The Break-Up

When you take a minute to think of all the things you take for granted every day, you might find it takes more than a single minute to consider all of them. At night, nobody wonders as they're falling asleep whether or not the road they take to work will continue to exist in the morning. Or if the Starbucks that provides them their coffee will still exist. Or whether or not their parents will stop loving each other. Or whether or not the sun will burn out. These things are just assumed to continue existing. Sure as the sun, as sung by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, with utmost certainty.

You might be certain that the members of your favorite bands are best friends, having impossibly productive and stable relationships, stronger than your own parents because they're bonded by their art. One of those bands might be the most influential rock bands of the last thirty years. Two members of that band, who've been married for 27 years, could be considered the King and Queen of alternative music.

In October, Spin reported that Kim Gordon & Thurston Moore announced the break-up of their marriage since 1984. After learning this a week ago I have been emotionally stewing about the potential demise of one my favorite bands that is still performing (one band on a very short list).

My own parents were married a year earlier, though they divorced in 1995, when I was nine years old. When I discovered Sonic Youth as a teenager it was very easy, having around only one parent who was very left-brained, to consider Kim & Thurston artistic parental figures who took up the same space in my subconscious that my real parents did.

My real parents taught me everything they could about life. "Listening to music that isn't cool is stupid," my father would say to me. "Stop listening to your father," my mother would say to me. But when I was in my car or in my room, Sonic Youth taught me everything they could about art. And noise. Lot's of fuckin' noise.

They taught me things my parents never could. They taught me that you didn't have to tune your guitar the same way everyone else did. They taught me that the best art I create will always come from the subconscious, everything floating around in my mind that I don't yet know or understand. They taught me to create my own meaning.

Sometimes they illuminated the things my real parents couldn't properly communicate. Listening to songs like I Love Her All The Time, Tom Violence, Death To Our Friends, Dirty Boots and Rain King helped me to understand that some things are better understood when you're older.

The Death of the Buzz

After 16 years, WPBZ, The Buzz 103.1 FM is dead.

Let me start by saying this is not an obituary for a highly-acclaimed, local alternative rock station. This is not the end of a beloved mouthpiece by and for the forward-thinking, knuckle-scraping, sonic rebels at the cutting edge of everything angry, bad-ass and loud.

In no way did The Buzz push any envelopes, stick it to any Men or rock anybody's faces off, unless you were the type of person to disagree, thinking these things could be achieved by listening (incessantly, relentlessly, 24 hours-a-day) to songs by

30 Seconds to Mars,

Breaking Benjamin,

Three Days Grace,
Puddle of Mudd,
Rise Against,
Papa Roach,
Shinedown,
Daughtry
and Nickelback.

The Buzz always played the same corporate bullshit you could hear everywhere and anywhere else. They were not great; they were an annoyance, and after sixteen years somebody decided they should peddle their drivel on the Internet, like the rest of us.

For me, the news that came on Monday was welcome, vindication for all the years of listening to moronic songs I was mature enough to despise when I was fourteen, let alone twenty-five. Fitting closure for all those times in the past, driving home from Suncoast High School, when I had to say to myself through gritted teeth, "Oh, I guess we'll just listen to that Finger Eleven song again. OK."

Gently they did go into that good night. Rage they did not against the dying of the light.

But there are some people who want them back, and they are just as entitled to their opinion as I am to mine.

The truly great moments in their broadcast history came only a few times a year when upon me they would bestow a Buzz Recycled Weekend. Those weekends, when for three days I was granted music that brought me back to the days in the passenger seat of my father's car, were great for people like me, who, for just once in a while, wanted to hear songs by

Jimmie's Chicken Shack,

The Butthole Surfers,
Alien Ant Farm,
The Mars Volta,
The Breeders,
The Deftones,
Fiona Apple,
Radiohead,
The Pixies,
Metallica,

Placebo,
Primus,
R.E.M.,
Beck
and 311.

If these weekends were only more frequent (hell, if they only kept the songs in the regular rotation) maybe the Buzz would have kept listeners like me, and in doing so, kept their place on our dials.

Sonnet II

My northern scope, hot glowing local blonde,
Suspending liquid ghosts in shifting globes
With ginger syntax, horrid equipoise,
To bloom anew, in fertile digs beyond.

Sacred mariners serenely breaming
Barges of posterity attrition.
Damage lacks for foreign superstition;
Noble kindling substitutes for dreaming.

Sun through sabel palms, when burning devils,
Shakes the blissful, screaming interference.
Tides eroding stranger incoherence,
Raising dangers soon to fresher levels.

Idiot mouths chasing literal thrills
Brighter than debunking embryo gills.

The Return To Idiocy

You know those nights where you can't sleep because you've run out of Xanax, and all night your mind reels with unanswerable questions like,

Which demographic is paying the largest share of my grandparent's social security?

When did it become acceptable for seven-year-olds to have cell phones?

Why does the media think that I give a shit about Britney Spears?

The answer to these questions are, of course, the Millennials; all of us who were fortunate enough to be born during an actor's tenure as president of the United States. Some would say that the teenagers alive during this time had monopolized all of America's precious, nonrenewable Irony reserves, leaving little for the newborns to enjoy when the time came for them (fifteen years down the road) to also disdain authority and be generally pissed off at everything.

Luckily, these two generations shared a common forum for social consciousness: MTV. And with this forum came the greatest spokesmen of all time for the disillusioned and disaffected.

On October 27, 2011, after being off the air for almost 14 years, America was once again granted the privilege to watch the adventures of Beavis and Butt-Head. Adventures like getting hepatitis from a homeless person, propositioning a man to let his teenage daughter manually pleasure them or denigrating the music videos on television as they live in abject squalor.

Although it's not the first time an animated television show has returned after an extended period of unnecessary cancellation (ask Seth MacFarlane), it's still the longest period of time from which an animated show has returned. After all these years, what's remarkable about the show is how true Mike Judge has stayed to the original incarnation, down to the show's bluesy guitar opening.

The only things Judge changed about the show are what couldn't have gone without it: the cultural references and the television they vilify. MTV president Van Toffler told Rolling Stone in February that, in addition to music videos, Beavis and Butt-Head will lend their talents for criticism to movies, UFC fights and popular amateur web videos.

Beavis and Butt-Head airs Thursday night at 10 p.m. on MTV. Here's a taste, friends.

The Rum Diary

Before Hunter S. Thompson gave birth to Gonzo Jonzo, he was just another 22-year-old in 1960 fleeing to Puerto Rico after wrecking his editor's car. After landing a job at the soon-to-fold El Sportivo magazine this boozy Caribbean respite provided him with all the material he would need for his sophomoric effort into the world of conventional fiction-writing, The Rum Diary.

Only for a true Thompson freak, the book is saved from its utter plotlessness by the characters he creates (or embellishes?) around protagonist Paul Kemp, a San Juan reporter who occasionally files stories while drinking and fighting around the humid commonwealth. Written in the late 50s and published in 1998 with the help of Johnny Depp, the release of The Rum Diary to American theaters has been long-awaited for those poor souls who chose to major in journalism after seeing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Like Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, the film is better than the book. Depp's subdued invocation of the Good Doctor's dialect is spot-on as he chases unfavorable leads and the promising Chenault (pronounced Sha-nelle), played by Amber Heard. There's even a scene where they have a long ménage à trois on a short pier with a candy-apple red 1960 Corvette.

The booze-imbued storyline leads to much fire-spitting craziness provided by Moburg (a perfectly scene-stealing Giovanni Ribisi) a rock-bottom burnout on a Hitler kick who stays with Kemp alongside second-banana Sala (an ever-wise Michael Rispoli) through the demise of their publication and the dissolution of their prosperity.

  
The Rum Diary is the perfect gift this holiday season for those who don't need another typewriter for Christmas.

The Inferno

There's a new book by Chuck Palahniuk that's set in Hell. Think The Breakfast Club and The Inferno twisted into one narrative. Madison Spencer, a thirteen-year-old daughter of liberal-secular-humanist celebrities who collect her siblings from impoverished regions of the world, finds herself in Hell after a serious weed overdose. Once there she meets a jock, a punk, a nerd and a slut. With them she goes on wacky adventures, one of which involves bringing giant she-demon Psezpolnica to climax with the severed head of her Hell-friend, Archer (the punk). Those little rascals.

The sights Hell has to offer: The Sea of Insects, The Great Plains of Broken Glass and the Giant Ocean of Wasted Sperm. Of the environment of Hell, Madison once said: "Hell is very much like Florida in that the resident bug life never dies." The currency of Hell is candy and all the operations are run by demon-bureaucrats who look lifted from a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch.

People Madison sees in Hell:

Norman Mailer

Kurt Cobain

Susan Sontag

John Lennon

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Madison learns a lot in Hell, like having a body mass index greater than .0012 and using the word "ain't" are damnation-worthy infractions. She also learns that the dead have many ways of sending messages to the living on Earth. For instance, if a soul is trying to tell you that you'll be dead before sunset, you will hear the song "You're the One That I Want" from Grease three times in the same day, seemingly by coincidence.

At a little over 240 pages, it's a hell of a good read. Ha!

The First Chill

Located under Georgia and Alabama lies a sleepy little state in the union that was colonized by New England in 1845. Because this sleepy little colony lacks the culture, heritage, hospitality and charm of the other southern states above it and the climate experiences the highest average heat of any other in the country the colonists who populate it do so for only the five coldest months of the year.

 But every year the residents of this colony, quaint as they are, wait longingly for the first morning of the Autumn season when they step out from their cozy little abodes to feel the first chills of winter, signaling the first waves of their seasonal flocks.

For the rest of the holiday season the simple residents of the warm, sleepy colony marvel with delight at the joyous clustering and spirited chirping of their visiting snow fowl in malls, restaurants, movie theaters, grocery stores and coffee shops. The darling residents gander curiously while their vacationers ruffle jolly plumage on highways, beaches, pontoon boats, tennis courts and golf courses.

Just as the curious residents of the warm little colony delight in the fluttering arrival of their annual gaggle in time for Christmas, so they despair when the time comes for their company to take flight back to their northern roosts.  Having nothing to do for the seven months until their yearly covey returns, the twee residents of the colony dawdle languidly without the knowledge of what a real bagel tastes like.

The Cat Named Guns

There's this orange cat that lives in a house built on farmland. This house is his second (maybe third) home. His age is indeterminate, but he spends most of his day doing nothing but lying around. He might sleep in the middle of an empty living room. He might investigate the happenings in the backyard of the house across the street (the one that doesn't get mowed regularly; whatever could be happening there). Or he might sneak up and gaze suspiciously at children waiting for a school bus at the bottom of the street for an hour. If nothing of the sort, he would probably go back to the house and sleep in some other, more interesting, empty room.

The people who live in the house think he is a perfectly acceptable little kitty. He's greeted with smiles and love and cutesy refrains of his name whenever he enters the room his people are currently occupying. When he's done being with his people, he leaves through a hole carved in a wall of the house provided for the comings and goings of him and the other kitties that live there. When Guns leaves, his people know that they have nothing to worry about, that he will soon return as surely as all the other kitties.

But one night not long ago, to the dismay of one of the people driving home after class, a dead orange kitty was spotted on the side of the road not far from the house. As all the people in the house came out to investigate the site of the accident it was concluded, after a few sad moments, that it was indeed their orange Guns who had perished.

Having many animals over the years had emotionally prepared the people of the house for a night such as this one. As the hole was dug in the backyard, they were careful not to strike the graves of the other animals who had once been residents of the house. After some solemn words were made for their good little cat, and his remains were peacefully laid to rest, the people went inside for their solemn shots of tequila, making melancholy jokes that their precious orange cat might stroll back inside after an hour's time like the heartbreak of the evening had never occurred.

These jokes proved strangely prophetic when later that night, as one of the people left their bedroom for a trip to the bathroom, their beloved orange cat was laying in the hallway looking back up at them as he would have done on any other unremarkable night.

The identity of the orange cat buried in their backyard is still a mystery.

Sonnet I

AM breaking fucking unrelenting,
Millions of boxes moving filthy miles
On roaring highways and waist-high mornings
For one but not all in all-changing styles.

Fat-noised the truth through galvanized salvage
Than with a better way to spend the day;
Out hacking off a crucial appendage
Clearly malignant, if it may so say.

Facial friends and vocal disagreers;
Of white static speech a black precedent,
A signal reaching the ionosphere,
A people for a dispatch never sent:

Most painful choices, the easiest, too.
My problem's not but a problem for you.