Dear Big Business: Just shoot us in the face and take our money already

Posted on May 2, 2012 by B.

I just watched a news segment about how some restaurants are taking slices of beef, from different cows, and gluing them together using some sort of Japanese, all-natural “meat glue” in order to create “steaks” and “choice cuts” like filet mignon from various parts of discarded meat.

The problem is: bacteria like e. coli, which is generally found on the outside of meat cuts, and which ordinarily gets burned away when you cook the meat, gets stuck INSIDE the newly-assembled, glued-together meat cut. So when you cook it, it’s not killed so easily.

I watched this news segment after watching a Frontline episode about how the 5 big banks in America who own 56% of the American economy continue to diddle Americans and the world with their magic math.

And this after watching a dirt-poor friend, down on his luck and jobless for months, develop diabetes because he can’t afford medical attention, and have his big toe amputated from a diabetes-releated infection which turned gangrene.

All of which, even though he stayed his 5 days in a county hospital, he can’t afford to pay back.

So it got me thinking… you big, rich, corporate assfaces are putting WAY TOO MUCH energy into this whole screwing-us-over thing.

Restaurant chains: You can put down your wood glue.

Wall Street and big business lobbies: No need to keep buying congressmen and having your lobbyists write legislation that keeps pounding our collective anus with derivatives and swaps and sub-prime loans.

Health care insurance and hospitals: No need to keep charging us for health care insurance when you don’t intend to pay up when we need it.

All of this is just so much work!

So let’s just be honest:

You want us dead, and you want all our money.

So can we stop with all the song and dance?

You want us dead, and you want all our money.

You not only need to make ALL the money in the world; you need to have ALL of mine.

And on top of that, I’m not allowed to live.

That’s cool! I get it. Just stop touching my boobs, fuck me, shoot me in the face, and get it over with.

Here. I bought you a gun. Come over to my house and use it. Right in my face. Just squeeze the trigger and make sure the safety’s off.

Hell, you can shoot my girlfriend too. And my cats. We’ll leave our wallets open and our PIN numbers on post-it notes. If you bring a moving van, you can take our electronics as well. They should fetch a few bucks at least.

This long, complex seduction of yours is just such a waste of time. For all involved! But especially for you, the one who the planet was created to serve.

Instead of all this slow pickpocketing and pillow talk, think about all the yachts you could be buying right now, or how many rides on Spaceship One you and your fat fuck family can be stuffing into your Gucci purses right now.

But no, you’re wasting time trying to convince me that the loan you gave me is good, or the health care I’m buying is actually going to be there when I need it, or that the steak I’m buying for that one night a week I’m able to go out and enjoy a meal, is not actually fifteen different cow penises stitched together with Japanese mystery glue, jam-packed with a payload of testicle-eating bacteria.

So come on fellas. Seriously. Just come over, shoot us in the face, and take our money.

It’ll be the one honest thing you do with your useless lives.

Then, when all of us are dead, and you’ve got all our money, and the world is silent save for the sound of you counting out your coin, you and your yacht club fuck friends can stitch yourselves together with meat glue and keep yourselves company.

The Perils of A Part-Time Band

Posted on April 13, 2012 by B.

I’m in a half band.

That is, a rock band. But only half of us in the band want (or are able) to put in the time to make it anything more than pure novelty.

It’s been a part-time thing since forming in 2000. Nobody was under any illusions that we were gonna conquer the world or “make it” or “get signed,” even though those all seemed possible to bands back then, as there was still a music industry, and smaller labels who could afford to take a chance.

But even under the banner of “part time,” those who founded the band were up for putting in the time, putting in the practice 4-6 hours per week, booking shows, pitching in towards our lockout, and all the other goodly band stuff you do as a team when you want to take even your “part time” hobby seriously, while still within the idiom of “part time.”

That is, there’s certain shit you gotta do in a band, even if it’s part time. And back then, we all did it.

Now, not so much.

From our first show on Halloween 2000, until right around 2007, we were all pushing it forward: booking out Sundays as band-only days for our 6 hour practices, each paying a fair split of the lockout rent, etc. and that all contributed to a forward motion that made everybody jazzed about the whole thing.

So jazzed, we’d even practice on weeknights when the lead singer from 80 miles away couldn’t make it.

The result: we’d walk into any venue we played (mostly all small, shitty dives), and blow them away.

We were tight. We had good songs, we had good players, and we were practiced.

Because we cared.

Zip ahead to 2009/2010, and it became a whole different scene.

The lead singer stopped paying his share of the studio rent because he couldn’t afford it, the long-time bassist finally quit because the lead singer hated his music and couldn’t make room for it, and we could never find a drummer who wasn’t either completely stoned or completely unreliable, or making incredibly retarded, band-busting ultimatums, or all three.

So we downshifted.

We downshifted to a more casual band mentality. Wait, “Can there be more casual than part-time?!” you ask.

Yes. There is a place called More Casual Than Part Time. And our band lives there now.

Even the new lineup we’ve put together – most really like what we’re doing, and want to keep doing it, but when it comes down to it, they can take it or leave it.

And I’ve been infected with it now too.The malaise.

How’d that happen!? How’d we go to a group spirit and group energy, all the way down to group “Meh.” ?

For me, it was a chain reaction of seeing the whole outfit relegate more and more of the caring, the energy, the heavy lifting, the paying for shit… over to me.

And now I’m on a slippery slope of asking “Tell me again why I’m paying the plurality of the rent for this lockout when we only practice twice per month, if that?”

Or, “Tell me again why I just spent 5 months dragging everybody into the studio to record a great album, mixing, mastering, doing the artwork, photos… Tell me why I’m supposed to keep being excited when the band, at the end of the day, goes “Meh,” and can’t pony up $220 for their share of the CDs, when they’ve had 5 months to put that aside?

Or “Tell me again why I should keep doing this, after interacting with people on Facebook for two weeks straight in advance of our album release… tell me why I should keep doing this when nobody else in the band bothers posting one single time about it?”

I can blame it on our music – maybe nobody really likes it. That’s an acceptable possibility, and quite likely. If that’s the case, I’m a big boy, so I can handle that. But I suspect it ain’t that, because we ain’t half bad, if you don’t mind me sayin’.

Or I can blame it on my personal marketing skills – maybe they’re not up to snuff. That’s very within the range of probable as well.

Or I can blame it on the fact that the market has fragmented into a thousand tiny pieces, or that nobody comes to live shows anymore, or that money is tight for everybody, or that even our friends and family can’t pay attention anymore because there’s too many cable channels, too many satellite radio stations, too many people screaming at them for attention on Facebook.

But the simple truth is, Nobody wants to the fan of a More Casual Than Part Time Band.

Nobody wants to buy merch from a half-hearted bunch of dayjob poseurs.

Music market fragmented? Who gives a fuck? It’s a band’s job to raise the flag, rip the beating hearts out of fans’ chests, and rock them like hurricanes. Even if that means all 5 fans in the audience.

Bottom line: If the performer doesn’t have heart, why should a fan have heart?

We played a dive bar in our hometown(ish) of Upland, California in 2001. Opened for a little 2-man outfit called The Black Keys. Heard of em?

Like us, they started around 1999/2000.

They had good songs, just like we did.

They put out good records, just like we did. Were great live, just like us.

But they didn’t do it More Casual Than Part Time.

They put their hearts in it.

And fuck you, Robert Frost. Because THAT has made all the difference.

Why I Left Facebook

Posted on April 11, 2012 by B.

I’m starting a 20th century social network. Here’s how it works:

If you want to add me as a friend, come by on Friday night and have a motherfucking margarita with me.

In 1985, I had a 300 baud modem I’d use to download pirated software for my Atari 800XL. So computers and anonymity, for me, have always held hands. They even got married (in a state where it was legal.)

Fast forward to 2000 and I’m co-writing a script with a friend and he’s constantly switching over to Friendster to shop for chicks.

“Man, why do you have your picture up there? Don’t you know people can find out who you are?”

But he didn’t care. In fact, he hooked up with a hottie. So I got over myself and gave Match.com a try. Had lotsa dates. Even a couple minor relationships with psychotic women. Hot ones. Oh goddamn, some very hot ones.

So when Myspace ejaculated onto the scene, I hopped on to promote my band.

Then, when I got my sealegs, and lost my nervosity about posting my identity on the internatches, I started my own personal profile.

You could say I eased into it, like a Taliban takes his child bride.

Then Facebook launched and I reserved my name and band names, but didn’t use it for a few years. Then 2008 hit and everybody waddled over to it like stoned penguins. So I did too.

And it was okay for a while. No stoned-penguin-eating killer whales.

But then I got this sinking feeling. Several sinking feelings, actually.

Long story medium, I up and left in 2011, after many false starts.

Here’s the top 5 reasons why:

5) The Corporate Goons Are Getting Smarter

They realized if they put up an ant farm, the ants would come. Only this ant farm knows what bands and movies you like, so it can target you perfectly for ads.

Not only that; they knew everybody in the world you were connected to, and what your relationship was. Your friend Assholehead has invited you to play the game Pre-Diabetes.

“So quit your whining, bitch. Install an adblocker!” you say.

Done and done, bitch. But I’m probably one of 4 out of my 275 friends who had the skill to do it. That meant every time my friends would see me on that screen, they’d be seeing me next to an ad for Slim Jim Bacon Fucksticks.

Yet I’m the guy who won’t even wear a t-shirt with my own band’s logo on it. See, I’ve got this fucked up condition where I go around calling myself a free man, with a free mind, and who, when seeking to influence the world around me with thoughts, chooses to do so with thoughts that can’t so readily fit on a t-shirt, or in a 1″ square margin ad on Fuckbook.

**4) Shit! Someone added me to the group “Ball Shavers“**

I can handle a request to join a Facebook group. Because I can say “No.” And it’s what we all did for a while, rather effectively.

What I’m less able to handle is discovering I’ve been added to a Facebook group months after it’s happened, and nobody ever asked me.

“NYC Filmmakers,” “Rock and Rollers For Slayer”, “Fans of Human Sperm.”

I’m sure they’re all great groups, but, hey, if you’re gonna stick your tongue in my mouth by adding me to your shitty fuck group, at least make sure your mouth isn’t full of cat piss, or humming the melody to “Poker Face.”

3) “I clicked LIKE. That counts as hanging out with you.”

I might be a rarity, but I have friends dating back to 1983 when I was in junior high. I have right around 8 of them.

In the 1980′s and 90′s, we made movies together, delivered pizzas, waited in line for Batman, and Star Trek V, and Army of Darkness to open, got drunk on near beer at strip clubs, and hung out with each other 4 nights a week.

Now, with Facebook, we click LIKE on each others’ posts.

And somehow that’s supposed to take the place of my best friends LIVE, in a room, watching shitty movies with me and drinking beer.

2) In high school, me and five guys beat you with bats and forced your face down into dogshit, but hey, let’s be Facebook friends

Were the jocks’ high school careers so wonderful that they forget we were mortal enemies?

But he’s friends with your REAL friend, and if you refuse the friend request, you’ll have to hear about it, and then you’ll have to re-litigate the dogshit incident. And who wants to re-litigate the dogshit incident? You’ll seem like some bitch who can’t get past shit.

But fuck it. Bring it on. REQUEST DENIED. Lick my balls.

But why should I be forced to think about your sorry ass even THAT MUCH?

And then there’s people who aren’t as bad as that guy, but who want to be your friend.

Next thing you know, you’ve got 275 people on your friend list, of which, only 50 are people you would give two metric shits about.

And even THOSE people, who are supposedly your real friends, even THOSE people don’t have anything interesting to say.

“Here’s a photo of my chicken and waffles, taken with my new Android phone. GANGSTA 4LIFE.”

“Me and Jenny got smashed on Zima and put our vaginas on the freeway pavement!”

“Buy my shitty album. Watch my shitty movie.”

(That last one is me.)

And if you’re not flooded with all the constant, crystallized fucktardery which the species of homo sapiens georgebushicus is capable of, you’re inundated by post after post of peoples’ fat, ugly, future homeless children. In Red Lobster bibs. Or poking their finger into the cat’s anus.

But, ultimately there’s hope of blocking out your ugly chubbed out fucker kids, right? Because I can hide that shit, right?

1) Wrong. You can’t hide that shit.

I’m not a programmer. I’m a hack filmmaker and a hack musician.

So I don’t know what’s so difficult about setting up easy-to-use privacy settings and sticking with them.

Mormons can stick together through multiple wives, black people can stick together through 600 years of slavery and racial oppression, so why can’t Facebook stick to an easy privacy policy? (P.S. Fuck you, Mormons, in case you missed that.)

But apparently Facebook never spent the points on that motherfucking skillup.

You mean I can set the privacy to the max, and then when I post a comment on a friend’s post, it STILL shows up in my timeline?

You mean, motherfuckers can still add my ass to groups without my persimmons? (Yes, Mormons, I used “persimmons” instead of “permission.” Fuck you again.)

You mean whatever the fuck I click LIKE on shows up in my motherfucking ugly ass timeline, and everything I’ve posted is now an open motherfucking book?

All so Mark Zuckerberg can sell people more Slim Jim Bacon Fucksticks.

“Here’s a photo of my Slim Jim Bacon Fucksticks. Nom.”

So I’m opting out. I have officially refused your invitation to play Zenga’s Assholehead Antfarm.

I’m gonna go text my friends now. Calling is a little too personal.