April 15, 2007
International Male
The week since my return from Tokyo has been flavored with the worst jet lag I’ve ever experienced.
Eleven-hour sleeping jags punctuated with ridiculous insomniac episodes. As Yoshi says, in his most disdainful voice, “Of course.”
Anyway, the city was awesome, as predicted. I love this place. When I was younger, I would dream of traveling. Idle dreams. It didn’t become clear until later that international travel doesn’t just happen to you - you actually have to do things.
Of course, these days it’s a little harder in some ways. At LAX, on the way to my flight, an eagle-eyed, superstitious DHS airport screener literally yelped with glee to see my half-drunk bottle of water going through the xray machine.
Her: Oh! What’s this? You’re not allowed to bring this in here.
Me: There weren’t any signs saying that.
Her: It’s been on the news.
Me: Yeah, I just really thought we’d be over that stuff by now.
Her (deadly serious): Oh, no. It’s going to get worse! They tried to blow up a plane. As long as they can make bombs with this stuff, it’s going to get worse. We can’t let you take liquid on a plane.
Me: But that’s not true. It’s scientifically impossible…
Her: It is true, sir.
Naturally, I wasn’t allowed to drink the remainder of my potentially explosive dihydrogen monoxide on the spot, in front of her. This rule might seem kinda counterintuitive if - as I had assumed - the purpose is to screen out toxins and liguids other than water! But that’s some pre-9/11 thinking right there. Who knows if terrorists have figured out a way to combine a colorless, odorless liquid with stomach acids to form a time-released explosion with the power to depressurize a cabin at 35,000 feet? I think it was in that 24 episode where Jack Bauer’s adversary had the really awful diarrhea.
Apparently, Kip Hawley isn’t the only idiot around here. And here I am bitching about our Homeland overlords; that’s so 2003.
Anyways, back to the fun stuff: Japan! Please check out my 130+ gallery of memories… and don’t judge me for photo-stalking the Singapore Air hostesses. You haven’t flown a mile in my pants.
In the weeks to come, I will be sharing rips of some great-looking records I scored in Tokyo. I also got a lot of old weird japanese pop stuff from the bargain bin at punk store NAT Records in Shinjuku (Shinmei Building 2F, 7-33 Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo 160), but trust me, I made the rounds. This is only about half of the 7-inches that I nabbed, and we’re not even talking about all the magazines, comix and CDs. Just what I needed! (Sarcasm.) However, your gain is my loss, or will be, or something.
Anyway, I’d like to thank all my Tokyo pals for the warm welcome they gave me in spite of my rude ways and Western odor. Shout outs to Onoching, Masami, Wild OX, Terumi, Elizabeth, Mike, Nori, Atchan, Rockin’ Jellybean, Shaku, and all the other cool folks whose names I cannot recall right now. Special thanks to Kazuha for letting me crash in her Nakano manshon, among her literally priceless collection of 1950s porcelain, Funny Face and Weird-Ohs premiums, Sailor Jerry flash art, and her handsome tomcat Sue.
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Miami soul singer George McCrae is mainly known for this monster disco hit from my childhood. 
There’s probably a good “A Star is Born”-style film drama to be drawn from his former romantic/management relationship with his hitmaking ex-wife Gwen McCrae (I like her records, too), but George was there first in 1974, riding the crest of the disco wave with some smooth crossover soul for those of us too young to Hustle. The steady rockin’ backing group is none other than KC’s Sunshine Band!
George is still going strong - check out his rather primitive webpage that makes my browser crash. Read his grandiose bio that, with its superstar hyperbole, deserves an audiobook reading by the guy from J&H Productions! No matter, this is still a great song. Now let me get back to my nihongo benkyo o suru. What? Oh, that’s French, baby. It means, “You are incredible.”
George McCrae - “Rock Your Baby”
George McCrae - “Rock Your Baby (Pt. 2)”
Rick at 7:42 pm
March 25, 2006
Security Mothers
The Toe Stubber usually stays an arm’s length away from political commentary. There are plenty of places all over the Web where you can get your deeply held cultural cliches validated - nobody needs to know what I really think about gay marriage except me and my box turtle. 
However, one of my favorite purveyors of snarkis politicus happened to write something recently that relates to the music scene, so it’s fittin’. Making my internet rounds the other day, I read this essay by L.E.S.-boy-makes-good Roy Edroso about security, danger, lameness and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s depressing, meaning it’s true.
Roy used to be in NYC’s the Reverb Motherfuckers (story here, here, here and here) and was also once wed to my pal Sally from the Honeymoon Killers. When I met him way back in the day, I had no clue he was such a good writer. But he’s learned some smart lessons, and the truth of his point really pisses me off. As once-excited music fans get older and deader and more brittle, and start legislating suffocating boredom upon the younger generations, they ought to remember just what they paved over in their new-age law enforcing zeal.
Rick at 5:47 pm
March 11, 2006
Humor Me, part 6
For movie lovers, Criticwatch covers the shameful activities of fawning media quotewhores Paul Fischer, Harry Knowles, Bill Bregoli, Clay Smith, Pete Hammond, Jeffrey Lyons and Shawn Edwards (and last, but certainly not best, the legendary Earl Dittman), as they suck up to every megacorporation or publicist who offers them a shrimp platter or an official baseball cap, then foist their fluffy, drooling, content-free reviews on the viewing public. This is comedy with a burning core of righteousness. Ignore the myriad pop-up ads and sign their petition; it’s a good cause.
Then, via Hit and Run, here’s a bizarre little classroom movie one might call Planet of the Bike-Riding Apes.
And the Joke of the Week, late as usual.
Satisfied?
Rick at 12:53 pm
February 21, 2006
Not All Vampires Suck Blood
When you drive a car in California, you are assumed by the government to be fair game. This means you cease being a human with rights, and become a “revenue source.”
I was on the freeway last October, in my old car which was built with useless old-fashioned shoulder safety straps (they basically work the same way as lashing your spine to the back of your seat with a length of rope, and they won’t stay connected anyway) and no right side mirror.
Not a problem - I use the lap belt, which enables me to turn and lean forward or sideways, basically all the mobility necessary for safe vision when navigating.
A motorcycle cop stopped me, so as to pump up his monthly stats. Not interested in facts about old vehicles or theories regarding the logic of personal responsibilty, this super duper tax agent on wheels wrote me up a citation for being dangerous to myself. After my court date passed (I couldn’t take a day off work, especially when I knew there was zero chance of getting justice in traffic court), I got a threatening notice, and so promptly sent the full $300. Three weeks passed. They finally got around to cashing my check - after they waited to ensure the deadline had passed - so the fine magically doubled. Now I owed another $300. I received a bill from a collection agency. I paid the new amount over the phone along with a hefty $25 Western Union surcharge. (Have I mentioned that I am literally made of money? Yes, wealthy beyond belief, that’s me, pal.)
That last part was three weeks ago. Today I got a cheery note in the mail.
What does all this mean? I can’t figure out if I’m just supposed to kill myself now. Maybe someone with connections in the supreme Soviet bureaucracy can explain how to get these retarded, parasitic slugs out of my life. How? And why? I try to be a good person. I try to mind my own business.
I’m gonna cry now.
Rick at 11:32 pm
January 30, 2006
Bitch
Maybe you haven’t been following the James Frey saga. Maybe you’re sick of it, and it’s old news and you can’t believe I’m wasting valuable Toestubber real estate on such a non-story.
See, I used to inject heroin and cocaine into my veins, and now I don’t. After spending most of my twenties high, and going through a lot of ugly shit it’s not necessary to burden you fine folks with, I stopped using most dope, with the exception of caffeine, aspirin, Axert and some assorted vitamins. I happened to do it with the help of some folks in Narcotics Anonymous, but I encourage any of you with an addiction that’s making life hell to do whatever works to get out of the exhausting cycle of dependency.
Really. Whatever works. I found that getting honest with myself was a good start.
The preceding unsolicited confession is only to establish that I have a dog in this hunt. I’m someone with a personal reason to be offended by a creep who writes wretchedly awful fiction and hawks it to millions by pretending he was the world’s worst junkie alcoholic outlaw badass criminal motherfucker - hunted by the authorities and persecuted by the straights. If you’ve ever been to 12-step meetings, you’ve seen this type, a lot. It’s the most popular line of bullshit among those poor pampered blowhards who just never seem to get it together, who can’t stay sober for any significant length of time - perpetual victims. Somehow, they must always one-up the last loser’s war story by painting themselves as the biggest, the baddest, the most rip-roarin’ dick-swingin’ crazy drug addict there ever was. These jackoffs never escape the romance of “livin’ the life” and impressing complete strangers with their toughy streetiness.
What Frey did was turn this banal stance into a crappy Hollywood screenplay-cum-novel where he wages bloody battle against fat, moustache’d cops and French pedophile priests, stops his addiction by force of his own superhuman will and some Eastern-style mysticism, and is befriended by cliches like the “sensitive mob boss” and the “junkie hooker with a heart o’gold” and other characters straight out of a Steven Seagal movie. He peppered it with inappropriate Capitalized Words, loads of sentence repetition and lots of crying and hugs. When his manuscript wouldn’t sell, he packaged it as a “memoir.” Oprah bought it. The rest is history.
Okay, I haven’t read his two bestselling books. I have read the finest book review ever written, and plenty of excerpts now that the scandal has broken, and lemme tell ya, this stuff rings so false, it buggers the brain. It makes Go Ask Alice look like Hubert Selby, Jr. Let’s put it into perspective: James Frey the writer is tattooed with the letters FTBSITTTD, which stands for “Fuck The Bullshit It’s Time To Throw Down.” No, I’m serious. This privileged fratboy imbecile insisted he was all about the Truth, man - on Oprah, in magazines, on his tough-guy blog (which he’s mysteriously shut down), in every public forum - and it continues to make him very rich.
Meanwhile, out here, there’s an enormously destructive Drug War still going on, with real people getting sent to real prisons. Clueless morons fan the deadly flames of prohibition in this country, every time they believe that crap like Jimmy Frey’s books accurately describes addiction or recovery therefrom. The Troy Duffy of American letters deserves every kick to the face he gets from now on. Pardon me if I can’t resist putting a boot in.
======================================================
Are the Stranglers punk?
Who gives a shit? Long before I ever heard the term “Eurotrash,” I was a big fan of their thuggish image and evocative rock sound. Back then it was difficult to find so-called punk rock records in the suburbs, so I consider myself lucky to have heard ‘em, and stuck by them even after they took a turn into bizarro-world with the album Men in Black. That first album Rattus Norvegicus had a cool, creepy cover. They weren’t exactly fresh-faced kids. Jet Black, their drummer, looked like a friggin’ child molester.
Here’s one of my faves: “Bitching.” It’s the second tune offa the second LP No More Heroes, and doesn’t have the sheer menace of some of their hits, but in another way it’s emblematic of the earlier band’s bouncy, snarling pubrock with JJ’s bass growl pumping away and Dave’s agile keyboard taking us off on swift flights of fancy like a floating, glittering turtle dove. Too fucking right, squire.
The Stranglers - “Bitching”
Rick at 10:21 pm
January 21, 2006
This is What Happens to Assassins Around Here
Okay, this guy isn’t really an assassin, more like a bandit. He’s like a lot of bloggers these days, in that he scours the Web for other peoples’ original content and then reposts it with an inane kind of “hear, hear! I agree!” Except he doesn’t attribute the source, he doesn’t know what quotation marks are, and every single image on his Blogger site is hotlinked from somewhere else.
(If you don’t know what I mean by these terms - direct linking or hotlinking - basically he’s using images somebody else put up, without hosting them on his own site or using photobucket, flickr, imageshack, etc. Everytime someone visits his page, I get charged a few pennies, because his server - Blogger.com - retrieves that same image from my server. Over and over again.) None of his sources are given the common courtesy of a page link, natch.
Everyone “borrows” images and ideas. That’s not what pisses me off. Mister g4jima came to my attention because I noticed my host was getting lots of referrals from his page. Then I poked around his site and noticed the rampant plagiarism and shitty netiquette and the fact that he not only reprinted my entire post without linking back, he even copied my “Illegal Disclaimer” from the sidebar over there on the right, verbatim. I mean, come on. Imitation is the sincerest form of flabbiness, I know, but stealing from me is the sincerest way to get a new rectum installed. Speaking of rectums, I changed the photo he’s using to a picture of a lady making a doo-doo (NOT SAFE FER WORK) and I hope his mom visits his website before he figures it out.
UPDATE 1-22-06: I guess he figured it out.
Rick at 9:51 pm
December 3, 2005
The Bullshit
“I have never heard one person say that the most difficult thing about Antarctica is working outside, or being cold. I have never heard one person imply that Antarctica’s tough physical environment would be the main reason not to return. I have never heard of one returnee who finally quit because it’s the world’s highest, driest, coldest, or whatever. People leave because of the bullshit.” - Nicholas Johnson
I work as a DVD production manager in a well-established porn production company. My unconventional job means I’m forced to deal with less of the outright bullshit you find in most occupations. By “bullshit,” I mean smallminded attitudes - in or out of the workplace - that exist only to crush our spirit, or consider such spirit-demolition an acceptable bit of collateral damage in the cause of social prudery, fear, ass-covering or bureaucratic tidiness. Y’all know the kind of asinine shit I mean.
My employer pays me an acceptable wage. At heart I’m very unambitious (although I still have the dream of one day finding a box of money). But I am not subject to pay cuts, because pornography always has and always will turn a profit. My idiot-savant skills are utilized fairly well, and I occasionally get professional praise for my work. I interact with famous pornographers and enjoy their respect, and every so often, pretty ladies drop by the office. More frequently, I look at endless photographical representations of beautiful women having sex… a lot. So much that it can get boring. I also constantly get to see horrific porno atrocities, which is entertaining.
My being a weirdo is more tolerated, because it’s recognized as common; in fact, a perverted mindset is considered an asset when you are marketing to other perverts. There’s a sense of freedom in interpersonal relationships. For instance, in many office environments, I would be compelled to watch what I say. Sexual humor would be tightly controlled or banned outright. I might not be able to invite a female coworker to “bleach my asshole,” in front of the boss, with impunity, or engage in simulated public sex in the parking lot on the hood of my car. Where I work, the difference between a joke and a malicious insult is determined by its effect; it’s not a blind political calculation made by a Human Resources tool. (This is a side benefit of: 1. a small workforce, and 2. the type of work environment that makes it necessary to discuss gaping anuses, bondage and lactation on a regular basis.)
So, this post is kind of my belated Thanksgiving essay to myself. National holidays really mean nothing to me, aside from an opportunity to get the day off work, but I figured it’d be a good idea to step back from my incessant bitching and count a few of my blessings. Some rabid smut fans come at me like I have the greatest job on the planet, while certain “straight world” acquaintances just assume I must be a skeevy old creep. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle.
Rick at 4:17 pm
November 26, 2005
A Billion Prefab Shades of Beige
I just got back from Fresno, California.
Rick at 9:48 pm
October 26, 2005
Paystub
Okay, I have a reputation as a spelling/grammar nazi. Not the kind of nazi that thinks bad spellers should be rounded up and exterminated; I’m the friendly kind of “nazi,” the kind that thinks it’s okay not to capitalize “nazi,” for example. In general, though, bad English rankles my testicles when it gets in the way of the writer making himself clear.
On my way to and from work, on Hollywood Boulevard, I pass a billboard advertising the Dr. Phil Show. It leaps out among a sea of similarly stupid signs.
“You’ve Got Your Battles.
He’s Got Your Back.”
Fuck this idiot! my mind screams. Is there a slogan more lumpy, more sandbagging to the ear? Unctuous smarm aside, this just reads poorly. Both sentences, on their own, make sense. But together, they make poop. (That last thing is the sort of on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand play on words the Dr. Phil people were shooting for; let me demonstrate how they failed.)
“You’ve Got Your Battles.” This is a broad, idiomatic statement. It is abstract, but could be literally true depending on how you define a battle. The “your” is redundant, because everything you’ve “got” is yours by definition, but that’s okay, because this comment is meant to be the kind of nurturing verbal hug you might get from a close friend or analyst/therapist, and certain soft redundancies are poetically pleasing.
Yep - you might say, reading the ad copy from the comfort of your automobile - I sure do have my battles, yes, siree… but what’s that got to do with the mustachio’d bald dude? Continue…
“He’s Got Your Back.”
Dumb.
The expression “having someone’s back” probably originated in the military, and has come to mean protecting a comrade from attacks which he or she can’t see, such as assaults from behind. It could never be literally or even figuratively true - it is an idiom with only one meaning. Although you do indeed possess your battles, the fat doctor does not actually own your back. If you tried to imagine Dr. Phil literally holding your severed spinal column while you stood beside him clutching an armful of battles, you’d end up confused. The slogan would only work if at least one of the literal images it brings forth could resonate. They can’t, because both sayings are separate abstractions that do not complement each other. One is passive, the other is active. They use the verb “to have” in different ways. The only thing the two statements have in common is that a retard paid lots of money to put them in my face.
You may think I’m taking this a bit too seriously. I’m not gonna be a crybaby about it. Sure, there are plenty of badly-written billboards. The crime here is not simply that an ad for an abusive emotional parasite has a bit of a tinny sound. What makes it offensive is that some illiterate copywriter actually thought he/she was being clever by splicing together two clashing idioms, merely because they contain words that are similar. Can you imagine a poor announcer having to read that shit? What inflection could render the proper soothing tone of well-meaning meaninglessness? I guess that’s why they make the big bucks.
When it comes to using down-home turns of phrase in creative, healthy ways, no one beats the country & western genre of music. The dearly departed Johnny Paycheck used to sing a song by the great George Jones with a very clever use of a similar device. It has been known to make me weep.
Johnny Paycheck - “(I’ll Be Over You) When the Grass Grows Over Me” (MP3)
Rick at 12:45 pm
October 9, 2005
Where Is the Love?
Here’s a really good and rather depressing thing a fellow posted last month, about the problem of getting traffic to a music site sorta kinda like this one. The consensus seems to be that begging for links from more popular sites might help. I’m not a tech geek, just a jackoff of various trades… so I don’t have the answer. Various sad, aborted stints as a web-based DJ and rock ‘n’ roll singer have made it obvious to me that this project will impart its own share of burnout, especially since I’m a lazy person by habit, and view myself as chronically uncool, as well.
Anyway, I plan to ignore/accept the fact that these words, pictures and files are getting consumed by only a select few. You, reading this - consider yourself one of the elect. You’re “special.” Just leave a comment to your favorite post, that’s all. For the fuck of Christ. (Comments are the only thing keeping the karma machine running.) The Empire of Heavenly Bliss shall be yours, for at least the next few months.
Rick at 3:21 am
September 23, 2005
Slicker Than Snot!
Many, many thanks to deadly codemaster / computer whisperer Michael Clifford for helping iron out all those stupid layout bugs. He actually fixed things up better than you see here, but I further fucked up the code in translation, so get used to what you see. For now. (If your browser isn’t Safari, you might be the problem.)
While you’re waiting for another mp3, you can look at these photos of my beautiful records.
Rick at 7:31 pm
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