How To Be a Dick: Holiday Edition

Ah, it’s that time of year again! Lights have been hung, menorahs have been lit, shoppers have been trampled and children everywhere have been traumatized by being thrust into a fat stranger’s lap. What better time is there to exercise your inalienable right to be an entitled, oversensitive, undeniable dickhead? It’s you right, no, it’s your job to make this time of year as stressful as possible for everyone around you. To ensure maximum impact, you should follow the five simple steps bellow!

Enjoy.

1. Wait until 8pm on the night before the holiday to begin to do your shopping. This will ensure that you can maximize your opportunity to be a total dick and offend the absolute greatest amount of people. Go out without a plan and expecting to be able to find every item you want in the exact color, size and design that you desire. Expect and demand that hottest toy, the one which has been virtually sold out since October, be readily available to you at a moment’s notice and in a perfect box.

2. Be nasty when in public. Walk through the mall, the bank, the grocery store and anywhere else you can run into a variety of people and act as though you are walking through a veritable miasma. This is your holiday of choice and these people are in your way, invading your personal space and generally making you wait an extra 2.5 minutes to get to the item you are entitled to purchase. Sneer at everyone who dares to smile at you. Bonus points if you can direct your shit smelling ire at a child under 5.

3. Once in line, stare angrily at the person in front of you. How dare they get there first? Don’t they know that you are on a very important errand and need to purchase your tickle me whatever first? Sigh loudly. Shift your weight and look at your watch repeatedly and in an exaggerated manner. If the line moves and they don’t, clear your throat and aggressively inch forward. Make that asshole in front of you know that they have absolutely ruined your day, your holiday, your children’s holiday and your great grandma’s holiday.

4. In the parking lot, drive the wrong way down the aisle, looking for a close spot. When you don’t find one that is vacant, begin scouting for people who may be loading up. Find the person with the greatest amount of packages and pull right up to their car. Once they begin loading up, it’s time to let them know that they are not doing it quickly enough. Lean on your horn, shout obscenities at them, shake your fist angrily and throw a tantrum until they are ready to pull out. Leave them just barely enough room to do so safely. As they are pulling away, give them the middle finger. Bonus points if you can do this with a family with children or someone who is elderly or infirm.

5. Once you get to the cashier and present your items to him or him, point out every single packaging flaw and demand a discount. How dare they not have the forethought to package these items in something that will operate like titanium in the store yet melt like butter when opened? If you have found something you want to purchase but not in the correct size or color, give the cashier hell. They should have known you were coming and help the item for you. Everyone knows that people who work retail are nothing but slaves to your whims! Once you are finished haranguing them about the lack of selection, the lack of colors and the general atmosphere in the store, demand that they gift wrap your items for free, place each of them into their own separate bag and magically teleport them to your car. If they acquiesce to your demands, make sure you let them know that they are not doing it quickly enough!

BONUS ROUND: After you have paid for your items and ensured that they are all suitably perfect, the cashier or another store employee may offer you some sort of seasonal well wishes. If they wish you a happy or merry specific holiday, become ridiculously offended that they have chosen a holiday which you do not celebrate. Let them know that they are racist and just as bad as Hitler, Stalin and the Heat Miser combined. Demand to see a manager. Yell at them and then go home to write a nasty letter to the local paper about how offended you are. Alternately, if they wish you happy holidays and you happen to be Christian, freak the hell out on them. How dare they engage in the war on Christmas? Don’t they know that without your god being born they would not have jobs? They are trying to rob you of your right to celebrate an imaginary birth! Remind them of the reason for the season and demand to see their manager. Give him or her holy hell (no pun intended) and then rush home to write angry letters to the local papers, Bill O’Reily and the Pope. Waste no time! This is war!

-Shannon (Who wants to remind you that the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear)

Jukebox Hero: Special Holiday Edition; The Bootlicker:

As we close in on the holidays, it is inevitable that some people may lose their bearings as the holidays approach. Those of us that have worked in retail or a restaurant quickly discover on Black Friday that this is going to be a long month, with an even worse soundtrack. If you're like me, you may wander the mall thinking, “why does the sound of Christmas music and the obsessive devotion to economic materialism always make me wish for a nuclear holocaust.” or, “Am I crazy or am I floating in a sea of the oblivious.” and then sooner or later, “I’ve got to get the fuck out of here!!”

Well there's no need to fear ‘cause the Dead Guy is here, and man do I have the solution to your lack of good tunes this holiday season, The Melvins' Bootlicker (1999). Nothing makes me enjoy the holiday season, much like this masterpiece. It is the second installment in a trilogy, which includes The Maggot (1999) and The Crybaby (2000). The fact that these albums were released only months, not years, apart are a testament to the musical prowess of the Blitzkrieg we call The Melvins. With songs like “Toy” and “Black Santa” the mellow, melodic sound of this album will entice you to enjoy it near the warmth of a hearth, while you sip on a hot toddy. It relaxed and mischievous feel will evoke the simpler times of your childhood, as The Melvins prove once again that they have more range in their pinkies then most bands have at all. Join The Melvins on this weird, psychedelic and surreal journey though the innocence of our childhood imaginations, while you enjoy flashbacks of that time you where tripping during that sweet ass snowstorm.

I was introduced to the Melvins by a friend from work who played guitar. The first time we meet he asked me if I listened Tool and the Deftones. I complied and we've been friend ever since. One day during a smoke break he told me about seeing The Melvins with Jello Biafra the night before. Staring at him, with a puzzled look on my face I asked, “Who are The Melvins?”. As the story goes he was first shocked, but more than that, he was... well, disappointed. So disappointed in fact, that he told me he would introduce me to them and, “You my friend WILL love them.” The Dead Guy had not been born yet, but very soon would be, along with “the jacket” . Loving bands like Tool and the Deftones as I did, finding the Melvins was like finding the holy grail of stoner metal. The now gray haired rock good, King Buzzo was a force of awe. He was a lumbering, sludgy, guitar shredding nerd with a great sense of humor, who I would one day meet. And sitting behind him, wielding a drum kit like the Hammer of Thor, was a mini Danny Carry named Dale Crover.

Being plumbed aurally by these two, I have grown quite accustomed to the heavy stoner sound that made me feel high when I was completely sober. Yet with such a distinct sound, I'm always impressed that none of their works sound alike, and this album is no exception. What may be the most unique work of the melvins, it displays a eureka moment of precision, granted by the experimentation that was afforded to them, after Atlantic dropped the from their label, and Mike Patton signed them to his indie label, Ipecac Records. Signing with Ipecac has given The Melvins the ability to experiment in all aspects with the recording process, which wasn't usually granted by major labels. It would be pretty ballsy to go into a new record company with such an ambitious idea like a trilogy, but with Mike Patton anything is possible.

The only thing that would be more ambitious then this masterpiece and the rest of the trilogy would be if Tool did a jazz album. This album has the ability to be a sprawling laid back trip that could fit into a corner of an empty, run down gin joint on Christmas Eve. It expands and contracts with mellow jams that seamless flow into some of the weirdest experiments with noise and sound that would make John Cale and Frank Zappa proud. From Buzzo's enchanted whispering of, “Toy, Toy, Toy, Toy” at the beginning of the album all the way to the spacey psychedelic acoustic jam of “Prig”this album will make you feel warm all over this holiday season.

-The Dead Guy

Track list (youtube.com links):

1.Toy

2. Let It All Be (live in Norway!)

3. Black Santa

4. We We

5. Up The Dumper

6. Mary Lady Bobby Kins

7. Jew Boy Flower Head

8. Lone Rose Holding Now

9. Prig

*Editor's Note: Let us know if you like these music posts and we'll keep doing them if you do.

We Can And Should Speak Out, Collectively and Do The Right Thing: or What Social Networking Sites CAN Be Good For

Tonight, I did something I rarely do. I went to a suburban bar with a cover band playing. This trip was solely for the purpose of attending the birthday party of someone who I have met in person once in my life. This person is friends with my partner but, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t really know me from Adam. Nonetheless, I made the trek and paid the five dollar cover, because it seemed like the right thing to do.

When I arrived, I was surprised to be greeted by a room full of veritable strangers with warm smiles and hugs. It did not take long for people to ask me if I needed drink or to offer me a seat in a crowded room. I am not a particularly open or familiar person. In fact, I am painfully shy at times. However, that did not matter tonight. Because it is close to the holidays and we are American adults. This is what we do. We smile and extend kindness to those who we believe have extended kindness to our friends and comrades. I was accepted and made to feel like family by a group of strangers simply because I am kind to and care for one of their own. This is our culture. We care for those who care for those who we care about.

Why then, do we have so much trouble passing a bill which provides care to those who responded to the trauma and violence of September 11, 2001 by risking their own well being in order to ensure the well being of others?

As Americans, we often show caring and compassion for those who we perceive to have been wronged, either by other people or by the system itself. We are quick to respond to calls for charitable donations and we are proud of it. Yet we seem to have no problem allowing congress to not pass a law which will provide healthcare for those who responded to the September 11^th disaster by rushing into the chaos and attempting t help those who were most directly affected.

How is this even possible?

Much like every other American, I think I remember that day very clearly and I know I remember the aftermath of that day as clear as anything. I can clearly remember everyone I came in contact with clutching their newly purchase American flags and sentimental materials and waxing poetic about heroism and the nature of the American consciousness. I remember a lot of talk about coming together and supporting one another in an extremely trying time. I remember the endless platitudes and syllogisms about colors that don’t run and the strength of a nation. It seemed like everyone around me wanted to talk about how powerful we can be when we come together and support each other.

And, as sentimentally overwrought as some of these expressions may have been, they all had a grain of truth.

We can be powerful when we come together.

We can change the world, or at least our world, when we collectively decide to do the right thing.

But we didn’t.

Granted, we did care for a while. We extended hugs and generosity and understanding like I have never seen before or after. For at least a few weeks following the tragedy, we lived in the America which I had always imagined had existed long before I was born; The America where every citizen extended a warm hand to every other citizen and we care for each other like family. Then, the bubble burst. We became fearful of other Americans who were too similar to our middle eastern neighbors in dress and religious creed. We became entrenched in several wars and began to bicker, once again, about foreign policy and economic legislation. We forgot to be unified.

We forgot our unity and we forgot about those who volunteered to help in one of the most frightening events I have ever seen.

We focused instead on tax cuts, abortion, NAFTA and a host of other issues. We bickered and argued and campaigned and voted. Somewhere, in the sound and the fury of our everyday lives and the endless shout outs of frustration, admiration and support to soldiers and politicians alike, we forgot to check on the very people who had, not so long ago, rushed head on into the smoldering destruction just to make sure others were safe. While we were debating and campaigning and speaking out many of these men and women were becoming ill as a result of their bravery and we never noticed.

They are sick and some of them are dying. The right thing to do would be to pay for their healthcare. If they were enlisted soldiers, who were being ordered to help and paid for their service during the September 11h attacks, they would have at least their basic healthcare needs taken care of, and rightfully so. However, many of these people were neither ordered nor paid to attempt to aid others in such a frightening and chaotic time. Many of them are simply American citizens who felt that they could and should offer a helping hand during a crisis. They rushed in when most were fleeing.

As a result of this, many of them became ill and our government, the people who we voted into office, will not pass a bill which provides them with the care they need.

Last week, congress voted down a bill which would provide healthcare to those who were sickened as a direct result of their actions in support of other Americans on September 11, 2001. And very few people seem to care.

Less than one week ago, my inbox and news feeds were flooded by people who were changing their profile pictures to support a war on a concept.

This week, a very real and challengeable fact became public, and no one reacted.

This is shameful to me.

However, it doesn’t have to be.

We can change it.

If you are one of the many Americans who cared on September 11 and continues to care now about the men and women who bravely sacrificed their own sense of well being in order to insure that of others, then I urge you to look up your local senator and harass the living hell out of them. Send letters, make phone calls, put the word out on facebook, twitter and myspace. Scream from the rooftops. Hold a sit in. Throw rocks through the windows of politicians. Do whatever it takes to be heard. Support the 9/11 Responders act and demand that those who you have voted into office do the same. It is the only right thing to do.

Please America, restore my faith in you.

As Christmas and all of its attendant sentiments approaches, please do what you can to make sure that these people are not left without the care they deserve for any longer.

I double dog dare you to.

_Shannon

The Lone One: Or How One Small Thing Can Be A Powerfull Remider

Over Thanksgiving dinner my sister-in-law and I were discussing her two and a half year-old’s newfound fascination with his penis. “When he pees in the bathtub he becomes mesmerized, like he can’t believe it’s coming out of him.” Without a beat I quipped, “And he’ll feel the same exact way twelve or so years from now.” It took my sister-in-law some time to figure out what I was referring to. “Oh?...Oh! Gross!”

I didn’t intend to sexualize her little boy, and I suppose to a woman (and a mother, no less) it’s relatively unfamiliar territory, but the first time a boy ejaculates semen is, for lack of a better term, MESMERIZING! I’ll never forget my first time. I was busy rubbing up against something soft behind my double-bolted bedroom door when, after months of shooting throbbing blanks, BOOYA!, there it was! Only, it was hardly a stream of virility; it was more like a sad little droplet of diluted baby batter. But its implications were nevertheless gargantuan, and I knew this then. I was a man.

There’s henceforth an array of physical rights of passage that most men experience as they pubesce and age -- shaving, growing chest hair, sprouting an upper ass patch, etc. I remember the first time I noticed hair on my toes. Well, it wasn’t I who first pointed it out but a couple of my high school friends. I was lifeguarding on a sleepy beach in Southern New Jersey and I asked my friends -- both girls -- to stop by one particularly drowsy summer afternoon to keep me company. They grudgingly obliged, only after I promised to buy them a case of beer with my infallible fake ID. When they arrived at the beach and saw me perched atop one of those towering lifeguard stands, they almost lost it. My friend, KMH, ever the alpha, grumbled, “What, you’re just going to sit way up there and look down at us the entire time? No way. Get your ass down here.” “I can’t come down unless it’s work related.” “Work related? There’s no one in sight. Well we’re not going to stand around and talk to your feet all day.” That’s when my friend, ABK, surveyed the few, errant, wiry hairs springing out of my big toe. “Eew, sick, look at his toe hair. It’s like a Hitler ‘stache.”

Fast-forward to today.

After one of the worst nights of sleep I’ve had to endure in quite a while I woke up this morning to a new physical right of passage -- one that is not so much mesmerizing as paralyzing. Not so much virile as sterile. Not so much stimulating as utterly deflating.

Cruelly confident in and of itself, resolute, foreboding and unmistakable, there it was (shining in all its glory): the lone gray pube.

I couldn’t believe my bleary eyes. Maybe it was the way the sunlight gleamed on it as I rolled out of bed naked? (Note: I only wake up unclothed after sleepless nights in which I rip off all articles of clothing one-by-one in an insomnolent haze). But after close, closer, *extremely* close inspection, however, I was able to confirm that it was not a healthy and vibrant sheen of my natural hair color but indeed a gray, nay, a white, nay, a whiter-than-white pube. Fucker.

I immediately crawled back into bed to contemplate what this meant. There of course would be more of these. And soon, I’m sure. While wrinkles and gray hair (on one’s head!) may, on a good day, help to “distinguish” a gentleman, there’s nothing at all sexy about gray pubic hair. No one can pull it off. NO ONE. (Sidebar: Google ‘gray pubic hair’ and enjoy what comes up).

So I considered where this sadistic and arrogant pube now left me. No doubt I’m a changed man. Sure, it’s only one pluckable little hair, but the implications of it are huge, and not nearly as exciting as when I first discovered I could procreate. But then I realized -- I could still procreate if I wanted. In fact, I could still do everything I did before, some of it even better than when I was a young man. And, in a way, this gray pube proves it, not to anybody else perhaps but definitely to me. My lone gray pube is actually my body’s way of telling myself that after all these years I’ve earned it, whatever ‘it’ happens to be. And, come to think of it, I have. I have earned it. And I deserve it, too. Thank you. Thank you, lone gray pube, for reminding me of this. You did good, really good. I genuinely appreciate it. Now, goodbye.

**FLUSH**

-Duardo

Juke Box Throwdown: Jane's Addiction- Ted Just Admit It

"Ted, Just Admit It..."

Camera got them images
Camera got them all
Nothing's shocking...
Showed me everybody
Naked and disfigured
Nothing's shocking...
And then he came
Now sister's
Not a virgin anymore
Her sex is violent...

The T.V.'s got them images
T.V.'s got them all
It's not shocking!
Every half an hour
Someone's captured and
The cop moves them along...
It's just like the show before
The news is
Just another show
With sex and violence...

Sex is violent...
Sex is violent...
Sex is violent...
Sex is violent...
Sex is violent...
Sex is violent...
Sex is violent!

I am the killer of people
You look like a meatball
I'll throw away your toothpick
And ask for your giveness

Because of this thing!
Because of this thing!
Because of this thing!

That's in me
Is it not in you?
Is it not your problem?
A baby to a mother...

You talk too much
To your scapegoat
That's what I say
He tells you everyone is stupid
That's what he thinks!

Snapshots
Make a girl look cheap
Like a tongue extended
A baby's to a mother

Sex is violent!
Sex is violent!
Sex is violent!
Sex is violent!

I wanted to focus on this particular song, because Jane’s Addiction has long been one of those bands who I can slip into as easily as a well worn pair of oversized coveralls. I loved them with the intensity that only a 14 year old kid can love a band for a good portion of high school, and then, as is often the case, I sort of forgot about them. However, there have been a few random occasions throughout my adult life where they have come back out of nowhere to remind me of how much I love them. One such occasion was just a few weeks ago when The Dead Guy and I were hanging out and listening to Nothing’s Shocking and Ted Just Admit It popped up. At that moment, I could not help but think about how this particular song, with its themes of sex, violence and media, seems even more relevant today than it was in 1988, when it was released, and again in 1993, when it was included in the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. I then began to babble about it, which is exactly when the idea for Jukebox Throwdown was formed.

That said, I suppose a good place to start with this song would be examining why the lyrics were and are so relevant. Well, obviously, Perry Farrell was reacting to an onslaught of shocking and highly sexualized content in the news media, especially on T.V. I don’t remember the eighties well, but I do remember the very late eighties and early nineties as a time when television news seemed to focus almost entirely on violence and sex. I have no idea if my perception of this time is accurate, or if it was simply a case of me becoming more aware. I suspect it was a combination of the two.

To that end, the title of the song has always made me think of nightly news anchor Ted Koppel. Now, I know that there are references throughout the song to Ted Bundy, whose trial and interviews were being conducted around the time that this song was written, but I think it is entirely possible that the title and resulting lyrics are a double entendre of sorts: asking the listener to consider the fact that most media had become violent and that most of our primal urges are violent by definition. Flash forward to now, and it is easy to dismiss the amount of violence we see in our every day television viewing, even if it is just the nightly news, as a symptom of living in more violent or unstable times, but I think this is a misnomer, and that this song is asking us to examine exactly that.

When we see or hear of an act of violence, from a slightly less than equal sexual encounter to a brutally horrific murder, we are at once repulsed and titillated. Our hearts speed up. We get very agitated. Our endocrine system kicks in and we are flooded with hormones. These reactions are similar to what occurs when we are sexually aroused. This arousal is, of course, uncomfortable for us. No one wants to admit that they feel anything akin to enjoyment when they are confronted with the most heinous of acts, but we do. We know, on a visceral level, that we would not act out of this primal reaction, but just that slight tingling of excitement causes us to watch these items more intensely. We are as captivated by the horrors of truly diseased men as we are by images of sex acts.

As we move along through the lyrics, there are many references to images of naked and disfigured women being made to look cheap. Again, a parallel is drawn between the literal image of a murder victim and the highly polished and artificial images which are presented in pornography. Our society gasps in audible disgust at the idea of seeing an image of a woman who has been cut or altered in an act of violence such as murder or rape, yet images of women whose physical appearances have been altered by a surgeon are widely accepted and even sought after, both now and then. I think that, by using the sexual imagery in the song along with the violent imagery, Farrell was reminding us that we are drawing an invisible and ever moving line between how much violence and disfigurement is acceptable and how much is not and then using that line to both justify our own actions and to sell the actions of those we despise.

In other words, by fetishizing violence in the news ad using it to sell ad space and keep viewers engaged while lashing out against sexual imagery in the main stream, we have created a bizarre vacuum. We spend hours viewing acts which are vile, heinous and frightening via the news and no one questions it. However, we still fight to keep images of sexual acts and expressions under cover. Perhaps, we, like Ted, need to admit that this sort of shaming of something natural and beautiful along with the exploitation of something so vile may be causing some of the problems we are facing.

-Shannon

After the Tipper Gore PMRC debacle, many bands felt it necessary to mock, stand up to, and expose what they thought was a true purveyor of the perversion of sex and violence, the news. It also informed us that these drives in the human psyche had a very thin line of distinction. Ted Bundy had been on the run since he escaped in the late 70's, and violence and murder was always enticing to the audience, as we would learn over and over again, with Jeffery Dahmer, John Wayne Gayce and O.J Simpson. The American public had their eyes glued to the screen to find out all of the horrors that had been perpetrated, and in particularly graphic detail during the trails.

We've learned very little since then about the correlation of sex and violence in the neurology of the human brain. But one could make the claim that the simple act of penetration, even in the case of sex is, in and of itself violent. Not all human beings enjoy the more extreme practices of S&M, but you could also make the case that acts like pulling hair, and even the dominant act of mounting evoke a Sadomasochistic element. What we have learned is that when it comes to entertainment sex (commercials) and violence (sports and movies) always sell. As Farrell sings “The news is just another show with sex and violence...”

Perry Farrell takes the time to really blur the line that separates these two acts. If you look at the lyrics one way he may be describing the photos of the victims that Ted Bundy captured during his rampage, or under another light of awareness it could be describing the circus of news camera before, during and after Bundy's trail, “Every half an hour someone's captured and the cop moves them along...It's just like the show before.” Farrell seems to be pointing out that the people think the news helps raise awareness about the heinous acts, when that is not the case. The news covers these stories for one reason, because people like them. The news is not here to rid the world of evil, if anything its mission is to create a culture of fear in order to desensitize people into accepting the fact that these atrocities will probably never go away.

- The Dead Guy