Since I’ve been so busy with CrippleBush lately, I’ve neglected the hell out of Divided Front. Today, I tried to remedy that. I planned on re-recording a handful of tunes but, now that the day is done, I managed three. It amazes me sometimes how I manage to piss my time away without accomplishing anything substantial.

As it is, I’m glad I managed the three tunes. I took a decent chunk of time to tab out “Down and Out in New York City” … it’s been bugging me for so long that no one else in the world has tabbed the song.

It isn’t laziness that kept me from doing myself, though. I can pick out a song, find the notes, figure out the riffs and fills, the chords and the melody … but it’s such an arduous, harrowing process. It doesn’t come easily for me. I don’t pick the correct notes right off and blaze through a tune in minutes. I have to painstakingly dissect it, find a sequence of notes and then use that to determine the key and, from there, I start to learn the song.

(more…)

I’ve been on a movie watching kick lately, since my girl is out of town. She and I were watching ‘the Shield’ and ‘Deadwood’ religiously, so there was no room in the queue for anything else. When ‘Deadwood’ started sucking, we just switched over to non-stop ‘Shield’ … that show is amazing.

On the agenda for today was, effectively, a pornographic movie called ‘Shortbus’ … which was so awful I turned it off after less than ten minutes. It’s a bad sign when a movie consists entirely of fucking (and hokey changes of character that involve panning through a pastel drawing of New York), complete with ejaculations, and it’s not even remotely erotic. Plus, I don’t even like white people, let alone watching them fuck … and the token Asian woman doesn’t count, fill in your own aspersion. If there’s an option on Netflix to give a movie no stars, this one’s got it coming… hardy, hardy har.

(more…)

No cursing, I promise.

I watched ‘Unforgiven’ for the first time Tuesday night. I enjoyed it. I love Westerns, in general, and I think Clint Eastwood is both a crackerjack director and a consummate badass.

That doesn’t count as curse.

Still, though this movie was considerably better than the dross that is churned out year after year, I found it to be a little thin … especially for an Oscar-winner, but winning an Oscar doesn’t really signify the greatness it is purported to bestow. Denzel Washington won for ‘Training Day’ supposedly … sure, he was a convincing villain, but Oscar-worthy? It’s commonly held that it was a make-good for being snubbed before.

(more…)

I am not going to be objective. So when I say that it is a sign of being fucked in the melon that you get off by shitting upon someone else or being shat upon, I don’t care if you think it’s normal. It’s not. You’re a freak, you’re mentally ill and you probably have Hepatitis C.

But that little fit of hate distracts me already from what I’m really here to deride … “The Time Traveler’s Wife” … oh, please God, why?

The commercials are not going to cause a reaction any stronger than whatever I jot down here but, for the sake of hyperbole — of which I’m so fucking fond — the movie’s promotional spots make me want to kill someone associated with the film while I vomit from disgust.

(more…)

I am sick of hearing about Michael Jackson. He is dead. Let the person be. There wasn’t much of him to go around based on his weight at the time of death, but everyone is picking at and squeezing his carcass for every last vestige that can be monetized.

But because they won’t leave it alone, I’ve got something to say about it.

One of the bigger topics, glossed over by the major media networks, is Jackson’s purported pedophilia. A cement-headed Long Island stereotype, Republican representative Peter King, griped that society is “glorifying” a “low-life” instead of giving press to salt of the earth types like firefighters, soldiers and other champions of the lower class.

(more…)

I saw ‘Slap Shot’ a year or so ago, in a bare apartment into which I’d just moved, during the throes of a shit break-up, as if there are good ones. So, there’s the mood: stark walls, a microwave box for a coffee table and constant, bitter acrimony. It has led me to commit sacrilege.

Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood for the movie, which was — in some ways — quite brilliant, but not in the way I expected. I think of it more as a tragedy than a comedy. It is a dejecting snap shot of pathetic losers bound for nowhere, their dysfunctional lives and relationships in a bleak, working class hellhole of a town.

I think the movie’s crucial flaw is that it is purveyed as humor. It is not funny. At least, it wasn’t funny to me. I thought the cheap attempts at comedy were either cringe-inducingly brilliant examples of how unfunny real, boorish and uneducated people are … or just shit writing that fell flat.

(more…)

The prevailing thought on my mind has been: “Wow, amazing that someone can be accused of being a pedophile, be so odd that eccentric doesn’t quite cut it, mangle their appearance with surgery to the point of abject disfigurement … yet still be mourned by millions. It says a lot about one’s accomplishments.”

Or, it at least cites how highly suspect is the value of public opinion. People, in general, have notoriously bad judgment and dubious taste.

(more…)

Talent and skill are two things in short supply. They are one of many rare tandems in life … brains and beauty comes to mind.

I predominantly spent this evening writing. I also made a simple and delicious dinner, played the guitar and the piano and found various ways to waste time on the temporal vacuum called the Internet. I did find an article on time signatures and learned some interesting things.

I play instruments, but I am loath to call myself a musician. To me, a musician is like a carpenter. They have a skill that they parlay into a trade that yields them pay. Musicians are people who play instruments professionally, for money. I play instruments because I can (to a reasonable extent) and because I enjoy creating things and expressing myself through song. I would love to be paid, but I am not willing to put myself on public display … which is a pretty crucial component of being paid to entertain people.

(more…)

At least, so says an ad on Facebook (see below, right).

The ad says “Want to be a Detective? The Government is hiring like crazy! Get Free information on how to become a Detective right now. Financial Aid available!”

I don’t know whether to make fun of the syntax, the random, albeit obviously planned, capitalizations or just its overall absurdity.

What strikes me more than any of the above is that I bet some asshole got paid a ton of money to write that shit.

I wrote copy once for a mobile video game company and made money hand over fist for minutes of work. Granted, my descriptions were eloquent things of beauty, but that’s not the point.

Interestingly, the guy who runs the company employs some dickhead asshole with a huge attitude to manage his finances and me and finance guy had a disagreement over my invoices, so I got the persona non grata treatment.

Best of luck boys, hope you run your piece of shit company into the ground, you fucks. At least you’ll still be OK because the Government is hiring like CRAZY!

I work in “the business.” Yes, I know that means nothing without context because there are tons of “the businesses” just like “the city” is relative to whichever metropolis is closest to your non-metropolitan locale.

But, come on people, the only “the business” is Journalism and the only “the city” is New York. And I hate them both, but I love them, too, damn it. Well, I tolerate them both … kind of like a wife and a child.

In “the business” we have something called “the wood” and, well folks, my wood was on the front page of the paper today. Now, before you get excited that I’m talking about my cock again, by wood I of course mean “the headline of our top story.”

(more…)