radioz

me and tom from the drastics on wxrt 93.1 givin a lil interview ... i actually sound somewhat collected and intelligent, though there are points where i definitely start to ramble ... check it!

waking up to breaking and entering

so i've been working the around the coyote festival, which is no small task ... the thing is a real beast, especially this year when we have 12 venues, and for some reason a ridiculous amount of bitchy artists and cheap patrons ... i might post something later about some of the encounters i've had over the weekend, but knowing the personality types i've been dealing with, they are definitely the type that are vain enough to google their own names, find this blog and sue me for libel or some shit ... anyway, so this festival means that i've had 3 days off in 3 weeks, worked a 24 hour shift (no joke, 10am monday to 10am tuesday with a 2 hour break to do a radio interview on wxrt and eat, and regularly work 16 hour days ... obviously that means i have no life and only about 5-7 hours of sleep per nite after bustin my hump all day (hauling 60 lb bags of trash, cleaning up overflowing garbages, carrying 40 lb boxes of catalogs to every part of wicker park, etc) ... and so (luckily) i do very little partying, drinking, smoking, etc mostly cause i'm too exhausted and i just don't care about it at that point, i know it will be a temporary release but the next day i'll be running even slower ... i say luckily cause if i had drank anything the night before i probably would not have heard the guy that broke into our apartment and come into my room at 7:30am and scare the bajesus out of me ... now, living' with sketchy musician types i'm used to people being around the crib i don't always know, but they usually carry a certain vibe thats easily picked-up-on that they are cool and belong there ... it took me about 30 seconds to even shake the sleep out of my head, find my glasses, and realize some dude was looking at me while i lay in bed, which is a really spooky feeling ... once i realized that this guy shouldn't be here i started yelling at him and he took off running back across the coach house i live in, down the stairs inside and then back across it again to the front of the house and then out the front door ... i didn't follow him too far out of the house, which in retrospect was foolish as there is a long gangway leading from the street to our coach house and could've at least gotten a better glimpse of what he was wearing or looked like as he had to run down a narrow corridor for a good 20 feet ... but instead i stopped shortly after my door, turned around checked the handle to see if it was locked, again stupid as it probably could've been dusted for fingerprints and went back inside ... at this point i didn't know what to do so i went upstairs and saw the light on in my upstairs-roomate's room which i remember being off when i went to bed ... upon peering into his room (which is a mess anyway, so it was hard to tell if his stuff had been sifted through) it was obvious that the bright new shiny laptop he had sitting in the middle of his desk was gone ... at this point i don't really know what to do as i've never been in this situation before, so i run downstairs and knock loudly on downstairs-roomate's door, and, much to my surprise, random girl answers the door sans downstairs-roomate ... i have a very fast exchange with her, "where is downstairs-roomate?" i inquire ... "oh, he said he was going to sleep upstairs on the couch" she replies ... "we don't have a couch upstairs" i shoot back ... i explain to her what just happened (or at least what i could make of what just happened) and she's either too hungover or too dumb to really grasp what i'm saying, so i run back upstairs look around upstairs-roomate's room again, come back down, and the bitch shut the door and went back to sleep ... what the fuck !? ... so i call upstairs-roomate, leave a message, he calls back, he comes back home (he had been stayin at his girls place) ... apparently the junkie (cause by this point i'm starting to think this guy was just a junkie rather then an actual thief) had turned out most of the drawers in upstairs-roomate's room lookin for cash or jewels or something ... ok, so the question still remains ... "where is downstairs-roomate?" ... i grab my phone and see i have a text from him at 2:30am saying simply "Call me." ... ominous, especially given the circumstances ... with no signs of forced entry i'm led to believe that downstairs-roomate simply took off instead of actually going upstairs to sleep ... he had to have left at 2am and either didn't close or lock the door in a drunken stupor (more on this later) ... so it's time to file a police report, always a good time when CPD are involved, and i mean it! the lady at 911 was super sweet and cool with me, and about 10 minutes later officer myron showed up at our back door ... he took stock of my drum sets and admitted to having just bought a gretsch set (jerk! i can't afford one and he prolly plays it twice a year) and came upstairs to get the story ... now this guy was the archetype of a chicago police officer, little heavy, little older, and the thickest south-side chicago accent i've heard in a while (think of SNL's "da-bears" skits and yer half way there) ... so he sits down at our kitchen table and we start going over what happened, i explain that not having my glasses on, it being dark, and the guy being 10 ft away from me its really hard to describe what the guy looked like ... but the best part came when the guy called in an ET (evidence technician) to come in and dust for prints ... i don't know if this is just the guy on the force no one likes, or what, but the conversation went like this ... NOW! you have to keep in mind the cops exaggerated chicago accent and the radio guy being totally dead-pan and somewhat insular ...

cop: yeah ... i'm gonna need to call in an ET
radio: ..... yeah ? ...... for what ?
cop: uh, yeah, why don't we call it a burglary ?
radio: ...... yeah ? .... what do you need ?
cop: eh, ya know, dust for prints, uh ... there was a computers stolen, and, uh, the assailant touched the cords and some drawers ... uhh, yeah, ya know, just dusting, and, uh, what have you ...

the cop then gives our address, etc to the ET guys, at which point this exchange takes place

cop: yeah, uh, i'm gonna need that ET for a specific time, uhh ... what times works for yous guys ?
uptairs-roomate: uhh ... 5's cool ...
cop: ... uhh ... according to the victim ... fivescool
radio: ... is that 5 am or seventeen hundred hours (said totally sarcastically)
cop: ... uhhh, yeah, why don't we try seventeen hundred hours, hey look, im a wagon guy, im under alot of stress right here

ok, so that conversation doesn't translate too well to type, but if you have the right voices and inflections in your brain, it should be pretty damn funny

so later that day ET rolls up and dusts upstairs-roomate's room in two spots and finds nothing ... so, we all think the guy got away, and its the end of our little adventure ...

until ... dun DUN DUNNNNNNN ....

i get a call monday morning, they caught some guy thieving in a house on the next block over from us and want to know if i'll come in and do a lineup since i'm the only one who saw him (from 10ft away, sans-glasses, just waking up), but still, they want me to come down ... ok, i dunno if anyone out there has done a police lineup but its pretty intimidating, and it is just like the movies ... walk into a dark room and there's a little window with 5 guys standing against a dirty concrete brick wall, they make each guy come up to the window, turn left and right and step back ... i wasn't that intimidated cause i knew they couldn't see me, and this room also seemed to serve as the lunch room for the cops as about 8 of them were sitting behind me chowing down ... i narrowed it down to 2 guys out of the 5, and im 100% sure it was one of those two, but couldn't finger the guy, and so thusly was of no use to the cops, and they were obviously not happy with me about that ... the only that was really scary about this lineup was that in the lower left hand corner of the window/mirror was a huge crack that was obviously from some high-impact object (fist) hitting the glass and shattering it ... that kinda thing can scare the crap out of ya ...

anyway, this blog post took me 2 days to write, at this point another ET guy came through, took pictures, and i don't know what will happen next ... oh yeah!

Fake News and Jesus

Don't panic, but there is a possibility that our President is full of shit

The Norwegian version of The Daily Show went to interview James Oddo, the minority leader of the New York City Council. He didn't think it was very funny.

Stephen Colbert wrote the best thing that has ever been in the New York Times.

JESUS OF THE WEEK

miss richfield 1981

aaa ha .....

Naked McDonald's Followup

A few months ago one of you posted the story about the McDonald's worker being strip searched in the office.

Now you can watch a video about it.

Its pretty fucking awful and makes even less sense than it did before.

But at least she got paid.

And on a light note, Danson In The Dark

i can't wait 'till i'm internet famous!

so i can get one of these goin' ...

taken from a real myspace brand myspace page ...

killin' bitches, sittin on death row ...

the current state of commercial hip-hop ? nope ! we're talkin about the great american song tradition of murder ballads! ... well, the roots are european, but leave it to good ol' appalachian folk to carry it out well ... again, i got turned on to this from the lomax recordings i recently acquired ... there are songs retelling classic outlaws such as jesse and frank james, but it's the ones that are simply sung about premeditated murder that just fascinate me ... like "Pretty Polly" ... the lyrics there differ from the recording i have, and are actually a little less heavy ... in the recording on the lomax tapes, the end lyrics go ...

He stabbed her in the heart and her heart’s blood did flow.
He stabbed her in the heart and her heart’s blood did flow.
And into the grave Pretty Polly did go.
...
Oh gentlemen and ladies, I bid you farewell.
Oh gentlemen and ladies, I bid you farewell.
For killing Pretty Polly my soul will go to hell

i like in that version that at the end the singer is revealed to be the murderer ... anyway ...

Midgets and Klingons and Furries. Oh my!

A very special COPS featuring a feral midget.

These dudes could kick all three of our asses.

Some chick on Fark actually attended the Furries vs Klingons bowling tournament that driznastic posted the poster for and she took these pictures.

long john

Lightnin' Washington And Group singing "long john"... part of alan lomax's field recordings of the american south ... i just got hooked up with a bunch of these, including the disc this is off of "Deep River of Song: Big Brazos" ... i'm pretty sure they are choppin' trees in this tune, which is holdin the beat ... the whole disc is fantastic, but that song in particular (there's two on the disc by washington, both are the stand-out tracks in my opinion) ... i highly recommend you listen to the track on that page and listen to how seriously these guys are singin that song, i mean, man ... you can feel it if you got any kinda soul ... i'm convinced that if all music was performed like that, there would be no room for britney spears, or whoever is popular right now ... because people would listen to music not just for a catchy melody or something to dance to, but the actual PERFORMANCE (and i don't mean pyrotechnics and jumbo-trons) would be the crux of what was being sung ... so all the gimmicks would be pointless ... well, i can dream anyway ...

calling shenanigans ...

on YOU pimpernel ...

A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and the cultivation of leisurely hobbies.

...nevertheless, the Scarlet Pimpernel is one of the great dandies of literature.¹

HAHA ... dandyass

more racialist business

bogarus's post got me thinkin about minstrels ... and what an odd phenomenon it was ... instead of the dominant culture subduing the minority and simply exploiting the people physically (which is almost always the case), it exploited its culture, and thusly helped spread that culture (albeit, a very racist perception) across the country and even into europe ... of course, the roman's adopted customs and even gods from the people they conquered, but i don't remember reading anything about roman musicians dressing up as celts or visigoths and performing for the emperor ... as the Ethiopian Serenaders did ...

Their first major performance was for John Tyler at the White House in 1844 as part of the "Especial Amusement of the President of the United States, His Family and Friends"

even more bizarre, is that anyone with a basic knowledge of geography, or understanding of the slave trade knows that the vast majority of american slaves came from WEST africa ... yet, many minstrel troupes and even opera houses for minstrels had names with "ethiopia" them ... if you find this subject as fascinating as me, i suggest you (at least) read the wiki on it

The rise of the minstrel show coincided with the growth of the abolitionist movement. Many Northerners were concerned for the oppressed blacks of the South, but most had no idea how these slaves lived day-to-day. Blackface performance had been inconsistent on this subject; some slaves were happy, others victims of a cruel and inhuman institution.[17] However, in the 1850s minstrelsy became decidedly mean-spirited and pro-slavery as race replaced class as its main focus.[18] Most minstrels projected a greatly romanticized and exaggerated image of black life with cheerful, simple slaves always ready to sing and dance and to please their masters. (Less frequently, the masters cruelly split up black lovers or sexually assaulted black women.)[19] The lyrics and dialogue were generally racist, satiric, and largely white in origin. Songs about slaves yearning to return to their masters were plentiful. The message was clear: do not worry about the slaves; they are happy with their lot in life.[20] Figures like the Northern dandy and the homesick ex-slave reinforced the idea that blacks did not belong, nor did they want to belong, in Northern society.[21]"

however, despite this attitude, black minstrels did appear on the scene, and gained as much prominence as their white counterparts with black performers being as popular as any white minstrel, again on our friends, the Ethiopian Serenaders

The Serenaders eventually returned to London, this time with the addition of William Henry Lane, a black man known as "Master Juba"

... the shows were billed and structured similairly to white minstrel shows, however ...

White curiosity proved a powerful motivator, and the shows were patronized by people who wanted to see blacks acting "spontaneously" and "naturally", as if on exhibit.[39] Promoters seized on this, one billing his troupe as "THE DARKY AS HE IS AT HOME, DARKY LIFE IN THE CORNFIELD, CANEBRAKE, BARNYARD, AND ON THE LEVEE AND FLATBOAT."[40] Keeping with convention, black minstrels still corked the faces of at least the endmen. One commentator described a mostly uncorked black troupe as "mulattoes of a medium shade except two, who were light. . . . The end men were each rendered thoroughly black by burnt cork."

here's the main page from which i gathered most of this info

so anyway, i had no idea that a show like this ever, or for that matter, could exist in the 19th century ... the black and white minstrel show ... courtesy of the BBC, aired from 1957 to 1978 and won several prominent awards ...

Racial sensitivity

How sad that our society has become so biased that a simple statue on a porch has to become a racial issue.

Happye (Belated) New Year

That Giuliani girl aint got shit on her! L'Chaim!

food for thought ...

as it is no secret, i hate fark (not necessarily the people) ... but the other day someone was askin' me to explain what it was ... i did my best to explain the difference between fark and totalfark, what a thread is, what a greenlight is, etc ... and after explaining what i know about it, this friend asked, "well, who gets paid then ?" ... it was then i realized that all you (funny, interesting) folks out there with totalfark accounts (gunnin to put up threads) are essentially paying to work ... that made me laugh, and then it made me sad ... let me explain, i have a problem with fark, the same way some people (myself included) have a problem with starbucks ... it seems to be the juggernaut blog/board "chain" that is consuming potentially hundreds of independents who instead jump on the bandwagon ... i'm assuming this is a combination of laziness (ie not wanting to go through the effort of starting/promoting one's own blog/board) and wanting to jump right into the limelight ... cause don't get me wrong, i seent some funny stuff up on that site for sure, but it's not like wonkette where the editors are actually writing and finding articles, it's all by people that could be runnin' their own scene, but instead succumb to the "community" of fark ... and that's a whole 'nother rant right there ... but ... last i checked, blogger is still free .... and this lil' blog (according to my google analytics account) gets between 30-50 hits a day ... and the bluntest only has 3 "contributers" hardly any serious discourse ... and mostly jus silly stuff, cnn articles, and the occasional week old celebrity scandal ...

i still can't get over it, ya'll pay to work and help inflate other people's salaries ... that's ... strange ...

i welcome any reply, albeit civil ...

oh, here's something ya'll farkers can relate to ...



OH HO HO HO HO!!!!!!! SICK BURN BRA!!!!!!!!!!
SICK WITH DISEASE
LIKE, GANGRENE n SHIT
SICK BRA
BETTER CALL 911
SICK BRA
SICK

my only real question ...

which side is bogardus gonna be on ... ?



image courtesy the folks at globalnerdy.com ... some funny stuff on there ... and to validate that it is a website run by actual nerds, i submit this quote

I’ve already received three email suggestions that someone hold a movie night for geeks where we watch the film and “smoke a bowl“, as the expression goes.

why is smoke a bowl in quotes ? is that a term for a term that's, like, extra top secret jargon ? where as to smoke a bowl would mean to partake in marijuana, but to "smoke a bowl" really means ... oh ... i dunno ... write some really sloppy and uncommented code ?