Brief Updates

When Tired Is the Entire Sum, That Shit Just Makes You Tiresome

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

Hello! In case you’re new here, there’s this band called Drug Church that I’ve been obsessed with for somewhere in the neighborhood of two years now. I’ve written about them quite a bit before, and I suspect I’ll continue to do so, because I assume they’ll continue to kick copious amounts of ass. What follows is something I started writing back in May, when I was on the eve of attending my first Drug Church headlining show. I took a break from writing to eat dinner, and before I got back to it, the show was cancelled.1 I didn’t bother to go back and edit the post at all because I was so bummed, and it sat abandoned ever since, lowering the neighborhood property values and scaring the neighborhood kids (“that old abandoned blog post gives me the creeps!”, they’d say), but no more!

My therapist wants me to set goals, and one of my goals is to write more, and to finish things, and that’s why I’m here right now. This old haunted house of a blog post has some good bones, and I didn’t want it to crumble to dust without at least givin it the old college try, whatever the fuck that means. They rescheduled the show a while back, and it’s coming up in a few days,2 so this seems like as good a time as any to HGTV that shit back into some kind of existence. Add some curb appeal, if you will.

Everything I said about the upcoming show in May holds true in December, and then some. The slow grind and boilin kettle of work is still bubblin away, and some shitty stuff has happened to some people I love, and I’ve really been leaning hard back into Drug Church lately. I never stopped listening to them, but I’d eased up a bit.3 I even went almost 36 hours without listening to them at one point back in October. My Spotify Wrapped 2025 informed me that only five other Spotify users on the entire planet listened to Drug Church more than I did this year.4

I listened to them a lot on CD and watched a lot of stuff on YouTube as well.

I’m listening to them right now, and there’s a good chance that I’ll listen to them a lot tomorrow, too.

I am actually quite surprised with the order here, but you can’t go wrong with any of em.

But I was talking about this old abandoned post from six-and-a-half months ago. The Penzeys Spices part isn’t relevant anymore, in that those spices are no longer new to me. In fact, I ran out of those Indian Special Blend Peppercorns months ago. The company still rules, and their spices are still great.

Anyway, here’s the original post, from May 22, 2025.

👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾

Real quick, full disclosure: the title of this piece is a line from a song by Drug Church. I often (usually) use lines from songs for the titles of my blog posts, but I’ve never before bothered with overt attribution. Lately I’ve been including a video from the band or artist I’m quoting in the title, but it occurs to me now that I should probably give credit where it’s due, lest anyone accuse me of being particularly clever.

I got my order from Penzeys today. I’m very excited. They consistently offer the best spices, herbs, dried chiles, spice mixes, and what have you that I’ve ever paid for. They were havin a “Get a $50 Gift Card for $35” sale, and when I received my card, they were havin a sale on everything that started with the letter “S” or the letter “B”, in honor of small businesses, and also in honor of Bruce Springsteen using his platform to speak truth to power. I took some pictures of my haul, because that seems to just be what we do these days, and because I’m excited about all the stuff I got for thirty-five bucks. Plus I wanna give them a shout-out.

Penzeys is a great company, and they offer a great selection of cooking ingredients, fairly priced. They always have something on sale, they always include at least one free sample, and they often include coffee mugs, magnets, stickers, buttons, and the like for free. If you or a loved one enjoys cooking, you should order some stuff from Penzeys! Unless you live near a storefront location, then you should go buy some stuff from Penzeys!

These pictures aren’t good, but I’m too tired to care.

I’m especially pumped about those India Special Extra Bold peppercorns. 😍

To clarify: I’m too tired to care enough to take better pictures. I definitely care about that horrendous reflection on the bags from the stove hood light that I didn’t notice until I’d already put the tea towel away, but I am way too tired to get the tea towel back out of the drawer and arrange everything again.

I’ve decided I’m gonna start using dried chiles more often. We’ll see how that goes.5
I’m also too tired to care that the Sunny Spain Seasoning and the Bavarian Seasoning aren’t turned slightly to the left (their right).

I’m stoked to try them all. I’ve had the Bavarian Seasoning before, and it’s great. According to the back label, it’s “excellent for all cuts of pork, veal, or lamb,” and if you like to eat those things, it’s almost certainly true, but I haven’t eaten meat in something like 8 years, so I use it on vegetables and whatnot, and it’s never let me down. Tonight I’m gonna use it in a mushroom stroganoff, and I am very much looking forward to eating some of it later. Maybe I’ll report back, but probably not.

I’m too pooped to care enough to take a less blurry picture of this, but I sure do hate how out of focus the letters are.

Speaking of looking forward to something, tomorrow night is the Drug Church show at Turntable up in Indianapolis (unofficial city motto: “If you don’t get lost at least once, were you really even here?”), and I’m fuckin stoked. The slow grind of work has been extra gritty lately, and my kettle is near to boilin, friends. For approximately 45 minutes tomorrow night, I’m gonna sing and dance and holler and sweat and smile and laugh, and I’m gonna forget I even have a job. I’ll definitely write about that at some point.

I’ve shared this video before, but that’s okay. Here it is again.

Here’s a live version, because we could all use it, whether we realize it or not.

This song doesn’t seem to be in their current setlist rotation, but it should be. Holy moly, what a corker!

For now, I’m gonna relax with a can of black cherry Waterloo and read some David Sedaris. I hope something beautiful happens to you today. Thanks for reading.

👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾👾

Thus endeth the old part of this entry. For the record:

  • the mushroom stroganoff was delicious,
  • the black cherry Waterloo was refreshing,
  • the David Sedaris was hilarious,
  • I still hope something beautiful happens to you today, and
  • I still thank you for reading.

PS: If you wanted to mash that like button and tell some friends about Clockwise Circle Pit, I wouldn’t be upset. 😘

  1. The reason for the cancellation was 100% understandable, but it was still a fuckin bummer. ↩︎
  2. Only two more sleeps! ↩︎
  3. I’m planning on writing about some of the things that pulled me away from Drug Church, but who knows when that’ll happen. ↩︎
  4. I know Spotify sucks balls, but I don’t pay for it, and I also still purchase physical media and merchandise from bands. Also, it would be irresponsible of me to not tell you that WordPress suggested that I change “sucks balls” to “suckles.” ↩︎
  5. Message from the future: I used one of those Sanaam India Chile Peppers for the first time yesterday, so I guess the answer to the question “how did that go?” is “it did not go well.” ↩︎

Don’t Tell Me What the Poets Are Doing

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

I’ve always been an avid reader, but I’ve also always been mostly ambivalent about reading poetry. Growing up Hoosier and all, I’ve liked James Whitcomb Riley’s stuff since I was a little kid, and “Little Orphant Annie” still gives me the willies. Dr. Seuss was my shit when I was a tyke, much to my mom’s chagrin. She somehow got it in her head that reading Dr. Seuss would “warp my mind”. She had the same reservations about the 1983 television miniseries V, as well as Twin Peaks. If she was still alive, I believe she would suspect that she was correct about the mind-warping. My family has never understood me, but I’m not gonna get into that right now. I gotta save something for the book, am I right?

What’s not to understand?

I think my main obstacle, re: wanting to read poetry stems from my senior year of high school, when I took L202 (a college-level Literary Interpretation class offered for dual credit). We analyzed and parsed and picked over Shakespeare and Dickinson and Frost and Plath and more until none of it could ever again be anything but a collection of meaningless words, devoid of any of the humanity those words might ever have had.

There are a few exceptions to my “Joel doesn’t like poetry” rule. I love Poe, and Shel Silverstein, and Langston Hughes, and Robert Frost (in spite of the over-analyzation), and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “The Waste Land”, and a lot of others I’m sure I’ll think of after I mash that “Publish” button. I enjoy most of Jack Kerouac’s poetry, when he wasn’t too far up his own ass with his jazz notions. Big Sur is one of my favorite books ever, but “Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur”, the poem he composed during the events semi-fictionalized in that novel, is nonsense to me. To be fair, though, I’ve never had to deal with sudden, overwhelming fame or alcohol withdrawal-induced panic attacks, so I can’t say for certain that the Pacific Ocean doesn’t sound like that.

♪♪To be faaaaaaiiiiiiiir.♪♪

The only author I can think of offhand whose poetry I ever really read on purpose anymore is Charles Bukowski. I know Bukowski was at best a very problematic human being, and I certainly don’t condone his behavior or consider him any kind of role model, but you can’t say he wasn’t honest, and goddamn, could he write. I’ve read his screenplay for Barfly, as well as his fictionalized account of that experience, Hollywood, and I like both. The movie is worth watching, too. Mickey Rourke is iconic as Henry Chinaski.

I’ve also read a big chunk of his short stories, and I can’t recall not enjoying any of them, but I think I enjoy his poetry more than his other writing. It has the same realness and rawness of his prose, but the poetic form makes it even more real, and more raw, like a carcass bleached clean by the sun.

Anyway, I wrote a poem today.

I used to write poems pretty regularly, but the urge hasn’t struck me much since I left Texas to return home to Indiana in ’06 (I lost the urge in the divorce, I guess). I have a lot of journals I kept between the ages of 18-24, and they contain an alarming number of extremely embarrassing poems about being lovesick and forlorn. Thankfully I never actually used the words “lovesick” or “forlorn” in any of my poems. That would’ve been much worse.

I did, however, self-publish/print-for-free-at-the-computer-lab-on-campus-when-I-was-in-college1 a book whose very existence mortifies me. It was a collection of my embarrassing poems combined with a collection of my even more embarrassing journal entries from when I was 22 years old and going through Some Shit That Nobody Else in the World Could Ever Possibly Understand (aka a broken heart). I gave a copy of that book to Henry Rollins once. He was very polite and gracious, and he said he liked the title (All Aboard the Joel Train) which is the only thing about that book that doesn’t embarrass me. I immediately regretted giving him a copy, and one of my greatest hopes in life is that he never read it. I thanked him in the introduction “for inspiration, in both writing and life”, and I included a handwritten note inside inviting him to contact me if he wanted to.

Same, David.

I continued to dabble in poetry well into my mid-twenties (right around the time I moved to Texas, now that I think about it), and then at some point, my writing just began to move away from it. I recently came upon an unfinished poem I wrote for Sheila not long after we started dating, and I think that might’ve been the last one I wrote until today, so I guess I maybe just finished my first poem in a quarter century. I’m not gonna say it’s good, but it made me laugh, so I decided to share it here. At any rate, it’s 100% better and 120% less embarrassing than anything I wrote when I was 20 years old.

“bling”

stumbling
and
mumbling
and
grumbling
and
tumbling
and
crumbling
and
jumbling
and
bumbling
and
fumbling
and
finally
thumbling
and
something called
scumbling
and
those are the words
that all rhyme with
humbling

I told you it was kinda dumb.

Not even me.

Thanks for reading. If you liked it/didn’t hate it, feel free to leave a comment and/or share it with your friends. If you did hate it, you could still share it with your friends, then you could all make fun of it together. Please don’t be mean in the comments, though. I have more feelings than my burly appearance and my surly demeanor might have you believe.

How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?

I’m also on Bluesky. Why not give me a follow for updates? It’s like Twitter, but not owned by a cartoon super-villain.

On the street and the epitome of vague…

1In retrospect, I might have been part of the university’s decision to start charging for copies.

Keeping Your Circle Small Is How You Rescue Yourself: A Thing About Quitting Facebook

/ Rev. Joel / 1 Comment

Today is the twentieth anniversary of my Facebook account, and I deleted it this morning, along with my Instagram account. I’ve been spending far too much time paying attention to other people’s lives, and not nearly enough time paying attention to my own. I’m a statistic: being chronically online has caused my mental health to suffer. I’ve become a kind of weird Facebook Hermit, hiding out in my house, going on intermittently for my own amusement about how much I like Peanuts comics and Sanford & Son and The Tragically Hip and Ginger, the woodchuck who lives across the road and eats clover in our backyard in the summer, or complaining for my own amusement about how much I dislike Donald Trump and football and Nicolas Cage and the asshole I got stuck behind while I was prairie doggin on my way home from Kroger.

Ms. Ginger Wiggles, at your service.
What, am I supposed to not talk about how much she rules?

When I wasn’t posting dumb shit on Facebook, I was angrily reading comments so I could feel superior to strangers. I’m 47 years old, y’all, I don’t have the time or energy to devote to being pissed off that some random guy with a “Let’s Go Brandon” image for a profile pic on the Louder Than Life fan group says Slayer is overrated and Acid Bath sucks. That guy is wrong about a lot more than his shitty musical taste whether or not I know about his opinions or his existence, and besides, it’s easier on my blood pressure if I don’t know about either. Plus there are way bigger things to get pissed off about (see also the real-time, real-life documentary series 2025: We’re Hosed, starring Nazi billionaires, religious fundamentalists, and dozens upon dozens of sex pests with a proclivity for violence).

Speaking of Nazi billionaires, I used to also have a Twitter account, which I pretty much only used to promote this blog and harass Ted Cruz. I deleted that account the instant I read that the present owner was buying the app. The decision wasn’t difficult, as I never like the format of Twitter anyway. Character limits are not conducive to my being long-winded, as evidenced by this very blog.

Anyway, I cruised along happily with Facebook and Instagram for a while, feeling somewhat morally superior, until right around the time it was announced that Suckerberg was donating money to the Orange Husk’s inauguration. That was my first real indication that my time with my beloved social media security blanket had to come to an end. The events of Inauguration Day itself solidified it for me. Facebook had to go, just as soon as I could muster the energy to start the process – no small feat in and of itself, what with the year of January being so emotionally and physically exhausting.

Speaking of Instagram, when I wasn’t posting dumb shit there, I was watching reels of cute animals and stand-up comedians and clips from Regular Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is a way of saying that Instagram was much better for my mental health than was Facebook, but unfortunately, they’re both owned by Zuckerberg, so they both had to go fuckerberg off.

It’s gonna be weird to not have those things at my fingertips to kill time during commercial breaks, or when Sheila goes to the terlit while we’re out at a restaurant, or while I wait for a doctor’s appointment. I’ve automatically lost touch with several people that I only knew through Facebook – people with whom I could’ve certainly enjoyed a cup of coffee or a beer IRL, but who I have no good reason to call or text. I’ll particularly miss a couple of folks from a Bill Hicks fan group and a few fellow metalheads from around the globe. There are some former co-workers who live in various places around the country who are evermore banished to the land of wind and ghosts, unless I happen to run into them while they’re in town visiting someone else.

You have very lucky dishes, Mr. Simpson.

Facebook has admittedly been good for some things. I have a friend in Australia who I met in the late 90’s on Bolt, an early social media website. We chatted and emailed on that site, as well as exchanged letters and phone calls a few times in the early days (one time her dad answered the phone, and when I asked him to tell her I called, he said “alright mate,” and I accidentally squealed a little bit), then our lives drifted apart for several years, until Myspace (and later, Facebook) brought us back together. Anyway, I was able to get her contact info before deleting, and I’m very glad about that. It’s fuckin wild to think that we’ve been friends for 26 years and have never met in person.

In addition to bringing people back into my life, social media has allowed me to show my true self to the world without the terrible inconvenience of being looked at while I do it. That’s an important thing for a socially awkward introvert such as myself to have. The amount that I dislike being looked at while I talk is unfathomable. I’m totally comfortable around a few key people, but for the most part, if I’m talking, and you’re looking at me, all I’m thinking about is how uncomfortable I am with the fact that you’re looking at me while I’m talking. That’s obviously a thing I need to get past, and I am working on it, but personal change doesn’t come easily or naturally to me. I can appreciate spontaneity from time to time, but I like my routines, and they are hard for me to break. But it’s like they say, knowing is half the battle.

Hey Roadblock, some stranger’s bringin me a prize!

Another not insignificant benefit of Facebook and Instagram is the added reach it gave my blog. It’ll be interesting to see how my stats differ without having those accounts to promote from. And while I know that in the short term my total views will take a hit, I’m happy that one less billionaire is making money off my work. I’m sure I’ll write more about all this another time, but until then, why not subscribe for updates, and/or follow me on Bluesky (@clockwisecirclepit.bsky.social)? Bluesky is pretty much exactly like Twitter as far as I can tell, so I doubt I’ll use it much, but at the very least, you’ll find out when I’ve posted something new here.

No deep dives into shallow minds.

Thanks for reading!

I Thought You Were Waving, Turns Out You Were Drowning: A Super-Brief Update

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

Hi! I should have my thing about Day Four of Louder Than Life 2024 finished and posted up here by the end of the weekend, but I don’t have time to get into that tonight. I’m here to keep the LTL spirit alive, though, by mentioning that today we locked in our tickets for Louder Than Life 2025! I’m already starting to mentally pack.

I am excited, thank you!

So far, the only band that’s been announced is Slayer, who will be making up their cancelled date from this year, and that’s amazing, but I don’t even care that we don’t know any other bands, because I know the lineup is gonna be amazing. I also know there are gonna be some turds. Sheila is pretty worried about Nickelback in particular, as they’re playing shows again next year. I’ve reminded her repeatedly that we aren’t required to watch or listen to them, but she remains steadfast in her worry.

I don’t give a shit whether or not Nickelback is there, I’m still stoked about it, and what with the state of the world right now, we all need something we can get stoked about. Check back soon for the “thrilling” final chapter of the epic saga that is one asshole’s experience at Louder Than Life 2024.

Really wish I could read your mind.

News Flash, I Need News Less: Final Check-In

/ Rev. Joel / 4 Comments

We’re at T-minus 27 hours until the gates open for Day One of Louder Than Life 2024. The car is (mostly) packed, the missus is showering, and I decided to write something, if only to keep myself honest about writing more. I’ve been awake since before 6:00 AM, and I know I’m gonna have to deal with that later, but for now, I’m flyin high on adrenaline (and my fingernails, which Sheila fancied up for me last night).

The color is called Motley Blue. Dig that speedboat finish!

Part of the fancy-pants package we bought this year is access to an official pre-party this evening, complete with open bar and “light bites”. We’ll hopefully meet at least one or two cool people there, but even if all we meet are duds, we’ll still have some stories to tell, eh?

Speaking of stories, the big story going into this weekend (other than the fact that it’s the 10th anniversary of the fest) is the weather. Every current weather model shows the remnants of Tropical Storm Helene hitting Louisville square in the butthole on Friday at the very least, with chances of rain ranging between 20% and 60% the other days, depending on which weather app or service you look at. The event is rain or shine, and while I’m not stoked about standing in the rain, and I’m really not a fan of being wet for any amount of time longer than a shower or a nice tub soak, I’m determined to rock my soggy ass off no matter what. I’ve got my water-proof Merrells and a proper raincoat, plus I’ll be taking an emergency poncho and an extra pair of socks every day. I’ll come out the other side water-logged as fuck, but it’ll make for a memorable event, and at the very least, I’m off work until next Wednesday, and I can’t be disappointed in that.

I’ll finish up with some songs from a few more of the bands I’m looking forward to. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to check back later for more about my experience at Louder Than Life 2024.

Ho9909 (pronounced “horror”) are wild as fuck. This’ll be our second time seeing them (first was LTL2K22), and we were supposed to see them perform a headlining set this past Sunday in Indianapolis, but that tour got cancelled. It would’ve been amazing to see them play in the dark, but ultimately I don’t care when or where I see them, as long as I get to see them again.

I totally slept on CKY until we started researching this year’s lineup. I was aware of them – I knew that they had toured with Clutch in the past, that they are affiliated with the people responsible for Jackass (their drummer Jess is Bam Margera’s brother), and that Jess plays in The Company Band with Neil from Clutch – but as far as I knew, I’d never heard a note from them. Basically, because I never watched more than 2-3 minutes of Jackass, I never had any kind of real awareness of CKY. I’m still not totally familiar with their musical output, but I know I’m stoked as fuck to hear some of their songs live, especially this one, which I was surprised to learn that I already knew pretty well, but didn’t know it was a CKY song.

I’d never heard of Narrow Head before this lineup was released, but holy smokes, do these guys scratch every single one of my musical itches. If they’d existed in the mid-90’s, I think they would’ve gotten huge. At the very least, my homeboy Travis and I would’ve been super fans.

Picture Being Built For One Thing: A Short Thing About Louder Than Life 2024

/ Rev. Joel / 6 Comments

My vacation is nigh, and I am Honkin on Bobo with excitement, friends. Only one more clock-in until I’m off for 8 days in a row. Only 4 days until we are southbound to Louisville, and only 5 days until Louder Than Life 2024 begins. We went from “I don’t think we I can do this again” to “this is our annual vacation” in less than three years, and brothers and sisters, I’m here to tell you that we have earned this particular annual vacation.

As I mentioned, re: last year’s fest, there’s no going back from Top Shelf.

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to approach writing about this year’s Louder Than Life, because as you can see from the flyer below, it’s a pretty dang big event, and on a personal level, it’s very intertwined with previous years. I think I’ve begun to figure it out, but I don’t have time to get started on it at the moment, as I have a lot to do in preparation for our trip, plus I’m very caught up in Season Two of Veronica Mars, and that show requires my full attention. I did want to write a li’l sumn sumn, though, just to hold myself accountable, and because I haven’t posted anything up on these “esteemed” pages in almost 6 months, and what’s the point of paying for the domain name if I’m not even gonna use the damn thing?

Anyway, this year’s Louder Than Life has, in my opinion, one of the strongest overall lineups in the history of the fest. The headliners get all the attention on the posters and the social media, and there are a couple of real duds on there (I’m looking at you in particular, Falling in Reverse), but this lineup is fuggin incredible, and it’s not just the bands with the prominent logos that are getting me stoked. Several of the bands I’m most excited about seeing are listed in generic white ALL CAPS.

One of the beautiful things about a festival like this is that it’s pretty easy to avoid a band if you don’t wanna see them. For example, when Falling in Reverse is playing on Saturday, we’ll be on the far end of the festival grounds, watching HEALTH, followed by Body Count, so we’ll clearly be the big winners on that day. On the other hand, one of the ugly realities about a festival like this is that you often have to make tough decisions about which band to miss because two bands you wanna see are playing at exactly the same time, or have overlapping start/stop times. I’m currently dealing with this in some capacity on all four days, and I’m sure I’ll write more about it eventually.

As I said earlier, I don’t have a lot of time to really get into this right now, but I wanted to get the ball rolling, which I figure will make it easier for me to keep it rolling after the fest. I have so much to say (about this festival and about my life in general over the past couple years), and I need to stop being a lazy turd and just say it, already, and I’m gonna keep it going this time. You’ll see!

I had to dig way too deep to find this image, and that’s just silly.

I’m gonna close with a song each from a few of the undercard bands that I’m extra pumped about seeing.

Touché Amoré has helped me work through some shit over the last year-and-a-half, y’all. They also tie into some of the things I have to say about this festival and about my life in general over the past couple of years, so you’ll definitely be hearing more about them soon. I will be a blubbering, emotional wreck when they take the stage at 2:15 on Thursday, and there’s a decent chance I will destroy my vocal chords singing along with them. This is their latest single, from their upcoming album Spiral in a Straight Line, which is coming out October 10, and about which I am very excited. The song and video both rule.

Drug Church has been helping me deal with day-to-day stuff and nonsense for most of this year, and if I have any voice left by the time they hit the stage Sunday at 4:45, it will surely be gone by the time their 30 minutes are up. Drug Church would be one of the very best bands to come from the mid-90’s if they hadn’t actually come from 2011, so instead they’re just the best band to come from 2011. This is one of their latest singles, from their upcoming album Prude, which is coming out October 4, and about which I am very excited. The song and video both rule.

KNEECAP is a hip-hop trio from West Belfast, Northern Ireland. I don’t know much about them yet, but I know that this song has not left my head since the first time I heard it, even if I can’t understand half the lyrics. I’m not 100% sure, but I think the beat might’ve gotten me pregnant. I have a feeling their live show is gonna off the hook, as the kids say.

Anyway, I really do need to get back to chorin, so that’s all for now. Stay tuned for more, though. My brain-dam is close to being breached, I can feel it. Check back in after next weekend and let yourself get swept away with my gibberish.

Thanks for reading.