Set List

I’m, maybe, a bit of an over-planner in some respects. I wouldn’t say that I’m a control freak (of course I wouldn’t — I have some self-respect) but I do want to have a say in how I’m represented and shit. Who wouldn’t?!

So, I was thinking, if there’s a funeral or memorial service for yurs ever-so-humble truly, after I shuffle off this mortal coil (NOT that I’m planning on or anticipating this happening anytime soon), I’d like a few specific tunes played. 

Such as:

Tubthumping by Chumbawamba OF FUCKING COURSE! I want folks to be just a touch concerned that I might get back up again (even if I’m no more than ashes in a jar). You know, you’re never gonna keep me down!

Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London. Why? It’s fun. I love the song and I don’t need any other reason. My funeral, my choice. Got it?! Also I just love the alliteration of this line and how he shoots it out rat-a-tat-tat:
     Little old lady got mutilated late last night

There’s gotta be a whole section devoted to Queen. I mean, c’MON!

Start with We Are the Champions 

I’ve paid my dues
Time after time
I’ve done my sentence
But committed no crime

And bad mistakes
I’ve made a few (🚨understatement alert 🚨)
I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face
But I’ve come through and I mean to go on, and on, and on, and on

We are the champions, my friends
And we’ll keep on fighting ‘til the end

Yes, it's over the top, melodramatic, and just a bit preciously oh-poor-me BUT it's also awesomely anthemic. I mean, I could, whilst dead, win a bowling championship with that playing in the background and I don't bowl! Sort of like Fleetwood Mac's Tusk. Hell, let's play that one too — an ode to my marching band years.

Second Queen tune, Another One Bites the Dust 

Lastly, Fat Bottomed Girls because we make the rockin’ world go round! We abso do.

The Rolling Stones, You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Sad reality.

A few by Bowie Aladdin Sane, Panic in Detroit  (which totally got me through my last months with that jank-ass traveling carnival), and Diamond Dogs.

The Who, I’m Free 
     I’m free
     And freedom tastes of reality

Liza Minelli, Life is a Cabaret from the musical Cabaret 

Talking Heads, Burning Down the House 

Disco Inferno by The Trammps. I dunno, could be fun … a good way to liven things up, mebbe?

Run DMC/Aerosmith, Walk This Way 

Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls for their harmonies which abso-totally slay.

A Day in the Life, Beatles just because.

Doctor My Eyes, Jackson Browne

The 1812 Overture because I like cannons going off in my symphonies. OK?

And I couldn’t possibly leave out Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from Life of Brian!

Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best
And

Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the light side of life

Basically, I'd like to go out on an up note and shit. 

80-Year-Old Bouncer

Slight addendum to yesterday’s aging punks report. 

As Jen and her crew were leaving, her pal Lynn pointed out the “80-year-old” bouncer who’d been positioned between the mosh pit and the stage. Jen confirmed that the guy really was old but, all the same, looked totally beefy fit.

I allowed that, for a punk show where the average age of the audience was probably around 55 (and I’m guessing on the low side), does management really need to hire a couple of 30-year-old off-duty cop beefcakes? Also, the bouncer might have looked like he had 80 years BUT, punk ages you. I mean, take a gander at Iggy Pop. He’s 79 or 80, still alive and totally rocking out but … emmmm … dude abso looks his age. Henry Rollins? He’s around 65. He looks fully fine but def 65. 

While there are a range of emotions which power punk rock, like alienation, isolation, nihilism, despair, defiance, sarcasm I’d have to say that anger is the main driver. Being angry for seven decades takes a toll. It wears you the fuck down.

Also too, we all age differently. e.g., my friend Jenny out in Arizona who, by the by, is NOT a punk rocker — she’s my age (late 60s). How old does this traitorous babe look? Mid 50s and a young, in-shape, naturally beautiful mid-50s at that. Has she had “work” done? Does she wear makeup? Does she sacrifice virgin asparagus to Persephone during the autumn equinox. No, no, and not that I know of. She's utterly radiant. BITCH!

Me? While I wasn’t a punk rock performer I did go to my fair share of shows and was in a few mosh pits. I mostly stayed out of the them though. Dudes liked to throw elbows and smash off each other. It could get nasty. Me and my brain and spine surgery habituated bod felt that was prolly not cool. Ya know? (My comparatively accelerated aging could be due to my proximity to mosh pits — punk rock osmosis. That’s a thing, right? Possibly those 90 bazillion neurosurgeries had some sort of affect as well. Maybe.)

Some shows felt mosh pit safe and fine — irresistible even. Maybe those shouldn’t be classed as mosh pits though? Fer instance, every time I went to see Concussion Ensemble (who I’ve mentioned before — three drummers on different, elaborate kits plus, one percussionist playing found objects hanging from a clothing rack, the MOST amazing Rich Gilbert on lead guitar, a second guitarist and a bass player). I’d get right down front. I NEEDED to become one with the beat they were laying down. The rhythms, the bass lines — yeah baby, I had to merge with that shit on an atomic level. All of us in the pit were pogoing our asses off — practically moving as one. We were totally tuned in.

We were heated atomic particles vibrating faster and faster. We were waves on a hurricane ocean.

The only other time I experienced that was at TT the Bear’s, a smaller club. A hard funk-rock band with a KILLER horn section was playing. The club was packed tighter than a Tokyo subway car at rush hour. There wasn’t a tissue’s worth of space between any of us.

Normally this would freak me right the fuck out but, mes amis, those horns zoomed. They were tight and totally funked up. The drums were lit. The bass was sex.

Have you seen those videos of salmon swimming upstream to spawn? That was the club that night only set to music that you need to smoke a cigarette after — even if you don’t smoke.

Not a mosh pit in an ‘80s elbows throwing, ‘90s crowdsurfing punk sense but there was moshing. Mashing maybe?

Goddamnit, I miss music. 

 Ooh, one last thing ...  Jen wanted me to point out that in the crowdsurfing pic from Sunday's Screeching Weasel show, the surfer was a youth. Dude was in his 20s. If you zoom in — take a close look at the arms ferrying him — those aren't young people arms that are holding him up. There's some awesome symbolism right there.

This is Boston, not L.A.

Last night Jen and two of her friends from her art school days at RISD went out to see Screeching Weasel at The Middle East in Cambridge. The Queers were one of the opening bands. HOW cool!

I don’t know how old any of the founding members of either of these groups are but I figure they’ve gotta be around my age and my 50th high school class reunion’s come and gone. *dramatic sigh*

Jen said much of the audience was around her age (mid 50s) but there were younger people in the crowd as well.

When The Queers came on a mosh pit with crowdsurfing broke out. Can you fucking imagine? A mosh pit with a bunch of mostly 55-year-olds who probably had to get up for work this morning. I can only guess the amount of ibuprofen and Tylenol consumed — the number of iced, elevated limbs, and sick calls today probably comes close to last night’s ticket sales.

Is this anything like our mothers getting mondo psyched to go see Tom Jones in concert? You know, swooning dramatically when he broke into It’s Not Unusual?

NO — NOT. AT. ALL!!!

In other, not fun, punk news, on Saturday the founding member of The Freeze, Clif "Hanger" Croce, passed away. 

The band, originally from Cape Cod, then Boston and now LA. Clif was influenced by The Ramones, The Clash and other early punk bands, Clif — he put together The Freeze in 1978. His was the title track for This Is Boston, Not L.A, the hardcore punk compilation released in 1982. Man o man, I remember that well. I moved to Boston in late 1980. In ‘82 I was living in Kenmore Square — punk central. That anthem — This Is Boston, Not L.A — was everywhere.

If you dance the same and dress the same
It won't be long 'til you are the same
You look the same and act the same
There's nothing new and you're to blame
This is Boston, not L.A.
This is Boston, fuck L.A.

"It is with profound sadness that we share the news that Clif “Clif Hanger” Croce has died of natural causes. He passed away in his sleep early on the morning of Saturday, October 17, 2026. 

As Clif’s friends and bandmates, we were constantly amazed by how his mind worked. He loved performing our songs and he wrote some of the greatest punk rock lyrics…ever. There was truly no one like Clif and he will be sorely missed."
~ Tom Reardon, The Freeze, bass

"Clif Hanger was an incredible talent. Singer guitar player songwriter. He was one of the best!

Clif was his happiest when we were in the studio. He’s been a huge part of my musical journey since I was about 13 years old. I will be forever grateful to be part of his."
~ Bill Close, The Freeze, guitar, vocals, bass

Bill Close was Clif Hanger’s principal songwriting collaborator. Will he keep the band going now that Clif’s gone?

In other news this morning …

Per Dutch psychologist and writer Paul van der Meer on Threads:

Semafor reports that CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pushed journalists to investigate alleged ties between Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and the Muslim Brotherhood.

She also reportedly directed staff to pursue the debunked conspiracy theory that Texas Democrat James Talarico was in a mental health facility.

CBS is Trump sponsored media (AKA Pedophile sponsored media).

Bari’s wife must be so proud of her. Maybe Nellie Bowle is just the same as Bari — a willing mouthpiece for the billionaire and trillionaire autocrats of our current kakistocracy. 

 They have two children — a boy a girl. Future clueless entitled Republicans of America. IF there’s an America when those kids grow up. 

Also attacking El-Sayed, or making a bad attempt at it anyway, was little Tommy Teepell. Who’s that? Why, he’s Josh Hawley’s (Running Man-MO) former operations director and son of Timmy Teepall, a Republican strategist with strong ties to Christian Nationalists. Little Tommy was a Republican plant and not a particularly talented one at that. The GOP — just a load of embarrassing, nasty, dumbfuckian slimeballs at this point.

I get the news I need on the weather report

I *think* we’re past the worst of the nor’easter here in coastal Massachusetts. The storm’s not wholly done with us BUT wind gusts have climbed down from their peak of 65 mph in our relatively calm neighborhood. We’re down to about 30 mph now. No trees have toppled but a couple branches came down. No damage to house or cars though. YEA us. AND we haven’t lost power! More yea.

Apart from dashing next door to watch teevee last night, I haven’t been outside. My balance is already banjaxed to Hell and back. I don’t need to give Mother Nature a shot at toppling me. As much as I’ve absolutely LOVED watching the bodacious breakers in the past, just standing in awe of them, I’m now just fine looking at pictures, thenkyouverymuch.

I gotta ask WHY, during these big storms, does the news always focus on Scituate, a town about 17 miles down the coast from us? Wouldn’t it be more dramatic to get shots from P-town or the Vineyard? Ya know, farther out into the ocean? Jen’s sister and fam, by the by, live in Scituate but, wisely, NOT on the coast. 

Yesterday on the coast in Scituate

Just so ya know, Scituate is pronounced "SITCH-oo-it" (or Sih-chew-itt). It’s the anglicized version of the Wampanoag word for "cold brook.”

As you may remember, Valhalla is located one house back from the seawall. We’re on a bay so we don’t often get the crazy kind of mini tsunami action that they see in Scituate.

The worst that happened yesterday was, weirdly, our water pressure was low so I didn’t get a shower. Yes, I could have just gone outside BUT I’m not insane – it was cold out there!

Paul Simon’s song Only Living Boy In New York came into my head for obvious nor’easter-y reasons this morning. When I looked up the lyrics I found the meaning, the inspiration. It’s about Garfunkel breaking up the duo to become an actor (which didn’t ultimately work out for him). It’s about Simon's loneliness, maybe feeling abandoned, and wishing your ex well. Can you say POIGNANT!

Tom, get your plane right on time
I know your part’ll go fine
Fly down to Mexico
Da-n-da-da-n-da-n-da-da and here I am,
The only living boy in New York

I get the news I need on the weather report
Oh, I can gather all the news I need on the weather report
Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile
Da-n-do-da-n-do-da-n-do here I am
The only living boy in New York

Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where
And we don’t know where
Here I am
Half of the time we’re gone, but we don’t know where
And we don’t know where

What a great song. I can hear it in my head. 'Scuse me now, I gotta grab that long overdue rain room time.

Lust for Life

It’s Monday and I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to face the week. I know, who is?

Got some, possibly, maybe/hopefully just annoying news about one of the endless medical tests I’m subjected to on the regular. Now I need to contact my new PCP and see what he has to say. I’m not yet convinced the young medic is up to the Level 10 jigsaw puzzle of diagnostics that I present – we'll see. It appears that, at the least, I’ll need to have a full colonoscopy done. WHAT FUN!

💩 groan 💩

Meantime, my foot’s improving. This means it’s easier for me to walk (gee duh, no kidding?) and exercise. That leads to an improvement in my crap mood. We can say so long to Miss Forever CrankyPants! YEA! I asked my podiatrist if it’s normal that it’s taking so damn long to heal. Dr. Hartigan, who is, perhaps, even older than me (HOW is that even possible?!) responded, “well, we’re not 22 anymore.” Gee rilly? //sigh//

 I asked if he had any tricks up his sleeve to fix that.

No, he does not. How about some Star Trek dermal regenerators, focused ultrasound devices, and tricorder action, hmmmm? Nope, sorry. Damn.

I firmly believe a banana nut muffin would make me feel ALLLLLL better right now. It would give me back my energy and lust for life. Yeah, me and Iggy Pop!

Cause I've a lust for life
I got a lust for life
Got a lust for life
Oh, a lust for life
Oh, a lust for life
A lust for life 
I got a lust for life
A lotta lust for life 

Rainy Days and Mondays

That song, Rainy Days and Mondays by The Carpenters came out in 1971. It played incessantly on my little transistor radio that didn’t pick up the 70 long mile away cool FM stations from the city. 

What could I hear when I got my hands on a better radio? The Doors, Riders on the Storm. Led Zeppelin, When the Levee Breaks and Stairway to Heaven. Rolling Stones, Brown Sugar and Wild Horses. Marvin Gaye, Mercy Mercy Me and What’s Going On. The Who, Baba O’Reilly and Won’t Get Fooled Again. Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Maggie May, Rod Stewart. Ain't No Sunshine, Bill Withers. Sly & The Family Stone, Family Affair, Cat Steven AKA Yusuf Islam, Peace Train.

I had just turned 13 but even I could tell the difference between Hallmark card, corporate pablum and art. 

I was stunned when, years later, people whose options I truly respected seriously claimed Karen Carpenter was an underrated drummer and praised her vocal abilities. But … but … their songs were nothing more than elevator music, grocery shopping and dentist office soundtracks. They were torpid, beige, approximations of life and NOW you’re praising her? Mes amis, Karen was no Terry Bozzio, Steve Gadd or Elvin Jones – she was no Tina Turner, Julie London or Annie Lennox but sure, yes, she definitely had talent. 

I only mention it BUT you can have angelic, high functioning pipes and fab abilities but if you lack verve – if you can’t tap into the juice of life – your music, art, writing, whatever, won’t have soul. Without soul, it will NOT live. DEAD TUNE WALKING! At best you've got something that's gonna start reeking if you don't bin it soon! I'm tellin' you.

I just read Carpenter’s Wikipedia entry. She died in ’83, a month shy of her 33rd birthday. Her long battle with anorexia nervosa finally did her in. Anorexia won.

Two years later, the coroner told colleagues that Carpenter's heart failure was caused by repeated use of ipecac syrup, an over-the-counter emetic drug often used to induce vomiting in cases of overdosing or poisoning.
~~~
Carpenter's friends were convinced that she had abused laxatives and thyroid medication to maintain her weight and felt that the problem had begun after her marriage began to fail. (source) 

Man, I thought she’d died in the late ‘70s. I guess that was just her career.

What brings this up today? It's Monday. It's raining and I'm a little down. Possibly my minor sad is because tomorrow's my birthday and I really thought I'd be a LOT farther along on my recovery path at this point. I blame my stupid, asshole toe.

Weird trivia for the day – Karen and I were born in the same town and in the very same hospital, eight years apart. Weird.

Oh yeah, I'm wicked deep

A person posted this question on Threads:

Who are the five writers who made you?

Oh please, that is such a limited way of looking at things. There are works (or a singular work) by a great many authors that have really spoken to me, caused me to stop and think deeply, reconsider and/or totally expand on my beliefs. There are also myriad books that transport me — whether it’s due to the incredible way the author wields words or the heights of creativity they’ve attained.

But to ask or assume that an author or any artist “made” me — as though they’re some grand Poobah of a cult leader — is just wicked odd. Sounds like we're getting into Scientology, Mormon or MAGA territory here. I’d like to get the questioner’s definition/explanation of what they mean by “made.” Possibly they meant to say "influenced" or "greatly inspired?"

What are five books that have made me think a LOT? So much so that I come back and reread them ... maybe even get something new out of them too.

1. Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
2. Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
3. Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
4. John Scalzi, Old Man’s War
5. Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries

There are are so many others:

•  Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale 
•  Virginia Woolf, Orlando 
•  Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-five 
•  Catherynne M. Valente, Space Opera
•  Philip K. Dick, Man in the High Castle 
•  George Orwell, 1984

to name just half a dozen.

That’s not even touching on Shakespeare, fer fuck’s sake!

Do you get the same thing out of, fer instance, the B side of Abbey Road or The Downward Spiral every time you listen to it? Or, at different times does it hit you in a fresh way? I kept discovering new things on repeat Aladdin Sane listenings — at least I did until my hearing went kaput. Same with David Byrne's The Forest.

How about a Klimt, Kandinsky or a Kokoschka painting. Do you see the exact same things when you come back and look at them 10, 20 or 30 years after first seeing them? Do they tell you something new? These are three painters, amongst many, who spoke deeply to me. My own work looks nothing like theirs but still they talked to me as did Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Ernst, etc.

“Who made you” is a rookie question. I’m in the back end of life — there aren’t five writers, five artists, five composers/musicians, five anyTHING that made me who I am today.  More like 5,000,000 plus me.

What makes anyone is a wickedly complex mixture not unlike the intensely complicated chemistry that goes into making a pot come out of a kiln a certain way.

It depends on:

• The clay body – the minerals in the clay can interact with the glaze layered over top.
• The base chemistry of the glaze plus the colorants and opacifiers. 
• The firing method – just to start, the oxygen levels inside the kiln.
• The firing temperature. 
• The pot’s placement in the kiln.
• The glazes that are on the pots that are next to your pot. Depending on the chemical compositions of each, the firing temperature, the kiln atmosphere, the glaze used on one pot can flash/interact with the glaze on another. This can be really awesome or … you know … not, depending on your needs and expectations.
• How fast or slow the kiln was fired and left to cool down. 

And this is putting it incredibly simply.

So, like yeah. Who we are, what “makes” each of us who we are can’t be reduced to a list of five people, events or things, let alone authors. That’s just abso-fucking-ridiculous. 

If we’re gonna be all blindingly reductive, well, let's fucking go! The five big-ass events/people, outside of my immediate family, that “made” me who I am today, are:

1. Martin Luther King’s assassination on April 4, 1968 (so I guess I should send James Earl Ray a, wut, note of acknowledgement? He's been dead for 28 years. I'm a little late.)
2. RFK’s assassination on June 5, 1968 (same note to Sirhan Sirhan? Dude's 82-years old and in a state prison in San Diego. I guess he'll die there.)
3. The 1973 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee by the American Indian Movement (AIM). 
4. The humor of Jonathan Winters, George Carlin, and the Smothers Brothers.
5. Paul Simon, The Beatles, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and Led Zeppelin.  

Also, let's give a big, special shout-out to neurofibromatosis type 2! 

And that’s my short list. Of fucking course.

White Trash America

Construction crews have begun the next step in the white trashification of the White House. They’re building a “cage” on the lawn for an Ultimate Fighting Championship event which will be part of Pedo’s “Great American State Fair” – the Freedom 250 extravaganza.

I hear the concert series portion of the 16 day event, announced with an array of big, BIG 🙄 performers (i.e not the usual losers seen with Pedo), is turning into the Great American Shit Show.

At least seven of the nine performers – people like Martina McBride, Morris Day and The Time, The Commodores, and Young MC have already backed out. Why? Turns out they were misled.

The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event. And despite the claims by the organizers that the event is nonpartisan, SPIN magazine describes it as ‘Trump-backed.’ (source) 

Freedom 250 was launched by Pedo late in ‘25. It purposely, deceptively describes itself as a "national, non-partisan organization leading the celebration of our Nation's 250th birthday." Shitzenpantz appointed Keith Krach, who served as an under secretary of state during his first term, as the organization's CEO. Make no mistake, this IS a Trump-backed org and anything to do with Trump is ALL about him.

The goal of the event is to make Dipshit Demento Donnie look magnificent and munificent – the grand impresario, the magnanimous dictator providing his adoring subjects entertainments to celebrate that he allows them to live in his country.

In order to get real, actual talent though, the organizers had to hide the fact that the concert series was a Trump deal. No sane artist wants to be associated with that world destroying, idiot madman. If nothing else, playing on Donnie’s stage is career suicide. At least one group wasn’t even asked about performing – their name was just included on the posters.

Can you say “desperate” kids? Sure ya can.

“Unfortunately, what was presented to us as a celebration of our country has evolved into something much more divisive than what I agreed to be a part of,” the frontman (Bret Michaels) of the band Poison said in a statement on social media.
   ~~~
The first to drop out, hours after Wednesday’s announcement, was Morris Day, who called his scheduled participation in the summer concert series on Washington DC’s National Mall a baseless “rumor”. 

Later on Wednesday, Young MC posted a message that began: “I have informed my agents that I will not be performing at the Freedom 250 event.” 

“The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event,” he added, before casting doubt on the claim from Freedom 250, the group created by Donald Trump to organize the celebration of the US’s semiquincentennial, that the series was nonpartisan. 

And on Thursday, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory, Martina McBride and Milli Vanilli all either dropped out or expressed surprise that they had ever been booked.  (source) 

Now, if the audience was just Pedo’s halfwit, white trash MAGAts, the planners could’ve put any two-bit talentless hack on stage. Hell, MAGAts’ll cheer and dance to a stack of yodeling turds – e.g. “Kid” Rock, Jason Aldean, Ted Nugent. Why didn’t they book these clowns? Because those barking butt plugs don’t draw the big crowds they’re looking for. Those old boys are crowd repellents.

Optics would be muy, muy bad. A serious embarrassment for Dear Leader.

Vanilla Ice will still be performing. I know. WHO?! Bobby Van Winkle is almost 60-years-old now. His big claim to fame is the song Ice Ice Baby which he wrote when he was 16 – 42 years ago. That’s just ridiculously sad. It reeks of all those pathetic old dudes who still brag about their glory days on the gridiron way back in high school. Bobby can feel reassured that he’s still hip and now – the infamous puppy killer Kristie Noem and undead Stephen Miller enjoyed grooving to his four decade old artistic spewings at Mar-a-Lago on New Years Eve. 

I saw someone describing the White House’s decor as "Temu Versailles.” With the big “wrestling” cage and stands going up out front though, it’s beginning to look more like a traveling carnival had a headlong collision with an ‘80s rapper and a museum dedicated to Liberace, curated by three totally tweaked out meth heads. All of the over-the-top bling, none of the pizzazz.

What can you expect from a man who, as John Oliver put it, looks like a clown made of mummified foreskin and cotton candy.

Body Count

I don’t remember any of their songs but then, in 1991, I wasn’t into rap or thrash metal. Apart from hometown Boston bands (Concussion Ensemble, The Zulus, Mission of Burma, etc, etc.), I was into Talking Heads, Pearl Jam (Ten had just come out), Paul Simon (Rhythm of the Saints came out the year before), Morphine (a Boston band, by the by) and the more experimental sounds of Brian Eno, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Kronos Quartet, etc.

Back to Body Count though — their biggest hits were Cop Killer, Body Count's in the House, Institutionalized 2014, Talk Shit, Get Shot, No Lives Matter, and their heavy version of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb. 

Jesus, I would do serious damage to be able to hear all of these right now!

WHY does this come up this morning? I saw another one of those ultra obvi, I’m-so-desperately-insecure-and-I-listen-to-WAY-too many-“alpha”-brocasts-about-how-to-get-girls-and-make-them-my-sex-slave/mother-replacement. 

Here’s the post:

Friend is in an absolute pickle rn…

He’s been on like 7+ dates with this girl, really likes her, everything’s going great.

Then last night for whatever reason he asked her body count.

70+.

Now he wants to end it immediately.

She’s 27, he’s 30.

Is this valid or is he being soft?

Dude is clearly asking for himself. He’s looking for support for his knee-jerk mysogynistic, micro-dicked, red pill/Andrew Tate influenced ego but doesn’t want to expose himself to the ridicule he so richly deserves. What gives the game away?

He’s dead specific about the number of dates his “friend” had with the woman – seven. If he really was asking for advice about a chum, he’d be more general. e.g., “a few dates” or “several dates.”

The “friend” asks the body count question for “whatever reason” – implying that the answer holds no weight – they're just curious – but on hearing an answer that intimidates, he wants to run away. THIS is the big reveal. The aged out hemotional teen is wearing an ultra thin cloak of I’m-hip-I’m-cool-just-curious but it blew right off with a light breeze of reality.

Threads gave him the advice he deserved. Some examples:

I mean, he can call it off if he wants but give me her number because 70+ murders without getting caught is a spectacular run.

If you drew a Venn diagram of "Dudes who question & judge body-count" and "Dudes who get shitty if a woman doesn't "put out" by the second date" it would be a circle.

Wow, she got away with that many and hasn’t been caught yet? My question is – where did she put the bodies??

If a guy asks my body count, I'm saying 1,000 and he can fuck all the way off as I've just lost all interest.

Did she go to an assassin school taught by Black Widow? 70+ is impressive at the tender age of 27, without being caught. He should be impressed!!!

I mean, clearly she's a pro. Over 70+ murders and not caught by age 27? She's definitely an elite assassin or a mastermind serial killer. Bro is already cooked if it's the latter and she's on the hunt for her next target.

Best of luck to him surviving.

What sane, mature adult could take a body count question seriously? How fucking puerile!

No one’s ever asked me but if they had, I probably would have answered “I stopped counting after the first hundred” and then walked right out the door. 

What I really wanna know is this – are reviews involved? Can they be? If/when men ask for your body count can you respond that you will answer him as soon as he submits his numbers along with the corresponding Yelp, Google, and Consumer Reports reviews/reports?

What’s good for the gander/goose is good for the goose/gander, amiright?

Steppin' Stones

Woke up with Micky Dolenz singing (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone in my head. Christ on a melting clock, I loved the Monkees and was so disappointed to find out that they weren’t a real band. Mike Nesmith was a real musician and songwriter. So was Peter Tork (bass, guitar, banjo, keyboards, and French horn). Micky Dolenz was an actor who learned to play the drums for his part on the show. Davy Jones? He was a jockey who could sing. Behind the scenes, other songwriters wrote their tunes and session musicians covered everything except the vocals.

I was a kid when I found this out but it bugged the hell out of me. I wanted them to be a real band, songwriters, genuine wacky creative talents.

Similarly, when I found out that Art Garfunkel was getting songwriting credits on all of Paul Simons tunes in the ‘60s but was just contributing vocals, I was pissed. Yes, dude had a lovely choirboy voice. He provided a sweet voice BUT he didn’t co-write those poetic songs. I hated that my girlfriend Jean went all swoony over him – acting like he was more than a singer.

Mind you, being a talented performer is grand – Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra, Joe Cocker anyone? Just don’t try to put yourself out there as an original artist. Fer gawd’s sake.

Maybe it’s like it’s Patrick Stewart playing Oberon in a A Midsummer Night's Dream. I’m certain he was absolutely brilliant but he didn’t write the play – Shakespeare did. Stewart would NEVER in a zillion years claim or imply that he’d had anything to do with the writing of the play though.

The songwriting team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote a lot of the Monkees’ songs. Neil Diamond, Carole Bayer Sager, Neil Sedaka, Harry Nilsson, Carole King and her husband Gerry Goffin also wrote for them.

The teevee show was cancelled after two short seasons. Frank Zappa supposedly asked Dolenz (who, remember, had only just learned to play for the show) to be his drummer but I can’t believe this was a serious invitation. Either that or Frank was tripping his auditory cortex clean off. I mean, Zappa wrote compositions with time signatures like 7/4, 11/8, and 19/16. Yeah Micky, that invitation wasn’t meant to be taken so earnestly. 

An aside: One of Zappa’s drummer was Terry Bozzio who I had the unbelievable luck to see at a drum festival in Amsterdam. This was probably three million years ago when early hominids were first sparking doobies along the Leidseplein. Bozzio was massively BRILLIANT. His playing was fucking transportational. My soul soared into the stratosphere. Swear ta Bast!

This interview with Micky Dolenz at The Guardian’s  website reminded me of their movie Head. I saw that way back in 1980 or ’81 at some odd little backstreet cafe/movie house in Cambridge’s Central Square. Back then, Central Square was still gritty with The Red Bookstore (located near the Massachusetts chapter of the Communist Party), the Orson Welles Cinema (picketed by nuns for showing a movie portraying the Virgin Mary as a pregnant basketball player), and Mary Chung’s – the small, dark Chinese restaurant in which I regularly dined.

In any case, Head, I dimly recall, was a real trip and I’d love to see it again. It was written by Jack Nicholson. Apparently I can watch the whole thing on YouTube. Huh. Waddyaknow.

Mike Nesmith died from heart failure in 2021. He was 78.
Peter Tork died in 2019 from a rare cancer – adenoid cystic carcinoma – at the age of 77.
Davy Jones died in 2012 of a heart attack. He was just 66 years old.

In the dream previous to the (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone one, I was designing business cards for my company’s rebranding. We were no longer going to be an offset print and copy house. Nope. We were going to specialize in assassinations and demolitions of mega-corporations.

I was kind of stuck on the logo. The old one (a cartoonish English Bobby) just didn’t seem to fit the new biz identity. Huh.

Honestly Now

I understand there was a big, BIG concert last night that was briefly interrupted by a football game. Green Day opened for Bad Bunny and I saw that Lady Gaga made an appearance too. Cool. 

Jen and Oni watched the show and said it was malvada fabulosa. They slept through the game, of course. I don’t really understand why the musicians felt they needed to stick a football game in the middle of their show but, whatever. Maybe it was some kind of marketing gimmick. A bid to widen the artists’ audiences?

In other wonderful world of sports news, I understand that VP Many Names has won the gold, as expected, in the Downhill Douche competition. He also was the recipient of a giant wall of boos, not that anyone watching the broadcast here in the U.S. would have heard it. Reports are that, unlike viewers in Canada, the UK and, presumably, the rest of the world, NBC muted the crowd’s thumbs-down to the world’s most socially inept, offensive politician (apart from Prez Pedo and his cabinet of meth addled sewer clowns). Yep, NBC is covering for asshole JD. It’s not just American citizens who despise this lying-ass, money-grubbing, soulless, suck-up to pedos. The whole world sees who he is and wants to wipe him off the bottom of their shoes – stat!

We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

Meanwhile, Israel continues to dismember Palestine. Looks like Palestinian land is gonna be up for sale to Israeli settlers soon. I suspect Jared Kushner and his corporate buddies just so happen to be deemed Israeli settlers now.

We are at day 1,446 of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Zelenskyy said that, in this past week, Russia launched more than 2,000 attack drones, 1,200 guided aerial bombs, and 116 missiles at Ukraine’s cities and villages. They're NOT interested in peace. DUH!

And Hillel and his lovely wife are still in Thailand where it’s warmer than 18º. I shouldn’t complain. Yesterday’s high, here in Valhalla was 4º. 18º is practically a heat wave. Woohoo.

Between all the snow, ice, arctic blasts off the bay and temps that would freeze a polar bear's ass, my sinuses are utterly fucked and I’m distinctly disinclined to go outside. Ten is not keen on taking our Mini out on the road either. Yes, this means I’ve canceled my dental surgery yet again. I feel rather embarrassed about this but it just can’t be helped. First cancellation – I was in hospital with my foot issue. Second cancellation – blizzard.

So, it’s understandable and not really my fault, right?! I think I’d be less anxious, more at ease about dental surgeries if they’d just knock me the fuck out for this shit. WHY do I have to be awake for this kind of torture?

Honestly! 

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

I could NOT sleep a wink last night. What the Bast-forsaken-fuck was that all about?! 

I suspect my inability to surrender to Hypnos had much to do with the fact that I had an absolutely fabulous, foofy coffee drink (okay, I had two of them WITH whipped cream!) at breakfast yesterday. Yes, these were caffeinated beverages. I don’t do the jitter juice anymore and, apparently, my system is now quite the delicate little flower when it comes to even the faintest of these demonic coffee elixirs.

Rats!

So then, what did I do all night besides fuss about my taxes? (which I’ve neglected to do for the past couple of years. HEY, I’ve been busy with surgeries and shit! Life’s been a bit overwhelming. Cut me some motherfucking slack!)

Well, I thought about this…what IF…. just WHAT IF I could get my hearing back for a day, what would I listen to? Okay, let’s make it a few days…maybe more.

On the classical front I’d start with:
Liszt – Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor, Totentanz 
Handel – Messiah 
Vivaldi – The Four Seasons 
Orff – O Fortuna (Carmina Burana) 
Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring 
Steve Reich – Different Trains 
David Byrne – The Forest 

I’ve never been a Jazzhead but I’d really love to hear these again:
Dave Brubeck – Time Out 
Ornette Coleman – Tone Dialing
Miles Davis – Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain, Bitches Brew

And then we move on to a bunch of other favorites:
Dylan – Blood on the Tracks, Desire, Bringing It All Back Home, Hard Rain
Paul Simon – There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years, Graceland, The Rhythm of the Saints
Beatles – B side of Abbey Road
Stones – Let It Bleed
The Who – Who’s Next
Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin III, Led Zeppelin IV (EXCEPT for Stairway to Heaven – I honestly never need to hear that one ever again.)

Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Brain Salad Surgery
David Bowie – Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, Station to Station, Heroes
King Crimson – a few cuts off the albums Discipline and Beat
Brian Eno – Here Come the Warm Jets 
Robert Fripp – Exposure 

Linda Thompson and Richard Thompson – Shoot Out the Lights
Richard Thompson – Hand of Kindness, Rumor and Sigh
Leo Kotke – That's What 
Tracy Chapman 
Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense 
Los Lobos – La Pistola y El Corazón
Morphine – Good, Cure for Pain

Belly – King (or Star or both!)
Concrete Blonde – Mexican Moon
Concussion Ensemble – Tragically, I don’t think there are any extant, decent recordings of this MOST awesome band. They were composed of three standing drummers (each kit distinct), one standing percussionist with a rack of random metal objects and other bits plus two guitarists and a bass player. No singer. They were spectacular!
Pearl Jam – Ten
Nine Inch Nails (NIN) – The Downward Spiral 

And I’d love to watch the Beastie Boys video Awesome, I Fuckin’ Shot That! and be able to actually hear it.

This is, of course, just off the top of my head as I watched the digital clock flip later and later to earlier and earlier while the sky got lighter and lighter.

*sigh* no more coffee for Donna.