Patti Smith with Steve Sebring; image courtesy of gerryco23.wordpress.com

Before I went on vacation, Kristen at Act Your Age told me that PBS was going to show Dream of Life, a 2008 documentary by Steven Sebring about Patti Smith. Then yesterday, as I was sorting out my house, my friends Jacob and Melissa reminded me that it was going to be on later that night. It should be noted that I received reminder messages from them within the span of five minutes. I’m fine with being the music geek friends send these sorts of notices to. Thanks, everyone.

First, a disclaimer. I’m not a Patti Smith fan. What I mean by that is, I don’t know Smith’s music very well. Several of my friends got to know her through her music, perhaps developing their feminist and/or queer identities as a result. I’m sure the same could be said for readers of this blog I don’t know personally. This isn’t to say I’m not open to listening to her work. I’m just not very familiar with it. If there is interest in subsequent posts wherein I listen to her albums in chronological order and document my thoughts about it like Carrie Brownstein did with Phish earlier this year, show me the way.

Next, a confession. I haven’t until recently been interested in listening to Patti Smith’s music. While I haven’t listened to Horses in its entirety, I am familiar with her, and the ways in which I’m familiar with her give me pause. Here is why.

1. Each time I see a documentary where she is discussed, the opening chords to “Gloria” fade in and a bunch of musicians wax pretentious about how her music melded the sacred with the profane, or that she was not a musician but a poet and I get pissy. Not because of the song, but because of the purple prose being recited over it. I actually hadn’t heard the song in full until I was well into college.

2. With some exception, these superlatives tend to come from men: Glenn Branca, Thurston Moore, Legs McNeil, Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, Richard Hell, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, and Michael Stipe are but a few names. I remember Alice Bag talks about her influence in the supplemental feature about women in punk in Don Letts’ Punk: Attitude and I know riot grrrl pioneers like Kathleen Hanna were inspired by her, but the praise mainly comes from the men. Established or well-regarded rock and roll dudes. Legends, if you will.

3. In some of the things I have read on Smith, she wasn’t very kind to the women and girls around her. Blondie’s Debbie Harry talks about how dismissive and unfriendly she was during their CBGB’s days in Please Kill Me, an oral history on New York punk collected by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. It was also reported in Mark Spitz and the late Brendan Mullen’s L.A. punk oral history We Got the Neutron Bomb that Smith was nasty to The Runaways after they tried to visit her backstage after a concert, leaving a baby Joan Jett particularly crushed. Now, oral histories are tenuous at best and Smith is not asked to comment about any of this. Also, Bebe Buell speaks favorably of Smith in Please Kill Me. Kim Gordon has a prolonged friendship with her as well. But this, coupled with the fact that she doesn’t identify as a feminist makes me feel weird about her status as a feminist rock icon.

4. Add to this the very apparent sense of malecentric hero worship Smith evinces and I feel really weird about her. While I like that she likes Maria Callas, The Ronettes, and Christina Aguilera, I don’t get the sense that she had much use for women. She cut her hair to look like Keith Richards. She learned to hail a cab by watching Bob Dylan in Don’t Look Back, a man who would later tune her guitar. That same guitar was a gift from Sam Shepard. Tom Verlaine apparently has the most beautiful neck in rock music, though her husband Fred “Sonic” Smith of MC5 possessed something altogether else. Pablo Picasso made irreplicable art until Jackson Pollack created paintings out of the drippings from Picasso’s “Geurnica.” Willem de Kooning’s paintings made her want to touch the art in museums, an “offense” she gleefully commited on more than one occasion.

In addition, Smith’s most well-known for covering songs by men, reclaiming Them’s “Gloria,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe,” and Nirvana’s “About A Girl.” Of course, she redefined those songs by singing them as a man without changing the male-female pronouns or amending them to be about Patty Hearst or Kurt Cobain. And, as I’m sure my friend Curran would be quick to point out, Smith often aligns herself with queer men like Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Maplethorpe, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Michael Stipe. Curran may also posit that this makes Smith more closely as a transgendered person, which makes sense given Smith’s commitment to androgyny and sexual ambiguity.

However, I’ve always felt that Smith’s indebtedness to men has aligned herself at with a more liberal feminist, at times heterosexist view of how women play the game of rock (i.e., play the man’s game). While I get how others believe that she’s expanded how women can look and sound in rock, to me it still feels more like she’s abiding by male definitions of performance and sound rather than redefining it for female artists, a group she may not in fact feel that she is a part of. 

To be clear, I don’t need her to be feminine. I’d like it if she were a feminist, but I’d be happier if it just seemed like femaleness wasn’t so burdensome or powerless or safe to her. However, this is how it’s often seemed to me that Smith views or once viewed my sex category, and with it my gender, and this has always been our wedge. I’ll let her state her case.

Of course, this outlook may evince some potential transphobia on my part. I also might be privileging binaristic norms around gender and sexuality instead of championing fluidity. This nagging feeling keeps me coming back to Smith as an idea. But maybe I should get to know her better. And with that, the documentary.

I’ll be blunt again. For the most part, I found this documentary to be indulgent yet slight. Smith of course is the subject, but I was disheartened by how much she seemed to dictate the narrative (I find it just as frustrating when men do this, though I did like when Smith ordered filming to cease backstage before a performance). I would have liked more context.

I also would’ve liked to have been surprised by it more. I didn’t learn much about the artist or the person behind her mythology. I also didn’t get much of a sense of time and place. I could deduce the passing of time by watching her children mature. I understood when we were watching her tour the Trampin’ album because she was speaking out against the Iraq War and the Bush administration. I gather that dancing on the beach in Coney Island with Lenny Kaye was fun, but don’t know why it needed to be shown in slow motion. I know that losing her husband and her friend and long-time collaborator was traumatic because she said so. I don’t know how she felt about the loss of her parents during the 2000s. I saw that she loved playing with her guitarist son Jackson, who toured with her, but I know very little about her daughter Jesse past a gender-bending pubescent trip to the bathroom and, later, a carriage ride with her mother. And past some previously captured interview footage of Smith, I don’t know why she left mundane New Jersey to become a punk poet in New York, though I think I can imagine why.

That said, there were little snatches of Patti Smith the daughter and the artsy gender rebel that I enjoyed and did help me get to know her better. Seeing her eat hamburgers at her parents’ time-warp home. Seeming both proud and embarrassed when her father admits that he can’t go to his daughter’s concerts anymore because he lost his hearing at the earlier gigs he did attend while wearing one of her concert t-shirts. Trading chords with Shepard. Reminiscing about eating hot dogs in Coney Island with Maplethorpe. Holding up her children’s baby clothes and proudly declaring their cleanliness and her refusal to use bleach. Talking about how wanting to touch original paintings in museums is easily satisfied by making your own art. Playing woodwinds with Flea on the beach and swapping stories about how expertly both musicians can pee into bottles while traveling. And seeing her performances and hearing her words, her songs. I wish I was given a timeline to find out when all of these works were created, but I’m content to find out for myself. Let’s start by revisiting ”Redondo Beach.”

Sweden is far from its 70s stereotype of a liberated, semi-nudist land of earthy blondes.  In fact, as far as social norms go, it seems as, if not more, conservative as, say, liberal parts of the US.

But there are moments when you realize that Sweden is a liberated semi-nudist land of earthy blondes, at least in spirit.  Usually these moments are at the library. Yes, the library.  Flipping through the bin of books on the alphabet and numbers and new siblings.

And there somewhere is a book with, on page 13 or so, a full-on illustration of a naked man.  Then a naked woman.  Then the naked man on top of the naked woman.  Enlightening stuff for the preschool set, I am sure.

We actually checked this book out once so I could write about it, but then I got all caught up in questions like, Can I scan this?  Is it appropriate, even if in a book for little kids in the local Swedish library?  Does one book signify anything?  Maybe the (very stern and unearthy)  librarians don’t even know about it.

But here I am writing about it, and that is because I found another example of Sweden’s, ummm, looser standards.

I found the Crue.

Yep, Motley Crue.  I was at the library today, holding a baby, following a toddler, and the featured book in the youth nonfiction section was:

Motley Crue:  The Dirt – Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band

Now the youth section includes teenagers. I get it. But it also includes young teenagers, and this is a book about, according to Amazon.com:

Whiskey and porn stars, hot reds and car crashes, black leather and high heels, overdoses and death. This is the life of Mötley Crüe, the heaviest drinking, hardest fighting, most oversexed and arrogant band in the world.

And lest you think this a mistake, the book next to The Dirt?

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

The thing is, now I want to read both books. I mean, a Swedish newspaper called The Dirt “a modern Canterbury Tales.” I never liked Motley Crue much, in fact I remember when Dr. Feelgood came out in the late 80s and I thought, boy, those guys are washed up and when would this hair band thing end, and in that darkest night, it was actually about to end, for I discovered Led Zeppelin soon after, the Black Crowes came out, and then a year later in college, I had Nirvana and Pearl Jam on constant replay, and the Crue was headed for tabloid hell.

But still, how can I pass up The Dirt now? I love the Canterbury Tales. I see Tommy Lee as the Wife of Bath, Nikki Sixx as the Miller and so on. So thank you librarians of Solna. And if my kid brings this book home when she is 12, you will be hearing from me …

Yesterday I had to attend a wedding.  Generally, weddings are lavish affairs.  Italian weddings in northern New Jersey? Well, those are a lesson in excess.

So imagine my suprise.  Upon arriving at the Crystal Yacht club, I was not greeted with valet parking.  Instead, we pulled up to a ”motel” style hotel. (Where we could’ve received discounted block rates!)

We enter, and find our place card.  It read “Mr. and Mrs. T-Bone.”

I kid you not.  (Clearly, my name is NOT Mrs. T-Bone.  Rather, this was a childhood nickname of A’s, circa 1993).  

I will summarize the remainder of woeful items:

First – As described above, the place was horrible.  Complete with the fake crystal looking centerpieces and plastic artifical flowers. I literally felt like I woke up in 1985.   The ice sculpture had a Dallas Cowboys star, and a NY Yankees symbol.  The groom wore a Cowboys tux vest.  
 
Second – the food was horrible.  I came home and ate microwaved pasta and meatballs for the third straight day.  And it was better than anything else I ate all day.  Venetian hour? That was a tray of cookies served on a plastic crystal-esque plate.
 
Third – the music was terrible.  And the dj looked like Steven Segal, plus 30 pounds and a frizzy curly ponytail.  I’m not kidding, we went from “boogie shoes” to “billy jean.”  Oh, and there were plastic moroccas.  And “glow” necklaces.  And special appearances by the theme song from Sopranos, and the Godfather.  
 
Fourth – I barely knew anyone who attended the wedding.  The “star” of my table was a woman straight out of central casting from “Real Housewives of New Jersey.” She sat there and debated her 1,000 a month lease of her Infiniti, versus purchasing a Mercedes GL.  B/C THIS is your greatest problem in life.   Oh, and she lives with her inlaws. Also, she must have made at least 8 comments like “You know nothing about life, wait until you have kids.”

Dearest friends:

Muhammad Ali  once said, “Champions aren’t made in gyms.  Champions are made from something they have deep inside them—a desire, a dream, a vision.”  By extrapolating  Ali’s maxim, one thing becomes abundantly clear:  Rutgers Law will win the UVA Law Invitational Softball Tournament on April 9-11, 2010.  It’s a FACT.  I mean, look around you.  Everyone still has desire (… to get find a job before the REPO man comes rap-tap-tapping at your chamber door);  everyone still has a dream (… it’s called “Barrister’s Ball,” or, “Buddy Mixer with Cumberbunds”);  everyone still has vision (… or can regain it through successful Lasik surgery, natch).   Thus, despite our (read: MY) ill-fated workout regimens, we are the champions.

But it will be no bed of roses.

No pleasure cruise.

I know what some of you are asking yourselves (and yes, I hate this rhetoric device too):

1. “But Jorge, how do I get involved with the 2010 Intercontinental Co-Ed Softball Juggernaut that is Rutgers Law Softball?”  Simple, Bro Montana.  Fill out the attached registration form and bring a $30 non-refundable deposit to the UVA Softball Table in the atrium.  Or you may choose to fill out the form at the table.  We will start tabling regularly from next week through Thanksgiving break.  You must register before Thanksgiving break if you want to attend. The total cost of the trip will be about $100 ($70 after deposit) for new players and $75 ($45 after deposit) for returning players.  These prices are subject to change (read: D-to-the-rizzop) depending on our collective fundraising efforts.  This cost includes: a 2 day stay at the wonderful Days Inn of Charlottesville, VA; a mesh Rutgers Law Jersey; and tournament registration*.  We strongly encourage 1Ls to attend.  Get your briefs done a few days early because you DO NOT want to miss this trip.  I know that it’s a little pricey, but it’s easily the best event of the year.

2. “But George, I’m not that good at softball.”  Listen, chief.  This is a FUN-raiser.   Besides, every team needs some Miguel Cabrera.  Follow instructions above.

3. “No, but seriously Hore-hay, I don’t want to play softball.”   Well, if you’ve read this far into the e-mail despite not wanting to play, I want to let you in on two secrets.  (1) My name is Jorge.  (2) I want you to break out that scarlet war paint and come anyway.  Far too often we forget what the softball trip is about—making contact.  And I’m talking about more than ground-rule doubles.  In ten years, when we’re at the Bar (Association events) together we’re not going to look back and talk about how awesome that ALALS bake sale** was.   No.  We’re going to talk about how awesome it was when [REDACTED] totally [REDACTED] in [REDACTED]’s [REDACTED].

The gauntlet has been lain.  The fields have been reserved.  All that’s left is your participation.

For New Jersey.  For Rutgers.  For “the Gipper.”  Let’s make it happen.

With love and squalor,

Jorge Estrada
J.D. Candidate, 2010
Sent on behalf of the Rutgers Softball Team

Hoje estou que não me agüento. Chato. Terrivelmente mal-humorado. Mentira, nem tão mal-humorado assim, acordei ph7. Não sabe o que é ph7, meu anjo? Eu te explico, ph7 é quando não se está nem ácido nem básico, está neutro. Sabe? Lesado, zumbi.

Hoje eu acordei ph7 e tive um dia inteiro ph7. Ok, não o dia inteiro, mas boa parte dele, o que já é suficiente. Não sou misantropo, mas quando estamos ph7, as pessoas parecem ainda mais insuportáveis do que elas são normalmente, algumas claro.  Hoje eu tive que lidar com gente, insuportavelmente cansado. E gente insuportavelmente cansada fica realmente insuportável.

Mas eu não quero ficar falando desse povo chato que povoou meu dia. Aliás, nem quero falar do que aconteceu no meu dia. Até porque estou desconfiado que comecei a tomar um gelo que eu não queria absolutamente. Principalmente porque se trata de uma pessoa que eu gosto muito. E por uma besteira. Mas é daquelas besteiras que é besteira pra mim e não pra pessoa. Saco. Detesto gente que sofre demais. Sabe? Gente que encana com os menores problemas do mundo? Então. Detesto. Mentira. Nem detesto tanto. Detesto só se não for meu amigo. Porque se for meu amigo eu só fico irritada e mando à merda de vez em quando.

Hoje eu estava tão, mas tão nulo, que nem sequer forças eu tive pra mandar à merda. Mas devia.

Pois agora eu estou um pouco mais ácida e mal humorada do que eu estava antes porque eu estou com fome. E eu fico insuportável quando eu estou com fome. E quando estou com sono também. Aliás, essa é uma combinação explosiva em mim: fome e sono. Pior ainda se me contrariarem nessas condições. Mando pra casa do caralho sem pestanejar. Às vezes não explicitamente nem verbalmente, porque não sou bobo nem nada e sei muito bem que língua que cabe na boca não lambe chão. Mas às vezes é bom, não acha, meu amor?

Chega. Preciso comer. Preciso. Se não… ah, deixa pra lá.

Click here to jump to this week’s chapter.

BOOK REVIEW :: BY CARRIE ROLLWAGEN

If you like punk rock, or if you’re one of those girls who wears a Ramones shirt around like in Chapter Fourteen, please please read this book. Or, you know, stop wearing that shirt.

The narrative is told by people who were actually in bands or involved in the scene somehow. Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain piece together all these bits of interviews and articles to make more than a coherent story. They make magic. Seriously, a lot of this text flows so well from narrator to narrator and paragraph to paragraph that you’d think it’s fiction. The fact that it isn’t makes it all the more impressive.

Sometimes punk rock is authentic, sometimes political, sometimes dangerous, sometimes just silly and goofy. The book is the same. It’s amazing and fun to read. Plus, it gave me insane lucid dreams, which seems pretty punk to me.

I grew up listening to Offspring, Green Day, Rancid, and etc. But I never knew how all of this PUNK movement started. This is why I decided to buy this book.

Please Kill Me (the uncensored oral history of Punk)

{$9.92/$194.08}

Overall, I’m disappointed in PUNK. But I’m satisfied. The PUNK I know is all about

giving the finger to the BIG MAN. You know you can’t beat the BIG MAN, but you

want to do something about those pigs who rip you off. So that started PUNK! I hate

how you are doing things, and I know anything I do won’t change a thing, but this is

how I feel and the only way I know how to express my anger at you.

^

The musicians who first started this sort of movement, The Velvet Underground, was

well tutored by the famous Andy Warhol. After the first generation of pioneers, things

just got bad. Punk stars became junkies and useless. The movement started to be an

act of self destruction. England saw this act of self destruction and magnified this to a

new level of Chaos, and it died.

^

Danny Fields: “…this punk thing wasn’t viable. That they were meant to self-destruct

and so what’s the point in investing in any of them? Why build an audience for the

Ramones or the Pistols or the Clash? Why institutionalize them if they’re just

going to be destroyed, if it’s their nature to destroy others and to destroy

themselves?”

Legs McNeil: “Now that it was here, I didn’t want any part of it. Overnight, punk had

become as stupid as everything else. Punk wasn’t ours anymore. It had become

everything we hated.”

^

POWER ANGER DIY were the things good about PUNK. Let’s leave it at that.

]]> http://electricmud.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/please-kill-me/ Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:33:44 +0000 electricmud http://electricmud.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/please-kill-me/

The above is not a request. I promise.

On my way back to New York I picked up a used copy of Please Kill Me, the classic oral tome of the so-called beginnings of punk rock, written (or, um, compiled) by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. In between moving my belongings into my new space I would take short breaks, which eventually turned into long breaks, and ended up breezing my way through the entire book. I still haven’t unpacked everything out of my car.

Surprisingly, to me at least, I don’t think I necessarily enjoyed it. While the gossipy tone of the narrative can be infectious, toward the halfway point you start to get boggled down by what seems to be an unhealthy fascination with the details of every band members drug habit. When people die, the books seems to glorify the fact that they were iconoclasts and wants to praise them, which is all well and good, except that nobody wants to admit that the scene was the real problem, a vicious cycle of junkies who fed off one another, leading to their ultimate demise.

And, possibly to the books credit, some people just come off as assholes. Having done months of research on Warhol in college, interviewing anybody associated with the man who was still alive and in the general area, I can testify to the fact that most of them are still living off said association, no matter how small it may have been. Maybe what made Warhol’s scene around the Factory, and in turn the “punk” scene around Max’s Kansas City and later CBGB’s, was that everybody could feel like they were the key ingredient making everything happen. You were important. It becomes a running joke throughout the book when you arrive at some crucial event, whether it be a song, concert, or death, and everybody seems to believe that they were there, it all happened because of them, and not not to believe everyone else who is telling you the exact same story. They say when it comes down to legend and truth, print the legend. Unfortunately, the legend frequently comes off here as sad attempts at relevance from folks who were known for not much more than shooting dope.

It’s also possible that what I’m criticizing is the whole point of the book, seems to be saying that punk rock was nothing and everything you thought it was, and that it’s definitely over is the only thing that is certain.

I’m on the Hamish Industries Softball Team.

We’re called The Window Pains.

Our captain is Farook from Accounting. He asked me what position I wanted to play. I laughed and said “towel boy.”

He said I could be towel boy and outfield.

It’s gonna be a long season…

We played our first game last night against Bob Jones’ Revolving Doors.

It was everything I expected. Hot beer and cold chicken wings; sweaty co-workers slapping each other’s rumps, and Otto’s nonstop trumpeting of Gary Glitter’s “Rock N’ Roll.”

“Ba na na na… Hey! Ba na na…”

The first time I went up to bat, my Hamish teammates and pals were all shouting “You’re the man, Alpo.”

By the 7th inning it was “Oh great, here comes the strikeout king.”

Mike compared my striking out at the plate with my success rate with the ladies. The “limp bat” jokes quickly followed. Everyone found them very funny.

It was a long dark night of softball.

Everytime I said “Is it over yet?” drunk Mary Margaret would respond with “You’re such a turd, Alpo.”

But things got interesting in the bottom of the 9th

We were winning.

They were up at bat.

Two out, bases loaded, full count, and me in the outfield checking my blackberry. (I know; a typical baseball cliché.)

That’s when I heard the sound of a crack and people yelling.

I looked up. The field lights were in my face. I stuck up my hand to block them out. I accidentally caught the ball.

Next thing I knew the members of The Window Pains were carrying me across the field and cheering my name.

I kept asking them to put me down and let me go home, but they didn’t hear me.

Ma mère c’est Debbie Harry et mon père Tom Verlaine, ma tante est Patti Smith et mon parain Ziggy Stardust.  Je sors boire un coup avec Dee Dee Ramone et fais la fête toute la nuit avec Sid et Nancy.  Je danse sur la musique du Velvet Underground et je rêve de m’habiller comme les New York Dolls. Ok, j’ai peut-être lu un peu trop souvent Please Kill Me, mais c’est pas interdit de rêver quand même!  Je parle de quoi? Bah, seulement de la bible de l’histoire de la musique punk depuis la fin des années 60 en passant par Television, The Doors et Iggy Pop.  Il renferme non seulement des anecdoctes intéressantes (l’origine de la chanson Tv Eye de The Stooges, les querelles de groupies et la sexualité débridée du couple Bowie, une autre version de la nuit où Nancy Spungen a trouvé la mort…) en plus de tracer le portrait d’une génération dont l’oeuvre trouve echo encore aujourd’hui.  Alors on sort notre Manic Panic et nos épingles de sureté, ou on se la joue glam en paillettes dorées et plates-formes, ou sinon il restera toujours la version androgyne aux cheveux orangés pour les mecs et la chemise d’homme portée avec le chien de Patti Smith pour les petites rockeuses dans l’âme.  Et la musique, on la joue fort.  Très fort.

The Velvet Underground - Sunday Morning

Nico - These Days

The Doors - Break On Through (To The Other Side)

Iggy and The Stooges - 1969

The Ramones - I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust

Television - Venus

Patti Smith - Gloria

Tom Verlaine - Sleep Walkin

New York Dolls - Personality Crisis

Blondie - Call Me

Sex Pistols - God Save The Queen

Sonic Youth - Kool Thing

John Cale - Heartbreak Hotel

Lou Reed - Perfect Day

MC5 - Kick Out The Jam

Johnny Thunders - Chinese Rocks

Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.

Compiled of tons of interviews with Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop, The Ramones, etc. Great insight into an era.

Here’s the trailer for a new documentary that looks into the death of Nancy Spungen, most widely known as the girlfriend of Sid Vicious.  Found via SlamXHype.

It looks interesting, although; I’ve always had pretty mixed feelings about Sid Vicious and the Sex Pistols in general.  Along with so many others, I agree that it’s a bit troubling the Sex Pistols are always championed as the iconic punk band.  If you’re interested in this kind of thing I suggest checking out Please KIll Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain.

Flea-bagged By an EconoLodge

Yes, you heard me correctly. Your favorite spoiled and pampered road warrior is holed up at an EconoLodge, just outside lovely Bellefonte, PA. I got the shitty news last week, when a travel agent told me everything within a 25-mile radius of here was sold out, and not even my Marriott Rewards Platinum status would allow me to screw some poor schmuck out of a room.

It turns out that about an hour to my northeast, the annual NAMBLA Fantasy Fest is playing itself out on the hallowed grounds of Howard J. Lamade Stadium (the phrase “touch ‘em all” refers to the little baseball players, not to you, ya sick ol’ pervs!). Meanwhile, a mere ten miles to the south, thousands of parents are helping their future date rape/alcohol poisoning victims get settled into the rarified campus of Pennsylvania State University; I hear there’s a football team or something.

So, TravelWhore is EconoLodgin’!!!

I tried for the past several days to steel myself for this place, but I had to throw out the playbook as I pulled up to the office, to see a shirtless, obese, mulleted freak walk out with a bag of ice, which he proceeded to smash repeatedly on the bed of his pickup.

Yes, Hateracer… the office most definitely reeked of some or other curry dish.

Yaaay!!! I get to park my car right in front of the door!!!

I threw open the door, and was assaulted by an unspeakable aroma, one that told me this room recently played host to a significant fire. Or a meth lab; couldn’t tell which.

The next ten seconds featured me ripping open my suitcase, hanging the work duds on the shower curtain rod, and running out of the room, nearly gagging from the stench. TravelWhore clearly needed a drink several drinks at this point.

While talking to Ms. TravelWhore, who cackled in delight at my predicament, I pointed the Corolla toward downtown Bellefonte, in search of a quick, 10:00 pm “surly hour,” preferably in a place where I would not be bitch-slapped by the “townies.”

I found a neighborhood-y joint that was open, and looked divey-but-not-too-divey; it was “Goldilocks divey,” so I casually sauntered through the front door, where your still professionally-clad TravelWhore was met with every “you’re in the wrong bar” signal known to man, save for the needle falling off the groove of the 45 record in the jukebox. Fortunately, I was not moved by this “welcome.”

Among the mullets, Aryan Brotherhood skinheads, Slipknot tee shirts and peaked-in-high-school-class-of-’89 bar skanks, I found an open stool at the bar, and was grunted at, seven minutes later, by the busted-up old barkeep. Those seven minutes turned out to be potentially beatdown-saving, as my first inclination was to order a healthy pour of The Mighty Jameson – my Irish Holy Water – to go with my frosty beer. A quick inventory of the offerings behind the bar told me that this joint stocked not one imported product, save for a couple bottles of rotgut Canadian whisky. But they DID have every flavor imaginable of Boone’s Farm, proudly displayed on a shelf behind the bar. I wondered to myself if the barkeep could point me toward some smart Boone’s/pork rind pairings?

Realizing that I was in some Bizarro Rome indeed, I did like the Bizarro Romans do, and ordered a bottle of Bud with a shot of Jack. My pleasant surprise for the day came when the barkeep returned a five and some coins in exchange for my ten.

I drank my drinks… efficiently, headed back to the Corolla, and left the Bellefonte nightlife in my rear view mirror.

Hoping the beer and booze softened me a tad, perhaps made me a touch less judgmental, I wheeled back to the EconoLodge and re-entered my posh accommodations. In hindsight, I should have had another round. Or three.

Fancy, huh?

Suddenly growing very tired, I contemplated sleeping fully clothed atop my bed (having once read that an average of 32 distinct DNA samples can be found in your average hotel bed covering – at your finer properties), but asking myself “what’s the worst that could happen?” I peeled off my clothes and pulled down the bedding, trying hard not to imagine the unspeakable acts of carnality to which this bed had borne witness.

Nice. Glad to see that my friends at EconoLodge care about the little things. Like careless smoking in bed, for instance. No wonder my room reeked of an old fire. Defying all known logic, I fell asleep in minutes.

I awoke seven hours later. Amazingly, I was not itching. TravelWhore takes the little victories where he can find them. I hopped in the shower and was out the door in under seven minutes (amazing how the lack of in-room coffee keeps one from lingering), but not before I saw this:

‘The fuck?!? Say it along with me, kids: they’re allowed, by law, to charge you THREE HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS to stay in this room for ONE NIGHT!!! Are you kidding me? Is Penn State football really worth this, and don’t you just get shit-faced and pass out in your own sick in a parking lot after the game anyway?!? Maybe they’re not drinking themselves into an early grave because they love their Nittany Lions – maybe it’s the only way they can face the fucking EconoLodge after their Saturday of reliving the glory days. I just don’t get it.

One night down, one to go.

TravelWhore is hungry. Hugs ‘n’ kisses from Bellefonte.

Postscript: I just ate dinner at Bellefonte’s High Street Pub, and it was fucking awesome. Plus, I had a curry dish, so I don’t notice the aroma of the EconoLodge. So much, anyway. Next time I’m in State College, hopefully in lodgings that are at least fit for stray cats, I will go out of my way to eat there.

]]> http://askachinese.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/vince-weiguang-li-please-kill-me/ Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:24:32 +0000 thebittersea http://askachinese.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/vince-weiguang-li-please-kill-me/

This is a little off topic but I couldn’t help it but to notice that the crazy fuck that beheaded a innocent bus rider is actually a Chinese. I can only imagine what was going through that head of his when he committed such an unspeakable crime. This man makes me sick and you all should check out the commentaries on Newsvine.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/05/canada.bus.stabbing.ap/index.html

Discussions can be found here:
http://ndrock.newsvine.com/_news/2008/08/05/1723185-bus-beheading-suspect-pleads-please-kill-me#comments

Tim McLean’s FaceBook Page:
http://yourhottopics.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/tim-mcleans-myspace/

Tim McLean’s MySpace Page:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=108390479

From Tim’s Older Sister Amanda:
“For anyone interested – my family has set up an account in memory of my brother to help pay for his final expenses and whatever is left will be donated to a cause close to his heart. Just go into any TD Canada Trust and donate to the Tim McLean in Trust account. If you’d like to mail a donation, the address of the main branch where we set up the account is TD Canada Trust, 6630 Roblin Blvd, Winnipeg, MB Canada R3R 1X1. We don’t expect, but greatly appreciate any and all help. The whole family has received such incredible support and love from all over the world, and we wish we could thank every of you individually.”

Please find it in your hearts to donate!

Muori per la musica.
Non moriresti volentieri per qualcosa di carino?
                                                                    Lou Reed

Label – Self Released

Website http://www.hotbutteredanal.com

Buy it here!

I hadn’t heard about the band “Hot Buttered Anal” until recently, but immediately coming to mind was the fact that one can conclude just from the band’s name that they have a weird sense of humor. But don’t let that spook you, serious folks, this album, entitled “Please Kill Me”, will cheer you up, make you laugh, and all of the above. For lovers of gore-grind, this album has something for you. The album artwork is conceptualized to look like a box of popcorn, complete with a parodical nutritional information fact card on the back. I won’t give away what the parody is, you’ll have to buy it to find that out. The music is done in a punk style, surprisingly enough (at first glance one would think this is a grindcore cd), with lyrics dealing with topics ranging from homosexual robots, to a heartfelt song about freeing lobsters. Unfortunately though, fun is all this album is. These guys don’t take themselves seriously, and that’s not a bad thing sometimes, but there really aren’t that many highlights to be found on this album, nothing that made me sit up and take notice, however. I had more fun reading the lyrics and looking at the album cover. If funny lyrics and liner notes is what you’re after, check out this cd. Hell, you may even like the music.

Rating : 3/5

The February issue of Spin has a little feature on the Black Lips that is a huge letdown. Spin contributor David Peisner went to their big deal Variety Playhouse show back in November, a show that “lacked some of the antics the Lips have become infamous for – urinating in their own mouths, onstage fistcuffs, leading an audience on a march.” That’s okay, because the after-party “will deliver some debauchery” with a performance from Mastodon spin-off Fiend Without a Face. Right?

Not really, because Brent Hinds is too drunk to play. But oh my god!! There is a keg of PBR at the party!! IN A BATHTUB!!! Jared Swilley even does a KEG STAND!!!! Things get even crazier when someone brings out JELL-O SHOTS and the guys say the F-WORD!!!!! Everyone gets really drunk and leaves with their girlfriends.

It sucks that Spin sent someone to witness the notoriously wild Black Lips in their native habitat, but probably not at the ideal time or place to do it so the whole piece ends up, not by any fault of the band, lame and labored by describing your typical Atlanta late-night party of forced amusement. I think you have to go on the road with a band to get a glimpse of real rock’n'roll vulgarities. Everyone’s on their best behavior when they’re with their hometown honeys. In this case, “best behavior” = blacking out before you can get into bigger trouble.

You’ll be better off reading the Mayor of Ponce’s works of staggering drunkenness as CL’s new Nightcrawler columnist.

Download mp3s of the Black Lips’ Whirlyball show at Chunklet.

I hate to bury TransRatFashion and fisting videos, but this made me choke on a scream of glee/horror.

In case Rolling Stone or anyone else wants to know what my song picks are, right now I’m listening to Soviet (Marbleyezed), Paul Westerberg (These Days), Amy Winehouse, Xiu Xiu (who knew Dave Matthews and I had so much in common?), and some other stuff that I’m not prepared to admit to. Like the Arcade Fire. So nevermind, I’ll admit to anything.

Also, Conor Oberst looks like a hobbit.