Stick Needles in Me

"Do you think everytime someone gets accupuncture a doll somewhere howls in pain?" Tapan Trivedi

My Ulcerative Colitis is acting up and the drugs they have me on are not doing a damn thing. The next step in drug therapy is a really harsh drug that will likely start wreaking havoc on my other organs and will require bone marrow testing regularly. Yep, they'll drill into my bones to remove marrow. That or I can do another run of the steroids. I LOVED being on the steroids, seriously. I had energy, and I felt better than I'd felt in years; no headches, no belly aches, nothing. I just don't like doing something so harsh more than once especially with potential side effects like a lump of fat devoloping on my forehead or a humbback.

So, what's a suffering belly aching gimp to do? Well, I don't want to do anything too drastic until after opening night of our new show, when my symptoms may start to fade on their own as my stress fades. But I don't want to have to give up doing things that stress me out, I want a long term solution to this problem.

I'm going to try accupuncture. It's something I've always been interested in and I've read that there is a high success rate at using accupuncture to deal with auto-immune conditions such as mine. (No, I don't have aids, that's AQUIRED Immune Deficiancy, my immune system is over-active not under. And it's a heredetary condition.)

My friend Linda works for an accupuncturist here in town who is also and herbalogist so I'm going to go give it a try as soon as they can get me in. I'm real excited about it and I look foward to describing the whole process here.

Sacto Punks hate me

This girl socked me in the mouth. How I responded led many of Sacto's coolest punks to think me an ass, and rightly so. Read the full story, my version of it at least, by clicking Here!

Ozzy Under Cover

Another CD review for the News and Review. This time I reviewed Ozzy's Under Cover, an album of covers and I never mention what a lame and obvious title that is for a cover album. Here's my review:

"It’s a shame Ozzy is doing so well. A tad more desperation might have taken him down the career-reviving path of Johnny Cash, who, with Rick Rubin’s help, turned in some of his most inspired work late in life. Instead, the Oz, with fame and fortune to spare, put together the world’s most expensive bar band to crank out this album of uninspired covers. With the best voice in the business at the helm, the album is certainly worth listening to--and the song choices are good; covering Joe Walsh, King Crimson and Mott the Hoople is not as obvious as taking on the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” But the arrangements are strictly by-the-numbers, rockin’ while the beers are poured. Oh well. Neil Diamond has turned to Rick Rubin; perhaps we’ll get his amazing pipes belting out some Ween sometime soon. "

Some New Posts

I have new posts up at www.rockass.net/mostlytrue and at www.rockass.net/panhandling.
Neither post is all that cheerfull. It won't stop raining, I have a big show coming up and my guts are rotten. If you want cheerfull it might be best to check www.playboy.com for now. Them gals is always so happy.

Happy Materialism Day

So what material goods did I get on this holiday when we celebrate our glorious consumer culture?

3 books
Death On the Installment Plan by Celine, American Splendor by Harvey Pekar and 1776 by David McCuloough

1 piece of jewelry

a cool Silver fly pin, it's awesome. I'll have to get a picture up soon. Thanks sweetheart.

1 cd
Nia by Blackalicious
1 doll
A cool 1959 reissue Barbie to add to my collection
2 dvds
Freaks and The Bad Seed
1 tool box
See I am butch (this makes up for the Barbie?)
Some clothes
including a great old wool trench coat from my girlfriend (+ three shirts)

Materialism day worked out okay for me. Next I'll post what I gave.

These Were The Earlies

A review I wrote for The News and Review.
The Earlies, These Were The Earlies:
Brian Wilson’s Smile, the great lost Beach Boys album, finally saw the light of day last year. These Were the Earlies was released in Europe months later, and it’s easy to see this delightful album as surfing playfully in Smile’s wake. Combining electronica and art-pop in lush arrangements, with a vast array of instruments, the complex production somehow manages never to seem busy. As with Wilco and the Flaming Lips, who’ve also managed to combine ambient sounds and electronic music with more traditional song structure and instrumentation, the real star is the songwriting: sweet perfection here, though there’s not a tune in the bunch that wouldn’t work with a single voice and guitar. One can’t help but gush over this fine pop album, thankfully available in the United States at last.

Much More Blogging Soon

This is sort of a coming attractions post as I've not been blogging much this past couple of weeks. The holidays keeping me busy, Mike's death keeping me sad but also introspective, the ICBINC show keeping me busy as hell and nervous to boot. The truth is I can't wait until it's all over. My stomach problems are flaring up and I hope they fade when the stress season fades. The last time I told my doctor about a flare up he tried to put me on this crazy medicine that would require having my freakin' blood marrow checked every couple of weeks. I asked him if we could put it off and see if things improved on their own and luckily the old quack agreed and things got better. I give up all coffee, sugar, wheat and junk food when the old tummy complains and the coffee headaches have been monstrous.
But wait, I said this was to be a coming attractions post. Okay. More job stories. If you're reading this and you want to share a crazy job story please send it in. Then a new blog, either fight stories or drug stories. Please, if you have a preference express it. And very soon I'll start a weird quirky blog called lists where I will just plubish lists. A list of all my favorite comedians. A list of all my brothers. A list of what I've eaten. I'm interested in looking at expressing identity through a collection of information with no writing just lists of the things that make up an individuals life. I have a querky little blog going now that I don't link to. You'll find it if you're inclined to look.
I'm writing this from a cafe. That's something I was excited about doing when I got a laptop, but I rarely do it. It's kind of cool. I'm sitting at Infusion, downtown Sac, having some chamomile and typing away. Nice.
So let me know, Fighting or Drugging and please send me your stories.

The Memorial

I went to Mike's memorial today. It was interesting seeing a Catholic church so full of punk rockers. Many nice things were said about Mike and many cool stories were shared. My downstairs neighbor Skinner told of he and Mike's bicycle gang The Shifters and someone else observed that over half of the people in attendance had been in a band with Mike at some time. His uncle talked about helping him move and asking if he had any kitchen utensiles. Mike held up a fork.
Mike was not on a career path, moved a-lot, would couch surf or crash with his folks. I hope everyone that knew him knew what a success he was. He succeeded at maintaining his intergrity, making great music, traveling all over the damn place and touching the lives of everyone who met him in a really positive way. I'm going to listen to some Popesmashers now, and enjoy his awesome drumming. I'm glad I knew him. I'm thankfull for so many good people out there today appreciating what a wonderful man we've lost.

Mike

I was just killing time at work and I decided to check out www.heckasac.blogspot.com. I was saddened and shocked to hear that my friend Mike Guis was struck by a car and killed. Mike was the drummer for beloved Sacto punk band The Yahmos and for The Pope Smashers, one of the best bands I've ever had the pleasure of hearing. Those outside of Sac might know The Yahmos as the band that most of the members of !!! used to be in.

Mike was a real easy going guy. He was ambitious artistically but he survived job to job, often having no job and he maintained every bit of intergrity he'd been born with. I looked up to Mike in many ways and I often wish that I was brave enough to live as he lived. Making art, traveling around, not stressing out about security. Once he mentioned Black Sabbath and I giggled. He tore into me. It was no joke. If I thought Sabbath was a joke then I hadn't listened to them he said. I respected Mike as a musician so I went to the used CD shop and traded some free tickets to a show I was promoting for some Sabbath CDs. I've been a fan ever since. He gave me Sabbath. Damn! That's a guy you've got to love.

This is really sad. I'm going to miss Mike very much. The comments section at HeckaSac have some links to photos and what not. The great photo up top here I got from HERE.

Footprints in The Sand: an inspirational poem

I had a dream in which there were footprints in the sand.
The little footprints were mine;
the big ones belonged to Jesus
(He has enormous feet, you know what they say.)
In some places all five feet could be seen
but in other spots only Jesus' feet appeared
next to long lines in the sand as if he were accompanied by serpents.
"These are the places where I dragged you away from fat men who wished to have sex with you after you passed out from alcohol" said Jesus.
"Oh, thanks, dude." said I.
"What about the spot with the big weird pock marks next to your foot prints?"
asked I.
"Those mark the place where you were freakin' out and eating dirt. I didn't stop you cause it was funny." said he.
"That's pretty cold, dude." said I.
"Hey, God made the dirt so the dirt can't hurt." said he.
"Oh, thanks alot." said I. "Hey Jesus, was your step dad Joseph pissed that God got to Mary before he did?
I mean that's got to be a pretty hard act to follow." said I.
Before Jesus could answer I woke up, drunk, with fat guys having sex with me.

New Jobs Story: Working On The Railroad

My buddy Jason adair (the second feller on the left there) gave us this great tale of his old railroad days. Considering his experience on the rails left him with nothing to type with but two stumps where his hands once was, the least you could do is read the dang story. Go ahead, it's up at www.rockass.net/allmyjobs or you can click HERE to go right to it.

Zombie Survival Guide

If confronted by a pack of flesh-hungry zombies today, would you be ready? Odds are, you would not. Luckily for you, former Saturday Night Live writer Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft) is out to improve that situation. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead will give you the information you need. What causes zombie-ism? Which weapons offer the best defense against ghouls? What should one wear to an undead holocaust?

The answers all can be found in this amazingly detailed and utterly serious guide, along with an eerie history of zombie outbreaks, an expose on the secret chinese Zombie farm where an undead army is being raised, and an amazing taxonomy of the zombie, drawing from all the great zombie films and putting together the most believable and compatible traits.

With the creepy scenes Brooks comes up with and his extensive research it comes as no surprise that his name appears in the credits of the 2004 Dawn of The Dead remake.

A must-have item for any survivalist’s library. Be warned: Reading such a thorough, excrutiatingly detailed book on zombies can pack twice as many chills as your average Living Dead flick. Just remember this one piece of advice: “Use your head. Cut off theirs.”

(a condensed version of this review ran in the Sac News and Review in April of 2004)
And you can buy it at amazon:

Bryna's Birthday

Its my wonderful, talented, beautiful girlfriend's birthday today. I'm off to get her some flowers and a foo-foo coffee drink. If you're reading this and you know my sweetheart, give her a call, wish her a happy 33rd birthday.

Richard Pryor 1940 - 2005

The following is an article I did for the News and Review. I did my best to get comments from other comedians regarding how Richard Pryor touched their lives and affected their artform. I could've written more, but sometimes it's good to have a forum like this force me to be succinct. I think it says goodbye nicely. You can read the article at the News and Reviews site HERE!

Sacramento’s comedians have an e-mail list where we trade jokes and career advice, post gigs or talk smack. Being comedians, we mostly talk smack. This week we’ve been posting heartfelt ruminations on the life, career and art of Richard Pryor, who, after a long battle with multiple sclerosis, died from a heart attack last Saturday at age 65.

“That a slum-dwelling kid with a prostitute mother can make it with nothing but conviction and a microphone, then the USA is a place to be,” Sacramento comedian Tapan Trivedi e-mailed from India, where he is visiting family. “He taught me to do what I like on stage.” Trivedi described Indian television reporting Pryor’s death, showing video clips without any audio in order to maintain decency standards.

“Pryor was never dirty,” wrote Rick Pulido, another local comedian. “He spoke like he was raised; he told us what he witnessed.”

Best known for pushing the envelope of what could be said onstage further than any other comedian with the possible exception of Lenny Bruce, Pryor armed himself with more incendiary material than “fuck,” “shit” and “nigger.” He brought every aspect of his life to the stage. For most, catching on fire while smoking cocaine would be a career-ender. Not for Pryor. He was in front of an audience joking about it as soon as his burns healed. Once, without warning in the middle of a routine, he re-enacted a drug-induced heart attack. It was a brave bit in its own right, but braver because he didn’t end the show with it. Like Houdini shackling himself and then slipping free of the chains, Pryor brought the audience from stunned silence back to laughter.

He also blazed trails on the racial front, reaching a level of success and power in Hollywood previously unheard of for a black entertainer. Pryor was able to pen his own deals and accordingly turned in a string of films including the hilarious Stir Crazy, the best of several projects pairing him with Gene Wilder. Like Redd Foxx and Dick Gregory before him, Pryor allowed Americans to laugh while working through their racial tensions.

“He blew open the doors,” wrote Del Van Dyke, who has trained many Sacramento comics. Shane Murphy, well-known for organizing local comedy benefit shows to aid sick kids, victims of natural disasters and whoever else needs a hand, also said goodbye to his comedy hero: “He spoke the truth up there without trying to make himself look good, and he somehow, like an alchemist, turned his worst tragedies and heart breaks into comedy gold. Richard and Jennifer Pryor even took the time to send encouraging e-mails to an obscure, bald, local comic in Sacramento, one of the greatest thrills I’ve ever received. I never got the honor of meeting you, Rich, but you were the best of us, and I miss you.”

Australian Racial Violence

My brother is in Australia right now. Read his take on the race riots at johnthereverend.com.

And feast your eyes on this handsome example of the superior race pictured at left. I don't think he has his every moment Zen. Why is it the worst, most drunken, broken members of a race are always the ones that are so sure that their race is superior?

This is really heart breaking. It has me wondering what I can do to show my love for good people of all races and religions. Me and my nephew went on a tour of churches, temples, mosques, synagogues. It was so cool. I was helping him deal with the fact that his family has different ideas about god, from atheist Uncle to don't really care about such things mom to born again grandparents. Some friends and I were talking about doing this on a larger scale. Like a pub crawl but a faith crawl. Get enough communion wine going and the differences are less than you'd think. Anyway, I've got to get back to being a member of the superior race. It's awful hard work with all these cops trying to oppress me.

Times are Tough For Santa

I dressed up as Santa Claus and went panhandling. I made $17.24 in an hour of panhandling. Check it out by clicking here.

A virus for you

Computer viruses may just be darwinian principles applying to the virtual world as they do to the real world. If you got a virus because you opened the file marked "Youngest nude girls allowed by law" good. You deserve it. Get off the internet.

If you believed that you're grandma who has been dead for three years sent you an attachment labeled "good happy family photo for you", bye bye, off the internet.

If you were fooled by the twelve year old kid in Malaysia who beats boredom by giving fat American's infected attachments labeled "Free Hamburger for hungry you", see you later, no internet for you.

My point? It's pretty easy not to download a virus. And if you got one, you may just want to stick to playing solitaire with your computer (what it was originaly intended for I believe.)

Pesky adware that keeps loading pop ups onto your computer even when you're offline is equaly easy to avoid but dammit sometimes a guy needs to see some naked ladies pretending to be lesbians. What do these advertisers hope will happen? That I'll by their product because they're totally f'in' up my web surfing? If a guy tackles me on the street and staples a flyer to my head, I aint buyin' the brand of pizza that he's selling, no matter how good the deal. What sucks is that some moron, or rather many morons, are responding to this kind of advertising. They must be, or the advertisers would quit using it.

So, virus making kid in some previously third world country with way more 'puter skills than me, please make a program promising a better pizza deal with lots of pop up ad loading and give a crazy permanently disabling virus only to those who actually try to respond to the pop ups. Get them off of my internet.

One last thoughts on viruses. Though I am an atheist I hate the argument that there can't be a god because why would god allow disease. To folks using this argument I'd like to point out that we know there is a creator when it comes to the world wide web, and what's the first thing this creator (Al Gore?) did once this virtual world was created? Add disease. So maybe there is a great creator, and a young Malaysian kid is messing up his world.

Sorry Malaysia, I chose your country at random, no offense intended.

Thirty Dollars in sixty minutes!

Yep. I broke my record as a panhandler. Yay for holiday shoppers (or mailers in this case). The full story is at www.rockass.net/panhandling.

Skating Again

WOO HOO! Went out with my nephew last night and hit a parking lot. We only skated for about twenty minutes, and then for another ten later that night, but it felt so good to be back on my board. And I actually learned something from watching videos. I can ollie twice as high as I could before I broke my collar bone. I won't be back in a pool or on a ramp for a-while, but I'm skating again and that's great.

It's fun teaching my nephew. Of course, he'll pass me up soon, but he won't need much teaching after that. Once you get the momentum going it keeps going (that's why it's called momentum.) He told me that this was the best day of his life. Sure we'd watched skate videos, and played some video games, but I figured the best day of his life would be one of the days spent at the Skate Park. No, he was stoked to be skating after dark. Ha ha. It's funny to remember what's cool to a kid.

Let's see what I break next. I think I'll start a betting pool.
Hey that's a great idea. I'm gonna do it. Watch for the "What part of KLJ's body will be injured while skating" pool real soon.

Hecka Not Cool

A certain local blog has some postings about who is and isn't a swinger, focusing on our local celebrities. What the hell? Do they aspire to be the Entertainment Tonight of the Sacto indy scene? Do they want to grow up to be the National Enquirer?

I don't care who is a swinger and who isn't. I hope to accomplish more with my blog than spreading gossip about who is putting what where. Okay, venting done. Thanks.

Stealing Christmas?

Click here for Google-news search.
Well, apparently the PC Liberals, atheists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc. are trying to steal Christmas, bastards that we are. Yes, we've gone and forced the stores to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas, at gun point if memory serves. Too bad we weren't as effective in trying to get their red, white and blue "We love a good war" decor down during the rest of the year.

I caught wind of the story while watching the evening news. I'm amazed at what can be considered newsworthy. There's a war on for Christ's sake, oops, sorry, already mentioned the war, guess I'm being redundant.

At any rate, say Merry Christmas if you'd like. Nobody will stop you. If a store wants to say Happy Holidays, and thereby wish the Christians a merry Christmas, The Jews a happy Chanukah and the Muslims a solemn Ramadan and the Hindus a festive Diwali in the most efficient way, how on earth could you find a problem with this?

One woman, interviewed on the news last night, said "This is the first thing the communists did, getting rid of religion!" HA! Lady, we're not afraid of commies any more, at least not until the ones in South America get a bit stronger. It's all about terrorists now you silly woman. One must keep one's hysterical fears up to date now. And remember, the first thing the terrorists do is to push their own fanatical religion ON the populace. My point? Quick, push your own religion first, they're coming!!!

In closing this rant let me assure you, I will not insist that the stores put up "Happy cold, noisey, crappy music, consumer-hell season!" if they want my business. I'll just assume that this is one of the sentiments they intended to cover when they said, Happy Holidays.

Happy Holidays!

Badly Drawn Robots

My friend Cheese, one of the funniest folks I know and The Sacramento News and Review's choice for Best Up and Coming Comedian has a wonderful web comic called Badly Drawn Robots. See it here, www.badlydrawnrobots.com and laugh and laugh and laugh.
I'm trying to convince Cheese to do, The Badly Drawn Robots go to Hawaii, but he doesn't listen. Tell him! Tell him to send those Robots on a trip. It worked for The Brady Family. There's the island love interest, the curse, the competition against the locals and all the great scenery. It's a sure fire winner I tells ya.

Panhandling Santa

Looking for suggestions. What would panhandling Santa's carboard sign say? Submit your suggestions at www.rockass.net/panhandling

Merry Christmas

My Christmas present to you, my loyal and lovely readers? A Christmas story I wrote. It's got fighting drunk Santa's, Eagles bashing, housewive-Santa love action, big black security elf drama and jailhouse redemption. Why it's the best damn Christmas Story ever. I'm currently working on producing a musical based on it. Watch for that next Christmas. Enjoy.

Click Here to Read My Christmas Story.