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Green Day and Avril Lavigne: Yawn Rockers
So I found myself waiting in line at the local Ralphs yesterday evening, stifling my usual urge to scream, when I realized I was hearing "The Time Of Your Life" by Green Day coming from the speakers. I'm pretty sure that confirms what we all suspected and feared when we first heard that song six or seven years ago: Green Day is no longer punk. When it's okay to play your music in a supermarket, you don't rock anymore, end of story.
Later in the evening I found myself standing in line at Longs Drugs, stifling my usual urge to scream, when I read the following headline on People or Us or one of those tree-killing, celebrity gossip rags: "Avril Lavigne and Her Unpunk Wedding." Why stop with the wedding? Why not expand the article out a little bit and have an All Avril issue called: "Avril Lavigne and Her Unpunk Life and Career."
At least Avril has one thing over Green Day tho: She never mellowed out and got shitty. Nope, she was Corporate America's Boring Little Darling from day one.
Cindy Brady: Would You Fuck Her?
 I was watching TV the other day and saw a recent clip of Susan Olsen, who, of course, used to play Cindy Brady on THE BRADY BUNCH. And I thought to myself, "Wow, she's kinda hot. Maybe not be the most beautiful girl I've ever seen but definitely a cutie." Then I wondered, if the situation had ever presented itself (at some point in the past, I'm married now), whether or not I'd have been able to have sex with her.
Before continuing, I should probably point out that I've always been a big believer in having sex with someone - even if you'd rather not - just for the bragging rights. For example: She's a nasty, icky old broad, and has been my whole life, but I firmly believe that if the opportunity presented itself, I'd have fucked the Queen of England. How can you pass that up? Maybe an hour or so of the worst sex of your life and then after that? You're the guy that fucked the Queen of England. For the rest of your life. The next time you're at the bar and one of those "Yeah I Banged Her" guys starts telling one of his "Yeah I Banged Her" stories, you can shut him down with, "Whatever dude, I fucked the Queen of England." Or even better the next time some ex-pat Brit gives you attitude (like that ever happens...but it could...maybe), you can look him right in the eye and say, "Shut your limey cake-hole, I fucked your Queen, I'm pretty sure that makes you one of my subjects."
...
So, anyway, sex with celebrities for bragging rights. But Cindy Brady? Just a tad on the creepy side there. If you're a dude and you don't have the slightest clue what I'm talking about, you should probably go register yourself as a sex offender.
Scary Stoma Lady
Apparently the speed-talkers in the Oxnard Police Department think that by having me get fingerprinted, that will somehow make me a better transcriptionist. I guess this way, if I ever finally lose it and write, "You're all a bunch of fags," instead of whatever the cop is actually dictating, at least they'll be able to dust the internet for my prints and...
So off I went to US Fingerprinting to volunteer more personal information in yet another database. Have you ever noticed how every business in the security industry has some bullshit patriotic name like US Livescan and Bonding, or All American Fingerprinting? My favorite are companies like Ameritek who put the "Ameri" part of "America" into their business name like that's at all clever or reassuring. There's nothing very reassuring about misspelling the word "tech." I think it'd be funny to start a security firm called East Block Pinko Live Scan and Identification.
So, I'm inside filling out the paperwork for this shit when scary stoma lady comes up to me and motions for me to follow her. I don't want to be cruel or fucked up but aren't stoma people creepy as hell? This particular lady looked like she'd put in the decades of smoking that usually precedes having a gaping hole in the throat. Her complexion made her look like a smoker, almost like her skin had been stained a grayish-yellow by all those fucking cigarettes.
I'm pretty good about dealing with deformities on other people, I can usually maintain enough self control to not stare or be grossed out until later. But man, when you walk up to me with a big gaping hole in your throat, I turn into a four year old and do everything short of actually pointing at you. Jesus Christ, it's a fucking hole in your throat! If I got close enough I could look inside your throat. And then vomit and cry myself to sleep every night for a week. Goddamn that shit is fucked up.
The internet being what it is...this is really one of those times I wish I could have some say in which thoughts are allowed into my head, and which ones aren't...I wonder if there's a fetish site out there devoted to stoma-porn? Just typing that probably earned me a decade in purgatory.
Love & Rockets
 I was going to write this a couple weeks ago but getting the hour or two of free time has been difficult. And I just realized I haven't posted anything in over ten days so I've decided to simply do this instead of actual work tonight. Thank god I have my priorities straight.
So anyway, LOVE & ROCKETS. Great comic, shitty band. I guess the band took the name after the comic. Or at least that's what I read once. Who cares? Let's focus on the great comic part.
LOVE & ROCKETS is rare for several reasons. Not only is it one of those few comics to gain attention from outside the comic industry, but it did so twenty years ago, way the hell before there was a "Graphic Novel" section in any of the chain bookstores. Back then almost no comics were able to make that claim and, of those that could, LOVE & ROCKETS was one of the very few (along with Maus) that didn't feature BATMAN & THE ALL PERVERT SQUAD running around in fetish wear. Mostly though, LOVE & ROCKETS is a rare and precious thing for the simple fact that it's a fucking great comic and has been consistently for damn near 25 years. Off the top of my head, I can't think of another comic able to make that statement.
 The comic primarily features the work of Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, affectionately referred to as Los Bros Hernandez, with occasional story and art entries from their brother, Mario.
When it was first published it had heavy sci-fi overtones which, honestly, was one of the things that attracted me to it. Maggie, one of the main characters from the stories written and drawn by Jaime was a comic book character unlike any other before and, most likely, since and the stories that featured her were no less unique. Her life was split into two drastically different parts.
The first, and most important, being her life in Hoppers, "a Mexican neighborhood in Huerta, California (and a stand-in for los Bros' hometown of Oxnard)" Her time in Hoppers was spent hanging out with her friends, going to punk shows, agonizing over not having enough money to buy the pair of killer boots she wants so bad, falling in and out of love with various crushes, and all the other appropriate activities a post adolescent would find herself engaged in.
The second, but more glamorous, part of her life was spent working as a Prosolar Mechanic with celebrity mechanic and heartthrob, Rand Race. When working for Rand, Maggie would frequently find herself in exotic locations working on impossibly cool jobs while crushing on / agonizing over her boss, Rand.
One of my favorite stories from those early issues is this story where she winds up having to leave the country for an extended (maybe a month or so) time, to work with Rand. The job takes them all to a dense jungle miles away from anything that resembles civilization, where they have to repair a Flash Gordon style rocket that's trapped under a dinosaur that's unable to move for some (it's been at least a decade since I've read this book, my memory is fuzzy...) reason. During her time in the jungle, she hangs out with the natives, gets drunk with her co-workers, pines over Race, and desperately misses and writes letters to her best friend / girlfriend, Hopey (as well as the rest of her friends). The same sort of thing anyone might do while working away from home, only in an impossible and exotic location.
 Another great story, actually one of the best stories I've ever read - book, comic, manuscript, cave painting...whatever - is a story called Human Diastrophism, which is just one chapter in Gilbert's PALOMAR stories. This is just an incredible and sad story and by the time it's over...actually, that's enough reminiscing. Besides, I don't want to ruin what is honestly one of the most powerful endings I've ever read. What I'm trying to get at is that you should totally be reading these books. Everyone should be reading these books.
Every time I read a new issue of LOVE & ROCKETS, I find myself just a little bit sad by the time I'm done reading. And I think the main reason for that is that this is one of the few comics that doesn't stay in one place for very long. The main stories in the book, especially those written by Gilbert, are huge in scope, spanning two or three generations. And they're so well written that you wind up getting to know and love the characters. And you'll be reading the comic for a year or two and all of a sudden Gilbert will advance the story five to ten years and you won't recognize some of the characters. And sometimes that's because the character is new and sometimes that's because the character is old and looks and acts differently than you're used to. And that's another testament to the quality of the writing: the fact that it's so consistent and so good, that you come to know characters based on dialogue and behavior and not just because they look the same, or because another character refers to them by name.
Another reason the book sort of makes me sad is that many of the stories are narrated in the first person by one of the characters in the story, and the character talks about things as they matter to him at that point in time and NOT as they used to matter to him at some point in the past, which is where the reader is usually coming from. For example, imagine that you were closely following a relationship I was having with one of my ex-girlfriends from seven or eight years ago. And you were really close friends not only with me but with her as well. And then you disappear for the last six years and you come back to town and you run into me and you're dying to know all about what's been happening with me and her. Except, it's six years later and I'm married to someone else entirely and maybe my ex dumped me or maybe I dumped her or maybe she's dead. It's not a good thing, it's not a bad thing, it's just...this thing that happened a while back, one of a million events that occurred sometime in the past. It doesn't really matter to me anymore, I've had six years time to get over it and move on but you're finding this out for the first time, six years late in the game, and the news that we're not together anymore might be totally devastating to you. And that's exactly how much of the ongoing story is presented. Pretty goddamn clever.
 And the fact that this book actually elicits an emotional response from me...I think that's why it's my favorite comic ever. Somehow, SPIDERMAN just doesn't get to me the same way LOVE & ROCKETS does.
I need to stop now, I've never really reviewed (at least, not without trashing it for being a piece of shit) anything before and I have no idea where a good stopping point is and I'm so crazy about these comics that if left to my own devices, I'll never shut the fuck up. Let's leave it at this:
Buy these books goddammit. Buy them and read them. Not all of them, I'd never ask anyone to commit to spending that kind of money just on my say-so. Start small and buy one of the collections. If you're flush with money right now, you might wanna check out the larger collections like PALOMAR and/or LOCAS. They're fifty bucks each, but they're over 500 pages and 700 pages, respectively. You're hardly getting screwed out of fifty bucks.
OR, if you lack the funds, or just faith in me (sinner), then buy one of the softcover collections of the series. There are like 20+ volumes to choose from and they're all about twenty bucks.
OR, if you're a completely pathetic fuck and you're as poor as I am, go to amazon.com and get the hardcover collection of the first volume from the "Used & New" section, where you can have it for less than five fucking dollars. Click here to see what I'm talking about. Or you can click on any of the images in this article and they'll take you straight to the publisher's site and you can order from them which, really, is what you should be doing if you can afford to. They've been putting these books out forever and they're not exactly a Fortune 500 company for doing it. Okay, that's enough for now, go buy one of these books and read it. And let me know how you like it when you're done.
Pavarotti
So apparently Luciano Pavarotti has pancreatic cancer. Which is sad, of course, no one should have to go through that.
But this isn't about Pavarotti's cancer. Nope, this is me bitching about my retarded supervisor. Again. I'm sitting here, transcribing the terribly important crime of driving without a seatbelt, just loving the shit out of my job, when my supervisor shouts out, "Pavarotti has cancer!"
I respond back with my now normal, "Okay..." It's not that I don't care, but I'm in work mode, so I don't see what Pavarotti's cancer has to do with anything we're supposed to be concerning ourselves with at the moment. And, to be painfully honest, I guess I really don't care too much. It's sad and all, but I don't know the guy and I'm not really a big fan of opera, so...yeah. I understand he's a huge talent and all but in my world, Pavarotti is just a deep, screaming voice that shows up on TV every once in a while.
If I just ignore the stupid shit my supervisor says then she starts to get worried that we're not "buds" anymore, and then I have to go through the whole, "Are we still buds?" conversation which is incredibly annoying. Rather than go through that I decide to throw out a token, "That's too bad."
"Oh yeah, it's a real shame because if he dies, then we lose that beautiful voice to cancer."
I know, I know, it seems like a benign statement and I shouldn't let something small like that annoy me. Walk a mile in my shoes. I just can't stand it when people get all bent out of shape about the tragic shit that happens in the world. I mean, I understand being affected by something like Katrina, but you give to the Red Cross and go about your day. But I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the sort of person who thinks the news is somehow more real than what's going on around them. If my supervisor would take the time to drive twenty minutes to downtown Los Angeles, she could see homeless people going into alcoholic convulsions and living on borrowed time, but fuck that shit, Pavarotti has cancer, its so TRAGIC!!!
And, at the risk of sounding cruel, how tragic is this news really? Haven't we been in danger of losing his beautiful voice to fried foods? Or old age? The man is 70 years old, if he dies tomorrow he's lived one seriously great life. Not that his passing isn't bad but let's leave the grieving for his family and friends and the folks that actually knew him.
And most importantly, he's not dead. He has cancer, he just had surgery and he's now recovering from that surgery. Hell maybe the guy will live. Maybe he'll sing again. Maybe not. I'll wait till he's dead before I mourn his loss.
Letter To The Gang: Happy 4th Of July!
Subject: Happy 4th Of July!
Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2006
To: The Gang
Heya Everybody!
Well, it's been a long goddamn time since I sent out one of these. So long, in fact, that I completely deleted the old spam list and created a new one from a more current version of my address book. Please let me know if there is a different/better email address I should be sending shit like this to. Or if you don't want me sending you email at all. If you don't want me emailing you at all, I hope you develop scabs all over your face. It'll be interesting to see how many bouncebacks this generates. My e-mail list speculation can't be too interesting so I'll stop talking about that.
I just wanted to take a few minutes and wish all you good folks a Happy 4th. And in a day of celebration, food, and beer I think it's important that we take a few minutes to reflect on what exactly it is we're fighting for overseas. And it's this:
http://mullet.cc/drunk/?s=640
And remember, if you're not out there today acting like a complete spaz who just shit his pants...the terrorists win. And you're a bad American.
The Good Reverend Aaron sent this to me, let's be sure to include him in our prayers tonight.
Oh and drop me a line and let me know how you're doing, it's been way too long since I've heard from some of you.
-Tim
Tight Butts Drive Me Nuts
The gorgon I work with actually just said, "Are we having fun yet?" I responded with, "23 skidoo," figuring she was initiating some bullshit recollection game of antiquated catch phrases, since FUCKING NOBODY would dare say, "Are we having fun yet?" and actually mean it as though it was something quirky and clever to say. I fucking hate people who talk like T-Shirts.
I also hate people who spew out a constant goddamn stream of movie and television references. That shit drives me out of my mind. I have this sort of old school idea in my head that people shouldn't be talking - EVER - unless they're trying to communicate something. If you're looking at me and saying, "Don't have a cow man," in your best Bart Simpson voice, guess what? You aren't fucking saying anything. Oh and also? I don't fucking watch The Simpsons, so you're goddamn quote won't mean anything to me. Why is it that the people that do this always make the assumption that A) everyone watches the same shows they do, and B) everyone understands exactly where they're coming from when they make these references? So fucking stupid.
Whenever I can, I like to watch THE OFFICE on BBCA, it makes me laugh. But I'm not gonna walk around singing "Free Love On The Free Love Freeway" unless I know that the person I'm talking with is also a fan of the show. And even if they are, I'm not going to just randomly start singing it. It has to make sense within the context of the conversation I'm having even if it's something as weak as the other person saying the words "free love." If that context isn't there and I start singing it anyway then I just look like a fucking retard who laughs at the sound of his own farts. Self-censorship is a good thing.
Milky The Marvelous Milking Cow
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