What's Left of the Germs are playing twice this summer...

...and their first Chicago stop will be at the Double Door.

It is my wish that Shane West, the young actor playing Darby Crash both in the upcoming film "What We Do is Secret" in addition to playing Darby Crash on this tour, will take his method acting to new levels while playing at this hokey rocknroll club.

I hope Darby hisself comes into his body and makes him take a runny heroin crap all over the soundboard. I hope they get banned from the Double Door for all the right reasons. If they do this, I will make a point to see them in August at the Beat Kitchen, for it will mean that, live, they still got it, and just like those middle-aged dudes who go see the Stones every couple years and like to yak and yak about how Mick and Keith "still got it," I too will brag to all the t-shirt punks at Columbia that yes, the Germs still got it after all these years.

FEAR: The Blog

The other night, a little drunk with Sarabird, I wanted to play her Scott Walker, only I couldn't find it in my many boxes of random journals, cd's, and cassettes from the past 15 years, but I did find, of all things, a cassette of "Fear: The Record."

I put that on instead (funny how you can switch moods from Scott Walker to Fear under the right conditions), amazed that it still played, and amazed at how great it still is to these jaded ears. I love Lee Ving's voice. It's like if you took the average drunkass Philadelphia Eagles fan and gave him opera lessons. That's the sound you'd get, this drunk guy howling. I wish somebody in a band around here sang like him, and I wish somebody played guitar solos like Philo, that detuned whammy bar anti-taste.

I first heard FEAR like a lot of people, in that masterpiece of exploitation, "The Decline of Western Civilization." I brought it over to Dave's house and we watched in his room, laughing hysterically at the subtitles accompanying the Germs. The bands were pretty good--nothing I was completely enamored with at the time--but then FEAR came on, and all those wonderfully ridiculous one-liners that enamored them to John Belushi. After 10 minutes of it in the movie, Dave and I just wanted them to shut up and play a song already.

Then they were off, and we were way into it. I bought the tape at the Peaches on State Road 434. Played the shit out of it, like a lot of punk bands at the time. They didn't really do enough to be much of an influence, but their 4 or 5 great songs are truly legendary, and when I hear them, especially after not hearing them for quite awhile, I laugh a lot and am thoroughly entertained. For example, I really crack up over the line " New York's alright if you like art and jazz," and the way Lee Ving's yankee snottiness comes out in the words "art" and "jazz," like the only thing worse than liking art and jazz is being gay.

And this brings me to the problem with that damn google. I googled up Lee Ving, and ended up reading this interesting interview with Spit Stix, Fear's drummer. (I'm too lazy to include it has a link, so just go ahead and google up "Lee Ving" your own self, and you'll find it on the first page.) It was interesting, but it kinda shattered some illuisions I wanted to believe in.

For example, in "The Decline..." I wanted to believe that that punk girl who kinda looks like Carol Burnett really really hated Fear and their fagbaiting. No. Turns out, she was a friend of the bands. There was also talk of Mr. Ving playing in a country rock band right before he was in FEAR. I didn't need to know that. Shit. Lee was actually very right-wing, sez Mr. Stix. Not that I care about that all that much, and it certainly doesn't denigrate the music, but I wanted to believe all that fagbaiting and audience rage was designed to just really piss everybody off. It was, but goddammit, he was sincere?!? Sincerity is overrated. Obliqueness shows real creativity.

The problem with google is that too much of it tells you more than you really need to know. Picture that annoying co-worker by the water cooler sticking out her hand and saying, "Too much information." People need myths and legends. Who cares if they're true or not. We need to believe them so we're inspired to do something similar.

Sometimes, I prefer reading about bands before actually hearing them. I think that's how a lot of kids actually first heard punk in the 1970's. That means you have to use your imagination. That's why the Killed by Death comps are so stupid and weird and unique. Nobody knew what this shit sounded like yet. The codification of the 80's hadn't happened yet. You actually had to make some kind of effort to seek out bands, whether it was going to shows, underground record stores, college radio, whatever. Now, it's easy. Almost too easy. It's great that you can find bands now so easily on the internet, it's just that the double-edged sword of it is that the imgaination and individuality may suffer. One of the few things I miss about living in Orlando was the ability to create in a near-total void. You didn't have 60 people passing judgment on what you were doing. You were allowed room to breathe, to create on your own terms without a bunch of idiots looking over your shoulder.

I'm not advocating a return to the days before internet. It's just that sometimes you're better off not knowing that there was a left-wing (Derf and Philo)/right-wing (Lee) dichotomy to FEAR, or that these guys did anything else that wasn't punk-punk punk rocking.

That being said, youse a buncha jerkoffs, eat my fuck assholes, and next time--don't bite so hard when I cum, and I'll see you in Frisco while they're installin the hottub.

"Faggot!!!"

Okay: I don't know if this happened for sure or not, but as I was walking to my class to teach in beautfiul Downers Grove, this black van speeds by the intersection I'm waiting to cross and some dude yells "Faggot!!!" only he doesn't look out the window or anything.

Was that directed my way? I wanted to believe so, if only because nobody's yelled that at me since...well...since I lived in my own burb, growing up and walking home from school.

But the dude wasn't looking at me when he said it. But, shit: it had to be for me, right? I was wearing a suit, walking--walking! not driving!--to work. Everybody in suburbia knows walking ain't cool.

I'm teaching now in the suburbs of Hinsdale and Downers Grove, and what strikes me the most about these places is how much they're like both Kirkwood, MO and Altamonte Springs, FL. Growing up, I wanted to believe that somehow Kirkwood and good ol' Sprizings were somehow different than other places, but they're not really. Just another Gopher Prairie. The kids in Hinsdale look like they're about to just go apeshit crazy....on drugs, on bad goth music, shopping--whatever it is that gets rich kids like these through boring days.

Downers Grove has a few bars and what looks like a really cool record store on its Main Street. I wanted to hang out there after work. I didn't, though. I took the Metra back to "the city." Getting on, and getting off--the same suburban archetypes I I used to think were somehow indigenous solely to Unincorporated Seminole County. The people, basically, just looked like either younger or older versions of the same rich folk who are conquering Division Street, one poorly-built condo at a time.

The Dale of Hins...have you seen these motherfucking houses!!! When I was a kid, my parents would spend afternoons driving around nice neighborhoods just looking at bigass homes, admiring their bigassiness. I felt like my parents as we drove through Hinsdale. People live like this. After 10 years of Chicago apartments and Chicago landlords, places like Hinsdale make me feel just a little bit envious and fascinated like F. Scott Fitzgerald at some godawful debutaunte ball. And everywhere--everywhere!--that look in the eyes--just like an Orlandoan! That know-it-all cockiness of people who don't really know jackshit. It's kinda like that Wicker Park Smirk: That smirk you see on indie-rockers (especially the newly-arrived indie-rockers) when they buy their 30-packs of Old Style at the Jewels, or that smirk they get when a band ironically "rocks out"...and each Metra stop as you go out or in is like some increase or decrease in tax brackets. Then, you're getting into Berwyn and Cicero, and then into the West Side, and eventually, you're back in dear old Humboldt Park, where the citytrash lady across from you yells nonstop at her kids and her husband about the "goddamn mess!"

Teaching, when done right, is the ultimate punk rock. You won't agree with me, and perhaps you even think I sound like an old hippie who gets a straight job so they can "change things from the inside, man!" but no, that's not what it is. Call me Jerry Garcia, but I believe anybody can write, and anybody can start a band. That's what I learned from punk rock. To get that there idea out to the world, it's gonna take more than playing music and writing books that are only read by my friends. I get to go into rich towns, poor towns (no, I don't just teach in rich suburbs), and all in between, and spread this idea in my own way. Hopefully we'll get some better writers and readers because of this. You have to start somewhere. I sound like a sanctimonious dick right now, and for that, I apologize. It's very difficult to express, especially when kids get it right.

If we can educate kids to really think, we have it in ourselves here to start a real renaissance. The technology is there now, and it's so easy to find out about anything...bands, writers, art, ideas...they're there and you can get them within seconds. We could fuck this up badly, or we could do this right. I see us on this precipice between another dark ages and a renaissance. Maybe we'll have both, based solely on how much money you have determines your level of renaissance. If that's the case, we're in just as much trouble as any other time, only on a larger, more destructive scale.

We can use this technology and these mediums to vote for the next American Idol, or we can create on our own terms. The former means reducing the idea of punk rock as something very narrow, very codified and exclusive, and the latter has endless possibilities.

Either way, I know where I stand here. With all of it.

Panic on the streets of Hinsdale.

Back to teaching today. Hinsdale. Shit...my ride's here. Later.

Went to Nashville

In the same way the Midwest has the self-delusion that it has cornered the market on levelheadedness ("My son's the same way! We go to the mall and he wants dese jeans wit' da holes in em, and dey're $50 more, so I sez to him, I sez 'Ya know, Tommy, I could just take da old jeans ya got and cut holes in dem, ya know? Sheesh, dese kids today."), so it is with the south, only their self-delusion is Civility.

That being said, Nashville surprised me in many ways. For starters, it was bustling on the weekend. Maybe this was due to the CMT music fest they had going on, but Broadway (the main drag) was packed with people, and the bars were filled with pretty good live music...reminiscent of Austin during SXSW without the depressing careerist bands oozing desperation for that contract, that handshake, that advance.

It was a good-time party crowd, from what I could tell, devoid of the drunken debauched idiocy of Rush Street, and no panhandlers either...just a bunch of cowboy hats walking up and down Broadway. After the rehearsal dinner (oh yeah--we went because of a wedding), we went to some honky-tonk bar where bands played old country and the whole scene looked like something out of "Smokey and the Bandit."

So, like Austin, L.A., NYC, and even Chicago, you're surrounded by entertainers who clearly are not going to make it in showbiz, but unlike the other places, from what I could tell, people just seemed cool with that. Maybe it's because Nashville isn't that far to go for most aspiring country musicians. It's not like moving to L.A. to make it from some farflung locale like Pennsylvania or Maryland.

Our hotel room had a fantastic view of the highway and airport and mountains. I like hotels. I like that you can make a mess and somebody else cleans it up. Sometimes, self-reliance isn't so swell--especially when you're on a weekend vacation.

The wedding was held on a farm just 20 minutes outside of downtown Nashville. It felt like we were way out in the country. We were way out in the country. That was what was so great about it. To get to this kind of country in Chicago, you need to drive for 60-90 minutes, and yet, there we were, watching the wedding happen next to a creek.

The weather was extremely muggy, especially if you were wearing a suit. My role in the wedding was 2nd String DJ. I like being the DJ. There's such a subtle power involved in it. You can really effect the mood of a party. It was a fun balance of attendees--southerners in every sense of the word mingling with citified hipster writer types. Neither wanted to dance at first--the former would rather chit-chat and the latter would rather be clever--but it was nothing David Allan Coe and Iggy Pop couldn't take care of. I was worried "Lust for Life" would scare people away because of the lyrics, but it didn't. Generally speaking, most people don't care about lyrics. I yelled "Hey! It's that song from the cruiseship commercial!" into the mic and that got everybody dancing in the humidity.

I had 4 glasses of wine over 5 hours, and that was good. I don't quite equate getting drunk with fun the way I used to, and that's fine. I'm even starting to find most drunk people to be really annoying. Except me. I'm perennially charming.

Later on, Sara and I walked away from the party to a patch of grass and stared up at the stars. Stars. What will happen when you can no longer go anywhere at night and see stars? Will this be some kind of yarn to spin for our grandkids?

The husband and wife drove off, all of us tossing birdseed in the air instead of rice as they walked past. Many people left early, and the average age of the dancers lowered and lowered before tapering off at around 28. These were the writers, and now they were alive and dancing. I love weddings. It's like people are just so relieved this happened and the families are so glad all the work, effort and stress is over and done with, they can finally relax and have a good time.

One more thing: Broadway isn't as corny as Beale Street, the latter with its facades lending franchises like Hooters some level of authenticity. In other words, somehow it felt more like a real place instead of theme park where you send your tourists.

So...I was surprised by Nashville. I could never live there, but I would definitely go back.

Going to Nashville

We're going to a wedding in Nashville today. I will assist with disk jockeying. That's all for now. Missing the Spits show on Saturday, but I'll live. I'll tell all about it when I get back...but for now, I need to get ready to drive and spend some quality time with the great state of Indiana.

Baseball.

I'd like to watch more baseball on TV, but that would mean buying cable, and that would mean throwing out what little of a "career" I have with the writing in favor of fine programs like "Hitler: Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel" on the History Channel (or as Bryan Delano calls it: the Hitler Channel), "Behind the Music: Bananarama," and "Shootin' Stuff" on OLN.

Besides that, I don't belong to a fantasy baseball team. I think it's because of the word "fantasy," which makes me think of Ween, D&D, and, well, titties. The word makes me laugh in the same way the word "midget" makes me laugh, and it's not because what the words mean per se, but just how they sound and the context in which they are used.

There's no time for that in this short life, or so I like to think, but it's great when the Cubs and Cardinals are on WGN and it's almost like how it used to be when you were a kid and baseball was on TV all the time. Now, the networks would rather show golf, NASCAR, and the WNBA. Thanks, Mister Man. Thanks for nothing. Asshats.

I originally wanted to write about what a bummer it is that Pujols is on the DL for 15 days, but that's pretty ipso facto res ipsa loquitor for anybody left outside of St. Louis who still gives two shits about baseball. Pujols hitting 80 homeruns would be a wonderful antidote to anything Barry Bonds achieves this year, but being out for that long reduces those chances. Shit.

No, instead, I'm going to tell you what I would do if I was the Commissioner of Baseball. I would take the job. I need the money. Teaching still doesn't pay very well, in case you were wondering, and current financial trends in drumming and writing remain the same--zip. There are murmurs that Condy Rice wants to be Commissioner. If that happens, I will never attend another baseball game for the same reasons I will never watch the NFL should Jeb Bush be made commissioner of that league. (Didn't these assholes learn their lesson from putting in Rush Limbaugh on ESPN???)

But if I am offered, I will take the position, and I will implement some ideas. Here they are:

--Bud Light will only get to have one 30 second commercial during a televised baseball game. Bud Light has the worst commercials ever made. They make me want to join a 1995-era Victory Records hardcore band, the ones that made it quite clear that they hated milk and other forms of oppression. Yes, they are that bad. No, it's not that they're bad--it's that they're stupid. Okay, we get it, we know your product and we will drink it and drink it and drink it because that's what baseball and America is all about. Shut up, already.

--The national anthem will be changed to "Frownland" by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. This will be the only display of jingoism during a 9 inning game. We don't need to hear "God Bless America" during the 7th Inning. Instead, we should be hearing anything from the Devil Dog's first album, a masterpiece of summertime good times.

--The New York Yankees shouldn't have a payroll larger than the GNP of most 3rd World countries. I'm sorry, but I just think that's wrong. I know, I know, but that's the magic of the marketplace, but I don't care. The New York Yankees will be moved to a city that needs a baseball team. Someplace like Montreal. Let them have the Yankees. New York already has the Mets, and everybody in that city should just learn to love one team.

--The Cubs will be encouraged to Forfeit. Not just a game, or the season, but their whole unjustifiable existence. The Tribune will never be allowed to own any more baseball teams. Wrigley Field will be demolished except for the facade, and behind it will be a mall full of shops. The Wrigley Field Mall. Everybody likes malls, especially on the North Side. This will also reduce the # of drunk 24-45 year olds from Big Ten Schools behaving like drunk 18-23 year olds in Big Ten Schools terrorizing the local populace.

--Sportscasters will be barred from discussing where they went to dinner the night before. While it's great that the guys telling us about the game had a delicious steak at Mike Shannon's in St. Louis last night, it's really not all that interesting. If you run out of things to talk about, as inevitably happens when you're doing the play-by-play for teams like the Cubs, Royals, etc., just stop talking. Go take a walk or hit the can until something worth yapping about happens. Silence isn't so bad. Really.

That's all I have for now. 9 innings and 3 outs and all the other rules are perfectly fine with me. Oh wait! Here's one:

--Get rid of that stupid All Star Game rule about the winner determining home field advantage for the Series. Just let the All Star Game be what it is--no big deal. It's just fun for its own sake. Let it remain that way. (And no, I won't change my mind if the National League wins and the Cardinals get home field advantage because of it.)

Now that's it.

High Adventure at the Printer's Row Book Fair!

Took part in the Printer's Row Book Fair yesterday. They put me in this panel discussion called "Young Author Interactive" in the Nelson Algren Tent.

The moderator was the literary director of the national endowment of the arts, and this was his third panel in a row he was moderating. The "crowd" was comprised of my girlfriend, a few stragglers, and some former co-workers of the only other panelist.

Perhaps the highlight for me was the moderator asking me if I realized this was a "Y.A." book when the word "fuck" is used 3 times on the first page. I thought that was really funny and laughed a stammer of an answer. We had fun up there. The moderator said it was his favorite of the panels, probably because me and the other guy, Andy Behrens, were actually entertaining and not all that serious about the "great burden of litera-tour."

There were no questions from the audience. Andy asked me what books I read as a teenager, and I got to tell the story of being a freshman in high school and having to do a book report on a biography. My Dad wanted me to write about Chuck Yeager. I wanted to do it on Keith Moon and the book "Full Moon: The Amazing Rocknroll Life of Keith Moon" by Dougal Butler, easily the funniest book on rocknroll ever written, complete with a glossary in the back of U.K. slangterms (like Irvine Welsh's books) and rhyming slang. I'll never forget my Dad driving home from the Altamonte Mall looking at the pictures of "Full Moon" during stoplights, getting increasingly angry at me, culminating in the furor erupting over the picture of Moon leaned over his girlfriend's backside, hand on her pantied ass, with the caption, "Keith with a little piece of his girlfriend Annette."

Anecdotes like these gets laughs at book fairs. If you're the least bit funny and reasonably personable, you tend to go over well at these things, because I guess so many writers just mumble like so many indie-pop college deejays in the middle of the night, and their answers to questions are about as interesting. You don't even really have to be all that funny, either. That's what really struck me about that "Reader's Manifesto" book that came out a few years back...how so many of the blurbs talk about writing that's "laugh out loud funny," and most of the time it's more obvious than a sitcom. It's just that a writer is expressing anything beyond the usual workshopped emotions is a surprise to everybody.

Mr. Kogan had asked me to do this before he was a guest on the talkshow, because I guess he liked that I could be coherent at 8AM to be on his radio show. That's cool, but of course, the worry is becoming the literary equivalent of George W. Bush: a pretender.

Because...shit...there is the nagging sense of "what am I doing here?" Here amongst the literati. It's not a Blackout kind of crowd--that's for damn sure--and it was strange to hear the nervous twittering laughter of the dozen or so audience members just because I said I've done readings in bars. How the hell else is the writing going to get out there to people who don't read?

But the interview segment was enjoyable and in the end I was glad to be a part of it. Afterward, Andy and I sat at these tables so people could get their copies of our books purchased. The line was not long. In fact, it was a lot like that scene in "This is Spinal Tap" when they were there to sign copies of "Smell the Glove" in the record store completely devoid of customers. I did talk to a nice lady who bought a copy of the book for her nephew who is also in a band. Surprises like that--that this book is being read by somebody beyond at least two degrees of separation--is gratifiying. I almost want to apologize to people (half the fun of hanging out with Jimmy from the Tyrades lately is exchanging self-deprecations about how we suck--Jim and his band, and me and my writing) I don't know who purchase this, but then I think it's just cool people are reading it.

Then Sara and I walked around. It was a perfect day outside, the kind that happens once every 25 years or so in Chicago--and literally thousands of people were wandering around browsing for books. It's the same feeling I get at the Metro on the last day of Story Week, when hundreds of people show up just to hear a bunch of writers read their work. This kind of thing isn't supposed to be happening at a time when supposedly nobody reads anymore.

We peeked into this rare bookstore in the middle of Printer's Row that I had always been too chicken to go into for fear of being too low-class or something. The place was amazing, and actually a Columbia student is one of the employees there. He removed from under glass one of the volumes of the complete works of Mark Twain that were personally signed by the man both "Mark Twain" and "S.E. Clemens." These went for $7000. $1000 was what they wanted for the Olympia Press first printing of "Lolita." Artifacts like these make me drool like record nerds holding the A&M Sex Pistols seven inch.

Then it was off to Old Town, to play drums in the practice space. Put away the all-access purple laminate that says "author," and let Sara take home the complimentary tote bag. Go to a bbq where Hoben will play Radon. Get off the panel and go back to life.