..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Sunday, October 29, 2006

"It’s good to work, Jerry. but it’s also good to play.
The Ant and the Grasshopper...
Once upon a time there was a grasshopper.
All summer long, the ant worked hard.
The grasshopper playeded the violin...he danced.
Winter came. The ant grew fat.
The grasshopper, he grew cold.
The grasshopper ate the ant."
- "Things Change"

"Everyone I love is...dead."
- Type O Negative


i was listening to the new Hold Steady tonight (finally had a chance to soak it all in) and it's good. real good. it truly is their "Born To Run" finally with all that piano and big guitar solos (i like the hockey organ a lot too) but this is my one complaint (since Matt already covered the "less lyrics" thing) i don't think he's reminiscing enough on here. i think that he's been hanging around the kids too much, maybe getting a little too popular. and anyone who's talked to any "Boys and Girls in America" these days will understand that they ain't really got shit to say. sure there's some real cool parts that sound like great drunken musings. however, back in the day, my teenage friends' drunken musings usually sounded like this:

"dude. dude. i drank 90 fucking beers."
"okay, you drank a lot, but come on. 90 beers?"
"Dave, why do you have to be an asshole?"
"dude, why do you have to exaggerate? yes, you drank more than anyone in Northwest Ohio drank tonight. you win. you're the big winner. why cheapen your victory?"
"how do you know i didn't drink 90 beers? why would you be counting my beers? what the fuck's wrong with you that you'd pay so much attention to what i do? huh, Dave?"
"we didn't buy 90 beers, fuckface. there's no way you drank 90 beers."
"you know, i hate drinking with you. when you need your ass kicked, let me know."
"how about now?"

at this point Jerry would attack me and i would pin him to the ground and dump a box of cereal or a potten plant on his head. wait, did i say "Jerry?" i didn't mean to be so specific. hold on, now that i think about it, it was always you, wasn't Jerr-Bear? for anyone not familiar with Jerry, he's since moved to Denver, but his greatest hits sometimes pops up on this blog, like right here.

anyway, what was my point? oh yeah. that dialogue up there doesn't make for the best song. actually, maybe it would. but the music on the new Hold Steady is better than "Separation Sunday." i will give them that. maybe if they combined the two.

okay, to be fair to Jerry for slandering him up there, i'll offer up one of his better moments:

back in high school, Jerry got obsessed with the Beatles song "Day Tripper" and he would sing the chorus constantly but change the lyrics to reflect his thoughts for the day. therefore the lyrics...

"it took me so long to find out...but i found out" would then become:

"it took me so long to get head...but i got head" or
"it took you so long to fuck a dog...but you fucked a dog" or
"it took me so long to take a shit...but i took that shit"

and so on and so on. this went on for weeks.

what other music did i just get? just bought My Chemical Romance "The Black Parade" because i'm a sucker for a concept album every time. and it had cool artwork. and it's good. it's just as gay as Queen and sounds just as great as Queen when you play it loud. they sound like a young Queen, like their first three albums that rocked before they got bogged down in disco. yes, it's hard not to get annoyed with the little simpering emo boys, i'm sorry "screamo" boys, however, if you just think of them as the greatest chick band ever, you're all set! loud in the car is best for this cd. did i say that already? speaking of, this leads me to another topic from the other night. a friend of mine was complaining how she can't find any assertive males, or any guys out there these days that will "be dominant." well, it's no wonder when apparenly at a concert these days (insert sound of grumpy old man rattling a newspaper whenever i say "these day") you can catch sight of a thong sticking out of back of some dude's black jeans. i mean, that's the new shtick, the latest style, right? didn't they already do that though? just like Charlie Murphey said on the Prince Hollywood story, "in the 80s, the dude that looked the most like a bitch got the most ass!" so, if we're going to continue to buy these sad-eyed, scrawny, ennui-soaked boys' music, we got to pay the price by having the new crop kids immitate them. and don't let the Geico commercials fool you. cavemen are out these days. speaking of commercials, if you want to combine two flavors like that old Reeses commercial where the guy with the chocolate bar stumbles into the guy with the peanut butter jar (and why was that fat fuck eating fistfulls of peanut butter out of the jar??) then you should listen to Type O Negative!!! it's good October music. lots of mopy, brooding, Burtonesque behavior mixed with a healthy supply of musclebound, lunkheaded idiocy. imagine if one of these recent androginous eyeliner bands worked out like crazy, got all huge on the free weights, then played their gloom rock to a packed crowd of little darklings. they'd come across like a bunch of dickheads, of course. they'd start making fun of the drama in their songs about halfway through. and they do! and i love this crap. lots of green and black. that's what the album covers look like and that's what the music sounds like. judge an album by its cover, dammit. green and black. see, they aren't just in all black like those little gloomcookies! they're green, too! that's the color of jealousy, anger, the dominant macho behavior you're secretly craving right now!

i'm listening to "World Coming Down" as we speak while I watch "The Outlaw Jose Wales" with the subtitles on. it's a minor Eastwood western, and the first 49 times he spit tobacco juice on that dog's head were funny. but the 50th time seemed kind of cruel. gave me an idea for my western though. which is the whole point.

here's some rapid fire music reviews:

-The New Cars "It's Alive": suprisingly rockin' live album from 1/4th of The Cars and Todd Rundgren. the two new songs suck though

-The Killers "Sam's Town": first three songs are decent then skip straight to song 10 ("River Wild") which makes it almost worth the 10 bucks.

-Outkast "Idlewild": their worst, which only makes it better than all other rap cds

-Pete Yorn "Nightcrawler": cool vampire (?) song that sounds like "Simonize" (his other good song)

-The Raconteurs "Broken Boy Soldiers": good, i guess. i never feel like listening to it though

-Nick Drake "Bryter Lyter": better than "Pink Moon," not as good as "Five Leaves Left"

-Slayer "Christ Illusion": good album cover

-Muse "Black Holes & Revelations": stupid album cover

whoa! i want to grow a beard like that grizzled fucker! crazed Confederates running amok on my TV right now. i could grow a beard like that. i'm going to. starting...now.

hey, here's the new booth at the new station. last show went decent. not too many callers. although one of my old bandmates, one of the original founding members of The Bucketmen did do some drunk dialing that night. can't fault Diamond Dog though, he was only 48 hours out of rehab. the theme that night was requesting songs you'd want played at your funeral. 97% of drunken Pittsburgh wants Johnny Cash played at their funeral. that or "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." a lot of them wanted that one, too. but i think you'd better have died in a shipwreck if you play that. i mean, what if you choked on a peach pit, then had that played at your funeral? you'd look kind of silly dead in your coffin wouldn't you? unless you filled the coffin with water and put some little boats in it. check out Clint with the rain coming off his cowboy hat. that makes me want to get rained on right now. and have a name that sounds like "clit."

and here's my pumpkin this year. i carve one every Halloween. this one is based on the short stories of my classmates in my writing workshop. i took it to class just like i did with my ant farm in 4th grade. too bad that ended in tears.

i need orange juice. i'm going to the store. if i don't come back to this tonight, just remember:

how do we know green to you is green to me?

i came back. here's another side of the pumpkin by request. and i was hoping some of you would tell me what song you'd want to (not) here at your funeral.

::: david - 11:59 PM [+] :::
...

"Just got back from vacation! Spent it down Root Canal!"
- "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" - Warren Zevon

"You figure out how to thrive in the world."
- Adaptation


anybody awake? watching some movies. listening to music. finally a day off. bought a avacado but it turned out to be hard as a rock. and guess what? you can't eat those things like an apple. just got real thirsty about an hour ago and had to cross the bridge to satisfy my craving for a strawberry/banana type drink. everything was closed except Sheetz. god bless 'em. also tried their car wash since i never went through one at 4 am. it's kind of spooky. i enjoyed it. i paid for the longest wash, turned up the music and drank my strawberry/banana smoothie thing while crazy robots washed my car Jetson's style. so let's talk music, books, and movies to get my fingers loose. what else is there to talk about anyway?

the new Showtime series "Dexter." anybody see this? i thought it was real good. even though it's a HUGE rip-off of the movie "Suspect Zero." here's the similarities in case anyone doubts this even for a second. both have a serial killer...killing serial killers. both have an omnious, unseen uber-killer who stays ahead of the law (and Dexter) by doing his killing and insanity and feces grafitti in a big refridgerated truck. uh...and more stuff i can't remember right now because it's late. however, in spite of the blatant theft, the show's got the right tone to it. happy Florida sights and sounds with jet skis and aliigators and parties, mixed with wisecracking cops and a dark, deranged hero voice-over. very cool opening credits sequence, too. it's like this violent breakfast montage. and the first three episodes have set shit up nicely. maybe needs an snappy opening song though. like "Sopranos" and "Entourage" have, instead of just the unmemorable theme music they got right now.

finally bought "The Proposition." it's the Nick Cave western. i've been watching it in 10-minute lumps since i'm barely here these days and the TV's never on, but i'm savoring every lump. imagine walking past a nice big piece of coconut cream pie and taking a quick bite each day. for a month. see, you can make that slice last forever! if a piece of pie actually lasted a month, i mean.

picked up the new Killers cd because all the neagative reviews compared it to Bruce Springsteen, and, if there's one thing that sucks me in every time, it's bad reviews about someone trying to go all "Springsteen" all the sudden and get in touch with their inner "Thunder Road." a perfect example:

Prince. "Little Red Corvette."

a song with more car/fuck metaphors that Springsteen's entire double album "The River" (which i think has no less that 427 songs about cars on it) and it's a song that's complelely critic proof. who doesn't like that song? i'll wait.........no one? see, that's what i thought. another example, Meatloaf. maybe not. did i say that out loud? oops.

also got the new Hold Steady album, but i haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. everyone's gushing about his lyrics again, but we'll see. it's gonna be tough to beat Primal Scream's lyric-of-the-year off "Riot City Blues":

"got caught giving head to a priest, the fucker choked on his rosary beads..."

to the three people that asked, the western script "Pigiron" will be done this month. i figured out a way to make a bunch of progress real fast. i have calendars in each room for no good reason, and i was changing them all (three months forward since i forgot i had 'em) and i realized that i'd gotten this antique gun calendar specifically to help inspire me to work on the western script a loooong time ago. so, since i saw there was only two months left on it before it would get tossed in the trash, i took it down and went through all twelve guns on each month and thought up back stories for each one that combined the actual facts of the gun in the photograph with some crazy folklore bullshit that i made up. then i made a main character in the script lay out all these guns to use one each month, sort of like his own calendar, and explain to his son something about each gun because you gotta have that scene in a western right? right?! example:

"This is February's gun. This is the first
.44. It was first made in 1870 and called
the “Model 3 American.” This weapon was was
a prototype where the firing pin rotated
instead of the cylinder. No more guessing
what chamber had a bullet in it, if you
were one of those boys that liked to spin
it after loading. This particular gun
killed 27 people...all during games of
Russian Roulette."

radio show going well in spite of a complete lack of listeners lately. the only time anyone called is when i was asking about anyone seeing the exclamation point on the news headlines on TV that screamed "Plane Strikes Building!" and how, if you turned up the volume, they were carefully explaining that it was NOT a terrorist attack. which of course begs the question, why the exclamation point? like i was saying on the air, i can't remember the last time CNN had an exclamation point on a headline. even if they said something like:

"Man Stranded on Deserted Island...Eats Own Head."

period. even with that headline, which could probably use some extra punctuation, they'd STILL use just a period. but this time! they! just! had! to! do! this! how obvious is that scare tactic? anyway, i tried to have people think of songs with exclamation points in the title because all i could think of was Hold Steady's "Hornets! Hornets!" couple people woke up and stumbled to the phone and/or stopped crouching ominously in the corner of their bedroom flipping their light switch on and off to actually call and request some music. so it wasn't all bad. just need to take more sugar and caffiene with me next time.

hey, if anyone wants to give it another chance, i finished a new revision of long rambling story "Flies on Shit." it was workshopped, succesfully i guess. some people surprised me by tuning right into the frequency of the story, and some people surprised me by being confused about the most obvious stuff. and, even though it's a little off subject, some people in that class really surprised me by turning out to have not developed a healthy sense of humor at this point in their life. never mind when someone tells you they aren't easily offended. that's almost always bullshit. turns out they're afraid of words just like the rest of them. tragic. anyway, the best thing i got out of the workshop was a name change. now it's Sharks with Thumbs. and very likely it'll be the first chapter of a new book. i think i'm ready to put the last book under the couch for now. it didn't get published, probably because of the wacky structure of it (yeah, right). it jumped around from the '70s to the '90s and bounced between the fiction of the story to the "true" stories that the characters kept telling. some exerpts i stuck on the site, but the majority of it has only been seen by people i've never met, which sucks because i wasn't there in their cubicle leaning over their shoulder when they opened the envelope, hurrying them through the parts that embarrassed me, and making sure they slowed down where i thought it got good. here's the contents page before i bury it in the yard, er, i mean, stick it under the couch:

ROADSPORTS & ROCKFIGHTS

Table of Contents

I. Road (March, 1975)
2..........Driving
13.........Flying
21.........Spying
36........Ride The Ride
50........Glass Car Crash

II. Last Rock Thrown (True Stories, Part I)
72.........Rock Wasted
79.........Shades
89.........What’s Worst?

III. Bad Sports & Blood Sports (Summer, 1999)
105........Suckerpunch
149........Skinned Knees & Scratched Basketballs
188........Good Games & Grass Stains
288........Nosebleeder

IV. Last Rock Caught (True Stories, Part II)
313.........Lying
319........What Are You Thinking?
329........Overtime

V. Sword (October, 1975)
338........Fighting
363 .......Squirt Guns & Firing Squads
383........Crying
392........Keep Your Elbow Up

the last agent to read this book said she was all into it, but her boss wasn't a fan. which would be fine, if, by him not liking it, he had NOT stopped anyone else from getting a chance to not like it, too. but look at the contents page up there. is that really so confusing? good or bad, i can't tell. but don't tell me something's confusing. that's the only thing that's not my fault. seriously, that wouldn't be so hard to follow, would it? the 1975 stuff is the boy and girl and how they met, the 1999 stuff is the stories of their three sons and all their nosebleeds and hemophelia and fucking up in high school sports, THEN surrounding that are all the stories (urban legends, "friend of a friend" stories etc.) that they've told other people, but written as if those stories were the only things that actually happened in the book. of course, by feeling the need to explain it at five in the morning suggests that subconsciously i do realize the structure is flawed. maybe that's why the apparent effect of reading my novel is kind of like a trip to the dentist. which would be fine if it was Bill Murray's trip to the dentist in "Little Shop of Horrors." But maybe it's more like "Marathon Man."

but enough about the old book. working on the new book! and because it's new, i can declare it's the best thing yet, goddammit. even if it's not. the section i'm on (which will stand on its own as a story like every good chapter should) is "Calling All Eunichs!" the title of an imaginary buddy/cop flick i made up. by the way, the exclamation point is in the title, not my sentence. i've decided to use the car chase list i made years ago and change all the movie titles to fake ones (for example, "Mad Max" becomes "Mad Mex," a goofy Mexican version of that series) and i'll use this list as sort of as a framing device. this way i didn't waste all that time making that list back then. in fact, i plan on cannibalizing a lot of this website for parts. why not. since the new book is in first person AND present tense (which one professor seemed to think i could not sustain for the length of a novel) i think some of these posts would fit in pretty well. the voice in the book might just have to be my voice (or the voice of an asshole, like it usually is on this site) after all, and if somebody could hopefully mistake that for a complicated fictional creation, so be it! gonna use the fist fight list, too. some of those movie titles are harder to change to imaginary ones though. why change the titles? because it's fun.

whoa. birds are chirping. got to try to sleep.

::: david - 6:38 AM [+] :::
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