This outdoor drinking game is a new one on me but I like the arts-and-crafts-meets-LARPing aspect of it. The men demonstrating it in this instructive video are connected to the band Death By Stereo. The Emotron posted this on Myspace.com. He referred to their game as the "West Coast version." The wisest wizard is the one who can tell me how the East Coast version goes.
If you really want to, you can watch The Emotron play a non-alcoholic version. Again, with the spewing of the Yoo-Hoo:
HERE Urban Dictionary has helped me out again. Perhaps, the jousting part is a burly Western addition.
I put on a record with a few albums by Japanese hardcore band, Gauze. First up was Fuck Heads. That's when I saw Momar's ears going stiff, signaling that he was giving me another one of his reviews. First they rotated independently of each other with each heavy riff. Shortly, he leapt off the couch and made a weird, drunk-looking circle on the rug, sort of staggering one way and then another, as if his senses were totally jammed. He returned to the couch switching his tail every verse or so and staring murderously first at me and then at the stereo. Then he darted off the couch and landed in the hall with his tail jerking back and forth. He never relaxed his ears. I found him crouched on the rug in the bedroom before the end of side A. By side B he seemed a little catatonic. (No pun intended.)
Then we put on Discharge and he calmed down. Hard to tell what this means in terms of his rating system. We're working on it.
This is pretty much the best name for a zine I have ever encountered and it gets extra points for containing mostly comics for degenerates. I read all of those first. It also contains reviews and features focused on rock music for degenerates past and present. The first issue even has an interview with Baby Shakes.
One of the reviews of a Gentleman Jesse seven inch in the second issue contains this incisive observation:
"However, if I were thee Gentleman Jesse, I wouldn't title the first song 'I Don't Want to Know (Where You Were Last Night)' [sic] I personally would have written 'Bitch, Pack Your Shit and Get Out.'"
I've been studying up on some of Atlanta's most famous eateries. Every time I tell people that I think I've come to the end of my project, someone has a new one for me. I don't really eat meat so poor Sean has acted as a proxy stomach for much of this investigation.
At this point I don't think either of us ever wants to see a frying pan again.
We have been so dedicated that we even waited for hours at Ann's Snack Bar to sample the Ghetto Burger. This behemoth is not just the stuff of local legend, it was also made famous by an article in the Wall Street Journal. So I had to know. Yes, I took a couple of bites. I might have taken more but that was all I could handle, what with two patties and the deep fried bacon. But it was good. Sort of like if Burger King was actually incredibly delicious.
But it's hard to tell if it's worth the wait. You would have to get a control group who didn't wait for two to three hours to get their Ghetto Burger and ask them if it is incredibly delicious.
The other thing Ann is famous for is not being very nice to people who don't wait until it is their turn to come in from the patio to the counter area to get their burger or hot dog. As for that, don't believe the hype.
Speaking of overwhelming encounters with beauty (see "Aphasia"), I think I managed to make myself useful at The Big Tease last night. My friend Carrie, who teaches trapeze to kids, got me volunteering with her as a cigar girl at this carnival/circus/burlesque extravaganza starring the Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins to benefit Eyedrum and Twinhead Theatre. Which means I had an excuse to wear a dress! I even put on eyeshadow. The cigar thing was really for show and, mostly, I was stamping hands and taking money. A lot of money.
This was one of those nights when it seems like half the weirdos in town came out just to demonstrate how beautiful they all are when you get them in one room. And I don't just mean the fire dancers and actors. The Atlanta Sedition Orchestra cheekily renamed themselves the Atlanta Seduction Orchestra for this special engagement and conducted a triumphal parade for the star set to their interpretation of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing." Somehow there was a tiny motorized vehicle involved that looked like a pink cat shaped night light in the darkness.
I found it all strangely moving. I should explain about me and marching bands but I can't, really, except to say that there's something about a high school band doing "Hang on Sloopy" on dented instruments that can bring a tear to my eye under the right circumstances.
I didn't get to see as much of the standing-room-only show as I would have liked but there was a trapeze act and Ms. Vagina Jenkins was in rare form. I was slack jawed before she had completely removed one satin elbow glove. A friend of Carrie's standing next to me noted that her every gesture seemed to mean something. Perhaps the parts of the night came together in a similar way. Or perhaps that feeling is another example of what sensory overload does to my feeble neurological switchboard.
It's not just a pretty word. It's a neurological disorder caused by brain damage. Sufferers have trouble understanding or using language. I've callously appropriated the term to talk about an experience that probably doesn't have a name. There's a similar condition that isn't caused by brain damage, or even smoking weed. I think it's just caused by brain overload. My brain gets overloaded pretty easily. One notable incident lasted for weeks.
It was my freshman year of college and I was living in Brooklyn and commuting into Manhattan for school. Growing up in West Palm Beach is pretty much the definition of sensory deprivation and my new life was pretty much the opposite of that. Then there was all that education I was getting.
At a certain point I stopped being able to talk. People would walk up to me and say, "Hey, Bev, what's up?" and I'd just look at them blankly, trying to form an expressible thought, like "Nothing much. What's up with you?", but it wouldn't come. Then I'd get distracted by the fact that it was taking so long to form a thought. Then my friend would say, "Talk to you later, Bev."
It was very distressing, especially since I figured I was the only person to whom this had ever happened. A thing I'd never be able to explain to anyone and something too weird and trivial to bother trying to explain anyway. Turns out a friend of mine from high school was going through the same thing around the same time. She had also left West Palm to go to college.
Last night, my friend Heather told me about a similar experience when she traveled to Ohio for college.
"I was in college and in a new city and people would walk up to me and be like "Hi, Heather" and in my head I would say "Hi" but I couldn't make my mouth say the words," she explained.
"I would feel like such an asshole," she added.
I know the feeling. It reminds me of Stendhal Syndrome and other situations where foreignness or an overwhelming encounter with beauty can cause temporary insanity or sudden illness. Nice to know these things happen to other people. Confusion and anxiety love company dontcha know.
Screaming Lord Sutch is March's Bad Idea Potluck icon. He is famous for dressing like Jack the Ripper and running for British Parliament. As you can see from this video, he also had a way with a rock n' roll song. By all accounts, his theatricality prefigured that of Alice Cooper, making him sort of a missing link between Cooper and his own inspiration Screamin' Jay Hawkins.
Okay, maybe this video really just demonstrates why he's the icon of the month.
I like this obit on him in the Dead Musician's Directory:
This is my new Internet time waster. It's no someecards.com, but it is amazing how so many contributors can nail the form. Each one is an cross between a haiku and gag with a set up and a punchline. They're funny and supposed to be true. A friend of mine who works for the state department told me about it while he was rambling incoherently about something unrelated:
This applies equally to her real-life acolytes. Unless they get tattoos of Barbie. Especially, like, Mermaid Barbie or one of her other more recent incarnations. That would be kind of awesome.
Actually, sleeve tattoos would make Barbie a Suicide Girl. But Totally Stylin' Tattoos Barbie would have to put on all her little decals at once to achieve that look and even then it wouldn't look right.
I wonder if the creators of this doll realize how magnificently tuned-in to the zeitgeist they are. If I saw a girl with a tattoo of a panda eating a cupcake, I would give her props.
Supposedly, parents don't like the tattooed Barbie. Don't they know little girls have always tattooed their Barbies with Magic Marker and ripped off the velcro outfits so they could make their dolls consummate torrid affairs in imitation of their mothers' soap operas?
All the ones I grew up with did, anyway. They probably all have tattoos now. Our parents shouldn't have let us have Magic Markers.
I quit the awesome job I was training for at the food co-op so I can focus on my writing. That is to say, I have deadlines and I think if I work this job I won't meet them. All but one of the publications I write for pays me, but still, quitting any job in this economy feels like running off a cliff.
On the other hand, ruining my sterling record of turning in decent copy on time will make me feel like jumping off a cliff. I decided to go with the lesser of two fuck-up moves. I'm not even going to go back on unemployment because I'm not looking for a real job. (Immediate back story: had sweet writing job, got laid off.) At least provisionally, I'm just looking for a couple more paying writing gigs.
So far, the people close to me are okay with it and my acquaintances are mostly just disappointed that I was all nice and apologetic about it, dropping off my neatly folded apron with downcast eyes instead of busting out with both middle fingers blazing.
Oh, well. This is Bad Idea Potluck, not Shitty Idea Potluck.
Feel free to rate my level of idiocy on a scale from one to ten and start a pool to see how long it is before I am applying to work at Caribou Coffee. Also, feel free to get me the t-shirt pictured above from web comic artist Natalie Dee's web store. I'm a medium.
My cat Momar doesn't contribute much to our collective well being. I have, however, trained him to review records and CDs for me. He's totally unbiased about music. And he can't read, so he won't be swayed by the blandishments of press releases or Vice. With him you get a pure response. You should have seen the sensitive way his ears started twitching when Sean put on a Colin Newman album yesterday.
A few days ago I tried Screaming Females' first album Baby Teeth out on him. The results were striking but inconclusive. During side A he stalked from on end of the house to the other. First, he crouched facing the front door with his nose a few inches from the threshold, as if he sensed an intruder. By the last song he was crawling through the living room, low on his haunches, stopping only to glare at the stereo. Once he made it to the kitchen, he proceeded to crouch in front of the back door. I should stress that, most of the time, all he does is lay around. In fact, most of the time, he's asleep.
He chilled out during side B. Personally, I think his reaction to side A was uncalled for but I'll admit that there was a lot of rock on there for him to process, especially for a three piece band. It only gets thicker on their second album What If Someone is Watching Their TV?
I haven't played their forthcoming album Power Move for him yet, but I will. The first track is called "Bell" and it is going to take me a long time to get sick of it.
Here are some examples of Momar's earlier criticism on Empty-Headsmind: Momar Likes Rock n' Roll
Looks like I'll be volunteering at this extravaganza starring noted ecdysiast Vagina Jenkins. I have no idea what I'll be doing but I promise to do my best at it. You may note that the Atlanta Sedition Orchestra seems to be about to change their name for this event. Maybe this is like their Sgt. Pepper's moment. It's all probably more than I can cope with psychologically, but I'll be there.
We know this anonymous blogger and we applaud the intensely (dare we say inadvisably) personal tone of this blog. The author of The Morning Hours is simply writing down all the memories she has filed under "love life." We're excited to see where it goes. We've also been dying to use the literary reference in the title to this post. (We got a million of 'em.)
I'm piecing the cultural history of the bad idea together slowly. I'm starting with the recent past and don't expect to get much further than that. Today we are going all the way back to the '90s and the Bad Idea Jeans sketch. The main hit you get when you Google "bad ideas," is an SNL sketch featuring Bad Idea brand jeans. Like sneakers that can make you fly, these jeans give ordinary people the power to keep guns around small children, have unprotected sex with strangers and give their kidneys away.
According to Urbandictionary.com "bad idea jeans" has come to be used as a term to identify a person who has, or who has had a bad idea. They are "wearing their bad idea jeans" in such instances.
And apparently, you can also get real Bad Idea jeans:
Unless, this is also a joke. Blast you, Internet. For a lot of my jeans, the bad idea was buying them in the first place. There's no cure for it either. Like, I sort of want the jeans the lady up top has. And I think I know where I can get some.
I learned a lot in Las Vegas. The most important things had to do with figuring out exactly what kind of shocks my heart can take. I mean that literally. A girl at my high school died of a heart attack when a semi ran her off the road. It's possible to die of fear. So, it's not the possibility of decapitation or throwing up that makes me wary of roller coasters. I'm afraid my heart will explode. But I survived the roller coaster at the New York New York Casino. I even opened my eyes once. So far, so good.
The geography of Las Vegas is conducive to testing cardiac structural soundness. There are a lot of things to jump off of and into there. Pools with conveniently close pool sheds. Cliffs sitting right next to rivers. There's an indoor/outdoor roller coaster down the block. There's a few of them actually. Alcohol is plentiful and more than socially acceptable. Outside the city, there are mountains and washes and hot springs where I discovered that mild spelunking and even getting caught in a flash flood won't necessarily kill you. I remember my life in Las Vegas as a series of action shots.
I was never timid as a little girl. I liked skateboarding and dares. I used to hitchhike. Jumping off of things was always a favorite pastime. Once I found a bike ramp unattended behind a Publix on a quiet Sunday afternoon and jumped my bike off that. But I wasn't a BMXer and I didn't know how to land. So, I landed on the bar of my bike. Luckily, my crotch broke my fall. I just lay there for awhile after that.
I've long felt a spiritual calling to occasionally set aside "perfectly safe" and check in with "probably won't die." Or, lately, the more grown-up version: "probably won't ruin your life."
It's not that I ever became really timid. But one day I did change. It's hard to explain. My first week living in New York City I saw the Blair Witch Project and became afraid of the woods at night. I used to walk around in the swamp near my house when I couldn't sleep as a teenager, but that movie scared the crap out of me and after that I never wanted to go into the woods alone period. There was always plenty of stupid to get into in the city, but that night I started to develop a sense of how that stupid might someday kill me. I never quit stupid. That's a lifelong love affair. But at a certain point I added freaking out about it. That's the real problem.
It really started a year later when I moved to Long Island and picked up the local custom of having panic attacks. I don't know how that happened exactly but I didn't find relief until I moved to Las Vegas. It's sunny there. And dry.The kids are into metalcore.
And it's a city against restraint. It's considered bad form if you don't take things to their complete and inevitable conclusion. The first time I went to visit a friend there we walked the entire length of the Strip and back the first night. The next morning I had lost my voice. I wasn't used to such dry air.
Years later, while employed in Las Vegas as a reporter, I stayed up late on a work night to skate most of the Strip. Some company or other had organized a mass skateboarding invasion for Go Skateboarding Day, which happens all over the world every June 21. Really, it seems like not much more was required than telling few hundred kids to be there. Who would miss it? There were quite a few arrests but I wasn't one of them so my "probably won't ruin your life" calculations were accurate. Of course, I was a mess at work the next day.
See:
I think my point is that there is a culture in Las Vegas that helped me not look at life through
existential horror-colored glasses as much. And to recognize that some of those "probably won't die or even ruin your life" events are vital, and should absolutely be prioritized. I think that's the point of this blog.
This is not something you figure out once and then you're good for life. You have to stay in practice and learn new skills on the path by drawing on old skills. I have many friends to thank for their help.
Like the time me and Sean went kayaking on the Colorado River with a friend of his named Justin. We stopped for a break near a little overhang. A cliff really. Justin climbed up and jumped off into the water below. It looked awesome. Of course, I was honor bound to do it too and Sean went up as well. But I was trying to go first. I say trying because my body or my brain, one of them, was having trouble with the directive. It was a pretty big rock and I wasn't sure how deep the water was.
"Just pretend you're skateboarding," Sean said. Then it was easy. This is a science. And that guy is pretty good at it.
The Bad Idea Potluck beer of the month is Sweetwater Brewing Company's Georgia Brown ale. It's from Atlanta and I'm feeling Atlanta lately. I was on the fence for awhile but this town has heart. Keep in mind that I fall madly in love with any city I live in for over a year. It's a chemical process probably linked to oxytocin production. I have some of this month's beer in the house right now, which is good because this beer is like drinking a warm hug (it's an insidious beverage) and it could keep snowing for a long time.
