Category: music

sabotage

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Listen up, y’all.

There’s not a guy in my generation that doesn’t know every fucking word of this song, and immediately wants to dress up like a Seventies cop with a bad moustache and slide over a car hood.

It’s immediate and visceral. I’m not the biggest Beastie Boys groupie, but hell, who doesn’t love that song?

Of course, followed by Come Alive by Foo Fighters, it’s a poignant, hard moment.

Makes me feel like a fucking teenager again, fucked up and wallowing, twisted about in depression and frustration, longing for something more.

And now, middle-aged and overweight, knowing it’s all a horrid lie.

Target: 600 words
Written: 447 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Artemis IX 1, Apollo IX 1, Poseidon IX 1, IXth Generation 5
Music: Voices Carry, Til Tuesday

jet fresh flow

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I ain’t got it.

Beck’s better at it than I. So is Flava Flav, Eminem, Ernest Hemingway, Erica Jong and Jules Verne.

I ain’t got it.

My niece raps better than I do. The other one sings better.

Everyone connects better with one another.

I am a non-valence electron, there but not involved, outside the chemical process, lurking in the outer ring.

I ain’t got it.

Target: 600 words
Written: 140 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Aphrodite IX: Hidden Files, Aphrodite IX v2 8-10
Music: Vivid, Living Colour

i go through all this

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Beeefooore you wake up.

Sorry. Bjork phase. I do like to get up early. I like the quiet. The alone time. If I can get that, and get enough things I want to get done before I engage with the world, the world and me are both infinitely better off for it.

I don’t go in rushed and angry, upset and falling behind. Frustrated and distracted.

And, the sense of peace is palpable.

That, of course, is not today. 

Target: 600 words
Written: 797 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 31-34
Music: The Very Best Things 1995-2008, Filter

veruca

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It’s funny how this seminal alternative band from the Nineties has such an influence on modern pop, but no one seems to ever mention them.

I mean, if you can listen to Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts and not hear Veruca Salt channeled through her, I have questions about your hearing and your mental state.

I try to tell my nieces these things, but they’ll, like me, have to figure it out for themselves (although I went through phases growing up that exposed me to a lot more great classic stuff, as filtered through a modern lens, than they seem to. Big band, underground Seventies punk, classic 60s acid rock and the original Fifties jump rock – crooners, The Beatles, The Doors, hell, I even went through a Michael Jackson/New Kids On The Block era – though not after I heard my first alternative – INXS and R.E.M. are forever my gateway drugs, as was The Joshua Tree).

Anyway, great band. Listen to them more, if you can. L7 too – nobody rocks harder, except maybe Lemmy.

Target: 600 words
Written: 556 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 53-56
Music: The Very Best Of Elvis Costello (I mean, it was shaping up to be a hipstery kind of day, anyway)

one hundred

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A hundred days into this year and we’ve already had multiple collapses, blood issues and a totality.

Sometimes, I’d like there to be a totality inside me, either to end it all or to burn away all the shit. Blind it with a shining aura, a brilliance unendurable except with the darkest glasses.

But the world keeps turning, a disturbing number of people think a man who thought it was intelligent to stare directly at an eclipse is a genius and hate seems to creep further into our lives each and every day.

We need another revolution. Another love-in.

Where’s our John and Yoko? Our sexual revolution appears to revolve around people making sex tapes, where wearing bikinis on your social media is a viable career path.

Where’s our screaming punk? Where’s our Kurt Cobain, hitting the nerves of a generation so raw that it changes entire cultures?

Where’s logic? Where’s freedom? Where are hearts and connection and compassion and a basic understanding of kindness?

Where’s the less ineffectual left? Where’s the sober right?

Where the fuck is everybody?

Social media is madness. Our world is mad.

This has been your daily agonized howl into the void, unable to stand anymore.

Target: 500 words
Written: 191 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 21-24
Music: The Vegas Years, Everclear

some music

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Some music just moves you. I just finished writing and while James Brown and Night Train was cool, I definitely funked out more to Modest Mouse and Steam Engenius, because SO. FUCKING. GOOD.

My tastes range, and it’s fine. I don’t mind following up Minor Threat with Rihanna or Dean Martin with Henry Rollins. There’s nothing wrong with an Eminem and Beatles mix, or Pink Floyd and NOFX.

It’s all about being open, and enjoying the moment. Falling into it and letting it happen, letting it be what it is and letting go of whatever else is happening.

Music is the most powerful presence creator; there’s a reason we love it in all its forms. It speaks to something primal within us that just wants to live. Here, now, forever in the groove, connecting and commiserating with our fellow humanity, free from all the rest of the world’s shit.

Target: 500 words
Written: 209 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 5-8
Music: The Vanilla Tapes, The Clash

t-swift

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I’ll admit: the girl can put on a production.

My niece made me watch the concert with her and I have to admit, that while I prefer music that’s not so overproduced, I was surprised by the sheer volume of hits the girl’s had, and the impressive stage show.

I mean, not teenage girl with tears streaming down her face impressed, but hey, I’m not the target audience.

Still. Good for you, girl. Way to do it without being completely vapid.

Smart cookie, that Taylor.

Target: 500 words
Written: 278 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
Comics: Rat Queens v2 24-25, Rat Queens: Sisters, Warriors, Queens 1
Music: Van Weezer, Weezer (just to show how iconically uncool I am from yesterday)

no longer cool

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It appears I’m not cool anymore. I mean, I was never really cool, but at least, I knew where the edges were, where the hip things were happening, even if I didn’t give a shit about them.

Now, I don’t care, more interested in exploring the expansive stuff of whatever scene I missed out on by virtue of era, location or the fact that I wasn’t cool enough to be invited in.

Or didn’t care enough to join.

Trends, fashion, these sorts of things never interested me. While a million morons rushed out to buy Stanley cups, all I could think is it’s not THE Stanley Cup, so who gives a shit?

Trends come and go so fast now online that the only way to stay on the bleeding edge of popularity is to spend all one’s time online, which is boring.

Plus, who cares? Spending time and money on shit that no one will give a fuck about tomorrow is just a good way to create clutter and miss out on time one could have spent actually enjoying one’s life.

It’s nothing more than a hyperspeed version of keeping up with the Joneses.

Fuck the Joneses. Who the fuck are they to set the standard?

Who are they to tell you what’s interesting or important in your life?

That’s the great thing about a real scene, real art, real cool – it remains that way no matter the age because it speaks to something fundamental inside us.

Cool is timeless; iconic is not just every random little thing; it’s the truly epic, the truly transcendent and emblematic. It’s crossing the bridge in Selma, it’s the Gettysburg Address. It’s the Velvet Underground. It’s Freddie Mercury at Live Aid. It’s Marilyn Monroe. It’s Caesar crossing the Rubicon. It’s Gretzky kicking his foot out as he lifts the Cup.

It’s real fucking Stanley, not some bullshit fad.

Stop using it for every little thing. It ain’t iconic if it’s old news tomorrow. Iconic is a state of being that speaks for itself, not a label for something you’ve been told is cool.

Target: 500 words
Written: 509 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
Comics: Rat Queens v2 20-23
Music: V, Live

tegan and sara, part deux

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You know what? For only knowing a handful of songs, it was a pretty good show. They played well, good songs and the stage patter… well, I’m not sure if they were ever stand-up comics in their lives, but they do a hell of an impression. I’m not used to my rock stars being so quick-witted.

Plus, it’s nice to see a community coming together. I’m not gay myself, but I’d wager a large portion of the county’s local lesbian population was at the concert, singing and being generally nice to each other, save a pair of dental assistant twins who were screaming so obnoxiously that even the band told them to shut the fuck up.

Seriously. How obnoxious must you be where your screaming at a rock concert is a little too much, for everyone, including the band?

Anyway, despite that, it was a good feel, lots of love and probably complicated feelings about love lives and things going around. At least no one got married, but the fervor that people rushing the stage to donate money for guitar picks and set lists (going to charity), damn. I’ve never been that stoked over anything but the middle of great sex with a very hot woman (my wife, for the record).

Anyway, long story short. Good time. Worth the trip.

Target: 500 words
Written: 1741 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Gregor The Overlander, Suzanne Collins
Comics: Rat Queens v2 6-9
Music: KooKoo, Debbie Harry

tegan and sara

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I don’t know a lot of songs, but I’m about to learn, apparently.

We’re off to catch Tegan & Sara tonight, so hey, limits.

Limited time. Limited energy. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it, but mostly, I’d like to sleep.

Target: 500 words
Written: 499 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Gregor The Overlander, Suzanne Collins
Comics: Rat Queens v2 3-5, Orc Dave 1
Music: Know Your Enemy, Green Day (I do - apathy and greed, consumerism and the overarching need to feed, feed, feed)