We get this idea, most likely from Hollywood, that the winter truly is a pristine white wonderland, but really it's just frozen ruts on all the roads and this dense mixture of snow, sand, salt and rust that cements itself to the wheelwells, hangs tight from fenders like filthy stalactites, and you gotta keep kicking that shit off yr car, but it gets as hard as granite pretty fast when the windchill dips to 12 below. It's mostly a losing battle.
Winter's not a wonderland, it's $300 for new front tires and a quick and dirty alignment. And can I just say that perhaps Tires Plus has the worst fucking coffee I ever dared taste, that the powdered creamer congealed upon contact with the swill and turned into tiny blobs that may have turned into more chunks of wet granite if the coffee had been any colder.
The cold really doesn't bother me. When I put the ass end of the Grand Marquis in the ditch Monday morning, I got right out and started digging myself out, and the winds whipping the cold dusty snow across my face were no bother. Of course, I'm bearded up cuz this shit ain't new, right? My boss just doesn't get that. And he knows I shave it off on the first day of spring every year. I've told him that twice. He hates the beard.
What I haven't told him, what I haven't suggested, is that he can guage how much winter we've got left by how thick and lustrous my beard gets by the middle of February. Groundhogs are old school, babycakes, and I'm just now realizing how far I've wandered from any sort of point to this post.
A couple of weeks ago, one of my coworkers turned me on to The Wilderness Of Manitoba. I don't love them as much as he does, but I do like them. They remind me of Crosby, Stills & Nash, and maybe Fairport Convention?
Winters are hard in Wisconsin, but they can't be nearly as treacherous as Manitoba at Christmas.
01: LOST: "The End" [S6EP17]: Pop culture is mostly irrelevant. Television is a mere distraction. LOST was/is a red herring in this thing we call life. Indeed, when all is said and done, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the producers of LOST, gave us a series finale that ought to be a hard slap in the face to all the hardcore fanboys who were demanding, are still demanding, answers to so many of the the mysteries of the island, the characters, the show itself. Cuse and Lindelhof were all but literally telling those fanboys that all those mysteries, those puzzles, were red herrings when it came to "the meaning of LOST". There would be no reason for all that Hanso Foundation stuff. Walt's superpowers will have to remain unexplored and unexplained. The numbers were apparently random and held no great powers. So much time wasted on Eko. The books Sawyer read had no deep meaning, really...Or did they? Widmore's motives would remain unknown. Etc. Etc. Etc. In the end, LOST was steeped in death, or rather, the intermediate state between life and death, called "bardo" in Buddhism. It is here, in the "sideways universe" of season six, that Jack Shephard's soul must connect with the souls of all those from Oceanic flight 815 so that they can move on. In season one, Jack Shephard gave us the first big catchphrase of the show, which ultimately came to define the entire series. Simply put, "live together or die alone", and here at the end of the show, they needed to live together through the plane crash and all the weirdness of The Island, so that they could forge strong enough bonds to find each other after death, in Jack's bardo. And here we are, fanboys obsessed with the trivial minutae of LOST, and all six seasons of that stuff, the meaning of all that stuff, is irrelevant, and some of it makes sense, and plenty of it doesn't, and some of the questions got answered, but others never will, but none of that matters. What matters is that we watched the show, shared in that experience, and then we got together around the watercooler, or in discussion boards on the internet, to talk about all those red herrings, those distractions. So many puzzles, so many theories, so much discussion. And now even more discussion about this series finale. Love it or hate it, Cuse and Lindelof brought us all back together again, their show a spark to connect us in this waking dream we call life.
02: Commodore Pumpkin: You might suspect some photoshopping going on here, but I'm not so sure this picture isn't real.
03: SNL Digital Short: "Great Day" [NBC]: In general, I really like the Digital Shorts put together by Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone(The Lonely Island) for Saturday Night Live, and this one, from last week's season finale, is a trim and fantastic thrillride from start to finish. Just remember kids, drugs are fun until they're not.
04: Royal Crown Cola: I'm not much of a soda drinker. Aside from the can of Mountain Dew I pound down first thing every morning at work, I just don't drink all that much of the stuff these days. Having said that, I always have some Royal Crown Cola in the fridge. Compared to the big two (Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola)RC isn't as sweet as Pepsi, and doesn't go flat as quick as Pepsi (seriously, Pepsi is shit), and RC is slightly sweeter than Coke, holds its carbonation almost as long, and in general, I find Royal Crown to be a creamier and tastier cola than the other two. Also, there is the Pair Of Kings cocktail to consider. I typically like my whiskey served neat, but if I'm going to drink a whiskey and coke, it seems only right that it be made with Crown Royal and Royal Crown. The Pair Of Kings! Thank goodness my boss gives me a bottle of Crown Royal every Christmas... 05: Wise Beard Man: If I'm not mistaken, beards in all their glorious variations, were the status quo in civilized (to say nothing of uncivilized) American society right up to World War I. It would seem head lice became a serious problem for our military men in the trenches of Europe, and shaving off all the hair on one's head was the first step in getting rid of the little buggers. And because society held soldiers and soldiering in much higher regard back then than we do now, soon it became fashionable for civilian men to go clean shaven. And here we are. Aside from some short-lived fads (moustaches in the '70's, goattees in the '90's) the clean-shaven look has remained the status quo, especially in the business world, since the 1920's. Take it from me, a dude who's worn a goattee every single day since the autumn of 1986, there are alot of uptight dicks in the corporate world who might appreciate an expensive blue suit, but will not take you seriously if you've got any sort of facial hair. You might be the smartest person in the room, but to these people, you'll always be a neanderthal. BTW - this post obviously doesn't have anything to do with Mark Bunker and Xenu TV, Scientology or 4Chan...Once in awhile I just gotta represent. I like beards.
06: FUCKING METAL: Is it possible that the infamous "duck face" craze popularized by plasticized celebutards and "real housewives" got its start in Fucking Metal?
I'm not a fan of Star Wars in the least...Hate Star Wars, actually...
However, I AM a fan of sounds, electric guitars, and facial hair, and I got a small kick outta this 20 second video. Plus, if push came to shove, I'd admit to thinking that Chewbacca is kinda cool.
The current issue of Time Magazine contains a story [link] about the renewed popularity of the beard in America.
Whether it is the scruff worn by assorted characters on LOST (which is a function of being on a deserted island moreso than a choice), the short-lived "strike beards" adorning the faces of David Letterman and Conan O'Brien, or the manly beards worn by various members of the New England Patriots (a function of superstition and cold fucking weather), this story's premise is that manly facial hair has made a comeback in our country.
Of course, being the iconoclast that I am, an iconoclast who has worn either a goattee or full-on beard since the age of 15 (1981 for those of you keeping tabs), I call "bullshit" on this entire trend, if only because most of these folks who have adopted facial hair are only doing so because they got a whiff of that same trend in the air, and want to be a meaningless part of it all.
Letterman and O'Brien both shaved theirs off within a week of returning to the airwaves, thus proving that neither truly had solidarity with the WGA, nor the cajones to keep the beard for merely aesthetic reasons, despite the fact that both talkshow hosts looked rather handsome in their bearded splendor.
If you pick up any indie music magazine, such as Alternative Press, you will see that the full-on beard has become as ubiquitous as those annoying fucking haircuts where the bangs hang prominently over half the face among the Emo/Metalcore set.
Listen, I don't know if I have a relevant point to this particular rant of mine, except to be self-serving (ouch, I think I broke my arm patting myself on the back)...Like I said, I've been wearing facial hair for 25+ years now, and it bothers me to see it become fashionable, rather than just "cool" all the time. So let me say this here - beards, or any sort of facial hair, is cool, all the time, until the end of time.
I had a chemistry teacher in high school, and we used to make fun of his fashion sense, to which he replied, "Fashion trends cycle through every 10-15 years, so I figure at least once per decade I'm back in style."
This is how I feel about facial hair. The '60's counterculture adopted the beard, only to trim it back to the moustache through much of the 1970's. The 1980's were all about the clean-shaven look (except for a brief stubbly moment thanks to MIAMI VICE), until Grunge made the goattee the hirsute choice of douchebags everywhere, many of them the member of a fraternity. And now, here we are, apparently celebrating the beard.
Personally, I think anyone (that includes you, ladies) capable of growing facial hair has a DUTY of doing so. Clean-shaven faces are for pre-pubescent boys and supermodels.
Those of you who know me, know my feelings about all of this already. My love of facial hair is probably best expressed through Doug Fudge, P.I., one of the characters from my comic strip who happens to make and sell all manner of outrageous beards and moustaches for the discerning person who wants to be incognito...
This current "trend", if it really is one, will be dead by summer...No, it will be dead by April. People are fucking cattle, for the most part, and as soon as this hype wears down, most will return to being cleanshaven bores afraid to cut against the grain, so to speak. To them, I say "good riddance" because they're just not cool enough to rock out with their beard out to begin with.
Oh, and my own theory as to why the beard has become popular as of late? I believe we're trying to identify with the "enemy", which right now is fundamentalist Muslims. Yeah, chew on THAT for awhile!
John Inman, Jean Baudrillard, and now Brad Delp, former lead singer of Boston...
Brad Delp died today, at the age of 55, from unknown causes, at his home in the greater Boston area.
Man, I can still vividly recall the very day I bought Boston's debut album at Galaxy of Sound, a record store in the Manchester Mall in my hometown of Grafton, WI...Brand new vinyl, on sale for $3.99, and "Sting", the Punk/New Wave douchebag who managed the store, gave me sooo much shit for the purchase, because it wasn't the Sex Pistols, or the Ramones, or whatever, you know? I was fucking 11 years old at the time, so what the fuck did I know, and really, how fucking sad and pathetic is it for a 20 year old douchebag to be giving shit to a pre-teen?
"Sting" was one of these elitist bastards who simply couldn't like, let alone accept, any form of popular music because it fucked with his credibility as a so-called tastemaker and his image as a "punk", whatever the fuck that meant in 1977, or today...But the joke was really on him, in hindsight, because the truth of this particular matter is that in 1976/1977, that first Boston album was every bit as radical as Never Mind The Bollocks or Rocket To Russia...Yeah, you read that right...I mean, c'mon, The Ramones were nothing more than a bubblegum pop band with distortion pedals and a fondness for The Shirelles, and the Sex Pistols sang about feelings just as much as Boston did...Anger and cynicism ain't more than feelings, dig, so what makes 'em preferable, or better, than unrequited love and heartbreak?
Boston's essential sound, due in large part to Tom Scholz's engineering, was fairly groundbreaking in 76/77, and the same couldn't really be said about The Sex Pistols, who were as much a heavy metal band as they were punk, and as such, they simply didn't hold a candle to Black Sabbath or The Stooges...As for The Ramones...Well, let's just say that my belief has always been that The Ramones were/are one of the most overhyped bands in the history of rock music, and let's leave it at that...That doesn't mean I hate 'em, it just means, well, let's get real here kids...
Anyways...
Brad Delp died yesterday, and at first I thought I'd stream a Boston song in his honor, but instead, I thought I'd unleash this nugget from Barry Goudreau's 1980 solo album, and in case you didn't know, Goudreau was the lead guitarist for Boston, and his solo album was ostensibly the third Boston album, as it featured Delp on vocals, as well as Sib Hashian on drums...Hell, even Epic Records promoted the album as "Boston-Lite", which infuriated Tom Scholz, who subsequently fired Goudreau from the band. Of course, Boston never did anything significant again...
So, here's "Dreams", off Goudreau's solo album, featuring Brad Delp on vocals...Enjoy!
Doug "Fudgie" Fudge is a character in my comic strip, Kieth The Perpetual Teen...As the title of this post makes clear, Doug Fudge is a Private Eye, and as such, he is a master of disguise, and this is just one of his beard and moustache index sheets, which I am offering here as a handy tool for yr next espionage/criminal activity.
Master orator, A-1 flirt, table tennis champion, world class lover, known slacker, sinistral minstrel, funky drum machiner, actual guitar hero, hungry freak, radio disc jockey extraordinaire, Pope of Discordia, advanced sloganeer, licensed coffee drinker, authorized cat fancier, snow globe juggler, ice skating judge, bonsai superstar, published poet with an unpublished number, understander of Jazz, leader of men, follower of my mom, Oracle database user, part-time billboard liberator, full-time Grand Marquis handler, accomplished pipe smoker, dental floss tycoon, fully-certified celebrity impersonator, dues-paying snake-handler, hyphen-minister, soft-spoken carrier of big sticks, amateur sleuth, semi-professional haberdasher, professional lifestyle consultant, chronic inhaler, retired bartender, grower of beards, psychic to the stars, Mint Spy agent, Friend Of Flat Atom, action figure model, stunt double, former paperboy, previous drunk, perpetual teen, and Nobel Prize winner in Theoretical Etymology. I'm also mighty handy with very large axes, extremely small firearms, celery salt, and Derrida texts. Possibly fake references available upon request.
