Tastes Good on T'Bun

Whenever I feel really shitty, I put on old punk. For one thing, the circumstances of most of the songs always seem much worse than mine. Yeah, I often feel like I want to poke my eyes out with a fork but I don't seem as angry or nearly as gleeful about it as that guy from the Angry Samoans.

And if, as my shrink says, I need to use laughter as a defense mechanism instead of "massaging" the root of my "pain," about a certain someone in my life, here's the playlist I listen to.

And yes, these are all real song titles.

My Dad's a Fuckin' Alcoholic
My Dad Sucks
My Dad's Fat
My Dad's Dead
My Old Man's A Bum

In short, when I want to laugh, I put on old punk. Because some of it is just really, really fucking funny. If you think sick and sobbing and debased is funny. Which I do.

And there's not much comedy out there I really, really like. Not raw and wrong and punk rock anyway. Not sick and sobbing and debased. I love Louis C.K., of course. And the late, great Bill Hicks.

When I first discovered punk, it occurred to me that it probably hadn't started with Green Day, so I went back and learned everything I could. I have my serious punk band playlists. And then I have the funny punk band playlists.

Like the one that has a lot of Dead Kennedys on it.

I never got into the Dead Kennedys on a purely musical level. I was much more into post-punk shit like Wire and The Fall and stuff like the The Damned, The Dead Boys, and The Misfits. My fascination with the Dead Kennedys stemmed from the weird, troll-like freak who is Jello Biafra. To me, a guy who'd name himself after gelatin and a country that had attempted to secede from Nigeria in the late sixties was someone worth a listen.

Just hearing Jello Biafra's spazzy, tightly wound voice cracks me up. Just looking at the song titles cracks me up:

I Kill Children
Stealing People's Mail
Let's Lynch the Landlord
Jesus Was a Terrorist
Nazi Punks, Fuck Off

One of my favorite song lyrics ever, one of my favorite songs ever, in fact, is Biafra-penned, Too Drunk to Fuck. This song makes me laugh on a level with the best straight-up comedy.

You give me head
It makes it worse
Take out your fuckin' retainer
Put it in your purse

And it gets better, or worse however you prefer to look at it, a few lines later, as he continues his manic litany of what happened, or what he can remember of what happened, during a long, depraved night that began with him drinking sixteen beers, starting a fight, rolling down the stairs, telling his hookup he loves their gun and that shooting out truck tires sounds like loads and loads of fun but in his room, he wished they were dead because they bawled like the baby in Eraserhead and now he's about to drop, his head's a mess and the only salvation is he'll never see them again. So when he finally yelps that now he's got diarrhea, it's just a wonderful foregone conclusion to a night that began with sixteen beers.

One of the funniest albums I've ever heard, although it's not punk, is The Frogs, My Daughter The Broad. It features heartwarming classics like Children Run Away (The Man With The Candy), Where's Jerry Lewis?, I'm Hungry, and Which One of You Gave My Daughter the Dope. These cruel, horrifying, and hilarious songs are about a child molester, a bunch of retarded kids, and a shockingly neglected old man in a nursing home screaming and swearing at the nurses to bring him some fucking food, a piece of fruit, anything, and a couple of junkies who managed to get the titular guy's daughter hooked on smack, respectively.

Stick Your Finger in the Dike, Stop the Leak is also pretty good, too.

I also love Ween for the same reason I love the Dead Kennedys. I only got into Ween a couple years ago. They were one of those bands that have been around forever and I never paid any attention to them. A friend of mine really likes them and has been into them for years and like some people, accuses The Flaming Lips, Electric Six and many others of ripping off Dean and Gene Ween's shtick. I'm not sure and I really don't care. The friend in question is one of those guys whose obsession with musical roots and influences and all that shit makes being around him a real fucking downer when Spank Rock's Put That Pussy On Me starts playing and you have the audacity to bob your head along to it even though it samples the Seed's Can't Seem To Make You Mine. This somehow makes it lame to him. He's a music purist. You know, kind of a snobby dick but he gives me all his music.

One night I was at his house and began looking at his Ween playlist. I started laughing as I read the song titles and he scolded me and told me that Ween weren't just a joke band; they were a real band.

Whatever. I like their fucked up titles and the fucked up songs.

You Fucked Up
Fat Lenny
Reggaejunkiejew
Tastes Good on T'Bun
The HIV Song
Pumpin' 4 the Man
Flies on My Dick
Mushroom Festival in Hell
I Gots A Weasel
Hippy Smell
Bananas and Blow

Yeah, as you'd imagine that last song is about bananas and blow. Blow, you know. As in cocaine. Mixed with bananas. You know. As in, the fruit. If it sounds a lot like Jimmy Buffet's Cheeseburger in Paradise, it should. It's pretty much Dean and Gene Ween's special kind of homage to the only song other than Kokomo that's been more drunkenly swayed to by shit-canned, sunburned, fat middle-aged Americans on Sandals all-inclusive vacations.

On the Block

Even though I'd heard that Patrick Kennedy sleep drove while on Ambien, a few months back my insomnia made me desperate enough to fill the prescription my shrink gave me.

Side note: Don't do it. The Ambien, I mean.

Side, side note: Maybe the adverse reaction to Ambien was just the nuances of my own particular brain. Xanax has saved my life what with my own truly awful panic attacks. I think that Xanax is the shit.

You just have to control your intake. A lot. If you want to be able to take it for panic attacks and not get all Valley of the Dolls.

Anyway, after having a Friday night, twelve hour dream wherein I grew a third nipple on my shoulder and the Zimbabwe peace faction talked me into breast feeding Estelle Getty back to life I woke, toked, took a shower and decided to leave the house for at least an hour.

Naturally, I hit the Marshall's at Atlantic Center.

Not to shop but to take pictures and then to create a narrative photo montage for my friends.

The Atlantic Center Marshall's is like a flea market run by a recovering meth addict whose own dreams include Jacob's Ladder, The Rapture, and a Lita Ford video from the 80s.

Its merchandise is new yet visibly pawed over and disgustingly marked, dirty but still new.

Whenever I'm there and pick something up, nine times out of ten, I hold it aloft, stare at it and then throw it down, disgusted.

It's not unlike when I was a little kid and my brothers would leave their worst, skid-marked briefs under my covers as a special goodnight surprise.

An errant shoe hangs out in the detritus of the luggage, which is also where most of the women's lingerie seems to congregate. Maybe women are approximating how many bras and panties can fit into a certain piece of luggage.

More realistically, a fair number of the ex-con types cruising around in there are taking bras and panties from the Intimate Apparel section and jerking off with them in the luggage section because it's the least frequented area at Marshalls.

Half-used, off-brand hair products tip over on their sides next to Perry Ellis America ties. Slow cookers hang out next to shower curtains and can openers. Badly selling Pilates bands keep company with Nicole Miller makeup cases.

I fucking love it.

To be fair, about a year ago they got a new manager. Presumably, their headquarters were tired of being flooded by thousands of calls on their 1-800 number.

Things have gotten slightly better since.

Meaning, you no longer find shit-filled diapers in the shopping carts. Only used tissues. (Phlegm? Cum? Who knows?)

The new manager, God bless him, installed a new concept in Junior Wear, dubbed "On the Cube" which is evidenced by a huge pink cube heralding the arrival of fashions with labels like Pretty Girl, Teaze, and Hot Stuff.

In my photo series to friends I like to call it, "On the Stroll."

Before you think I'm being elitist, half of my wardrobe is Pretty Girl, Teaze, and Hot Stuff. Which I buy from the Cube when I'm stoned. Which is pretty much the only time I shop.

A while back, I tried to take a guy there on a Sunday morning.

"Let's go," I begged. "We'll get stoned and you will die laughing. It's incredible. I take pictures and send them to friends with captions."

I could make him seem like the villain with a dismissive kicker but he didn't do anything like that.

He was a nice guy, really. Boring but nice.

Just not a weirdo.

Good for him. Really.

He just shook his head, smiled, and said no.

He wanted to go to an exhibit at the Whitney.

I sat back, deflated.

"Fine," I said. "Okay."

We could've gone to a found object exhibit at the Atlantic Center Marshall's and I knew I'd be way more into it but I was trying to be a good girlfriend.

We broke up a month and a half later.

The Sunday after we broke up, I found a used condom in the Home and Housewares section.

It was nestled next to a Suzanne Sommer's Thigh Master.

Stacy

"Stacy" bugs the fucking shit out of me.

You probably don't know "Stacy."

Or maybe you do.

See, "Stacy" is "the" prototypical viewer of the network at which I recently, quite literally, slaved night and day, including weekends, during their big, fat Upfront push (Google that shit and puke), bringing-in-millions-of-ad-sales-dollars and then getting stridently chastised after charging for that, oh I don't know, seven extra hours every single night.

Anyway, "Stacy" is mid-twenties; early thirties. (Rather than paying worker chumps a fair wage, networks prefer to funnel the bulk of their fundage into focus-group bullshit I could figure out after the price of two pulled pork tacos and a dime bag.)

"Stacy's" interests include Sex and the City shoe-type bullshit, chocolate cravings during her period, Twitter, clubs/restaurants she reads about in New York Magazine, hanging out with "the girls," and having a four-hundred-thousand plus wedding before she turns thirty.

Basically, "Stacy" is every loud-mouthed, excruciatingly annoying twat who's stood behind you in line at the Midtown Starbucks you're forced to enter because you're too astoundingly hungover to venture elsewhere for morning caffeine before showing up at the job you really, really hate.

Presumably, once inside said Starbucks, our prototypical friend "Stacy" yammers away on her Mariah Carey Swarovski-encrusted cell-phone to her BFF about the mojitos she had last night with their other BFF and then some ugly guy was like, Hey don't I know you and I was like, Uh NO, are you kidding. Maybe like, um. I don't know. Why are you even TALKING to me? Come ON.

Yes.

"Stacy" is every cunt-ish twat towards whom you want to take off your shoe, turn around in that loud, wretched, acrid-smelling Midtown Starbucks, wildly and without any thought of legal consequence, just break out her fucking front teeth, simply to see and hear the wonderful powder, cinder crunch of her cosmetically-whitened chompers turning to dust, even though it means you'll go directly to the pokey.

Anyway, friends. Sorry. Every network you watch has a "Stacy."

They all do, even the ones you think are kind of "cool." You know. A little "smarter." A little "edgier."

Trust me.

All consumer networks do, anyway. Because they're pimping shit during commercial breaks. I've pimped myself to networks near and far and it's the same shit everywhere.

Some prototypes are consumer "high end." One of these in particular is called "Evan."

This virtual, Socialism 101 nightmare enjoys international travel, bottle service, high-price technology, and even higher-priced, um, girls who are down with international travel, bottle service, plastic surgery and, of course, programming that focuses on plastic surgery.

Basically, "Evan" is fifty-five percent of the men you meet in Manhattan.

So maybe, now that I think about it, those venal network fucks are onto something.

Anyway, I have to go bed now. I have to be up early.

"Stacy" has a lot of discretionary income I need to whore for.

Another network. Same fucking shit.

Coke Used To Be Sexy

I've suspected for a long while now but I thought that it would go away; that it was just a lark, much like American Apparel '80's-ironic-statement tard-o sunglasses, yoga with your dog, and Williamsburg facial hair choices, in general.

But no.

Coke has made a definitive comeback.

Maybe it's ironic. Maybe not.

Either way, it's here and it seems, not going anywhere any time soon.

Anyway.

A friend sent me this link a long while ago (I just haven't been writing) because he knows how much I love coked up rock goddesses of the past.

The guy from TV on the Radio was talking about the notoriously poor sound quality on SNL and cited the above link as an incredible exception.

Whatever sage musings that guy offered, all I got is: Stevie's performance makes me want to do coke again.

Even though one of my greatest achievements in life; my only great achievement in life is managing, despite all my self-destructive tendencies, to not do coke anymore. Or at least, to try not to.

And to mostly, most of the time, to succeed.

Instead, I suggest you watch it over and over, chainsmoke, drink Stoli, diet tonic and lime, Boone's Strawberry Hill, whatever the fuck rot-gut you got on hand, and then drunk dial men (or women) you swore you'd never, ever drunk dial again.

Because you know, fuck it.

Look how fucked up and misguided and tweaked out Stevie was. And look how great that performance was. That's what you're supposed to do. You know. When you feel things. You're supposed to get kind of lost. Kind of fucked up. It's just the way it works.

Which is, of course, the biggest, most bullshit excuse for alcoholism, drug addiction, poor relationship choices ever. Ever.

My favorite though, besides Stevie's at-times-unblinking-coked-up-beyond-belief-eyes-in close-up, is the '80's L.A. rock scene drummer-for-hire.

Clearly, he's partaken of plenty of the hella powder and for him, as long as he keeps pounding the shit out of his kit, everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

Not his ex-wife's alimony payments, his receding hairline situation, or his myopia.

It's a beautiful thing to watch. And to hear.

Because whatever happened to ugly, nebbish, square-looking people being able to rock out? That shit doesn't happen anymore.

Everyone's so fucking self-consciously styled, sneering-for-the-camera, and dickishly Nylon-ized these days in rock world.

Now that I think about it, the guy in the Stevie video, in the Members Only jacket who gets on stage and twirls and head tosses with our coked up rock goddess, would be featured in a Nylon 2010, flashback-to-the-late eighties fashion spread.

Even though I want to, I can't hate him.

Because homeboy reminds me of my very first (gay) bf, Henry.

Henry, who'd promise me the last Ding Dong if I'd back him up in dance routines he'd painstakingly choreograph; if I'd maybe throw in a stray pop and lock here and there.

I was a chunker as a little kid. I'd always do it.

Years later, I got skinny on coke.

For a while, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

Still, I'd eat lots of Ding Dongs when I was straight even though I no longer liked them because the taste reminded me of being chunky and invisible to men.

This was in a gambit to gain weight so my mother wouldn't catch on that her only daughter was a cokehead who drunk dialed men she swore she'd never, ever drunk dial again.

Because you know, Jesus.

That's what you're supposed to do. You know. When you feel things.

One day, a good fifteen years after his choreography sessions and three years into an art director stint at a magazine that dedicated the bulk of its pages to lip gloss and eating disorders, Henry saw me in New York, all skinny and fucked up looking.

He hadn't seen me in a while.

"Look, bitch," he said after a long moment of stunned silence. "You know that I love skinny. But you look fucking gross. You need to stop doing blow and get some sleep and maybe eat a cheeseburger. And if you don't, I'm calling that crazy ass fucking brother of yours and I'm telling him how much shit you've been hoovering up your nose. You look like Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface, without the bowl cut and bandeau dress."

Not too long after, I stopped doing blow.

I got some sleep.

Finally, I called my big brother and told him that I was kind of sad.

He took me out for a cheeseburger.