Monthly Archives: February 2004
this week in rock in la
tonight
banyan, 14 below
courtney love, roxy
jimmy smith, catalina
honeyboy edwards, cozys
joe & genuine, universal
the dan band, the avalon
saturday 2/21
ac/dshe, spaceland
30 seconds to mars, roxy
the walkmen, henry fonda
youth brigade, troubador
bollywood follies, key club
sunday 2/22
death by stereo, troubador
spazmatics, dragonfly
jimmy smith, catalina
peter himmelman, mccabes
mxpx & sugarcult, palladium
totaly 80s convention w/ richard blade, henry fonda
monday 2/23
TSAR, good hurt
jimmy smith, catalina
cassandra wilson, royce hall
dillinger escape plan, house of blues
tuesday 2/24
+/- , spaceland
neil young, shrine
marvin etzioni, echo
beau soleil, royce hall
michelle shocked, tangier
vonda shepard, troubador
thursday 2/26
KEN LAYNE & THE CORVIDS, king king
krs-one, malibu inn
liz phair, house of blues
star fuckers, cat club
dana + draw your boss + dogboy
tomorrow leah turns 18 years old.
i mention this because she has been kicking my ass since she was 15.
i think she has 3-4 different journals/blogs but the only one ive ever paid much attention to was her site at vacant.cc.
i like leah because she always seems a little too smart for her britches, she has her own style, and pretty much always keeps it positive. which is interesting because in her about section the native canadian writes this about where she now lives in texas:
My sister, Elana, is 21 and moved back to Canada after she graduated. She did not like it here and I do not blame her.
maybe its cuz elana didnt have a jon bon jovi boyfriend.
its not that leah hasnt had her struggles. the day after christmas this year she found out she had been fired at her place of employment.
then there was that time last year when she realized that you cant really sell a zine for a buck these days.
apologized.
and sold it for two bucks.
i like that she takes a lot of pictures and movies and isnt afraid to stay clothed.
it didnt seem that long ago that i interviewed leah for my website. this was a time before blogs, so maybe it was sorta long ago. anyway, after that, i put her in my “i will never be this cool section” in my links page, and she hasnt left it.
if she ever wrote anything for lick i would probably fall over.
since our interview many moons ago i think we’ve chatted maybe twice or three times. im very happy just being a loyal reader of hers and shes never let me down.
happy birthday leah vacant girl. one of the biggest rockstars on the internet.
vacant + zine #2 is on the market + livejournal
heres a little story i gots to tell
about three bad brothers you know so well. they started to change cub history, im talking the professor, mark prior and my man kerry.
one lonely cub fan i be. all by myself without nobody. california sun beating down on my baseball hat. the race is getting hot, my old style beer’s getting flat…
woke up this morning with a pretty girl asking if i could turn off the howard stern on the radio.
her eyes were closed and didnt see the smile on my face.
it was a permagrin.
ear to ear.
i was beaming.
yes, she and i had superstar porno love the night before. yes, i had bowled and liquored myself up pretty good. yes, i had full control of my mightysword. theres nothing like the feeling a man gets every blue moon when he realizes that he can floor it with no repercussions.
like speeding in the pitch black darkness of an empty desert highway with the clash’s know your rights blasting through the t-tops without any worry that the man isnt gonna flick on his party lights and join the parade.
wham wham wham
then
whapwhapwhap
then
BOOM
BOOM
bambambam
fuck the neighbors. fuck the lack of music or candles. fuck the bedsprings fuck the blinds getting kicked fuck the blankets getting twisted fuck gravity fuck the headboard getting destroyed fuck that this isnt sex saturday.
two ways to have girls fall in love with you
be rich
or do what i did last night.
this morning i wasnt smiling cuz of all that. that was luck. that had very little to do with me.
this morning i was smiling cuz i remembered that the cubs are going to win the world series this year, and after i hit the snooze button i drifted off knowing that somewhere in heaven harry caray was smiling too.
bring on the bosox
the lick blog + god’s lonely man + kitty bukkake has been knitting
i just dont want anyone to think im not grateful.
the internet has given me everything. right now im listening to Eamon’s “fuck it” which… well… how are you gonna hear that on the radio. at work we have itunes. lots of people are on it. i listen to music i wouldnt normally listen to OR download like billy joel and thats a true story that someone asked me to turn it down. piano man. im 110 years old but im still not so old that i would ask someone to turn down billy joel. i think its funny.
today was hard for nearly everyone i talked to. its earlier than 11pm and my truest is asleep. one guy asked me to come in to his office today so he could vent. i dont blame him. i had nobody to vent to today. i had you. i did vent. i do need a new gig. this one is so over. at first i thought i was gonna get killed or fired or comfortable. now im just afraid its just going to age me overnight.
bowled today, next to two super hot girls. well one super hot girl. she was jamaican. as dark as the darkest chocolate youve ever seen. curves that were so natural and nice. tas for you and me. but not a black girls butt which bothered me a little but that skin. you wanted to take a semi sweet yet bitter bite out of it. and her hair started back on her head. nice forehead. did the complete curve before the hair. it was long and superblack. she had a gap sweater on. tight jeans.
at first i thought she was with the nba star. but no she was with the normal looking jamaican brotha. the pale redhead white girl was there with the shooting guard. i didnt care. she didnt seem to be sitting next to him. shes mad at him travis k said and i said shes not into him. thats not her man. he said how do you know. i said cuz im her man. and i waited for her to go to the bathroom or have a smoke or get a drink. but first jamaica bought a round and then number nine went out. never was she alone.
what would i have said?
i woulda lied and said she was the hottest girl in the bowling alley. seriously i would have said that i want to take her bowling at a real bowling alley would she come with me. and she woulda said yes and i woulda said right now and she woulda laughed and i woulda said ok how about now then.
way hotter babe is coming over right now. might be parking her car right now. she says she loves it when i let my aries side out and vent and i said i dont have an aries side and she said oh yeah you do remember that time you ripped me apart for being late and i was all oops/
below is my favorite collection of poems. i will keep it up one more day, and then take it down around lunch time.
today i wore my 1908 cubs hat. theres this mechanic that i see on rainy days and we talk cubs baseball and he and i ran into each other in the ammo locker and he was all and i was all and we were gonna high five
but instead we hugged.
still hasnt sunk in
the cubs have greg maddux
dougie gyro + wormhog + bloopy
dear prospective employers
i dont know who you are. i dont even know if you read this. i hope you do, but i doubt it.
i have to quit this life of crime
fighting.
when it rains like it does today i dont get to fly chopper one. i get stuck in a car. driving around. talking to our marks. shaking down our stoolies. like peter gabriel we shake the tree.
this is the part of the job that i hate.
the muscle. the strong arm. the beat down. the ooomph.
if you dont sign me up to work for you im going to do the unthinkable.
im going to be a highschool english teacher and turn my back on the world.
im going to marry a cute little woman and get a minivan and sell out and harvest kids that look like me and go to soccer practices.
this rocketship of rock has been sitting on the takeoff platform for some 79 years and it is ready to blow.
let it be known. i am ready to rock and i have been ready to rock for quite some time.
ive tried to distract myself with Lick and the ladies and charities and haircuts and baseball and rock shows and liquid courage but at some point a motherfucker has to tap out.
i want a job where i can rule the world.
i want a job that will pay me more than any showdog can jump over.
i want a job where i can use whatever this is that ive got and share it with the good people of the world.
i want a job where i can see a rainy day like today and say i know lets go to the mall and talk to the old ladies and ask em about moonshine in the 40s.
i want a job where people dont come up to me and say, would you mind turning down that billy joel, its too loud.
yes that happened to me.
i want a job where the management actually knows my name and remembers where i came from and where i want to be.
if i cant get that, then fuckit, i’ll grade the stoners’s shitty ass essays about catcher in the rye and get my summers off.
this is the gospel of the dumbass.
our girl kristin updated
and not only that but it was a cool creepy tale of college and mysterious ghostlike creatures sending her strange messages via chalk and sidewalks.
i love ghoststories.
i also like it when people write the madpony and make her happy.
its raining here in hell aye. im listening to fitty duetting with beyonce. now its the darkness. now its my new favorite record, dave grohls probot with lemmy on one track. god bless lemmy.
if i ran vh1 i would run a lemmy tribute right now and get it over with. fuck waiting till he dies. whys a nigga gotta die before the man tips his hat to his shit? thats all i wanna know.
i wanna know if she’ll ever love me.
i want lemmy to cover whitney.
i also want lemmy to cover beyonces crazy in love. i see gold. probably platinum if you get the tower of power horns to back him.
lemmy needs to get on american records. rick rubin would know how to market his ass.
to me producing is half pimping. rick pimped johnny cash brilliantly. i dont know how he fucked up on the jesus and mary chain so poorly. its amazing that Lost in Translation has reminded people how good that band was. god i miss em.
speaking of music, as many of you know Frank Black, Black Francis, Charles Blahblah got interviewed by our girl Emmanuelle the other day. Then her french editors f’ed shit up. Then Frank found Em’s Buzznet pictures and sorta gave her a hard time. in her comments section.
some people think its cool that he would be using the internet to “clear things up”, but no. its not cool. its not rock. its not punk. its not cool especially when he knows damn well that Richard is her maiden name and he tries to call her Richard as if she was a man.
emmanuelle is a lot of things: hot, french, smart, funny, killer, brilliant, welch’s wife, and shes all woman.
frank black oughtta be stoked that the kids still give a shit about the pixies.
fat not really rock stars leaving comments on the internet is not cool.
whats cool is planet of sound, allison, covering the j&m chain, recording with albini, giving kim deal someone to sing with.
trying to diss good reporters in their pictures comments is kidstuff.
when i was in college i had the great good opportunity to interview on seperate occasions both ms kim deal and mr black francis. and to the surprise of no one kim gave the greatest phone interview ive ever had the pleasure of being a part of and fatboy gave the worst.
write some new songs, hit your high notes, and quit trying to manipulate the french music media, which no one, no offense emmanuelle, ever paid much attention to. even now.
there is a god
and hes not a yankee fan.
greg maddux has returned home where he belongs, the friendly confines in which he spent his formulative years. wrigley field, the land of milk and honey, the crossroads of america, the house that gum built.
older and slower, but he’s back. and if you dont care about baseball or dont care about sports, just know that your hero will sleep alone tonight, but with a smile, and a spark of a glimmer of hope returning to his (good) eye.
pudge who, we got maddux.
in 1986 greg maddux was twenty years old, two years since graduating high school, two years since being drafted by the cubs in the second round.
in 1986, pictured, twenty year old greg maddux appeared in six cubs games, lost four and won two.
in 1987 the cubs put him in the rotation. in 30 appearances he won 6 and lost 14.
the 21 year old would never have a losing record again.
over the next 5 years (’88-’92) greg maddux would go 87-57 despite his team being better than .500 only once during that time.
1992 was his last year as a Cub.
the professor won 20 games, lost 11, struck out 199 batters and had an insane 2.18 era despite playing half of his games in the hitter friendly wind-aided wrigley field.
he pitched more innings than anyone in either league that year, 268.
the cubs (78-84) wound up 18 games behind the bonds+van slyke pirates whose ace was doug drabek (15-11, 177 ks)
in 1992 maddux won the cy young and his right to test the free market waters.
the atlanta braves had the second best pitcher in baseball at the time, mr tom glavine who also had 20 wins in 92, and they had the strikeout leader mr john smoltz who whiffed 215 batters.
ted turner, the braves owner, shelled out $4.2 million for mr. maddux and a pitching dynasty was complete.
greg maddux since 1993 has blazed a trail to the hall of fame. racking up 3 more cy young awards, countless golden gloves, and he’s now only a few games away from recording his 300th win.
he was 194-88 with a 2.63 era during his 11-years with the braves. a team that was perrenially in first place during that stint, only dipping as low as second place once since maddux’s arrival.
he has consistantly been one of the top ten highest paid players in the game as well. last year he earned $14.5 milion.
yesterday the cubs signed him to a three year $24 million deal that would take him to his 40th birthday.
while this is far better than nothing, greg maddux is only 10-10 in postseason play. the cubs beat his ass 3-1 in his only appearence in the playoffs last year.
the braves during that amazing run only won the world series.
however, during his entire career, the last time he won less than 15 games was when he was 22 and had that 4-16 season to forget.
last year, for example, the old man of the staff went 16-11 with a bloated 3.96 era, the highest era he’d racked up since he was 22.
what he can bring to the cubs staff, which is instantly the best in the majors, is experience, intelligence, and class.
$8 mil a year is nothing compared to the value he’s going to give Mark Prior (18-6 2.43), Kerry Wood (14-11 3.20), Matt Clement (14-12 4.11); and especially valuable to the 23 yr old Carlos Zambrano who went 13-11 with a 3.11 era last year and fizzled in the playoffs.
if any team was to compete with the yankees other than the angles this year it had to be the cubs and they had to get maddux. and they did.
and this is where you get on your knees and thank the Lord for letting this happen
for perhaps the tribune corp isnt entirely full of shit after all
aarons baseball blog + souptree + science blog + dub symphony
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
i refuse to write about sex.
i cannot write about drugs.
i know jack about rock.
– 7:54:28 PM
i love the contradictions of the human experience. i love the differences and insanities and illogical parts of us that make no sense except to oneself.
i love how people can write in great detail about every aspect of their paranoias and psychoses and illnesses and fears but cannot write about “drugs” and refuse to write about “sex”.
and i type this without a tap of sarcasm.
you don’t get that sort of complexity in lord of the rings i don’t care how many times you rent it.
lick magazine, dear child, isn’t solely about the brass rings of lcd
how many times you’ve spread your legs
or popped pills
or snorted
or banged
your head
or how you did it
or with whom
or how it made you feel
or how it made you not feel
its not about threeway kissing on x in the parkinglot of a dead show in oakland where afterwards you exhaled and could see your breath but you were warm and toasty inbetween those hippy girls.
its not about the time you dropped acid then sucked nitrous and watched the sun set and then melt into the ocean while listening to brass monkey on a homeless mans boom box and feeling your soul float up and up and away from you
its not about being fifteen in the fourteenth row at the back in black tour, going alone because nobody else’s mom trusted them the way yours trusted you.
lick magazine is about writing about the things that you wouldn’t normally write on your own blog.
its about writing little things about things you refuse to write about
its about writing long things about things you cannot write about
its about writing things that you do know jack about since you’re the one who saw jack and meg in fucking pomona.
you’re the one with the kurdt print when everyone else is lucky to have the poster.
rock is the part of us who embraces the darkness and says yeah man ive missed that.
drugs is what we take to silence the devil in us that says we don’t know jack
and sex is the deliciously low carb reward
you don’t have to write for lick right now or ever. you don’t have to tell me it’s you when you email me from an anonymous email addy.
but you do have to remember that people read you and love you and are inspired by you regardless of your ridiculousness cuz most of us can see through the blahblahblah and into the rock.
don’t listen to that bullshit artist whispering in your ear that you don’t know jack
write the good stuff
and when you’re scared, send it to lick
sorry, we’re open
mick kelleher rides his bike through the detroit suburb
with a tshirt that says iowa
and his two year old behind him in a kiddie seat.
hes nearly forty now and as skinny as he was when 17
i think about how he warmed
the bench for the Flubs in the 70s and
he thinks that life is grand and i wanna die
i wanna have my skull crushed in a trash disposal unit
one whose walls close and metal squeals and wood snaps
and guts spews the cubs werent shit with him
and im not shit without you.
the fellas across the street sit on the abandon couch fat
drinking the new flavor of budweiser
talking about lots of people but not skinny number twenty
lie about lots of girls but not you
this girl had most of her hair shaved down there
better eyes well differnt at least
soft skin yawn
and even she talked of you
mick knows im a fool
and where are these destructo fields
where you walk on a blade of grass
and it slices you
where is this place called peace
where can i get more than a piece
i wanna quit young like mick
i wanna be your top draft pick
i wanna fuckin have it now
i wanna see the holy cows