The Welles Syndrome

I'm pretty damned sure that ChrisB mistook me for my buddy Matt Campbell (the lead singer of Bufu L'Ru) two posts below.

I just came across some shocking evidence. We both look just fucking like Orson Wells at different points in his career. It must be a Midwest white-boy thing.

Here's a helpful guide:

The Josh Wells

The Matt Wells

Spooky.
God help us both.

Soul Doubt

Yeah, I'm a big whore. Y'all know that you really want some fresh crab meat.
I'm just fearing what happens when the "crab boil" post disappears from the bottom of the page. I'm pretty damn sure that Google doesn't have many ads for guns, rye liquor, and out-of-print Chicago punk 7" EPs.
Hello, boner pill ads!

Anyway... Check out the damned ads. I have a new WILT in the works and postage to pay.

L&E Record Geek Public Service Listing #2

Selective Album Covers of DeKalb

Okay, I have a load of discs from ye olde D-Town days, but am having absolute zero luck finding any online jpgs of the covers. I just scanned 'em myself and am posting them just in case anyone else is trying to track 'em down.

The Harmonics: Christ and His Mama in the Shit House of Love
(Seven Dead Arson Records) 7DA001

BuFu L'Ru: The Little Green Guys Come and Take You Away!!
(Seven Dead Arson Records) 7DA002

More Fucked: Godamn More Fucked & The Assraper
(Self-Released)

Grenadier: Hand Offensive
(Ubique Records) 16892-60972

Ed Posega: Breather
(Self-Released)

The Floating Basement: Goiter
(Self-Released)

The Floating Basement: Smell-O-Vision
(Self-Released)

The Floating Basement: Nothing and Then Some
(Self-Released)

The Floating Basement: I Want My Money Back - An Evening With the Floating Basement
(Self-Released)

The Magnificent Ambersons: Current
(Strane Records) Strane CD-1

The Magnificent Ambersons: Ambersongs
(Weed Records) Weed 004
If Ed wants to shoot me the tracklistings for all of his discs, I'll gladly plug in the tracks for the first 4. If not, meh.

Okay, That's it for now. Keep your eyes open for #3 sometime soon profiling obscure local comps.

Video WILT #1

Since the YouTube Posts I've thrown up over the last week have met with great enthusiasm (with an overwhelming cumulative comment tally of "zero"), I figured that I should give you all what you obviously want - A mega-post of you-tube clips.
I spent all weekend picking some of my favorite video clips off of YouTube as a tease for the new (completely different) Summer 2007 WILT coming at the beginning of July.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Video Wilt #1
NOTE: You may want to hit "refresh" (F5) after each video, or everything starts to bog down and g-o ----- r--e--a--l ----- s---l---o---w.

Shellac – Prayer to God
Fan video for the awesome track off of 1000 Hurts.


Dwarves - Drugstore
Old Dwarves video from 1990.


Drag the River - Portland
Replacements cover from the DtR boys that keeps getting bumped off of the regular WILTs – Jon (Armchair Martian) sings on this one.


Johnny Cash – God's Gonna Cut You Down
Great video for a song I included on the Fall ’06 WILT


Against Me! – White People For Peace
I really like this video (and song) – A lot. It’s off of their brand-new major-label debut.


Bad Religion - Sorrow
Really cool video for a song that I had on the pre-WILT comp “Paradigm Lost”.


Methadones – Say Goodbye To Your Generation
If you read this blog – First off, sorry - Secondly, you should know all about this band by now. Essentially, Sludgeworth for the late ‘90’s to the present.


Naked Raygun – Someday (Live)
Speaking of Sludgeworth – Here’s a clip of Dan Vapid singing the SW anthem “Someday” with Raygun at the Minneapolis show immediately following the HoB Chicago shows. This is hands-down my favorite song of all-time (not the best version, but…).
I’ve been putting this song on mix-tapes for going on 15 years. It was on some WILT awhile back.


MOTO - Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance to the Radio
Oh shit, the MOTO boys are loose on the internets. They are gonna totally clog up all those tubes. Someone call an interweb plumber – Quick!
Video for a track originally on my pre-WILT comp “Old Hipster-Douche Soundtrack (for Homos)”.


McLusky – She Will Only Bring You Happiness
I had this song on the Summer 2006 WILT.


Riverdales – Blood On The Ice
If you got the pre-WILT comp “It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time...”, you know this one. If not, It’s about Hockey.
Great cheap-ass Fan Video. Nintendo 8-bit hockey Rulz!!!


Hanson Brothers - The Hockey Song
The guys from No Means No channeling the Ramones. I fucking love this!
Another one from the pre-WILT comp “It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time...”, but this time it’s AFTER “Blood on the Ice”, not before.


The Zambonis – Hockey Monkey
More hockey goodness – Huge thanx to Ed (and Alex) for turning me on to this.


Two Man Advantage – Hockey Night In Canada
The capper to the hockey-themed songs. Look for my buddy, Mr. Mark Linskey, in a cameo @ the 2 minute mark.


Mark Linskey – The Rat Is Dead (Live)
I saw Mark in the preceding video and decided to see if he had any videos up on the You Tubes. I found this track from a show I set up for him out here in DC with Two Man Advantage opening (much to my surprise). This song was originally done by his full band, The Hudson Falcons. If you listen real hard you can hear my loud drunk ass braying in the background.


Foetus – Time Marches On
Uber-swank video for this song off of “Love”.


Turbonegro – Get It On
Everyone’s favorite Nordic death-punk band gives us this one.
The hardest part of throwing together this comp was trying to decide which Turbonegro video to include. I chose this one (not quite sure why).


The Division of Laura Lee - Need To Get Some
A track from the Fall '05 WILT comp. This has to be one of my favorite videos of all-time.


Electric Six – I Buy The Drugs
AKA: that one E6 video set in a frat-house. Hilarity ensues.


Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – I Believe I Can Fly
Karaoke iz da bomb. For some reason they couldn't get Karaoke master Old Dog to participate in this video, so they had to load it up with other lip-syncing celebs - look for everyone’s favorite jailbird, Ms. Paris Hilton, @ 1:09.


Jason Webley –Hey Ya (Live)
This is a cover of that Outkast song from the show here in DC that I couldn't get anyone to go with me to.


Tommy Heavenly 6 – Heavy Starry Chain
Viva La J-Pop! This one’s for The Girl.


Dillinger Four – Maximum Piss and Vinegar
Totally great fan video tribute to Najica anime girls that uses the D4 track for some (totally) unknown reason. Animated pantie shots galore.


Screeching Weasel – Cool Kids
Another great home-brew fan video. And yet song from the pre-WILT comp “It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time...”.


Nerf Herder – Van Halen
More dork-rock. From their first self-titled album.


Rancid – Knowledge (Live)
The guys from Rancid “covering” a track from their original band, Operation Ivy.


Jawbreaker – Jet Black
Great video for a great song off of one of my top-10 albums of all-time.


Barry McGuire – Eve Of Destruction
This is a 1965 cover of the P.F. Sloan song with modern imagery. It has bible verses in the video and ends with an image of the bible, so I consider watching this video as “church”. This could be used to free up some valuable Sunday time for you religious types.
I’m just saying…
I’ve been infatuated with this song for over a year now, and have about 10 different versions of it. I plan on doing an all EoD comp once I track down 6 or 7 other versions (thank Ed for planting that idea).


That’s it.
Now comment, you fuckers.

I Got Yer Wallpaper Right Here, Buddy

The Cubs have taken 3 of the cross-town series games. Even if the Sox take the next 2 games, Ed still needs some new wallpaper for his workputer (as detailed HERE).
Since I'm such a great friend, drunk, and fucking around with Photoshop @ 5:30 in the AM, I've thrown together the perfect collage to suit my friend's new need.Just click for full-size, and you're good to go. No need to thank me... or shoot me.

The Best Show On The Televisions

It's Monkey Dust, it's British, and it's on the higher tiers of your premium cable package. More specifically, It's on Sundance Channel and it's one funny fucking show.
Here's a taste(NSFW):

Two Completely Unrelated Items

Item 1: While trying to track down some record info, I stumbled across the The Chicago Shows List Archive. Wow. The list ran from September 1993 through March 1997, and almost any show that went down in the Chicagoland area during that span is up there. I can click on almost any week and find at least one show that I was at. It's a really fucking cool trip down memory lane.
---
Item 2: I found this great video clip on Boing Boing. This one goes out to tha P-Dawg (be sure to turn on the volume for the full effect).

This is quite possibly the greatest 5 second video in the history of the internets. It's called "Dramatic Chipmunk", but is actually a Prairie Dog.
This is the point where P-Dawg decries the speciesist stereotyping of his burrowing rodent brethren. "Oh sure, we ALL look alike to you people, Huh?"

L&E Record Geek Public Service Listing #1

Okay, this shit has been has been driving me fucking batty for years now. You go to try and find information for some old record (usually a compilation), and the internets are anything but helpful. I've decided to start doing occasional posts with all of the pertinent information for obscure "lost" records that can't be easily found through regular searches. L&E posts tend to rank fairly high on Google searches (much to my surprise and/or dismay), so I figured that this possibly could be helpful to some other frustrated music nerd out there.

L&E #1 : Punk - Music Collection Int. (Trojan Records) - CD (OOP) - 1991 - MCCD 015

Track Listing
1. What Do I Get (Live) - Buzzcocks
2. EMI - Sex Pistols
3. Personality Crisis - New York Dolls
4. Angels With Dirty Faces (Live) - Sham 69
5. If The Kids Are United... (Live) - Sham 69
6. Born To Lose (Live) - Johnny Thunders
7. Bored Teenagers (Live) - The Adverts
8. Looking For A Kiss - New York Dolls
9. Rip Off (Live) - Sham 69
10. One Track Mind (Live) - Johnny Thunders
11. Boston Babies (Live) - Slaughter & The Dogs
12. Pretty Vacant (Live) - Sex Pistols
13. No Time To Be 21 (Live) - The Adverts
14. Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing - Discharge
15. Brickfield Nights (Live) - The Boys
16. Time's Up (Live) - Buzzcocks

I'm sure it seemed like a great fucking idea to name this album "Punk" back in 1991 (hey, that's what it is), but it makes for a royal pain in the ass trying to track it down on the interwebs.
The album itself is a decent culled album, but nothing all that great. I think I found it in a used bin somewhere and picked it up for the NY Dolls and Boys tracks.

Clarification: I'm just doing this to try and get the information out there - I'm not gonna copy it and send it out to you, sorry. No, not even if you ask really nice. With all of the information contained above you should be able to track down a copy for yourself.

Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts Is Alive (And Producing Kids Shows In Japan)

I was just googling the interwebs when I came across this great video clip from a Japanese kids' show. It's from a program called Pitagora Sōchi that seems to prominently feature Rube Goldberg devices constructed out of household items - Awesomeness ensues.




I seriously could watch this all day. No really, I literally could - I'm still looking for a job and have all of the time in the world to sit around and repeatedly watch crappy low-res You Tube videos of foreign children's programming.
Fuck it, I'm gonna pour myself a drink and sit right here and watch this damned video for 8 hours straight just to prove a fucking point. Take that, responsibility.

In Psalm Knee Yak

I can't sleep - Last night I couldn't sleep - Friday night I couldn't sleep - Thursday night I couldn't sleep. Over the last 4 days, I've been averaging about 3 & 1/2 hours of sleep per night (more accurately early to mid-morning).

It's 5 in the morning on Monday (I post-dated this entry because I'm still convinced that it's Sunday until I can fall asleep). I keep making valiant efforts to get to sleep, but it just doesn't seem to be working. I go to bed at a reasonable hour and just lie there for what seems to be an eternity before I give up and head back out to try and medicate myself to get to the land of dream.
It doesn't fucking work. Since 3AM, I've consumed 1 Valium, 1 T3, 2 Benadryl, and 4 glasses of Staroplzenecky Absinthe - I'm still wide fucking awake, and coherent enough to type this.

I don't even have the benefit of Abraham Lincoln and a wise-cracking beaver to keep me company in my deprivation (ala the PhRMA ads)- All I have is a flatulent Labrador at my foot and a soused wop snoring away on the couch and reeking up the living room.
I was fucking robbed. Where's my Dead President and anthropomorphic mammal? If I got to pick, I'd totally go with Teddy Roosevelt and a platypus with an Ulster Scottish dialect. That would so fucking rock.

I really do need sleep. Fuck.

Squirrel Revolt Quashed By Crutch

BERLIN (Reuters) - An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch.

The squirrel first ran into a house in the southern town of Passau, leapt from behind on a 70-year-old woman, and sank its teeth into her hand, a local police spokesman said Thursday.

With the squirrel still hanging from her hand, the woman ran onto the street in panic, where she managed to shake it off.

The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

"After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man's garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh," the spokesman said. "Then he killed it with his crutch."

The spokesman said experts thought the attack may have been linked to the mating season or because the squirrel was ill.

My Two Cents - Sopranos

I've been holding off on doing a post on this one, but finally decided to give in and throw in my two cents.

I loved the ending, and I may be the only one who thinks it was clear-cut. Immediately upon watching it, I thought "Holly shit, they killed Tony." I actually jumped in my seat when the screen cut to black. Since he WAS the show it just makes sense that there would be nothing left to watch once he was gone. I've had some time to think about it, and I stand by my initial reaction. He's dead as Di dropping downers at a disco.
Earlier in the season when Tony was in the boat with Bobby he had said something to the effect of "I don't think you ever see it coming, All of a sudden everything just goes black" - I'm paraphrasing, but you get the point. They also did long black holds last season when they were cutting between his "everyman" coma fantasy and the waking world, so after the 5 second ending of blackness you could legitimately insert Heaven, Hell, Tony stuck in a hotel as a businessman without his wallet, reincarnation as a cat, or an eternity of nothing - Insert afterlife here.
I'm not placing any bets on who got him, I think that's the point. Death could come from anywhere at any time - In Tony's eyes, everyone is his potential executioner. It doesn't really matter who pulls the trigger - You're dead.
I was really hoping that Tony would make it all the way through without any comeuppance. I would have preferred to see it end with him giving Meadow a hug and sitting down for a malt. It seemed too hackneyed to end it with a judgement (death, jail, descent into madness, etc.), but I appreciate how Chase wrapped it up with five seconds of ambiguity rather than a bombastic climax.

For me, Tony died at the end, but the ending is wide-open to other interpretations. The greatest aspect of the cut to black is that everyone is left to fill in the blanks for themselves - To think. No wonder so many people are pissed.

The Red Smut Menace

Those godless red commies are trying to turn our poor innocent children into sodomites, transvestites, and homos. I know I say that all the time, but now I finally have incontrivertable proof.

I was cruising the inter-tubes when I came across the 1965 educational video "Perversion For Profit" on the Internet Archives site.
Apparently, the Ruskies are using cheesecake girly mags to erode America's children's belief in God and turn them into masturbating rapists. As if that wasn't insidious enough, Red Ivan is marketing bodybuilding magazines to young christian boys in order to turn them into a bunch of prancing fairies while publishing racy novels to turn our young girls into sadomasochistic sodomites.

You may laugh now, but just wait until you return home from a hard day at work only to find Junior watching televised wrestling with a cucumber up his butt, and little Suzy prancing around naked in a black leather zipper mask with clothespins on her labia.
It WILL happen if you don't take action NOW. Remember, obscenity leads to depravity - It is our duty to destroy it before it spreads.

If you care about the future of our United States, you really should click on the links below (just not at work) to learn of this impending threat to America's moral fiber.
PART ONE - 13 min.
PART TWO - 18 min.

Weasel on the Radio

I was browsing over Ben Weasel's blog when I found a great link of him talking baseball on the Madison ESPN radio affiliate back in April. The man knows his baseball.
The thing I found the most intriguing is the bit where he talks about how he just stopped being a Cubs fan back in 2000 after watching 'em run in 2 walks in the bottom of the 9th. I've repeatedly sworn off the Cubs many a time when they've pulled that crap, but Mr. Weasel seems to have made it stick. I didn't think it could be done.
He also raises a good argument on how Dusty Baker single-handedly destroyed one of the greatest pitching lineups of all time.
I don't always agree with him, but he is extremely well informed, and makes some damn fine points (at one point he even prognosticates the Yankees/Clemens deal).
If you're into the game (and have 15 minutes to kill) I'd highly recommend checking it out.

Leftovers

While I was back in Illinois, I discovered a pile of old WILTs from Spring 2006.
If anyone missed this one the first time around, and wants it now, just shoot an e-mail to dclies(at)gmail.com.
This is your last chance.

Welcome to DC

I'm freakin' amazed that this story hasn't gotten any attention, as it is the most awesome tale of nihilism ever to hit the national news media.
Here's the breakdown: Some skank spent the entire day smoking crack, rear-ended an undercover police cruiser, took off runnin' (and since police chases are prohibited by law in DC, fled without pursuit), plowed through a 'black pride' picnic, turned around, ran through the street festival once again, mowed over 40 people while laughing, was stopped only when the cops decided to throw fucking Segway scooters under the vehicle, and she did it all with her 7 year old daughter in the car. Oh, and apparently she was an ex-aide for DC Mayor Marion "Crackpipe" Barry.
Cracktastic!
Don't believe me (I wouldn't)? Here's the LINK.

Fuck a Duck

The motherfucking Anaheim Mighty fucking Ducks just took the cocksucking Stanley Cup. FUCK!
To give you non-hockey fans some perspective, this is the equivalent of Rush Limbaugh winning the Democratic party's nomination for president with Bill O'Reily as his veep.
Right now the NHL ranks somewhere between intramural badminton and competitive hotdog eating in my pantheon of sports fandom. I fucking give up - Why couldn't there be a fucking strike this year? Now the cup is scarred for life with this blight forever engraved into it's visage.
The Stanley Cup used to be a beautiful unattainable goddess, now she's just some sleazy bar hag that vomited down the front of her tube-top right before porking your retarded cousin.

AAARGH!!! The NHL is D-E-A-D.
I'm done.

More on my feelings about the the NHL (& the Ducks) HERE.

Happy B-Day Stinkerbell!

It's The Girl's birthday today, so if you see her today be sure to wish her a happy one (or risk severe cranial damage).

Pandora's Boombox

The Girl sent me a link for Pandora Radio. It's a streaming radio station fueled by the Music Genome Project and it totally fucking rocks. It is hands-down one of the best web-based applications I've ever stumbled across.

To test it out, they have you enter the name of a band. I chose Naked Raygun. Here are the first 5 songs that were played in the stream:
Naked Raygun - No Sex
Supersuckers - Ron's Got the Cocaine
Screeching Weasel - Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue
Social Distortion - It's the Law
Dag Nasty - We Went Wrong

How fucking great is that? I own every single CD that those songs come from. I created a few more stations for Screeching Weasel, Foetus, and Big Black - all with unbelievably awesome results.
If you LastFMers are looking for a new alternative you should definitely check it out.
For more info, click HERE.

You've Got Crabs

Today I got to partake in a truly unique eastern-shore experience. I went to a high-school graduation party with The Girl for her third cousin (or something - I'm not quite sure how the extended family schematics work, as most of my family - extended or otherwise - really aren't on speaking terms).
Anyway, The Girl's family - blah, blah, blah... The real story here is that they chose to celebrate the occasion with a crab boil.
Whoo-Hoo, Motherfucking crab boil!
It's taken me the better part of a decade living in Maryland to figure out how to eat those goddamned things, but now I've gotten the hang enough to give all of you inlanders the basics on how to consume whole blue crab.

First off, take out a second mortgage out on your house because a bushel full of mostly inedible shell costs an ass-load and a half. Yeah, you buy writhing live crabs by the fucking bushel just like apples. They actually call blue crabs "Maryland Apples". Okay, well... I do.
I would highly recommend that you don't take the crabs home on the subway. I'm speaking from experience here. And if one happens to get loose from the bushel, it's better just to let it go and pretend that uppity fucking crab was running around loose in the subway car before you got on the train with your basket of well-behaved crabs. If you do have to go this route, be sure to have the number of a friend with a car to get you the rest of the way after you get kicked off of the train.

When you get to the destination (after waiting in the hot blazing sun with a basket full of stinkin' crustaceans for over an hour waiting for your worthless buddy to show up at the Metro stop), dump the bushel in the tub and run some water to determine your live-to-dead crab ratio. After putting all the dead ones in the "give to suck-friends" pile, grab a HUGE lobster/corn/etc. pot (with steamer) and throw it on top of a flaming charcoal grill.
While you're waiting for that to boil, set up gladiator matches and/or crab races to determine the most fit (and therefore most delicious) of the bushel. Tip: Whiskey and wagering increases the entertainment value of this portion tenfold.

Okay, the pot has boiled over three times, you're seeing triple, and you've lost your last fifty dollars in the Miss Crab USA beauty-pageant, so it's time to start cooking those little bastards. Carefully remove the crabs from the tub taking special precaution not to get pinched.
Run around the house screaming with a half-dozen fucking crabs hanging from all parts of your bloodied hand. Note: Pouring whiskey on them will not make them let go, but does add a nice flavor to the boil once you manage to rip them off of your mangled appendage. Boil those motherfuckers first as an example to the rest of the group. Employ the 'basket and tongs' approach to avoid any further injury.
Drop 'em in the steaming basket, wait until they go from brownish-blue to bright red, pull 'em out, put 'em in a big cardboard box, and cover thoroughly with Old Bay seasoning (make sure to buy the big-ass restaurant-sized container). Repeat until all of the tub is empty, and the crab that ran off to somewhere under the couch has been located and neutralized.

Now it's time to figure out how to eat these damned things. You'll need a wooden mallet, a butter knife, loads of paper towels, and at least 3 years of advanced biology. First rip off all of the legs and give up on getting any meat out of those after 15 minutes of pure failure. Next remove the claws and use the butter knife and the mallet (think hammer and chisel) to put cracks in the middle of all of the meaty bits. Crack open (making sure to drive the sharp spikes covering the claws deep into your fingers) and consume the meaty bits. The proper 'dip' for Maryland blue crab isn't drawn butter, but a mix of vinegar and Old Bay - It's fucking delicious and stings the open wounds much more effectively.
Now it's time to crack the fucker open. Turn the carapace over and locate the 'apron'. Pull the pin down and off. Resist temptation to yell out "CRUSTATION IN THE HOLE!" and huck it at someone across the table.
Now that the apron has been removed, jam your thumb between the carapace and the abdomen and rip 'em asunder. Throw the carapace on the shell pile, scrape the gills off with the butter knife, and cut out the lower 'v' where the 'mustard' lies. Some people think that the 'mustard' is the best part of the crab - Those people are gross weirdos. Cut the remaining abdomen in two (you should have two small white sections) now pick through the thin inner shells in a futile search for edible meat.
If you've done everything correctly, you should have about 3 tablespoons worth of edible meat, a huge pile of shells, and bloody hands. This should take just under 15 minutes per crab. Repeat 10 to 20 times, or just give up and grab a hot-dog from the kids table.

Shell-Pile Aftermath

The Girl's family was smart and got the crabs steamed and seasoned at the market. This is a huge time-saver, and definitely the way to go if you're not drinkin'. Also, I should mention that you need to eat blue crabs OUTSIDE (preferably on a newspaper-covered picnic table) unless you want your entire house to reek like crab innards for the next decade, and be picking bits of crab shell out of your feet for weeks on end.
Even better, find a good restaurant that sells soft-shell crabs and just eat the whole damned deep-fried motherfuckers shell and all.

The whole rigmarole sounds like a huge ordeal, but is really a lot of fun (and delicious to boot). Today's boil was alcohol-free (back in my day, graduation parties were... insert olde-tyme drinkin' story here), so I only had the patience for 5 or 6 crabs before I resorted to the aforementioned hot-dog option. Now my crab appetite has been piqued, and I may have to throw a crab bender sometime this summer.

I'll be givin' 5-to-1 odds on crab #8 to win it all.

Flickr Illinois

Yeah, I'm a freakin' slack-ass. I just got around to posting up the pics from my trip back to IL in April on my Flickr page.
There's a bunch of good stuff up in there - There are shots from the e-pissy drinkin' night, a photo of Elise's melons, and a bunch of nature pics including my new desktop wallpaper (pictured).
Go get yourselves some.