WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS. YOU'LL NEVER BE ALONE AGAIN.

First off, the guy who sits next to me is the master of Roadrunner Records' entire back catalog. What this means for me is that I get to sit here and listen to old King Diamond, Slipknot, and classic power metal and....fucking machine head. Ok, so its not THAT amazing, and it will be even less cool once he gets to the "N for Nickelback" section...but for now, I fucking love walking into work and hearing "Abigail" screaming full blast out of studio quality monitor speakers.


St. Patrick's day was a fucking mess. I got my roommate and friend Tek drunk at 5 pm...they can't drink for shit...and we headed to the city, 6 hours after the other drunks hit up 2nd avenue for their green beer.

Things were great, we found wings and Irish Car Bombs fairly easily, and were high fiving our way to sainthood. Until the girls showed up. My roommate studied in Japan for a month, thus affording him what many college students have, "the study-abroad friends". The strange and unique bond that you form with some people you have met with zero context, with only a strange new culture to put them in. You might have a night of wild drunken slippery sex on a study abroad trip, only to find out that stateside, this girl is a raging bulldyke lacrosse champion lesbian. No one knows who/what the fuck they are when they are living in a different country.

Regardless, some study abroad girls came out to meet my roommate. They were in from Florida, and this was to be their last night. I was feeling strong, so I decided to attempt some charm. There were two of them, and I couldn't decide which I liked better, so I just tried for both at the same time. I was a double barreled shotgun, sometimes both barrels, sometimes one, and sometimes I would just jam...hearing nothing but the sickening sound of a weapon clicking ineffectually...and throw up.

Right in front of one of them my stomach went sour, the bile coming up to rest at the base of me neck, the flume of alcohol I had been riding would be temporarily closed at that point. So I thought I would be cool and take a generous (read: fucking huge) sip of water. The glass i grabbed wasn't water at all, horrifying, it was a nice huge glass of whiskey and water that I had just ordered. That was a wrap, I headed straight to the bathroom and puked my brains out. Nice.

So you could probably tell I had no chance with any girl, but damned if I didn't keep up my overzealous attempts at bedding one of them. When it came to pass that the other of the two had a man, I focused my efforts on the other. Poor girl.

Overzealousness reeks of desperation, and desperation, as they say, is a very, very smelly cologne.

So I continued my misguided attempt to get ass. No matter what though, we were having a fucking great time. The only kind you can have when you are with your friends, drinking at odd hours with cute girls who laugh at your jokes. All smiles and little glasses that you have to drop into bigger glasses before you can drink from them.

We hopped around the city, bar to bar to ATM to bar to Roach Coach Gyros to bar. In transit, without fail, we would be screaming, literally screaming the song, "We are your friends" by Justice vs. Simian. Mimicking the singers maniacal shriek, getting better at the imitation with each step and pint. My singing probably didn't help my chances either, nor did the fact that I had developed a nasty habit of saying "bunz". ..which I picked up from a previous night of hanging out with Shady Milos.

Anyway, crunch time, Bleecker street, she is sitting on my lap somehow, laughing at something stupid, talking about Arcade Fire (they're fucking overrated), and she just leaves. I make a half ass attempt to pursue, but the look on her face says, "hey well thanks for all the whiskey, but I'd rather go home and pleasure myself in my hotel bathtub than hear you say 'Bunz' again. Have a good night."

"Whatever, that bitch was BUNZ, son."

I wake up on my couch confused, but pretty damn happy regardless. Hungover giggling with my roommate and Tek, patting ourselves on the back for being such fools.

I believe thats all for now. My friend Jargy is coming to the city tonight. He is a hell of a journalist, coming to check out neighborhoods for when he moves here. We are going to work on some projects together, but he has a towering cunt of an ex-girlfriend that he just cant shake, so I will be performing an exorcism before anything gets done.

Have a great day.

Gang Gang Dance

Gang Gang Dance is from Brooklyn, I think. They have been embraced and lauded as a pretty cool "band" in the Williamsburg white-fucker scene. I think they kind of sound like Liars...who I like.

I suppose this is a "review" of their DVD I saw.

Lower East Side, the 205 club, fuck-you cold outside, and I knew already that the drinks were going to be 9 dollars, the opposite of a giggling open bar. The night started off ok, as I warmed up with a Guinness in the pub around the corner, waiting for my co-worker and whiskey partner to show up (he never did). The pub played talking heads and TV on the Radio and I talked with the locals about the merits of both. Great people.

Leaving such a place to walk 30 feet in arctic cold to a hipster prom with a guest list was already looking to be horribly unappealing.

I was intrigued though, as I like noisy we-eird shit, and I was told by "the scene" that Gang Gang Dance is exactly that. So i bundled up, griped, pissed, and moaned my way 30 feet up Stanton and went in. So this was the release party eh? Shady people still had their scarves on, mugging from the garage-sale furniture VIP section. A skinny white dude played nice dubstep records, which still didn't do anything to cool me off. The 9 dollar rum and coke didn't work either, and I found my hands clenching into rocks every time I was bumped into by a "hey I'm here, did you see me?" type of person.

My spirits lifted though, when I saw the adorable girl writing notes on a pad. Just like an old school journalist. April O'neal fantasies gave me something to think about until the DVD started. I had a hero in a half shell by the time my drink was half gone....sorry I just had to, the set up was too perfect.

It should be obvious by now that I was in no condition to view something like a Gang Gang Dance DVD.

It was pretty cool, but so weird to the point that I desparately wanted some one to call "bullshit". There was no way these people were "feeling" this all the way. There were some interesting elements, but it was far too noisy and grating to cheer for. So I started getting on the whole, "these people are not here for the music, they are here for the scene" line of thinking.

I believe there is a lot of truth in that. Gang Gang Dance I'm sure has very few "fans", and by fans I mean the type that know all their songs and can whistle their tunes. BUT, fans or no fans, a lot of people still show up to their shows, and still buy their shit. This is because they enjoy (we'll stay away from the reasons WHY) what the band is a part of...which is...fucking....hip white jerks in brooklyn making innovative music.

I like to think I was just there for the music, but I came to the conclusion that I wasn't that much better than these people.

Yup, it was full on existential crisis at a DVD release party. Anyway, the DVD is called "Retinal Riddim", it is pretty cool, but the main thing to learn from this is the age old adage that I made up:

"If its good, its good, if it sucks it sucks."

If the music can stand on its own once its been severed from the scene and the hype, then it is worth your attention. Check out the trailer for the DVD, this is actually the coolest part of the whole thing because of the gabber beats.



More to come later...

Kung Fu Drunk

"Kung Fu Drunk"

I need to remember that phrase, it came to me in my sleep last night dreaming of underwater combat with the Aliens from the Alien movies.

It had a narrator,
"Ash was able to free himself, slicing the thing above the left shoulder with his plasma torch. He backpedaled, piss scared, violent, and kung-fu drunk. With the thing inches from his face, he closed the door to the facility, set the timed lock for 30 years, and took off his helmet to figure out what the fuck was going on."

Of course, immediately after that, a different door opened and the alien came in riding a flood like Slim Pickens riding an A-bomb, hooting and hollering, singing something like "She'll be comin' round the mountain" in the most demented voice I've ever heard.

ANYWAY, I needed to write that down, because the phrase "Kung Fu Drunk" made a profound impact on me. If I were ever fighting zombies or aliens, I would make sure to achieve that kind of drunkenness, where my own strength is alien to me and my fear is almost non-existent. Like the time downtown when the 300 pound blacked out guy got directly in my face with a look that sharks must give to their prey, abusive husbands to their wives. I just stood there and didn't move, too drunk to register the threat, or too drunk to care, I looked him right in the eyes until he walked away.

The Alien had a voice like the guy singing in this song. This song/band is fucking amazing. The band is called Battles, the song is "Atlas".

OK thanks for reading, proof that dreams are a hodgepodge of shit you've recently experienced:

1. I've watched Alien and Aliens and Alien 3 more times than you jerked off last year.
2. Just read a section in my zombie book about underwater zombie combat.
3. Battles fucking rule.
4. The vocals in that song fucking rule.
5. Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove is funny as hell.

...that was a weird one. More to come later.

Aesop Rock New Single

Listen to this track.

Aesop Rock- None Shall Pass
From the Adult Swim/Def Jux compilation; Definitive Swim. You might as well get that too, its free.

Aesop Rock has a way of putting together seemingly utter nonsense to make it compelling. At least 10 times I've gotten pissed at the guy for being too obscure, but yet I always end up listening to him. I can't really explain it and that is what I like. I spend a lot of time explaining why one thing is better than another or who could beat up who. With this, it just feels good to say "I just like it". So I've already said too much.

Anyway, check that one out, and then move backwards in time through other inexplicably good Aesop Rock tracks, the ones that are just plain fucking good (yer going to have to find them yourselves, I have no idea where they are).

"Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives" from the EP of the same name.
"Freeze" from Bazooka Tooth.
"9-5ers Anthem" from Labor Days.
"Daylight" from Labor Days.
"Skip Town" from Float.

And that's where I stop.

Now go find a nice girl with huge breasts and give her a hug. Its therapeutic.

Metal

Ok, So i updated this thing 3x just now. Thats right, there is three posts of bullshit below this. Even a new one under the weird ass JC post.

I also just wrote this as a reaction to a blog belonging to a friend of a co-worker of mine: http://www.metalsucks.net/

Its a pretty cool metal site, and I wrote this with the intention of getting it posted on their site, but I wouldn't blame them for not posting such direction-less ranting. Enjoy.

METAL SUCKS

Call this an editorial, or a guest editorial. None of what I say here will be really news-worthy or news-related. In fact it’s the opposite, all I am going to do here is be an “old school” (I’m 24) metal curmudgeon. The point is that I am wholly and completely correct when I say, you can stop listening to metal now. It’s ok. You’ve had a good run.

Metal bands will do one or two fantastic things, and then consistently follow it with re-hash crap until one of their band members either gets married, has kids, or gets killed on stage. This is why I am utterly dumbfounded that people still buy Korn records.



Maybe it’s a personal problem, but I can’t even find myself engaged by the new Haunted album, because nothing will beat the opening to “Hate Song”. That band died a quiet death when Peter Dolving left, and they didn’t re-animate when he came back.

A few other things…

Opeth never topped Orchid, all they did was get obsessed with the letter “D” and make some weepy sad bastard cold castle music. You can stop pretending they’ve made anything good in the last 6 years. Chris Barnes’ Cannibal Corpse will never top The Bleeding, and Corpsegrinder’s band will never top Vile. It’s a shame isn’t it?

If you want to skip to the end of this whole thing, the entire genre of “metal” was completely and totally negated by one album. It is called City and it is by a band called Strapping Young Lad, maybe you’ve heard of them.



So what then? Nothing beyond that point is relevant, I am not all that worried about it, but there are a few other things I want to address.

Another problem is the discovery that people in metal bands are actual people. That one is a shame. I was extremely angered to hear that Alex Webster had a wife, and didn’t spend all of his time fucking and eating corpses. The guy in Soilent Green worked for an art transportation company or some shit. These people don’t have jobs! All they do is live metal, drink, fuck, kill, rock, and play shows. I don’t want to hear about anything else.

The only “real life” metal drama I want to hear about can only involve one or all of these three things:
A) The members of Mayhem stabbing each other in the head.
B) Immortal shopping for bullet belts.
C) Chris Barnes entering rehab for his crippling addiction to vaginal skin.

The only metal tour video that anyone needs to see ever was created by Pantera. I realized this watching my roommate’s Lamb of God DVD. The only redeeming factor was that the lead singer is a drunken camera-mugging diva. Nice try, but there is no room for diva-dom in metal (unless you are Big Val), there is only room for tits, solos, firecrackers, brown liquor, and tits.



And what is this about black metal gaining credibility in the hipster community? I thought black metal ended with Old Man’s Child’s album Ill Natured Spiritual Invasion. Galder fucking freestyled the vocals on that whole album. It doesn’t get any more hip than that (the time that Demon Burger used a vocorder is a close second), so stop blogging about hip black metal.


Fuck you.

It is also too bad that The Berzerker broke up. That band ended the second they took off their masks, because they were “too hot”. Metal bands can’t get “too hot”. Rest in Pieces Berzerker, we hardly knew ye.


R.I.P.

You can also stop opening heavy metal record stores. The only heavy metal record store that ever mattered was called Nightfall Records in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The store was owned and operated by Don Decker, the fat angry hearse-driving singer of the legendary band Anal Blast (Tampon Tea Bag!), the first time I went there I had to wake him up on the couch to buy my first Blood Duster CD. This was after I stood around to hear tales from the Nightfall’s officially sanctioned crack whore/mascot about getting butt-fucked in the alley for crack. That’s metal. You can give up now, world.


I can't believe I found this. Thats Decker and he's about to tell her he wants to shit in her eyes and eat her used tampons.

In closing, Atheist is reuniting somewhere in California. I will see you there.

Phat Kat Review

Here is the review I did for Beautiful/Decay Magazine. The issue is out now. I love those guys. I worked the VIP section at their last party that was co-curated by a pretty upscale (read:pretentious) art studio. Meaning I had to quell a minor uprising of artsy fuckers with French Accents demanding VIP. The only exception I could find was this guy, Sun Tek Chung. He's cool as fuck.

Shady Milos later came to the party and hated my ear off for about an hour about the seven dollar beer.

Anyway, Here is the review.

PHAT KAT- CARTE BLANCHE
Look Records

Phat Kat was slept on, mishandled by a few labels, watched his city (Detroit) get grossly misrepresented, and had one of his best and brightest friends (Dilla) leave earth far too early. He put Carte Blanche together so we could hear exactly what it was like, in his words. The end result makes me darkly thankful for dead geniuses and major labels with their heads implanted in their asses. The beats on here (namely the 5 posthumous DIlla beats) are worth the trip alone, but they are nothing without Kat's "Motherfucker, I've been chained starving to this radiator for years now" type of flow. I listened to this record so many times I memorized where the "promo only" drops were. The point is that James Yancey might be resting but Phat Kat and everyone else on this record wants you to know that Detroit refuses to do the same.

JC

What the fuck is going on?

JC Chasez, yes, the one from *Nsync, his new single?

The new "angle" for ex boy-banders (apart from swaying over cracked out Timbaland shit) is now indie rock?

This track "Until Yesterday" sounds like some futureheads/voxtrot/indie fucker throaway b-side. It has a fucking real band. The terrible thing is that its not 100 percent terrible. Its 89 percent terrible, which is way too low for my comfort.

And its not just me, either. I will bet you my nuts that they are going to try and push this thing as an indie rock record. They are already marketing it on cornerstone compilations, right between The Bishops and The Pierces.