SkandaLo, Motherfuckers, SkandaLo

Texas is Satan's ashtray. If you don't believe me you are either a moron, from someplace worse (i.e. Florida), or you're one of those annoying-as-fuck native Texans who thinks that if this huge turd-state had seceded from the rest of this country in the first place, things would be just dandy. Seriously, who could possibly be this loony?

We here at Blind Butcher have this thing about driving around. We get all goofy at the thought of carousing about the extended Houston/Gulf/East Texas/Piney Woods areas looking for ghost towns, taking photos, and generally absorbing the feel of the place in all its disheveled glory. In the last year or so we have been to Victoria, Edna, Lake Texana, Livingston, Huntsville, Texas City, the Bolivar Peninsula, Goodrich, Swarthout, Willis, Waverly, Old Waverly, Conroe, Diboll, Lufkin, and Nacadoches (in no particular order). There have been other points in between, but these were the main stops along our meandering. If there is one thing that unifies this massive chunk of southern and eastern Texas, it's the way people in rural areas hobble life together from pieces of the past. Homes are often a mad jumbled combination of bits of this and that which are then tied together like some sort of odd puzzle. I guess when you have little to no income and are practically off the grid you do what you have to in order to get by. Financially and emotionally speaking, I get the drift. Having no money makes you get creative.

Creative architecture or not, as an outsider passing through, as an observer, seeing trailer after shack after burned-out horror-house, the accumulated effect is a wee daunting. Or at least it was today.

Today's jaunt brought us to the Nacadoches/Lufkin area. We were in search of this cemetery in what is the remains of a former town called Pluck, named after the "pluck" of the citizens to settle in such a difficult location, though it was also suspected of being named for the citizen's general "orneryness." My kind of town.
The problem with today's trip was that it rained like hell damn near the entire time. Me, I love, as in fucking love, rain. Still, all lovin' aside, traipsing about with a five year old and a two year old in tow, through the mud, in a total downpour, is tantamount to child abuse, so we settled on driving about and getting more of a feel for the place in the stead of a more in-depth mingle with the natives sort of deal, which is what we always prefer.

The feeling I got was depression.

Mind you, I am prone to being bummed out, it's no secret. Life, for me, can often devolve into something close to agony. Whatever. I always seem to find more reasons to enjoy it than to suffer it, so it works out. The shitty light coupled with the endless rain was not painting a happy picture of the pine woods and their seeming menace (to me anyway). Even this far north it appeared as though hurricane Ike had some effect on roofs and signs and things.

For me, the best part of the Pluck cemetery (okay the only part, really, since we were turned away by the shitstorm,) was this sign out front:

"CEMETERY ENTERANCE"

Enterance? How can you paint a fucking sign and still get the spelling so catastrophically wrong? I mean for fuck's sake, take a moment and consult a dictionary if it's that hard to get it right. It's a cemetery. Dead people are being honored there. I mean, to me cemeteries are wasted space on a practical level, but still, "enterance"?

Nice.

And on and on it goes, mile after tragic mile, husk after shed after rusted hull, the decaying flotsam of our disposable culture all Mad Maxed into oblivion by these scavengers of our collective soul.

I can't believe I just used the term "collective soul."

Also, take another, closer look at the photo at the beginning of the post. Expand it and look closer at the sign on the left. The place is called SkandaLo. I don't know why, but I think that a hair salon called SkandaLo is totally fucking hilarious. There's no explanation for it, I just think calling your joint SkandaLo is genius.

And while you may not agree, notice the near-total dilapidation of the little strip center there. Notice the shabby-assed purple paint job on D-Cache, the store next to SkandaLo. Notice the way the pavement is cracked and the sky is grey and the building is ancient and the whole thing has a Bukowski level of hopeless waste to it.

Fuck me. That's it, I'm ending it all right now. Or, you know, after I play some more Star Wars Force Unleashed on my son's DS. That shit is the bomb.

See? Yin and Yang, day and night, night and fuckin' day.

Oh well, SkandaLo as they say...

christ Has a Mass

Christmas is the cancer that comes back every year, malignant as fuck and pissed off. I'd say it brings out the worst in us, but it's hard to see how much worse we as a race could possibly be at this point.

I hate everyone. Really, I do.

And yet, through that one-dimensional gibberish, however true, I am also able to embrace the duality of tendering a very passionate and possibly endless well of love for a select few.

The rest, well, the rest.

I haven't punched anyone since high school.

All told, this is a small miracle if you consider just how intense my anger is even at the ripe young age of forty.

I can readily admit to being emotionally damaged, stunted in a very real way. I know that I am a master at creating turmoil in my wake in as much as I relate to the people around me.

Honestly, I don't really care too much about that, generally speaking, but for those unfortunate few that I care to consider close, knowing me is like a barefoot hike down a broken-glass covered path in total darkness. Pain is a certainty. I'm not proud of this.

I tend to foster this extremely uncomfortable duality in my everyday life, and quite frankly, it is a fucking tightrope that I am getting very tired of walking.

I want to hit someone and I want it to hurt. Not anyone in particular, just someone. I want to channel my anger through my arm and direct it right in between the crossed eyes of some total piece of shit just begging for it.

I know it's all just macho spouting. I know that. I know it but I had to say it.

I have no desire to go to jail, be fired from my job, or find myself shot on the side of the road. Maybe talking about it in here, boring you to tears, forcing you to regret reading this (and rightfully so), maybe by doing all this I can avoid the real deal and work on getting over it. Again. And again. And a-motherfucking-gain.

I'm no christian. I'm no theist. I'm no god believer/lover/even needer. I do not in any way have a need to celebrate the birth of anyone born thousands of years ago, and even if I had such a desire, I would exact it on my immediate surrounding life, not on the entire fucking world.

Blah, blah, I know. Temples to commerce, tithing for the god of currency, prostration before the gods of greed, selfishness, arrogance, ignorance, ugliness, guilt, horror, rage, lonliness, terror and emptiness.

This is Christmas, and I hate it.

It takes almost nothing to set me off, to get the wheels turning, to flip a switch and get me to see the actual path as it lays before me.

Is this the season of your undoing? Is this the season from which you will distill the very essence of failure and meandering hopelessness?

It's mine.

Is this the all-consuming wave of defeat that surrounds everything you can even imagine before even you can imagine it?

It's mine.

Is this the moment where you turn away from the blast, avert your eyes in hopes that you will be able to see once again the illusory gilded parapets from which your empty optimism will rain down like a filthy storm and wash the streets clear of reality?

Enjoy it, it will end soon enough. Just like this post. Just like the remaining shard of my dignity.

Nothing ever works. Nothing is ever worth the effort, the paper it's printed on, the price, the time, the trip. Nothing.

And everything.

god died for us. Maybe one more favor. Maybe he could stay away. Better yet, maybe we'll finally realize he never was.

I hate you all. Christmas too.

I feel better.

Exhale. And bed.

Some good music and movie recommendations to wrap up a shitty year

Sometimes life kicks you in the balls, and 2008 has certainly been a year that my crotch needs ice (and a little lovin’). Music is certainly an inspiration for me, and movies are an occasional needed escape, so I thought I would share some things I came across. I will try to avoid obvious bands, because what good would it do me to tell the readers of this blog how much I like Neurosis? Preaching to the choir does not appeal to me.

MUSIC

God is an Astronaut - I’m really into bands like Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Explosions in the sky, and the like. Of all of the instrumental, post-rock bands, I’d have to say that my three favorites are Red Sparowes, Russian Circles, and God is an Astronaut. The latter of the three has everything that the others do, but they subtract the metal and add a stellar, sort of 80s new wave and ambient sound at times. The band appeals to me more so than the others of the genre at this point. Other similar, notable bands: Mono (Japan), Gifts From Enola, and Yndi Halda.

The Protomen – I never knew that there was a genre called Nintendocore. Their music is based entirely on the Mega-Man video games. When a friend recently told me about them, I wasn’t too interested in listening, but since I pride myself on being open minded (and not a douche-bag), I gave it a go. The sound is familiar to me, but I had not heard of many of the similar bands when I looked them up on last.fm. I hear bits of Queen, At the Drive In, and Death From Above 1979. What’s also great is that they did a cover of No Easy Way Out from Rocky IV. They’re not afraid to be cheesy as hell, and it works for them. Supposedly, then never come out of the characters they are on stage, even in interviews. Strange, but whatever; I like the music. Devin Townsend, eat your heart out.

Murder By Death – Indie meets Johnny Cash, but in a really good way. They played one of the best shows I have ever seen. There aren’t many bands these days who sing about whiskey, bar fights, and runnin’ from the law.

Screaming Trees and Bad Religion – I know these are well known bands, but I can’t believe I was so late in hearing them. My parents should have done the deed about ten years earlier; then I’d be much more on the ball with a large chunk of the music I like.

MOVIES

Slumdog Millionaire – Probably one of the best movies I’ve seen in the theater all year. With crap like the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still coming out, it’s quite refreshing to see something really good. Hell, even Synecdoche New York had some good parts, as depressing as it was. So, if you get the chance, go see Slumdog, or rent it when it comes out on video. I liked The Dark Knight too, but again, I’m trying to list the not so popular/obvious ones.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring – It’s a Korean film that came out in 2003, but I saw it recently. It’s a Buddhist tale that shows the different “seasons” of a man’s life. The entire movie is set on a lake, with a floating temple in the center. The film uses imagery more than dialogue to tell the story, so much that one might not need the subtitles be able to understand what’s going on.

Both of the movies I mentioned are worth seeing with a significant other, if you’re so lucky to have one.

At least some good came from this shitty year. Anyone else have any movie or music recommendations (or books, for that matter)? I’ll do my best to post once a month, Mr. Butcher.

Stoking the Friendly Fire

If pressed, I would have to admit a certain, uh, inner conflict over the idea of friendship. Seriously, what the fuck is a friend anyway? It's really just another in a long line of nebulous ideas in life that seem to take on such monumental importance without any of us actually really agreeing on what it is.

With the advent of the whole social networking phenomenon, it is amazing to see just how easy it has become for us to expand the boundaries of what a "friend" means.

I have always thought myself clever for telling people that I have almost no friends and a lot of acquaintances, which, while being accurate, is not really that clever, and is really more pathetic than anything else.

Still, at the end of the day, how many people can I claim as someone I could rely on, as someone I could trust to tell something deeply personal without being embarrassed or concerned that it would somehow be used against me later on? Would I even need fingers to count that low?

It all started with MySpace. I was getting in touch with "friends" I hadn't spoken with in years, and while that in itself is interesting, it's also a little dubious. There is a certain novelty to seeing pictures and personal information about people you lost touch with but maybe have wondered about on occasion. It's cool to see that this person is now fat and has a billion kids, and it's cool to see that so and so is now the king of a small island country, but really, how superficial?

It seems as though Facebook is now eclipsing MySpace as the place for wasting mountains of time for the folks I have known over the years. I'm not entirely sure why that is, but it may be the semi-anarchic nature of the way Facebook works. Unlike MySpace, there is not a ton of options when it comes to personalizing the look of your homepage. In fact, everyone's page pretty much looks the same. The difference is that each page contains different sorts of information. You can put as much or as little about yourself up there as you wish, and it is all laid out in a sort of chronological list of updates that all network together on your screen. You get a running tally of whatever nonsense your "Friends" are doing at any given moment as long as they too keep up the ruse.

In all fairness, I have had the opportunity to get back in touch with some people I have cared about in my own retarded way and in that sense I am pleased with Facebook for that reason alone. Beyond that, I have also located and in some cases, contacted people who I more or less don't really give a shit about at all.

And I should also add that I am not a great friend to anyone. I can admit that. I know that I am hard to get in touch with, and hard to remain close to. This is something I cultivate, truth be told, and I do so because being too close to damn near anyone is something I pretty much find to be repellent. While this says more about me and my misanthropy than anything, I am well aware that this rends me fairly unappetizing as someone anybody would waste too much time bothering with.

It's not quite that black and white, but for the sake of argument it'll do.

We're all getting older. Nothing to be done about that, ask Heather Locklear. She'll tell you, were she an honest woman, that the best thing to do is to roll with it and not to fight kicking and screaming all the way to the plastic surgeon like she has obviously done. Having the opportunity to surreptitiously reconnect with your past without having to get your fingers dirty is a fantastically alluring way to sample the wares without buying anything, and in this world, that is like an axiomatic principle for daily life.

It's no wonder Facebook has captured the imagination and the free time of the entire galaxy. Facebook is a buffet of sociological flotsam drifting around just waiting to be skimmed from the surface.

When I think back over the years and remember how easy it has been for some of my supposedly closest friends to shut me out when things were maybe too uncomfortable or uneasy, or for that matter how easy it is for me to simply drop off the face of the earth, I realize that someone needs to start a new sort of networking site. The new site could have all the stupid as shit games and contests and mindless fan pages and useless discussion boards and whatever else that gives us a reason to mill about looking for a mildly entertaining diversion, but it would all be centered around people you know, not people who are your "friends," because really, who the fuck really has any actual friends, and why in god's name would they want to share anything about that with the entire galaxy?

Whenever you are actually hoping for a little galactic inspiration, look no further than Star Wars. As any self-respecting nerd will tell you, everything you need to know is wrapped up in the world sprung forth from George Lucas' fevered ego. The rest, as they say, is doo-doo.

America Eats Its Youth

This is my young cousin who I guess is the new typical lost and confused youth of America. Still comes as a shock to me though. The kid grew up in a large condo in Queens with a view of the river and Manhattan - the only child of liberal New York urbanites. He is as mild mannered as these pictures probably tell you. It is easy to see through the camouflage isn't it?

Smart dude, he went off to college, scholarships and all, but couldn't hold it together grade-wise (probably from too many nights playing D&D or some such geekedness). Ashamed with himself he decides to join the Air Force. Past generations in the family would have joined the priesthood I guess, but other family dramas in that arena probably lessened the appeal. 

As if there is any appeal in joining the Air Force. Now he's in line to dismantle IED's in a foreign desert.

The inspirational movie Stripes aside I never had any inkling of a dream to join an armed force. And if I did, it certainly wouldn't be entry level one. I think I'd hold out for officer or military doctor or something.

In this Age of Information some of us, seemingly sheltered and privileged, still get eaten pretty good.

Lawful Neutral Gelatinous Shambling Cubes from Tatooine, and Shit

I never made it in the world of role playing gamers. I never made it because I never tried. I never tried because it just wasn't for me. There comes a point in one's life where you become privy to something approximating wisdom. Actual wisdom is of course reserved for those with actual insight. For the rest of us, the overwhelming majority of us, these shards of insight are placeholders, but they do their job all the same. One of such moments for me was the realization that I didn't have the patience to actually learn how to even play Dungeons and Dragons.

You know how much I loved playing video games. Soon enough I'll regale you with tales of comics. I know that I am easily an associate of nerds. I also know that I am able to walk the line between geekdom and mainstream normalcy without ever actually being either fully embraced or belonging in either.

At my mother's job, some lady convinced my mom that from her description of me (no doubt inflated to paint me out to be some sort of genius in the rough as only a mother can do), I would be a prime candidate for the new game everyone was talking about, Dungeons and Dragons.

When my mother brought the original game home, I bought her sell of it before I even opened the box. I loved the idea of taking on a role and using your imagination to conduct all sorts of adventurous shit with a bunch of guys who were as into it as I was.

The only problem was, once I opened the game and began to read the directions it was about as exciting as doing homework, something I also never found entertaining.

My gaming career defeated before even coming off the ground, it would be a few years before I am sitting with Mike Gunn up in his room, altered, when he whips out the Gary Gygax gaming manuals and monster books. I gotta tell you, when you are stoned, those monster books are pretty fucking genius. Hell, sober, the idea of a Gelatinous Cube is a quality mindfuck. Ditto for the Shambling Mound. That stuff is gold.

So, maybe Mike was of a league well above my own in the brains department. Maybe Mike not only took his SATs, maybe he also got like a 1500-and-something on the damn thing. Maybe. Okay, definitely to all of the above.

Regardless, he still wrote a poem called the Wayward Youth. Geek.

See? I walk a line.

In time, Mike convinced me to help him try and get a group together so we could play D&D once and for all. I gave in. I admit a weakness for the dorkside. Mike, naturally, was the dungeon master, a role which is apparently something like being a geek Jesus of some sort. You create the world, populate it, map it out, and fill it with all the crazy shit that a bunch of geeks would cop boners over like trolls and elves and fucking gnomes and shit.

God, what a disaster. Despite the group's claims of experience, it was quickly obvious that Mike was the only one who had ever played the game at all. The whole way with which you have to determine the "alignment" of the character you play as was even less familiar to them then it was to me. I at least knew about being "lawful neutral" and all that goofy-assed stuff. These guys were pretty much just drinking and talking about all the girls they would never ever even dream of actually fucking, like, as in all the girls in the entire world. There was some dice rolling, some florid prose from fucking Golem over there with his notebooks and graph paper, and beyond that, a lot of diversions. We called it off and went on an adventure all our own involving a bong and a bag of weed.

Yeah, so, I'm no gamer.

Still, I can go on and on in my mind about the joys of mutant powers, the ideas of Philip K. Dick, the philosophy behind various films, books, albums, ideas, etc... and that is where it's at with me.

I think what has separated me from the grade-A ultra-dorks is the way guys like that are able to singularly focus on one thing so obsessively that it is very difficult to break that spell. Me, I am kind of like that, but at the end of the day guys like Mike Gunn have me beat. Guys like that can literally spend months in a row plotting out every single detail in a D&D campaign as if the very fate of man stood in the balance. Me, I always get distracted at some point. Simply put, something else simply grabs my attention, and with that the tangent train is out of the station.

What I wouldn't give to have a mind like that.

Wait, what am I saying?

Jesus, what a fucking geek I am.

Game on.

The Swedish Cross-Eyed Polish Zombies From France

What a fucking day Sunday was for the Blind Butcher. We had the pleasure of taking my kids to Huntsville State Park and running around like idiots and kicking a Scooby Doo playground ball with reckless abandon. We rocked the backroad highway 75 to avoid the traffic on I45 and in the process took advantage of the scenic passage to grab some photos of rural life (quickly becoming one of our favorite things to do). In our meanderings we happened across an ancient Catholic church. The place was built, apparently, to attract the somewhat large number of Polish immigrants in the area at the time. To me, all I could see was the perfect location for the ultimate Omen film.

Let it be known that I fucking love the way empty churches look out in the country. And this particular church was intensely creepy. I guess I tend to think that churches are just creepy, period. A bunch of people get some cash together and use it to build a big building just so they and their pals can get together and share their love of something no one can actually prove exists. But not just any old something, no, these sorts of folks build actual temples to appeal to their emblematic tokens of faith-based imaginings. It's too much for me. But the buildings themselves are like living museums to hubris, and that I can get down with. Beyond that the aesthetics are the bomb. Churches are such brilliant monuments to folly.

Imagine a big powerful dude, and then build him a house. Never actually have any evidence of his existence, but feel justified in demanding others control their lives in the name of this dude.

Moronic.

So, after getting stuck in traffic and spending way too much time ogling the giant penis of a statue in the name of Sam Houston (a big dude in his own right, and one who actually existed at some point in reality), we headed back to 75 and took the scenic route back towards Houston.

Sometimes, when you are on the road, there comes a point at which it quickly becomes clear that you will not be getting to your destination at any point close to when you planned, and worse still, you will have to make new plans in order to accommodate this temporal shift. Today was such a day. Fortunately, my kids travel unbelievably well, a fact which I can only attribute to their being my kids and my being a comfortable traveler myself.

Next up: For weeks now we here at Chez Butcher have been not only aware of the upcoming Gojira show at the newly opened Houston House of Blues, nay, we have been debating our inner selves as to whether or not we could afford the hefty ticket price to get in the door. And you gotta know that we are big time Gojira fans 'round these here parts. That Gallic juggernaut gets us all moist in trou'. Part of the inner struggle for us in regards to attending shows is due to our having trouble committing to much these days what with being divorced parents with pressing demands on our time, but even worse still, the other major part to our fear of concert commitment is the financial bit. Shows are fucking expensive. Tickets for this show were $28 a piece. That gets you in the door. That's $56 for the two of us. If you want a beer for god's sake then you get to shell out $7 a piece for them. We each had three of those.

At the last second, and after much internal debate (and several fruitless attempts to talk to an actual human at the club to get information about when Gojira would be going on), we made a mad dash to the venue.

After a quick consultation with a couple of very serious looking crew members outside the venue, guys with piercings that outnumbered fingers, we were able to figure out that Gojira was on at that very moment but that we would be able to catch the bulk of their set if we hurried, which was good considering we were already downtown and willing to go bankrupt to see the mighty French band.

It only took me a credit card and $56 to get us into the club. I may be wrong, but I think you could get a BJ at the Bunny Ranch for less. I could be off on my math.

The Houston House of Blues is about the least-most House-of-Bluesy sort of place you could possibly imagine - anywhere. You have to climb 3 floors just to get into the fucking place, and the building it's in looks like some sort of Las Vegas nightmare with its Journeys shoestore and its shiny lights and pristine, vacuous exterior. If Robert Johnson were alive today, he would take one look at that place and burn his guitar in shame. I mean, with fucking Dan Ackroyd at the helm, I guess I shouldn't expect some sort of juke joint out in the boonies with chili pepper lights, holes in the floor, and patrons with gold teeth, kicking back malt liquors and blithely rocking tears in the crotch of their pants... their good pants.

Once in the club it was time to ignore the entire world and just enjoy Gojira. And god damn did they deliver.

Gojira is a very precise rhythmic machine set to the tune of death metal with a decidedly environmentalist twist. But who cares about the lyrics with music this gargantuan? The focus of the Gojira sound is their masterful drummer, but that almost takes away from the way in which Gojira is able to create a complete sound with the entire band. No note is out of place, no beat extraneous, no vocal line over the top. No, the entire band understands their role and executes it with the utmost ability and intensity. Admittedly, the bassist was a little too intense in his stage performance. I know heavy music gets people all goofed up, but whenever you are playing as though every note out of your instrument was handed down from the lord himself, then perhaps you are entering the arena of theater and leaving the world of reality. There's absolutely no reason for anyone in Gojira to act like they're any heavier than they already are.

That, or maybe the bassist was simply blown away by his own band night after night. God knows they blew me away Sunday.

If I had any complaint at all about their show it would be that while the set was mighty and downright beautiful, it could have been quite a bit louder and more intense, sonically speaking. I blame whoever was at the board. I thought the soundman was holding back, until we heard the headliner, In Flames, hit the stage.

In Flames also suffered from the mediocre mixing work at the sound board. It was as though the soundman was afraid to turn it up, as if perhaps the neighboring tenants were bitching about it being too loud, a concept which is practically a Houston institution it happens so often in this shithole of a town. Houstonians get huge boners whenever they can call the cops and simper about the band being too loud.

We were not fortunate enough to catch the openers, 36 Crazy Fists, a metal band from Alaska, which is in itself a coup of sorts and something that would be dear to the Unspeakable for reasons obvious to anyone who knows her. Beyond that, the semi-coheadliner, All That Remains, bailed on the show for what was billed at the door as "Medical/Health" reasons whatever the fuck that means. I guess what it meant was that we caught two bands Sunday night, and the first, as I've said already, was the balls. The other band was In Flames.

I've heard a ton of their stuff, and while I like some of it, basically their "safeness" is pretty tedious if you ask me. Having said that, they sounded pretty good, they were very well rehearsed and they are a very solid band. I just want more threat and intensity from metal in general, or at least a little less selling out to pop sensibility. In Flames came off as trying really hard to get at that carrot dangling in front of their frostbitten Swedish noses. Even worse, they had some of the most obvious and mainstream lighting I've seen for any band ever. They even had this one lighting effect, which they mercifully only used once, which was basically a swirling array of flowers.

Flowers.

Death metal flowers.

It was painful.

They also used some sort of disco lighting that looked like it was lifted directly from Studio 54 or some shit. Not too metal.

And I love metal, it consumes my musical taste to be quite honest, and I am a fairly forgiving guy when it comes to metal. And I think that even taking that into account, we are still left with the fact that In Flames are poseurs. Sorry, but they are, and that is simply that.

What they do for melodicism, for bringing metal to the masses, they also undo by simply pandering to the obvious so deeply that they eventually undermine their own efforts by becoming pussies with distortion pedals.

Except for their bassist. That guy is massive. It's awesome because the rest of the guys are wee little Swedes, but this bassist dude, he was like 6'2" or so, full of metal hair, and chunky. The rest of the guys were little. Little Swedes. The kind you hope would make you meatballs and sing you folk songs in the frigid winter nights.

In July I had the great fortune of catching the At the Gates reunion show. At the Gates is also Swedish, also a death metal band, and also pioneers of the melodic sound that would eventually define the genre now known as metalcore.

Thing is, At the Gates were totally fucking genius and the crowd were on it. The jockfest retards at tonight's show were too busy taking their shirts off and hitting people to notice much of anything outside of cock-pulsing beats and this-side-of-gay disco lighting.

One thing I noticed was that both At the Gates and In Flames had band members sporting the 3/4 length men's capri-pants look. Say what? As the Unspeakable said knowingly, "Swedish." 

 Nuff said.

The only thing those of us here at Blind Butcher could do to debunk the stupidity of the shrunken-balled eunuch party directly in front of the stage was to bum rush the pit and work some of our mojo.

It was ugly in there. Muscular pituitary inbred hillbilly rapists were in the pit, shirtless, sweaty and hungry for damage. This scene led the Unspeakable to start yelling, "BECAUSE I'M A LADY," to the people in front of us in order to get us up front without incident or pause. Once that plea wore out, she was able to get us in place by shouting out "OH, I'M GONNA VOMIT." I get the expulsion of pent-up frustration that motivates people of lesser intelligence in the pit, but I don't really understand why clubs tolerate such ignorant displays of violence in the same venue that frisks you and runs a metal detector over your genitals at the door. What, getting broadsided by a 250 LB gorilla isn't an act of violence because you were too close to him as he worked out why daddy dick-slapped him as a youth? Fuck that, that's as stupid as a $7 Guinness in a can.

That's when we began shouting at the band between songs. You know, as a social experiment.

"WHY ARE YOU SPITTING SO MUCH?" to the vocalist.

And...

"YOU'RE TOO BIG," at the bassist.

And my coup-de-grace, "WHY ARE YOU SINGING IN ENGLISH?" to the melodically inclined Swedes.

Pure comedy gold.

Anyway, if you see that Gojira is coming to your town, get thee to the show post haste. They are touring the states for the first time ever and they are pretty much at the top of what metal has to offer at this very moment. Yes, they are that good. Do it. Go. Really.

And if you can't catch them, then forgo whatever useless CD you were eyeballing by that Pitchfork band you cop boners over and buy some Gojira instead. If you actually take my advice and do so and come away unhappy, well then go fuck yourself, because you're lost in some sort of reality that is cloaked in the shroud of tediousness and pretentious flaccid blight.

Seriously. Check our Gojira. The longest most painful nights are almost bearable with Gojira to wash it all down. Well, almost anyway. You can take care of the rest with cheap grocery store Guinness for $8 a six pack.




"Look honey, it's a cross-eyed zombie!"

Fuck, I am hilarious.

"Whutcha Readin' For?"

I meant for my first entry on here to be angry and sarcastic, not boring and informative. I’ll try harder next time.

I have been reading more than ever lately. Along with new books, I’ve been rereading books that I previously read and loved. I wish I started reading my books with a highlighter long ago. It’s quite frustrating to me when I can’t quite remember a great idea or line from a book, with no way to find it short of reading the entire book over for that one thing on that one page. Now it’s easy. Like Mr. Butcher, I also spent a number of years surrounded by books. Through the years, I came across many interesting books, and I would always write the title and ISBN on a post-it and stick it in my wallet. Every couple of months, I would just throw the post-its away, because, like most of you, I’m lazy with certain things. I always wished that there was an electronic way to keep track of the books I’d read and the books I would eventually like to read. I also tried to get my friends to all read and discuss the same book, but it would never work. Strangely enough, I was the only one who would actually read the shit they picked, and I was always the busiest of the group. I then thought that it would be nice if the organizational tool would somehow give me the chance to talk to other people who might happen to be reading the same book as me at a given time. Many virgins and goats later, my wish was granted. I came across a site called Goodreads.com. Basically, it’s myspace for book lovers. It goes beyond what I wanted as well. You can write reviews on books and even publish your own, right through the site. I also like that you can only post one picture at a time, meaning that it’s actually about the books and what people write and not about how attractive you think you are. The site also has a place for published authors, so if you’re obsessed with, say, Danielle Steel or whomever, you can look to see what they’re reading. I haven’t explored the site fully, but I must say that it beats the hell out of myspace and facebook in my eyes.

Have fun quadrupling your daily caloric intake.

Metal Up Your Ass

I have never wanted a specific dog so much in my entire life...

heavy metal pooch

Two Finger'd Scroll

Got immersed in iPhone technology on account that I got hired to "fix" somebody's web app so that it worked on one of them things. Turned out the user just needed to know how to two finger scroll but he didn't like the sound of that so he had me redesign the app in such a way that only a one finger scroll is needed. So I made some trips to the Apple store, played around with my friend's iPhone and threw the app at this site a few times. Strange to work with a fellow who is up on the times enough to have a web app designed for smartphones but he himself doesn't want to learn something new. I'm kinky. I hear two finger'd scroll I'm there.

Spinning

I accidentally watched Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? and Boogie Man back to back the other day. I say accidentally because I hadn't planned to watch Boogie Man; it just showed up onFrontline while I was staring at the boob tube. Turns out these two flicks make a great package deal.

WtFIJP? is about a coarse talking trucker lady trying to get her thrift score find validated as an authentic Pollock. Boogie Man is about the legendary Republican campaign manager, Lee Atwater. Both are about spin; and after watching them both you'll have fun thinking about: who was spinning who? who got spun? who is spinning the viewer directly? who is spinning the viewer indirectly? who is just now realizing they were previously spun? who is spinning the film maker? what's the film maker's spin? How many spins can you catch? Who have I spun lately? Who spun me? Am I a good spinner? Or am I usually getting my spin spun back? Is it possible to spin back a spun spin?

Game On

While reading over my previous post, I found it kind of comical that I pretty much used the Bon Jovi “I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all” analogy when describing my love of books. So, kudos to myself for that one.

I had to explain the concept of Manga to the new lady at work today, and soon after that I had to explain what an RPG novel is. I name checked Warcraft as an example of a role playing game. I loved the blank face of disinterest I received in return. That's the stuff of dreams when you are trying to find out if a new hire is going to shit on your entire work world or whether they are going to actually help you get things done. Soon after the Warcraft reference I got in a few copies of the Warcraft video game guide and it's the sort of near synchronous event that happens fairly often at work for some reason. I love that stuff.

I can't tell you how many times I have thought of some obscure book or author only to pull that very book out of the next box. I swear I must be like some sort of totally useless book clairvoyant or some such shit. Uncanny.

As I am wont to do at my intellectually unstimulating job, my mind was wandering about over the topic of video gaming and I realized at that moment just how much of a dork I have been over the years.

So in the spirit of full disclosure I am now going to give a brief, tortuous, and purely pointless rundown of my history with video games over the years.

It won't quite be chronological because, well, my memory isn't even vaguely linear. So bear with me. Here we go.

1979(ish): Coming back to the states from a five-year stint in gay Paris, my parents take a month long sabbatical to Tokyo to visit friends leaving my brother and I to fend for ourselves with my Aunt in the insanely American town of Louisville, Ohio.

(As a side note – In Marilyn Manson's autobiography he describes an incident during which he apparently has sex with some local Louisville girl who by his account is way out of his league, which is forcing me to admit that I at least read part of that book.)

My Aunt has this crazy box that you plug into the TV. This box is called Pong. I am a duck to water. A duck who plays Pong by himself for many hours, and a duck who literally takes to water during swim lessons at the Y (yes, for those who actually read my shit, the same Y at which I am mistaken for a girl.)

1980(ish): My dad gets a bug up his ass in his new bachelor pad and decides on an apparent whim to buy a Radio Shack TRS80 home computer. The damn thing uses a tape deck for memory. We discover Pyramid, a text-based game, and waste countless hours dying in a verbal wonderland.

My dad shakily enters the world of cooking with his now infamous concoction: the mac-n-chee-pinto-bean-tuna-fish casserole. His well-deserved ridicule has begun. It takes many years for him to exonerate himself by becoming a virtual genius when it comes to cooking on a grill (seriously, the guy is a real talent).

1981(ish): Atari is the shit in console form. There are two camps in middle school: those with Atari and those without. Care to guess our side of the fence?

1982(ish): In an anticlimactic but no less welcomed turn of events, the Cramer family acquires it's first Atari 2600 console. With the console is the ridiculous game Combat, which while advertising as having 27 different games in it, is really just 27 versions of the same monocolored shitty game. No matter, in our house there is a new king and his name is Atari.

In the next couple of years the spirit of aggressive hostility that is borne between my brother and me is honed to a razor sharpness. This will later culminate in his putting a box of thumbtacks under my bedside rug as a good morning gift which I return in kind with a face punch.

We acquire more stunners like Frogger, Soccer, Missile Command (which I fall asleep playing and wake up two hours later having scored a million-plus points), Space Invaders, Defender, Centipede, and one of the world's greatest all-time games – Asteroids. Woo-baby. The hours I've burned on that game alone. Terrifying.

Game rooms pop up everywhere. It's hard to imagine how many quarters are stolen from the world as kids lose their mind to go to the arcade and rock out on Defender and Donkey Kong and the like. The arcade by my house was called Ice Cream and Games, and the dude that ran the place was a Polish immigrant who looked almost exactly like Klause Meine from the Scorpions. It is at this arcade that the dickhead bully down the street taunts me for awkwardly bending my wrist while we play air hockey. I respond decades later by outing him as a friend of Ted Nugent and a closet homosexual (which he is, and which he is).

1982-3(ish): We visit my friend Daniel in San Antonio. Dan has a freestanding system called Vectrex. Vectrex is like porn for teens. The system is comprised entirely of vector graphics based games, which basically means games like Asteroids, or Battlezone, or Tempest. Vector graphics games are all comprised of points connected by lines on a black background. The different games come with overlays that mimic the look of their arcade counterparts. That so much was created with so little is a testament to the creativity of gaming designers of this era.

Around this time, while languishing in a bowling alley known for a murder, I also discover a game called Pick-Up. Pick-Up was a Vector game and it was the shit. Dan's Vectrex has Pick-Up.

For the record, Dan had the entire Micronauts comics series and I read the whole damn thing. I love Dan forever for this alone. I also hate his sister forever for playing the Genesis album Abacab on replay the entire stay. Demon bitch.

She also tried to walk in on me while I was shitting, something that couldn't possibly be pleasurable to anyone.

Still, Dan also has assloads of X-Men comics, so all is forgiven. Besides, she was adopted so I can't blame Dan.

Back home, this guy down the street keeps a real cougar in his backyard. I am not making this up. The cougar is called Ripides and the guy lets the thing walk around in the living room. While this is pretty cool, it's the row of pinball games that he has in the loft that keeps us coming over. Despite the obvious creep factor involved, the guy never tries to ass fuck any of us.

Intellivision is now making kids want to stab each other over which console is the king.

My friend John has the Intellivision, and he and my other friend, Matt, are moths to a flame with the damn thing. Me, I feel disloyal to my 2600 and rebel. It's all those damn buttons. If I want to push that many buttons I'll go back to my dad's TRS80. Fuck that noise. Okay, I'll admit that Pitfall ruled. I'll give John that one. Bastard. But he will never be able to explain his love of Night Ranger and Yngwie Malmsteen. Never.

Still in the early to mid 80s here: My friend _____'s dad is a doctor, and as such feels the need to let everyone know how little of a burden it is for him to throw money at his kids. Thankfully his misguided generosity puts a full-sized arcade version of the game Battlezone in their TV room.

That's what I'm talking about.

Not so thankfully, his mom decides to share with me that she wishes she were "only ten years younger."

I immediately stop going over to the dragon lady's house. 

Even Battlezone isn't that cool.

The late 80s/early 90s find me turning my back on video games. Too busy getting loaded, I suppose. Too busy playing in bands. Too busy being broke.

1996(ish): The guy at my new job rants and raves about the Playstation he put on his plastic just so he could play the new game called Tomb Raider. I act interested while secretly thinking the guy has taken leave of his senses for wasting money he doesn't have on a fucking video game.

About three weeks later I do the exact same thing.

Without exaggerating, over the next couple of weeks, and whenever I am free (which I make sure is every night), I play Tomb Raider until I have literally finished the entire game. I am now lost in a pixellated world of narcotic joy. All hope is lost.

For brevity's sake I will give you a brief summary of the next few years as it relates to video games: I play them with a renewed vigor. I am at this point a total gaming dork and I am even proud of it.

There come times during which I have played Grand Theft Auto so much that when I go driving afterwards it takes several minutes to not look at the environment as a place to exploit as I am running from the cops and trying to collect money from my whores.

For the record, I pride myself on not gaining any police attention whenever I am collecting from my ladies.

And then...

Burnout.

Other than the Silent Hill series and the occasional Tomb Raider reissue and the rare adventure with my kid, it is over.

Now, video gaming for me means Spider Solitaire, or this new one on my home page called Flood-it!.

Pretty high-tech stuff.

I got totally burned out on the same four or five ideas played out in higher and higher levels of graphic resolution and lower and lower levels of creative intelligence.

That is, until my brother scored The Wii.

Shit.

Wither and Wane

I was at work today and I kind of had a moment. I've been in the bookselling business for many years now, too many to mention, and I and not only familiar with books, I live them.

I have probably touched literally millions of books in my day and honestly speaking, despite all the issues that go with working retail – and god knows there are plenty – at the end of the day, like say today, I still like what I do.

That is to say, I still like the actual doing part. All the politics, the ass kissing, the back stabbing, the lies, the laziness, the incompetence, that stuff is for the birds. Yeah, that stuff can go jump a cliff. What I dig is being surrounded by books.

I love books.

I love fiction, literature, history, sociology, science, comics, art, cooking, bargain, poetry, kids, philosophy, the occult, fuck, I even love bestsellers and all their vapid glory.

It's boner city for me to be surrounded by books.

The store I work in is a landmark in Houston. It's a landmark, but don't tell the property management company because they seem intent on making a buck and tearing the thing down once my home office moves the program and closes our store for one that actually might turn a profit.

Once upon a time, in true storybook fashion, our store was the biggest bookstore in all the land (or at least in all of Houston). No one could even hope to unseat us as the book buying center of the Houston universe.

We anchored our little shopping center. Hell, when our building was built in the late 30s, we were the center. Back then, on opening night, crowds gathered to watch the Jack Benny film and taste a small sample of America at its finest.

The movies stopped running eventually, and before you knew it some investors had turned our building into an independent bookstore.

Unfortunately what they had in vision was not matched in their business acumen and before long they had to sell out to the world's largest bookseller.

A few years later I entered this picture and except for an 8 month stint refining my hatred for hippies, I have been there ever since.

As for the business, well, over the years the suits envisioned a future of huge and profitable megastores. Our poor little converted art deco theater, all clunky and retrofitted, didn't match up. Sure, for years we did fine what with the giant health food store being in the center and really no competition to speak of, but once they moved down the street leaving their old spot empty for several years, and then once our only actual competitor erected one of their own huge anchor stores right on the same corner we were doomed. Suddenly the tables were turned.

Me? I'll keep my job, will move to another store and will keep doing this work for the foreseeable future.

So anyway, at this rate, yeah, financially speaking I will die an indentured servant, so to speak. I will be working until I can't work any more and then, for all I know, I will move under the nicest bridge I can find and take shelter from the weather while I wait to die.

Good solid fun.

But you know what? I don't suck devil cock and I don't bend over and take it too far up the ass. Oh sure, I might dally, but I never go full hog.

So do I have dignity?

Fuck you for asking. I smoke meerschaum and let my team of afghans pull my gilded chariot through the streets because I am a god among men.

And tomorrow, when you are at your job, massaging the ego of your Napoleonic gastrointestinal expulsion of a boss, offering your sphincter up to the gods of commerce, while you are signing every contract old Mr. Scratch shoves beneath your nose, long since immune to the smell of sulfur, I will be at the bookstore reading the Walking Dead series, eating leftovers, and only being nice to the people who deserve it.

Just do me one favor in my waning years.

Come say hello when you come to pick up the new Danielle Steel, okay? Deal?

The Whiteout

I live in a very populated area of Houston, Texas just west of the Galleria. In case you are unfamiliar with Houston, the Galleria is a gargantuan mall that is known for drawing people from all over the world, who, it would appear, can't resist our overpriced crap. If you were into demographics this would be your part of town. We've got it all around here. In fact, this apartment complex alone is an international, intercultural, and interracial wonderland. Whenever I go for a walk around the (massive) property I encounter Africans, the Hungarians downstairs, Latinos, Caribbeans, and that damn French guy.

Okay, there's no French guy.

Also cross-represented is damn near the entire economic strata. There are the ubiquitous homeless, there are folks like us - the working poor as they say, there are whatever is left of the middle class, the measurably affluent, and then there are the folks like George Bush senior. Yeah, that douchenozzle lives here too.

So we just had a little election, maybe you've heard about it. I don't know. I guess people are talking about it.

Maybe you yourself live under a rock. If so, let me just let you know that here in Texas we loves us some GOP action. If it's right of center then buddy bring it on.

We have brought you such moral stalwarts like Karl Rove and Tom Delay and of course, George Bush (lesser and greater). We pack a right-wing wallop and we are proud of it.

Dandy.

Unfortunately for Texas, this was not her year at the polls. John McCain got bitchslapped this go-round.

Thing is, you'd never know it if you were to measure the pulse of American presidential politics from the polling station at which I waited in line to vote last Tuesday.

Those same sons-of-bitches I wrote about the other day were out at Briargrove Elementary in full force.

As I entered the school I came face to face with a huge line. While it may be true that only 40% of Texas voters went to the polls, it was clear that nobody told the yup-monsters in line to stay home.

It took us a solid hour to make our way into the polling room. Usually that would be just fine with me. I am not too civic minded; voting pretty much does it for me. Plus, I sort of get a little moved whenever I go and vote. I don't know why. In the last several elections I have either voted for Obama or Ralph Nader or whoever it was that ran Green the last presidential election. So my voting record has been a wee shoddy.

Yeah, Obama won, but he sure as fuck didn't win Texas. And as for those other jokers, none of them ever had a snowball's chance in hell of winning; so basically for me voting is kind of like pissing in the wind.

Whatever. I still get tingly inside when I do it.

This time it was sort of different.

This time I was going into the polls knowing that the guy I was voting for was going to win the whole deal. I knew that this was an historic election and I was acutely aware of its importance as I stood there.

The line wound its way around the front entrance to the school, and as this was happening the last students to arrive were filtering in. This little boy strode in, maybe Indian, and loudly asks the general throng, “Wow, what are all these people doing here”?

No one says a word for a moment, maybe out of surprise, but more likely out of a desire for anonymity from our fellow line-waiters. Finally I and one other woman responded almost in unison. “Voting.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, “I hope everyone votes for Barack Obama, I would love that.”

There are a couple snickers, mine included.

And then the woman directly behind me says, “Oh great, another brainwashing.”

Loudly.

To a fucking elementary student.

Now this whore is on my radar.

Look, if you don't know about me yet because, I don't know, your head is totally up your ass, or you were Google-ing “scrotum” or whatever and somehow landed here by accident it might help you to know that I hate people.

Yeah, I'm a grade-A misanthrope. You may have read about us in college. During your frat-boy youth, your beer-bong haze, your cheerleading pompom practices, your pleated skirt tennis lessons, perhaps you heard about the people who fucking hate people.

I'm one of them.

So it doesn't take a lot to tip my repulsion of humanity over the edge, and that goes especially for public places like lines.

At that point I am no longer relishing those rare moments when I am not not ashamed to be American (or human for that matter), I am now focused entirely on how I will make it through the line without gut punching this satanic minion in her kidneys. I am no longer flush with patriotic duty, I am now engorged with a bloodlust.

Joining Ilsa the She-Wolf in line is her tragically stupid eunuch of a husband and her catastrophically-cursed poor little daughter named Sarah-Kate.

Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket how I fucking loathe hyphenated first names.
Why, for the love of god, why, would you think your kid needs two first names? Is this little homunculus twice as wonderful as the rest of us? Or wait, I know this one... Or, is it that you are a pompous white snob with a chip on her should as big as her sense of entitlement?

“Ding!”

We have a winner!!

For the remaining 45 minutes it becomes like the Bataan Death March for me as I endure this woman as she regales all of us poor bastards around her with tales of her daughter's wonderfulness.

And for all her snide talk of brainwashing she is quick to let us all know who her daughter voted for in her school's mock election.

Once the woman finds out the guy in front of me looks Hispanic she immediately has her daughter recite her 1 to 10s in Spanish.

Oh joy! The little white girl is already being used to patronize brown people! And all before her first ballet lesson!

Then it hits me.

This is the election that belongs to the brown people. And for all the years that I rubbed shoulders with the progeny of pathetic wastes of life like this woman and her soon to be Hitler Youth daughter, come January, this terrible, terrible woman and her crushing ugliness will finally be in the minority.

National pride restored I enter the booth, punch in my little number, and proceed to side with the underestimated brown man who will forever change what it means to be American for us all.

And best of all, it comes to me like a freight train of glee. This woman, this woman who is desperate to hold on to all that has cornered her in her little world of shame, is now in the minority.

Let freedom ring.

And fuck you, lady.

Hope you enjoyed the ride, now, step aside and shut up.

Slightly Well Known, Totally Blowing Himself

Back when I was regularly selling myself out to the wasteland of the Nonalignment Pact, I made a couple of attempts to appeal to the vanity of a one Mr. Eugene Robinson, who, in case you are unfamiliar, is the front man of the San Francisco based band, Oxbow. I won't bother to go into why they rock. Check them out on your own, I've waxed rhapsodic long enough on them in the past. Dig it up and draw your own opinions.

I've held off posting the small piece he finally ended up sending me for many months now as I found it to be both written more for his own vanity than anyone else's interest, and also written from the point of view of a very threatening man with something to prove to no one in particular save perhaps himself.

Basically, I wasn't interested in in posting the piece because he is capable of much more as a writer. His book, which I might add was the only reason he agreed to follow through with me, is a great read on the subject of fighting and why he is so into it. I highly recommend the book, and I also highly recommend you don't take this following bit as a litmus test to his worth as a writer.

The male ego is often something much like a drunk behind the wheel of a train going downhill in total darkness, which it so say that the male ego unhinged is as terrifying as it is pathetic.

Stumbling across the back and forth between us over this, I figured what the hell. It's just languishing in my inbox, collecting dust. Why not air it out and move on?

Here I am, moving on.

Enjoy.


SOMETHING ABOUT A BOOK ON FIGHTING. AND FUCKING. AND THE INELUCTABLE DIFFICULTY OF DOING BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.


"And if there's anything I can do to make you feel better, Eugene, please just let me know."

Yes. The ol' "I'll do anything gambit". The ways in which I had been snookered, snaked, and otherwise pulled around the maypole are too extensive to go into here and are off of the point besides which was, as I saw it, and to quote ODB: how to buy pussy I could not afford.

"...anything at all to make you feel better."

And in a 100-foot Charlie Brown-cliff dive of total stupidity I say:

"Your pussy. And me in it."

And she laughed and laughed, a light trilling thing teetering dangerously close to a guffaw before it resolved itself into a "No. But, really...."

So, there you have it.

What I did next I am not particularly proud of but the way I see it there was no other way: I called Homeland Security.

Yes. I figure they will know what to do and at the very least a few weeks in Gitmo while they try to figure out the mix up should help her align her priorities in way that much better accords with mine.

So it is done. The functional equivalent of a TKO. All in the name of love.

Have I mentioned the book I've written on fighting or my great and uncanny craft with segues?

Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking [www.amazon.com/Fight-Everything-Wanted-Ass-Kicking-Afraid/dp/0061189227]

....while it is unlikely to rescue me from a life of continued penury it comes as close to anything to explaining why I am smiling when I am fighting. Or calling Homeland Security.

And for this reason you should buy it. If you, and your relatives who don't live anywhere near Gitmo, know what's good for you.


--Eugene S. Robinson

Oh, That the Sun Might Rise Again

I have always had a thing for Halloween. And, we're talking for what has become a whole host of reasons over the years. As a very young American expatriate, my earliest memories of America were practically more myth than reality, and Halloween might as well go ahead and be added to that mix. I first went trick-or-treating in Paris, France, with friends from A.S.P., otherwise known as the American School of Paris. A lovely place, really, and a great place to get a first-rate elementary education. If I have half a brain, I owe a great deal of it to A.S.P. and its progressive curriculum.

I am not a big holiday guy when it comes right down to it. As cynical as I am, it is more than a little difficult for me to admit to myself that the holidays are little more than an excuse for people to spend money and propagate some form of diluted tradition all in the eventual name of commerce.

Fuck that.

But, still, I have always enjoyed Halloween.

I dug John Carpenter's movie (still do), have loved the pagan implications, have enjoyed any holiday that is centered around deception and masking who it is we really are. It's rudimentary and juvenile, but it still works for me.

But if we flash-forward to now, to me being forty motherfucking years old, to me being divorced, a father of two, a man who is tormented by demons (too much?) then maybe Halloween takes on a new, less important significance.

Maybe All Hallows Day is little more than a chance to make my kids smile.

Hell, you know what? That's more than enough.

We have battles to fight in this life. We have hills to climb and wars to wage. And most importantly, we have an obligation to take our middle finger and wave it directly in the face of anyone who dares cross our path.

But back to Halloween, back to this Halloween.

This Halloween was a bittersweet one. It has been a year since I left my ex-wife, and it has been a tough year by all accounts. So much pain for so many people, and at the core of it all the decisions I have been a party to, I have been a prime motivator in executing.

So we have the kids this weekend and they are hungry for candy.

It is my plan to drag them over to the semi-affluent neighborhood a few streets over and badger folks for candy.

But it all comes unglued when I realize just who these people actually are.

America has a very ugly underbelly.

We are a nation of repressed humans, needing to find a berth in which to land our anxieties and our fears. This neighborhood, this enclave of white, this enclave of white bread America with their dull, pasty skinned children, with their Hummers, and Land Rovers, with their stucco mansions and manicured lawns and bay windows and custom mailboxes and luxurious earrings and their silent rapes and their late night abuses and their substances and their suicide and their race rage and their entitlement, rampant, a disease, a blight, a stain on who it is we actually strive to be.

where is the heart of this country? Who is it we wish to be? Who is it we have presented ourselves to be in the morass of contemporary life?

In line at the grocery store, righteous and indignant, boutique honey and artisanal breads, olive bar tubs and organic milks, smug self-satisfaction and all the lot... it is all too much to bear.

There is no struggle save this struggle, and at the heart of it is this small family, desperate to tread water, to find a solution to this, and then this, and then this...

And all the while, our heads held high, our battles being fought moment by moment, and our vitriol being refined to an exponential degree...

Make no mistake.

I hate you all.

As I lead my children through your streets, ashamed of who I've become, and you, clad in your polo shirts, to the one, collar upturned, hair so elaborately gelled, wife so carefully chosen to enhance your illusion of control...

Know that I am here to tear it all down.

That, and eat your candy.

Oh yeah, and shit on your lawn.

What a dream,

What a life,

What a world to which we are forced to adapt.

And still, I wouldn't stop for a single second because it's still, in all its agony, in all its confusion, in all my rage, all my sadness, all my guilt, all my doubts...

Despite it all, I am still better than you.

Trick-or-treat.

Lighter please...

Called out.

Okay, Cramer. Here it is. You want a contribution? I'll give you one. 

As we settle in to the semi-Great White North, and it snows a week before Halloween, I shift gears due to cold and the undertaking of dormancy of the foliage from summery pop and colorful images to the grey, cold, mechanical machinations of intricate, studied musics. Why? Have you tried listening to Prog on a hot day? It doesn't fucking work. You need cold, you need to be inside, wearing many layers, sipping tea or smoking illegal, secure in a artificially heated cocoon that will allow you to full digest the notes and the movements. Whilst in the heat, you can let go, and succumb to the 'groove.' Let yourself go, and just 'feel the beat.' 

Nuts to that. Fuck the groove. I want to be overwhelmed by detail. I want to swim in notes and layers, lost in multi-layered melodies that spiral and careen into poly-rhythms and breakdowns that have no direction and leave no indication of where they're headed. 

Why? What's the fucking purpose of this? Huh? Where am I heading? What the fuck am I ranting about? Is it the two VERY strong stouts I've just had? (Well, yeah, maybe.) It could be anything, but it's really about the feeling I've been lucky enough to experience (and actually noticing it due to its infrequency) four times over the last four years. That is to say, from christmases (I don't capitalize because I don't thing the so-called deity and all its so called days should be. I don't capitalize its name, either.)  2004-2007, I left the confines of the "wackjob" state  to spend the last week (or so) of one year and the first (or so) in the chilled landscape of the nicest goddamn people in the upper midwest (and that is saying a HELL of a lot.) 

And when I've come up on those holiday excursions, I've had uncontrollable urges -- not the kinds that 14 year olds get, pervert -- no... Urges to listen to progressive music. Music that takes all the details and explodes them to an nth degree. And none do that better than the one job that not only gives my chills up my spine but (live) will bring a slight tear to my eye. 

OPETH. 

I've been plotting and scheming (and so has Cramey) for ages on writing a post about this particular Swedish megalith, and -- since the aformentioned beard has called me out (in a way) and I've had (now 1 1/2) a good amount of stout, I figured, what the hell? 

Take your mind back to 1999. I, to put it mildly, was having a bad year. (I think academically when it comes to time, so more like 1998-1999 school year.) My mom had passed away in Sept of 1998, my grandfather a month or so later, and my uncle, who was (and still is, I'm sure) a sever alcoholic and raging idiot, got hit by a car, taking out the family dog and one of his legs. Awesome. Needless to say, I didn't need the additional stress of full time college, a part time job, the annoyingness of getting over the "big college EX", and a lawsuit filed by the D-Bag who sued my mom the day she got her fatal stroke, that was also a part of semester one of year 6 at anonymous state university, Michigan. But what kept me going -- aside from drinking and cigarettes -- was the music I loved. Yes, the music that took me away from it all, the music that made me feel like a 100 bucks. 

Opeth? Metal? 

Nope. Not EVEN close. 

You see, back in those days, I was mad for one thing: Oasis. Granted, I still like 'em, but back then, it was all I could see. I tried to wear the clothes, tried to act like the biggest douchebag to come out of England since... Well, England's had a LOT of douchebags over the years. And I defended Liam Gallagher til I was blue in the face. Seriously. 

But on the periphery, there was a friend of mine that quietly bided his time. He worked at the local quasi-indie record shop with all of his friends, and due to his proximity to a friend of mine, we became friends. He was into -- like a rather large number of kids who went to high school in the Mountain Town -- EXTREME metal. I spotted him in a class wearing a Hammerfall shirt and snickered to myself. "Just another townie into bad metal," I thought to myself. But truth was, he had a pretty wide berth in taste. I was able to turn him onto The Holy Bible by Manic Street Preachers, Ray of Light, and Sleater-Kinney's Dig Me Out. He (and his friend Chris Dick) did their best to steer me in the direction of long hair and long sleeve black t-shirts with silly logos, but I resisted. Until one day, Italy Jason -- as he came to be known -- did the math, and sent me home with a few artists that Chris Dick hadn't thought of. For some reason. Truth is, I'm surprised because Chris Dick was and is quite a force in metal journalism. 

What did the Jason give me that day?  Well, to freak me out, Arcturus. To lull me in, the Gathering (Nighttime Birds), and to really give me something to think about, Opeth's Morningrise. It would be that last disc that would stick in my head. Time after time, that became the template for what I was looking for in new, modern, extreme metal. Techincal ability, power, melody, the ability and courage to let it all soften a bit, it was all there. But, since it wasn't Oasis, I kept it at distance and spent my time trying to -- ahem -- 'live forever.' Get it?

Cut to a few years later, and I'm no longer that alcohol soaked idiot with terrible luck. It's 2006(ish), and I'm coming into work on a day off to drop off a pair of CD mixes for a friend who wants to hear what this Akerfeldt fellow and his Opeth band are all about. Now, this friend is someone who I instantly (who? whom?) respected.  A good musician with a damn good ear, I was hesitant about suggesting something that I felt really wasn't 'mine' to give. I sort of wished that Italy Jason had been around to make the suggestions for the mixes for me. But the pair of discs -- apparently -- went over well. So well, in fact, that ol' Johnny Cramer's interest in the Swedish wall of music only served to rekindle my love for them. And on and on it went. It was official: Opeth was now a band I could love. I had passed it on, I had embraced it, understood it, and made it a part of my musical self. No mean feat, especially how territorial we get about such things. Italy Jason was surprised, but understood. He knew all along, the fucker. 

Cut to a couple of years later, and I'm just north of Saint Paul, in a club that will soon feature the talents of Jason Mraz one night and Tesla soon after, nearly getting choked up when Opeth plays my favorite song off of Still Life, Serenity Painted Death. So excited by the announcement that I gave a mighty "YYYYYEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" after hearing Akerfeldt mutter the first syllable of the first word of the title. 

Goddamn I love that band. And to make it all even better, their slower, proggier stuff makes this fall in a town I've wanted to be in for so long makes it all feel so damned RIGHT. 

I can never thank Italy Jason enough for that. Nor Cramer. It all seems silly and maudlin, but it's there. 

So. There you go Cramer.  A post. From me. Hope you think it doesn't suck. I gotta eat now. 

HEY MOTHERFUCKERS

If you have entertained the thought of writing for this blog, then fucking do it. Not tomorrow. Right fucking now. I'm sick of your pathetic bullshit simpering cowardice, your fears that you aren't good enough, or the broken record cockswaddle you keep slathering all over yourself about how no one cares what you say anyway.

Do you want to write something? Do you have something that is itching to be let out? Anything at all?

Then get to fucking work.

I'm probably not your friend. I really don't have friends. I hate people. Ask anyone.

I'm vain. I need attention. I hate writing for my own gratification. If I wanted to amuse myself I'd jerk off in front of the mirror, again.

Shakespeare died centuries ago. You don't have to worry about him showing you up anymore. Just USE SOME WORDS AND SAY SOMETHING HONEST. EVERYTHING ELSE WILL FALL INTO PLACE.

It's not about respect, about glory, about honor, about anything that increases blood flow. It's about communicating.

Communicate.

Communicate, because if you don't, the people with nothing to say will do it for you.

The Return of the Witch

Have you had a chance to catch Suspiria yet? Heard of it? Suspiria is the horror film made by the practically infamous Italian director, Dario Argento. The first (and best) part of a trilogy that centers on the story of three evil witches. All of the things that make Argento the genius and the singular artist that he is is very much present in Suspiria. There is the bizarre, almost surreal performances that are both childishly amateurish in as much as they are virtually alien. Watching people act in Suspiria makes me feel as though I am watching a movie made by creatures who have studied our behavior and done the best they could with their limited knowledge: it's familiar but yet something entirely... other.

Then there's the whole issue with the lighting. Argento is a great believer in the power of lighting to create a mood. There is plenty of orchestrated, super saturated colored light soaking up the screen throughout Suspiria, and it's another example of one of Argento's more effective trademarks.

Anyone coming to Argento expecting anything close to dramatic weight ought to look elsewhere because in Argento's world, everyone is a caricature of an actual person and practically all the dialogue is like something written for a high school play, it's that bad. The thing is, in Argento's hands (at least in Suspiria, his masterpiece) this is yet another way in which Argento creates a world entirely his own, as compelling as it is creepy.

Capping off Suspiria is the absolutely genius soundtrack music of the band that effectively served as Argento's foil, Goblin. If you never took the opportunity to actually see the movie, you would still be almost forgiven if you went ahead and just bought the soundtrack. Goblin's music is both creepy and totally rocking at the same time. It's the kind of music you would kill for if you were to make your own atmospheric horror film.

The second installment in Argento's trilogy is called Inferno. Set in New York, Inferno, while a formidable film in its own right, is not quite the match of Suspiria. Sure, the building in which most of the action takes place is suitably creepy and menacing, and yes the lighting and mood is all set with skill. I guess it's just that this film doesn't have the balls that Suspiria had. It's pretty hard to flesh out a trilogy that begins with a near flawless classic. Having said that, Inferno is still a strong follow up and a worthy path towards the final entry in the bunch.

But here's where we run into the hitch. It would be decades until Argento actually got it together and finished his master work. Mother of Tears was released in 2007 much to the delight if not anxiety of his now legions of fans worldwide.

This fan would have been happier to keep wondering what could have been.

It's hard to imagine how it could have taken Argento literally thirty years to make this movie. Well, okay, it took about a year I suppose, but it took him thirty years to deliver the end to this story line, and you would think that in the interest of doing himself justice, he might go ahead and, uh, not use his daughter to play an American in Rome. Asia Argento does not have an American accent. What she has is an Italian accent with no hint of anything even remotely American in it. Her character's name is Sarah Mandy, and there is nothing Sarah Mandy-ish about Asia's accent. And, to top it off, it's totally irrelevant to have Asia's character come from the States in the first place. She could easily have been an Italian woman. This is an example of what happens when things go wrong with Argento.

Yes, the bold, unnatural primary colored lighting in on full display as is the exorbitant settings, and yes, the gore factor has been pushed to somewhere around twenty. I'll thrust my thumb up for that, but when it comes to the package as a whole, it takes no effort whatsoever to recognize how far Argento has fallen in being able to create something positive out of the tension of facing such consistently unusual elements on screen for so many years.

I would argue that what makes Argento so great is the very same thing that threatens to destroy him when it all goes wrong. The idea of the trilogy is a brilliant one. The execution of Suspiria is such that it will forever hold a place in the history of film. The jilted performances and embarrassing dialogue hang around Mother of Tears like an anchor. The witch herself is so nonthreatening, and is basically used as an excuse to show off her naked breasts as if that is still somehow transgressive in this era. Has Argento ever seen the Internet? Hell, has he seen his daughter in any of her previous movies? The witch has about ten lines, shows no personality, isn't creepy, and looks like a magazine model from the 80s in a very bad way. He should have called her the Mother of Brut By Faberge or some such shit, that would have been more accurate. And just when we finally are let down with her on-screen presence, she is impaled, hilariously, by a giant object piercing the ground in an obviously phallic fashion. Nice.

Sadly, with the tremendously disappointing release of Mother of Tears, Dario Argento has shown himself to be something I never wanted to have to admit to myself: he is just like you and I, normal.

Jesus, what a terrible thing to say.

If Argento had worked as hard on amping up the menace, and spent less time having his daughter wander around Rome with nothing important to do, this could have been salvageable, but as it is, this movie was a huge mess from start to finish.

It's like George Lucas with Star Wars. I will never forgive him for all that Ewok bullshit at the end of Jedi. When it's time to go out, go out with a fucking bang, not dancing teddy bears.

I mean, yeah, Lucas went and shit all over the franchise by putting out three more turds to cap off the whole deal, but let's not get into that now or we might be up all night with that catastrophe.

Maybe it would be cool if Argento and Lucas teamed up to make a The Witches of Star Wars trilogy.

Let that sink in.

Lasers, tits, Darth Vader, primary colored lighting, light sabers, deep and shadowy shots of tall and ornate buildings at night, mind numbingly bad-ass space fighting, and a climactic showdown between Asia Argento and Carrie Fisher replete with cigarette burns, bad tattoos, light sabers, hair buns, track marks, and bottles of pills.

I'm so there.

Who needs a screenwriter? Gentlemen?

You know where to reach me, boys.

The Pilgrimage

A couple weeks ago, this corner of the Butcher's world took a little jaunt to the dank and musty wastelands of south Florida. If you know little of me beyond the scorn and spite that literally pours from these fingers whenever I can muster the will to do so in this little corner of the electronic underworld then perhaps it would behoove you to know this additional tidbit - I fucking detest Florida.

Maybe blaming a geographical location for you own personal demons is a bit unfair, but to me, Florida is one of those regions of the country that is shrouded in darkness and death. You know, like Louisiana.

My mother was a resident of Florida in the waning years of her life. The southern Gulf Coast of Florida to be exact. She loved the place. She loved the beaches, the laid back lifestyle, and, uh, well, that's about it. Maybe love is too strong a word. Let's say that my mother enjoyed the life she semi-retired to once she hit the marshy cesspool of south Florida.

When she died two years ago she left behind no will, practically no estate, and a small insurance policy that took two years to clear probate court so that her funeral expenses could be paid off as well as some legal fees and a small bit leftover for her mountainous medical bills.

To her numerous medical creditors this amount ended up being a minute drop in the bucket as her legion of health woes easily ended up costing her a considerable fortune.

If it's possible to be relieved when the most important and loved person in your life dies, then that's a part of what I felt upon knowing her suffering was finally over.

With the estate out of the way this left the matter of dealing with the remainder of her personal belongings.

My mother bought the house she died in with a fifty-fifty split between herself and her closest friend. Therefore, all her things languished in the upstairs floor of their home awaiting the legal hurdles (as well as emotional ones) that stood in the way of closure.

When my brother called to let me know that it was time a hasty plan was devised and we were off within a couple of weeks.

Going through things that hadn't been touched since the day we left her home two years ago was a little emotional for me since my image of that moment in time was frozen on the week following her death. I would love to tell you how enlightened I am in my mature handling of loss, but returning to Florida put things in perspective.

I can handle her loss, but I will never be comfortable with it. She to me was a giant and the giant has fallen. That is a truth almost too big for me to realize.

Then again, I must, and maybe I already have and just don't know it yet.

We packed up our Penske truck in a whirlwind of ruthless decisions and calculated sensibility. And by the next afternoon the Unspeakable and I were on the road.

Our drive is somewhere around 19 or so hours, and in a 16 foot truck the gas mileage was criminally atrocious. I figured out that we were getting about 10 miles-per-gallon on the highway. I filled up about six times at sixty bucks a pop, so do the math. My credit card bill will eat me alive for months to come. Dying, as it turns out, is fucking expensive.

Nonetheless, long distance driving is easily one of my favorite things to do, and getting the opportunity to spend time going places with the Unspeakable is something I relish. One plus about the huge truck was that it was easy to drive and actually turned out to be rather comfortable as well.

Whenever I take long drives I always like to stop in cities along the way and waste time either eating or just snooping around. I love doing this.

So, our first stop? Tampa.

Tampa is the home of the Salvador Dali museum, and though we were too late to catch it open, I have been fortunate enough to visit the mus em before and it is fantastic. I can't recommend it enough. If you are ever driving through and have time, go there. I promise you won't be disappointed.

As a side note, I acquired a signed Dali lithoprint from my mother which now hangs proudly in my home as I write this.

Sure, he most likely had his minions not only draw and run off the print, he most-likely had them sign it as well, or so the rumor goes as it relates to the end of his career when the print was made.

Either way, it's awesome, so fuck you.

Anyway, in Tampa we ended up stopping at a Greyhound bus station in order to use their facilities. There was a hockey game going on downtown, so the traffic was fairly bad and lo and behold, there sat the station, resplendent in its decadent glory, terrifying toilets at the ready.

As we walked back to the truck we stupidly missed the chance to snap a photo of the actual fork that was laying in the middle of the road. That sort of shit is pure gold.

Back to it, we drove as far as we could stand it and then pulled off to find a hotel hours later in Tallahassee.

In all my trips through Florida, I have never stopped in Tallahassee, probably because it is a little ways from the highway, and also probably because I have pretty much always already made plans to crash in Mobile, Alabama a few hours further.

In the tank, and with our late start, Tallahassee it was.

Little did I realize, Tallahassee, the state capital, is also the home of Florida State University. Little did we realize - it was game night.

College towns go apeshit for game night. Okay, college towns go apeshit damn near any weekend night because being in college is often an excuse to abuse drugs and alcohol and thumb your nose at your parents by fucking anonymous fat people you will regret exposing your genitals to for the remainder of your life. Rebellion is a two-headed sword.

Since we were almost out of gas and had already wasted enough time trying to find an open Chevron station, we instead looked for a hotel. We found this ancient place on the strip just beyond the university. On the inside it was immediately apparent that the place had this sort of decaying southern haunted mansion vibe to it. There was a really old marble tile floor, and when I went to use the bathroom while we waited for this slow-assed old man to count his till for shift change, I sort of came across this bizarre second lobby covered up by an oddly placed couch to keep people like me from looking around too much.

I have absolutely no belief in the paranormal, mind you, but still, this would have been a great location for a ghost movie shoot.

Nevertheless, we bailed on the place because the Unspeakable was getting a strong about-to-spend-too-much-money-on-a-roach-motel vibe about the place. She's more sensible than I am, so we split.

We couldn't sell our kingdom for an open restaurant beyond fast-food, so instead we settled on this inexplicable empty liquor store just off campus. The beer was reasonably priced and the selection was excellent.

We went back to the room where I promptly passed out after one beer as I was totally wrecked from driving all day. Nice.

In the morning, driving out, I realized that Tallahassee was actually an interesting looking place and so I hope to go back and snoop around some more if I ever return.

From there it was hours and hours of deep-south driving, following I-10 as it leads you ever westward.

Whenever I pass through Louisiana on my way home to Houston I make any excuse I can to stop in New Orleans even if it's for an hour. I still love that town, and I am sad to report that it is still as fucked as it was three years ago in many ways. Still, stopping there continues to be a pleasure for me and it was also an important moment for me to visit a place I loved with the person I love more than anyone. NOLA has a lot of significance for both of us as it is another in a long line of near-misses in the back history of our coming together. I split beignets with her, and then we had a beer at the House of Blues. There we sat in the building that housed the Nick Cave show ten years previous. We were both there, not knowing each other, having no clue that we would return in decade with the person we were always meant to be with.

Sometimes poignancy is just the best shit ever.

From there is was off to make the final stretch back to Houston. We got home at 2 AM, wiped out and glad to be home.

There is so much I could go into about my mother, about being in her world two years after her death, about how my life has changed since her death, but maybe I do that all damn day long already. Florida for me will always be the place that I will equate with decay, with finality, and with sadness. It's not fair, Florida is a huge state, and while we seem bent on erasing it, Florida is a place of great natural beauty. There is an interesting history of outsiders making their way in a place far from home, and I can always dig that. Many unusual people have adopted Florida over the years, and this too appeals to me. Still, getting out of there is often my main goal whenever I end up there.

Maybe in the next life my mother will retire to the Pacific Northwest, to a climate that is more conducive to the reality I romanticize in my warped mind.

Giving a big piece of my past to the Unspeakable was reason enough to go back to Florida. Respecting the end of my mother's life was another. I most-likely will not return again soon, and that is actually fine with me.

I love you, mom.