Went to the Five and Dime, Bought Myself a Copy of Time: A Thing About a Band Called Clutch (Part Two)

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

I’m finally here to write more about Clutch. There’s a pretty good chance I’ll go on about a few things only marginally related to Clutch, as well, but I don’t know where this is goin yet.

I’m gonna start on April 14, 1998. That was the day one of my most favorite bands in the world (Clutch)1 released their third full length album (and first since I’d started listening to them), The Elephant Riders. It’s still my favorite Clutch album most days. My homeboy Travis bought two copies and gave one to me, because it was also two days before my birthday (the big two one), and he was (and is) an awesome dude. That birthday week is definitely one of my Top Five Best Weeks Ever, and riding around in Travis’s big ol red F-150 while we blasted The Elephant Riders is one of the standout snapshots.

Here’s the copy Travis bought for me. Well, it’s a picture of the copy, anyway.
Here’s the backside/track list.

Here’s the opening track/title track.

Don’t be eatin all the hard tack, between we two there’s half a small sack. Still, we got miles to go.

It was released on Columbia Records, and the dinguses who made the decisions at Columbia had no idea what to do with a band like Clutch (which is to say, Clutch). They refused to release the first version of the album, instead forcing the band to record in both in a studio and with a producer of the label’s choosing. Anecdotally, those knuckleheads definitely didn’t market the final, released version worth a shit, but it’s been my experience that the people who get paid to make the decisions are usually the ones with the dumbest ideas,2 so it’s not really all that surprising that Decision Makers at one of the biggest record labels in the world (at the time) would fumble the ninth-inning slam dunk that is The Elephant Riders. I tried to work in a hockey reference there as well, but I couldn’t make it happen. I’m very torn up about it.

I would like to love you, I sure would treat you right. We could take the trash out every Thursday night.

This album continues the evolution of Clutch from the lean, mean, pissed off hardcore punk-adjacent heavy rock ‘n’ roll riff machine that tore its way out of Germantown, Maryland in 1991 to the weird and indefinable metal-adjacent jamming heavy rock ‘n’ roll riff machine they’ve become. I first saw them live on the tour for this album, at the Emerson Theater in Indianapolis, and, it was a stone groove, man. Every direction you looked, there were riffs. Front man Neil Fallon was already perfecting his fire-and-brimstone stage persona, and I almost fell down a few times dancing, on account of the floor of the Emerson Theater was sloped, on account of the Emerson Theater used to be an actual fancy theater instead of a shitty all ages music venue where the urinals were lined with stickers inside and out, and an almost certainly carcinogenic snow fell gently from the ceiling tiles when the bass drum hit loud enough.

The only specific thing I can remember about the performance is that they opened with album closer “The Dragonfly”, and it was sublime. A partial set list exists online, and while I can’t vouch for its accuracy or its completion, it looks like it was a great set3.

Big if true.

I saw some great bands/shows at the Emerson Theater (and missed a few, too), and I’ll prolly write about a lot of that at some point, but who knows whether you’ll get to see it. The internet just told me that the Emerson Theater still exists, and my eyesight and reading comprehension told me it has a terrible website, and the website told me that Municipal Waste is playing a headlining show there in May. I have to assume the venue has been spruced up since I was there last.

Pity the mate of Queen Mantis, so content but so headless, Katy did nothing but shiver and cry, as did the dragonfly

By the way, I acknowledge that it says “I WASN’T THERE” in that screenshot of the set list, but that’s not true. The screen read “I WAS THERE” before I logged in. The logic makes sense, but from a purely aesthetic point-of-view, as far as screen shots go, I don’t like it.

Excuse me, Mr. Horse. What are your feelings about that fall?

Anyway, a live Clutch show is one of the best things you could ever experience, and their fan base is one of the most devoted I’ve ever seen, comparable to The Mountain Goats and the long strange trip of the Grateful Dead (including all the Dead-adjacent and affiliate bands).45 People who’ve seen them 30, 75, 120 times or more. I’ve seen them 13 times now, and only one of the shows was disappointing to me in any way, but that was entirely my fault, and it happened fifteen years later, so I won’t get into it now.

I’m gonna share three more songs from The Elephant Riders and then we’ll move ahead. This three-song run makes up the middle of the album in a way, and in my studied opinion, it’s the best three-song run the band has done to date. I encourage you to check them out, but you really should just listen to the whole album. Especially if you like a groove and a swing with your fatass riffs, and can at least tolerate some gruff hollerin.

“The Soapmakers” was the only single released from the album, and it ranks number 21 on Clutch’s most-played songs live, according to available data collected and aggregated by setlist.fm, and I gotta tell you, it really is somethin special. Like nearly every song from the band, this one kinda sounds like it’s being sung (sang?) by a sentient beard, and it’s a bit weird to see Neil all babyfaced and beardless in this video, especially considering he would go on to cultivate such a mighty beard.

As they stirred heaven and earth they combined to one, and everything was everyone and each one was all.

Aside from the memorable refrain, “The Yeti” didn’t really grab me until I was livin in Austin, which is when I started to write more, and on a more regular basis. One night I was in the office while my ex was at work, and I got righteously zooted and played The Elephant Riders through headphones while I wrote on the computer. “The Soapmakers” faded out with those weird, spooky sound effects, “The Yeti” rolled into my eardrums just like it had hundreds of times before, and suddenly the song came alive in my mind. I watched the story happen in real time, across the vast expanse of a seemingly endless snowscape, and the song worked some kind of magic on my brain, and now there’s an 89% chance that at any given moment, lyrics from “The Yeti” are in my head.

Sky is filled with starry scenes of heroes in their greatest deeds.

The last song of the three is also one of my favorite songs of all time. They’ve only played it live 18 times, according to available data collected and aggregated by setlist.fm, and do you wanna guess how many of those times I was in attendance for?

I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with “hero”.

I even caught em on an anniversary tour of The Elephant Riders, and the only songs from the album they didn’t play are “Muchas Veces” and “Crackerjack”, but “Crackerjack” is an instrumental with a long trombone solo, so I wasn’t expecting that one anyway.

This seems like as good a time as any to mention that “Muchas Veces” also contains a trombone solo, and it’s fucking perfect. Both solos are played the hell out of by renowned tromboner6 Delfeayo Marsalis (of the renowned Marsalis Family). As I say, I wasn’t expecting to hear “Crackerjack”, but I thought surely they’d play “Muchas Veces” with some other type of solo(s) or extended jam in place of the trombone solo, because they do sometimes jam on songs live, but alas, they did not, and that’s almost certainly the best chance I’ll ever have of hearing it live.

Muchas veces I don’t know if I’m coming or I’m going, muchas veces I’m at a loss as what to do.

Okay, I’ve spent way too much time talking about the one album, so I’m gonna stop for now and pick things up in a post-The Elephant Riders world. Thanks for reading. Check back eventually for the next installment. Or, pop your digital digits into that box below so you can be among the first to know. And tell your friends, yeah?

  1. Duh. ↩︎
  2. And the thumbs farthest up the asses. ↩︎
  3. Duh. ↩︎
  4. A lot of Clutch fans refer to themselves as “Gearheads”, but I don’t feel like I know enough about the band to fall in with that lot. ↩︎
  5. I certainly could’ve included Phish and Dave Matthews Band in that company as well, but I can’t even with those two. ↩︎
  6. I mean no disrespect to Mr. Marsalis, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to include the word “tromboner” at least once. Well, twice now. ↩︎

Cook As Needed for Pain, Volume 3: That Black Bean Sweet Potato Thing

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

The Bouncing Souls saved my life. I’ll just go ahead and get that outta the way right now. They are one of the top three or four reasons I survived the second half of 1999 and the entirety of the year 2000, and I’ve been tryna write about them for a couple of months now, but I’ve been struggling to figure out how to approach it. I’m still not sure if I solved it, but this is something, at least.

The thing about sweet potatoes is that they’re extremely versatile, but I feel like most people only encounter them around Thanksgiving, when they’re covered with maplesyrupandbrownsugarandmarshmallows and sometimes nuts, and therefore do not resemble anything that was ever called a sweet potato. And I know lots of people love sweet potato casserole, and I’m not here to fart on your salad1, but I really believe with my whole heart that if you’ve only eaten your sweet potatoes extra sweet, you should taste a savory sweet potato dish and marvel at the difference, and I guess that’s where I’m goin with this right now.

This recipe doesn’t really have a name – it’s kind of like a veggie chili, and I’ve been known to use leftovers to jazz up a batch of veggie chili, but when I make veggie chili, it’s different from this. This is its own thang.

Tom Hanks is: David S Pumpkins in His Own Thang (Part of It!)
I’M DAVID PUMPKINS, MAN!

And since I haven’t been able to come up with a suitable way to distinguish it from my chili without overexplaining, I end up just calling it “that black bean sweet potato thing” as in “hey Sheila, I’m gonna make that black bean sweet potato thing for dinner tonight”, and so I’ve decided here and now to just call it That Black Bean Sweet Potato Thing.

It’s a good thing I didn’t overexplain anything, right? Jesus.

Here’s the ingredient list for the thing:

  • 1/2 cup yellow or white onion, small diced (see Notes)
  • 1 medium to large sweet potato, peeled and medium diced (see Notes)
  • 1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 can of hominy, drained and rinsed
  • 1 can of diced tomatoes
  • 2 cups of your preferred broth (see Notes)
  • 1 Tablespoon tomato paste
  • 1 Tablespoon ground cumin
  • 1 Tablespoon ground ancho chile powder
  • 1 Tablespoon Penzey’s adobo seasoning (see Notes)
  • 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
  • 1 teaspoon granulated onion
  • Salt and black pepper to taste

Notes:

  • Small dice is approximately 1/4 in (6.35 mm) square. Here’s a decent tutorial on the various types of basic culinary knife cuts.
  • It would be perfectly fine if you just scrubbed and diced your sweet potato, leaving the skin on. In fact, it would be even healthier.
  • I use Better Than Bullion brand “No Chicken Base” almost every time I need a broth. It’s one of my secret weapons, except I just told you about it.
  • Penzey’s adobo seasoning is salt-free. Many adobo seasonings include salt as a main ingredient. If you substitute a different brand of adobo seasoning, be sure to taste it before you begin adding additional salt.
  • Feel free to add other things, as well. I’ve added diced bell peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, and spinach. One time I added all of those things, plus some pinto beans and more liquid, and accidentally made veggie chili. You could certainly add some kind of meat. I imagine some kind of venison or stewing beef would be pretty baller, and all manner of poultry and pork can certainly participate in the Thing. The only real limit is your imagination.
Milhouse contains multitudes, yo.

So what you do, see, is you add a tablespoon or so of olive oil to a medium-hot saute pan, then add the diced onions and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring often, until the onion starts to turn translucent, then add the peeled diced sweet potatoes. BEWARE OF SPLASHING OIL!

It should look something like this.

Lower the heat to medium and cook for 8-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until those sweetie pooteeties start to soften, just a lil bit. Next, add the seasonings and the tomato paste, and stir to combine. Cook for another minute or two, then stir in the broth and the can of diced tomatoes, juice and all. Maybe even give the can a li’l rinsiedoodle and pour that tomato water in, too. It’s not rocket science.

Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat back to medium and cook for like 5 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. The sweet potatoes should be softer, but still kinda firm, and the liquid should’ve reduced by approximately one-quarter to one-third of the beginning volume.

Like this, more or less.

At this point, add the beans (and hominy, if using). Stir to combine again, then lower the heat to medium-low and continue to simmer for another 10-15 minutes. Stir it a couple-few times. Adjust the heat as necessary.

This is after stirring in black beans and hominy, but before it started simmering again.

After ten minutes, pop a lid on the pan and put it in a 250° F (120° C) oven until you’re ready to eat. It keeps getting better the longer you cook it. I recommend using this time to make some rice and/or quinoa, because that really ties things together. Follow basic rice/quinoa instructions or the packaging instructions, if your rice/quinoa came in a package with cooking instructions. When your grain of choice is ready, put some of it in your favorite bowl and top it with your delicious black bean sweet potato thing. I like to top the whole shebang with some diced avocado and just get after it, but it’s also great with any combination of sour cream, shredded cheese, cilantro, pickled jalapenos, and Cholula, and if you like raw diced onions, that’s probably pretty great too, but it’s not really my scene. A side of tortilla chips is optional, and is also recommended.

Here’s an example of what your Black Bean Sweet Potato Thing might look like by the time your rice and/or quinoa is and/or are ready to eat:

So saucy. So delicious.

I suppose it’d probably serve four. I usually cook for two, and it serves two twice in our house. I’ll be the first to tell you that I’ve never understood most mathematics, but I do know that two twice equals four.

Jackprot! Let’s hit the tables!

But I was talking about The Bouncing Souls.

The Bouncing Souls have been making punk rock ‘n’ roll for the freaks, nerds, and romantics since they formed in New Brunswick, NJ in 1989. I first heard them in 1998, a little under a year after the release of their self-titled third album. I love their entire discography from the beginning up to and including 2003’s Anchors Aweigh. I haven’t listened to much of anything since The Gold Album, which I recall thinking was just fine, and is certainly better than no The Bouncing Souls. Even if they don’t necessarily light my f-i-r-e, it feels like newer Souls albums and songs are still connecting with a lot of people, and that makes me very happy, because any amount of The Bouncing Souls in your life is a good amount.

Anyhow, the stretch from Hopeless Romantic (1999) into How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2001) is the sweet spot for me. Hopeless Romantic was the first album they released after I discovered them, and it was the one I listened to most often during the darkest days of my wilderness years. The title track is one of my favorites.

I’m kinda lazy, and I kinda stink, but I’d clean myself up for you.

I could easily sit here and show you 11 or 12 of the 13 songs from the album, but ain’t nobody got time for that, so here’s a quick sampling of some of my very most favorites.

All we had was our dreams, that’s all we needed to be free.

Some of these songs still instantly transport me to moments in time and space from the summer of 1999, aka “Sad Sack Summer”. “Night On Earth” is one of those.

I’ll miss you, but now I’ll know better next time, ’cause I found me.

People probably called the ‘Souls sellouts for making songs like these, but people have always been pretty stupid, so I wouldn’t put much stock into what they have to say about much of anything. Enjoy what you like and if they got somethin to say, tell em to cram it.

Now I know I’m gonna try, and I know this will pass by and by.

This was also around the first time I got to see the band live, on the 1999 Vans Warped Tour in scenic historic beautiful Tinley Park, Illinois (town motto: “Where the Allman Brothers Band plays when they play in ‘Chicago'”).

I felt compelled to draw this visual aid for some reason. Dig that butterfly effect emanating outward.

But I kid the good people of Tinley Park, Illinois [town motto: “You might be thinking of the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Noblesville, Indiana (town motto: “Where the Allman Brothers Band plays when they play ‘Indianapolis'”)”]. That first time seeing The Bouncing Souls live was magical, and I even have two washed out pictures from right near the rail, which I am going to include here. The less good one was captured by me, and the other was straight tooken by my old pal Rasma, from atop my old pal Owen’s shoulders.

I sure don’t miss disposable cameras.
That security fella in the red shirt instructed Rasma to get down immediately following this snapshot.

This is the same Warped Tour where Scott and I walked past Mike Muir from Suicidal Tendencies while he lifted weights in the parking lot. That was pretty surreal.

I was significantly less sad, generally speaking, by the time How I Spent My Summer Vacation was released in May 2001, but I did still seem to still be on a real similar wavelength with the band.

Forget about the things I said, I make no excuse for them.

Like its predecessor, this album could be presented pretty much in its entirety, but for the sake of time, I’m just gonna include three more songs.

Tomorrow’s a lifetime away, she’s all I want today.

I saw them live for the second time while they were touring for this album. It was July 12, 2001, just two days shy of exactly two years since the first time I saw them live, up yonder in Tinley Park, Illinois, back in the twentieth century.

I’m no good, you’re no better, wouldn’t we be perfect together?

I feel like if you’re gonna know one song from The Bouncing Souls, there’s a decent chance it’ll be “Gone”. It’s a good’n.

I needed strength to change my mind, but those ghosts stuck to me like glue.

Here’s the part about when I saw them live in 2001, when the Vans Warped Tour stopped at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater Deer Creek Music Center in scenic historic beautiful Noblesville, Indiana.

The $ in “music” is an accident, but a happy one.

I got a spot on the rail just to the right of stage left (which still seems to be my preferred spot), and they played “Quick Chek Girl” and “East Coast! Fuck You!”,2 and that’s pretty much all I remember about that set, because I was absolutely blissed out. I got to meet the band that day! I accidentally cut in front of a large section of the line and didn’t become fully cognizant of that fact until about three years later, but whatever, I got to meet The Bouncing motherfucking Souls!

The manager said “she quit, she isn’t here. Do you want me to help you count the papers?”

I told them their music saved my life, and Brian said “that’s awesome, us too”, and when I produced my “Gone” CD single, for autographical purposes, Greg said “man, he’s got all the cool stuff”, on account of I was also wearing my A-Team replica t-shirt (as pictured below – also, it’s the same shirt that my ex-wife later turned pink the one time she ever did laundry) and they also thought that was pretty cool. It was a Top Three moment for me at that point in my life, and if I’m being totally honest, it’s still probably in my top twenty. Here’s a self-portrait I made the day after I met them, when I was working at the music store in the mall.

This is pretty accurate, although my smile was even bigger in real life.

Incidentally, my first week at that job was the coolest job I’ve ever had, then the company became the property of Trans World Entertainment, and the whole place immediately started to swirl down the shitter. It’s still a real contender for Favorite Job Ever, though; I mean, on the bad days, I still got to listen to music and hang out with my friends. The customers were terrible, but it’s not like the customers aren’t also terrible every other place and all other times. But my days at the music store are a story for another time. This is about The Bouncing Souls.

In September, 2002, The Bouncing Souls released a split EP with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania political punk rockers Anti-Flag. Both bands had some originals, plus some covers, and it was a great, high-energy release that also introduced me to Anti-Flag. Then in 2003, they released their sixth full-length album, Anchors Aweigh. I loved it upon its release, and I still love it today, but back in 2003 my life was headed in a direction that did not require the presence of new songs from The Bouncing Souls to help me get by. Since then, they’ve existed more in my periphery for the most part, and while I do believe that any Bouncing Souls is better than no Bouncing Souls, when I get a hankerin, I go with the classics.

I did see them live once more, on the Anchors Aweigh tour in the fall of 2003, when I lived in Austin. I’m pretty sure that was my only time seeing a headlining set from them. It was great, as expected. Then a bunch of time passed, then in early 2020, they announced a headlining tour with a stop in Indianapolis, Indiana (town motto: “Don’t expect an easy drive to or from your destination”). I got tickets for me and my homeboy Matt, who is one of the other three or four reasons I survived that 18 months in my early 20’s, as mentioned way back in the beginning of this thing. The show was cancelled when our simulation received the hard reset that was 2020, and they have yet to reschedule an Indianapolis show, but I’ll be there when they do, smilin like a little kid on Christmas while I dance my ass off and sing along with every word I know.

Give it to me straight, touch my heart, I’ll sing along forever.

Anyway, I was talking about That Black Bean Sweet Potato3 Thing. Black beans are awesome. Sweet potatoes are awesome. You should cram em together in that taste sensation I told you about up yonder, That Black Bean Sweet Potato Thing. And you should listen to The Bouncing Souls while you’re doing it. If you’re capable of having feelings, they can surely speak to at least one of em.

Thanks for reading. If you wanted to tell a friend about Clockwise Circle Pit, that wouldn’t be the worst thing that ever happened to me. Until next time…

Tell me about your big “but”, Simone.

I made that myself. Would you believe I’ve had absolutely no graphic design training?

  1. I really did fart on a guy’s salad one time. I didn’t do it on purpose, but he kinda sucked anyway, so I never felt bad about it. ↩︎
  2. “I know we’re not on the east coast, but you can all say ‘fuck you’, right?” – Greg Attonito ↩︎
  3. I spent a
    very long time
    tryna decide
    whether I should spell it
    “potato”
    or “potatoe”
    (in the fashion of former Vice President of the United States of America James Danforth Quayle)
    but ultimately
    I decided
    he should be
    a footnote
    and nothing more.

    Also
    I just learned
    that you can turn a footnote
    into dang ol poem! ↩︎

An Unforeseen Future Nestled Somewhere in Time: A Louder Than Life-Related Update

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

I work too much and I don’t write enough. It’s a tale as old as time. To be clear, I don’t work an exorbitant amount, but it’s still too much, because human beings cannot possibly exist to work until we’re dead, and if that is the point of this particular simulation, then I’m ready for a reset any time now, please and thank you. Well, maybe not any time, but I’ll get to that shortly.

I’m fine. Really, I am. It’s just that the world’s got me some kind of down these days, friends, and neighbors, and I’m really struggling to maintain optimism, re: our future in this realm. I mean, a pants-shitting, thieving, tacky pedophile with unusually small hands is the nominal leader of the most powerful nation, militarily, in the history of humanity, y’know? And King Dipshit the Orange has some truly evil scumfucks pulling his strings, which makes it hard to maintain hope, y’know? And there’s still a lot I wanna do before it all ends, y’know? And I’m always so goddamn mentally and physically worn out from working and keeping the house and yard slightly presentable in this infernal heat and humidity that is summer in the Ohio River Valley that I never feel like doing anything when I’m not working. And that’s dumb, y’know?

I really am fine, though, I promise.

Hey, here’s something exciting that makes things better for now: Louder Than Life is quite nigh (35 days, 13 hours, and a little over 4 minutes, according to the app), and this year is gonna be a humdinger. I’m talkin a real live wire, man. I had a lot of intentions, re: writing about LTL more regularly over the past ≈ 11 months, but I also had a lot of intentions, re: getting in better shape in time for this year’s fest, and we see how well that turned out, don’t we? (Spoiler alert: it did not turn out well.)

I did slightly update my in-depth guide to getting the most out of your time at Louder Than Life, and if you haven’t checked that out yet, you can do so here.

Some pretty major news was announced last week, re: LTL, namely that the actual physical location of the festival will be different this year, as the entire fest has been moved to the parking lot adjacent to the Highland Festival Grounds. It’s gonna be weird to learn a new layout, and I’m not sure that I’m 100% stoked about the new location. Mostly the fact that it’s entirely in a parking lot, which means there’ll be pretty much no grass, and the sun will definitely be more intense on the blacktop than it would be on grass/dirt. The total area seems to be spread out a lot more this year as well, which will mean much more walking. Careful readers may recall that I logged 34+ miles over the course of last year’s LTL, and that was with one entire day cancelled!

Speaking of that cancellation, I assume the decision to move the festival is at least partially influenced by the “mud” that occurred last year after Hurricane Helene pushed her way through town, but I can’t say for certain, and the reason doesn’t matter anyway, because it’s how things are gonna be, at least this year. My only realistic choice is to enjoy myself, and frankly, I’ll take standing on asphalt in the summer sun in Kentucky for 9+ hours over working any day of the week. Throw in some great music, great food, great friends, and superlative people-watching, and baby, you got a stew goin! Hopefully not a hurricane stew like last year, though.

Carl Weathers was an American treasure.

Further pros, re: the new layout include shade trees throughout, and access to the air-conditioned Kentucky Exposition Center (“an immersive merch experience…featuring festival gear, additional activations, and lounge seating” – if there’s one thing I appreciate, it’s access to air conditioning and seating), which is pretty fuckin cool. The biggest addition to this year’s setup is the inclusion of Kentucky Kingdom Theme Park in the cost of our admission. The park will be closed to the public all four days of the fest, and per the official website:

Your pass now includes:
• FREE access to 18 amusement rides inside Kentucky Kingdom, including the Giant Wheel (ferris wheel), Lightning Run (rollercoaster), Scream Extreme, Skycatcher, and more fan favorites.
• Extra shaded areas, picnic spots & restrooms •Select concessions, shopping & air-conditioned indoor dining.
• Ride hours run daily from 2PM to 9PM — with the Giant Wheel staying open until 10PM for late-night spins. Please note: Hurricane Bay waterpark will not be in operation during the event for festival goers or the public.

I’ll be surprised if I take advantage of the rides (unless bumper cars are part of it, then you just try and stop me!), but the addition of park access will certainly help keep the crowds spread out a bit more, and if there’s one thing I appreciate, it is a well-distributed crowd.

Meet the new map, different from the old map.

That’s about all the time I’ve got for today. Dinner still hasn’t found a way to cook itself. Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back for more Louder Than Life-related stuff (hopefully) leading up to, and certainly following, assuming the simulation doesn’t reset before then. I’ll be so pissed if it does.

Before you see the light, you must die.

Only 35 days, 12 hours, 7 minutes, and 25 seconds to go!

Did I Shave My Balls For This? (With Apologies to Deana Carter)

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

I’m supposed to be vasectomized and goofy on anesthesia right now, but none of my doctors told me I needed to stop taking one of my medications three days ago, so the anesthesiologist cancelled the surgery, and I got a Monday off instead. I’m not complaining about the Monday off, but I am gonna complain a little bit about the situation that led to me sitting here annoyed and writing instead of out of my mind on propofol and giggling at Regular Show.

YOU MAKES NO SENSE!

The whole thing really kinda amplifies modern life in these United States. Surgery I was gonna have to pay for even though I currently have health insurance, scheduled almost four months in advance because the doctor only performs that operation on the second Monday of each month (and his appointments don’t begin until 1:00 PM) cancelled because at least two different people dropped the ball (no pun intended), re: relaying a simple message to the patient.

What really refries my frijoles is that I did everything else right. Every single thing they told me to do or not do to get ready for the procedure, I did, or did not, as it were. I would’ve followed the rule, if they’d told me the rule. I got it rescheduled easily enough (the doctor even offered to do it this Friday, which didn’t work for Sheila or me because we both cast our lot with the service industry decades ago), but that’s not the point. I was very relieved that I would never have to alter my private area with a razor again (utterly harrowing!), and now I do have to alter my private area with a razor again because at least two separate individuals in at least two separate locations (all of them professionals in the medical field) failed to tell me I would need to cease taking a pill three days prior.

I didn’t have much use for country music in the late 90s, but she has a real nice voice, and “Strawberry Wine” is a jam.

But I’m not here to talk about the busted-ass healthcare system in this country, or about my private area. Today, I wanna talk about Louder Than Life, because it’s been a while since I’ve written about it (a little over 8 months!), and also because the 2025 edition kicks off in 63 days, if you count the pre-party the night before Day One, which I most certainly do. In approximately 5,443,200 seconds, I will clock out from work and cease to forget that I even have a job for nine days, and Sweet Baby Jeebus am I ever excited!

This is definitely the most thrash and death metal heavy lineup in LTL’s history.

This year’s lineup is the biggest ever (“160+ bands” according to the official website), and as such, it’s also maybe the most mixed bag I’ve ever seen for this particular festival, as far as my interest in the bands. Thursday’s main stage lineup is jaw-droppingly heavy and badass, with the sole exception of Marilyn Manson, who can fuck directly off and into the sun. The guy’s a super creep, but more importantly, I never liked his music, so his inclusion (likely killing my momentum between Down and Lamb of God) is disappointing to me. The cool thing about the way LTL is set up, though, is that I can fuck off and do something else while he’s lowering the property value on that side of the festival grounds, and I might not even have to miss any of Down or Lamb of God.

However, as I’ve mentioned before, the cruel nature of the multiple stage setup means that in addition to wanting to stay in the vicinity of the main stages all day, the second stage also has a lot of things that tickle my fancy, and the Kroger Big Bourbon Bar also has four bands I’d really like to see. Thankfully the third stage doesn’t have anything for me on Day One. The rest of the weekend should be easier to maneuver (unless the schedules are put together by someone with personal vendetta against me), and I’m already excited about being able to leave early on Day Two and again on Day Four, because I’m definitely gonna need that to make it out alive.

Long-time readers of my nonsense may recall that I wrote back in early December that if Acid Bath got announced for Louder Than Life 2025, I would “shit everyone’s pants”, and if you look toward the top of Day Three there, you’ll see that come September 20th, I’ve got some defecatin to do. I’m gonna lose my mind when they play “Graveflower” and “Pagan Love Song”.

My family doesn’t tend to live a particularly long time, but I do come from a long line of celebrated poopers, on both sides.

I’ll definitely be writing plenty more about Louder Than Life over the next 90,000 or so minutes (and beyond), but for now I’m gonna wrap this up. Thanks for reading, and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any of the excitement of my rambling essays about LTL2K25, how much I hate working for a living, and/or my private areas.

You’re screaming because there’s nothing left for you to say.

We Yabba Dabba Doo All the Way to Shangri-La: A Thing About Self-Inflicted Burdens, and Also a Band Called Clutch

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

I decided to take a break from writing wedding vows to try to unpack some boxes from the corners of my brain. Speaking of boxes: for as long as I can remember, I’ve had boxes of stuff. All kinds of stuff, most of it garbage. Regular readers of my nonsense/knowers of me personally are no doubt already aware of this, but I’ve always been a nostalgia junkie/pack rat/sentimental fool, and throwing things away just does not come easily to me. The number of boxes has fluctuated over time, but I’ve always had at least a few, and I’ve often had a lot. They’ve gone with me every time I’ve moved, out of one closet and into the next, sometimes under the bed, sometimes in the basement, one time in a pyramid in the middle of my bedroom that I had to walk around to get from one side of the room to the other (that was a very sad year for me).

Nineteen years ago, while packing up to move back home from Texas, I chose five boxes at random, taped all of them shut without opening any of them, and threw them into the dumpster at the apartment complex where I’d been living with my soon-to-be ex-wife. This was the absolute peak/nadir of my box-having life. I left at least eight more boxes (probably closer to twelve) in the walk-in closet, also without opening any of them. My reasons for doing so were threefold:

  1. I simply didn’t have room to bring everything back with me. Some of the boxes would have to stay behind, full stop.
  2. If I’d started looking through all the boxes to decide which ones were most important before loading up the truck, I’d still be there today, living with a new family and internally debating whether I should continue to hold on to my fourth grade report card, or my birthday cards from 1993, or my official Mason Shoe salesman certification that I signed up for as a joke in when I was 12 years old.1
  3. A teeny tiny part of me wanted to be a petty bitch and make my ex have to deal with some of my collected detritus and ephemera.2

I know I left some good stuff behind, and every now and then I’ll remember something specific, and I’ll get a lil sad, but by and large, it was all garbage, and should’ve been disposed of much sooner. I currently have the smallest number of boxes that I’ve had since I first left home in 1996, and it’s a nice feeling. There’s still plenty of stuff in those boxes that I do not need to hold onto (I’m looking at you, SAT results from 1994 and cheap acrylic paints from 2007), but some of the stuff is quite essential. For example, I have a shoe box full of letters my dad wrote to my mom when he was deployed in Vietnam in 1965-66. She kept every letter he sent to her, and I have all of them, and that’s pretty awesome.

Speaking of non sequiturs, I’m gonna see Clutch live this weekend, and I’m incredibly stoked for that. It’ll be my 13th time, and my first in nearly two years, which is pretty long time for me to go without seeing Clutch live these days. They’re touring on the 30th anniversary of their massive self-titled second album, and that just happens to be one of my favorite Clutch albums. They were originally talking about playing the album in its entirety, which would’ve been extremely cool, but they apparently decided to not do that, and have instead been favoring songs from the album on their setlists, which is still fine by me.

I have plans for the future, guess they’re futuristic plans.

They’ve opened with “Animal Farm” a couple of times on this tour, and I can’t begin to imagine how I’ll survive an entire show if they pull that insanity with us.

Well I’ve been appointed to inform you your days are numbered.

One of the cool things about seeing Clutch live is that you legitimately never know what they’re gonna play next. The four members take turns writing the setlists, so every stop on a given tour gets a unique set. They have some standards they almost always play, and large stable of songs that they often pick from, but they’ll drop a legitimate deep cut into the set surprisingly often.

I didn’t get to see em play “Rats” until my twelfth time, and it’s not even really that deepa cut.

In the doorway is a cutaway of flesh and bone.

They’re playing some casinos on this tour, which I’m pretty sure is a first for them, and the casino nearest us, which happens to be one of their stops, also happens to be the casino we visit most often, which happens to be pretty fuckin rad.3 We don’t go there terribly often, but we go often enough to get free or discounted rooms, free slot play, and free food when we do go. I know it’s not really “free” if we’re spending money every time, but we’re basically breaking even, and we’re having fun without hurting anyone, so as far as I’m concerned, everyone’s a winner.

I gotta wrap this up. As far as I can discern, enchiladas haven’t figured out how to make themselves yet, which is too bad. There’s some AI I could get behind. Thanks for reading. Sorry if you were expecting a nice tidy conclusion. That’s not really my thing. Before you go, dig this screenshot from the Wikipedia entry for “Yabba Dabba Doo”. It made me snort-laugh.

Ah yes, Froyd Flintstone, husband to Walmon, father to Pubblers.

If you enjoyed this, it’d be cool if you told a friend and/or subscribed (for free!) to receive more content like it, and occasionally some content that I actually put a modicum of thought into. Okay, that’s all.

  1. Undoubtedly, I would eventually decided “yes” to all three, and when I finally made it back to Bloomington, I would have to use those boxes to build a shelter, because there’s no way I could afford to live in this city if I wasn’t already established here. ↩︎
  2. A few months after I moved back, I saw a post on her Myspace wall asking if anyone was interested in a loose box of football cards from the 1970s, so I was at least mildly successful. That’ll teach her to cheat on me. ↩︎
  3. That sentence could’ve been much clearer, but here we are. ↩︎

Oops! I Did It Again: Adventures in People-Pleasing

/ Rev. Joel / 1 Comment

I had a complicated, confusing relationship with religion growing up. That doesn’t make me special, but it’s a fact about me nonetheless. That’ll be discussed here someday, or maybe it won’t. What’s pertinent for now is that I started to consider myself agnostic in my early twenties, and since my mid-thirties, I’ve generally considered myself atheist, if only because I don’t believe in capital-g-God. I’ve experienced enough to know there’s more to the world than what we can perceive under normal circumstances, so I’m not averse to the idea that there’s something bigger than us, but to me, the fact that human suffering is a thing means that the capital-g-God of the Torah, Bible, and/or Quran cannot exist, or if they do exist, they’re the biggest prick to ever do so, and if that’s what’s real, then I have no interest in pursuing it beyond this realm.1

To that end, I became an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church in the summer of 2000, when I was 23 years old, as a larf. Cut to Spring 2007: my brother calls me up and asks me if I can “still do weddings”. I ask him what the hell he’s talkin about, and he says “I thought you were ordained, I’m gettin married and I wanted to see if you’d do the wedding”, and I say “oh shit, I guess I can still do weddings”, and I agree to do his wedding, and thus begins my brief foray into wedding-doing.

I went on to preside over a total of seven weddings, to the best of my recollection, the last one in (I think) 2015. My stats are kinda interesting/depressing. Five out of seven of those couples no longer exist today. Two out of seven were second marriages, and in both cases, I also presided over the first wedding. One of those two couples is also one of the two still-married couples.

I never turned anyone down flat when asked to officiate, because I’m a people pleaser, although I did politely decline when asked to perform a possible eighth in 2017, because I was given the opportunity to politely decline with no hard feelings. I’m thankful that Jamie gets me. See, the thing about me is that I r e a l l y hate talking in front of people. I know most people don’t like it, as such, but I truly, honestly, and sincerely, if given the option, would rather eat live hornets than ever again talk in front of more than five people, and even then I’ve gotta know at least four of those five people pretty fuckin well to even be kind of okay with it.

What I’m saying is: every single wedding ceremony I officiated was a waking nightmare for me. I was told by at least one guest at each wedding that they liked how “quick” my ceremony was. I was told by a lot of people at all of those weddings that they couldn’t really hear me. Every single time, I’m up there sweatin like Ted Striker tryna land Flight 209 at Gates 8-25…

I just want to tell you both good luck. We’re all counting on you.

…and I’m standin there tryin not to puke like Davie “Lardass” Hogan at the The Great Tri-County Bake Off and Pie Eat…

Like Charlie Hogan’s brother. If he had one.

…and the whole time, I’m trying so goddamn hard to remember to enunciate, and speak up, and slow down, all of which I never do in day-to-day conversation, and every single time, I prayed to an empty sky that no one I cared about would ever again ask me to officiate their wedding, because I wasn’t sure I could go through that again.

Cut to the day before Easter, 2025: Sheila and I are visiting my father-in-law and his fiance. Both were married once before, and both lost their beloved spouses tragically within the past three years. They’d recently become engaged and had already moved into a new house together. The four of us are sitting on the back porch enjoying the spring weather and some cocktails, and the topic of their wedding comes up. Without even thinking, I offered to officiate. Time froze around me. I could see the words floating toward them, and I was powerless to stop them. I was already so fucking nervous.

They thanked me and said they’d keep it in mind. A couple days later, they set a date much nearer than any of us (including either of them) had expected, based solely on the fact that my brother-in-law would be in the states in early July. Sheila went to visit on Mother’s Day while I was working2, and they discussed details and made plans and much to my relief, they’d booked a venue where the proprietor was also an ordained minister and a DJ.

Tom and Jerry cartoons contain pretty much everything you could ever need.

Cut to, three days ago: Sheila gets a text and says “Dad wants to know if you’ll officiate the wedding”.

Me: What?! Why?! No! What?! I thought that was included! That guy’s gonna do it, right? I can’t!

Sheila: I think he just wants to include you, and probably make the ceremony a little more personal.

Me: What if they want me to mention God?! I don’t think I can do that! Oh God, Sheila, I can’t lead a prayer!

Sheila: I think you should just talk to him about it.

So I texted him and told him I’d be happy to do it, but that I wouldn’t feel comfortable performing any kind of religious ceremony or leading any prayers, and he said he wouldn’t dream of asking, and they just want simple ceremony. When I asked if they wanted anything specific, he asked me to “come up with something nice”, and said he had faith in me. When I asked how long they’d like it to be, he responded “not long – short but witty”, and here we are, less than 37 days away from me sweatin like Striker and tryin not to puke like Lardass while I talk in front of a group of people, all because I though it’d be funny to call myself “Rev. Joel” twenty-five years ago. I’m definitely retiring after this one. My shirts and my guts are both depending on it.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed it, why not tell a friend?

  1. The only church I’m interested in is Drug Church. ↩︎
  2. It’s not without its perks, but by and large, working in the hospitality industry is for the fuckin birds. And not the good birds, like goldfinches, but the shit birds, like European starlings. ↩︎

Even the Losers Get Lucky Sometimes

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

You know what I’d really like to sit in right now? My homeboy Jim’s old green-and-beige plaid swivel rocking chair, that’s what. That was a perfect chair. I don’t know where he got it from, but it was in his bedroom when we were kids (after his older brother moved out, and he took over the bigger room), and to this day it was the most comfortable chair I ever sat in. At some point he no longer had room for it, so he lent it to me, and I had it in my possession for approximately 4 years. Four of the most comfortable-sittin years of my life.

I gave it back to Jim before I moved to Texas, and I’ve missed it ever since. That chair would make our recently-cleaned study/vidja game room the bee’s knees. Right now it’s the cat’s pajamas. If it had that chair and a sweet rug to tie the room together? Duck’s sunglasses. I’m sure I could find a similar chair, but it wouldn’t be as comfortable. Nothing could ever be as comfortable as that chair. And look, I know nostalgia is coloring my opinion of the chair, but I also know comfort (and sitting), and I’ve sincerely never had a more comfortable sitting experience than in that chair. That includes our dope purple velour mid-century-style armchair from Joybird, which is probably the second most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat in.

I’ve got some great memories with Jim’s old chair. I watched Twin Peaks for the first time while sittin in that chair. I read On the Road for the first time while sittin in that chair. I fell in love with The Beatles while sittin in that chair. I completed Super Mario World with a 96* for the first (and so far only) time while sittin in that chair. Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol saved my life one night while I sat in that chair.

One time I got real stoned, ordered a pizza, and later fell asleep watchin Grosse Point Blank while sittin in that chair. When I woke up the next morning, I picked the pizza box up off the floor next to me and ate the rest of the pizza in the dark and silence while sittin in that chair. I suppose I wouldn’t call that a “great” memory, as such, but it’s a vivid one, to be sure. That was a weird time in my life. I plan on writing about my wilderness years at some point, but I wouldn’t get too pumped for it just yet, or maybe at all.

I texted Jim and told him I was thinkin about the chair. He responded “didn’t I give that to you?” followed by “WTH happened to that?” I guess the chair didn’t leave the same impression on Jim’s brain (his butt either, apparently). He’s always had a bad memory, though, and I’ve always been a slut for nostalgia, so it’s not terribly surprising that things turned out this way. Anyway, I hope the chair is up in heaven, being sat in by Harry Dean Stanton. He deserves a good sit.

Charles Montgomery Burns mediates on the pleasures of sitting.
You said it, ya weirdo.

Last time, I talked about high school reunions, and earlier today, I started reading through my unfinished high school reminiscence project. A quick correction: in my previous post, I indicated that the working title of said project was “Unfinished High School Reminiscence Project”, and when I found the file today, I was reminded that at some point I changed the working title to High School, or “My Obstacle“. Clockwise Circle Pit regrets the error.

As in: GET THE FUCK DOWN OFF OF MY OBSTACLE!

A lot of it is way outdated, on account of I started writing it during the first summer of Li’l Bush’s second term, and plenty of it is embarrassing, on account of I started writing it 20 fucking years ago. Some of it is less embarrassing, though, and today I’m gonna share one of those less embarrassing parts. This was on my mind when I was writing my high school reunion thing, and when I realized it also mentioned Jim,  from up yonder, I figured I was fated to share it here. It must be your lucky day. I corrected some grammar and gave it a general tidying up, because I’m a better writer now than I was when I was 28 years old. Here it is.

Average Joe(l)

My identity in high school was pretty low key.  I was the nice guy that a decent cross-section of people knew, and I made small talk with a wide variety of people and cliques, but I had a pretty small core of actual friends. The core changed and morphed throughout my high school career, but it always included Jim, as it always has since that fateful day of kindergarten registration, when I stood behind my mom, clutching her leg in horror as Jim peeked around the wall of his parents’ living room, each of us too shy to speak a word to the other. 

As the days, months, and years ticked by, Jim and I both changed, and we had our ups and downs (as true friends do), but we never lost sight of what was the foundation of our friendship – that we could always rely on each other, no matter what. Now, our lives have taken drastically different directions, but I know I can still call Jim, and we can still hold a conversation as if we haven’t been apart.

Perhaps nothing illustrates my social standing circa 1995 better than the final issue of our sub-mediocre school newspaper, The BNL Star. On an otherwise regular spring morning, just as first period was beginning, two intrepid reporters for the Star came into my classroom and spoke to the teacher. The teacher told me I needed to go with them, causing everyone in the room to turn and look at me, an event which haunts me to this day. On the way down the hall, they told me I’d won a senior survey category.

Not “Best Looking” or “Most Popular” or anything like that. What I won was “Most Average Person”, a category I don’t recall even noticing when I filled out my survey, though to be fair, I only voted for “Best Sense of Humor (Girl)” (my friend Liz) and “Best Sense of Humor (Boy)” (me). We arrived at my locker, and I stood sweating in my Jimmy Page & Robert Plant 1995 tour shirt while an ace photographer from the Star took my picture. A week or so later, I turned to the senior survey and located my picture way down in the bottom-right corner of page 7, way past the “Most Talkative” and total bullshit “Best Sense of Humor” categories, down below “Favorite Movie” (Forest (sic) Gump) and “Favorite Car” (Mustang), along with a caption: “‘Mr. Average Nice Guy’ – Joel Hearth”. How nice.

Just to the left of that was the official, less pleasant, designation, “Most Average Person”. The name beneath that illustrious title? My cousin Billy, with whom I share no physical resemblance. Turns out I was so average, they didn’t even know which Hearth I was.

That concludes the old part of this post. Here’s proof of concept.

I had to go back to class after this picture was taken. Everyone looked at me again and I hated it.

For the record, I would never say “rock the house”. Can you even imagine? This concludes the new part of this post. I hope you enjoyed both. Thanks for reading.

 

Close Your Eyes and Then It’s Past (An Exercise in Self-Indulgence)

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

“Life goes by so fast
You only wanna do what you think is right
Close your eyes and then it’s past
Story of my life”

Mike Ness wrote those words, and Social Distortion made that song. There’s a good chance you’ve heard it before. It’s been in lots of movies and TV shows, and it’s their most played song by a very wide margin on both YouTube Music and Spotify.

Their old songs are still great, but man, is Mike Ness ever corny.

I used to listen to them a lot, mostly in my early twenties, which is when I listened to punk rock and hardcore way more than I listened to metal. To be fair, a lot of the metal bands I was into at the time either broke up or went back underground, and back then, it was much harder to keep track of the underground, and I think I’ve been pretty clear over the years with regard to my personal laziness. I got consistent access to the internet in 1995, but it was far less omniscient than it is now, so it wasn’t until I started working in a music store in October 2000, with an employee discount and access to an order catalog, that I began to find out what those old favorites had been up to, much to the detriment of my pocketbook and my credit rating. But I’m not here to talk about that today.

I’m here today
Because I had an idea.
My thoughts don’t always
Work in paragraphs
Why not
Just write
In poetry form
Instead
When the need arises
Or the urge strikes?

I can already see it  coming off pretentious and/or pompous  – an exercise in self-indulgence, if you will – but I reckon that’s not my problem. And besides, publishing a blog is nothing if not an exercise in self-indulgence.

So fucking good, and quite fucking self-indulgent.

Quick side story: one hundred thousand years ago, I was watching Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage with my homeboy Sal, and there’s a part where Neil Peart (RIP) is talking about people accusing Rush of being pretentious. He says something like “to be pretentious means you’re pretending, and we’ve never been pretending”, and I turned to Sal and said “I’ve been using the wrong word this whole time – Neil Peart isn’t pretentious, he’s pompous“. No offense to Mr. Peart. The man was obviously a phenomenal drummer, and he could write a hell of a song. If he hadn’t replaced original drummer John Rutsey, Rush almost certainly wouldn’t have become the Rush we know and love/hate today. But it’s also a fact that his lyrics, his drumming, and his persona were sometimes a bit much.

L-R: Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart, Geddy Lee (not pictured: a shred of pomposity) (Just kidding.)

Anyhow
Why not
Write poetry
Whenever I
I feel like it
And prose
Whenever
I want?

I’ve been thinking about high school a lot lately. I know there’s nothing groundbreaking or special or even particularly notable about that, but it’s my blog, and that’s what I’m gonna talk about. If you don’t care to read it, that’s okay with me. You can watch this, instead.

You’re welcome.

This’ll be my thirtieth year out of high school, and that is causing me to have some feelings, friends! I remember my parents attending their 30th(s) when I was in the throes of high school. They had fun and spoke fondly of the event(s), but based on my count, they each had approximately 30 graduating classmates who all knew each other, and many of them were married to each other (including my parents).

Our fifth anniversary
Was advertised
In a tiny item
On Page 5
Of the local paper
And was later cancelled
Due to lack of interest

When my 10th came along, I was livin in Austin, Texas, some 1,000 miles from my high school. I genuinely wanted to attend, but I couldn’t afford to make the trip. I spent a lot of time writing a lot about high school in the days leading up to the reunion, and on the day of the event, I began working on what I have come to call “Unfinished High School Reminiscence Project”, which contains varying anecdotes of varying quality, and which has informed a significant chunk of my writing since. It’s also the source of “Speaking of Eric”, which my friend Chris turned into a silly comic, which led to further collaboration with Chris, which led, ultimately, to a self-published book containing three of my dumb stories/anecdotes from childhood, all made better and funnier with the help of Chris’s drawings. We still have some copies left, if you’re interested.

Fifteenth anniversary
An exercise in absurdity
Thirty-five dollars
To hang out with friends
I saw all the time
Surrounded by ghosts
And stereotypes
And caricatures

35 bucks
To eat
Picnic food
Off paper plates
And drink
Bud Light
And Miller Light
And chilled red
And Chilled white

Thirty-five
American smackers
To eat shit
And drink shit
And talk shit
With friends
Who I already saw
On a pretty damn
Consistent basis
While surrounded
By people
I hadn’t considered
In 15 years

Many of whom I never spoke to a single time in high school. I spoke to, at most, 20 people with any real regularity in my four years of high school, and probably 25% of those people had been classmates since elementary school. I’ll bet I had an actual conversation with no more than 50 individuals in those four years. Note that the population of my school was somewhere in the vicinity of 1,400 souls, 356 of which were in my graduating class alone.

And yet there I am in 2010, less than two months before my wedding, giving 70 bucks to some fund or another so my fiance and I could gain admission to a golf course country club in the middle of nowhere (the back entrance comes out less than 1/4 mile from my childhood home) and spend the evening with the attending members of my graduating class.

Part of it was morbid curiosity. I wanted to see who got fat (besides me), who went bald (besides me), and who floundered when set adrift in the real world (besides me). That’s not to say that I wasn’t happy at that point in my life; I absolutely was. But the fact is, I spent a significant amount of my early adulthood lost at sea. My time in Texas was very much informed by my choice of vessel during that journey. It’s hard to navigate in a rudderless boat. I’m using an awful lot of seafaring metaphors for a guy who is very uncomfortable with the idea of open water.

Anyway, my fifteenth anniversary was pretty dumb. My friend Chris (from the comic book) DJ’ed in exchange for admission, so the music was good at least. My buddy Jesse walked in the door, put on a name tag, and walked straight to my table, saying “you are the only person I care about talking to tonight”, which was obviously a very nice thing to hear. He was the sole exception that evening to my then-current circle. In fact, I’m pretty sure I only spoke to one person outside that circle the entire night, and that only happened because she walked up and inserted herself into a conversation in-progress with Jesse.

It was basically like an extended lunch period, circa 1995, but with worse food, and shit beer. Plus everyone was a little bit fatter and/or balder. The jocks and cheerleaders sat with each other, and the rest of us sat at random tables in small clusters. Whoever was responsible for “catering” the event bought deli platters and white bread and fried chicken and potato salad and coleslaw and potato chips and cookie trays from Wal-Mart.

At one point, Sheila went to the ladies room, where two of my former classmates approached her and asked, ever so tactfully, “who are you married to?” She responded that while we were not yet wed, she would be marrying me in a little over a month, and they both erupted in squeals and went on and on about what a great guy I was, and how they just loved me, and omigod they were so happy for her, and do you wanna wager a guess how many times either of them even acknowledged my presence that night?

I’m in love with my sadness.

My twentieth and twenty-fifth both fell on Sheila’s birthday weekend. Quite understandably, she had no interest in spending her birthday hanging out with a bunch of strangers. Only morbid curiosity made me sad to miss them.

The 30th though
That’s major
That’s big time
Morbid curiosity
Might get the best of me
But not if it falls
On my ol lady’s
Birthday

I have mountains more to say about high school and memories and time, and how they’re all pretty much nonsense, but for now, this exercise in self-indulgence is coming to an end. Thanks for reading, and keep on keepin on.

Here’s What I Learned Living Under My Rock: A Thing About Working, Writing, and Getting By

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

My friend Ryan gave me a book a couple of years ago called Several Short Sentences About Writing, by a dude named Verlyn Klinkenborg. I may’ve mentioned it on this blog before, but that was maybe on Facebook instead, or maybe it was just in my head. The book discusses the importance of the humble sentence. It aims to get the reader/writer to think about each sentence as almost an entity unto itself. No sentence is any more important than the other, because the sentence really is all there is. Without the sentence, there would be no paragraph. There would be no literature. It’s an interesting book, and it’s helped me become more confident in my writing. I remain a bit embarrassed about making it public, yet I persist in the practice.

Before I go on, I gotta get this outta the way: Verlyn Klinkenborg! Whatta name! I recommend shouting “Klinkenbooooooooorg!” as you shake your fist angrily at a cold, empty, uncaring sky. It’s fun.

Homer Simpson shakes his fists at a cold, empty, uncaring sky above the Box Factory and shouts "Klinkenbooooooooorg!" while Bart Simpson's lucky red hat sits on top of a double-corrugated, eight-fold, fourteen-gauge box.
Like this. Frinkiac, you’ve done it again.

So anyway, I was showering earlier, listening to Drug Church and shaving my head, as I often do after work, and I started thinking about the fact that I practically never sit down and write, even though I love to write, and even though I know that writing makes me feel better. Writing has always made me feel better, so why don’t I do it more often? Like for real?

When tired is the entire sum, that shit just makes you tiresome.

But I was talking about Several Short Sentences About Writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg. I noticed the book on the shelf while I was getting dressed after my shower, and I was reminded of the humble sentence, and I crammed that memory together with my shower quandary and made a regular ol Frankenstein’s monster of a realization that I should sit down and write a few sentences, and see where it goes.

So far, right here.

I’ve been working in foodservice for almost 32 years now. (For the record, that’s 66.6% of my life so far spent preparing and/or delivering food to people. That’s both metal as fuck and a stone cold bummer.) For almost the entirety of my history as an employed human being, I’ve been keeping a journal in some form or another. I am in possession of dozens of my journals from as far back as late high school/early college. Sometimes I look through them. The reasons vary. One time I’ll be moved by nostalgia, one of my greatest enemies. The next, I’ll be in search of something hilarious I remember writing down, or the date of a concert. Maybe I can’t figure out what to write about, and I need some inspiration. It’s happened before.

Sometimes I’ll find a cool doodle I made, complete with song lyrics. I’m not sure what’s goin on here, other than a self-portrait of sorts, but I like it.

In this case, the song is “Disbelieve” by Drag the River.
Goddamn, whatta band!

A common subject in so very many of those journal entries is the fact that I don’t write often enough, and that I don’t wanna be working in foodservice when I’m 50. It’s recently come to my attention that I’m almost fifty years old. The way I figure it, in today’s economy, and going off the premise that we have at least two years left as a civilization, I’ve got maybe three options for not working in foodservice when I’m fifty goddamn years old. Here they are forthwith, in no particular order:

  1. Become dead.
  2. Become rich (preferably as fuck).
  3. Get into management (likely still foodservice, less standing, more meetings).

Thing is, as much as I dislike the foodservice industry, I’ve disliked every other industry I’ve worked in more. Retail, construction…I guess that’s pretty much it. I did some screen printing work for about a month in my early twenties. I enjoyed it, and my boss was cool, but I quit, on account of I didn’t like having to drive 30 minutes each way to work a second part-time job when my primary part-time job was driving around delivering pizza all night. What I’m saying is that where employment is involved, my current situation could be worse. It has been worse, even in the last couple of years.

So the new life plan I came up with in the shower is to keep workin for The Man and payin the bills until I can figure out how to get rich as fuck, and meanwhile to stop thinkin and talkin about writing, and sit the fuck down and write as much as I can, every chance I get, whether I show it to anyone else or not, just like I used to do all the time. Because I’m a writer, goddamnit, and I always have been. At best, I’ll write something I can feel comfortable sharing. At worst, I’ll feel better afterward.

“Remember, a writer writes, always.” – Larry Donner

That’s all I got for now. Thanks for reading. Tell your friends. And listen to Drag the River. You’re welcome.

Variations on a Theme, Nothing Works: A Thing About a Band Called Drug Church, a Sitcom Called Corner Gas, and Baked Potatoes

/ Rev. Joel / Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned this many times over the past few months, both on this “esteemed” blog and out loud, with my mouth, but I am currently in the throes of a full-bodied, months-long obsession with a band called Drug Church. I’m gonna mention it again right now. As of this moment, I’m also planning to write a little bit about a TV show called Corner Gas, which I’ve also mentioned here and IRL before, but not nearly as much as I’ve mentioned Drug Church. I also wanna maybe talk about the bizarre nature of existence, but I might not be ready for that yet. Anyway, here’s a Drug Church song.

Take advice from a pro: nothing works.

I’m gonna start here: the way I make a living is, I help run a pretty large operation in my field of expertise. It is far from the worst job I’ve ever had. The benefits are practically unmatched in my industry, and the pay, while absolutely not as much as it should be, is decent for this town. Several days a year, I don’t have to work very hard at all, and I get a shitload of PTO. I work with several friends (including two of my best ones), and many of my workplace proximity associates are fun and/or pleasant to be around for 4-10 hours a day, 4-5 days a week. Jobwise, it’s about the best I can hope for at this point in my life.

The Problem is this: several of my workplace proximity associates are significantly less fun and/or more unpleasant to be around for even 4-10 minutes a day, yet I continue to find myself having to be around them for 4-10 hours a day, 4-5 days a week. I’m talking fuckwits of the highest order. Complete baked potatoes when it comes to personality and/or work ethic and/or basic intelligence and/or the ability to carry on a conversation without complaining about some goddamn thing or another.

No offense to baked potatoes. If I am one thing, it’s a man who loves baked potatoes. About once a week we’ll have baked potatoes (aka Big Ol Taters) for dinner, and they’re fuckin delicious. What you do, see, is you get one Big Ol Tater per person (approximately 1 pound each)(to be clear, the potatoes should be approximately 1 pound each, not the people). Scrub em up real nice and either pat em dry or let em air dry for a bit. Approximately one hour before dinner time, preheat your oven to 425°, then rub each potato with some cooking oil, then rub some kosher salt and cracked black pepper on each one. Pop em directly on the middle rack of your very hot oven and bake for 1 hour. I put a small baking pan lined with parchment paper and aluminum foil directly under the potatoes to catch the dripping oil. After an hour, check for doneness by jabbing a toothpick into the fattest part of each potato. If the toothpick goes all the way in with minimal resistance, your delicious baked potato is ready to spruce up. I like to top mine with butter, more cracked black pepper, shredded cheddar cheese, steamed broccoli, more shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, and salsa, but really your imagination is the only limit when it comes to toppings. You could plop some chili on there, or some cheese sauce, or pretty much anything you can think of. It’s a hearty, satisfying, super-easy meal, and it’s cheap as hell to boot.

But I was talking about my shitty co-workers. I know that shitty co-workers aren’t a new thing. If I am one thing, other than a man who loves baked potatoes, it’s a man who has had his fair share of jobs.1 As such, I’ve also had had my fair share of un-fun/unpleasant co-workers, but here’s the thing about my current “un-” situation (situat-un?): this is by far the largest place I’ve ever worked, both in terms of size of the company, and in terms of sheer number of coworkers. I’m no mathematician, and I admittedly have always had difficulty understanding fractions and decimals, but I know enough to know that that’s gonna result in the largest percentage of coworkers being absolute chucklefucks that I’ve ever experienced before, and friends, I’m here to tell you that it is dumb.

The company being as big as it is means, among other things, that getting rid of incompetent and/or inept and/or entitled and/or lazy and/or combative dickheads can be a months-to-years long process which requires an endless stream of “Conversations” and “Coaching Sessions” and written documentation, even when every single person around them can see that those incompetent and/or inept and/or entitled and/or lazy and/or combative dickheads should never have even made it past their probationary employment, let alone still be employed some 5, 10, 15, or more years later, constantly crying victim when their incompetence and/or ineptitude and/or entitlement and/or laziness and/or combativeness is called to task.

Just some all-around contemptible people.

I also work with the largest quantity of Loud Talkers per capita to be found in the entirety of my employment history. And if I am one thing, other than a man who loves baked potatoes and has had his fair share of jobs, it’s a man with sensory issues who has a real hard time with loud talking, especially when it involves more than two people at a time, which it almost always does when I’m at work.

The lazy asshole thing combined with the loud talking thing means that, among other things, I lose a little bit more of my already fragile mind every single day I work. I don’t like losing my mind. It’s the second healthiest thing about me, after my beard.

Here’s what I’m getting at: Drug Church helps me deal with all that shit. I listen to them on the way to work, and I listen to them in my mind while I’m at work, and I listen to them on the way home from work, and most days I listen to them at home after work, too, except when I’m watching Corner Gas, but sometimes during commercials, and so very many of their songs speak to the way I feel  90% of the time.

They are one of five things keeping me sane right now, the other four being my amazing wife, my amazing friends, Corner Gas, and Ginger, the groundhog who hangs out in our backyard and eats clover. Here’s another one of their songs.

I hear your story, those bitter thoughts invading.

Corner Gas is a Canadian sitcom that originally aired from 2004-2009 on CTV. It takes place in the fictional town of Dog River, Saskatchewan, where Brent (played by comedian Brent Butt2, who also created the series) is the proprietor of Corner Gas, which sits at the intersection of two roads in the middle of the prairie. Lacey runs The Ruby, a cafe/diner that shares a wall with Corner Gas. Hilarity ensues. All the people in town are either kinda dumb in an endearing way, or too smart for their own good (also in an endearing way). It’s very cleverly written, the cast is great, and the show is just hilarious. You can watch the whole series for free with ads on YouTube. You might be able to stream the whole thing without commercials somewhere as well, but not on any of my services.

Oscar is a strong contender for my favorite character. He reminds me of my dear, departed dad, if my dear, departed dad had been an idiot.

I got tickets yesterday to see Drug Church live in May. It’s a headlining show, and I’m not sure I could possibly be more excited. Well, if they were playing here so I wouldn’t have to drive to Indianapolis, I would be more excited, but I’m still so fucking pumped. It’s a newer venue called Turntable in the Broad Ripple neighborhood, located in the space where Cracker’s Comedy Club used to be. My friend Lori saw a show there a while back and said it was a cool space, and I trust her judgement.

This is gonna be one for the history books.

Here’s another one of their songs.

One man per crucifix, form a line, your turn is coming, just give it time.

I gotta wrap this up for now. Don’t worry, I still have plenty more to write about Drug Church. Probably about Corner Gas, too. Heck, I have almost three full seasons to go still, plus there’s a feature-length follow-up film (Corner Gas: The Movie) and an animated series (Corner Gas Animated)! I still wanna talk about the bizarre nature of existence at some point too, but I guess I’m not quite ready for that, other than to say that the nature of existence is completely fucking bizarre.

Here’s one final Drug Church song for this outing. It’s the first one I ever heard, and it’s still one of my very favorites. There’s a 92% chance that the opening guitar lick is in my head at any given moment.

Ever been to a county fair
Where all the games are scams
Now apply what you know
To all the things you don’t
Politics and business
Most love many friendships
Throw until your tendons tear
But those bottles stay weighted

Goodwill then hard stops
Slow learner gets taught
My teachers tried, my teachers lost
(There were principals involved)

Mishandled, and robbed
They rubbed my feelings raw
But now I’ve put my glasses on

Brings it all into focus
Slow to hear, late to notice
But now I’m on a constant watch
Cynical not bitterness
Love my girl and friendships
I forgive all of life’s hassles
Flat tires to thieving bosses
Overdrafts to cheating exes

But don’t make me remember
If I don’t have to

Goodwill then hard stops
Slow learner gets taught
My teachers tried, my teachers lost
(There were principles involved)

Mishandled, and robbed
They rubbed my feelings raw
But now I’ve put my glasses on

Apologies
Are a wedding night fling
Sometimes it’s best to exit quietly

Apologies
Doesn’t quite wash it clean
Sorry is a sad and sorry thing

Thanks for reading. It means a lot.

  1. A quick count indicates I’m currently on my 21st job, with a strong possibility that I’m forgetting at least one. In addition to Drug Church and Corner Gas, I’ve also talked a lot hither and thither about my absolute disdain for the entire concept “working for a living”, especially when the purpose of that work is to make more money for someone who already has more money than me. That’s a topic for another post(s), though. ↩︎
  2. If that’s not a name destined for a life in comedy, then I don’t even know what’s real. ↩︎