8/2/04

I See No Evil

I understand all
Destructive urges
It seems so perfect
I see no evil

Hey

Surprise, surprise, back just one scant week after the last one. What's Bill been up to? You're about to find out.

First off, for those of you who were concerned, we (we being me and Joe) are back on more like the schedule we used to adhere to, he had the last ("Bum Weiner") newsletter up within a couple days of issue, along with all the funny photos and captions- a lot of you have commented, I'll let Jason speak for the bunch of ya, "Kudos to Joe, some of them simply kill me". Amen.

Also, if you haven't read last issue on the site, it has tons of tack bat match photos, plus Joe's own foray into amusing writing- and amusing it be, mateys- under that Retro Queen highlighted thing that you can access- I still don’t know what they’re called, fuck me. (Sarah says they're called "links" - whatever.)

Got a kind of moving e-mail this week from someone, a stranger, who says she's been reading this thing for close to two years now, and "I feel like I know you, and Joe, and your girls, and all your weird friends (she said weird friends, ha) better than I know people who I see every day at work. Please don't ever stop putting out your wonderful (she said wonderful, ha) newsletter". Well, you know what? I won't, and it's all just for you (send nude photos of yourself ASAP).

Speaking of my girls, it was a close thing, but they're both going back to Baltimore to live with Satan and Ghandi on the 14th of this month. Rachel spent most of her time here this summer teasing that she was going to come back here to live, went out of her way to tell all and sundry how much she hated S & G, and hated living with them, and how she really felt she'd be so much happier here, but when push came down to fucking shove, she wasn't willing to confront her mom and tell her she wanted to live here, not there.

I hate it, I don't think the girls are living in anything even approaching a healthy environment there in Maryland, and I'm hardly alone in thinking that, but they're both of the age where if they won't do anything about it, there's not a whole fucking lot I can do. Except be hurt and pissed and very, very concerned, and confused, and to think that it really sucks that Loretta's being rewarded for her Queen Bitch behavior- and if you're rewarded for it, why change it? What fucking ever, my dick and a loaf of bread will get you a sandwich. And I got your reward right here, ya goddamn shitbag cow.

The girls (while we're on the subject) were pissed that I didn't mention in last newsletter that we played music at a cook out- I refuse to call it a party, since most people there went home well before the time a party even starts- at Joe's and Laura's during the period covered in the last NL. I forget exactly what we played, Joe and I did some acoustic stuff, Sarah sang back vocals, and excellent lead on "Stop Your Sobbing", Rachel did a damn fine job on bass on "Summertime Blues", so . . . I don't know, girls, there's your credit, I guess.

In the "What'll You Have?" department, Bill's drinking some Pabst Blue Ribbon, for the first time in over 20 years, easy. Tastes good, I stopped for gas at this little non-chain place there on Rt. 60 going to Huntington last week (cos they had the Interstate all roadworked up), went to the cooler to get some chocolate milk (gut burn working for some reason that night, maybe cos the girls were in NC with the fuckface crew), saw they had 6 packs of PBR long necks, had to get one cos you NEVER see it around here anymore, saved it and just got into drinking it tonight.

When I first started drinking serious, back in the spring of '73, the rednecks all drank either Stroh's or PBR, the preppie fucks drank Miller, NOBODY, as far as I can recall, drank Budweiser. I started my drinking with the redneck crew, which may or may not surprise you, at lunch time at Stan Miller's house, me and Stan and Mike Mollohan pounding the Stroh's, yuppie fuck boy and child of privilege Whitney (and did I EVER fuck with him for having a girl's name, and besides that, I saw him at Loretta's 20 year high school anniversary in '97, his second wife graduated with Loretta, he looked TEN THOUSAND years old, all wrinkled up and hair white as salt, and acted it as well, whiney old fuck, "Have a beer, Whitney", "No, better not", "Hey, FUCK YOU, grandpa") Darby drinking Miller- he was allowed in cos he drove, and bought my beer, seriously, and weenie ass Jeff Rampy sucking up mouthfuls of Old Milwaukee and then going into the bathroom every 30 seconds or so to spit them down the sink, pitiful fuck that he was.

If I knew then what I know now . . .

I don't know why I bother going off about commercials, they're obviously made by pinheads, hoping to sell pinhead shit to other pinheads, but again, I fucking HATE the "isn't it so cool to be a piece of shit" coda that they have. My latest gripe is the commercial for that fucking M&M and cookie doo doo log (yeah, I said it, I said "doo doo log", now sue me) where the kid takes them all and then rips up the box and blames it on the dog. That's supposed to be cute? I'm supposed to be amused? What would amuse ME is if that dog jumped up and bit the little shitter's balls off, or if his mama came in and brained his lying, stealing ass with a frying pan, "That's what you get, ya thieving little bastard", now THAT would amuse me no end.

What's Bill been reading? A half assed mystery- I think- by Mickey Spillane, the ending was weird as fuck, and as we all know Mickey can't write worth a damn, but back in his old (OLD) Mike Hammer days it was so fucking crazed it didn't matter, it was still entertaining as hell, like poor old suicided REH's Conan stuff, but I hate how Mickey is still doing his corporate whore thing, shilling for Miller Lite, all his characters order that old lady cat piss by name whenever they're having a beer in this book, SHAME ON YA, MICK, don't you have enough money already? Damn your whorin' ass anyway, that kind of stuff makes me mad.

Also read "A Time Gone By" by William Heffernan, very good, best mystery I've read in quite a while, I recommend it- see, I'm not always cracking on shit, whoever of you it was who said that, I forget- gonna look for more of his stuff.

What's Bill listening to? CRC are apparently struggling- good- so I got 5 CD's last week for $20, shipping and "handling" included. Buy 1, get 4 free.

Two by Television, their first, "Marquee Moon", issued in February '77, but I never bought it till September '77, right after I moved into my first apartment there in Fairmont. It was being pushed HARD by Creem magazine, among others, as this totally great album by this totally great band, gonna change the world, blah blah blah. TV were part of the early NY punk scene, I'd already heard the Ramones and thought, "Oh yeah, I can play this shit," so I put on the TV album and thought "What the fuck? I can't play THIS."

They were actually decent to really good musicians, great riffs- "See No Evil" still rocks like fuck- but there were all these intertwining guitar lines as well, and all this arpeggiated shit, I've never been able to do that stuff to save my life cos it's like the centipede and walking, I'll be going along fine for so many bars and then think about what I'm doing, "Ah, fuck" and there it goes into chaos city, didn't really like the sound of the record when it first came out, all Fenders, sharp and twangy and crisp sounding, when at the time everyone, including yours truly, Joe as well for that matter, were all Gibsoned and humbuckered up, going for the CRUNCH. Didn't like Tom Verlaine's (TV, how clever) singing even one tiny bit back then, doesn't sound that bad to me now, 27 years of listening to Joe sing will do that to you.

It's still a very evocative album, music is right up there with smells for me in bringing back a certain time and place, fall '77 was the very first time I'd ever lived on my own, brief though it was- Loretta moved out of her dorm room and in with me on her 18th birthday that October, and we never looked back, too busy screwing like banshees (LIKE BANSHEES?), yes, like banshees, dammit, but I can still remember like it was yesterday, literally, coming back after class to that apartment there on View Avenue- Joe remembers the place I'm sure, it was set up on a hill overlooking Fairmont, hence the street name- and listening to this record for hours and looking out across the town, it was always gray, and unseasonably cold, those of you who were alive and sentient at the time may remember the horrible winter of 77-78, this fall was the prelude, and thinking all these serious young man thoughts, about who I was, and what I wanted to do with my life, I was pretty damn convinced I had the world by the balls at that point, more fool me, and thinking, God help me, how lucky I was not only to have found my true love, but to have found her so early in both of our lives, so that we could spend so much of our lives together.

Yeah, well THAT didn't turn out so well. Still like the album, though,

Also got TV's second and last album, "Adventure", not as good as the first, but not bad, and in one of those bizarre things that seem to always happen to me, the booklet inside was for some fucking Yes album. (In a similar vein, for the past 3 months my electric bills have come with the return envelopes already licked and sealed, so I can't use 'em. I can just see someone there at American Electric Power going "Let’s fuck with Bill"- no seriously, I can really see it).

Also got Led Zeppelin IV, or whatever it is you call it, CRC doesn't really have much of a selection so I figured I'd use the free CDs to replace stuff I had on record that I never bothered to get on CD. Let's talk Led Zep evocation, a lot of youngsters, including my own, think they're overrated, which I won't argue, but for their time . . .

Zeppelin always makes me think of Stan Miller, mentioned in the PBR paragraph above, this red neck kid from east Nitro I got to be beer drinking friendly with our junior year, he lived with his mom and sister- more on her in a bit- his Dad having died from something that kills you many years previously, that's why we went to his house to drink our lunch, cos his mom was at work and there was no one home- you have to remember this was before working moms were common, they mostly just stayed at home to spoil their kids fun. Stan's mom was nice, but OLD for a mom, probably 60 or so at the time I'm speaking, and she always used to make me eat peanut butter sandwiches every time I stopped by, for some damn reason, for God's sake, Mrs. Miller. She died the summer we all - Stan, Joe and I, along with the beer drinking, or in Rampy's case, mouth holding and then spitting out, crew- graduated, and damn me to hell, but I wasn't sorry to see her go.

Stan's house immediately became party central, always plenty of beer- there goes the inheritance- and always, ALWAYS, either Led Zeppelin 2 or 4, or one of the first 2 Steppenwolf albums playing on the stereo. It was THE place to bring a date when you were looking for-

Bill and date: Hey Stan, can we use your- Stan: Sure

-and I'm telling you, I hear songs from any of those 4 albums and I'm back in Stan's bedroom, young and free and balling like fuck.

As for his sister, Sally? nah, that wasn't it, Joe help me here- she was a year ahead of us and in that combined French class we had, along with that other looker, Robin Donahoe- she was something else entirely, blond, blue eyes- Stan looked like he'd been made, ineptly, out of mud- gorgeous, with this incongruous, almost surreally thick, southern accent. Honey dripping, it was. Her good French class friend Robin, who was also gorgeous, but dark haired and tanned, always used to stop by after ma died, and between the two of them they used to drive me CRAZY. I used to fantasize about the three of us together till it hurt. To be totally honest, I also used to fantasize about just the two of them together till it hurt.

Well, faint heart never won fair maid (nor got anybody laid, to butcher a phrase), so one day when I stopped by to see Stan and he wasn't home, but- what was her NAME?!- maybe it was Sally, I'm pretty sure it was an S-word- was, so I tried to hit on her.

"But Bill, you're Stan's friend" she says.

"Yeah, and I want to be your friend too" I told her. Oh dear Lord, how I wanted to be her friend.

Well, she got the picture pretty quickly and, "Oh no you don't" she tells me. "You just need to wait outside for Stanley".

Yeah, well fuck that, I went and got drunk.

As for the Zeppers themselves, I think they were idiot scumdogs, but who’s to say if I were in their position that I'd have behaved any better.

What else? Lets see, got the first Emerson Lake and Palmer album- I know, but like I said, their selection's real limited- it's got a couple songs I like, "Knife Edge" in particular, with a nice clangy Rickenbacker bass riff and lyrics- "Our machines feed the furnace/If they take us, they will burn us" that feed my techno hating ego. Also the Sex Pistols album, also not great, but I used to have a copy and someone stole it, so to whoever stole it, FUCK YOU, I got it back, I think they were tremendously overrated, stole riffs from both Chuck Berry and the Jam- I realize this is the pot calling out Mr. Kettle here, I don’t care- I do like the chorus to Pretty Vacant, "We're so pretty/Oh so pretty . . . vacant", shows some wit.

Saw this thing last week on Shark Week, and while it sucked for the guy, I was still thinking, "It's about fucking time", these two idiot naturalist types are out standing in chest deep water in the Bahamas trying to look cool while all these bull sharks swam around them, I'm talking big ones, 8 and 9 footers, and bulls are thick bodied sharks, an 8 footer will go 350-400 pounds, easy, and that's a big goddamn fish. Anyway, asshole number one is talking about how bull sharks are really misunderstood, they don't attack people unless it's by mistake, they really don't want to hurt us. Then this shark with perfect comic timing comes up behind him and bites his fucking calf off.

The guy almost bleeds out, but he survives, they show him a year later and the scarring, on what's left of his lower leg, is horrific. You know what? Good fucking for ya, dumbass. My point is that I'm sick of that idiot bastard Crocodile Hunter- my only hope is that whatever fucking animal does for his ass, they get it on tape, cos I know it’s coming, and I truly want to see it- and his misbegotten ilk, going around treating these goddamn deadly animals like they're fucking props. They're SHARKS, you stupid motherfuckers, and CROCODILES, and COBRAS, and BEARS, and LIONS, and whatever you fucking get, you WENT ASKING FOR IT. Worse yet, they make stupid numbnuts who believe whatever they see on TV think these animals aren't dangerous.

Also saw this show about man eating leopards in India. I'm talking here and now, two months last year, I think it was August and September, 20 people were killed by leopards in the Indian city of Mumbai. This is inside the city limits, which looked like downtown L.A. or something. For fuck's sake, it looked so bizarre, a leopard lying as road kill beside this multi-laned highway, kids being snatched by fucking jungle cats out of back yards that don't look like some Third World scene, they look like South Hills. Go shake hands with one of those killers Steve Irwin, you goofy ass twit (I'm serious, when some big ass something rips his head right the fuck off I'm gonna laugh till I piss- I hate 'im).

Not quite on the same scale, but Joe had a copperhead in his front garden last week. Show 'em, Joe.

In the latest NL obit news, it falls upon me again to give you very sad news, this time that Zombies guitarist Paul Atkinson recently died of cancer. Anyone who knows me personally or through this rag knows the very high esteem that I hold the Zombies in, just a shit fine band, British Invasion originals, bright, decent guys who could also write, sing, and play just to beat hell, they weren't a guitar attack band like the Who or Kinks, but their best stuff ranks with those two bands, or anybody else's for that matter. RIP Paul, and thanks.

In more Death Falcon news- and hey, been taking a lot of flak for that tack bat stuff, listen, I'm only crazy if I do it again . . . which odds say I will-went down to Nitro for the Fatal Four Way (who names these things?) match for the XMCW Hardcore title, with Hardcore Mark Mathews, Bad Boy Dallas Michaels, and Smokey C. I have only myself to blame, cos I knew what I was getting into when I started working this shit league a couple months ago, but these guys CANNOT WRESTLE- NOT A DAMN LICK.

They did have a hot crowd down there for once, really into the matches for a change, the DF cut a promo that got good heat, caught a lot of shit from the crowd when he came out and did that crowd baiting walk around the ring that is just too much fun-

Some little kid- You're stupid! DF- No, you're stupid! Why aren't you in school? SLK- Because it's summer. DF- THEN WHY AREN'T YOU IN SUMMER SCHOOL?!?

Not exactly the height of wit, but it sent his little buddies into hysterics- "Yeah, why aren't you in summer school, ha ha". I love kids.

Also wound up some fat ass truck driver named Leon who's always there at ringside, "You ain't no damn good", he hollers, "THAT'S NOT WHAT YOUR WIFE SAID, FAT ASS!", again, hardly that clever or original, but it got the smoke snorting out of old Leon's nostrils, he tried to come over the rail, the DF told him, "You better hope you're too fucking fat to get over that rail, cos if you get on this side of it I'm gonna fuck you up for real, you pig." Leon sort of looked around for a security guy to pull him back, and when he couldn't find one he just sort of stood there looking stupid. I love wrestling.

Allen told us right before the match that the end had been changed and HMM wasn't dropping the belt to the DF after all, he was going over on BBDM. Personally, I don't give a fuck, it's all a work to me, (got paid in pizza last night, by the way, cos somebody stole $50 out of the cash box) but I think the DF was a little peeved. The match was your typical 4 way cluster fuck, and since the DF was in a mood, he stiffed the living shit out of both Hardcore and Bad Boy, my favorite was when he was supposed to drop an elbow across Bad Boy's (he of the fucked up DDT last Nitro show) chest, and it somehow came down across Bad Boy's throat instead. Oh dear, my bad. Bad Boy made a very satisfying "GLURK!" sound and rolled out of the ring gagging and holding his throat. Good sport that he is, he went crying to Allen about it afterward, apparently didn’t like what he was told (get over it) so he packed his bags and left in a snit. If ya can't stand the heat . . .

I like Smokey C, for a seventeen year old, homeless, drug dealing pothead who's already fathered two kids our- no wait, that would be your- tax dollars are supporting, he's actually a pretty nice guy. So it figures he'd be the one to actually get fucked up. I busted him open for real with a chair shot, but he was okay with that- bleeding profusely, but okay- then at the end of the match he was supposed to moonsault from me off the stage, I was agin it simply because he does the worst fucking moonsault I've ever seen, he missed me by a mile (other than to clip me in the middle of the fucking head with his knee in passing) and broke his right ankle on the landing. I'm not unsympathetic, but a cardinal rule in most things is, if you can't do it, DON'T TRY IT.

Anyway, the DF may be taking the month of August off (been 13 matches so far this year), this Nitro hardcore shit is getting old, took a couple really hard chair shots to the head from Bad Boy (another reason he got the throat shot, he also got another legit nut shot- hey, it's the fucking Death Falcon- I forgot about that, he was also weeping about that to Allen, "He's gonna make it so I can't have kids!", the DF's response "I'm doing the world a favor, you pussy!", in fact, when Allen started laughing at that is when Bad Boy decided to go home to his Mommy, I HATE these guys who want to dish it out but can't take it), and that shit sucks- that would be the head shots, in case you got lost somewhere above- it doesn't hurt that much at the time- well, the first one does, a lot, your vision sort of whites out in this electric flash kind of effect- I remember Larry Holmes saying "When Ernie Shavers hit me I thought people were taking my picture", exactly, and then if your vision comes back you haven't been knocked out- you can't really feel them after the first one, thankfully- but they give you a motherfucking horrible headache later, one of those where your head feels all cottony inside and you're eyes feel all puffed out and you tend to say "Huh?" a lot when spoken to.

And I don't want no lectures about chair shots, that's as old school as it gets, rasslers been swinging folding metal chairs for as long as there's been folding metal chairs, and it is NOT just cheap heat.

One other funny thing happened at the match- when you're taking chair head shots, and being elbow dropped on the floor by some idiot coming off of the basketball backboard rim, you've got to make your own fun- when HMM tried to call a Jungle Fever, which is essentially a Spanish Fly, but off the top rope, no way in hell, which is what I started to say when this old kung fu movie me and dear gay Steve watched the spring break I spent up at his house popped into my head, the villain tells the hero he's gonna kick his ass or something, and instead of saying "Bullshit" or whatever, the hero says "Nonsense, masturbator!".

Huh?

So when HMM calls this ridiculous move I have no intention of taking, I looked him in the eye and said "Nonsense, masturbator!". The look on his face was absolutely priceless. He stopped in mid grapple and his mouth gawped open and he sort of went "Wha . . ?" And then I clotheslined him out of his socks.

I'm also going to have to get an escort or chaperone to sit with Rachel at these things, all the damn wrestlers are hitting on her. Jesus.

Guess I'm pretty much done, don't want to end quite as abruptly as last issue, which was just like, I'm 15 seconds away from passing out, better sign off. If I knew a good joke I'd tell it right now, but I can't think of one.

So I guess I'm out of here.

Pull down the future with the one you love

Later

Bill

SHARON! Stan's sister's name was Sharon. Now I can sleep.

Nonsense, masturbator!