Describe My Day with a Song #3

I switched the format. Guess I'll make this a regular feature. Anyway,

"I Can't Stop Farting" by The Queers

--The Robo-Pirate

Moment to moment

I had to get something out of the Grampus today, and as I walked back to the office, for no particular reason I threw my keys straight up in the air, and for that second during which they were aloft, I felt intense joy, the kind you feel when you're twelve and it's summer and the whole day, if not every day that will follow, is entirely yours. The sun grinned down at me from cloudless blue, catching on the rings and a couple untarnished spots on my keys, and when they clinked into my palm, I was a little sad, but not without hope, for life will turn out okay if I treasue moments like this one.

--The Robo-Pirate

Oblivion Update #1 (from the pages of Nerdular Nerdence)

In my continuing effort to make myself as unappealing to women as I possibly can, I would like to inform everyone that Morricone, my alter-ego on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, is now a Level 4 Agent and is doing just fine, having recently acquired the Battle Axe of Souls.

--The Robo-Pirate

"Urethane." "I'm a what?"

Today, the MSN home page had a link to Roller Derby, which has been going strong in places like Austin and probably Detroit for like five years now. Since the Texas Rollergirls were on TV last year and now that the internet has decided to write an article about them, I imagine that Roller Derby is probably about to be totally played out.

Regardless of that, I think Roller Derby is pretty cool, mostly because I'm a casual fan of people pushing other people over, especially if all the pushing is on the part of quasi-attractive girls. Of course, in the case of Roller Derby, quasi kind of gives them a mulligan; predictably, Roller Derby is performed by rockabilly/punk rock/Austin lesbian bartender-type girls who are mostly cute and a little scary. This is irrelevant to me, however, because I judge a Derby girl's merit solely on the coolness of her name. For instance, I tried unsuccessfully to get my ex-girlfriend involved in Roller Derby, largely because she said she would skate under the fake name Jackie Onasty.* I never even knew if she could rollerskate or not; I just thought it would be cool to be the boyfriend of famed Roller Derby queen Jackie Onasty.

Anyway, from Assassination City Derby League in Dallas, the best name I found was Mary Lou Threaten, who is a member of La Revolucion. A lot of the other girls' names are pretty jejune, but Mary Lou Threaten totally wins big.

--The Robo-Pirate

*Unfortunately, this name already belongs to a chick on an Austin team.

Whoa Nelly!

Nelly Furtado is back with a new album! To celebrate, I've rewritten part of the chorus-outro to the "Like a Bird." Why? because I want her to read it and think I'm hilarious and marry me. Unless she's crazy. I don't want to marry her if she's crazy.

I'm like a bird,
Except I can't fly,
and I don't have feathers,
and I don't eat worms,

(but baby yeah) I'm like a bird,
but-with-a human-sized brain,
I don't bathe in a gutter,
I don't hatch from an egg

(butstillbabyyeah) I'm like a bird,
but don't live in a tree,
guess it's a bad simile,
doesn't really describe me

Ad nauseum.

--The Robo-Pirate

Succumbing to the Urge

I probably have more interesting things to discuss in light of the past ten days or so (oh who am I kidding--I had a birthday and a show and both evenings ended with me barfing in parking lots), but the most important news is that I finally caved and bought an Xbox 360, as well as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which is probably the nerdiest game you can possibly play, unless you count accounting. Anyway, on Monday, I got a birthday check in the mail, which I wasted no time in cashing along with some checks for writing crappy album reviews and raced as fast as the Grampus would carry me to Gamestop, in order to further prolong my adolescence and inhibit my social interractions with others.

--The Robo-Pirate

What would we do without him?

What's that MySpace? Internet Freedom is under attack by big telecoms like AT&T, but Moby is going to show me how to fight back? Whew. I hope he starts by taking on News Corporation.

--The Robo-Pirate

Describe the Day with a Social Distortion Song #1

"Ball and Chain"

--The Robo-Pirate

This was from yesterday. Posted today because I had to board the plane.

I'm at the Sacramento Metro Airport right now, having gone to Lodi for my brother's high school graduation. The immediate inspiration for writing is the fact that there is just now an employee simultaneously dragging two wheelchairs bearing old people through the terminal. He looks like a cross between Eazy E and the trainer from Mike Tyson's Punch-out. Despite the fact that his way is relatively free of people, he persists in shouting "WHEELCHAIRS, COMING THROUGH! ERRNT ERRNT ERRNT!!! WHEELCHAIRS, COMING THROUGH! ERRNT ERRNT ERRNT!!!"

I guess this is a funny thing to do, though I couldn't tell what the old people thought about it. Reading their facial expressions is nearly impossible on account of all that drooping skin.

--The Robo-Pirate

Late Night, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad!

Now seriously, would a guy like this enrich uranium for the wrong reasons? I mean, you know?

You never catch Kim Jong Il cracking up like that.

I'm just saying is all.

--The Robo-Pirate

Describe the Day with a Sublime Song #1

"Burritos."

--The Robo-Pirate

...And Justice For All, or at least for Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling

Well, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted today, thank Christ. Of course, they have no remorse. Of his conviction, Skilling said, "Obviously I'm disappointed. But that's the way the system works."

You're disappointed, Jeffrey Skilling? I'll bet you aren't as disappointed as the people you bilked out of their pensions, nor any Californian who was inconvenienced when his or her power went out because of you two, nor as disappointed as you will be when get to experience life in federal prison. Enjoy your butt-rapes, you fucking assholes. You deserve every humiliating second of them.

--The Robo-Pirate

Sheesh

Log on to Sallie Mae dot com to manage your loans!

(It's not recognizing me)

Your expected wait time for this call is 3 minutes. Mondays are our busiest days.

(it's Wednesday)

...

Look, do you guys still want my money or not?

I'm just saying is all.

--The Robo-Pirate

Fighting the Urge

I've been working part time at my friend's bar in order to have some savings while the bulk of my primary job's paycheck goes to bills. What this means is that I can make about a hundred extra bucks a week or so, which also means that I have disposable cash, and disposable cash means that I very nearly bought an Xbox 360 on Sunday.

As far as compulsions go, I could do a lot worse. At least it's not heroin or shoes.

--The Robo-Pirate

The Robo-Pirate Engages Archie Bunker Mode

Comic books are gay. Now I don't really mean that, but when I was a kid, I used to ride my bike across town to the Comic Grapevine, which was the only dedicated comic book store in Lodi (I know, I know, as if a community of 55,000 people needs more than one). And this made my mom nervous, in part because I had to cross a busy street called Kettleman Lane, but also because she swore up and down that the Comic Grapevine was full of pedophiles, who would love nothing more than to grab a couple eleven-year olds when they went to pick up the latest issue of Aquaman.* As far as I was concerned, I was perfectly safe as long as I didn't go past the manga racks and into the back of the shop, because that was where twenty-something men with glasses and patchy goatees sat reeking of Mountain Dew and armpits while playing Dungeons and Dragons. And as everyone knows, these people are not to be bothered or engaged lest you wish to be pulled into a windowless van and later cut up into bite-sized pieces.

My mom might have been hysterically imaginative about the patrons of the Comic Grapevine, but I do concede that comic books unfortunately get this homoerotic rap, because of a number of inherent conventions. Primarily, it's because of the overwhelming dude factor. When a medium is largely comprised of dudes reading illustrated stories about dudes, it's hard not to think certain things. This was a big deal in the mid-1950s, when some concerned citizens got their noses out of joint over homoerotic overtones (homovertones?) in comics because of a book called The Seduction of the Innocent, that alleged, among other things, that superhero comics made kids gay. And really, if you have ever looked at an old Batman comic, you can kind of see where they were coming from.

Anyway, on Sunday, I went to the Borders down the street to pick up the May issues of Uncanny X-Men and Astonishing X-Men. Like a lot of bookstores, the Borders' comics selection is in a revolving rack near the periodicals. After I had found the two books I was looking for, my browsing shifted to the adjacent magazine shelves. I absently gazed at these magazine for almost a whole minute before realizing that I stood in front of titles such as Out, Shout, Pink, Curves, DIVA and probably the official publication of the Bravo! network. In other words, Borders puts their gay and lesbian lifestyle magazines right next to their comic books.

Oddly, Men's Health was way on the other side next to FHM and Maxim.

I don't know what the point of putting magazines geared for topman and bottom next to the comics is, but I made a beeline for the Playboys nevertheless, just in case anyone had been looking. It's bad enough to be 27 and caught with two X-Men comics; I can't accurately describe the embarrassment of being caught holding said comics in front a magazine with Augusten Burroughs or Rosie O'Donnell on the cover.

--The Robo-Pirate

*Over the past couple years, I've noticed that Aquaman seems to be the most maligned superhero in the entire pantheon. I don't know why this is, but apparently Aquaman hs a reputation for (so sorry for the pun) fishy behavior. This is why I'm glad I stuck to Marvel titles. Cyclops and Wolverine fought over Jean Grey, not Gene Grey.

Yet another reason why Danzig should have stuck with the Misfits

I've been looking for this video for about two years. It's of Glen Danzig getting punched in the face. I assume I don't need to tell you twice to click the link.

--The Robo-Pirate

Quiznos = Bad

Last night sucked. I had a lot of crap to do, not a lot of time to do it, and this stress was compounded by the fact that I ate Quiznos, which caused me to vomit twice. I guess I should be grateful that it didn't totally incapacitate me today. Apparently, minor food poisoning is God's way of saying make your own damn food.

--The Robo-Pirate

I Heart NOFX

The Warped Tour comes to Dallas on July 1. Before you ask if I'm a little old to be going to the Warped Tour, I should remind you that any question you ask of me that begins with "aren't you a little old to be __________" is definitely rhetorical and probably irrelevant, because the answer to the question will almost always be yes.

I don't go every year. In fact, I've only gone to five: '97, '99, '00, '03 and '04. It gets to be a bigger ordeal every year, and unless there is a headlining band that I really, really like, I don't care to watch eight million bands I'll never see again. Occasionally, I'll become a fan of a band I've never heard of after seeing them on the Warped Tour (Tha Alkaholics in '97, Flogging Molly in '00), but mostly, I wait around to see bands I listened to as a kid, which sort of makes me feel like my mom, who recently went to see Bob Dylan. I missed out on a lot of concerts in high school, so while my friends have vivid memories of Rancid at the Warfield or Pennywise at the Crest Theater, I don't. I have to see these bands a decade after I should have, but better late than never, right?

This year NOFX is headlining, and I can't wait. I've never seen them live; the closest I've come was at the 2000 Warped Tour, when I needed only to direct my attention to the other stage when Long Beach Dub Allstars finished their set. Instead, I got a call from my girlfriend at the time, more or less demanding to know when I was coming to pick her up. A week later, that girlfriend would bang her roommate's visiting friend and totally lie about it, so needless to say, I should never have even bothered to answer the phone. If that story wasn't so uninteresting or long, I'd probably tell it to Fat Mike and offer him my sincerest apologies, if I ever get to meet him.

Anyway, I quit listening to NOFX because of two albums: Heavy Petting Zoo and OK Computer. Heavy Petting Zoo was a huge disappointment. It has exactly three listenable songs: "Filthy Phil Philanthropist," "Hot Dog in a Hallway" and "Bleeding Heart Disease"; the rest of it pretty much blows. It didn't make sense to me that a band that got better with every subsequent release could churn out such a turd. Of course, I was a rabid Led Zeppelin fan between 1992 and 1994, and when you consider that the last three Zeppelin records get progressively worse, my displeasure with NOFX is a little illogical and kind of unfair. Regardless of that, though, I lost interest in them, especially after I bought OK Computer.

Now, I don't like Radiohead very much any more, but I used to like them a lot. I love The Bends and I love OK Computer, and I have a lot of really fond memories of both, but after the audio equivalent of "The Emperor's New Clothes," I dropped them like an angry cat. By now I may have painted myself as a fickle fan, but I'm really not; Kid A and Amnesiac are good records, but not as good as OK Computer, and certainly not as goddamn good as every music critic (except Nick Hornby, bless him) insisted they were. Plus, I got tired of Thom Yorke's neverending anti-american pontificating. Doesn't he have his own country to shake his finger at? I'm just saying is all.

OK Computer is the only concept album I have ever paid attention too. Other than humoring people who insist that "The Dark Side of Oz" is something other than deterministic pot-talk, I've never bothered with concept albums, with the possible exception of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, since it's on my need-to-get-and-give-a-good-going-over list. I'm not even sure that OK Computer qualifies as a concept album, since there doesn't seem to be a central character or whatever. It is obviously unified in theme (THOM YORKE IS AFRAID OF TECHNOLOGY! SO MUCH THAT HE MADE TWO TECHNO ALBUMS), and my sophomore-year roommate insisted it was a concept album ("a paranoid song-cycle about the soulless mechanization of modern life" Really, Andy? And you say you didn't read that in Rolling Stone?), so for my intents and purposes, that's what it is. The main point of all of this is that after I had digested it, I pretty much decided that I had outgrown the Fat phase of my life.

Then one night in 2003, I went into this bar on 7th street that had one of those mp3 jukeboxes. I went in and loaded it up with Sublime and Bad Religion and Dropkick Murphys, and the bartender and I got to talking about mid '90s punk, and he wanted to know what I thought about the new NOFX album (which, at the time, was The War on Errorism. I of course, had not bothered to listen to it, so he lent it to me, and I was immediately hooked. And since acquiring an iPod, I've been playing catch up with all the releases I've missed. A brief recap:

• So Long and Thanks for All the Shoes is decent. Darth Vato might start covering "Eat the Meek," though Eric does not know it yet.
• Pump Up the Valium wins big.
• 45 or 46 Songs has about 25 songs worth hearing
• I totally missed out on the 7" of the Month Club
• Never Trust a Hippy is also great, though it's more or less a continuation of War on Errorism.
• I haven't gotten Wolves in Wolves Clothing yet, but I'm reviewing it for the Weekly. I hate the album art, though.
• The live album is still my favorite.

They made a video for "Seeing Double at the Triple Rock," and it's not awesome, but it's got me amped about seeing them live. Go see it here.

--The Robo-Pirate

The Ultimate Reason Why CHiPs is Totally Fake

As I drove around downtown today in a tiresome, if ultimately successful quest to get the Grampus registered, I noticed about six or seven motorcycle cops, and they got me thinking about Ponch and Jon, of the ever-awesome TV show CHiPs. Until the A-Team came around, CHiPs was probably the greatest and most awesome show in the history of great and awesome shows. When I was four or five, CHiPs was so inspirational to me that I combined these khaki-colored Pac-Man pajamas with my dad's socks to make what I thought was the closest thing to a CHP uniform you could have without actually having to be stuck in Barstow pulling over semis.

Anyway, if you recall, Ponch and Jon were CHP officers, and they did all sorts of things that CHP officers never do, such as solve crimes and crack jokes. As near as I can tell, the only thing motorcycle cops ever do in real life is ruin a person's day. Ponch and Jon seemed downright helpful, good-natured and glad to be doing what they were doing, which I have always felt is an inaccurate portrayal of motocycle cops, since they don't seem to like doing much of anything but riding around while scowling. Of course, all of Ponch and Jon's phony industriousness and good cheer might as well be gritty realism when compared to the show's most obvious deviation from real life: Ponch and John didn't weigh three-hundred pounds.

What is the deal with that? Why are most bike cops so fucking fat? When I see a pair riding parallel down the freeway, I am immediately reminded of the world's fattest twins riding those minibikes.* I have a couple friends who were turned down from the Houston and Dallas Police Academies, and near as I can tell, the only reasonable explanation for their rejections is that they are both in too good of shape to be cops.

Stupid fake TV. This is why I only watch cartoons.

--The Robo-Pirate.

*And why in the world are there no pictures of them on the internet?! I bought the The Guinness Book of World Records about seventy different times from the book fairs that came to my school for the very purpose of seeing the world's longest fingernails, the world's fattest woman and the world's fattest fucking twins. There was even a joke on The Family Guy about them, for goodness sake! So where the hell are they?

On the other hand....

Darth Vato heads to Galveston tomorrow in our new van, which I have christened the Grampus. There is a lengthy explanation of why I chose this particular name, but the short of it is that the HMS Grampus was a 14-gun sloop that was experimentally provisioned with only water and beer for several months during the Seven Years' War. It's also a genus of dolphin, as well as the former common name of killer whales.

Anyway, we're piling in the Grampus and heading down to the Gulf to play with a band called Shark Attack at a place called the Balinese Room, where we played last month. According to its website, it used to be some kind of hip, speakeasy type jazz club. It looks cool anyway, and we had fun last time. So I guess it's worth being slammed at work. And just in case Jesus reads this blog, I still could stand to win a lottery jackpot. Even one that's only a million dollars. I don't even need the really big one.

I'm just saying is all.

--The Robo-Pirate