Haircuts, heroin, women, & Apple computers

Yeah, so last week I shaved (my face, you fucking knobs) for the first time since like October. Partially because it's getting warmer, and partially because the Ranee and Ranette were becoming increasingly reluctant to be seen in public with an Old Testament prophet.

But mostly I shaved because when riding in the rain, my smoke kept getting wet and falling apart.
Priorities, right?
Any fucking ways, I had totally forgotten about what a fucking commitment shit like this entails.
You know, like now, in addition to the already fucking excessive list of a hundred+ things I have to decide about when I get up in the fuckin morning, now I got to fucking decide if I'm going to fucking shave or not, for fuck's sakes.

Like that old hillbilly joke, Yup, I went to school, but hell, nobody told me I had to go back!

First gettin shot, now gettin married...baaad habits...

Yeah, well I still ain't cut me hair, so I still got that going, anyways.


Raj

Hey, remember that one fucking guy??

You remember that guy, yeah?
That fucking drummer.

Crazy fucker, right?
He was the one that worked a shit union gig at the radio station so he could afford all the gear he wanted.
He drove that Ford minivan, he said that if he couldn't get the gig on his drumming, he'd get hired just for his van.

That one time he took that one chick, that crazy-assed schizophrenic redhead that was always hanging around, they went out and parked the van in the middle of this field at like 2 AM and he was banging her silly and suddenly this giant fucking tractor appeared, doing night harvesting, and they were pinned in its huge fucking floods, he said he took off so fast the redhead got thrown back with all the drums and shit, buck fuckin naked, and it took him 20 minutes to get her out.
But first he said he sped through two counties with no pants on, the tractor scared him so bad.

You know that fuckin guy, we were playing that showcase and he had to use the headliner's drums, yeah? And it was the 80s and the guy had a bunch of electronic pads in place of toms and one was programmed to a reverse gate, and he kept hitting it by mistake so it sounded like the fuckin Thompson Twins

were sticking their heads in in the middle of a fuckin Credence show.

And he got so fuckin mad that he busted the thing off the stand and had to pay the kid with the hair for a new one.

Remember that one time when we tried to get him to sing, and he said drummers can't sing, and the guitar player said, yeah, what about Don Henley?
And the guy, whatsisname, he says, yeah, have you heard him play drums??

There was that one time we got a call from the Agency, they needed someone to open for Teenage Head,

Go do a fucking image search for Teenage Head, I fucking dare you

and wanted us to do the gig. Drawback was (and the reason they were calling us, most likely), they wanted to use our drum kit. That guy, the drummer, he was like, No. Fuckin. Way.
Mark Lockerbie had a pretty solid reputation for demolishing every kit he played on, that's why they never used their own rig.
Sadly, Teenage Head was the guitar player's absolute favourite band of all time, he worshiped Frankie fuckin Venom

like people worship the Boss or Joe or Chuck D and shit.
He begged that one guy to take the gig, but he just straight up wouldn't do it.
I think the guitar player ended up crying.

You remember him, don't you?

Yeah, I heard he was playing some Solstice festival or some fucking thing up near Grand Prairie and was going on at like 3 AM so he did like 4 tabs of windowpane or some fucking thing to stay awake.
I heard he played Wipeout for an hour and twenty minutes straight and just fucking fell over dead.

You remember that guy, right?

APPARENTLY I need some new material...

SO I had this joke I was getting ready to post.
About the weather.
I was pretty chuffed with it, if I do say so myself.
And then completely out of the fucking blue, I see Michael fucking Caine (My-goe Fak-een Cayeen) tell the exact same joke, about fucking England, on Parkinson.
IN 1975.

For fuck's sakes.

And no, I ain't posting fucking video on it.

Raj

Some kind of metaphor

So, I used to play a lot of pool.

Like, a LOT.

At home, most bars have a table or two, and my friends and I used to spend mucho time in bars, so I played all the time.

I even have a custom-made pool cue

from the PIs.


The thing is, though,
I STINK.
Like really bad, I really am crap at the game.

Despite thousands of hours of practice, with guys who range from good to great, I just plain suck at it.


But you wouldn't know it until I start making (or, more accurately NOT making) shots.
I LOOK like I really know what I'm doing.
If you never saw me actually play, you'd think I was a serious hustler.
A force to be reckoned with.
But when it comes time to actually start shooting?

Just plain Pure-D shit.

I think there's some kind of analogy here.
But I'm just not sure what ir is.

Raj

Sound counsel has no expiry date

No, this ain't a shameless recycle, I got a point here.

Yeah, so for a while back 11 or so years ago, I had like a monthly column on this site that was run by these foreigner freelance journos and stringers and shit, sort of an Inkernetsk clearing house where all these cats who wrote in Taiwan for everyone else could throw up their own shit.
Needless to say, their standards were, to put it mildly, relaxed, as evidenced by the part I just wrote about me having a monthly column on there.
These dudes are still around and are actually sort of semi-public figures, in addition to being really excellent fellas, so we'll maintain our standard No Outs policy. If you know them, then you'll know of whom I speak.

Anyways, the events of the last few days here kind of made me think about how, you know, you might think you got the whole thing sorted, as I was mentioning to the Wee Irish yesterday. And then, you know, out of nowhere, well.

So I wrote this in like 2000 or 2001 or some fucking thing, but it kind of expresses a lot of my thoughts over the last few days.

Except that now, unlike then, I'm not so consumed (apparently) with what a clever sumbitch I appear to be.
Jeez, save yourself a whole buttload of embarrassment and burn everything you wrote more than 6 months ago, for jumping out loud.
Anyways, it goes like this, pretty much as it appeared at the time.

And yeah, it was about 5 nicknames ago or so.
And keep your thoughts about the picture to yourself, trust me, I've heard them before.

The Boomzilla Mojo
by Snake

You Feel Lucky, Punk?

I'm sitting at the light, rainy morning rush hour, right? And I start to get that creepy feeling, you know, where you just know that the cat on the next bike is giving you the old once-over. Being in a fairly confrontational frame of mind on the given day, I elect to not ignore it, so I turn and look. Sure enough, it's an old coot on a paint-spattered Sanny 125. Dude's got on the standard propane driver's navy blue-with-white-reflector-strip two piece rainsuit, rubber flipflops, and yellow hardhat with the red/white/blue stripe, you know, the one no foreigners except the old burnouts in Tainan ever wear. Buddy's doing the long slow tilt down, then up, just eyeballing the fuck right out of me. Bad enough already, but of course, he's passed the mandatory 35-year-old point where he gets queered out enough by eye contact to cut it the fuck out. Not our pal, fuck no, the old bastard has the corn to keep up the action even after going pupilo a pupilo. So, like I usually do in these situations, I give as good as I'm getting. Jimmy looks down, I look up. Jimmy looks up, I look down. Now, so far, me and Staring Lin are shaping up for a right fucking Mexican standoff here, and God only knows to whence this whole ugly mess could escalate. Fortunately for both of us and the free world, the light starts to change. And just as the other yellow is getting old, Gramps looks me square in the Oakleys and says:

"Gutta lackeyt ooyoo..."

Light changes, I boot out, and I'm like two or three blocks on before I figure out what the fuck he's on about. Of course, by that time, he's way off behind, disappeared like maybe he was never really there in the first place. Like some angel or messenger from The Other Side or some fucking thing. Way too late for me to say thanks.

And so I'm thinking, like, now what the fuck was that? And what the fuck was he talking about, anyways? Some kind of fucked up goodwill missive from the Tourist Bureau, or his best shot at Have a Nice Day?

Or maybe he knew something I didn't?

For the guys back in Vietnam, troops, hangers on, and correspondents alike, for them the standard departure wasn't marked by a Goodbye or a Seeya or even a take Care, when those poor sons of bitches took their leave, the only thing the smart ones ever said was Good Luck.

Good luck.

Goddamn right, pal, and thanks for thinking of me.

Because, as I was telling Spunkmeyer just the other night, we forget, you know. It's gotten too gentle here, things are all legal and shit now, everyone's all visa-ed up, and it's easy to get sucked into thinking you're at home or something stupid. Just when you get your sick white ass all settled in and your shit is sorted and all, why that's when something comes down the Boomzilla Mojo about some sorry fuck who got his fucking hash settled, but good.

And you always ask, or I do anyway, is this bad luck? Was our bud really just Walking Down The Street Minding His Own Business?

Or did some little teeny weeny, seemingly meaningless fuckup or poor judgment call fly out and circulate in the Karmic fucking ether, taking its own sweet time before circling around, days or even months later, to scream back to earth in a Satanically steep descent, picking up speed and evil ions along the way while speeding at Terminal Velocity, straight back at the unsuspecting ruboid who got lulled into thinking he or she was back in fucking Pencil Thin, Iowa?

The Bad News is, don't believe the CETRA press releases, kids. It's still the Third World. Most of the time, anyway. Usually when it stands the best chance of fucking you up royally.

Occasionally we used to find a new clear route that cut minutes off our driving time, one of those semi-industrial strips that run along the tracks or something, with no traffic at all most times of the day and almost no inroads, where you can just fucking open up and tool your bad ass along without worrying about stunted fuckboys with Henna hair and bad teeth or dopey fucking secretaries who never really got the hang of that scooter driving thing. Upon describing the newly discovered route, descriptions would invariably end with something like "...and you can do like a hun, and all you have to worry about is a fucking cartoon anvil falling out of the sky and squishing you..."

The problem here is, it's sometimes easy to forget that we live in a place where the incidence of actual cartoon anvils falling out of the sky and squishing you is only slightly lower than the chance of rain.

As the old collection agency Final Warning letters used to say, "Conduct Yourself Accordingly...".

Good Lucky To You, indeed.

NEVER get off the boat.

God Damn Right.

Unless you're going all the way...

Raj

You've GOT to be shitting me

Wait a minute, hold everything.

Am I getting this right?
Seriously, that fucking asinine looking Rock Em Sock Em Robots

movie,

the one with young Mr.Ackman, the guy my spiritual guide Outlaw Vern

refers to as the young Clint Eastwood they went back in a time machine and brought here to star in the X Men as Logan Wolverine

this is an actual real fucking movie???

Come on.

I thought it was, you know, like, an Internet joke, you know, like

or some fucking thing.

Crap, I feel like I woke up in 1983 or some fucking thing.

Raj

My life is like a roadside bar

Wow.

Cree Summer (yes, that's her real name).

She’s the voice of Penelope Young

in the Batman: Arkham games, and about a billion other things.

She’s hotter than stink, and is best pals with The Bonet, for fuck's sakes.

(Leonard. You

STUPID STUPID FUCK)

Anyways, get this:

I KNOW HER (Cree Summer's) DAD.

Journeyman film actor, Canookistanian National Treasure, real-life SOA character, and hella swell guy, Don Francks.

Who's done a roughly metric shitload of stuff himself.
You may remember him as Hooky the bar owner in Johnny Mnemonic.

That is, if you care to remember anything about Johhny Mnemonic, many don't (get it???).

Anyways, yeah, I worked with him a couple times.

He’s the only person I’ve ever let call me “Bear”.

First ever voice of fucking Boba Fett, how about THEM apples??

Raj

As far as gettin a little Strange goes...

Now, before I start, a bit of a disclaimer.

IF you had been born the last time I was in a room with a naked woman who WASN'T the Ranee, you would have been drinking and voting legally for a while now, at least where I come from.
Of course, for the sake of perspective, the last time I worked a branding,

the rings of Uranus (nyuk nyuk) had just been discovered.

but I can still remember the smell.
Of the branding, not the rings.
For fuck's sakes.
So, you know, fair warning.

But I was just thinking, you know, about the whole Sex with Strangers deal.
Now, of course, YMMV on this, as in all things, but really, was this ever a good deal?

Surprisingly, considering my long history as a recidivist serial monogamist, I've actually had a fairly extensive level of achievement in this area.
And, really, in all honesty, I can't recall a single instance where the experience


(Oh fuck ME, the Uncle Ho Brothers just walked past...I'm this close to pissing myself right now...)

was even remotely rewarding.
And no, I'm not doing that fucking thing that all them fucking guys in fucking sweaters do so they can get sex with affirmative woman type chicks, I'm serious.
Every time I've had fun or even anything remotely resembling a Good Time in the rack, it's been with someone that I had spent at least some time getting to know with they kit on beforehand (or before[choose your body part]).
The other ones just ended up all oogy-like.
And, perhaps tellingly, NONE of them ever ended up in a return engagement.

Just saying, is all.

Raj

Use your low gear on the way down or you'll burn out your brakes...

One of my favourite modules in 80's and post-80's action movies is The Former Badass Who Had His Illusions Cruelly Shattered And Chucked It All To Live A Life Of Seclusion In The Mountains And The Army/Government Man Comes to Coax Him Out Of Retirement For
One
Last
Mission...

You know, it worked for Clint

It worked for Arnie

Most recently it worked for young Wally Markberg, in the excellent Shooter...

Even the fucking dog thinks that ponytail looks fake

With the help of a good old hound anyone would be proud to own.

(Hey, help me out here. Buddy's the STAR of a movie. With Rhona in it

AND with Katy fuckin Mara

in it

the fucking BOTH of them in their underwear, and the closest he comes to tearing off a piece is with the fucking mutt?!?!??! Kind of negates the whole point of being a movie star, don't it?)

ANYWAYS, that whole up on the mountain/recluse deal, that's pretty much how I've been feeling for the last couple weeks...

So this is the part where you all get to be Danny Glover and say

You're a hard man to find.

And I go

Not hard enough, I guess...


Raj

Help me out here, protocol-wise, will ya??

Hey, refresh me memory here.

What's the accepted practice on

rubbing one out based on a picture

Or mental image of a friend?
OK or big no-no?

And no, the old "Well how would YOU feel??" response won't work, since the last time anyone had a sexual fantasy about me, Bono

was cool

and Sammy Fucking Hagar was the singer for Van Halen

the first time...

Times like this I'm always tempted to quote SLFJ from the Long Kiss Goodnight, where he says

...and the last time I got blown, candy bars cost a nickel.

Good line and all, but it never really sold, coming as it does from Sammy J, who, rather than saying he can't remember the last time he got some trim, is more likely to be saying

He can't remember the last time he didn't get some trim.

Motherfucker!

Raj

One less fucking thing to worry about

I mean, seriously, do I fucking look like I have something to share???

Raj