hiii helloooo heres more cerberus because she is my wife In Real Life and im sorry but im trying so hard to focus on writing this caption but LOOK at what is directly in front of me

HOW am i meant to write in these conditions!!

TV Guide, February 13, 1988

No Sassing Grandpa!

Our House's Shannen Doherty, 16, is concerned about her character's behaviour–and its impact on viewers.

By Helen Newton.

Shannen Doherty hunches over her high-school algebra textbook, reluctantly penciling problems in her least-favorite subject. Her teacher hovers over her. The two are alone in a small, dingy trailer that, despite a tacked-up poster and a forlorn bit of artwork, lloks nothing like school. This is the location classroom for NBC's Our House, whose three child stars (Shannen, 16, Chad Allen, 13, and Keri Houlihan, 12) are legally bound to squeeze three hours of daily lessons between scenes.

"It must be difficult," comments a visitor to the teacher, "going to school like this, all alone,no friends, no football games . . . ."

"Are you kidding?" interrupts the teacher. "They love it. What kid in his right mind wouldn't trade six hours in school day after day for this?" She gestures broadly at the controlledhubbub that fills the city park around her.

Just then an assistant director knocks on the door. "Time to get ready, hannen," he calls, and the actress, saved from solving for "x," bounces happily down the steps of the schoolroom, up the steps of her dressing room and into a costumer's impossibly conservative version of a punker's get-up.

Shannen's character, Kris Witherspoon, normally tends toward preppier attire–she does have her heart set on attending the Air Force Academy–but in this episode, she's trying to teach her crusty grandfather, Gus (played by Wilford Brimley), not to judge people ony by appearance. In Our House, one resident or another learns something uplifting every week.

"With our audience [young teens and families], I think we have a responsibility to set good examples," Shannen says earnestly. "There are drugs and so many other things that kids can get into trouble with that Ithink, if we can help, we should." But then good examples seem to come as naturally to Shannen as they do to Kris. Earlier this season, for example, she confronted a script that had Kris casually mentioning condoms. "It wasn't important to the plot. It was just a casual thing," says Shannen, her cheeks hinting at a blush. "I was uncomfortable with it and I thought Kris would be too, so I asked if they would take it out." They did. And Shannen tells of a scene in the episode being shot today that called for her to scream angrily at her grandfather. "I don't think Kris would sass her grandfather. She's let him know she was angry, but she'd be more respectful." Out came the sass.

Shannen doesn't believe in sassing her mother either, though she has ample opportunity: Rosa Doherty is with Shannen every day, all day, beginning with the hour's drive from their San Fernando Valley home. California law requires the presence of a parent or guardian until a child actor reaches 16, but Shannen, who will turn 17 in April, has asked her mother to stay on for at least another two years.

They're close, these two. "My mom's my friend," says Shannen unaffectedly, and you believe her. The two share a lot–beyond a mutual enthusiasm for Laura Ashley wallpaper, animals and their Baptist church, there's obviously their dedication to Shannen's career.

Rosa watches over Shannen carefully–what ordinary mother can confer with her child's teacher several times a day?–and she adamantly opposes allowing her daughter to work longer than the 10 1/2 hours required daily. But when Shannen is busy, Rosa finds plenty to occupy herself. Everyone on the set knows her: she joshes with the costumer, the hairdresser, the other children's mothers. She lays plans with Shannen's publicist and manager. And she readies Shannen's fan mail so Shannen can answe ir. ("A lot of kids ask me for advice," Shannen says. "Kris is so together that naturally she'd know what to do. Meanwhile, I look at the mail and think, 'Oh, no, what do I say?´")

But Shannen does know what to say–like the time two years ago at the beginning of ninth grade when she announced to her mother that she wanted to go to school like a regular kid. "It was the beginning of high school, and I wanted to get situated," she says. One semester was enough, however. "There are plenty of kids around work for me to be friends with," she says, when asked whether she misses the social experiences of high school. "There are Chad and Keri, and on the Lorimar lot there are the kids from Valerie's Family. And I met my boy friend"–she says this slihtly shyly, as if unaccustomed to the term–"on the set of Max Headroom." (Since then, Shannen has decided to attend school in her senior year. She plans to fit her TV work around her academic schedule.)

The next week, the next episode, the next location–this time 40 miles north of Los Angeles on the woodsy shores of a lake. It's lunch time; long tables are set up above the lake and Keri trails Shannen around and between them as they play with the two assistant directors' walkie-talkies. Shannen's handle in this game is "Sugarplum," a nickname some of the truckers who worked for her grandfather in Memphis called her when she was little. The assistant directors look benignly, almost paternally, on.

"We feel lucky," says Rosa. "This show is like family. The crew is great. And Wilford really cares about people." Although Brimley refused to talk about his young colleague, citing a dislike of publicity, Shannen and Rosa say the show's star is generous in other ways. They've been guests at his Utah ranch. Shannen, sharing Brimley's interest in horses, bought one from him two years ago, though she's since sold it back to him. "It was a quarter horse,and I'm more interested in Thorough-breds," she says. And Brimley takes a deep interest in the health of Shannen's father, Tom, who, like Brimley, is a diabetic.

The week before, at the city-park location, Tom had shown up, clearly almost as at home on the set as Rosa. "Everyone loves my dad," says Shannen. "He likes to cook, and sometimes he brings food for the crew."

Belying his hearty appearance now, Tom Doherty suffered a stroke in 1983. Although Tom says it was the best thing that ever happened to him because it forced him to slow down, Rosa says, "It was very hard on the famiy, but we got through it as a family. the children came to occupational theraphy with us so they could understand and support the process." Shannen adds, "I used to draw him a picture every day and hang them all around. It cheered him up. It was pretty scary, seeing him not able to do a child's sorting game." Now almost completely recovered, Tom says, "I have an easy job that allows me to do things like stop by the set occasionally and spend more time with our son, Sean." Sean, 20, is ambitious, too,but his area is politics. A conservative, he's actively involved in his local Youth Republicans group. In 1986, he was elected a GOP official in Los Angeles. "Our son needs attention, too," Tom says, 2and sometimes his mother doesn't have time."

Rosa's timefirst became a rare commodity when Shannen was 10 years old. Over her mother's initial objections, Shannen became active in a children's theater company, where she was spotted by an agent. He arranged an autition for the role of Drucilla Shannon in Father Murphy. "It was like fate, because I have this lucky doll named Drucilla and my name is Shannen and I was determined to work with Michael Landon [creator of Father Murphy]," Shannen recalls. Drucilla the doll went along on the audition, though she stayed in the car, and sure enough, Shannen got the part. She also won the continuing interest of Michael Landon, who cast her in Little House: A New Beginning and in an epiode of Highway to Heaven.

"I'd like to work with her again sometime if she's available," comments Landon. "She's got a good head on her shoulders. She's very conscientious and determined." Those qualities were, in fact, what drew him to her when Shannen was a 10-year-old. "Even then you could see that she treated this as a business. She really wanted the job for herself. It was not a case of a parent wanting a show-business career fora child, which is often the case. I'm very proud of her."

William Blinn, co-executive producer of Our House, echoes Landon's thoughts. "Shannen is like her character. She's a very dedicated kid." With the show now in its second season, Blinn hopes the work will continue to be there for her. Our House has the unenviable task of taking on CBS's warhorse 60 Minutes. "It's counter-programming to the max," says Blinn of his show's effort to attract a young audience. And so, while the ratings have not been spectacular (the highest so far this season was 14.5), Blinn says NBC is pleased to be a solid second in its time period.

Whether the show has a long run or not, Shannen intends to. Like Kris, she has goals in mind, and if co-star Deidre Hall (Shannen's TV mom, Jessie) is right, "she'll get anything she sets her mind on." With her manager and her mother, she's looking into various film and TV projects. "I plan to get into feature films and eventually to direct," Shannen says confidently.

A visitor asks her what sort of actress she sees herself becoming in the future–the next Ally Sheedy, perhaps, or Molly Ringwald?

"The next Shannen Doherty! I'm one of a kind," she declares boldly, then lapses into a self-conscious giggle. "Really," she says, more seriously, "the person I try to model myself on is Katharine Hepburn. She's really into her work."

But before stardom, there's college. A California university makes the most sense if she wants to work at the same time, Shannen says, but there's still something about the sound of Harvard, Princeton or Yale. . . .

"Really?" says her teacher later. "That's ambitious. She'd better get to work on that math."

The Band You Love To Hate By Tom Lanham of RIP  (There’s no date on this but I would say 1995 or 1996?)

Eyes wide as a barn owl's. Spines stiff with anticipation, like a hungry scorpion. The two teenage girls sit stock-still in their booth at a posh Berkeley diner, practically bursting with excitement, but without the faintest clue how to handles it. Clueless, you might call them. A few feet across the linoleum aisle--with his back to them, oblivious to all the oh-my-gawd facial expressions--sits the object of their adulation, dressed in unassuming black jeans, black T-shirt, shredded black Converse, and a beat-up black baseball jacket. But even with his once-green dreadlocks tamed to a short black business cut, Billie Joe Armstrong--yes, the snaggle-toothed MTV ragamuffin from megaplatinum neo-punkers, Green Day--is as easy to spot as Michael Bolton at a Rogaine convention. Although the kids want to leap up from their seats and race over for an autograph or a jittery hello, they don't dare. Instead, they're forced to deal with their seething emotions as if they were eating post-tonsillectomy ice cream: a lot of numb gulping and a quick pain chaser. This is the blessing of being Billie Joe Armstrong. Alas, it's also his curse. By the time you read this, the irascible little rocker will have turned 24. And exactly two years ago, he and his wacky bandmates--drummer Tré Cool and bassist Mike Dirnt--lolled around the trashy basement flat they shared, getting stoned and sneering at the idea that Dookie--their just-released "sellout" on big-time Reprise--would ever amount to more than a nice drink coaster. Fame? They were more preoccupied with their bong collection, stacks of rock 'n' roll bubblegum cards, and a thriving sea monkey tank displayed prominently on a window-sill. Most of their furniture had springs poking through--they didn't care. Armstrong regularly picked boogers from his gold-ringed nostril and then flick them onto the scary shag carpet--what did he have to worry about? Too bad he couldn't have foreseen the all-too-near future. Green Day happened to be in the right place at the right time. The three-chord slam-a-rama Dookie--a pop-edged return to decade-old punk ethics--became the surprise hit of '94, going on to sell over 11 million copies. Armstrong, accustomed to frenetic club performances, began translating the group's infectious energy to larger and larger venues. Demand continued to grow at a staggering pace; Green Day fought back. They turned a satellite MTV Video Awards performance into a "spit-cam" fest by urging the crowd to gob any camera lens it could ("[The cameramen] tried to make it look like it was cool, but it wasn't"). Last October, Armstrong and company issued their 32-minute follow up, Insomniac, almost as an afterthought, with little promotion, a visually offensive video (for "Geek Stink Breath") and--at least initially--a strict no-interview policy. Simultaneously, they ditched their high-powered Cahn-Man management team and are now virtually managing themselves. Along the way, Armstrong married his long-time sweetheart Adrienne and last March fathered a son, Joey. In typical down-to-earth fashion, the couple spent their honeymoon a few blocks from home at Berkeley's prestigious Claremont Hotel, not on some exotic island. Beginning to see the problem here? How does a street-smart kid from humble beginnings skyrocket to world-class notoriety and yet--with his music in millions of homes and his privacy suddenly a right that needs defending--still adhere to the simple ideals, the simple lifestyle that spawned him? Is "successful punk" an oxymoron? Insomniac provided few clues--it was more of the same slacker-ennui sentiment, more defeated, disenfranchised grousing set to speedy, memorable hooks. Or, as Armstrong barks in the aptly-dubbed "Walking Contradiction," "My wallet's fat and so is my head...I'm a victim of a Catch-22." And that, in essence, was the topic this tortured artist wanted to discuss at the diner. The old "be careful what you wish for" adage. The classic "problem with success is finding someone to enjoy it with you" truism. Armstrong, who takes occasional sips from a vanilla milkshake, but mostly stares morosely at the floor, seems to be dealing with superstardom in a relatively normal way. Don't be fooled by the steady stream of negative vitriol that follows; he's analyzing it, breaking it down, figuring out ways to disconnect his kinetic career. Or at least turn down the volume for awhile. 

RIP: We know what's going right. But what's going wrong? 

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG: Lots of things, really. Actually, when I came here today, I said I didn't wanna talk about anything good, because I don't really have anything good to talk about. Goin' on tour pretty soon--don't really wanna go. Just because I've been kinda torn. I wanna stick around at home. I don't like playing arenas, and I realized I didn't know what I was getting myself into on the last tour, but I went into it being positive and getting excited about it. But I didn't realize that I was the kind of person to whom it's too much of an event and not really a personal thing anymore. And I started to realize how much I liked being the background music to this scene at the club. And now it's.... I dunno. People expect so much. It's cool and stuff, and it can be a lot of fun, a really good experience. But when you play that many arenas.... The first time we ever played those big kinds of shows at the Shoreline (Amphitheater in Mountain View, California), there was weirdness--we were playing for a lot of f?!kin' people. And I hate to say it, but sometimes it just feels like another gig. We played every day, 50 gigs this last leg, and it just wears on ya. There's all these people, and they think "Alright. I paid my $15--you better impress the f?!kin' shit outta me right now!" And I realized that for Joey, the rock and roll touring life is not a good atmosphere for a kid. I tried to make it to where it would be, bringing lots of his toys out. But there are no familiar surroundings for him. And he likes all the attention--people come up and say hello to him every day, people who are on tour with us. But he doesn't have his own room or a home to go to every day. So, no more touring for Joey. 

RIP: Turned on Regis and Kathie Lee this morning to find their gossip columnist dishing dirt on Green Day. How Insomniac didn't do nearly as well as predicted, how it was a disappointment to the label. A failure, supposedly. 

BJA: Well, it's like, we didn't set up this record. We didn't. We didn't do any promotion beforehand, we completely quit doing interviews, and basically we just wanted to go on into it. We weren't even sure if we wanted to do a video. And then when we did a video, it got yanked from daytime rotation because people were getting grossed-out by it. So I think we did alienate a lot of people. So that was expected, that it wasn't going to sell a lot of records. 

RIP: NOFX have taken it one step further. They refuse to talk to press, make videos, pander potential singles to radio. They don't want to get any bigger. 

BJA: I dunno, maybe I'm just getting jaded or something. But I just got cable again and I can't stand anything. Six years ago you could hear something that was different and know that it was different. So it'd be "alternative" or whatever. But now it's like you get this Joan...Osborne? With the ring in her nose, waving the alternative rock flag, when she's just...not, ya know? And I'm thinking, I hate all this music that's coming out now--the past year was just hell for music. But people are buying it, so then I'm thinking, Maybe they're the ones that are good and I'm the one who sucks? I just don't know if I really wanna be involved in the rock world anymore at all. Period. I don't necessarily have anything against a big record company or people who what to join up with a big record company. It really is right for some people, but more and more, I don't think that I'm really meant to. And I hate to sound like that, because I don't like taking things for granted. I don't like to talk about my problems when there's some kid struggling in his garage somewhere saying "F?!k him! He's just taking it for granted. Shit, I wish I could do something like that, but I'm just stuck here in Biloxi, Mississippi, and I can't even get a gig." I'm so confused right now. 

RIP: It must be odd to know that, with all those millions of albums sold, drunken frat boys are probably staggering around to your music right now. Your audience grew far beyond your control. 

BJA: Oh, totally! We became what we hated. Which is, the people I despised in high school--and now--are buying our records. We initially became a trend, so there was no way I expected to sell as many records with Insomniac as with Dookie. That's one of the biggest-selling records of the decade. We get slagged by the punk rockers, and it's like, I don't blame them. If you draw that much attention to yourself, that's what you're gonna get--attention--and it's not personal anymore. 

RIP: Ever think about giving it all up? 

BJA: There isn't a day goes by in the past year and a half that I haven't thought about quitting. I went to this party on New Year's Eve, and this band Juke, and another band, the Tantrums, played in a friend of mine's backyard. And a lot of my old friends showed up, and everybody was just dancing. And I was dancing, and getting really muddy, and I was having a great time. I can't remember the last time I sat down and listened to a record from beginning to end and felt this incredible spine-chilling music. And it's because I haven't been able to go out and watch bands play at my free will. I'm not gonna live in a closet, I'm not gonna vegetate myself. 

RIP: But it has to be difficult, when tons of kids know your face. You're on your way to Michael Jackson-dom, where you have to wear a disguise in public. 

BJA: If you think about the Beatles, at that time all people had to go by were the photographs on the records and every now and then a television appearance. So when they'd come to town, people would just flip out--it became this huge public event every single time. Whereas now, everything is so saturated kids don't even have to leave their home to go to a show anymore. They can sit in the comfort of their living room, and your favorite rock star is gonna be entertaining you while you sit down and have your microwave burrito. 

RIP: The Milwaukee cops weren't pleased with aspects of Green Day's Milwaukee show last November. Why were you arrested? 

BJA: I dropped the pick and--actually, I even forgot about it--I just mooned the crowd, which is pretty harmless compared to what I've done before. And I wasn't even thinking about it--I just went out and started playing again. Then I went backstage and was hanging out with Adrienne, and this guy Jimmy who does security for us goes "Come on--there's a car waiting for you outside right now. You've gotta get out of here!" I said "What's wrong?" and he said he didn't even know. So we get in the car and all of a sudden about ten cops come walking over, fully surrounding the car. So the guy puts the cuffs on me, throws me in the car, and I get tossed in the holding tank for two, three hours. I wasn't in the bullpen--I was in with the other ones, the not-so-bad ones. They made me take all my jewelry out. And my shoestrings, so I wouldn't hang myself or something. I dunno. I just don't know how to fit into rock music anymore. I don't know what I like about it anymore. I don't like anything about it anymore, to tell you the truth. To tell you the real truth, I'm a pretty miserable person right now. I'm totally depressed, and my wife can vouch for that because she's around me. In fact, she's the only person who's really around me. I dunno, the whole thing with the mainstreaming of punk rock. I just feel lost in the whole thing...I don't really know...I don't wanna...I dunno...It's miserable, it really is. It's f?!ked up. 

RIP: For every original voice that comes along, there will be countless mad signing dashes for any and all sound-alike artists, with no thought given to the artist's longevity. Just throw the record out quickly and hope it sticks. 

BJA: The thing is, a lot of musicians have gotten so comfortable with this big so-called "Revolution in Rock Music" over the past decade. First it was like, "F?!k the corporations! F?!k the corporations!" And then people just sorta got cozy with that, and forgot that these bands are getting lost in the shuffle. And I'm talking about the ones that never get noticed at all and just get kinda bitter. The 15 minutes of fame is getting shorter and shorter. And now music is totally going backwards--the first half of this decade, there were a few things going on that were interesting. It wasn't my favorite kind of music, but it had a sensibility about it. If you think about Nirvana and Pearl Jam and that whole Seattle scene, and even the Offspring--there was this thing going on that was more honest, in a lot of ways. It wasn't like, beer, drugs and pussy, like what went on through the '80s with all the hair bands. But now what we've got is Hootie & the Blowfish.... 

RIP: Who are probably a lot like you. They seem like nice, regular guys who--through no real fault of their own--are suddenly assimilated into pop culture. 

BJA: Yeah, but that's the problem, is that they are nice regular guys. And they're totally comfortable with that, and they sort of put that out, to where they don't really have...I dunno, there's a certain amount of attitude that, say, someone like Cobain or Vedder has that they don't have. But it's becoming way not...real anymore or something. Maybe not real to me. It's just turning back into what it was in the '80s. It's like, "Hey, everyone! We're Huey Lewis and the News!" I dunno. Maybe nobody knows what the f?!k I'm talking about anymore. 

BJA: I get so irritated by people. I think I'm more bitter than I've ever been in my whole life, to tell you the honest truth. I think Insomniac is much more of a bitter record than Dookie. And I think the older people get, the more they kinda get angry. I think a lot of people feel like they get cheated by lief somehow--no-one is ever completely satisfied. There's maybe a few. But I mean, I'm in a place where I don't really wanna be. It's like, sometimes I feel like we're losing our passion for playing music. And that's the f?!ked-up thing, when you lose passion for what you love, then it's like, Is this marriage headed for divorce or what? 

RIP: Theoretically, you can fight back a couple of ways. Like Cobain, you could make a record almost calculated to offend all the bandwagon-jumpers. Or take as much time off as you'd like. Who says you can't go live on a desert island for two years? 

BJA: That'd be nice. I'm just not enjoying life right now. I'm really not. I'm so cluttered, I can't even speak. Yeah, I do feel like I'm getting old, and I'm kinda bitter about that. I'm not excited about being onstage anymore, and I was really trying to convince myself that I was. Really. Before we did this last U.S. tour, every time I did an interview--I don't know if you read the last Rolling Stone piece--I was like "Yeah! I'm excited! I wanna play these arenas!" and stuff. And then just every night, it started sucking, it felt like a routine or something. It felt almost choreographed in a lot of ways. And I was yelling "f?!k you!" to people, but I didn't know who I was yelling "f?!k you" to anymore. 

RIP: Last time we spoke, you said you went out of your way to change every single show, make each one different. 

BJA: Well, I think it's just the stress of getting up in front of all those people all the time, every day. It's like, "Do I really feel like downing another f?!cking pot of coffee and a bottle of wine before I walk onstage to do this again? Just to get myself ready to go?" You know, for all those people. And every night I always do something different and stupid. But at the same time, it'd be really cool to just say "F?!k you!" to people and like, walk off. And then they'd get it. It's like, "I'm really telling you to f?!k off this time! Time to pack up and go home." It'd just be so nice to start from scratch again. 

RIP: In many ways you can. That's the music-making system trying to program your behavior. And obviously you've broken quite a few rules already--you don't even have to be talking to me right now, actually.... 

BJA: Oh no. I really wanted to do this interview, just because the last interviews that I've done, I've been miserable, and I was pretending not to be. I really was, I was lying. Not to the reader, not to the person I was doing the interview. But I was lying to myself, convincing myself that I was really happy with how everything is going. 

RIP: So you always knew what you wanted, and now you've got it, in spades. You're having trouble figuring out what's next? 

BJA: I didn't even know what I wanted back then. I really didn't. I didn't know if I wanted to be huge, totally successful. I never knew that. I was struggling so hard even to sign that f?!king contract--when I was sitting there, I was contemplating, "Should I just run outta here right now? Am I making the biggest mistake of my life?" A lot of people say, "You're totally disillusioned with what money can do for people," but money never meant shit to me. There's something very passionate to me, very romantic, about living on the street in a lot of ways. Just because I really like my lifestyle back then. I was totally content, in retrospect. A lot of it has to do with the fame. I dunno, I'm trying to talk right now and just totally stuttering. 

RIP: It's not like you chose music--it chose you, and you can't help it. 

BJA: Yeah, it's cool when people really get it. But what a lot of people don't understand is that we're a band that's been around a lot longer than people know. And that's the thing. The difference between this and what happened between Kerplunk and Dookie--in a year, I got married, I had a kid, and I sold 11 million records worldwide. That can do something to ya, ya know? 

BJA: Sometimes I think it'd be cool to just hang out with my friends, drink beer, smoke cigarettes. The more I think about it, the more I'd be really happy with that. I don't think that we're feeling quite like a band anymore--that's one problem we have. There was this certain rock 'n' roll underdog think that we always had--we always drove for something, always drove from town to town in a small van. And you know, I f?!kin' like touring like that--it's like culture shock, really, driving around in a van, setting up my amp when I get there, and playing. That's rock 'n' roll, that's what it started out as. A bunch of sweaty pigs in some tiny f?!kin' bar having a hootenanny, that's what punk rock was to me, that's what drove me to it. I love rock music in its simples, rawest form. And I think we're the only band, really, that plays rock 'n' roll. 

RIP: Has all this put a strain on your old friendships? Do your pals treat you a little differently now? 

BJA: When I come up to friends I haven't talked to in a while, there's a weirdness. And the ones who are really close to me don't really bring up anything, but that thing is still there; it's still in the air. And sometimes I'll just not say anything the whole time we're hanging out. I'll be totally quiet, because the only thing I'll have to talk about is my band, and I get so sick of talking about my band and myself. So I'll just be quiet, since that's the only thing there is to me, except for my son and my wife. 

RIP: Pretty soon, you'll be boring everyone with slide shows--"There we are at Yosemite!" 

BJA: Ha! Adrienne was telling me the other day, "When you were in there dancing with all your friends, while the band was playing, you were so happy because you were so in your element." And I've even gone as far as saying we're not a punk band anymore. But no matter what, that's still gonna stick with me forever, because I love the music, I love the energy of a new band coming out that creates this sense of urgency about 'em. I'll never be able to kick that habit. I love hangin' out with my friends who have small fanzines--kids just writing their guts out about whatever the hell's bothering 'em, and putting it on a Xerox machine and then handing it out for a quarter apiece at shows or at a party. All I wanna do is just try and work it out. I was sitting there the other day, counting all the records that the Replacements put out, stuff like that, Dan thinking how [Paul] Westerberg totally came across to his audience and did everything, everything that the wanted to do in music. He wasn't extremely successful for it, but the guy has influenced people, and a lot of 'em don't even know that they are influenced by him. All I wanna do is just write good songs and stick to it. I wanna develop--not being experimental--but go into different styles, go across my boundaries of the two-and-a-half minute punk song with a three-and-a-half minute jazz song, or maybe get into a little bit of swing or rockabilly. 

RIP: With such staggering success, you could walk into Reprise and tell 'em you're doing an album of saxophone solos and they'd allow you that creative luxury. 

BJA: Well, I never wanna be that experimental. I don't wanna get into synthesizers and shit like that. The thing that was cool for me with Insomniac was that I think we definitely set a foundation for ourselves, because we put out our hardest record to date, totally in-your-face all the way through, and now we're able to go anywhere we want. We can do that now--we do have that going for us. That is, if people are still interested. Which is kinda weird for me to say.... 

RIP: Your craft will always remain the most important thing of all, even if you're just writing for your own amusement. 

BJA: Yeah. No matter what, I'm gonna be writing songs for the rest of my life. I mean, I already have a shitload of new songs right now. But I just wanna do some other things with it. We've sold a million of Insomniac so far. But I definitely want to be respected as a musician. Well, more as a songwriter than as a musician. I wanna be f?!kin' normal, is what I wanna be. The thing is, I've seen so many freaks and so many weirdos and crazy punk rockers and drunks and junkies. But for a lot of those people being weird is easy. It's so easy to be strange--the hard thing is to try to be normal. There's no such thing as normal, ya know. 

RIP: How's your mom feel about all this? 

BJA: She's kinda worried about me. She doesn't know what to think of everything. We have a hard time communicating with each other, just because I don't like to talk about it that much. So she feels like she has to walk on eggshells around me all the time. 

RIP: You buy her anything cool once the money started rolling in? 

BJA: Nah--she doesn't want anything. I've asked her. She's been living in the same house for over 20 years, and she's content living there. But I did give her a trip--she went to Hawaii, her and her boyfriend. And I think travelling is really good--if you paid for someone to travel, so they can go and explore and see some things they've never seen before. But I think that's probably where I get it from. I get so content with not having much. And then you get all this stuff, all this attention, and you don't really know what to do with it. You don't know how to channel it. 

RIP: Most outrageous thing you've bought for yourself? 

BJA: I got my car primered! And one thing I did do was build a home studio. So I've been recording all my friends' bands for free. I produced this band called Dead and Gone, and Social Unrest, Fetish and the Criminals. And I have this side-project called Pinhead Gunpowder--nothing's up with it right now, but we played at the beginning of '94 a few times. RIP: Sounds like you've got more than enough pressure valves to let off the steam. Still, do you worry about death? 

BJA: Yeah, I do. But I have too many reasons to stick around. One is my son and my wife. And I don't feel like I'm finished yet. I'm not done, ya know? And the beauty of it is that death is forever and your problems aren't. And that's why I'm talking about my bad shit, because you vent that, you get it off your chest and you can move on to something else. There's gotta be a positive side to all this--so you just sort of try and dig it out. Get rid of all the bad--out with the bad air, in with the good air. 

RIP: You said about Green Day that you think your "bandwagon is coming to a close and all that's gonna be left is just a band. Hopefully." So then will you start writing happy songs? 

BJA: I thought about writing a totally sarcastic song called "I'm So Goddamn Happy," just talking about how happy I am. Actually, I'd like to put out a double record--I'd like to put out tons of music. But I never wanna become an egomaniac. I just wanna keep things down to earth, so I think it's really important for us to take a long break after all this stuff. We just put out two records back to back, one year after another, and now we can sit back and work on ourselves as people again. So we don't parody ourselves. And it's so hard to be a father and a musician at the same time. If I get into one thing and I pay close attention to it, like if I'm with Joey and I start neglecting my music, then I feel like I should play more often. So I start playing my music, and then I'm going, "Am I neglecting Joey?" So it becomes hard to do everything at the same time. 

BJA: I wanna create a very mellow and sound atmosphere for him, because I don't wanna make any mistakes for him--I want him to be able to make his own mistakes. And even when it comes to swearing--I don't cuss in front of my kid. I'd rather him get it from some dirty-mouthed kid at school. Then at least I'd know, I could go "Thank God--my kid is in a real world and he's learning these things from his surroundings." That'd be a good thing. Because the best things you ever learn are the things you learn in kindergarten. 

Finally, after more than an hour worth of gut-spilling, Armstrong suddenly observes four brace-faced girls, each no more than 12 years old, idling over by the cash register. They're there on the pretext of getting change. In reality, they just want to ogle punk icon and pin-up darling Billie Joe, stare at those caterpillar eyebrows and chiselled cheekbones up close. Another oh-my-gawd event. "I gotta go--it's gettin' weird," the reluctant rocker whispers, literally leaping up from the booth. "I can feel eyeballs all over me already...." And as fast as that, he's gone. "Was that...was that...B-B-B-B-Billie Joe?" stammers one swooner. "No," says the waitress, with a subtle smile. "That was just some guy who usually eats here alone, nobody famous at all. You know, just an average guy." A little white lie to herd the young 'uns out. But nevertheless the truth.

Please......... if you want... speak to us about human au rodorah?

OH… OH!!

A brief profile of all agents involved:

Rodan grew up in the same grade as Godzilla and Mothra, although he ran in different (punker) circles. After going to college, starting a PhD program in organic chemistry, getting kicked out for various reasons including fighting with his fellows and Mad Science he ended up renting a room from Mothra while he found work.

He and Goji have an unequal sort of friendship, but it’s genuine. She was the first person to treat him normally after his transition (”hey bitch!” “I’m a man now, thanks.” “oh. hey bastard!”) and she can help him with any trouble he gets into. That being said she also takes him for granted a lot, looking down on him subconsciously for his weakness, his need for connection. On a similarly subconscious level Rodan craves validation as much as he loves conflict and his current friend group gives him both.

The Ghidorah triplets are the head of a multibillion-dollar Danish development company.  Their great extracurricular pleasure is finding ‘slums’, as they call them, and developing them into identical gentrified communities. Breaking whoever tries to protect their neighborhood and culture is part of the game, so Godzilla puts herself right in their sights from day one when they pick her town for their next project.

Haven’t solidified a story for how the Ghidorahs meet Rodan, but at first they see him as a means of getting to Godzilla by tempting one of her friends and supporters away from her. Rodan is super not into it at the beginning, so they go on a weeks-long seduction escapade, tempting him with gifts, displays of power, romantic excursions, etc.

Ichi (Richard) sees it as an extension of the Game, a physical manifestation of showing dominance over the neighborhood, to capture and show dominance over someone in it. He’s very competitive.

Ni (Niels) doesn’t like Rodan a lot at first, but he sucks it up for Ichi’s sake and gets very involved with the strategic aspect of planning their dates and their shows of affection.  Ichi might have the drive, but Ni has the style, and he’s going to make sure the little punk appreciates it, damn it!

San (Sander, or Kevin, Rodan’s affectionate nickname for him) is the first brother to genuinely like Rodan. When he’s not with his brothers he’s a lot more mellow, and he actually tries to get to know him the normal way, no stalking or ridiculously expensive presents involved. Like all the Ghidorahs though, his command on Normal Human Interaction is pretty limited so he takes most of his inspiration from rom-coms and books.  Rodan’s co-workers think it’s hilarious that his very tall european boyfriend shows up every day with a beautifully prepared lunchbox for him.

Eventually Rodan warms up to them and they’re a really good fit altogether. They definitely have a contentious relationship at times, especially Rodan and Ichi - arguing ferociously and then passionately ‘making up’ is like, their love language or something.  Ni is aro/ace, but he and Rodan end up spending a lot of time together just - hanging out and sharing ideas.  Ni doesn’t have any friends outside of his brother and Rodan’s been added to that short list by rite of being around all the time. They develop a mutual appreciation, and being the least dramatic brother means that Ni is usually the first person Rodan goes to with a problem. San is the most affectionate, and he craves approbation even more than Rodan does on his worst days, and Rodan sort of likes being the emotionally stable one for once.

Rodan’s too much for any one person to satisfy, so having three partners works really well for him lol.

Rodan has a sick-ass motorcycle and he makes his own pyrotechnics to use during races and fights. He starts making them for the Ghidorahs, eventually, even though they usually just use their traditional weapons (taser (Ni), gun (Ichi), baseball bat with nails stuck in it (San)).

They have a bunch of different cars, but Ichi likes their gold lamborghini, Ni drives his tesla, and San has a very nice rigged-out motorcycle. 

Of course there’s the whole Battle for their Neighborhood/Rodan the Traitor thing he has to worry about, but…..

Also, Rodan tops the HELL out of all of them (thank you, ckret2. thank you.)

Vaguely au-of-aus: 

- Ichi has to marry someone in order to secure his claim on the family inheritance by same arbitrary deadline. Oh no! Wedding au!

- Rodan doesn’t realize that you can still get pregnant on T and gets knocked up, panics and flies down to Mexico to single-dad his two dumbass kids. Every Atom! au!

- Godzillaland au where the Ghidorahs give up on terraforming the neighborhood and just settle down to be occasional menaces with their shared husband Rodan

- Rodan thinks San’s German at first:

“ah, Guten tag!”

“Heh. We are from Denmark, not germany. But Danke”

*internally* *swedish chef voice* “bjork bjork bjork?”

So, Pride was pretty great. It was my first time going, and I was so happy? Content? Freed? Blessed? Gay? Gay.

It was a grand old time. So I went with my boyfriend (ace, trans), my QPR partner (ace, panro, polyam), a friend (bi) and her boyfriend (the lone het). We arrive around noon, because we didn’t really want to see the parade (both my bf and my QPRP don’t like small spaces with lots of people and loud noises) so we just went to the festival. 

Still a super duper fun experience, because - let me tell you - everyone was in rainbow. We had ya drag queens, we had ya gay boys and ya lesbians, we had soft babies and hard punkers, we had wild costumes and normal clothes, we had people without shirts on and just tape on their nippies, we had people being led around on leashes, and we had the super old gays who remember a time when none of this was possible (those are my favorite gays), we had just about every walk of life in that festival. Just walking into the area made me feel like I was lifted to another, a better, world.

Anyway, so we’re all havin a grand old time; the first thing we decide to do is eat. The festival had carnival food; so we had lemon aid and hotdogs and fries and the like. As we were in line for the food, two older gays started shouting, we only got the tail end of their conversation, clearly missing the lead up to the joke, but they were yellin, “Free foot-longs for everybody! Happy Pride!” and “Ban small hot dogs! Foot-longs for life!” (was it a dick joke? only gay jesus knows.) Regardless of the context, it was gr8 and I laughed.

We sit down and eat our food and everything is good. I’m feelin the vibe, I’m pointing at hot people, I’m laughin it up. Everything is great. And then -

Disaster struck. Alarms start going off. People are ushering the gays out. Required evacuation. A very lovely bear in an official shirt was loudly informing us that we had to go. (“That looks delicious,” he said to a woman holding a phallic popsicle, “It’d be better in one of the surrounding buildings. This is a required evacuation, I need all of you to leave,” He looks at me, observing my A.Ham hat, “I love Hamilton, you have to go.” But would I be back?) The gays were forced out of the festival, children were crying, drag queens took off their heels. A catastrophe. This is homophobia at work.

(There was a tornado watch.)

We had no real clue where to go, so we followed the other gays; for, gays are known for getting lost, but they are also rather resourceful. Like our own miniature Pride parade, the rainbows led us to safety, in the form of a car garage. We sat there for a little while and watched it rain outside. After an hour? Maybe? (It truly did not feel like long, but my sense of time is absolutely horrid.) The rain stopped and a wondrous queen stood on top of a truck and yelled into a megaphone, “GAYS! WE’RE BAAAAACK!”

It was like being called out of your room for dinner; slowly, bright bits of color slunk out from the shadows to return to the promise lands.

(My group and I took a quick interlude to partake in an past time that is not yet legal in my state. Some gays could smell our activities and waved to us as they walked by; cheering. The cops had much on their hands at the moment and could not care less about those stupid homos getting lit behind a tree.)

We return to the festival moments later, stoned out of our minds. Everything was amazing after that (and before that, too, if I’m being honest - which I am. The storm could not dull my good mood). I paused in the middle of a crowd, staring at the most amazing lesbian girl ever (everyone there was so cute, god damn), and it was in that moment that the reality of the situation hit me. 

I was at Pride. I was at my first Pride, with two people I loved (and two other people who are also rather chill), and no one could tell me that I didn’t belong there. I almost cried, looking around and just watching as gays of all ages, sizes, colors, and creed intermingled. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Just, lots of dicks and dykes everywhere.

At one point, I saw an individual who had the cutest freaking dress on. They were clearly nervous about wearing it (I’ll be honest, I didn’t ask their pronouns, they could’ve been a young drag queen - although they didn’t seem to be in drag so much - or they could’ve been a pre-e trans girl, or just an adorable twink in a dress; i don’t know, regardless, they were cute.). The dress itself was just gorgeous; it was Doctor Who, with a space pattern and a tardis on the bottom left corner. A bit short and loose; absolutely adorable. I wanted one. But mostly, I wanted to inform the owner of how well they rocked it. I saw them earlier, when we were getting food, but didn’t have the chance to speak with them. I made time for the chance. I went up to the individual and told them that a) their dress was fantastic and b) they looked great in it. Do you know what they said? “Thanks, it took a lot of courage for me to come out here and wear this.” I responded with something like, “Well, you look amazing. I hope everyone has been nice, because you deserve it.” Literally as soon as I said that, a woman comes up to them and complements them on the their dress. I was probably more excited about it than the poor buddy. But they smiled shyly and thanked her. It was honestly a blessed moment. Complement people, it could honestly make their day.

Anyway, then we shopped a bit. For myself, I bought a giant pan flag, a polyam button, and a button with they/them/theirs on it. For my sister, I bought a key chain that had the ally flag on it and one of those equal sign stickers. And for my gay friend whom could not yet go to Pride, I bought a magnate that said “love is love”. Always bring back something for those who could not see the wonders for themselves.

After that, we didn’t really wanna do much else. It was already a pretty long day, so we decided we’d leave Pride (I know, a truly upsetting notion) and walk across the city to get ice cream. We took pictures and went home.

A full day, for a full gay. 

The end.

Visiting Hours

The Canterlot Dungeons. Not a place that Gordon would imagine finding himself in, especially after the first time coming here - what with having taken a mail run up here to deliver letters not only to the guard ponies, but those that worked the daily grind here. 

Hell, even some of the prisoners had gotten lucky, finding themselves with a letter or two - a faint connection to the outside world.

So, why had the meek looking griffon found himself coming back here? To visit someone - not of blood, but of familiar species.

The paperwork was hell to fill out, and who knew it would take such red tape to even set up a visit in the first place? It was understandable, of course. There were very clear guidelines to be followed: dress professionally, keep a professional demeanor, no uncivil actions. Anything out of the ordinary would cause this visit to end early. Gordon padded through the stale air of the dungeon, following beside a armor clad guard in escort towards a secluded door on the far end of the hallway. His voice was steel-clad, reminding the griffon what was going to happen here. “Remember that you have about thirty minutes for this visit - though, we’re unsure of why you’ve chosen to visit someone who is not of relative blood or of family.” The guard-pony gruffed. “However, given a through reading of your background and the fact that your criminal record is clean, we see no reason not to allow you in.  Alongside this, someone who represents this prisoner thinks that some outside contact would do good. In her words.” Gordon nodded, quietly. “Do you know who represents them?” The white-furred stallion shook his head. “I’ve personally never interacted with them, nor is it my place to ask. I’m simply here to do my duties and make sure your visit goes without a hitch.” Closing quickly in the distance was a dark-oak built door, reinforced with thick steel screws, as well as having the metal built into it. No doubt in case a prisoner decided to think they would get clever. Which had to have happened an amount of times before to consequate the needed protection. The guard-pony marched to the side of the door, looking to the mailgriff. “I’ll be right outside. Your thirty minutes will start as soon as you walk in and I close the door. He’s already waiting inside for you. Understood?” “Yes, sir.” The door was promptly unlocked and Gordon padded in; taking in the sights.  It was a small, basic room with little to nothing in it; a oak desk with two fold up chairs on each side, completing a dull white-washed stone chamber. Across the opposite side, and already occupying the other chair, leaned back a rather annoyed looking grey griffon - whose lower half ended in a arctic wolf. The head was that of a red-tailed hawk, yet was devoid of any shade of red; simply just grey, to match the appearance below.  Steel colored eyes sought out the visitor; scrutinizing him over from the second he walked in. What was a postgriff - especially a stranger he didn’t know - doing here? Didn’t they have better things to do? And why go through all the trouble to set it up in the first place? “..What do you want, Post Bird? I was trying to sleep here when you interrupted me.” The hawk headed griffon spat, indignant in the face of his visitor. Nervous, Gordon sucked in a breath and cleared his throat. “I came here for two reasons: One, I have some good news in terms of mail for you - a letter from your representative’s going to come in soon.” The hawk’s ears flicked. “Oh yeah? And what’s the second reason?”

“Because it sucks to be alone in a place like this.” Silver’s beak scrunched up, baffled at this goody two shoes logic. Someone caring for him? In this city? There had to be some ulterior motive - money, or jobs, or something. “Alright, what do you want out of me?”  Gordon’s eyes flicked up to the fellow griffon, confused. “What?” “You heard me: What do you want out of me? You’re giving me help, so obviously, you want something out of me. Some favor I’m going to have to repay later.”

“What’re you talking about?” The post griff cocked his head, which prompted a quiet snarl out of the convict, hunching over the desk that seperated them. “Don’t fucking play innocent with me, Goldielocks. You’re not just here to give me a hand and keep me company - I don’t buy that shit for a minute. Now spill it.”

Gordon fell silent, while the wolf-rumped griffon took in the silent expression. Surely, he was joking? There wasn’t any kind people left in this city; and those that were tended to manipulate, lie, cheat. Griffons were no different - being the money hungry buzzards they were that wanted profit. A minute passed. Still, not a peep out of Gordon. Growling, the grey bird slunk back into his chair. “...You’re really trying to help me? Me, out of all the thousands of bucks inside this maze of a dungeon?” “..Yes.” “Why?” Silver would ask, in a new confused tone. “What makes me so different from all of them? I’m a crook just like every pony else. And don’t say-” Gordon interrupted. “Not everyone here is guilty of being a thief, logically speaking. There’s those that are in for murder, cart-jacking..” Silver continued. “..Larceny, assault. Indecent exposure - look, what’s your point?” “I know what it is like.”

“It?” The punker thought about his words for a moment; brows raised up at his words, processing them over for a moment. Griffons like them weren’t too common in this city; let alone anywhere else. And given the traits that some citizens held xenophobia in their actions and words.. “...Oh.” “Yeah.”

They both shared a collective sigh. It never seemed to change; with the coming of ages. Some race, somewhere, out there was inevitably going to be met with paranoia, and a reluctance to be accepted into normal society - it was no different, be you on the side of the law or not. That was one the little things that both of them could relate on, at this very moment. After another few minutes, Silver would speak up again. “Look, I shouldn’t be taking a chance on you. You’ve got a life outside of these bars, and a job - which probably doesn’t pay much - but it’s still a job. Why waste your time coming out here?” Gordon looked behind him for a moment, glancing to the door before drawing his voice into a low whisper. “..Because it’s a hell of a lot better than dealing with some of the cretins in my workplace.”

Silver huffed, amused. “Well, that, I like your honesty on.”

The rest of the conversation carried on with back and forth between the two: Gordon asking Silver about what it’s like behind bars, and vice-versa with Silver wondering what it’s like on the outside so far. It was surprisingly civil - when one wasn’t being shaken down for information on the suspect of being a manipulative scoundrel. One more minute remained, and it was almost time for Gordon to go. “..Hey, kid.”  “Yeah?” Gordon asked, curious as to what he wanted. “Look, uh..” Silver scratched the back of his neck. “..If you’re really serious about wanting to help me out, I wouldn’t mind another visit. Or two. It gets fucking lonely being the only griffon for miles out here.”

The mail griff nodded. “I’d do that. It’ll take another work week, but I’ll see what I can do. And if nothing else, I’ll write.” Silver nodded, his tail swishing behind him. “..Thanks. I guess. I’m.. not used to this sort of thing, let alone anyone caring.” Thirty seconds. “Really?” Silver turned his head away to the side, a frown finding it’s way forward. “..Yep. Didn’t think anyone would care - so this is kind of a first.”

Gordon’s ears fell flat; had no one reached out? No family to speak of? No friends to talk to - besides the ones made behind bars? ..Gods, this poor soul really didn’t have anything to come back to.

“I’m sorry to hear-” A loud buzz would be heard above them. Time was up. And Silver needed to return to his cell. “Well. That’s my cue to leave..” Reluctantly, Gordon would get up out of his chair and move back towards the door he’d trotted in from; already being unlocked, judging by the clicking of the locks, “..I’ll see you around?” Silver leaned back in his chair, giving a lazy salute with his claws. “Until next time, kiddo.”

The two birds would eventually head back to their respective homes - not knowing that just now in that encounter, the first few seeds of a friendship would be laid into place. While it wouldn’t be known now, perhaps in time, they would blossom. All it needed was just a little bit of nurturing.

Sympathy For The Devil (part two)

summary: Set in 1978, Bill a young yet accomplish cop takes on the crime in New York City. Nervous yet excited to take on his first big task at his new department and prove himself. He soon finds out his partner is everything he had least expected.

warnings: strong language, mentions of sex acts, mentions of drugs

author’s note: thank you so much to everyone who took the time to read the first part of this story! not sure how many parts this will be but i promise i won’t drag it miserably long haha! Enjoy!

also if you’re seeing this for the first time you can read part one here and if you need to catch up on previous chapters go here.

What were the plans for the day? He took the time to think, pulling a cig from his pack and waiting for his lighter. Jerry's words came echoing back to him, "change your look up". Unfortunately, he was still waiting for Pat to bring him clothing and such and that wouldn't be until later in the evening. He got his lighter back finally, lighting his cig and took a deep drag.

"So?" Star pressed.

"Well, we can't go out strong the first day. I know you want to get this over with but it's suspicious." He took a moment to take a drag of his cigarette. "Remember I said I need you to help me, help you?" Bill rested his elbows on his knees.

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Got anything in your bag to get rid of this?" He pointed at his 'stache.

Star smiled, "Oh! We're playing makeover!" She reached for her tote on the bed and rummaged through it. "You're lucky. I've got a new razor in here somewhere. Ah!" She lifted it in the air proudly upon finding it. "And, I've got clippers, stole it out of a jawn's car."

Bill had made Star sit in the bathroom with him while he shaved. She was upset about it but understood why she had to. It was quite funny to her, he was stern but never mean, at least so far. He wasn't like the rest of the pigs, she could tell that much. Bill finished shaving his mustache that he had spent months growing out thick and then turned to Star asking how he should do his hair.

"My man, had the sides shaved? Long on top? I don't know what it's called?"

"Your man," he questioned.

Star rolled her eyes, "My pimp, whatever."

"Oh. Could you do it like his then?" He passed her the clippers and traded seats with her on the closed toilet to get on her level.

She glanced at him skeptically. "You sure?"

"Just, do it." He closed his eyes he didn't want to have to think about it.

The clippers cut close to scalp from his temple to the nape of his neck. He could feel his brown locks falling to his shoulders. In a sense, he felt his old self leaving him at that moment. He had to take on a new persona, the kind of persona he worked to lock behind bars. He had to remind himself that as soon as this was all over, once the job was done, his cruiser and his uniform were waiting for him crisp and new. He heard the clippers shut off and then the smell of hairspray filled the bathroom as Star slicked, what was left of his hair, back. Bill stood up, looking in the mirror as he felt the near bald sides with his hand and sighed. It was done. And he guessed it didn't look so bad.

"And what about your clothes?" Star said talking to his reflection in the mirror.

"Shit," he muttered. "This is all I have to wear right now."

"Jesus. The station didn't prepare you at all for this, did they? It's not your fault. Everyone's worthless over there." She pulled his navy necktie, "Get rid of this." Bill loosened it, taking it off. "Are you wearing like an undershirt?"

"A tank?"

"Okay, untuck your shirt and unbutton it." Bill unbuttoned his dark gray shirt, he grabbed the ends and billowed it out. Shedding off the last bits of his hair off it. He wore a thin gold chain underneath adding to the look, perfectly. "And your gun, you can't have it in a holster like that. Put it by ya cock," she pointed at his crotch.

"You don't have to say it like that?" Bill said taken aback by how blunt it was.

"Then put it by your, your thing, whatever?" She said annoyed.

"Don't say, thing. Just, just don't say anything about what I got, Jesus," he tucked his gun in the front of his waistband. "Alright? Better?"

"Look a little mean." Bill furrowed his brows, leering at her. "Better."

Bill figured they should spend the day cruising in the Pinto, to places Star normally hung around. He took note of the addresses and cross streets on a little notepad at every red light. Half of the places she had a story about getting arrested at.

"Over here," she pointed at a little bodega, "I got punched in the face by a jawn. That pudgey cop, Neils? You know him? He arrested me and not the guy that assaulted me. Not lyin'!" She explained every run-in with a strange enthusiasm. As if her arrests were a new badge you add to a girl scout sash, instead.

"Neils? I think he left the department before I started working." Bill turned down another street.

"How long you've been working there?"

"Coming up three months. I'm a transfer."

"That sucks."

"Why?"

"You transferred to the shittiest station in New York City," she laughed. "I figured you were new or something. You're too nice?"

"You think I'm nice? And I'm not new like that I've been working for 5 years now."

"Well you've been nice to me so far," she shrugged. "So, in a few blocks, that's where I normally hustle. If you want to drop me off for a few hours? Gotta do the normal shit while on this job right?"

"I can't take my eyes off you, strict order."

"Oh you don't have to my man would park close. I go behind the alley right by. And jawns get 15 minutes tops, only. After 15 you come tappin' on their window with your gun."

"Christ," Bill sighed. "Fine. Just, for an hour. Do what you have to do. And get names," he urged, "we have a bigger job to do than this."

Bill pulled up to her regular spot, of course just a corner, awfully riddled with more crime than selling pussy. He rolled down his window as Star strutted across the littered street, giving her a stern look. He sat in his car watching her pull guy her third guy into the grimy alley. Bill reached over for the radio, turning the volume up for What's Going On by Marvin Gaye. He lit up a new cigarette, noting not just Star's actions but all the junkies and punkers walking by.

"What in the fuck is going on, Marvin." He muttered along to the music.

Shortly, Star came strutting back to the Pinto, Bill turned the key in the ignition thankful the hour was up. She pulled a wad of cash from her bra, quickly counting it out. He glanced at the crumpled bills, it was all dirty to him. He just felt so dirty.

"Almost sixty!" She said happily. "In just an hour and it's all mine," she stuffed the cash in her pleather black gogo boots.

"Get any names?"

She shifted her eyes, "No..."

"The hell Star? I'm waiting on you while you're doing whatever the hell in a nasty ass alley? And you don't have any damn names?" He was losing his last nerve now. "We have a job to do. I'm not here to actually be your fuckin' pimp."

"Sheesh... I take it back you aren't too nice," she settled into her seat pouting until a familiar face went strutting down the crosswalk they were stopped at. "You want a fucking name?" She said with venom, opening the car door.

"Star!" Bill yelled but it was drowned out by the car door slamming in his face. "FUCK!" Pedestrians were still crossing he couldn't leave the car there in the street. "Star!" He yelled for her again but it fell on her stubbornly deaf ears. She was following a rail-thin girl with skimpy clothing. "Hey, bitch!" He heard her yell just before disappearing around the corner. The crosswalk cleared enough that he made a sharp turn parking along the curb, slamming the breaks.

"Gina, I know you have my money!" Star yelled at the girl a head taller than her. "I gave you my bag that night! So where the hell is it?"

"I don't have shit!" The girl yelled back in her face.

They were making a damn scene and Bill had to get Star back in the car. He slammed the car door to announce himself. Look mean, Stars words came back to mind. "Star get your ass back in the car!"

She looked over at him but she wasn't done arguing yet. "Just tell me what you did with my money, Gina? Look at you, you look like shit! You shoot it all up?!"

"Who's this your new pimp?" Gina pointed at Bill. "You're pathetic, Star! Your money was only good for a night, get over it!"

"Star!" Bill said again.

Star didn't say another word to Gina but Bill could feel the same rage that filled the interrogation room they were in that morning. Her fist balled at her sides, her arm went back to take a swing but Bill wrapped his arms around her pulling her away before she could. Gina was laughing at her, adding insult to injury, when Bill shoved her back into the car. He sped off once again.

"What was that all about? Huh?!" His voice deepened when he was mad. "Picking fights? You wanna catch another charge on this job? You want to go to jail?"

Star leaned forward cradling her face in her hands as her small body trembled. "That was all the money I had," she cried. Bill's anger settled, he just felt bad for the girl. He only knew her by what was written in those case files but she was a human being. With dreams and desires like anyone else. "The night I got caught up," she leaned back wiping her eyes, toughening back up. "She was with me, I handed her my purse," she shook her head. "I only know her by Gina. She works sometimes on the next block over. As you can tell the ugly bitch loves to shoot up dope. So there, a name."

"Star, are you taking this seriously? Because I really need to know if this is going to work."

"I know, I know. I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry I get impulsive it's always been my downfall. But Bill, she stole almost three grand from me."

He sighed, "I just need to know if this is going to work, Star?"

"Yes. I won't do that again, okay. I-I'm sorry. Really."

"Don't be sorry again. Okay?" She answered him with a nod. "We probably started this all wrong. I think... maybe we should get to know each other? Set up boundaries. Some trust. I don't want to be your babysitter, you're my partner in this. You're my partner, say it back to me." He needed to hear it for his sake.

"I-I'm your partner."

"Good. Now, usually, after a shift partner's have a drink at the end of the day. We can talk over a beer, sound good?"

"I'm starving."

"We'll find someplace with food."

Inside a random red-lit bar in the city, they grubbed over greasy burgers and beer. Brandy by Looking Glass playing on the jukebox. Star had devoured hers. Bill guessed she hadn't eaten in some time and offered to buy her another one but she declined only asking for another beer.

"I guess, I'll start, I'm 27," Bill pushed his plate away and reached for his pack of smokes, "Uh, I told you my name..."

"Yeah, you should probably change that."

"Good idea," he nodded. "How'd you figure out your name?"

"Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight," she began to recite the children's poem, "I wish I may, I wish I might. I have this wish, I wish tonight." She sipped her beer with a smile. "Something my daddy used to say to me. My real daddy," she clarified before he could question who she meant.

"Well, I'm not really creative like that. Got any ideas?"

She looked around the bar for inspiration when she a certain beer advertisement caught her eye. It would work, she thought to herself, it was simple enough. She pointed above the bar.

"J-A-X. Jax. No fuss."

Bill shrugged, "Better than what I could have come up with. So anyway, I saw your file, I'm from Jersey too. Newark." He paused realizing he wasn't very interesting. "I don't know what to say? I don't do much? I work, have a beer after, listen to some records at home and go to sleep."

"Sounds like a riot."

Bill chuckled, quickly waving at the bartender for another round. "I mean, I have a cat named Minx, she keeps me busy sometimes but that's about all."

"A bachelor? No girlfriend, no kids? No wonder life hasn't seemed to kick your ass yet. But it sounds nice Bill, I mean, Jax." She laughed.

"And you?"

With the spotlight on her, he felt her get uncomfortable. She worked out the feeling by chugging the rest of her beer and reached for the new drink taking a gulp. "You know what I do," she wiped the dribble of beer on her chin.

"May I ask why?"

"It's not that complicated. I mean it kinda is but whatever. I've been getting into trouble since I lived in Atlantic City, you saw my records. I'm impulsive like I told you. I can't help it sometimes."

"That doesn't really answer my question..."

"I-I don't know okay..." she looked away debating with herself whether she should tell him anything. No one has ever cared to be honest. She looked back at him, he was waiting. She gave a heavy sigh before answering. "I ran from home when I met a sweet guy when I was 17 on the boardwalk. Got here and he wasn't so nice."

"Talking about your pim- your man," he didn't feel comfortable saying pimp while she was opening up.

"No... his name was Freddie," strangely a fond smile spread across her lips when his name left her mouth. "He used to slap me around but I'm mouthy, you know. I don't think sometimes when I speak. He'd pop me right on the mouth for it... I don't know one day he was sick of me, just like that," she snapped her fingers, "I was out on streets I barely knew with nothing. I started stealing first, selling what I could. I met my guy not long after, he helped me out a lot, let me stay with him. Had a place to go back to every night. Except for these last couple of months, I've been sleeping at bus stops or random couches. Sometimes, I'll work the jawns really good so they'll pass out for a little while so I can get some sleep in." She laughed when Bill raised his brows, amused and shocked. "My guys not getting out in a long time, though. I saved up that money to go to California, right?" She glanced over at Bill and noticed his face saddened and figured it was time to wrap up. She said too much, she always told herself she was not a sob story. When she gets this job done, her story would become one of resilience. "Anyway, I snuck out last night to hunt Gina down. It was important I'd get my money back."

"You know you get paid right? For this job? You get money."

"Really? How much?" She said eagerly.

"I really don't know but I'll make sure you get it, okay." He finished his beer. "And fuck Freddie. I've heard your mouth all day. Now, have I lifted a hand to hit you?"

"No," she shook her head.

"Exactly. Real men don't hit women." ...

Later that evening at the motel, he was dressed down with the sweats Pat packed for him. He had the TV on the news. Star emerged from the bathroom in a baby pink nightgown, it hung low, nearly exposing her breasts. He fixed his eyes on the TV until she was finished tying on her bonnet to protect her curls and got into bed. He had slept alone for so long that just knowing there was someone else in the room with that wasn't his cat felt foreign. She laid with her back turned to him and after a while, Bill thought she had fallen asleep until she spoke.

"When are you gonna turn that off?" She said sleepily.

"I'm waiting for the weather."

"When you step outside tomorrow, you'll know."

"Fine," he grabbed the big bulky remote, he wished he had one for his TV at home, and shut it off.

"And that's the way it is, Monday, November 6th, 1978," she said reciting Walter Cronkite's signature sign off. "Goodnight Bill."

"It's Jax. You don't know me like that." He mocked her words from earlier that morning.

"Right." She laughed.

PART THREE

Geza X Interview from 2005, Part Two

By Mor Fleisher Leach (2005)

Mor: Did you meet Josie Cotton from working at that studio?

Geza: Yep. I met her there and she was actually going out with Larson. I had a big crush on her, but I didn’t tell her until years later. We were together for a long time. We’re still good friends.

Mor: What got you into music production?

Geza: It was almost like an accident. It’s a funny story. I did want to produce records because, like I said, I grew up hearing all these sounds on the radio and I was thinking, “How do they make it sound like that?” as opposed to “Oh, how did they write that song?” I was interested in the overall effect of the record. I remember being really moved by the way things sounded. In those days, I couldn’t tell a guitar from a drum. I just liked the sound. Naturally, one thing led to another and I got into recording because I had my own gear and I was always a do-it-yourselfer. There was a recording studio across from The Masque and just before The Masque opened it closed down. But I was working there. I just walked in and asked the owner if I could fix up the gear and do some additional engineering, just be a handyman around the studio. He said “Sure! I’ll give you $10 an hour and you can sleep in the work shop.” And you know, if you’re working around a studio as a second engineer it’s sort of like an apprenticeship; you learn a little bit about how the gear works. One day there was a session and the engineer was drunk somewhere and the owner asked if I could do the session, so I did. I ended up doing a lot of mariachi and disco. Bands would come up from Mexico with a case of J&B and they would get drunk, including me, and they’d play all these mariachi songs. So I had a little bit of an engineering background and I was sort of interested in producing, although I didn’t really know what a producer did. Then the Masque happened which was shortly thereafter. I just started spreading the word around the Masque that I was a producer and, low and behold, Darby Crash walks up to me and says, “You’re a producer. Produce us.” That’s how I did that first Germs single. It was also my first production and Slash’s first record.

Mor: What was it like being the soundman for The Masque?

Geza: That was almost by default. The Masque had just started up and Brendan (Mullen) had a bunch of rehearsal space around the outside of it because it was a big basement. I was looking for a place to stay because I had been living in that recording studio across the street and got booted out of there. I went and asked Brendan because I’d just heard there were a few bands staying there; I think The Bags had done one show there. I went and asked Brendan if I could rent a room from him and he said that there was a room that I could rent for $50 a month. I told him I had a bunch of PA and recording gear too and if he wanted to do shows I could put some PA stuff up. I ended up just having the gear. It was not really a PA, it was something more Scotch-taped together. He had some stuff, I had some stuff. I had a bunch of microphones and stands that were useful. I also had a fairly good tape recorder so I recorded some of the live stuff too and some of that ended up being the Live at the Masque album that Lee Joseph reissued. I recorded that one my little 4-track recorder.

Mor: Where did you record The Screamers’ demos?

Geza: There was one really good one that I did in Paul Roessler’s garage. I did it very carefully but Tommy Gear tried to get me to erase the tape. That’s the famous Screamers record that’s going around the internet that always has some weird sound buzzing in the background. There’s some other stuff they did in this hi-fi shop but nothing ever sounded exactly like The Screamers except that one recording that I made.

Mor: Didn’t somebody reissue it to get rid of a lot of the buzzing?

Geza: Yeah, I did that. I put it through a processor.

Mor: How was it like recording with bands like The Screamers, who never really recorded an actual record, as opposed to bands like Dead Kennedys or Black Flag?

Geza: The Screamers were kind of a different story because they sort of snobbed themselves out of the game. They were one of the best bands going and I was their sound man. I stayed with them for two or three years because I just their loved music. I would travel around with them and always do their live sets. There were a lot of electronics behind the board because they were this electronic-oriented band, so I would add to their sound with echo and stuff like that. There would be points where they’d walk off the stage and I would make a weird gobbledy-goop sound that came out the speakers. They did a number or live things like the Target Video recordings which I mixed a lot of. I would also go up north with them to San Francisco and mix the sound for them. The thing is I never really got to record them, which is what I really wanted to do. By that time, I had a friend with studio experience, but they were holding out for a major label deal. No one knew the Jimmy Carter story in those days. I’d heard it in New York when I had gone because I was carousing with some of the old-school punkers there, and they were worried I was an investigative reporter. I got an anonymous tip from a reporter at the New York Times saying that he heard that I was pursuing this story about punk and Carter. He said “I want you to know that you’re on the right track. I’ve seen the memo, that’s all I can say. It’s a true story, but I can’t tell you anymore than that and I can’t give you my name.” He thought I was a reporter too.

Mor: So The Screamers weren’t holding out to make a multimedia movie? They just wanted to record under a major label?

Geza: They sort of wanted to get a video done because they thought they were a visual band, so they hooked up with this Dutch filmmaker (Rene Daalder) who had a couple monster movies under his belt like Massacre at Central High (1976), which is an okay movie. He was just this drunk alcoholic Dutch filmmaker. He sort of got them under his spell and pretty much emasculated the band because Tommy Gear was really like the control freak behind everything and his power got taken away from him. It was very S&M the way he and Tomata (DuPlenty) interacted because Tommy was pretty brutal, but they put out a good show and they worked very hard to do that. Tommy really revved Tomata up into a frenzy which impacted his stage performance. So anyway, Rene came along and took over that whole project and he had these weird visions of acoustic pianos! Videos! Sets! Strange things! But it was all very stupid. He’s clever and has a good sense of the absurd, but he does have this classic way of movie making. He got this Penelope Houston from The Avengers kinda girl named Sheela (Edwards) who’s a very good singer and she was going to be his “theatrical truth,” but it just never ended up turning into anything. You have to give him a little bit of credit for what he wanted to do because it was original and he really did try and worked very hard. He got a little warehouse to do some production, kind of like Green Jello before Green Jello. But you know the type of person who’s sort of a con artist? He was that way. The movie, Population: One, was pretty good. It’s fun to watch, but it’s just Rene’s work as opposed to The Screamers’. I liked it, but I didn’t like it for the same reason as other people who thought they were watching The Screamers’ vision.

Mor: After the whole LA punk explosion happened you kind of went off the radar. Were you doing anything at that time?

Geza: Drugs. I went way off the radar! I was strung out on speed and heroin and escaped from LA with my tail between my legs and went to live in this dirt barn in West  Covina. I was washing up in a horse stable every morning and going to the gym and walking a mile on a dirt trail to the bus stop to go to this junior college. Basically, I was so spun out that I completely trashed my life. I could hardly string together a sentence. I figured I’d go to school and the gym, but what I didn’t realize was it was going to take me about eight years to recover. So I was babbling for eight years, literally like somebody you see on Hollywood  Blvd. I quit taking speed, but I wasn’t getting any better for a long time.  I was still crazy. It took years before I started getting better. I went to AA for a long time and then I did start getting better pretty fast.

Mor: When you came back you started working with rap music, right?

Geza: Yeah, a little bit. I still had this fear of music because I thought it had destroyed me. I still had a lot of trouble talking and tying my shoes and stuff like that. After that I got a job in this studio and I was semi getting back to normal because by that time I was sober for a while. The weird thing is even when I was sober before it didn’t really make that much difference, but when I got into AA I really started to feel a lot of improvement in my mental space. So I got this job engineering and that was just when the whole rap wave was on and Paramount was one of the cheaper studios, so a lot of South Central rappers came in there. I worked with all kinds of people; I worked with Ice-T, Sir Jinx, Rhyme Syndicate—so many different people. I wasn’t working with them ongoing, but various sessions. I got really good at sampling and looping.

Mor: Did you ever want to become a mainstream producer?

Geza: Sure, I wouldn’t mind. I love pop music and I have no problem with any of that. A lot of people think that’s selling out, but to me it’s about the whole craftsmanship of putting together a song. I used to teach advanced record production at UCLA and I’d just go into the whole craft of production and describe it as a Rubik’s Cube. You’ve got about three minutes to basically squeeze in an entire dissertation of pop culture that has so much emotive power that people just react to it. I love the challenge of doing that. It’s like putting together a puzzle. I enjoy the craft of making a really good sounding pop record. Usually I’m known for bringing in somewhat rowdier elements to add some cool to an otherwise commercial artist. It goes the other way around too. I used to get accused of watering down a lot of punk artists. Now I listen to those records and I laugh because Black Flag said that their fans got upset when I produced one of their records (“Six Pack” 7”, 1981) because it sounded over produced. I listen to those records and they just sound like they were recorded in a steel garbage can.

Mor: Have your engineering and production techniques differentiated through the conversion to digital recording?

Geza: Absolutely. I used to do it more by the book where you’d go into pre-production working with the band in rehearsal for a while and then recording them and making sure all the parts moved correctly. Then you’d try to get everything on to each track as carefully as you could because you can’t go back and juggle stuff around. Now I just dump everything into the computer even if the parts are too long or whatever because I can just trim them down later and cut and paste everything into the right places. I don’t do as much pre-production nowadays, but I do a lot of post-production. I find that the new medium lends itself to certain types of sound so you just get that modern sound where everything’s very cut and spliced. You also get a lot of layering of different sound flavors and not much reverb because everything is in its own natural sample sounding space. It changed my whole method a lot and I really enjoy doing it this way. I was one of the first people on ProTools eight or nine years ago. I set up a whole system that behaved pretty much like a tape recorder so that it wasn’t like you were sitting at a work station. Even at my studio there’s a monitor and the keyboards are right in front of me in the middle of the consul so I can operate that and the computer at the same time while still being about to see the artist.

Mor: What interests you to work on now-a-days?

Geza: In regards to music, I’m not so sure. A few years ago, I had this art epiphany. I basically said, “You know what, I’ve been backing up other people’s art for almost thirty years and did damned little of my own.” I’m an artist and I’ve always had to work to do these recordings. I went AWOL and pretty much escaped from recording. I still have my studio in Malibu, but I’ve taught other people my production style and I have a lot of people doing a lot of the work. I’m in Downtown LA more doing fine art. I put my paintings in different shows and I’ve been really enjoying it. I do these large-format digital paintings on canvas. I take photos, screw them up on Photoshop and print them up bigger on canvas.

6/27/20

Every day I seem to realize my feelings more and more. Of course, right now I’m high off my ass. I had three vape puffs of this dab pen, and I am just standing inside my boyfriend’s mom’s house like a total zombie and my brain is empty of everything. I could barely even talk. I stopped when I took too big of a hit and it hit my chest pretty hard to where I was coughing so much and my throat was burning for the longest time.  It was pouring outside at the time, it’s still raining slightly. Some days I really welcome the rain to set the mood and some days I just want the sun to be out. Guess it really depends on my mood, right? While I was over there his mom said to me that she liked a few of my posts on Facebook, but then said most of my posts she doesn’t because they’re “inappropriate” but in reality, it is just who I am and most of my posts involve some sort of self-deprecating humor.  I can barely think right now, in fact, I had plans to cook stir fry for myself, and I haven’t cooked for myself in a very long time, I’ve been eating straight junk for months now. I really couldn’t cook at that point because my mind was too gone, so in the end I just fixed myself two bowls of store brand cocoa Krispies. I also took a pint of Ben & Jerry’s with me too and downed half of that. That could be the reason my body has been feeling like shit lately.  Things that got me mad today? There is a few to name. Everything just makes me despise my “favorite person” even more so. He said the way I dress (I usually dress like a punker or anything that is abnormal or weird) is childish, and that I look like trash. I do not like to conform to what normal girls would wear or present themselves, it is not me and never has been. He also left me in the car to go into his brother’s car to smoke with him, and he never offered me to come. Lastly, he kept nudging me into his mom to signal me to go up to her and hug her. There are huggy and touchy people in this world, I am not one of them. Even the last time I saw my grandma and described my boyfriend’s mom, she said “oh yeah we are not that kind of family, we don’t like to hug”, and I think that some people need to understand that. I don’t like to touch, or be touched.  I managed to actually get everything done on my school assignment list just now, and I’m now relieved, cause I can have tomorrow off from school and then I am starting the new term on Monday, College Writing. I’m starting to sober up a little now, my mind is clearer than it was an hour ago that’s for sure. An hour ago, I was in the car with headphones on literally jamming out to Michael Jackson, really feeling myself, y’know.  I guess I had better get to planning out the rest of my day, and tomorrow’s day. I want to implement a self-care day for me really soon. I have other commitments though, like I have to really clean my place, it’s so cluttered. I can’t have a self-care day when I am feeling stressed like that. When my place is cluttered, so is my mind. 

Music and Politics Rant

This is a long one. If you're looking for the TL;DR version, sorry oh denizens of Short Attention Span Theatre, there isn't one. This is cross-posted from my other blog. My oldest (Thing 1) and I recently had a debate over the relative musical merits of Kate Bush: I think she has merit, Thing 1 thinks she does not. It was one of those debates and ultimate disagreements that reasonable, educated people have that, far from being destructive, add the sort of spice to life to keep it from being an unrelieved death march. I'm not a fanboy for anyone, including Kate Bush. I long ago started thinking of her as the Charles Ives of pop music: a pile of interesting ideas that often deliver something significant but at least as often get in each other's way. Like Ives, people tend to either love her or hate her and have legitimate reasons for both positions, but tend to simply entrench for "reasons." And this sort of "debating" got me thinking (a dangerous prospect). The whole discussion with Thing 1 started when I watched a 2014 BBC documentary on Kate Bush. I thought it was pretty well done. It showed a number of intelligent, talented people who find merit in Bush's work. It interviewed Lindsay Kemp, who still had four years left in the tank at that point, and showed his influence on art rock at the time (basically everybody from Bowie on) (It also showed a couple of other things, perhaps without meaning to. It showed through Kemp's gestures the extent of mime vocabulary's influence on what might be characterized as "gay mannerisms", Kemp being a dancer and choreographer with heavy mime influence, having studied with Marcel Marceau. It also shows the difference between European artists and intellectuals and US pseudos. In the interviews, several people casually remark on having seen Kemp's "Flowers", based on Jean Genet's "Notre Dame des Fleurs". You would be hard-pressed to find any in the US to this day, outside of core LGBTQ+ culture, who have heard of Kemp, "Flowers", or even Jean Genet other than by reference.). And then toward the end it shows why rock critics as a group are ignorant, vicious little parasites. More on that below the fold, wherever the Hell that might be. Once upon a time I was in newspapers, and one of the things I did was write music reviews. It was a paycheck, and as I’ve noted elsewhere, I’ve always been closely involved with music. I wrote by two rules: 1) Be consistent, and 2) make it about the music on its own terms. On the first point, it doesn’t matter if the readers agree with you; they just need to know what to expect from you. If they know you don’t like a particular artist or a particular type of music, they can read you through the appropriate filter. The second point breaks in two. First, it’s about the music, not the people. I did not savage Van Halen because they were pricks who brutalized the little people who had to service their every whim. I went after Eddie Van Halen (who let’s face it was the real core of the band) who went shredding up and down the fretboard at random with no regard for chordal or modal structures (In fairness to Mr. Van Halen, he no longer plays like that and is a far superior musician than when every blockhead with a K-Mart electric six-string thought Eddie was God and gave us a generation of speed monkeys with zero musicianship.) (The speed monkey syndrome unfortunately spread to other instruments. It was the overwhelming norm among the Celtic fiddlers who followed Bonnie Rideout to Ann Arbor and insisted on playing faster than their talents, compensating by dropping notes out at random, and then blaming all the rest of us for all the ensemble issues. To all of you, I give an eternal, “Fuck you and the banshee of an instrument you tuck under your hiply stubbled chins and rape with your bows.”). Second, you have to put it in the music’s own frame of reference. It makes no sense to pan a Metropolitan Opera performance of Cosi fan Tutte because it isn’t a Black Sabbath concert. I realized early on that almost no rock music critics could grasp either of my rules (From this point on, you may assume that “Robert Christgau is a wanker” is flashing subliminally in the background.). From the beginning of such things, Rolling Stone has been the center of rock criticism (I just damned near wrote “crock recidivism”. I’m not a nice person.). It has also been the center of what is wrong with rock criticism for just as long. These guys were groupies. They were wannabes who couldn’t cut it, so they hung out with the guys who could, basking in the limelight. The reviews weren’t reviews, they were hagiographies. “The music must be great because I party with these guys.” “They must be significant because I party with these guys.” Everything was on a chummy, first-name-only basis (“Mick and Keith were really rockin’ it Thursday night.”) that became the norm for roughly forever (Cam Crowe slipped a screamingly funny joke about The Rocket’s review style in his movie Singles.). As tastes changed and their substance-abuse buddies died, faded away, or became arena bands (and now nostalgia bands playing the Peppermill in Wendover), Rolling Stone found itself unsuccessfully playing catch-up, jumping on every bandwagon that rolled down the street in a desperate attempt to get in front of The Next Big Thing and failing miserably. If it weren’t for Matt Taibbi, that rag would have no reason to exist. In the 70s other rags stepped into the breach, but they took the Stone’s style sheet and were all clones of one another. They couldn’t comprehend my rules, either. I remember one of these rags (probably Circus, but who honestly gives a shit at this point, they were fungible) going after every Harry Chapin recording because it “wasn’t rock.” Well no shit, Sherlock. Chapin wasn’t a rocker, he was a folkie, self-proclaimed, and condemning him for not being what he wasn’t was…well…not even wrong. Congratulations, rock critics, you just earned Stephen Frys’s second-greatest insult, right after “I almost care.” There was one exception to the Clone Wars: Creem. But that didn’t make it good, just different. Admittedly, Creem was covering a lot of things no one else was, including the early days of punk and all that was happening over at CBGB. But my gods the pretension. Memo to Lester Bangs: Just because you covered something doesn’t mean you invented it. Just because you came up with the label “punk rock” doesn’t mean you created punk rock. Punk rock was created by garage bands (US) and pub bands (UK) (I always envied the UK guys because no matter how, frankly, BAD you were, there was someone willing to book you. Here in the US? Not so much. Although you could always get homecoming and prom gigs if you were just another shitty cover band.) (Punk was spawned by my half-generation, the Late Boomers. The reason was simple: We were fucking sick and tired of the hypocrisy of the Early Boomers, our big brothers and sisters. They were the 60s Children, the Flower People, and they were still peddling that bullshit even though the wheels had fallen off the wagon and there was a global recession. They accused us of being self-centered for not “working for change” like them while they busily leveraged the huge advantage of having sucked up everything before we ever got on the scene. They took their 60s, corporatized, commoditized, packaged, and slapped a smiley face on them, and expected us to swallow it all without question. The problem was that we just didn’t believe hard enough in the dream. Meanwhile we were saying, “The fuck? Our dreams hit the wall at 110 per in Fall ’73! The wreckage is everywhere, but you dicks and everybody else is just stepping over it like it isn’t there!” We wanted to wave our private parts at them, so we did. Which is a long way of telling you Millennials that, if you lump the Early and Late Boomers together, your ignorance is showing. Yeah, there are plenty of Late Boomers who sold out [You hear me, Barry Obama? You sold us all out, but history will always remember you fondly because you landed between the Texas Turd Tornado and Hitler 2.0.], but we were the first ones to face the New Normal you folks are now dealing with. You need old wise men and women for your villages? Trust me, we’re available in hordes.) As yet another aside, there were garage bands, and there were garage bands. None of us were very good, but most of us wanted to improve to something resembling competency. The early punkers simply didn’t care (Hell, a lot of them, such as the New York Dolls, were so bad they made The Kingsmen sound like conservatory virtuosos. And the Noo Yuck critics, apparently on permanent bad acid trips from frequent visits to Andy Whore-wall’s Fucktory, kept rubbing out one after another for them all. “Daringly campy!” “A raw, animal sound!” Shit-shoveling by rapidly deteriorating white guys desperate to continue being perceived as bleeding edge.). Fortunately, this only lasted a few years before a lot of the punkers decided it maybe would not be so inauthentic if they actually learned how to play their instruments. I don’t care what John Lydon continues to blow out his ass, Black Flag was never boring. But I really can’t leave the topic of pretension without a mention of The Village Voice, the self-proclaimed font of all things cool and hip for over six decades and running. In reality The Village has been overrun with gentrifying yuppie scum straight off the set of Thirtynothing since before Rudy Giuliani parked his malignancy in the Mayor’s Office, and The Voice has followed suit. And Robert Christgau was at the center of it all. It has never ceased to amaze me how someone so admittedly ignorant could be such an expert on everything. He admits he is “not at all well-schooled” (understatement) in 50s and 60s jazz, yet he has reviewed jazz artists such as Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Sonny Rollins without any of that context and has declared Frank Sinatra the greatest singer of the 20th Century (A meaningless statement. How can you compare Sinatra and, say, Pavarotti? You can’t, and anyone with a lick of humility and two brain cells to rub together doesn’t even try.) while apparently ignorant of Nelson Riddle’s role in creating Sinatra’s best albums. He was an early promoter of punk, right through all the “authentic vs. poseur” wars, blissfully unaware that this was not a rebellion unique to punk but rather was a recurring fight in music, most recently before that in the “this is jazz/this is not jazz” that started with the rise of bebop after the Second World War, that caused a butt-ton of damage to the genre, and that Miles Davis was a pivotal player in until he finally got over it and put on that shiny red leather suit and released Bitches Brew, which Christgau unironically nominated to Jazz & Pop as jazz album of the year in 1970. He considers the New York Dolls one of the five greatest artists of all time. Please. The Dolls were influential, true, and for two reasons: 1) Their show was cheap and entertaining and so readily copiable and copied, and 2) their musicianship was so crude a half-trained baboon could cover it. Not exactly reasons to put them in GOAT contention. Finally, Christgau doesn’t like and is nearly completely ignorant of classical music. This tells me so many things, but two bubble immediately to the surface: 1) He has neither the music history nor the music theory to hold 90% (at least) of the opinions he’s been paid for over the last half-century, and 2) he’s a shallow little shit who needs to sit in a corner and STFU. And believe it or not, all that was just a warm-up to get around to John Harris. Toward the end of the Kate Bush documentary is a roundtable discussion of her latest album (Aerial) by several UK rock critics, including Harris. Harris makes the remark that the music sounds like something you’d hear in a department store and that it’s obvious Bush hadn’t been in a studio for 12 years. I’ll start with the statements themselves and then turn to their wider ramifications. Department store music? I’d like to know where Harris hangs out that this is the ambient Muzak. Let’s chalk this one up to hyperbole and move on to the “12 years” remark. He doesn’t really elaborate on this (not entirely his fault, given the roundtable format) so we can only speculate on his actual point. Do her pipes sound rusty? Not really. Does the technology sound dated? No (And trust me, I keep up. It’s not like I sit around listening to Sergeant Pepper’s going, “Oh wow, they played those tapes backwards!”), and even if it did, that would be one to lay on the producer and the engineer. Is the music dated? An ambiguous word, “dated”, but I’m afraid we’ve finally reached what Harris was driving at. By “dated” do we mean it doesn’t sound like other music being produced now? First, when has Kate Bush ever sounded like anyone else, and second when did sounding like everyone else become a standard of musical quality? It hasn’t and it shouldn’t, but I’m afraid this is the point Harris is trying to make. Perhaps, though, he meant this sounds like her old material. Saying that an artist is repeating themself is a helpful criticism, especially if you explain why you think so. Frankly that’s a point I can agree with; I find a certain sameness in her work since Hounds of Love. But that isn’t even remotely what Harris says. He says she sounds old-fashioned, which is never a useful comment, merely a pejorative one, and worse, a pejorative aimed not just at the artist but at the listener. You are listening to old-fashioned music. You are old-fashioned. You are outdated. Catch up! Under the best of circumstances, this is unmitigated bullshit. Coming from Harris, it is unmitigated bullshit that is part of a career full of it. Harris’s cred as a “serious person” essentially rests on his 2003 book The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock (repackaged in 2004 as Britpop: Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock) and the follow-up BBC Four 2005 documentary The Britpop Story. His thesis is that 90s Britpop was the last great shining moment for UK pop. No, really. At this point, let facts be placed before a candid world. The UK has been a popular music powerhouse for quite awhile, and by “powerhouse” I mean a global influence. Let’s start arbitrarily with Gilbert & Sullivan, pass the baton to Ivor Novello, and then to Noel Coward. The Second World War made hash of it all, and the post-war generation found that the US had stolen the baton, but rather than going gentle into that not-so-good night, both the rockers and the mods invaded the US and stole much of the thunder back. This continued into the 70s, whether you’re talking about arena bands, metal, prog rock, or punk, and on into the 80s, again whether you’re talking about power pop, synthpop, or New Wave. Big influences that can still be heard around the world. Compare Britpop. The whole point of Britpop was to be a calculated foil for Grunge and as safe and marketable as possible, the perfect theme music for the Tony Blair years. It has so little edge it couldn’t leave a mark on a piece of talc. Its influence has been negligible except as a template for profitable pap. In 1997 the whole sham came unraveled as Oasis released the bloated disappointment Be Here Now and Blur abandoned the field to join the US “lo-fi” movement. Their lasting influence is Coldplay, and let’s be honest, if Coldplay is your gold standard, I’m afraid you actually have a pyrite mine. But Harris thinks Britpop was the shining end of UK rock. There are a number of holes in this assertion; two are glaring. First, there are still plenty of new bands in the UK churning out good stuff (That Harris seems blissfully ignorant of these bands makes me wonder just who is out-dated and needs to catch up.). Look them up yourselves; I’m not falling into the trap of naming a few here. Suffice it to say they’re diverse, and you’re likely to hit on several you consider acceptable regardless of your musical tastes. They’ve even been having an influence in the EU, but we’ll see what Brexit brings (Influence in the US? Not so much since we have reached a level of insularity here that rules out anything beyond our borders having merit, in spite of having access to it all on The Interwebz.). And these bands have a Hell of a lot more to offer than the Britpop slag did. Which brings us to glaring hole two. As noted previously, Britpop didn’t really have an impact. None outside of the UK, and damned little in the UK on any time scale longer than the life of a mayfly. Britpop was a nothingburger with a side of flies and a So? Duh! Harris, though, raises this localized, ephemeral phenomenon and turns it into the last scion of the UK pop tradition. This should just be considered a bad case of the sillies, except that Harris’s new schtick is political commentary, especially for The Grauniad. In keeping with The Graun’s policies, his position is “Support Remain but maintain that ‘both sides have merit’.” Which raises his Britpop position from silly to ironic, because Harris’s thinking on Britpop (“It was important in the UK, ergo it was IMPORTANT!”) is just the sort of insular, UK=World mentality that made Brexit possible. Brexit happened, for the most part, because of a bunch of people who believed that, whatever the puzzle was, the UK was the only piece that mattered. Harris’s elevation of Britpop on so high a pedestal rests on the same belief, even though he’s a Remainer. So it’s unintentionally ironic. It’s symptomatic of a malignant mindset. And it’s still silly. And so I give you Christgau and Harris, Exhibits 1 and 2 in my case for the beyond-uselessness of rock critics. And the former is still being allowed to write revisionist histories of the music of the last half-century while the latter is still being allowed to…well…write. What a world.

The Muffs - Blonder and Blonder

　

Background

This was probably the height of the Muffs' popularity.  Their cover of "Kids in America" was heard by millions in Clueless, and "Sad Tomorrow" from this LP was doing well on the radio (as Kim Shattuck would proclaim in concert as her excuse for refusing to tune).  It was looking all uphill from here, as labels were scrambling to hop on the pop-influenced punk wave that was brewing, but it just wasn't to be.  The Muffs are still around, one hiatus and several albums later, but they unfortunately never got big enough to draw the stadium crowds that Green Day and some other contemporaries did.  While they started to touch success, they weren't quite allowed to grasp it and hold on.  No one quite knows why it didn't work too well, but at least we have a solid discography to go back to.

Track by Track Thoughts

"Agony" starts off the album with the energy you can always expect from the gang.  The departure of Melanie Vammen isn't exactly glaring (much like her presence on the first album), but the change from Criss Crass to Roy McDonald behind the drums is clear.  Where Criss brought straightforward punk energy, with the Muffs Roy seems to restrain himself and play more to the song.  The drums usually take a backseat to the punchy guitars and catchy melodies, and this track is no different.  Kicks and snares hit almost playfully with vocal punches at times ("soon you'll re-a-lize").  Ronnie Barnett delivers what he usually does, bass that plays nice with the guitar and vocals and is usually mixed too quietly to hear it anyway.  Kim provides the normal couple chords and switches nicely between melodic stretches and her trademark scream, capping the song off with a series of yells that wouldn't feel out of place on a metal track.

"Oh Nina" is a live favorite and it's clear why from the jump: the guitar, bass, and snares hitting in machine gun succession can liven up the deadest crowd, and the sing-songy flow and catchy chorus are just plain fun.  The screams are on point and numerous, as usual, making you wonder how she's still able to talk after hundreds of times performing this song.  The subject matter, presumably about being lured in by a transsexual (or a "queer," as Kim puts it) is funny enough.  In general, this is another exercise in consistency by the group, nothing amazing but always a good listen.

"On and On" sees Ronnie's bass poke through a little more, with another nice melody and riff from Kim and solid drums from Roy.  "Two ugly people come my way, tell me that I'm wrong" perfectly encapsulates the adolescent rebel vibe ever present in Kim's lyrics.  The key change towards the end of the track is a rare treat in the Muffs' discography, another callback to the songs of old that influenced Kim's songwriting.  This one's the shortest on the album, clocking in at 1:47.

"Sad Tomorrow" is likely their most talked about song, even though it's honestly not much of a standout on the album or in their catalog as a whole.  Ronnie's bass is audible once again, mostly matching Kim's vocals throughout.  The solo is used sparingly throughout the Muffs' history, but it's present here, again mostly following the vocal melody.

"What You've Done" is a story of a love gone wrong, another topic Kim's no stranger to.  "One fine day I caught you lying" explains the mystery of what you've done pretty bluntly.  This is another shorter track, again not reaching two minutes.  There's a solid few chords as usual, plus a solo, but there's not much to really go into.  The hook is catchy but being interspersed among the vocal- and rhythm-driven verses may hurt it some.

"Red-Eyed Troll" seems to me to be the story of a girl who picks on Kim and tries to steal her boyfriend.  It's notable for being the only track where Kim drops an F-bomb ("You piece of shit now, you fuckin' jerk").  This is another fun listen, with the verse seeing the bass hitting with the kick drum and the guitar laying quick, maybe Primus-like chord hits over the snare.  During the hook, the bass switches to arpeggiating up and down while the guitar sustains a bit.  One false ending and a frantic coda brings it to an end.

"End It All" feels even shorter than it is.  It's pretty standard for them, essentially all hook with simple but energetic instrumentation.  It's catchy enough, but that's all you'll get.  But isn't that all you need?

"Laying on a Bed of Roses" is half indecipherable, but the other half might be about Kim getting mad at a lover who she feels she works too hard for, or something.  I don't know.  It's not necessarily as catchy as others on here, nor is it as energetic, but it just grooves nicely. It might be a bit of a grower for some as compared to other tracks on here, so keep that in mind.

"I Need a Face" is the first of two face-related tracks on the LP, and the one that has the funniest story relating to it (Kim dedicating it to Kurt Cobain the day after his suicide, leading Roy to quit on his first day before coming right back).  This one's catchy, with a fun bassline and a hook made for a crowd to sing along to ("Hang on, hang on, hang on meeee").

"Won't Come Out to Play" is my personal favorite from the album.  It's another one that's basically all hook, and the hook is incredibly catchy despite the dour lyrics.  The bass is great and plays nice with everything else, the guitar work could be a singalong on its own, the drums stand out a bit without taking over, and the key change is the best I've heard from them.  Packing all of this into just a minute and 52 seconds makes this one you could play over and over without getting tired of bobbing your head.

"Funny Face" is one of the slower tracks on here, at around 67 BPM.  Another one you want to sing with.  The triplet guitar riff and hi-hats together make for a good listen, and even if I couldn't decode the lyrics' larger meaning at gunpoint, they're easy enough to make out.  If there's one thing to criticize, it's the fade out ending.  Who the hell likes a fade out?

"Ethyl My Love" is another fan favorite, written about the side character played by Vivian Vance on I Love Lucy.  The easy to follow chorus, crazy screams from Kim, and the relatively soft bridge that jumps right back into the chaos all probably contribute to the song's status among many diehard Muffs fans (Muff-heads?  Muff divers?).

"I'm Confused" is another favorite of mine, though I prefer the demo version by a lot.  It oozes petulance in the way only Kim can ("I hate everyone, and I don't like it son," "Everybody is an ass"), and when you combine that with the instrumental it creates another standout by the group. The way the song devolves into chaos is a nice touch, with multiple guitar tracks, the bass track, and the drums just going nuts for the last 45 seconds or so.  It adds to the idea of being confused, and serves as an abrupt transition into the closer.

"Just a Game" finishes this LP softly, with a solo track by Kim.  Whatever the lyrics mean, the song as a whole manages to give you the feeling that it's closing time.  At just a second under two minutes, it's not exactly a marathon, but the slower tempo makes it feel longer than it is.  It's not a barn burner like you might expect an album by a triad of pop punkers to close on, but it somehow fits.  It's a rare treat live and, when Shattuck can hit the notes, it's easy to see why.

Final Thoughts

Blonder and Blonder is decidedly less punk than the Muffs' previous, self-titled effort, but it fits into their discography as a perfect middle ground in their transition from that more punk, less pop to more of a balance like you'll find on Really Really Happy.  Any Muffs fans out there have undoubtedly already heard this album, and fans of the genre would be remiss if they hadn't given it a shot.  For those on the fence, or those who might not be familiar with the pop punk blend, you should probably give it a spin if you're into the kind of three chord, aggression over art style that groups like the Ramones and Nirvana were known for.  While you can hear the influence of older, softer groups, it's not a smooth transition from them to this, so it might not be a great starting point for them.  If you only know the Muffs from Sad Tomorrow or Kids in America and didn't like what you heard, it might be worth peeping depending on what you liked and disliked.  Disliking Kim's voice would make this a hard no, obviously, since it's her band and her voice on every track.  If you disliked the songwriting or the poppiness, it might be worth a shot considering "Kids in America" was a cover and "Sad Tomorrow" was essentially their play for college pop/rock radio.

The positives outweigh the negatives on this project for me by far.  The Muffs' consistency is as much of a boon as it is a hindrance.  Kim could write a song in her sleep, but you might not remember it the next day.  This album provides some standouts, but not as many as you might expect considering the critical acclaim and the mix of youth and experience Kim, Ronnie, and Roy had at the time.  There's pretty endless replay value, as the songs manage to fit well on the album without blending together or feeling too samey and it doesn't command your attention necessarily.  It's not too long and it's not something you can't skip tracks on if you want to.  Overall, I think these things make Blonder and Blonder a solid 8/10 in my book.