today is my homeboy jeff solomon’s 13th birthday.

hes now a man.

born to mountain goats in the south of france, jeff learned at an early age the value of friends when a grizzly bear found their humble goathouse. right before jeff and his family were about to be ripped to shreads and eaten a pack of gardener snakes jumped from a plane freaking out the bear and saving the lives of the solomons.

jeff has been repaying his friends endlessly over the years, from deliving our children, to gentle yet firm backrubs, to even fixing our computers as they break down from overuse and bottomless strands of dna.

i first met jeff at the daily nexus in santa barbara when i was running into the office to drop off a story and run out as quickly as i could. jeff was sitting on a couch playing the acoustic guitar. he had no shoes on. his long hair reached down to his ass and tried to tickle his hole.

he winked at me as we acheived eye contact. he was kidding. but was he? i didnt want to know. but i did. but i didnt. of course i didnt.

years later i still dont know what he meant by that wink and ive seen jeff in dresses and skirts and in wigs and bikinis. ive seen jeff play bass for my favorite rock group tsar dressed as a european soccer fan, if seen him play bass for san franciscos mighty thee mystakes in a tuxedo, and i saw him play for the brothers steve in isla vista but not for very long because there were drunk girls in need of a quickie makeout session.

without jeff solomon there would be a lot of unwritten blog posts from not just this blog but from welch, layne, ben sullivan, and so many others. most of LA probably.

right now hes putting together a supercomputer for me so i can do some sweet shit that you aint never seen before. and i will reward him handsomely with baseball cards. since they pay the rent.

i dee jayed at jeffs wedding a few years ago which lead to me dee jaying two weddings this year. i played exactly the same songs and nobody noticed. which is why jeffs the greatest. he has one and a half children, several dogs, a beautiful house, a wife thats far too good for him, and a bass that has his name on it for the day that i get married and need a twenty minute bass solo in the middle of a cover of big bottom.

jeff and i covered the news together a few times in santa barbara, we crawled under houses in frisco, and here in la i let him sift through my porn every six months as he upgrades my shit and laughs and laughs at my hairy ass.

he may be the nicest man in LA since i saw ben sullivan swat a gnat in palm springs.

i hope he likes my bar mitvah gift.

jeff and erin’s wedding + jeff in tsar + in the victorians + marrying steve and heather

today is the birthday of some of my favorite people

the first of course being mr john wayne anti of the redondo beach antis.

anti epitomizes pretty much everything that i like about native californians. theyre mellow. they rock. and they have their priorities straight enough to appreciate the right things – a nice sunset, a good guitar jam, the wonders of nature.

it’s also prince’s birthday.

greatest rock entertainer of all time.

its also allen iverson’s birthday. karisas favorite baller.

as well as thurman munson’s birthday. captain of the yankees during the bronx zoo era. artie lange’s favorite yankee. one of the last real baseball players and not just because he looked like john belushi.

but the dearest to the busblog would have to be the fact that today is miss anna kournikovas twenty-fifth birthday. as many of you know anna and i have had a long and dramatic relationship.

many people assumed that when she left me to be with that latin boybander that i would move my affections over to maria sharpanova and her long legs and short skirt but if you noticed i didnt. i dont think i even posted one picture of ms sharpanova. nor have i covered any womens tennis.

and in return, anna hasnt gotten married.

have your fun little girl

you’ll know where to find me.

anna kournikova nude? + anti + patrick

the white stripes

a year ago today
get behind me satan
V2 Records

the new york times got this cd the same time i did.

somehow theyre declaring this a masterpiece because it has some addt’l instruments on it than just drums and jack white.

not so fast baby.

the white stripes have, what five records now? they better put something more on there than just drums on jack white.

wheres my calculator. im such an old man. i have this great calculator thats big and has big buttons and can take a good punch and has big numbers and is solar powered and i never knew id be calculating so much but i calculate like a bitch.

i also find myself using a flashlight quite a bit.

so ive heard this cd for weeks now, which ive decided is really what i should do before i take a serious stab at reviewing a record because i felt bad the second i posted that weezer review.

the chick asked if i ever felt bad about 2,000 people possibly getting “hurt” that i wrote something and fuck no, how on earth could i even post one word if i was worried about hurting anyone.

but i did feel bad busting on rivers because it is a small world, and he does know some of my friends, and he does use the internet, and he did allegedly did get freaked out about pinkerton, and hes just a fragile little dude who very well could have done a little technorati search on his cd and there i was one of his biggest fans who had made a friggin photo essay for maladroit is now talking shit about make believe.

thats gotta suck.

especially since ive listened to make believe every day for the last two weeks.

on the firt day of having Get Behind Me Satan i loved it. on the second day i thought it was just more of the same old white stripes gimmickrey. on the third day i thought it was totally cool again. on the fourth day it helped me write a dirty letter to anna kournikova.

jack white knows what he wants to do with the white stripes and that is this: not rock the boat. this record is not very different than any of the others, maribas be damned. thats the bad news. the good news is everyones got another white stripes cd to love especially on random with about twenty totally different cds.

the problem that i have with Get Behind Me Satan is that theres not enough Satan. anyone who’s seen the White Stripes live knows that Mr. White made a deal involving his soul at the crossroads, but as is usual Satan usually pays up in spades. (see: Zep, Sabbath, R. Johnson, Abba).

if i could find that blasted calculator i would say that the Deceiver is definately in the house on track one, the single, the power chord havin Blue Orchid which has nothing to do with the rest of the collection, sadly. (video)

Be’el’zebub was present on track three ringing My Doorbell asking me what are you going to do about it?

Forever For Her, track four, is so gorgeous that it hints to the sweet rays of lightness from the angel side of the former number two man in Heaven.

Yes, before he fell, Lucifer was an angel, a high ranking one at that.

This is a song he would have written back in those days.

Ugly As I Seem track five made me pull out led zep’s Going To California to see how close it got (not that close) and one of the few times that we get to actually hear the genius of Mr. White on this record as everything is even more stripped down than normal with just his wife/mom/sister on a bongo while he plays acoustic and sings a song that sounds like something robert plant would have paid millions to have been able to record on one of his solo records. half way through you say hi satan and he winks.

somebody is in there with them in the firey furnace during Instinct Blues and Take Take Take but i think its neil peart, not the Fallen One. those are far too intellectual tunes for the devil. give us fire fuckers. fire.

red rain sounds like a white stripes parody with so many effects that its almost like they know theres not a song in there just a good excuse for jack to run around the stage live. which is fine. but not worthy of hellfire. just regularfire.

Little Ghost track 12 is a visit from Lorretta Lynn who is also an angel and would have been perfect on her solo record that White produced and he was smart to steal it from her and put it here, which is naughty, but not satanic.

Get Behind Me Satan ends in the bluesy piano of I’m Lonely (But I’m Not That Lonely Yet) which hints if not comes straight out by saying that he has the hots for his sister, since after all he’s lonely, but alas not that lonely yet. It’s an odd song because you want to feel sorry for him because he obviously wants to get it on with her but, dude, it’s your sister!

which would have been way creepier of a song if Meg White wasnt outted earlier this year as having been Jack’s wife, and not his sister. regardless Satan is all up in this song. which might not be good for your soul, but is great for rock music.

i still havent found my calculator so lets say Satan is on half of this cd, angels are on two tracks, and the rest of it is plain old white stripes. therefore six thumbs up, but no masterpiece.

the boston globe says it’s just ok + boston herald liked it + canada.com reports that jack calls is a truth record + philly.com calls it brilliant, gives it 3.5 stars and says it has lots of guitar which it doesnt + detroit news calls it “possibly their best“, its good but its not even their second best + the new yorker wished that jack wrote a chorus for blue orchid and duetted with xtina + newsweek has an incredibly sober feature on them aka dull as hell + fake dyi has the best review though