Wednesday, May 18, 2005  

Rainy Days Make Me Hallucinate

Yet another grey and dismal day in New England, and somehow the thought that David Wells will be starting a baseball game in a few hours does nothing to improve my mood. It's perfect moping weather but good for nothing else. If I still wrote depressive poetry about unattainable women, I'd be in hog heaven. It's the sort of day that when I was younger would have called for drinking at 2:00 and making bad choices by 5:00. But I'm old and responsible now, so I have to swap coffee for whiskey and writing for fighting. This is, of course, subject to change if The Whiteboy starts throwing meatballs instead of binging on them. I'm always amazed there's no actual sauce on his jersey or a half-eaten sub hidden in his dugout cubby.

This is what I'm talking about. The weather makes me a hater. What do I care if DW's a chunkamunk? I should be rooting for him, sending him positive vibes Santa-Fe style. If anybody can muster love for a big bald drunk, it ought to be me. Go get 'em, Whiteboy! Put that inertia to work and get some K's at the expense of the fumbling, bumbling A's, who, I was suprised to see, are not actually managed by Walter Matthau.

You, the insomniacs, swingers, dropouts and misanthropes that make up my readership sent me reams of email about the last column. The consensus: I shouldn't be allowed to purchase, listen to, or write about music. I expected at least a little backup, but save for Brendan from Scamper, y'all mostly adopted a tough love policy. Fine. Me and Avril don't need you snobs, anyway. You'll be sorry. She's buying me skateboard lessons in exchange for helping her out with her kissing technique (too much nibbling, not enough flicking).

Good show tonight: 8:00, the Comedy Studio. Me, bodhisattva jesus DJ Hazard, and Pete Gustin from WEEI with news cameras in tow, plus a menagerie of promising newcomers and assorted riffraff. Please come out and laugh. Free admission if you say you're on the VIP list, which, as VIP list criteria go, is pretty easy. Usually there's a monetary, fame, or cup size criteria, but we're open-minded in Cambridge. So come on down with your poor, flat self, and get in on the fun.

They Hit Me Because They Love Me

I have a certain friend who is something of a muckety muck with the Red Sox. His mucketiness is such that he is, in fact, getting a World Series ring as a thank you for his services. Last night, after tricking me into a bar, he held me down, poured Black and Tans down my throat and said, "You know, you'll never see your dad's eyes light up with pride like when he sees the family name on a World Series ring." Maybe so. I'm sure it's comparable to when he sees your name and face on a third generation photocopied flyer for "Comedy Show and Free Appetizers" at a biker bar in Weymouth.

I'm not actually in Weymouth this week. Truth be told, I'm in Beverly, at some speakeasy called The Pickled Onion, and athough my Spidey sense doth tingle, I do respect any bar honest enough to put "pickled" in their name. Show's tonight, 9:00 pm, and that's it for promotion.

In re: the Avril Lavigne Incident, my wife and friends are so goddamn hip and musical that I'm embarrassed to even talk tunes with them; they all grew up in a big city, with a selection of cool radio stations, with cutting edge formats and knowledgeable DJ's. I grew up listening to KILO-94 in Colorado Springs, which somehow managed to pack 28 hours worth of Pink Floyd into a 24 hour day. Sure, you Bostonians know the Pixies and Mission of Burma, but I have yet to meet a one of you that knows that if you look at Ronnie James Dio album covers upside down, the "Dio" actually spells "Devil." And Steve Luc, I see you composing a "Well, I grew up in Oklahoma, and I still managed to know good music" comment in your head; you are an exceptional case and an indie savant, if not entirely rock autistic, so just delete that sumbitch. I tried, man. I tried. I knew there was other stuff out there, and late at night, I'd work the knobs on my parents' stereo and try to tune in the "progressive rock" station from Denver like an East German trying to find the Voice of America in 1968. I'd get massive static and could only pick out a band name here and there, never any actual music, and even back then I was too cheap to buy records based on band names alone (Butthole Surfers notwithstanding).

The point is that I'm like a battered woman when it comes to buying CD's, because of the aforementioned wife and friends. Every time I buy something, they gather in a circle and laugh and point. It's like Lord of the Flies. I download some Blue Oyster Cult, and Sam Walters smashes me in the head with a rock and takes my conch, the skinny Spanish ratfuck. So now I shop online and load and unload my shopping cart about a hundred times going, "But what if it makes them hurt me again? They're right; I am too stupid. Maroon 5, you got me hit and made me wear sunglasses!?"

But I had some gift certificates to kill off, and by God, I wanted some new music.

It's inevitable that a man my age won't know every song out there, and it's normal that I haven't heard of every new band, but man, you know you're getting old when there are entire genres of music you've never heard of. Emo? Crunk? What the fuck? (As near as I can tell, emo is like if Al-Qaida kidnapped a punk band and made them play through their set and then said, "Okay, let's do it again from the top, but this time, fag it up a little, will you?" and crunk is any song that features L'il John saying "Ye-ah").

So how'd I do? Black Eyed Peas Elephunk, Alkaline Trio Good Mourning, Green Day American Idiot, and (this is where the punching starts) My Chemical Romance Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, the latter of which prompted my loving bride to put the baby down, laugh in my face and ask, "How OLD are you?"

Comment away, but remember, you promised never with a closed fist. NEVER WITH A CLOSED FIST.

For Those About to Rock

My boy Sam Walters rocks your punk ass.

For those of you unaware, Sam is a great friend, and one hell of a comic. He began life as a hopeful, promising writer of cutting edge, Catabridgian satire, but thanks to my corrupting influence, he is now a foul-mouthed purveyor of shockingly graphic material that slaughters in roadhouses and fraternal lodges all over the Eastern seaboard. He's also the drunken fool who dropped trou to expose a star-spangled wang during my Thursday Night Fights Tribute to 9/11 a couple of years ago. And oh yeah, he writes humor columns that nobody will publish because they're too "dark."

And to answer all your many emails at once: yes, I will post another derivative-of-Hunter-Thompson column in the near future.