PRIVATE WOOD or HAHA b/w SWEET SCOOP THAT

God dammit. I'm turning a distinct/peculiar shade of red with anger over a certain British band with floppy, dark, "mop-like" hair for driving their little clown car up to the music bus and kicking out all the good stuff: Satanic R&B and cheesy, anachronistic instrumental cuts with needly, wet-sounding guitar and sleazy basement musics. It doesn't take a psychologist to come down and break a bottle on the side of a ship to crown this a complete & total bummer.

At the time, it was as if everybody turned into a gaggle of weepy virgins instead of some kinda' creep that hangs out in a bar (re: basement) and says weird, vaguely veiled things to teenage girls. Ehh... maybe that's not such a great vibe. It was as if someone had replaced gin & coffee (together -- it's called a "Ray Charles") with a hot chocolate machine (::frowny face::). What's good about that? I'll tell you what: nothing!

RUG CULTURE

What if it were the last day of Earth & the first day of your period? Or if you hired strippers for your end of the world party & they showed up way too drunk? I heard a story about how a friend was ragging on a stripper's bodyguard for looking like Jared from the Subway commercials. He yelled "Hey Jared" one time too many & the thug flashed his piece.

The constant bombardment of information is so overwhelming that I don't think I could "tap into the zeitgeist" if I tried. What is the zeitgeist? Does it matter whether I can figure out what it is?

Drug culture is weird but this is the future & the future is so wild. There are whipped creams that gets you drunk. Four Loko has been banned but you can't suppress greatness. Some creep(s) will figure out how to make FOUR LOKO HOMEBREW.

Richie & I popped The Whip at Elks Lodge a couple nights ago and man it was good. I MADE A NEW MIX FOR THE OCCASION. Brad Hales was our guest and the selection was spectacular. If anyone has a line on even more "secret" bars in town, do let me know. Dark rooms with billiards & smoking in the back?

Last week I DJ'd an auction of prison art. This was my buy: "Passion Fruit." If you catch word of one of these auctions, you must go.

Home life is good. Someone said they thought ENB and I had broken up because I wasn't covered with bruises anymore. Outside right now it's the storm of the century.

Silence is golden, but a whisper is a treasure.
In the field of clichés
we straddled a horse together.

And when a baby kangaroo cried in the distance
how did you that make you feel?

My good friend Richie & I popped The Whip in Hamtramck this past Wednesday & it was a night of surprises. We had a live guest: Eddie Kirkland, one time member of Otis Redding's band and John Lee Hooker's second guitarist. The man is 87 years old & whipped everybody; we had to unplug his amp at 3:30AM or he would have kept going. Tonight, Eddie & Richie play the last Gories show for a while. Also: RICHIE MADE A MIX FOR THE WHIP. 

Mike had a monster holiday party at the hair place. An unnamed band played a looooong set of Jefferson Airplane songs in a reggae style. Not a lot of fruitful conversation that night but many, many tasty licks.

ENB & I saw LUCKY DRAGONS play last week & it was a highlight of my life (one of many, of course!). There's something about Lucky Dragons. A realistic idealism. Punk rock taken to its logical place. And the jams are amazing.

There's a new show house in Ypsi called Chain House (formerly known as Stupid House). It was me + a bunch of noise doods + fist fights = success!

RECAP

My friend Richie is a beatnik. He plays drums for Danny Kroha, is Dennis Coffey's DJ, and puts out books. He's also an ace DJ and we started a new party called The Whip. The first one was a month ago and I MADE A MIX for it which doubles as a love mix for my best gal.

Two friends were just blessed with warehouses. We found all kinds of stuff inside one of them: live shotgun shells, a box of straight-up turds, a motorbike seat Mike had been looking for, cassettes of cursing lawyers, etc. Haunted space!

Over at the other warehouse, they were in the business of setting chairs on fire. Flames from the final blast licked the camera lens.

This warehouse had an ornate spiral staircase that lead to a tiny, banal office for dwarves -- a small room with tan carpet. Very spooky. The staircase didn't lead up into the room but ended at it. Inside the room, the mouth of the stairs is just a hole in the floor.

My homies in MI AMI made A MIX FOR 20JFG. DMM has this 100% SILK thing going on now too. Busy bodies. They're really changing up their shit right now & it's getting weird. Weird great.

I've been telling people that my new band is a young woman tied to a pole, a free jazz drummer stationed 20 yards away, and me & another person pretending we're not involved but trying to prevent people from "rescuing" her. The cops came to our first show.

ENB & I spent some time in the country last month. I told the father of my best friend's bride-to-be "not to be a pussy." It was a mistake; he was a forgiving host. ENB pumped rounds into the fire pit.

It's almost impossible to flyer in this town. Some dickhead told me that I should rent a "pole-like kiosk" specifically for flyering to be installed directly next to poles. He split when I asked him to pay for it.

Chacho finally came to me in a dream. We acknowledged that it had been some time since we last saw each other & spent the afternoon playing in a yard. We danced, let him shit on someone else's lawn, and played hide & seek in the house. It was the simplest, least weird dream I've ever had.