CHAOS IN TEJAS 2008 photos

Brilliant times in Austin, TX these past few. Proofs of the proof:





























Here's a link to the set. (the slideshow feature on flickr seems to be ailing, but you can try it on the set page)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacquescousteaucouldnevagetthislowahhhhhh/sets/72157605127684074/

Feel free to re-post. If anyone wants copies or higher res versions of any images, they can hit me here or on flickr.

Thanks to old friends and new for treating each other the way olden punks should.
Luv,
D

"I just to a Nuprin!"* II

The following notes (passed to me during the Reagan era) were found a box in my folks' attic, commingled with a couple of Blanche Knott's Truly Tasteless Joke Books, which I stole from a local bookstore in the mid-80s, and likely brought back to the giant, hollowed-out shrub we used as a clubhouse. I passed the shrub last week and wished it wasn't trimmed to 6 inches off the ground. Prob for the best. "33 Year Old Man Found By Police in Clifton, NJ Shrubbery", although funnier than any Onion headline in the past year, would not bode well, employment-ally, in the event of a google.

Planting land mines around Ronny's grave seems so petty upon recent reflection on how our lives had run parallel:

Minutes after Reagan was sworn in, the hostages were released from Iran, sparking accusations by the left that he orchestrated "The October Surprise."
Minutes after my first day of school, my pee was released in my chair, sparking accusations by Elise Geiger that I was, "A pee-er!!"

In 1986, after bombing Libya, Reagan declared, "Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong."
In 1986, after watching Iron Maiden's Live After Death VHS, I declared, "Priest Sucks."

Cindy (below) was my first "girlfriend". This note was pre-dating (read: pre-1st base on the West Point field trip bus ride in 1989).




Shortly after Cindy dumped me in the hallway and gave back my pewter drum pin, I danced with this girl Jen at a VFW hall dance in West Paterson. I vaguely recall going to Hot Grill

or maybe Rutt's Hut

with her, but, aside from a general sense of not liking her and thinking she was mean (and 'didn't even like metal anyway') I have no other memories of her whatsoever.


What a commitment-phobe! Maybe I asked if she wanted to get gravy fries the following Friday after school. Foiled! 15 is too young for a gravy-stained extremely serious relationship promise ring. I see that now. I wonder if she's a grown up, 33 year old crazy lady who writes emails like this to ex boyfriends. I wonder if she married whoever Billy is and works at Linens 'n Things in Totowa.

Finger of fate, how you fingerblast me on the tracks above Pathmark and call me a slut to the whole clarinet line.





*Title a reference to this 4 year prior blog.

Highland War Face

Me in '88. Totally pissed. This was shot in August, just after I finished a stint at baseball camp. The season prior, I was on an undefeated little league team (Paterson Stamp or Parker House... sponsored by a local business... can't recall which) where the team captain was the coach's son. Course he was. I was far and away the worst player on the team- a potential threat to their image and record. Whenever I was called up to bat, the groans from my own team's dugout were audible... and crescendoed with every unsatisfying swing of the bat. I was fortunate enough to have a dad who [I clearly recall] assured me that if I wasn't enjoying myself and decided to bail, I wouldn't be a "quitter"- I would have just been someone who wasn't having fun and fucked off for good reason. I fully believe that I might have been a different person today if he was a dick about it. I finished out the season of doom and decided, along with my best friend Kevin, that I would sign up for [and destroy at] baseball camp.

What followed was a training period of Rocky IV proportions *Vince DeCola montage fade-in*... What was left when the dust settled is evidenced by the eye of the tiger, above.

When baseball season rolled around (1st season of "Babe Ruth League") teams were randomized but the 1st team we faced boasted a handful of kids who were on the undefeated team from the preceding season. As I approached the plate, I heard muffled laughs and a couple of them sat down in the outfield as a physical demonstration of what I couldn't hear from across the field. I. Was. Seein. Red. The first pitch was at eye level. I swung anyway, and cracked the shit out of it. The ball scorched for the first basemen's head. He ducked just in time. As I stood on first base, safe, I stared down my ex-teammate for a good 5 minutes. I remember getting off a good line, but I'm not even tryin to recall it. No desire to.

Sweet Enola Gay, son.

(Highland, NY is where my Grandmother's parents settled from Italy. They dug for water and started a small working farm. Elders of the Bellacicco family still live on this land and my Grandmother still owns the 2 room cabin, which was built in '69 on the 1 acre of property I'm sitting on, here. I still visit when she's up there. It's just outside Poughkeepsie.)

Woooohhh Oooohhh parts

Kinda special like Lowenbrau:

1. Having a girlfriend who is both not a psychopath and also prone to surprising your azz by painting the inside of your closet & putting your shredded sneakers and hibernating double bass pedal away--


2. Spring cleaning on a dreary Sunday while listening to Verbal Assault and Jon Benjamin.

3. Sprinklin’ gunpowder on Heston’s grave. Thanks for the heads up about it being "made of people" and everything. We had it from there, Bright Dead Eyes.

4. bok choy

5. fresh ginger

6. Scanning 63 year old photos of my grandparents when they were dating. He was on leave. I have the jacket he was wearing in my closet and the train schedule from this trip is still in the chest pocket.

Rendendo romanzesco una minaccia ancora in ’45.

Attenborough for Emperor

Borneo's Pitcher Plants

have adapted to living in low nutrient soils by evolving a lid covered in nectar glands that lures insects and positions them above its waxy, water-filled pitcher. Most slip, drown, and are slowly digested by an enzyme produced at the bottom of the mini pond-grave. Red Crab Spiders hang in the pitchers like Burroughs to junk, securing a safety line out of silk to the edge and lowering themselves down to feed on decaying ants and beetles. That, I can deal with... but, when mosquito larvae fall in and sink to the bottom, outta reach.... things done changed. THIS holy diver will use a nearby air bubble as an oxygen tank to dive to the bottom. After finishing off some wriggling larvae, he climbs back up his underwater safety line. In a display of mutual responsibility that should make any human shit pants-y with shame, the spider insures that the plant he relies on gets fed by regurgitating remains and waste, which are more easily assimilated than a slowly digested, Sarlacc Pit-style, victim.

Planet Earth, I wanna have your bay bay.

Frankie Stubbs, Where are you when we need you?

(from Jack Rabid's The Big Takeover, issue 45, 1999)

A Dispatch From The Ostentation Station Agent

Many (2) of you know that at some point between 31 and 33, as evidenced by my NPR time extending well past the legal limit, I've aged 20 years and have put all that rips and shreds on the bottom shelf next to that Sacco & Vanzetti book I never opened. I can usually be found (like you're lookin) slouching in the Prius, going 65 on the Turnpike, sprinkled liberally with crumbs from various Kisses Knishes and taking pedantic, never-to-be-accessed notes in my head while Brian Lehrer interviews Vali Nasr.

A few weeks ago my stylus fell in my $13 Whole Foods salad. There's so much wrong with that scenario, I could shit the bed... the Crate & Barrel duvet-adorned bed.

I make no more money than I did several years ago, so what crappened? Yeah, it's totally natural for a once-culturally incendiary (hi, Eric Boehme) man in his early 30s to find, for example, holding sway over the once mighty kingdom of shit and shinola that was the mid-90s New Brunswick hardcore scene far less emotionally relevant than.. ooooo, a This American Life archive on sad pet stories, but somehow, I became profoundly stuffy and in need of a waterboarding session somethin awful.

The above "paragraph" (just by virtue of it existing) should be proof enough, but for the one of you (hi Kevin!... maybe) who are still reading, here's some further bullet-earning bullet points:

1) More than once, while out with my lady friend (who, like me, has an extensive and diverse ibrain library full of great musics) I set the mood with a jaunty episode of All Things Considered, only to realize that neither of us could give a crud and that I haven't listened to any new music in 2 years.

2) My solution to that severely un-diabolical display was to switch to a dry 'n grumpy 45 minute Tom Scharpling rant.

Fuh huh huck. The kid once referenced Dark Angel in a romantic letter to me and this is my date behavior?!

Since I just made fun of a friend for over-explaining his flickr uploads, while I somehow take myself more seriously the less cool I become, it's time to kick this shit. As the first step in the 2 step program I'm pretty much totally ruling, here is an amazing parody of This American Life by Kasper Hauser and I'm even including this Onion article on TAL's recent achievement.

Thanks for scrolling, and someone introduce me to a new band that doesn't sound like Ben Gibbard caressing a Casio with a Members Only jacket or some Meshuggah/Pere Ubu hybrid.

I'm gonna kick tomorrow.

Luv,
Derik Moore
Grassroots Sales Rep
Subcultural Suicide 'n Things