Adventures of McBean and Co.

Walking McBean around the suburban neighborhood. He hustles along in haphazard patterns without a leash, running all over lawns as I contemplate my life. It's kind of a nightly thing. McBean used to be named Cody, but I have changed his name as I sometimes do. McBean cannot talk and so I realize I can pretty much just project onto him whatever, and that happens to include a name change. That’s all animal people are, I realize, people who cannot own up to the fact that human beings have fundamentally let them down in some way. They end up projecting all kinds of things on to their animals, taking them around, substituting them for actual people. It’s completely insane. I would only consider myself a partial dog-person.

And besides, McBean is probably projecting so many needs on to me. "Isn’t that right?" I ask him, walking around the neighborhood, making sure no one’s around to hear me talking to the dog. McBean used to be my uncle’s dog, and when he opted out of being an American in favor of living the superior European life, supping up on fine wines somewhere, my grandmother inherited McBean. She’s pretty much in the habit of being an elderly person, however, not prone to Homeric treks through the neighborhood, and so I took over the daily activity of walks. He relies on me like that. In as much as he can even walk at all. Still, though, there he is everyday, wagging his tail like a motherfucker. It's kind of endearing.


In return for my stoical subservience as dog-walker extrodinaire, McBean pays me back by pissing and shitting on every available surface along our walk while I slowly contract frostbite which will require the amputation of limbs. He’s old, I guess. Forgets that I do not posses a fur coat like he does. What can you do? Just tonight, in fact, he has gone the extra-measure of darting straight for the most manicured lawn in the neighborhood, an all-time favorite trick. He despises these people, maybe, thinks their petty concerns and nice lawn deserves fertilizing. Who could say what McBean is thinking? He is, though, invariably shitting on the nicest lawn in the neighborhood, and of course I do not possess a bag in which to pick up the shit (do not actually go the extra length of bringing the precautionary measures of shit-picking-up-material). The inhabitants of said house have taken notice. Realize there is a renegade dog within the neighborhood, have gone so far as to set up an encampment in the window of their house. Are camped out, in fact, nightly. Lying in wait, in their secret encampment. "Don’t let him go there!" some woman shouts at me out of nowhere. I feel naked out there, on the middle of her lawn, at a time when I thought most people would be inside eating Cheetos, watching T.V. I almost want to duck for cover, crouching down a little as I hear her yell at full volume. McBean and I have been spied. I have no idea of how to respond to this situation, have not been versed in the etiquette of shit-picking-upping. I can see she has left the window encampment in which she is yelling from and is in all probability in the process of coming out to greet me--where she will find no one, however. As I am hauling ass down the road at top-notch, McBean in pursuit a little slower, having just finished his business.

Deerhoof at Skidmore

Clunking and clunking away.
Deerhoof at Skidmore and random philosophical musings afterward in a Taco Bell parking lot. There's nothing like whipping out your western constructs in the parking lot of a Taco Bell. Can I get some Fire Sauce with that, please? It was a good time, though. Deerhoof are awesome. They set up these nicely melodic parts and then proceed to totally destroy them with these completely retarded thumping sections, which evoke cartoons so perfectly. "More bands need to wreck their songs," I say. Which, I guess, is the parting sentiment.

They have taken my favorite television station TRIO off of the air and have replaced it with something called Sleuth. Instead of getting to see your favorite indie rock videos interspersed with old-school favorites like Mr. Bill, you now get unfathomable programming choices, like marathons of Knight Rider (leaving you only to contemplate the powers that be. Is there some demographic out there really that bent on nostalgia programming? I cannot believe). While I may have liked seeing Hasselhoff drive around in a car with his bouffant blowing in the wind at age five, even going as far as to request his presence on a birthday cake, it seems all changed around now. I take it all in, just to be sure.

Today’s episode reveals that Bonnie (the mechanic) has been indoctrinated by some “intellectual” group, and now the powers that be want to use K.I.T.T. (the uptight, Trans-Am manifestation of Alex Trebek—which is definitely some kind of oxymoron, totally oversought by the writers of the show) in some kind of heist, which will earn them money to carry out other nefarious acts in an overall plight for world dominance. “Pull over to the curb,” they tell K.I.T.T. “This seems highly irregular and disconcerting,” K.I.T.T. replies. Can you believe? I almost laugh out loud. The sides have been drawn, though. The archetypes of Good vs. Evil present—the same kind of worldview perpetuated by my grandmother. “What if they come and get my information?” she asks you. They? You question her, all of the sudden remembering those Knight Rider episodes, the shadowy element of evil. I can’t really tell you what happens next, but it seems fairly predictable. It’s some kind of inverse fantasy world vis-a-vis Stanely Kubric in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you know that the producers of Knight Rider were smoking a whole lot of weed and watching that same movie some years earlier. They pretty much knew that it would appeal to a whole bunch of 8 year-olds, because basically, who doesn’t want to see a jacked-up car who talks like Alex Trebek totally whip ass of the bad guys.

I just don’t know, though. K.I.T.T. really annoys me. It may just be my neo-Luddite stances talking, but I hope for a car crash. Something. I want the bad guys to win and for K.I.T.T. to be subverted. I will go so far as to admit that those people were not dumb, though. There’s some pretty intense stuff going on there, underneath the surface. You kind of have to look. It's all there if you aren’t just totally distracted by the insanity of their hairdos.

The Most Depressing Day of the Year

Ting-a-ling, motherfuckers. What’s going on? It is probably verging on the 25th or later by the time you’re reading this. That’s good news for you. NPR relates that scientists have determined January 24th is the most depressing day of the year. How they figured this out, I have no idea. That’s what they have decided on, though. Apparently, most people have given up on their New Year’s resolutions and are totally catatonic and depressed by the 24th, when their credit card statements have started rolling in, revealing the excess of holiday revelry. This revelation thus provides the suicidal urges that have people calling in to work or driving into to trees (or icy rivers—as pointed out by the nightly news: “I heard the car revving up,” some random bystander reports, “and then it just took off over the embankment and into the water”. They then cut to footage of a Ford Taurus bafoonishly floating in the icy water, the driver rescued).

Personally, I had a pretty rad day. My holiday stoicism and meager present-giving circumvented the whole January 24th depression day. Instead I shambled around all day, trying to find people who would share in my intense enthusiasm for getting drunk and going sleigh riding. I wasn’t very successful. People responded predictably, with wrinkled noses and contorted faces which suggested that either I am totally insane or they’re no fun. It’s cool. I don’t mind. Be depressed if you want to. What, you can only sit around when you’re getting drunk? Drinking Gin out of a brown bag while sleighing is sketchy? The last time I checked, there was no law against it.

I kind of like the idea of a national depression day, though. One day in a year where we would recognize the forces conspiring against us. You would be able to take that day off work and just do whatever, because hey, man, things are pretty fucking crappy. It’s all pretty much relative, though, I imagine. I’ll get mine, I’m sure. Just don’t be wondering what the hell is the matter with me next time you want me to hang around in Lark Tavern, scowling at the proliferation of bearded men in there. Because that just really bums me out.

Industrial Earplugs-Style

Anyone out there ever listen to the radio? Plenty of people do, I know. The car I’m borrowing this morning only happens to get two stations, Fly 92.3 or The River. I have to decide. Nickelback or Lionel Richie? Listening to Fly 92 at least offers me the chance of hearing the Kanye West song, and so I decide to chance it, on the 90% chance that I’m going to hear something bad. And I mean terrible. I know from past experience that this particular station has a play list of the same four or five songs, periodically interrupted by the radio DJ coming on to announce the latest in celebrity affairs. “Can you believe,” she intones, “Brad Pitt and Angelina?” At which point she segues back in (you’ve got to love the segue, like they do it on the nightly news. They will segue anything if you give them the chance), “Well at least these two won’t have to worry about what Kanye is singing about here.” She plays the prenup song and I’m getting all into it. Getdowngirlgoheadgetdown. People are taking sidelong glances at me from their cars. I try and wrap my brain around just what it is it about a skinny white kid brandishing freaky dance moves to a song about conjugal arrangements while seated in a rusty Buick that elicits all out derision from passers by, but people are totally spazzing out. It’s like they just cannot believe. Kind of a weird part of town, I decide. What can I do?

I listen some more. “Nickleback,” I say derisively underneath my breath. All dancing has come to a halt. I cannot believe this kind of subservience. It’s terrible: the equivalent experience of looking at the place where you live, the junk-strewn living room and declaring, this is just not working here. We’ve got to do something about this. The weird thing about most pop-cultural stuff, though, is that people never make those kind of deductions, they don’t really care. It’s just kind of there, like the weather, and you just kind of deal with it. And this is a point which extends well beyond music to a myriad of subject matters which I contemplate on a daily basis. Walking around the grocery store the other day. Is there anything in here which won’t kill me? Something which doesn’t extend the package life of a particular product to beyond infinity, which won’t give me a heart attack at some later point. Listening to Fly 92, actually, is the musical equivalent of the various toxins in most of the foods at your local grocery mart. I try and be discerning but what can you do. You find yourself in a borrowed car and all there is to eat is some candy bar that you find in the dash. It’s a heart attack all the same.

There’s this guy at some venue of “entertainment” that I sometimes go to, and I notice he wears what appears to be headphones. On closer inspection, though, I realize that they are not actually headphones, but in fact industrial-sized earplugs, like the kind they give to construction workers who have to deal with insidious noise all day. “Hey, why do you wear those for?” I ask him one time. “Oh, I just can’t handle this radio station in here,” he tells me. It seems totally insane, but then, I understand, too. You have to keep your guard up. And I kind of feel like, optimistically, we’re all just drowning out the din, industrial earplugs-style, like that guy. In fact, I like to think of it as a conceptual steel-plated suit, like a medieval warrior. You can almost imagine. So next time you see me, don’t ask me why I’m dressed so weird.

Clean Your Hands of Me

Virgin blog. Trying not to fuck it up. So sparkly and new. I feel like a four year-old with a magic marker in an empty room, and I will probably live up to that reputation, besmirching the walls every which way, slashing of the color pallet. Parents will make an entry and everything will be redecorated, ink on my hands.

This is the degeneration of my longtime aspiration of making fanzines. I was going to do that for ten years and just never got around to it. And so I’m getting around to it, I guess. Finally. The end result won’t be as cool, though. And if you have the time and patience, I suggest you check out actual ‘zines, as they’re way cooler and less sterile. Not a very good case I am making, I know, contributing to the cultural degeneration. But what can you do? I happen to live in Albany, New York. I never knew of any kind of cultural contingent happening around here, and so the prospect of doing anything just felt to me like it would have fallen on empty hands. I could be wrong. There are some creative people who live around here, I know. Maybe I just never met any of them. I don’t know. This whole thing will come unraveled, possibly; the next time you see me, I’ll be situated in an all-night copy center with paper cuts on my hands, cursing myself. Who could say what’s going to happen? I like to stay upbeat like that.

I should also probably preface all this by saying you should definitely not read this blog. It will only corrupt you in some kind of way, spiny tentacles reaching out and wrapping around your brain. Things I have written in the past have caused loss of friends, derision from strangers, and alienation from certain area bartenders. Not a good track record. I should probably stop now. It’s not even the third paragraph and I already have ink all over everything. But really, though: be warned. I’ve got to go wash my hands now.