Hell at the Salvage Yard

It was an early spring afternoon. I was aligned with the notorious Ream Team and we were preparing for another one of our epic wedding events which we hold regularly, yearly, monthly, and sometimes weekly at our restaurant which will remain unnamed to protect the innocent. Dee Shaftini had just ordered tacos from the generic Mexican restaurant on our block, our resident celebrity wait was present, and the crew was about to segue into some heavy rafting sessions, some involving random acts of insensitivity. I was happy as a clam and I love clams. Instead, I opted for two crispy chicken tacos. Everything seemed to be okay as I joked with Sean Butera, our executive bus, and speculated as to the events that would soon unfold involving the tournament.

Suddenly, to my shock and dismay, my wife and children appeared in the main bar. They were all talking at once, spinning tales of an untimely meeting with the curb right outside the restaurant. Apparently she had flailed in my Buick because the sun was in her eyes and she turned too soon and ended up blowing out both tires on the passenger side. The car was disabled, parked backwards on the curb by our side door. At first, I was just trying to understand why they were all there in the first place. I just couldn't process that information. She said had to get something out of our other car which was parked in the back lot. My kids were in a frenzy and my wife was in awe. She had this wide eyed look of shock in her eyes, and when I got to my car, I soon understood why. The tires weren't just flat, they were shredded and basically ripped in half. Luckily for me, Johnny G. Shaft had the AAA card and the tow was free.



That's when I called the evil empire, aka Walmart, where I bought the tires and where I had the car towed. First, I spent at least twenty minutes on hold with the wrong store after being transferred like six times in the process. Chetorious Raft witnessed this debacle as we conversed in the upstairs office waiting for the ceremony to commence. I finally got through to a human being in the tire department and proceeded to set up a deal to get the tires replaced. The clerk rattled on about the possibility of a prorate on the price and so on and that they were going to go ahead and put the tires on. It would all be done first thing in the morning.

So, I called Walmart the following morning and the woman I had spoken to had not shown up for work and they didn't know where she was. I was put on hold for another ten minutes. Then, a guy got on the line and told me they were going to put the new tires on it. I waited and didn't show up there until 2:30 and the car was sitting outside with blown out tires, untouched. I went inside and the same guy I had spoken to on the phone was there, haggling with some dirtball at the register. Then, all of a sudden, a young blonde sorority looking chick, the kind you might find on www.campusbabes.com, approached questioningly, and he immediately dropped everything and took her outside. They didn't reappear for like fifteen minutes, and then they re-entered, calling her father on her cell. The good clerk was all of the sudden a deeply concerned, considerate, and caring individual. He reassured her that he would take care of everything, and saw her to the door.

Soon enough, when Bambi exited with cell phone in ear, he instantly turned back into Biggie Shortelay from the Durham ghetto ready to pop a cap in my cracker ass for looking at him wrong to get my tire fixed in his hizznitch. I felt like Frog from the 21st Street Crew in Colors when he got sent to County with the Crips. Then, he blurted, in his toughest voice, "What you need man?" When I told him I had called, he rolled his eyes and spat back, "There are a lot of customers up in this place, we ain't been able to get to it yet." After I gently inquired, he then said reluctantly that it would be ready by the time they close, 6:00. So, I said I'd just come back.

When I returned, the Buick was on three good tires and one piece of shit temporary tire. They had the spare on in full effect, donut stylee, kickin' a little black rubber in the back with a bagel on the fly. I knew a shafting was coming fast and I suspected a bent rim. Sure enough, the rim was shot and I had to call a salvage yard to get a replacement. I was less than thrilled. The asshole at the Walmart gave me the name of the nearest junkard, and what follows is simply a continuation of the reaming that took place on this ill-fated weekend.

Of course, the guys at the salvage yard were dicks. I was there for like 45 min waiting,and they had about fifteen employees there, none of whom I saw do a damn thing except watch Nascar on their little shitty TV. In the middle of my wait, one of the guys exclaimed, "Gordon just hit the wall!!" Everyone sat silent like E.F. Hutton had just piped up. That was the first sign that I was in a really bad redneck place. Then, a woman came out of the back office to use the soda machine and some hick co-worker crept up behind her and tried to press the wrong button and she slapped his hand shrieked in her country tone, "Get away from me you idiot!"



I continued to sit and wait. All of the customers were either Mexican laborer types or gangsters wearing fake diamonds and Yankees gear. Then, after I paid, the guy told me to go through the side door and the rim would be out there. I got my bent rim out to match it up, and noticed there were two of the same exact rim out there. I matched one of them up to mine and no one offered to help or anything. It was like I was invisible. Suddenly, the guy who brought the rim up from the yard entered with a disturbed look on his face. I could see him coming from the corner of my eye. This grizzled redneck fucker with a half-smoked Kool hanging out of his wrinkled lips was like, "What in the hell you doing boy? That ain't yer rim!" I was like, just give me my piece of shit Buick wheel so I can get out of this shithole. I told him what I was told by the cashier, showed him my invoice and he mumbled around, bitched at some people in the garage and then muttered something under his breath about me or someone being "fucked up". I was over the whole experience at that point and was ready for a full-on down home redneck confrontation. The kind you have when you're sober and it's on. Before I completely went off on the guy he drove away in his little shit wagon back out into the junkyard.

Then some moron who had been there all along doing nothing but walking around in circles pretending to do stuff, rolled over the other rim, which was the exact same wheel as the one Jethro yanked from my reach. Apparently he was the one who was supposed to be helping me all along. Suddenly, he now had the sacred invoice. After handing it back to me, he walked away shaking his head. I was like, "What the fuck?!" It's bad enough to have to deal with getting this stuff fixed, not to mention then paying for it. Enduring experiences like this is what makes angry old men angry old men. Maybe thats why I don't live in the city. Its incredible how something so simple can turn out to be such a pain in the ass. Thank God I had my blog so I could just let it all out.

My Bracket is Lame

So, I threw caution to the wind and got involved in this bracket thing again this year. Now, after two rounds of some of the most gut wrenching defeats I can remember ever enduring, I'm wondering if I'll make it through to the final. The sad thing is that thus far none of this has killed me nor made me stronger, it has just pissed me off. I think I am developing high blood pressure and I almost lost consciousness at Shorty's during the Carolina upset. What are these guys doing to me?



I am pissed at Ohio State and UNC the most. Not because I had them both going to the Elite Eight and they are history, but because they barely showed up in this tournament and I had to sit through it. Not to mention that I'll then be heckled by one of my co-workers at the restaurant who picked Georgetown. Georgetown? C'mon! What happened Buckeyes? I don't know if I can stomach the reason my bracket sucks so bad is because these guys basically threw it away. It may mark another bitter loss for me in the sports betting arena, but it definitely marks the point in my life when I have realized that NCAA basketball is just too competetive to really bet on with any degree of certainty. Anything can happen in these tournaments. Anything. The point where I began to think that I knew what was going to happen in this tournament was when I entered into a fantasy land.

Other teams I'm mad at: Kansas, Tennessee, Illinois. You guys really screwed me, are you happy now??

VOID: Hardcore with Flavor

The year was 1982 and I was a freshman at an all boys Catholic high school near the heart of downtown Wheaton, MD, a somewhat irrelevant little suburb of Washington, D.C. Neither the town nor the school were exactly the pride of the metro area, but it was in Montgomery County, one of the wealthiest counties in the country and your parents had to pay for you to go there. I had already been heavily into skateboarding and BMX for years by then and my musical tastes had ranged from funk to metal, but mostly I was into what is now called classic rock, although I was branching out. I had a couple of Devo records and I liked the Ramones. I was fourteen years old and on a collision course with hardcore punk rock and didn't even know it.

At our school, you had to dress like a yuppie square, so everyone generally wore the standard attire, dress shirt, tie, no jeans, no athletic shoes. This made it just that more difficult as a freshman to tell who was who. I had spent the last few years in Montgomery County public schools where kids could basically dress however they wanted. Private school was a completely different place. The teachers, some of whom were referred to as "brothers" would get up in your business. They would get physical if they were so inclined. It was a weird and sometimes overly aggressive male environment. All boys, jacked up on fresh testosterone and basically just being dickheads at that clueless stage of life. Only, instead of fighting in school, if two kids had a beef with each other and word got out, everyone would go down to the Wheaton Library at 3:15 and watch them brawl right in the front lawn. It all seemed so organized and weird.

One day, in class, I noticed some kid sneaking a read of Bob Haro's Freestyle BMX book during a boring lecture. I was jonzing to see all of the newest maneuvers and the latest freestyle mini ramp plans, but I hardly knew the kid. Being the pest that I can be, I had to at least ask. He reluctantly agreed and passed it to me under the desk top. Some time after that day I came across this same kid sitting on the bench outside of the school waiting for a ride listening to a walkman. I sat next to him and all I could hear was this blasting fast paced music blaring into his headphones. I looked at his cassette in the deck and the tape inside read in bold capital letters, "FLEX YOUR HEAD". Being the same curious asshole that I was the week before, when the music stopped I had to ask, "Dude just let me hear one song." He put the headphones over my head and on came the most raw rock music I had ever heard. That is the first time I ever heard Void. Never before had I heard such organized chaos, and at the age of fourteen I was already overdue. Oh, and that nameless kid who BMXed and revealed DC hardcore music to me was none other than the now notorious punk music writer, Chest Pains singer and local Chapel Hill maniac Greg Barbera, aka: Greg E. Boy.

So I went out and purchased a copy of the classic DC punk sampler at Records Yesterday and Today in lovely Rockville, MD and I listened to it over and over for months. My absolute favorite tracks still to this day are the ones by Void, a band that at the time captured the pure essence of thrash punk with the most mind blowing guitar sounds I had ever heard before. This was the kind of music we started listening to at the ramps where I was beginning to spend almost all of my spare time. It just made you skate better listening to it. Back then, we had to build the ramps deep in the woods and steal all of the materials to do it. Blasting Void on the box at the ramp became a regular ritual for the suburban punk skaters in the metro area. I'll never forget some of the furious skate sessions with Void's epic split EP with The Faith screaming in the background. It remains as one of my favorite records of all time, the Void side anyway.



The record begins with a humming feedback that soon stops abruptly and gives way to a guitar intro that brings back memories of the Guess Who. Suddenly, you're slammed face first into a manic attack on your senses. Its the kind of music that makes you want to smash something with a smile on your face and then drop in on the ramp and do a frontside lapover grind while giving your friends on the platform the finger just for fun. The second track Time To Die will blast you into a backside air, and on from there the songs just continue to shred and they are actually great songs. Listen to the track Organized Sports with the gang chorus from outer space for a real eye opener. Guitarist Bubba Dupree may have been the only true master of punk rock guitar feedback that I can recall. His style and rhythm stand out on these old Void tracks. Singer John Wieffenbach was a rabid punk singer who sang every song like he meant it. The track Think will rattle any unsuspecting listener into a frenzy, and what about those lyrics... "When young pianist builder Kimberly as Iris, exacting Moran as will diversified present, and her area senior as recital popular as June 26 swells and gets Orchard Lake Avenue in America..." It goes on and really does make you think. Holy shit these guys rocked. They were onto something.

Anyway, as far as I know Void broke up in like '84, and two years later when I went to Maryland, I found out that Wieffenbach had lived in my dorm before me. This geeky kid named Doc on the third floor of Cecil Hall on South Hill used to weave tales of "The Mighty Weef" and proclaimed that there would never be another singer like him ever again. Doc was one of those kids who never moved out of the dorms until he graduated. He always wore a white lab coat and combat boots. He was a wacko dude, and I think now that he was right all along. He used to hang out with Weef and he naturally was a huge Void fan. I never saw him after my first semester when I moved out of the dorms.

Bigger hardcore punk bands emerged in the mid eighties and thrash ended up turning into speed metal, and then it all started to sound the same to me. Speed for the sake of speed. I guess thats part of the whole deterioration of that scene during that time. But now, looking back and giving Void another listen you begin to realize that they had a flavor all their own. Still to this day, when I hear their music I get amped.

check:
http://www.punkrecords.org Void Demo Download

http://www.dementlieu.com/~obik/arc/dc/void_tg22.html Void Interview

I Cabbage Patch Early and Often

Everyday when I awake, I usually use the bathroom and then get back in bed just to remember what it feels like to be comfortable and at rest before I am rattled into reality, or my perception of what is my existence. Then, I cabbage patch. When thats over, I continue with whatever it is I am doing, or I merely cabbage my way through the rest of the morning, and sometimes into the late hours of the evening. Then I cabbage patch again. I guess it all depends on how that pale green, round, leafed vegetable stands up to the daily rigor of my routine shafty activities. Taking all of this into consideration, and other things I have yet brought to light, the true essence of the cabbage patch must be revealed. In this essay, I will try to translate what the cabbage patch means to me and the rest of us who cabbage regularly.

First, the cabbage must be carefully selected and admired in that sequence, and then it's onto the real patching which involves a myriad of rafty variables which could just jump up and bite you on your unsuspecting ass if you're not paying attention. And that matter would then be the patch itself. Naturally, it would then follow that when you enter the patch you usually don't know what is going on and sometimes you don't even want to know what is going on. Raft happens... I think we all know where this is headed.

Second, the cabbage must be addressed as a separate entity from the collective term which by its unplanned yet innate nature combines the rubbery green vege-ball of life with the patch which we will see as the forest in that old "see the forest from the trees" analogy. The patch exists only as an inevitable and observable response to the energy of all of the individual cabbages we deal with regularly. Yes, all of us must be a part of this synthesized cabbage patching as long as we exist as ardent individuals with no fear of patching our way through life and the hereafter. The cabbage is real. CPSR!

Third, and last, we all well know the meaning of the C.P., but do we dare take a gander at the last two initials of this fabled war cry? S.R. stands for whatever you think it means. A lot of people have their ideas. Some think it stands for Strained Rotation. What the hell? Cabbage Patch Strained Rotation!? What does that mean? My friend was sure it meant Served Regularly. Cabbage Patch Served Regularly. Now that makes more sense, but unfortunately it is way off the mark. Only the people truly in the know really understand what CPSR stands for. And it is to them that I say, "I love you guys, CPSR forever!".

please check:
http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/uploads/cabbagepatch.mp3

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cabbage+patch

Bear Psycho by Stabler Hsu

Grizzly Man
The Story of Timothy Treadwell

This acclaimed documentary by renowned director Werner Herzog investigates the life of Timothy Treadwell, a grizzly bear activist and fox loving maniac who basically lived with giant grizzly bears for a few months a year for thirteen years until he was finally eaten by one. Unfortunately, he died along with his mysterious girlfriend who was crazy enough to be out there with him making bear movies. They were basically ripped to shreds and eaten by a huge grizzly. Ironically, in this final act, Treadwell would end up responsible for the killing of one of his beloved grizzly friends. They shot the bear, cut it open and out came both bodies in mangled chewed up pieces.

This movie is kind of disturbing in a lot of ways. At first, your expectation is that this guy was a thoughtful activist with lofty bear advocacy dreams and the fact that he comes off weird is because he might be a little "quirky". But by the end of the film, you are just waiting for him to get eaten. Please will one of the bears eat this guy and get this over with! Listening to this guy is difficult. In take after take of his whining about everything from homosexuality to one of the local foxes that took off with his hat, you begin to see that Tim Treadwell was really Tim Notwell. This guy was a basket case. He wanted to get eaten by a grizzly bear. Its all he ever talked about. My favorite part of the movie is when Herzog interviews this guy who states in a serious deadpan manner that he thought the reason Treadwell made it out there so many years without getting killed is because the bears thought he was retarded. I highly recommend checking this film out, but you will have to endure some complete retardation in the process.