit for this idea but unfortunately I cannot. I read this list in either “Playboy” or “National Lampoon” and thought it was great idea. Included are some golden oldies, okay two that I know of. They were good, so I left them in there. The others are my own entries. You got a problem with that?

And, yes, I know some of the people listed are dead, consider it a tribute and just go with it or you’ll end up on the list, I swear to God!



UPTIGHT---------------------------------------------- LAID-BACK






Howard Stern----------------------------------------- Fred Norris
Mick Jagger------------------------------------------- The Rolling Stones
Cocaine------------------------------------------------- Marijuana
Dr. Joyce----------------------------------------------- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Lady Gaga---------------------------------------------- Amy Winehouse
Nancy Pelosi ------------------------------------------- Barack Obama
Jerry Brown ------------------------------------------- Jerry Garcia
Eddie Murphy------------------------------------------Charlie Murphy
New Gibson Les Paul Custom -----------------------Pre-CBS Fender ‘Strat
John Mayer ---------------------------------------------Buddy Guy
Gregg Allman------------------------------------------ Dickie Bettes
Phantom of the Opera --------------------------------Jersey Boys
Ferrari ---------------------------------------------------Corvette
Sting------------------------------------------------------The Police
Bob Dylan----------------------------------------------- John Prine
Grey Goose Vodka-------------------------------------Jameson’s Irish Whiskey
Oxycontin-------------------------------------------- ---Scag
George Bush------------------------------------------ --George Clinton
Prince Charles------------------------------------------ Prince Harry
Damian Marley-----------------------------------------Bob Marley
Hillary Clinton----------------------------------------- Bill Clinton
Johnny Depp------------------------------------------- Johnny Cash
Fox News------------------------------------------------ BBC News America
Satellite Television-------------------------------------Satellite Radio
William Shatner----------------------------------------George Tokai
Bono------------------------------------------------------ The Edge
Harry Potter-------------------------------------------- Harry Chapin
Mike Bloomfield----------------------------------------Michael Bloomfield
Gay--------------------------------------------------------Bi
Bermuda------------------------------------------------- Jamaica
Sara Palin------------------------------------------------Sara Silverman
Rush Limbaugh-----------------------------------------Rush
Bruce Springsteen--------------------------------------Little Steven

Wed, White and Blue

Well this is the week of the big wedding. My son is getting married to his High School sweetheart, finally. Clear across the fucking country, sunny southern California. I don’t mind weddings because I usually have a good time. It’s amazing how well behaved people are when they’re dressed for a wedding. You’re expected to be with all your friends, everyone’s dressed up, major party atmosphere, but you have to wait until the reception before you can let loose. Or just have a drink, unless you’re the father of the groom with my reputation.

They’ve been forewarned that I can be difficult, but that’s not true at weddings. This isn’t a restaurant where I can criticize the food and belittle a waiter if he doesn’t have the nuts to put up with me. Never show your weak side, but never fuck with a waiter until you have your food. Weddings are fine. You already know what you’re getting to eat – you filled out a little card six months previous. I know I’ll get a good table; I’m the father of the groom. This is a title I’m going to milk for all it’s worth. I’ll only be the father of the groom once, hopefully.

There are a few things I desperately have to avoid at all costs. One thing, believe it or not my precious readers; your author is a sentimental fool. This culminates in my eyes welling up with tears at wedding ceremonies and looking like a big pussy.

My biggest criticism of weddings has always been with the reception, because after all, that’s the real part of the wedding. I’ve seen marriages that did not last until the end of the reception. Of course this particular wedding I’m thinking of was a tragedy just waiting to happen. The bride and groom had met a scant three weeks previous, were both fresh from rehab, and were both extremely annoying individuals.

So what was I doing at this greatest pig-fuck of nuptials? Thank God I was working with the band. I was a completely neutral entity at one of the best/worst train-wrecks in recorded history. Real white trash at its’ best! The father of the bride had paid for the entire wedding, a fact we had learned the second we were contacted to do a gig at the reception. He was quite obsessed with this fact as he only had one daughter and he really fucking hated the dick she was marrying.

Dad liked our band. We weren’t cheap, so dear old Dad sincerely wanted to se his daughter have her special day even though he was obviously not happy with her choice of spouse.

The lovely bride was an obnoxious, fat, piggy, little bitch that just took great pleasure in shouting orders to anyone in the banquet room. After all, this was her day and this is the way the bitches on the T.V. act. Being the “thing that scares food the most”, she just had to have a knosh while she was primping for the ceremony. The band’s dressing room was the next room over from the bride’s so we had “up close and personal” views and sounds from the den of misery.

She bellowed like a hunted killer whale when she dropped some ziti all over the front of her “ever so tight” gleaming white wedding dress. How dare that bitch! That ziti was delicious! She just couldn’t wait for a napkin, or was just so used to not having one she didn’t have time to stop her natural jaw reflex that kicks in whenever there is any type of food within reach.

The band elected me to do a recon mission, find out what all the horror was about. Usually this would have been a piece of cake, no pun intended. I put in earphones from a non-existent component, strapped on my guitar and walked out into the hallway. I was pretending to listen to a tune while trying to figure out how to play it on my guitar.

I had my eyes shut tight in order to portray a serious musician doing some serious listening. In other words if you look like a douche-bag people tend to pass you by and I had that tactic down to a science.

When I got a quick peek at the very noticeable “marinara sauce” stain on her wedding dress and the hissy fit that was violently spit out of ever orifice that little Miss Piggy had, I had to run and literally dive back into our dressing room. I hit the play button on our ever-present boom-box, gesticulating wildly, letting my fellow band mates know that I was in need of immediate assistance.

Our drummer, being the evil genius that he is, sized up the situation and quickly tossed me a nice clean towel from his personal stash. I covered my mouth as I let loose the paroxysm of hysterical, guttural laughter that only a true suck fuck like me can fully conjure up, or appreciate for that matter.

Some people, more sensitive than I, may have felt sorry for this young narwhal. But, alas, I had just a wonderful time re-enacting this scene for my fellows in arms. Were we going to leak this information to the rest of the guests? A striking paradox, this was sensitive stuff here!

Everyone would have been straining to get a glimpse of the stain, not the blushing bride! Snickers would have emanated wildly from the wedding flock, and I’m not talking about the bride’s favorite health food. In the same sense, the father of the bride would have cut my balls off and fed them to me if he found out I was the one that exposed said stain.

I soon felt both amusement and pity for this young girl on her wedding day; I kept our little secret within the confines of my band mates. Unfortunately, one of the busboys had also noticed and I was given the same reenactment that I had just performed, this was out back by the dumpsters when were smoking the obligatory joint before the gig.

The kid was good, very entertaining. He played the part of the bride with Strasberg-like aptitude and soon his story had the entire wedding party abuzz.

The poor bride had to concoct a floral arrangement to cover the stain. It made her look like she had roses growing out of her ample breasts. She was all tits and flowers and looked ridiculous. It looked like she was holding her bouquet between her boobs so she could keep her hands free.

When she was handed her bridal bouquet of roses that are held down by your waistline she immediately wished she had done this sooner. She would have seen that the stain-covering roses and the bridal bouquet roses together looked like she was holding three foot long roses.

When she reached the alter and handed the bridal bouquet to her maid of honor it looked like she only handed her half of it. This caused some murmurs to start. When the bright red stain appeared from behind the roses the murmurs got louder. When one of the bridesmaids giggled it was infectious.

Everyone ended up having a good laugh, especially the groom. Big, BIG mistake! The bride started to cry which made the whole thing funnier at this point, the point of no return (you really had to be there).

Well, the procession was restarted. Someone saved the day by getting the stain out with club soda and baking soda. Miss Piggy and Clem were finally married. Dad got so drunk he started a fight which the band had to break up because it seemed like everyone there wanted to see a good brawl!

Miss Piggy and Clem were divorced right after their first child was born three months later.

Boy was that good fucking ziti or what?





Selah.

I'm a Hate Filled Moron

I was just looking at an editorial or, more accurately a spoken opinion from Keith Olbermann. He was giving his opinion of the people opposed to building a new mosque a few blocks away from the Ground Zero sight. Keith was of the opinion that the people opposed to the “Muslim Learning Center” are akin to the Nazi “hate snowball” effect.

“They came for the Communists, but I did not speak out because I am not Communist.”
“They came for the Trade Unionists, but I did not speak out because I am not a unionist.”
“They came for the Jews but I did not speak out because I am not a Jew.”
“When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.”

He (Olbermann) says to draw these comparisons to Nazis is ludicrous, now.

Let me get one thing clear about my opinion. I do not like the fact that there will be a nice new Muslim Education Center in the area while Ground Zero is still a big fucking hole in the ground. I’m not dumb enough to think that just because it’s not planned out to be an actual mosque that there will be no anti western culture zealotry spoken there.

I read one woman’s opinion, agreeing with Keith Olbermann, saying that she was sick of the hate filled rhetoric coming from these moronic idiots. Hmmmm.

You know, honey (bitch), there’s a mosque just one subway station away from the former World Trade Center Sight across the port in Brooklyn. It’s less than a half a mile from the hole we call Ground Zero.

If you think WE are the “Morons spewing hate filled rhetoric” why don’t you do this:
Hop on the subway, go to the mosque. Walk into the mosque and ask the first person you see what they think of this subject. If you get out of there alive let me know if you still think I’m a hate filled moron.

Stop getting your opinions from talking heads like Keith Olbermann. How do you know he’s not a total shithead? A lot of these types can’t form a cognitive sentence without a teleprompter telling them what to say.

You know there are still a hell of a lot of people that remember quite clearly what happened between the United States and Japan (for one) during WWII. It’s only been sixty-three years. Ask the survivors of the Bataan death march how easy it was for them to see Japanese people in their neighborhood after the hell they went through.

Some wounds do not heal quickly enough for you, do they dear? We’re really glad you can forgive and forget already, but a lot of us that witnessed the blood and ash that day have been changed permanently.

This poses a question I would really like an answer to.

Is it now politically incorrect to hate your enemy? Does society disapprove of openly showing contempt for people that want you dead? So, there’s some religious fanatic out there that would literally decapitate me if he had the chance, but I’m the asshole? I literally stood on the bank of the Hudson River and watch the WTC crumble, but I’m supposed to believe that Muslims are not my enemy.

How many conflicts and acts of terrorism since WWII have not involved Muslims? These are called facts to me, and rhetoric to those that think I’m a hate filled moron. Maybe I’m hate-filled, but moron (fuck you)?

I’m supposed to eat some good old American P.C. shit once again. Maybe it’s time someone took a stand and listened to the soldiers coming back from the wars. I usually hear from the enlisted ranks or officers that no longer have political motivation (retired). Let’s just say that a lot of them are all for nuclear weapons at this point.

One retiring Captain just returning from multiple tours of combat duty told me he was originally going to be a lifer, a career Army soldier. His men were completely disillusioned from seeing their friends killed in horrible ways. They could not get an answer to the question of just why the fuck did their fellow soldiers have to die?

He told me he shared the views of the enlisted ranks, after all in the Army shit rolls down hill and if you want to hear the real shit ask the guys covered in it. They’ve said that they’re “Just sick to fucking death of trying to win a war against an enemy that won’t die. Or is it an enemy that we can’t kill? How about an enemy we can’t even fucking define? It’s still an enemy that’s killing us with impunity every fucking day no matter what the fuck we try to do to them or for them. At this point fuck them!”

Wow.

Disillusioned? They sound a little more than just slightly low on morale to me. Why aren’t they being asked their opinion of whether to erect a “Muslim Learning Center” two blocks away from Ground Zero? It seems like their opinion would matter a little more than someone that had made up their mind from a Keith Olbermann T.V. editorial.

Does the monetary backing for this “Muslim Learning Center” really even exist? There are still some questions as to whether or not certain “partners” were even aware, or real for that matter.

Can’t the builders of this “Muslim Learning Center” take into consideration the way people feel about its presence? This is the only place it can be built? Why aren’t the people directly in charge of trying to get this “Muslim Learning Center” built showing their faces and answering questions? Oh, there are a lot of fucking questions.

We take other ethnicities and religious views seriously and label someone politically incorrect when they disparage said entities. But what about us? Is this the muslim version of being politically correct towards us? Did Honda build a factory on Pearl Harbor? I don’t think so.

Well, what ever these fucking people have in mind I think it’s in real bad taste to erect a fucking mosque while the towers are still a hole in the ground. I’m just getting sick of having to eat this P.C. bullshit at times like these. Being labeled a hate-filled rhetoric spewing moron from some woman makes me angry. I served my country, I wonder if she did? I saw the towers come down and had friends, good friends, that I saw die with my own eyes right in front of me. Did she?

With all the “Death to America” chanting going on in muslim countries just which one is the party spewing hate filled rhetoric? After witnessing our Presidents being burned in effigy, our kids coming home without limbs, with shattered minds, and in body-bags. Our children coming home from wars started by muslims.

I’m not stupid, believe it or not. Of course I don’t hate all muslims just because they’re muslims. But I’m not naïve either. I am of the idea that muslims are trying to make a statement by erecting a “Muslim Learning Center” in the shadow of Ground Zero. And getting back to naiveté, do we think there will not be any anti-American rhetoric spoken in this “Muslim Learning Center”?

From what I’ve garnered in my research, the path to Jihad from any mosque is a short one. I know one journalist, probably the best in the world right now although he is not recognized for it, that wanted to see for himself just how prevalent anti-Americanism is within the walls of seemingly tranquil mosques. After literally choosing a mosque at random he went all stealthy on their ass and found out some shocking facts. Real quick like.

I won’t get into details because this column isn’t funny and I like writing funny stuff, damn it! Anyways it took until day two; yes the second friggin’ day, before he was able to record a typical ignorant hate-filled speech calling for Jihad on Jews and Americans in general.

Maybe nine years ago this wouldn’t have even been an issue, but twenty-three days later things changed. Changed in a big fucking way, sister. I’ll bet this woman that thinks of us as “hate-filled rhetoric spewing morons” would have been of a different opinion back then.

Either that or she was twelve.


Selah.

Eighth Grade Science Class Warfare

Schools! There’s a wide chasm when it comes to what schools were like back in the ‘70’s compared to what they’re like today, I’ll tell ‘ya. This freaking onslaught of political correctness brought with it some pretty crazy shit, different to say the least, anyways.

From the articles that I have read and what I’ve seen on my beloved T.V., some bullshit rules concerning student interaction have gotten just a little out of hand. There’s just so much sensitivity to every little remark and every little touch (between the kids, of course). The over-analysis of these age-old rites of passage if you will (and you will…) is really robbing kids of some of the best stuff about being a kid. I’m talking about things as innocuous as holding hands or playing “footsies” under the cafeteria tables.

A lot of these incidents have been labeled everything from assault to rape for Christ’s’ sake! Some of my favorite junior high female friends would have been charged with assault on me. Their way of showing they liked me was to usually bust me over the head with something. They certainly got my attention all right. This was of course, at that tender age (12 – 27), the way kids start to explore the fascinating differences between themselves, “flirting”.

These types of antics are as common now as they were when boys used to dip the tip of girls’ pig-tails in their desk ink well, don’t worry I’m even too young to have witnessed that one. So what do girls do now? Just run up to a guy that turns them on and shove a hit of ecstasy in his mouth? Then tell him to check his email for the location of the upcoming booty-call? They can’t use the old quasi assault method of attack; with the size of today’s backpacks she could take his pimpled face right off, not a good alternative.

Texting! Holy shit, Holy fucking shit. I can’t imagine the carnage that would have transpired if we had that kind of advantage over our enemy (the faculty) when I was in eighth grade. A mass coordinated assault on Mr. Harger, our eighth grade science teacher, just might have made me a career Army man. I had led our barely pubescent posse to oppose this foe because I was the proverbial “insufferable little shit” and he seemed like a good candidate to me.

He was new, that was a massive sign of impending doom (for his ass), and had NO fucking personality whatsoever. Duller than dogshit I’m afraid my friends. He bored the living shit out of us and he didn’t seem to make one iota of effort to make the lessons less fucking insufferable. Some of the hell we put poor Mr. Harger through was really very innovative I must say, but he had it coming to him (keep reminding yourselves we’re all twelve years old here).

He knew damn right well we hated his class because he was fucking boring, and he couldn’t care less. We knew it, he knew it, and he knew we knew it. This was WAR.

He had just returned from a teaching assignment in South Africa. The first and only time he tried to tell the class a “Tale of Africa” all he talked about was the fact that they allowed corporal punishment. He didn’t get into the details of this however (lucky for him).

My buddy Dana (not his real name, nudge, nudge, wink of the eye) got just a little bored and fed up with this guy’s bullshit and decided to set the rear wall on fire.

Don’t be taken aback, dear readers. This was done with such alarming frequency and was so fucking funny by this time that none of our classmates even mentioned that the room was on fire. Until the wall-sized relief map (plastic) of the world started to go up in flames we were even able to suppress our laughter.

Even then it was just the gaiety and laughter of young children, giggling at the geeky asshole trying to put out the fire we just intentionally set. Oh, we hid the fire extinguishers, too…

One incident that still cracks me the fuck up to this day is this one:

Our Junior High School Principal use to have to come down the short hallway to Harger’s class quite often, usually to tell him to shut his class the fuck up. He was a pretty good guy even though he was treated as enemy high command back then. We showed no mercy and took no prisoners (we didn’t know how).

On one occasion when we were particularly unruly (we were going fuckin’ nuts!) our over-burdened Junior High School Principal had to make the short trek down the hallway to the eighth grade science lab. Being a professional man of reserved and quiet dignity he asked Mr. Harger to step outside into the hallway to have a little tête-à-tête.

Well with the both of them out in the hallway the unruly classroom was unsupervised. And we were ready. We quickly ran to the blackboard at the front of the room. I took my place as recon officer. I was keeping watch, observing the enemy talking in the hallway, ready to signal any warning to my squad. These were well trained men (men?) they worked quickly, quietly and with amazing precision.

In no time at all the words “HARGER SUCKS MOOSE COCK!!” appeared in huge letters mere seconds before the Principal and teacher decided to finish their conversation inside the classroom. As they stood talking right in front of the blackboard our esteemed principal noticed our artwork. He looked at the teacher, rolled his eyes towards the blackboard, and lightly tapped the board twice with his index finger. As he looked out over the rim of his glasses he was off with barely a whisper.

We collectively wet ourselves. I still laugh at that one to this very day. If we had motivational tools such as You Tube, cell phone cameras, and text messaging I can only imagine the kind of mayhem that would have ensued.

Mr. Harger had a routine for starting the day’s lesson. He would close the classroom door, walk over to the blackboard, open his briefcase to remove his notes, and then proceed to bore the shit out of us.

I would have loved to have captured the moment when he opened his briefcase and was startled by the hardcore gay porn centerfold we put in there for him. A true Kodak moment!

YouTube indeed.

Selah.














**Big thanks to ri and most of all, cld, for the much needed motivation.

Fear and Loathing at a High School Reunion

I was recently sent an invitation to attend my high school class’s thirtieth reunion of our graduation. One of my only friends left from high school also had emailed and asked me if I was planning on attending. Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to see an old friend or two I can only express my horror at seeing most of others. People that I would never want to see again, ever.

One trait I possess is an incredible memory with strict attention to detail. You know the old saying “The only thing an Irishman can hold better that his booze is a grudge!” Some of these reasons I have emanate from our class’s twentieth reunion.

We had a good time for the most part. There was an open bar which made it possible to put up with the horrid wedding DJ they hired to keep us busy, God forbid we actually interacted with the people we were there to interact with. However it was really very tasteful. It was at a nice hotel, good food, and they didn’t plan it on Thanksgiving.

That’s right my young readers. High school class reunions are often scheduled during the Thanksgiving Holiday break. This brainstorm stems from the assumption that most of the graduates will be in town for Thanksgiving. And all the people that were smart enough to get out of their hometowns and find themselves can just, again, go fuck themselves.

At my twentieth reunion one of the more revolting and insulting thing was the cute little name tags they give you. Isn’t it embarrassing enough that you actually have to read them to figure out just who the fuck this dickhead is that you’re talking to?

But this time the graduates that were diligent enough to study hard enough to be “Honor Society” level school darlings had big Stars on their name tags! Big bright blue stars! This was twenty fucking years ago in high school and you’re still fucked up enough to think that makes you special in some way! In-fucking-credible! I would loved to have known this in advance. I would have come with my tax returns stapled to my suit jacket.

I can’t complain, however. Compared to a lot of folks there I guess I had aged quite well. Of course being the cynical bastard that I am I took great pleasure in seeing the guys I couldn’t stand end up looking like fat old gasbags. At the ripe old age of thirty-eight! Oh the enjoyment of seeing one the biggest assholes I ever met lose his hair! I know that’s awful, but as you probably have guessed “nice” isn’t really my writing style.

My wife was wearing an original “Betsy Johnson” dress, she looked great. I had on a custom made Irish linen suit, no tie and sandals. It was fucking August, I get hot when it’s August. I need to dress light and was comfortable as hell even though most of the guys there were wearing their best “suit and tie”. I was quick to notice that quite a few of the guys that were dressed like bankers couldn’t keep their eyes off my wife.

She was quite popular on the dance floor that night. Being the gentleman that I am I was able to refrain from asking their wives to dance. I was too busy telling the DJ that he sucked. He tried to explain to me that what he was doing is pretty much standard fare for DJ’s, and he was right. But it still didn’t stop me from voicing my distaste for the corny proceedings (Oh, c’mon the music sucked). I’m not crazy about dancing anymore, anyways. In my youth I loved to dance but watching the “show” that night was much more amusing. There wasn’t much all that much dancing because of the fucking wedding DJ they hired for some stupid reason. They were so fucking lame I can’t even think of a witty put-down.

I was actually asked to recommend a list of songs that were popular with our class, pre-reunion. So, naturally I put down a list of songs we used to rock out to like crazy-assed teenagers should. I foolishly thought we might be dancing to these particular songs. Instead the wedding DJs’ played these songs during dinner and then proceeded to play nothing but techno “house” shit for us to dance to.

It was just great being the one responsible for hearing “Ironman” while we were trying to catch up over dinner. Trying to explain this to these fucking shit for brains Dj’s was impossible. These shitheads were pure “wedding” and they were sticking to it.
They then started playing these retarded wedding games that sucked the life right out of the room.

The parties we had back when we were young and all together were much different than this crud. I think we would all have had a much better time if we had recreated the same atmosphere. An atmosphere it was comfortable seeing these people in. I’m talking, of course, a live band. A good band, like we always had in high school. Low lighting, loud music and lots of booze. This causes dancing to break out, and dancing, in a lot of cases leads to getting laid. Now that’s a fucking party! I felt like I had just left the Weinstein Bar Mitzvah when this tragedy was over.

You could always tell the poor bastards that end up coming alone. They are either the creepy looking guys nobody remembers or they’re the ones having a great fucking time dancing with the ladies you came with. Oh wives love to flirt when they know their husband is watching. And dancing is a great way to show that “thing” off ladies, you all know that.

You’ll see some miffed husbands (‘cause that “thing” was looking good). “I was only dancing.” You never want to dance with me,” she’ll say with that certain little pout. I’ve seen women get their husbands so worked up using this method they ended up humping in the parking lot! Guess it works.

I had one lad I had known since the tender age of thirteen greet me as if we were old friends and he seemed giddy as a school girl to see me. Wasn’t this the guy that always had a sneer and an insult ready for me? Veiled or not they were insults and digs. Time is a very strange concept that has very odd consequences.

On one hand there was a man that I had been very close with during our high school years and almost ten years after. We were contacted by he and his wife before the reunion. We made plans to sit at the same table together, and we got together for drinks at their house the day before the reunion. And yet this “friend” for some reason saw fit to humiliate me at the end of the event for all to see.

He had been telling me throughout the evening that some people would be going to his house for an “after-party/pool party”. I was pretty smashed at the end of night, I had planned on it. That’s why my wife booked us a room at the very hotel in which the event was being held.

At the very tail-end of the night I was discussing with this person, out loud mind you, just how in the hell we were going to be able to get to the pool party. We were at a large table that was full of classmates and their spouses.

“Pat, there’s no party… he said with a wry grin, shaking his head like you would do to someone that was a confused pathetic drunk. He turned and walked away still slowly shaking his head. It made me feel like I was acting like a fool and I was the only one in the room not aware of it.

It’s not that you weren’t in on the joke, and the joke wasn’t on you. You were the joke.

Had I been set up? Was I the subject of some elaborate ambush? Of course it’s ridiculous to even think that. So what could the reason for this possibly be? Things seemed to be going so well.

Maybe there was something I had said the previous day during our visit to their house – who knows? Maybe it was the fact that when we were in school he always had a girlfriend and a nice car. I hardly ever did. And he never let me forget it. It was kid stuff and he used to rub it in my face every chance he got.

But now the shoe’s on the other foot. My wife and I had been married for ten years; he made an off hand comment that he was amazed that we had lasted this long. And I guess it didn’t help when I pulled up to his house in my (mint condition) 1974 Jaguar E-Type convertible.

But seriously, what the fuck is going on here? We both loved nice cars and hot rods when we were in high school. We used to take road trips to exotic car dealerships just to gawk at the sports cars. That was one thing we definitely had in common in those days, our love for cool cars. We had even talked lightheartedly about co-owning something nice one day. But he always had a nice car and I “did not”.

I’d honestly be thrilled if my “friend” told me he was driving a new Ferrari. Of course I’d be jealous! With my love for cars I’d be the first one to let him know! But it would be a “proud” kind of jealousy. As long as the fucker let me take it for a ride.

So my faithful readers, just what would make this person direct his ire and petty dislikes towards me, an old friend?

I have a hypothesis. I’m being brutally honest right now and may really regret writing this, but hey…

During our short visit to our “friends” house the day previous to the reunion this so called friend of mine pulled me aside and said “Dude, your wife’s a stone fox and your car is absolutely gorgeous.” This made me feel extremely uncomfortable. He was saying this as if I had been fishing for these compliments all day. They certainly didn’t come across as genuine; he may not have sneered quite so hard if they were.

Our lives were not a contest, not to me anyways. If there ever was any competition I would have gladly conceded the win right after high school. It’s sad really.

The trophy’s yours, you win my friend.

Too Rolling Stoned

So Mick Jagger turned sixty-seven less than a month ago. Good God. Did you ever notice that he’s starting to look more and more like Maria Shriver?

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with performing as long as you can, as long as you stay relevant. I can’t name one song from the Stone’s last four albums, but they still sell out every venue they play. Mick is starting to look like a raisin and Keith is looking like an exhumed Bozo the Clown. Ron Wood looks like a deflated blow-up doll. High definition technology is not friendly to our beloved Stones.

But do we still love them? Can you love a band that charges outrageous priced for anything associated or licensed by them? They were charging one hundred dollars at one point to join their fan club. This literally got you nothing. No freebies of any kind. No early ticket sales, no special seating, and if you think you were ever going to get to meet one of the world’s leading Prima Donnas’ well step aside because I tend to spit when I laugh that hard.

Just try to get a ticket to see the Stones at face value. After all the fucking crooks get done with them you’re lucky to be able to even see the stage for anywhere from two hundred to two thousand dollars per seat. I figured out once that the money for the first three rows at Giant’s stadium would generate enough money to pay the band. That leaves a whole lot of scratch on the table and the Stones want every last penny they can get their shaky, wrinkled hands on.

Personally I think your ticket prices should reflect the reception of your last album. If it sucked donkey dick well it’s time to lower the fucking prices you old whores! If this was the case Mick couldn’t afford his daily inter-penile shot of Viagra.

I think it’s funny that all these old rock stars are dropping their artistic integrity and selling their songs to be heard on every advertising campaign with an open wallet. They realize the money avalanche has been thwarted so the hell with it. Let Cadillac play some Led Zeppelin tunes. Led Zeppelin’s demographic is now the people that buy Cadillacs. This wasn’t exactly the case in the seventies, believe me.

We are all getting older but our music is staying at the same popularity level it was when we were little kids. The Stones had already been a band for fifteen years before I was old enough to see them in concert. When I finally did see them for the first time they had at least five bands open up for them.

The show went on all day long, well past dark. I figure at today’s prices the equivalent cost would be about fifty-two dollars per ticket. Today that won’t even get you entrance to the “official” fan club.

Here’s a novel idea: someone should start an unofficial fan club, charge half price for membership and actually offer the fan something for his money!! The Stones would sue your ass silly in a fucking heartbeat!

In the last interview of Keith Richards I read, the author remarks that Keith is looking well. By that I can only guess that he meant that he didn’t look like he had just “spiked-up” (shot heroin) or was nodding off (good heroin). But he did notice that during the interview, while they talked for just a little over two hours, Keith finished a whole bottle of Jack Daniel’s and didn’t seem affected by it at all.

Yep, that’s why he’s still my hero. But what about you? We can’t all be drunken freaks, peering out at the scary world from behind Venetian blinds now can we? I always told myself, sometimes out loud, that if I can just outlive Keith Richards then I’ve won. Won what I have never even tried to define, but it will be a sweet victory dance nonetheless!

Not that I wish my hero any harm (Die already you wrinkled fuck!) I would never even think that. I might write it, but my writing and my thinking have nothing to do with each other.

You can never take away from the fact that Jagger/Richards have written some of the most incredible Rock songs extant. I wish there were new bands putting out tunes like “Sister Morphine” or “Gimme Shelter”, but there just isn’t.

I read these reviews today of modern albums and I’m fucking sick to death of the new words created by music critics. Power-pop-punk. Excuse me, but if it is punk it is by definition not pop. It’s punk, that’s why that use that name. Real punk spits on pop. It’s like describing something as a water-fire combination, I think when you read power-pop-synth-groove used to describe a new release you can pretty much guarantee it’s crap. If the reviewer can’t figure out what in the fuck it is how the hell are we supposed to sit through this shit?

I think the consistent success of bands like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, coupled with the resurgent popularity of the music from the old guard. Dylan, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin George Harrison, Allman Brothers, the list can go on forever, just as their music has.

I have a young cousin, eighteen years old, that listens to the same music that I do. The fact that she can see through the bullshit and appreciate the musical legends and masterpieces of our time gives me hope for music in the future.

I can’t understand how the music industry sells some of the stuff I read about in “Rolling Stone”. Of course they lost all credibility years ago when it comes to music, just look at who has graced the legendary “Cover of the Rolling Stone”. I usually mention the Jonas Brothers, but I just pick on them because I think they suck out loud and are an embarrassment to modern music.

When I saw these little jack-offs on the cover it really made me sick. Don’t try to sell me some fucking teeny-bopper bullshit. When did Rolling Stone start to gear their content towards children? What really killed me about this particular issue was that there was also a great article about Gregg Allman. The Jonas sisters marked the cover and a music legend like Gregg Allman, someone with real talent, is relegated to the “basement”.

I can’t understand exactly what reading demographic Rolling Stone is trying to attract. On one hand there will be a scorching expose by Matt Taibbi on America’s financial crisis and then a massive spread on Justin Beiber. Do Beiber fans understand national financial data? I kind of doubt it, they’re nine years old.

This Beiber kid belongs in a magazine geared towards his own age group. I don’t want to see this little shit in a magazine I pay for! Why the fuck should I? I’m pushing fifty, why on earth would I care about pre-teen music acts? I shouldn’t even know that the Jonas’s or Justin Beiber exists. Of course I don’t like their music, I’m not supposed to. It’s for little girls and I haven’t been a little girl in quite some time now.

So, the only acts worth seeing are now are musicians in their late sixties. Journalists have to make up new words to describe today’s tunes. Kiddy music acts grace the cover of what was once a great rock-n-roll magazine. The internet has turned the music business upside down. Even the music execs can’t figure out how and who to fuck over these days.

I’m tired of hearing all these new bands that are playing music that is lauded in the press and boring as hell in reality. I keep wishing for next Beatles to appear but I think I’m aiming too high. We used to have dozens of incredible acts in the sixties and seventies. Since then we’re lucky if we get two per decade.

I feel sorry for young people today for not being able to experience the ecstasy of hearing legendary music developed in their own time. When I was a high school senior we had Pink Floyd’s “Wall” album and the last Led Zeppelin recording come out during that year.

Keep listening to the old stuff, my young readers. As of this writing the Jonas Brothers have had to cancel tour dates due to poor ticket sales. I don’t think we’ll be seeing them or Lady Gaga or Katy Perry this time next year. Not on the cover of Rolling Stone anyways.

I’m glad I never got too attached to them…

I Hate Your Kids

I’ve always made it clear I’m not a big fan of little kids. The only kids I ever liked at a young age were related to me. And they knew old Uncle Patrick wouldn’t hesitate to use his special magic trick (sucker punch) to keep them from bothering me.

I was at a local Nightspot for an “open mike” night. This setup was simply a band that was paid to back up whoever felt like gracing the stage that evening. In this neck of the woods there are some pretty incredible musicians. Most are seasoned (herbed) players from the New York City area. But one dude brought his guitar player kid with him this particular night.

It seems that little junior here was a guitar prodigy at the ripe old age of thirteen. You have to be incredibly gifted to be able to sit in with experienced musicians at that age. The kid could play, no doubt about that.

There was just something about him I didn’t quite like. Maybe I was jealous of this spunky little fucking midget. Could be, I really rolled my eyes when he started doing “rock star” moves while he was playing. I got a bad case of douche chills when he walked out onto the dance floor and played a solo on his knees. Christ on a fucking cookie! I just had to do something.

Well the guy running the show, the guitar player for the “house” band, called me up to the stage to play. The kid didn’t sit down. Shit. I didn’t even want to look at some fucking little shit at a nightclub yet get up on stage and jam with the little cocksucker.

Junior started to excitedly ask the bandleader if he could do one more tune. This just isn’t done, when they call up someone else you are fucking done. Your turn is over. Of course just because he was a little kid prodigy the rules didn’t apply to him.

I was pissed. So I stood there with a blank look on my face while we had to play some Metallica song. I helped Junior out by whispering in his ear that he was out of tune during his solo (that was actually quite good).

“Good, that’s over with, my turn.” I looked at the drummer and told him to play a slow twelve bar in “A” (or was it “G”?). A twelve bar is a standard type of rhythm usually used for jamming on some improvisational blues. And if there’s one thing I can do is play some fucking blues.

Ah yes, the Blues. Now there’s something a fucking thirteen year old doesn’t know shit about. I was quite pleased when I realized that this little freak didn’t know what the fuck we were talking about. The music starts and I started playing some licks I’ve been practicing since Junior here was still trying to figure out how to keep from shitting his diapers.

To show what a great guy I am in these situations I openly and very loudly passed the “lead solo” over to him. He was, I was pleased to see, no longer being cocky. He didn’t know any blues `licks; you have to have lived just a bit before you can even feel the blues, never mind playing the blues.

So I kept on encouraging him to try harder! I could see this was upsetting him. Not his playing, it was my “encouragement” that upset him. “C’mon you little fuck! You want to play with the big boys let’s hear it!” He looked scared and lost, he looked at me questioningly (I was screaming at him…). So I turned my back on him and stole his solo.

“Don’t take it too hard, kid” I told him offstage “Everyone fucks up royal now and then.”
“B-but I don’t know any blues, yet!” he whimpered. “Aw, you just need to experience some blues, that’s all, kid!” And with that I slipped a rufi (rufinol – date rape drug) into his Coke, and then stole his wallet while he was in the men’s room throwing up.

“There’s some blues for ‘ya, you little shit” I thought as I planted cocaine in his father’s unregistered pickup truck. It’s a good thing I knew about the drunken driving road block that was set up right outside the bar. It was also a good thing that I came by boat (lake action). I had also taken the liberty of instructing the bartender to keep feeding the alcoholic father tequila shots on my tab while I schooled his kid in Rock-n-Roll.

I don’t know whose cocaine it was I planted that night, but I do know an easy way of scoring. You can always stir up a little fun by walking into a large men’s room on a busy night at a seedy bar and shouting “POLICE!!!” at the top of your lungs. Just open the door, stand aside to let the onslaught run out, then go in and collect your winnings!

Coke, speed, half rolled joints, and embarrassed coke sluts are all that remain in the Men’s after pulling that fun little stunt. The only person left was some guy holed up in the last stall that kept muttering “Where’s a fucking vein when you really need one?” to no one in particular. All in all just a great night!

Let’s keep the kids at home folks. I’m a firm advocate of age restrictions. I try to enforce this by acting like a total asshole when there are kids around at what is supposed to be an event for adults. I don’t think your fucking spawn are cute, even if they’re well behaved. I hate having some dickweed telling me to be careful of my language because there are “kids here”.

I actually take that as a challenge. I love making people leave early because they don’t want their kids to be around me. It’s really very easy, just use harsh language. Say “fuck” a lot. A real lot. Tell a disgusting joke in the kid’s presence. It will freak out the parents and the kid will think you are a god. The kids are the only ones that think those gross jokes are funny, anyways. I remember when I was that age I already swore like a truck driver and if an adult told me an adult joke, well, shit, I was in heaven!

Sure, I was a weird little kid, but I’m an even weirder adult so I guess the cosmos are still in line. Case in point: I once noticed a woman breastfeeding her infant in the food court at the local shopping mall. I walked over to her and stood just to her right. I looked at my watch and sighed, looking slightly annoyed. “What are you doing?” she asked, “I’m just waiting in line.” I said back.

Folks this was the food court, okay. You want to flaunt your funbags in any way, by all means be my guest, just not while I’m trying to eat, okay? I wouldn’t walk up to your table and stick my balls in your soup. I just wouldn’t.

One other fun “dinner out” I can recall involved a couple of annoying little shits that were running around our carefully chosen restaurant. We were there to see the band that was playing after the diners were gone. It was a great place to eat so we showed up early for a little dinner.

One family had two obnoxious sons that were approximately 10 – 12 years old. These little buttheads had those fucking sneakers with wheels built into the sole, effectively making them into quasi roller skates. These adderall soaked gremlins were tearing the place up and coming just too fucking close to our table.

And of course their asshole, dipshit, scumbag, dickhead, dimwit, jackoff, fuckstick parents just sat there and let them run amok and bother the shit out of everyone. By everyone, of course, I mean just me.

I sized up the situation with great acumen. A dinner napkin, dropped with great accuracy of timing and placement, could potentially send one of these little bastards spiraling into the wall with great force. That is, if they made it past all the dangerous and sharp obstacles on their way to the safe comfort of simply slamming into a wall.

The plan worked with perfection. The only thing more disturbing in the dining room that night than the kid bleeding badly from a head wound was the grown man laughing uncontrollably.

Just another memorable night in the life of your twisted author.


Selah.

It Was Fifteen Years Ago Today...

As I was driving in my car this morning I was already aware that today marked the fifteenth anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s death. I guess it just hadn’t hit me yet. I turned the satellite radio to the Grateful Dead channel. They were playing one of my favorite Jerry ballads “(‘Walk Me Out In The’ ) Morning Dew”.

This particular version of the song was recorded in the mid-seventies. Garcia’s voice sounded sweeter and more alive than I’ve ever heard it. This was a very special recording.

Fifteen years ago today a man that had made a profound impression on my life and life-style passed away. Jerry Garcia was, at the time of his death, one of the most famous people on the face of the earth, cursed with that bastard usurper of life, fame.

This brought the tears. I found my eyes welling up as I listened to Jerry singing sweet harmonies with Donna Godchaux. I knew I missed Jerry terribly, but this reaction really surprised me.

Jerry started his music career as a happy hippy that would have laughed like hell at the term “music career”. He was a banjo/guitar teacher at an early age – Jerry was never one to keep his knowledge selfishly. From what I’ve heard over the years he never minded showing someone a lick or teaching a song, if he had time.

It has been said that Jerry was the most recorded guitarist in history , according to fellow Bay Area guitar player Henry Kaiser, "With more than 2,200 Grateful Dead concerts, and 1,000 Jerry Garcia Band concerts captured on tape — as well as numerous studio sessions — there are about 15,000 hours of his guitar work preserved for the ages."

I saw the Grateful Dead live for the first time in New Haven, CT in 1975.

Like most people I was familiar with the Dead’s music only from what I would hear on the radio, which was never much. I liked what I heard, and owned one Dead recording. The “Skeletons From The Closet” recording contained most of their “commercially successful” songs, most of these could be heard on the radio once in a blue moon. I was astonished when I found out this collection of songs was probably the worst overall representation of the Dead’s music issued to date.

I didn’t really start listening to the Grateful Dead seriously (very serious) until 1985. I was living in a very “modest” room in a huge house rented by several guys my age. One of my roommates was into going to all the Dead shows he could possibly see and still keep his job.

This is when I started to be schooled on the Grateful Dead. He told me tales of three hour concerts where virtually everyone in the audience would stand and dance the entire show. He told me all about the “scene”. Travel, friends, music, drugs - good drugs! You didn’t have to talk me into it. I have always been a huge advocate of “Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-Roll”.

My roommate also lent me a great live recording containing choice selections from the Dead’s live shows. This was an actual CD issued by the band, not a bootleg tape. I honestly listened to the disc as much as I could stand, sometimes not being able to sit through an extended jam or drum solo. This, I was assured, would change as soon as I experienced a few live shows.

Boy Howdy! Oh, he was right.

I discovered a “treasure trove” of music that I had never heard before. Incredible music, blending every music style imaginable with lyrics that portrayed a history of Americana.
Jerry Garcia and his extended musical family resurrected old American folk songs, sea shanties, and traditional songs that had no real writing credit other than “Traditional”. This is an integral part of Jerry Garcia’s contribution to music that is often times sorely overlooked.

Here I was, a guitar player for 25 years that was just sick to death of new music. But here I had stumbled upon endless hours of music that was just what I had been searching for. Honest songs emanating from the hearts and minds of musicians not hampered by commercial music business bullshit. And they had a great fucking guitar player!

These songs that were previously recorded on the early Dead albums had now been honed to perfection after years of touring and hundreds of live performances. Listening to them on the old albums was not the best introduction to their music as the early albums could not capture the incredible magic that happened at the live shows. By the early nineties, however, the Grateful Dead were on a plane of their own when it came down to sheer talent.

So, in order to get the real Grateful Dead experience you had to go to the shows. Lots of them. This was usually a scary proposition for the uninitiated. But what was so scary, Cops? Was it the crowds? People were nervous around the hardcore “Deadheads” and I personally don’t blame them one bit.

The deadheads were originally some of the sweetest, most generous, gentle, hippies I had ever met. They were friendly to strangers, they were happy to meet new people, very welcoming, they made you feel right at home.

I was a corporate non-tycoon at the time and had a very short military looking haircut. This usually would be the cause of immediate distrust within a tight knit group of anyone involved with the “counterculture”. In other words I didn’t look “cool”, I looked like a narc. At first this didn’t matter at all as long as you acted okay, actually as long as you didn’t act at all.

They respected honesty of character. There were people that looked like Tommy Chong that were narcs and people that looked like me (that weren’t narcs goddamnit!). I was an experienced musician searching for, well, searching for treasure, and having found it, went to all the shows I could. Even though I had short hair the ‘heads (at first) were very accepting. We enjoyed some great times with people we had just met, literally mere hours before.

Unfortunately we caught the tail end of the good times.

Fame had finally caught up with the Grateful Dead.

Like what happened in San Francisco with the Haight-Ashbury scene decades before, huge numbers of lazy dirtbags (ooooh, sorry) were drawn into the Deadhead's way of life. They could easily take advantage of the giving nature of the hard working, self sufficent Deadheads. The term "self sufficient" used to be in the very definition (the fucking core) of what makes a "Deadhead a Deadhead".  It was a major source of pride for a group of individuals that didn't get much respect.

The Scene in the parking lots was getting a dangerous buzz about it. Hordes of con-men were roaming the parking lots selling fake tickets, fake mushrooms and running all kinds of grifts.  I finally stopped bringing a guitar with me to the shows. We once moved the car to a different space because we were pretty sure a "fan" was planning on ripping off my guitar. He sure as hell didn't know the first thing about the band, or the guitar. Paranoia was rearing its ugly head. This kind of thing started happening all the time, to the point where we just were not having fun anymore.

The feds were busting people for selling LSD, Garcia had relapsed badly into heroin addiction, and the last tour was plagued with small riots and mass injuries. When lightning struck at one of the last shows the “Tour From Hell” was aptly named.

And just like the end of the "Summer of Love" the good times were coming to an end and there was a hard rain fallin'.

So, good drugs, good people, good music, good drugs, what was not to like? But as a wise man once said “Nothing good lasts forever”. And of course this couldn’t be truer when describing Jerry Garcia.

Sometime while on break after this disastrous tour, Garcia decided to throw in the towel and get some help. The night he checked into a rehab facility he died in his sleep, August 9th, 1995.


I actually felt a kinship with Jerry Garcia. I know that sounds like the worst kind of obsessed fan bullshit. Not to mention it’s embarrassingly pretentious, and not just a little akin to something a douchbag would utter.

But fuck it, I did.

I felt so grateful to have been turned on to so much incredible music at a time when I was just so fucking disillusioned about the new crap that was coming out. To be suddenly presented with hours upon hours of pure genius was a gift. And to be able to see this great musician perform close to one hundred shows filled me with enough memories to last not only a lifetime but an eternity.

I really fucking liked Jerry Garcia is what I’m trying to say here. There’s nothing like seeing Jerry Garcia live anymore. No Grateful Dead, no Jerry Garcia Band, no more Jerry at all.

He’s gone, and he ain’t never coming back.

Rest in peace, my friend.



Selah.

Hey, Let's Trash Jeff Tweedy!

I was just watching a documentary on the band “Wilco”. Or should I say another documentary on the band “Wilco”. It seems “Wilco” really likes “Wilco” so they make a lot of documentaries. About “Wilco”.

I’ll start my tale at the time when I had the misfortune to meet “Wilco” shortly after they reached the “semi-national” level. That is where you play large Colleges, showcase night clubs (big bars) or theatres instead of the usual beer-stained, shithole, little bars. You also get to open up for the big name acts at festivals, in coliseums, and stadium shows.

I met them at a festival that traveled the country sponsored by the very “Irish” beer Guinness. They gave it a very Irish, very Gaelic, very annoying name – “The Fleagh Festival”. How fucking pretentious! Just who the fuck looks at that word and knows the proper pronunciation? I guess it’s some kind of advertising ploy. If an advertising ploy pisses you off then it usually is some kind of ploy (ploy’s kind of annoying too, now that I think of it). So this pompous brain fart of a name is pronounced “flah”.

So Wilco’s playing the Fleagh festival, we are in San Jose, CA sometime in 1999. I’m standing at one of the beer and food tables in the hospitality lounge (it’s a fucking tent) scarfing down a bratwurst and a Guinness, when I notice the entire band standing behind me. One of the guys was already deep in conversation with the friend that I was with so I chatted the other fellows up.

Very nice guys for the most part. I knew absolutely nothing about this band, had never heard of them, and I had just seen them play for the first time less than a half an hour ago. I thought they sounded okay for the most part. They certainly didn’t suck anyways.

Outside venues are not great places to really delve into music with great concentration. No, the outside shows are for getting really blasted, just trashed, and dancing with your clothes off. Not the best place to really seriously experience the music.

I struck up a conversation with the lead guitar player whom I would later find out was Jay Bennett. I usually talk to the guitar players (I play, too, so I talk to them). Jay was very concerned with how the sound was. I told him the all around volume could’ve been a little louder, but the band as a whole sounded pretty good.

He then rephrased the question asking not how did the band sound but how did he sound. Oh I get it now. Jay’s fishing for a compliment! I guess I wasn’t gushing enough for certain members of Wilco that day in southern California.

I wasn’t blown away by Jay’s guitar playing. He was good, don’t get me wrong, plus he was a multi-instrumentalist, but he played guitar exclusively on stage that day. He also sat in with another band, on their last tune, before he hit the stage with Wilco.

So I told him that, when he sat in, I liked the solo he did to close the tune they played. “Yeah, I wanted to show those guys how to do a proper rock-n-roll finish.” I realized this guy was being a little cocky here. Plus his solo wasn’t all that great.

You have to understand that I spent a good deal of my youth as a roadie, light-guy, and sound-guy before I ever took to the stage as a guitar player myself. I started playing in 1974, and have done hundreds of gigs. So I wasn’t completely full of shit. This was back during a time that is turning out to be real “Golden Era” type history.

I say this because in Connecticut in the mid to late seventies there was a lot of live music going on. The drinking age was still eighteen years old, thanks to the Viet-Nam era draft. Fake ID’s were easy to get, gas and booze were still cheap. The bars were plentiful, they were always packed nightly full of kids from age sixteen on up, and they all had live music.

The musicianship of the band members at this time was off the charts. There were some amazing players back then that I had the privilege of working for and working with. These fuckers could play. A lot of them are now very successful session players that have played with the best in the business. I’ve had many a shock when noticing someone I’ve worked with onstage at Madison Square Garden, or in the Live Aid concert or Saturday Night Live, etc. All very cool moments I will freely admit!

These people were phenomenal musicians and that was how high the bar used to be. I’m sorry to say a lot of today’s musicians just do not even come close to that level. Today’s modern guitar heroes do not come close to the level of the players from the sixties and seventies. Of course that is just my opinion, but it’s a very popular opinion.

So here I am trying to think of some thing nice to say to this guitar player that’s fishing for a compliment. And this is after he just said something kind of cocky. I just smiled and said “Well hey man, you play a really nice guitar.” Now this is well known amongst guitar players to mean that you play well. It doesn’t mean you have a nice guitar.

Jay Bennett gave me just the slightest of dirty looks as he hesitated for just a second before he replied. I think he was trying to determine if he’d just been insulted or not. “Oh, I wished you had said ‘You play a nice guitar well.’ He said through pursed lips and squinty eyes. “That’s what I meant.” I assured him in order to assuage his ego.

I really regretted doing that right away. I realized that I wasn’t really that bowled over by this guy’s performance. I didn’t know who the fuck he or his fucking band was. Plus I wasn’t really all that impressed with the band for the most part.

As I mentioned before it wasn’t real clear to me at that time just who the band’s front man was. I did notice someone standing just a tad back from the group bull session that we were having with a kind of removed, amused look on his face.

He wasn’t talking to anyone so I thought maybe he was a roadie or something. I had just seen them for the first time so I didn’t remember if he was on stage or not. I was just being polite when I tried to include him in the conversation I was having with the bass player (bass player good guy). “Oh please don’t let me interrupt! He exclaimed a little too quickly, “Please go on with your conversation.”

He said this as he kind of waved me away, letting me know he was interested in watching the interaction, but not at all interested in participating in the interaction itself. He just stepped back with his arms crossed and a bemused look on his face. I like to watch the monkeys play, but if I joined them, well, they’re just so dirty….

This makes you an asshole.

This dickhead, I later found out, was the ever lovable Jeff Tweedy, leader, front man, and lead singer/songwriter for “Wilco”. I can recognize a pompous musician with great ease. I asked my friend if he was ready to split. “Yeah let’s go. These guys suck anyways.” I didn’t disagree at that moment so we said our goodbyes to the guys in the band.

As I said the other guys that were Wilco at the time were very cool, very nice guys. It was just Jay Bennett that was an egomaniac and Jeff Tweedy was just plain arrogant. He was, to me, the worst kind of arrogant also. I really try to keep up with music and had never even heard of these guys. You can almost forgive arrogance from a real celebrity, fame does do some real fucked up things to a person.

Jeff Tweedy fired Jay Bennett from Wilco soon after that. He of course sighted creative differences. The last disc they recorded together “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” contained eight of eleven cuts that were co-written by Tweedy-Bennett. The previous disc was almost completely written by the pair. It’s pretty obvious to me that those numbers suggest, along with almost universal praise for the album, that the creative differences were just what the band needed.

So what if life wasn’t a fucking fairyland? When is it? They were living a life millions of musicians and billions of wannabees would kill for. I could understand sacking someone that is making the creative process impossible. No problem.

But true collaboration requires concessions. And a true “band” requires loyalty.

There are many things a band member could do that might be construed as disloyal. Firing a band member for selfish reasons is something a band leader should really take seriously. It keeps the other band members from worrying if they’re next.

Doing solo gigs. This makes the other band members feel that they are no longer needed.

Forming a second band while you are already in a band really detracts from the whole “band” concept. I’d be real fucking worried about my job security if this happened.

You should realize that the Wilco band members that didn’t have writing credits or publishing rights don’t have royalty and residual checks coming in the mail every week.

By this time Jeff Tweedy was a rich man and his band mates were not (this part I did research). After firing Jay Bennett, Tweedy went on to write almost all of the Wilco songs exclusively. Jeff Tweedy was now “Wilco” personified.

And Jay Bennett is dead.

Somehow Jay Bennett was having a hard time affording his health costs. This is right after co-writing an album that sold 500,000 copies. Just before he died of an accidental overdose Jay sued Wilco for $50,000.00 in unpaid royalties.

The Tweedy-Bennett collaborations yielded more sales than just about all the other albums combined*.

Four of the twelve songs on “Sky Blue Sky” the credits are listed as (“Tweedy, Wilco”).

Sure sounds like “HIMSELF” and “them” to me. Talk about being thrown a bone. I’m just using simple deduction here (I’m guessing), but I would think that the writing credit “Wilco” refers to everyone in the band except Tweedy. There were six other people in the band besides Tweedy. That means six people split the royalties from four songs on their worst selling album to date. That is what is known as “Getting Fucked” in the music business. What a guy!

There are a lot of musicians that write songs that are long, drawn-out, and boring. But they’re not disloyal, pompous, control freaks. In one documentary Tweedy, during one of his solo appearances, chastises the audience for talking while he’s playing his precious oh-so-important songs.

One fan jokingly shouts out some reference to marijuana. Tweedy takes this personally and with extreme arrogance asks this “moron” “Maybe you didn’t know I just got out of Rehab? It was on the crawl on CNN, the CNN news crawl.”

Tweedy says this like it is common knowledge. If you are at a Jeff Tweedy show and you don’t know his personal history or have to talk to someone while “HIMSELF” is singing one of his boring-ass songs, you may just get chastised from the stage by the singer “HIMSELF”.

If this is “Rock-n-Roll” then I’m going to go get a haircut. Then cut my wrists.












*With the demise of real music sales due to file-sharing most CD sales figures are obsolete.

Is That Road Kill In Your Pocket or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

Is That Road Kill In Your Pocket or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

I just finished writing a very well received guide to testicular discomfort experienced by men. Well, guys that actually have hair on their balls (interesting emails on that one), but I digress. I think that it was a very honest account of a fairly private matter. Private to men, anyways.

There has always been one thing about women that I still do not understand to this very day. I might as well just blurt it out because this discussion is never going to get off the ground if I don’t.

Why don’t women wear underwear sometimes?

Laugh all you want but I really just can’t think of more than one maybe two reasons. I mean if you and your beau want to go out and get freaky-deaky with some semblance of ease, okay, forget the drawers. But can’t you just as easily slip them off? It’s not like you’ll be wearing giant work boots with a skirt (most of you anyways).

The risk must far outweigh the reward. Is there some prize for having a “mountain air”, “spring fresh” snootch? I’m sure it would be greatly appreciated, as a matter of fact I know it is, but rewarded? I would think you’d have to be pretty damned confident to go out on the town sans panties.

I mean, there’s plenty of good freakin’ reasons to wear underwear unless there’s some new totally fucked-up fad I haven’t heard about yet. Even if it is for some sexual reason aren’t there panties that are pretty much just dental floss and a postage stamp? I don’t think they’d get in the way; determination would take care of that P.D.Q.

Could it simply be the breeze? I could see where that would be a very attractive incentive. It would certainly put a big smile on my face, but I’ve never heard this used as a reason. I’m actually so in tune with the whole “breeze” idea that I just had to form my own opinion. Plus I finally had an excuse to try wearing a skirt!

Didn’t quite turn out the way I had hoped. First of all, guys, the way we are built? There’s just too damned much package sticking out all over the place. Not even in the same direction! You’d think we would have gotten together on this issue and made a decision, but no! Some guys “dress” to the left, some to the right, some have to tuck it into their socks. With some poor bastards it doesn’t make any difference. Ooofa. Then some dudes make the mistake of placing “it” or “dressing” not to the left or right side, but straight down the middle.

This causes “Hook Dick”. Stop laughing. It’s not funny.

Oh shit, it’s fucking hysterical if it’s not your problem. And just a quick note: it’s not my problem either and I have the pictures to prove it, lots of them. That website, however, is still under construction!


The only reason for women not to wear panties I can ever remember hearing was to eliminate panty lines. Are they that unsightly? Is there a man on earth that would let a panty line prevent him from trying to reach the Promised Land? No. There is not. The only time this happened, and it well could be the start of this craze, was when a celebrity of note picked up a lovely woman slightly older than he was (major cougar).

But this was Hollywood. She knew people he needed and she looked just fine to him. He loved the tight pants especially. But when the panty lines turned out to be varicose veins, well, he made it a priority to have his date’s “au natural” underneath from then on. Just a tad shallow and I really wish I had just made that up.

We’ve all seen the pictures of Brittany Spears climbing out of her luxury automobile with what appears to be road kill clutched between her ample thighs. How this could be advantageous to anyone is a complete mystery to me.

Guys do not give a flying fuck for a rolling fucking donut if a woman has panty lines! It’s like that old joke where a guy at a bar rejects a “hot babe” because her fingernail polish doesn’t match her toes. It’s just not going to happen, not on our part!

Ladies, this is stuff you worry about. Not only do we not care, notice, or even bother to look at this stuff, we don’t understand why you do.

Don’t you lovely ladies know that the proper undergarment is akin to gift wrapping? There’s a billion dollar industry out there just for hot blooded males (horndogs) that would love to be surprised by their mate wearing some kinky lingerie. What’s the harm? I just thank God that there is no way to make a man look sexier by draping him in some sort of alluring undergarment, alluring to women anyways…

So if this nonsense is just for vanity’s sake I want to know just who it is that is convincing all of you gorgeous women that there is yet another freaking detail you have to worry about in order to “compete” with those “other bitches”.

There’s always some other, perceived or true, female competition and her name is usually “that skinny little bitch”. Or worse.

We haven’t even touched upon the obvious question of hygiene. I can’t begin to imagine what the cost of replacing a seat cover in Brit’s $400,000.00 McClaren/Mercedes SLR would be. You could buy Victoria’s Secret entire Spring Catalog for that kind of money!

And my God! If the interior was velour? One good joke and that car would be in the upholstery shop for a steam clean pronto! If I knew this situation existed in my presence I would do everything in my power to cause an embarrassing accident. Lampshade on the head, joy buzzer, exploding cigar, dirty jokes, whatever it took, I’d get that laughter sprinkle going if it killed me.

My vote is for covering up little muffin. Young inexperienced men, boys actually, could be scarred for life if they got an unexpected first-time up-close look at Brit’s snootch. You guys forget, those wonderful things can be very frightening when you’re a young innocent lad.

But, if you unwrap it slowly, and read the instructions carefully, or better yet have the instructions read to you, there should be no fear, and any surprises will be the good kind.

There, so if you steer clear of these “filthy little sluts” you’ll never have to worry about bedding a lass that has a snootch that looks like the bottom of your tennis shoes. Yep.




Selah.








*quick hello to rh, as: you know who you are….