Issue 33:

Good Things Come To Those Who Mate

The season of love is upon us. Or so it seems. Walk into any major-chain drug store and wham! you’re confronted with America’s favorite form of advertising – overkill. While I’m entirely at ease seeing red all the time, and I’d imagine the chumps who wear rose-colored glasses most of their lives hardly notice the difference, what of the regular Joe Schmucks? You’re finally getting images of the fat, jolly old guy out of your head (burned like after-images onto your retinas from constant exposure), only to have them replaced by fat, jolly babies carrying weapons.
Scott Hefflon, Prelude to a Lick

Brethren, we are at a crossroads. It’s 1997, and King Rock is now 40 years old… It’s an obvious fact that the King has not aged well… Gaze upon the King’s bloated, corpulent frame, dozing like an overfed armchair quarterback on the once glorious Throne of Feedback! Stare with disbelief at the Best of Shalamar albums and Those Polka ’70s compilations that stain his collection! Tremble with anger and frustration as you consider his court of suit-and-tied grownups with a taste for trad jazz and a sharp eye for the bottom line – knaves and heathens, all! Listen with shame to his rambling public addresses, stuffed with superfluous content and “social relevance” but devoid of the molten electricity, the fire that used to shake worlds, collapse stars, and send souls spiraling ecstatically into the farthest reaches of the universe!
Chris Adams, Bring Me the Head of Jeff Lynne

Things to Watch (Out) For in 1997:
Black Flag Reunion Tour- “Still Damaged After All These Years”? “Slip It In (One More Time)”? You’ve seen the Pistols, you’ve seen the Descendents, you may have seen the Circle Jerks, you probably saw Kiss, now see once-Mansonoid-psycho-creep turned health-nut-self-help-dickhead-poet-jock Henry Rollins again share the stage with ex-chopped-synapses-grind-guitar-hero now fusion-fret-jazz-doodler-geek Greg Ginn…. Then get ready for Get in the Van Part II!: “8.11.97 TULSA OK: Lying on my bunk in my bus, thinking about how cheap Life is. Thinking about how I wish I could just negate myself. Be nobody, forever, until Death. Saw the rest of the band drive by in the van they travel in. They waved. I wished I had a chair to throw at them.”
Jon Sarre, Sarre-Chasm: All Punked Out in ’97

Living with the two women that I do is making me a misogynist. I’ve always been a borderline misanthrope, but never have I seen the face of evil so personified as in the faces of my two female roommates. There is no dependable reality with women around…. A brilliant proposal, involving numerous parties each contributing and taking a fair cut, that could well benefit mankind and turn a sweet profit at the same time, falls on deaf ears. As your spiel winds down to its closing, robust with summaries of grandness and broad-thinking implications of such a bold move, she cuts in, irritated that you’ve monopolized the conversation for so long with your delusional powerthink, to tell you that you just let your ash fall on the carpet, you have a stain on your shirt, or there is something sticking to your shoe and you best not have been dragging it all over the house. You sit, deflated and defeated, because there is no rational counterattack, and no way to defend yourself. A tidy profit loses to a tidy appearance every time. At least, every time a woman is involved. We strive to conquer new kingdoms as well as further fortify our own, and they want us to stop dragging mud into the castle.
Scott Hefflon, Women: Peaceful Cohabitation is Bunk

The Shaggs can be explained in one of two ways: 1) This band is the inevitable result when fresh minds, unhampered by preconceived musical ideas are given free range and unlimited license to record their ideas before those who dictate what’s “Right” and “Wrong” in music can get their soiled mitts on it; or 2) The Shaggs are a bunch of inept musicians who can’t play, can’t sing, have no sense of rhythm, and were thrown into a studio by their dad after only a few months of even touching their instruments. Both answers are correct.
Lex Marburger, Still Grating After All These Years: The Shaggs

On the river’s bank at the bottom of the valley, a gray-eyed woman in flowing white robes held a tall bronze-shod spear in one hand and and a golden tablet in the other. The tablet read: Click Here!
So I did.
The page transformed itself unremarkably and then neatly hand-scripted on my screen appeared the following:
The Six Sacred Urgings of The Delightenment
1. Feed Yourself
2. House Yourself
3. Clothe yourself
4. Groom yourself
5. And if you are a man, always put the toilet seat down, even if you are living alone for the time being.
6. Strive to do these, and indeed all things, with beauty and grace, or at the very least, with style and humor always, so that you may delight and be delighted.
“Whooo, this bitch is tougher than my old Sunday school teacher,” my friend Eddie, who was sitting there with me, said.
Kerry Joyce, The Mind Museum and Adjoining Garden

Let’s face it, loungesters! It’s time to look truth straight in the eye, and not shy away from the ugly reality of it all. While all the new, young Dean Martin clones of the world would have you believe that the Sands was still standing, and that Sammy was just taking a long nap; the reality is that slick, old Swanktown is long dead and buried. Sadly, the Neo-Swinger vision of Neonville is as false and incorrect as the new Mega-Buck Corporate Hitler vision of Vegas. The cowardly new proponents of Comdex-Town would have you believe that this was the world’s largest Chuck E. Cheese Pizza joint; all full of virginal angst and cartoon pathos. But this is not Disneyland…
Garrick H.S. Brown, Dispatches From The City of Death

3:51. I held a press conference at the Ritz-Triscuit Hotel announcing my conversion to Hey Judaism, a tiny sect based on the teachings of the “White Scriptures,” which, if read backwards, state that “All you need is love and a suitcase filled with unmarked bearer bonds to be sent to me via Express Mail.” This created quite a stir among the gathered members of the media, the two stringers from Modern Flossing who afterwards claimed they had only come because they mistook the conference room for the gift shop.
3:55. Unable to cope with the pressures of fame, I went on a thirty-second grenadine bender and checked into the Bettie Fjord Clinic for twenty seconds of rehab (which consisted of being slapped by an imposing Norwegian woman and being told to “Cut it out!”).
William Ham, The Culture Bunker: Obscurity Minus 14:59 And Counting

It’s been one of those lies. Like going to a funeral for someone I only sort of knew, chiming in on old tales of conquest with now friends who weren’t really then friends, pretending to like bagels because they’re hip and French or something. The truth is that a bagel is just a bad fuckin’ doughnut, and I never really liked SNFU.
Austin Nash, SNFU

This invokes everything from the Kinks to the Talking Heads, but with a slacker attitude. That means that they do a half-assed job, but I guess that’s fashionable in the ’90s.
Joshua Brown, the Multiple Cat

I have an old Walkman that, when accidentally jarred, makes the most abrasive noise you can imagine, constantly forcing me to screw around with the volume dial until the blasts of static and distortion subside and my battered ears can enjoy the aural fare at hand once more, at least until I hit another bump in my travels and have to repeat the process all over again. Lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that my love for strident screechmusik is largely due to this phenomenon. In fact, a lot of the stuff I’ve been listening to lately is actually enhanced by these intrusions. The Flying Luttenbachers is such a band.
Nik Rainey, The Flying Luttenbachers

As time went on (as it is wont to do, regardless of how many times one yells the words “no future” into a microphone…)…
Joshua Brown, the Crucifucks

Yeah, but is (Bark Like A Dog) good? Well, yeah, didn’t I say that? It’s OK. The old CDs are more vital, more a part of something that was going on at the time. At least, it seemed that way at the time. Perhaps Bark Like A Dog is an integral part of what’s going on right now. What is going on right now, anyway? To question the validity of Screeching Weasel in 1997 is to question where “we’re” at right now, and that ain’t something I can help you with. So fuck off.
Scott Hefflon, Screeching Weasel