Black Friday Shenanigans

Happy Cyber Monday, everybody! I had never heard of Cyber Monday until this past Black Friday. I guess it's been going on for about ten years now, which i had figured just from hearing the name. I mean, you can tell something's from the bygone era of the 90s when it's got the word "cyber" right there in the name like that.

So i managed to dodge most of the Black Friday bullets this year. I didn't get pepper sprayed; i wasn't left for dead on the floor at Target; and according to employees at the Wal-Mart i showed up at ten minutes after open, i narrowly missed a riot over Xbox games. Seriously, i got there at 10:10, wandered around for fifteen minutes without finding a single Xbox game except the random crappy ones abandoned by people who rethought their selections, and then asked an employee, who told me that two pallets of Xbox games disappeared in under five minutes, and there was a riot. Man, if that doesn't restore your faith in humanity, what will, right?

Once i got in line at Wal-Mart, i decided it would be a good idea to start texting updates of my Black Friday adventures to Amanda. She, sadly, had to work until midnight, which she had scheduled at the beginning of the year, anticipating having a couple hours after work to go get in a line somewhere. Once she found out, a couple weeks ago, that stores would be opening more around midnight or earlier, in the cases of Wal-Mart and Toys-R-Us, she was pretty righteously pissed. So anyway, that's the kind of person i thought it would be a brilliant idea to shoot updates to.

Keep in mind, also, that i had to be at work at 2:30AM, and it's a half hour drive from Best Buy to work. Hitting Best Buy at midnight when they opened hadn't seemed like a bad idea at the time...

10:10PM: Arrived at Wal-Mart

10:43: In checkout line, sweaty and irritated

10:52: A lady hands me a free 5 Hour Energy. The day may yet be survivable.

10:57: Turns out the line isn't straight. Goddammit.

11:00: Line forks. Hope i made the right choice!

11:06: Checking out!

11:08: Out of Walmart!

11:22: Arrival at Best Buy

11:26: The line is almost to the far corner of Kohl's. Considering giving up. Saw [a friend]. [here's a map.]

11:31:



11:39: Recall Walker petition comes down the line!

11:48: Best Buy line now stretches almost to Panera [again, see map]


11:54: Kohl's opens. No Best Buy movement as yet.

11:59: Movement!

12:07: Almost to the front of the building now. There are still people standing where i started.

12:11: In the store!

12:43: In the checkout line...three quarters of the store clockwise from the registers...

12:43: I'm at the Apple kiosk, and the line wraps around the wholewhole.

12:49: *whole store. Your call screwed up my texting.

1:00: Just heard that the line now stretches to the entrance.

1:15: I am at a preorder station for Halo 4, a game which does not come out for 13 months yet.

1:21: Justin Bieber singing toothbrush >.<

1:42: I am shunned by refrigerators.


1:54: Fortress of appliances.


1:58:


2:03: In the home stretch!

2:06: At a register!

2:09: Fresh air!!! Also the cops are here.

Scum and Villainy (part 3)

9. Bieber Fever
Justin Bieber is not the worst thing ever
It’s just the latest in a long product cycle
Three more years, he she or it will all be over
We must dispose shit to keep the industry vital

This song will be relevant long after Justin Bieber is dead
The fever will get transferred to someone else instead.
This song will be relevant long after J. Biebs is gone
And the product cycle has to just move along

It’s so sad that i’ve got to use a reference
Just to make this song make any sense
A couple more years and i’ll have to change the words
Maybe if i’m lucky they’ll be misheard (Where’s my safety pins?!)

I wonder if Donny Osmond ever saw this coming.
The fall of Brett Michaels, the demise of Britney Spears
N*Sync, Boyz II Men, Menudo and Ricky Martin
Ashlee Simpson, that other Simpson, more than one other person i forgot
They all start out at the top, and they all end up with me at the bottom
They’ve just got one way to go.
Just one way.
And i’m already here so i’m saving time.
Fuck those guys.

--

On the surface, it seems like it’s about the disposability of pop music...and it is, i guess...but to me it’s more about the people who always freak out about how the current “big thing” is the “worst thing ever” and the harbinger of the end times, or whatever. Like how you go to Memebase and like every other joke nowadays is “Kill Justin Bieber.” Frankly, it’s boring. Two years ago, all the jokes were “Kill the Jonas Brothers” and now, nobody remembers who the hell they were. This kind of attitude goes back at least to the 60s with The Monkees. It’s just a cycle. Don’t kill Justin Bieber. Let him get old and fat, that’ll be much more fun when he pops up on VH1’s Where Are They Now.

“Where’s my safety pins!?” - This is a ridiculous in-joke between me and Bob, and a few other people outside the band. If you must make it a metaphor, though, i’ve thought of saying that it references how the teenagers who are into pop today tend to turn to rock later in life. Like punk. Punk is big on safety pins.

As for that last part, if you don’t know who these people are/were, you’re going to have to look them up yourself. “That other Simpson” refers to Jessica Simpson, who was actually famous before her little sister Ashlee. I was hoping that my phrasing here would be perceived as a dis against Jessica. She always irritated me more than most plastic pop packages.

10. Old Man
Wish i was an old man that looked like a wizard
Or maybe an old man who resembled a pirate
With so many choices and so many styles
It’s a wonder more people don’t want to try it
Wish i was an old man, just like my cat is
He’s 18 now and that makes him respected
And when i’m an old man, think i’ll grow a long white beard
And hide things in it that are unexpected

Wish i was an old man, wish i had gnarly hands
Because that would make me look so much wiser
Wish i was an old man with a poofy mustache
Because that would make me look so much hotter
Wish i was an old man with weathered eyes
Because that would make me look so much wiser
Wish i was an old man, wish i had a tophat
Because that would make me look so much hotter

As an old man, i hope i look like Abe Lincoln
With a gaunt face and a suit and a tie
Because Old Abe looks much better than Santa
As an old man, i hope someone bakes me pie
I hope that my wife will make the neighbor kids cookies
That smell like heaven every Sunday morning
But those little bastards have to outrun my hose
I hide in the bushes and i strike without warning

And when i’m an old man
I’m gonna drive a red Corvette
Gonna drive it so damn fast
With my dark sunglasses on
I’ll race seventeen cops
Back to my retirement home
Yeah.
These are things i’ve gotta do before i pass on

--

I have an odd preoccupation with aging. This is the result of that.

“He’s 18 now and that makes him respected” - I do indeed have an 18-year-old cat. When i first wrote this song, which we recorded first for the Doodle Taintstein Sings the Blues EP, he was 14. I’ve kept the lyrics updated every year since.

“And hide things in it that are unexpected” - Not a reference, i just wanted to point out that i think this is one of the best lyrics i’ve ever written.

“Little bastards have to outrun my hose” - Look, just because i’m encouraging my wife to cook for them doesn’t mean i’m not going to fuck with them. They’ve gotta earn those cookies. Little bastards.

11. Pizza Ladder
Come on now, don’t be shy
You’ve got a decent alibi
Gonna have to do what’s right
Sooner or later, but not tonight

I ate a pizza and i fell off of a ladder
Not necessarily in that order
I’m a little off today, my brain is kinda scattered
And i think i will simply walk right into Mordor

It’s been a long time coming
As long as your mouth’s been running
I don’t really feel that bad
But i hope that you’re not mad

The transition is complete
We no longer have to compete
And now there is no stopping
I’ll climb the ladder to the toppings

--

This song is about procrastination. You can also think of it as a breakup song, that’s ok too. The deeper meanings i’m keeping to myself.

“I ate a pizza and i fell off of a ladder, not necessarily in that order” - This is an exact quote from Thomas while we were writing this song. Earlier in the morning, he had in fact fallen off of a ladder, and then eaten an entire pizza. As you might imagine, he was a little out of it that day. This was his bizarre, disjointed way of explaining something completely random and out of the blue that had nothing to do with anything.

“And i think i will simply walk right into Mordor” - “One does not simply walk into Mordor!” It’s a quote from Lord of the Rings. Boromir says it. It later became an internet meme.

“I’ll climb the ladder to the toppings” - This is another one of Lisa’s contributions. All i said was, “I’m working on a song called Pizza Ladder” and this came out of her mouth immediately.

12. Lunch Lady Returns
Lunch lady, i’m kind of upset with this
Meatloaf you gave me
I’m afraid that it might be out of date
There’s all this mold and this hair in this
Meatloaf you gave me
And i think that it’s eating through the plate

Lunch lady, i can’t abide by this
Meatloaf you gave me
It’s burned all the feeling from my nose
Lunch lady, what’s wrong with you and this
Meatloaf you gave me?
I think it’s time for this cafeteria to close

--

The sequel to the title track to 2002’s Lunch Lady EP, the very first damidol release. I’m thinking that in another nine years, there’ll be a song called Lunch Lady Forever, followed by Lunch Lady And Robin.

This one’s pretty self-explanatory.

Scum and Villainy (part 2)

5. Nintendo Girl
I like to watch her score
Her score is higher than mine
It’s all in her beautiful thumbs
I’d like to take her to World 9

My princess is in this castle
Now i know that i don’t need to go through another level
Up up down down left right left right B A select start - that’s the key to her heart
Now i know that i don’t need to go to another castle

I put on her Power Glove (it’s so bad!)
And it fit just right
She took controller #1
I was her Luigi all night

Game Genie gave us infinite lives
There’s lots of co-op in our plans
When she scores, she’ll do it with me
We have an 8-bit romance

--

I think the title of this one kind of says it all. It’s a love song about a girl who’s really into the Nintendo. Although my girlfriend was always a Sega girl, and we’re both primarily Xbox players now. Nintendo just makes for such better references. I don’t think i could do a love song with Halo references.

“Her score is higher than mine” - My girlfriend’s gamerscore is higher than mine, actually. By about 2000.

“Take her to World 9” - there were only 8 worlds in the original Super Mario Bros. game. So presumably, World 9 is where you go after you rescue the princess.

Line 3 in the chorus is the Konami code. If you’re unfamiliar, you’re going to have to look this one up.

“I put on her Power Glove and it fit just right” - the rare triple entendre! First of all, there’s the actual power glove, a bizarre accessory for the NES that was actually kind of a predecessor to the Wii, but 20 years earlier. Second, it means condom. You should have gotten that one. Thirdly, as a videographer who went through a respected film school, this is also in fact a reference to the film On The Waterfront. Marlon Brando FTW!

“I put on her Power Glove (it’s so bad!)” - A reference to the film The Wizard, a film from the late 80s that was basically a 90 minute Nintendo commercial, spotlighting the Power Glove. “I love the Power Glove - it’s so bad” would go on to become an internet meme two decades later.

“She took controller #1, i was her Luigi all night” - Please tell me you get this one. If you don’t, i’m so old. In Super Mario Bros., controller #1 was Mario, #2 was Luigi. I think this was true of all of the NES Mario games except for Mario 2.

“Game Genie gave us infinite lives” - Same qualifier as above. Game Genie was an add-on that would allow you to input cheat codes before you even accessed the game, most commonly stuff like infinite lives. This is also a metaphor for marriage, or something like it.

“We have an 8-bit romance” - The original Nintendo system had an 8-bit processor. That may not even mean anything to the kids these days... In the old days of gaming (read: the 90s), systems were made or broken by the bits in their processors. Nintendo even spotlighted its huge processor with the Nintendo 64, which had (surprise!) a 64-bit processor.

Punk Rock Now
There’s too much water in the Kool-Aid and it kind of tastes like crap
All the hipsters are asking their doctors to smear them for pap
We’re part of Generation Poser - there’s not much left to say
The last original song is already brittle and gray
It’s like i’m drowning in this Kool-Aid, and it kind of tastes like filth
Since when does punk rock have to do with wealth?
If you can’t do it yourself, don’t do it at all
Punk rock does not come from the mall

Here in this punk rock now

Music to slit your wrists to don’t appeal to me
If i cannot enjoy it, it doesn’t fill my needs
Yeah, i’ve got nothing nice to say about the emo kids
But that’s probably exactly the way that they want this
I see you rocking the same haircut that your mommy did
When she was 15, living at home, reference ibid
It’s not a question of your generation
It’s interference from corporations

Here in this punk rock now
Forget your punk rock now
Crap on your punk rock now
Bollocks to punk rock now
Fuck your punk rock

--

This song is largely about Hot Topic, and such. The manufacture of punk bands for a pop audience has bothered many for a long time. Punk used to be a genuine, underground, DIY movement, and then it got subsidized. I think it reached a nadir in the mid-00s, when i was watching TV and a fucking commercial came on for a band of 14 year olds dressed in leather with mohawks, doing music that could only be considered punk in its simple chord arrangements. They were called Detention or some such thing, i’m not really sure, i just remember it was a reference to getting in trouble at your middle school.

“There’s too much water in the Kool-Aid” - You know how that goes. Here, the Kool-Aid means punk culture, and there’s too much Simple Plan in it.

“All the hipster boys are asking their doctors to smear them for pap” - I’m hoping this is being read somewhere in the far future, where hipsters have been forgotten. It’s like Mitch Clem once said, “There’s something wrong with your scene when the easiest way to get into a girl’s pants is to get into girl pants.”

“Since when does punk rock have to do with wealth?” - SELLOUTZ

“If you can’t do it yourself” - This is what punks mean when they say DIY. Do It Yourself. It seems strange that i have to explain this but i know for fact there are people who don’t get it.

“Punk rock does not come from the mall!” - Hot Topic. Like my friend Abby once said, “As soon as there’s a store for it, it’s not punk anymore.”

“Music to slit your wrists to” - Emo. Hopefully this trend, too, has died by the time you read this, random future person.

“I’ve got nothing nice to say” - a direct reference to the aforementioned Mitch Clem.

“Rocking the same haircut that your mommy did” - another reference to hipsters/emos. They tend to like haircuts that were popular for young girls in previous decades.

“Reference ibid” - Reference is the same. As in, i’m talking about hipsters and emos, for reference, see hipsters and emos. Not exactly what ibid means, but close enough. Lisa helped me out with this line.

“Bollocks to punk rock now” - I wanted to slip “bollocks” in there to reference punk’s British roots. Never mind the bollocks. Here’s the Sex Pistols.

Zero
Cracked open another jar of strawberry malaise
No one really wants to hear what i need to say
I’ll just keep it to myself because i know it’s safe
I’m afraid that my words would be just another waste

You know that this always makes me feel like i have died
I don’t approve the way you make me feel inside
I only wish that you could once take my side
You know that there is only one way to make me come alive

I find the taste of strawberry brings out these memories
I put this suit back into the armory
Mortality is hard to address without sounding emo
Maybe it would help if i could let you know

Zero
It’s a zero
Take me, zero
It means zero

I feel so much better now and i’m not even done
If i could forget about zero, i would just be one
I think that our little chat has been for the best
Thank you for letting me get this off my chest

Come alive

--

I don’t want people to read too much into this one. I was in a weird place when i wrote it. I really wanted to write something that addressed my own mortality, but as it turned out, that seemed pretty emo. So i thought i’d do an example of how to write a sad rock song that couldn’t be considered emo by today’s standards; at the end, THINGS GET BETTER.

“Strawberry malaise” - this is a metaphor for something, i haven’t exactly decided what. But it allowed me to use “strawberry” again in the song to reference “malaise” without having to say that word again. I love slipping big words into songs, but it would be easy to overdo it.

“I put this suit back into the armory” - Dropping my defenses. Letting someone in. Getting rid of the suit of armor.

Then there’s another jab at the emos...

I Am A Machine

I’m not going to post the lyrics or explain the references in this one, because that’s the whole point of the song. It’s one giant reference to something. Bonus points if you can figure it out by the end of the second verse.



Stay tuned for part 3...

Scum and Villainy (part 1)

I'm so unbelievably excited. After all these months, the masters for damidol's first full-length album, Scum and Villainy, are in my possession. All twelve album tracks, fully mixed and mastered, and five B-sides (one original and four covers, three of which include guest vocals by the illustrious Joshua Welch).

In celebration of that, i wanted to post kind of a cheat sheet to all the weird pop-, punk-, nerd-, or internet-culture references i've included in the lyrics, since a lot of it isn't going to be immediately recognizable to the unwashed masses (read: you). Also i like talking about myself. If you haven't figured that one out yet, welcome to my blog.

All lyrics copyright 2011 Trevor Triggs and damidol, by the way, so don't steal this stuff or i'll get a lawyer to beat your larynx with a tire iron until pennies come out.

1. Drinking Gasoline
Open up your throat and take what's coming to you
That aperture is big enough to shove my rock through
Let's share our souls, man, let's share our very essence
All i want's to cop a feel on your presence
Stop trying to save your face, just let it melt
I need you to feel this below your belt
If your genitals are burning, then i'd suggest a cream
My engine's overheating and you are my gasoline

But my friends, you've got to see
That this never really was me
So tonight i'm laying off the alcohol
And drinking gasoline

I've got a lot of opinions, but no one wants to hear them
I'm sick of angry songs, they bore me into a delerium
Why are the 80s back? Weren't they bad enough the first time?
I've gotta shape this world into something that i can call mine
I'll say 'genitals' again because it feels so right
But i wanna write music that nobody else will like
So pass me that guitar, and i'll play some shit for you
When the rock reaches your stomach, your doctor won't know what to do

After drinking all my fears
And damaging my ears
I sure could use a little ambisol

--

Drinking Gasoline is one of the oldest damidol songs in our repertoire. I wrote the original version in 2005, and it's been killed and resurrected by every lineup since then (so, about four times). We brought it back this time after recording for the album actually began. I played the guitar riff for the guys once, and then we played through it as a band twice, and then went straight to recording it immediately after that. I think it turned out rather nicely. But this time, i decided that the original lyrics were terrible, and they got almost completely rewritten. The two choruses are the same, and a couple of other lines, but it's mostly new.

Lines 3 and 4 in the first verse are a reference to an old damidol song called Roy Orbison is Rolling in His Grave. We stopped playing it after Natalie exited the band, and she took the song sans lyrics to her new band, Venus in Furs. Bob and i agree that they play it better anyway. Line 5 is a reference to another Natalie-era damidol song, Face Melter, which we quit playing after our third or fourth show without her.

As for the thing about the 80s, if you haven't noticed that 2011 is shaping up to be the return of that despicable decade, you need to walk around a college campus for about 15 minutes when it's warm outside. You'll be horrified.

2. I Don't Care if You're Still Drunk
I do not care if you're still drunk
I do not care if you're still drunk
I do not care
If you're still drunk

Oh god, i feel like i'm drowning backwards
It's coming up instead of going down
So pour me another mixed in equal parts
I'll contain myself with another round

I don't really feel
That it's a big deal
I had a good meal
Before i came to you

Give me a bigger cup
You gotta fill it up
With a good dollop
Of your strongest booze

Remember the time that we played at the Wisco
and somebody pooped right in the sink?
It was our first CD release show
That was my favorite time, yeah, i think

It's so hard to be a polka band
But in Wisconsin, that's all we've got
So won't you line up those shots for me?
You know that i like this quite a lot.

--

Yeah, it's mostly about drinking, but there's a bunch of stuff in there about being a band, too. Which generally involves drinking. And i used the word dollop. I'll let you decide if i gain or lose points for that.

The second verse is a true story. When we played at the Wisco for the release party for our EP William Shatner's Pecs in 2009, somebody took a dump on the sink in the women's bathroom.

"It's so hard to be a polka band" was an alternate lyric for the old damidol song Denial (circa 2004). On the recording (from the Meaning of Life EP, 2004) the line is "I watched denial slip away," but live, i had about four lines that i rotated between. I was glad for an opportunity to reuse this one. One of the others, which i should probably get into a song again at some point, was "Don't smoke crack any more...than you have to."

3. Pukeflower
Get out of my beautiful garden!
I cultivate a better kind of plant
You weren't born a Rose and you can't fool me
Flowers don't wear such ugly pants

A Rose by any other name
Would not make the other flowers puke
You smell so goddamn bad that i'm ashamed
I'd be associated with you

Stay out of my beautiful garden!
To me, you are just a weed
You're a rose, but with no petals
Adorned with thorns to make me bleed

I thought i told you to get out of my garden!
It's not so beautiful anymore
Now i'm gonna have to burn the whole damn thing
Thank the gods you never had a chance to spore

--

This song is a heavy-handed metaphor for the most useless human being i've ever encountered, a co-worker whose name you can probably guess. She's a dirty hippie. She smells terrible, has no work ethic, has a voice like nails on a chalkboard, and never never ever never ever shuts the fuck up. She wasn't born with the name Rose, she legally changed it at some point in her 20s or 30s, and she truly does wear ugly pants. Also, that last line should have been "I'll thank any god you never had a chance to spore" but that was a bit too clunky; truly, though, she never did procreate, which i believe to be evidence of the existence of a merciful god.

4. Stalker
I'm in the van across the street, i'm watching you change
I show i care by masturbating to your Facebook page
Yesterday, i waited for three hours, you weren't at home
My better fantasies involve you arriving not alone

Now that i've been keeping statistics on your hiccups, i've found that it only happens on weekends
I went through your garbage looking for old panties because, to survive, i know that i will need them
I looked through your window because i thought you were putting in a tampon but it turned out to be your grandma and her depends
And if you'd give me a chance, all i want is to be friends

Thursday, i saw your boyfriend; my dick is bigger than his
I think he's gay, i can tell by the way he takes a whiz
I bought you better birthday presents (than him) but couldn't give them to you
They're in the van in a box, next to my bucket of poop

You've got the prettiest teeth
That i have ever seen on a human
This story has no end
I'm waiting for you to invite me out of the van
Thinking of you is all i ever want to do
You make me fuzzy down to my spleen
Why does everybody think it's a problem
I'm 45 and you're not quite 18?

I see you

--

Yeah. Um...yeah. You know, there really isn't any way to explain this song. I had come up with a truly sleazy-sounding guitar riff and all i could think to do with it was to put the creepiest possible lyrics over it. Maybe one of the reasons i don't want children is because i know that someday, they'd hear this song.

The second line was "MySpace page" originally. Even though Facebook was already overtaking MySpace at the time i wrote this song, a Facebook page was pretty well locked down to outsiders at that time. Since Facebook's privacy policy has become practically nonexistent in the last two years, though, i felt it was appropriate to update the song for the times.

The line about hiccups was something that Tonya, the photographer who did our promo shots for William Shatner's Pecs, actually said while on the shoot, except in first person rather than third. If you replace "your" with "my," this is her quote verbatim. I thought it was beautiful, so i stole it. She approved.

Also, who hasn't pooped in a bucket to avoid leaving their van once in a while?



I think i'm gonna cut this short here, actually, because it's taking way longer to type all this out than i thought it would and i've got other things i need to be getting done. I'll do the other 8 songs later.

Shimmer Like Stars

I got a little cocky at the station today, and the director told me to put my money where my mouth is.

See, i started a new job last week. I'm working at a local TV station on their morning news shows. Before the program, i edit the packages. During, i run camera(s). Unfortunately for me, this involves being at work at 2:30 in the morning, which means that i'm actually kind of pushing it for still being awake right now at 7pm. I just wanted to rifle off this quick post before i hit the sack.

So, since i've only been there a short time, i'm still in training. Mostly they've had me watching other people work, but i've been breaking in and doing stuff as often as i'm comfortable, which seems to be a lot more often than they have expected thus far.

One of the things that we do is that sometimes, when we come back from commercials, they like to get a big move out of the camera. So we'll pull a camera 5-10 feet back from the set, and when the show starts up again, slowly push it back in for a nice trucking effect.

As we were coming in, the director came over our headsets and said, "Whoever's on Camera 3, why don't you back it up and get a big move, let's show the new guy how it's done."

I happened to be on Camera 3 when he said this, so i got on the mic and said, "How about the new guy shows you how it's done?"

The other two operators on the floor turned to stare at me, with those oh no you didn't looks about them. And they laughed. One of them said something about throwing down the gauntlet.

"Oh yeah?" said the director. "How about you pull it back and tilt that camera up so we get a nice shot of all the lights hanging from the ceiling, and make 'em sparkle like the stars in the sky? Then as you're pushing it in, tilt down to get the anchors in frame. Think you can handle that?"

Son of a bitch, i may or may not have actually muttered. "Yep. I got this."

I'll admit it was a little choppy, but anyone who happened to be watching the news at about 5:30 this morning got a little treat.

One of my coworkers at the lab (where i still work in addition to the station) said to me, as i relayed this story, that sometimes the viewers kind of enjoy seeing it when we fuck up. Not that she had seen my move; 5:30 is apparently way too early for her.

Good to know, because shortly after my big move, i very, very nearly made my first big fuck up. It involved some frantic scrambling by the whole floor crew in the last 15 seconds before the commercial break ended, but we got it covered. I ain't fired yet!

Francesca Rides Again!

In the five years since the Francesca Incident, i've moved to a different cubicle in the lab. The cubicle i currently reside in is built for four, but there are only three permanent residents: Martha Samus, Greg, and myself.



The vacant computer gets occasional use by meandering chemists whose own computers are busily computing chemistry, or else by the Jolly Green Giant because he likes to irritate me while he's surfing the 'net. But the phone next to that computer remains out of regular service. Ergo, whenever it rings, we know it's going to be a wrong number.

Well, today, i thought it was time for Francesca to return from her five year sabbatical. Martha Samus has only been with us for a year, and i don't think anybody even told her about the original Francesca Incident. She was working quietly at her own computer when the tenantless phone interrupted the silence.

I rolled my chair over to it and lifted the receiver, keeping my voice in the same monotone i use when doctors call our real phone number. "[name of lab], this is Francesca."

Martha Samus continued to work for a moment, perhaps not at first realizing exactly what i'd just done. Then suddenly, she spun around, her eyes resembling albino watermelons (or something large and round-ish, anyway), clutching her mouth to stifle the laughter so the person on the phone wouldn't hear. Speaking of the person on the phone:

"Hiiiiii...i'mmm...tryyyiinngg...toooo...reaaach...someone by the naaammee...ooffff... You know what, i think i have the wrong number." Click.

And then the laughing began.

Shortly thereafter, i headed out for lunch, leaving a customary note on the in/out board that i had gone to Subway. When i returned, it had been vandalized, stating that Francesca had, in fact, gone in my stead. I walked into the cubicle, where Martha Samus and Greg sat expectantly. "Francesca at Subway, huh?"

Martha Samus giggled a bit. "I...may have told Greg..."

Within minutes, my boss, Karen, walked past me and said, "Hi Trevor...or should i say, Francesca!"

Sigh.

Who Loves Ya, Baby?

I spent the summer of 2001 working at a Cub Scout Summer Camp called Indian Mount Reservation. My Boy Scout troop had gone there for our summer camp every year for as long as our troop had existed, as far as i know, and i had always loved the place. Obviously i've got a lot of memories from camping there. But after the 2000 season, the management decided to switch gears and convert the entire camp to focus on the younger kids, the Cub Scouts. My troop then moved on to Camp Dekorah, wherever that is, i don't even remember, but i wasn't really ready to let IMR go. I spoke with the program director (whom we affectionately referred to as Doug Tape) that last year we were there, and secured myself a spot as a counselor for the 2001 season.

I'm not really happy about what ended up happening after that, mostly because i spent much of the summer of 2001 making an ass out of myself and probably making Doug Tape wish he hadn't taken me under his wing. But, there are of course bright spots in my short and illustrious career of manhandling small boys.

For example, there was the time when a dozen ten year olds jumped on my head and held me down on the ground for several minutes while their parents all gathered around, mentioning how precious it was. That was great{.} Note my use of the recently-christened sarcasm mark.

Also great was how, at the geriatric age of 16, i had my first taste of what it's like to be an out-of-touch old codger, when i made a reference to Devo and was met with blank stares, which continued as i expanded the comment to include the fact they they performed the song Whip It. As i sang the chorus, i was met only with head shaking. Yeah. Oldness.

God damn it, that was 10 years ago!

There was also a tender moment where i helped a one-armed eight year old from inner city Milwaukee shoot a bow and arrow for the first time. It was one of those heart-rending moments where you know you're part of something incredible, if only for a moment. The boy's father thanked me in an emotional display. It's not something i can really leave out while talking about that summer, but it's one of those things that there aren't non-sappy words to describe. It was a powerful moment.

But i was recently reminded of this time that the staff was taken out for some kind of staff appreciation day. IMR resides in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, a mere stone's throw from the world famous Milwaukee. And within the aforementioned Milwaukee resides the world famous Ed Debevics. Ed Debevics is one of those "come for the food, stay for the abuse" type places, where the waitstaff is intentionally rude in a hilarious way, and sometimes stands on tables to perform weird little song-and-dance numbers. It was something of a tradition among the IMR staff to eat together at Ed's at least once during the course of the summer.

As our waitress, Gerdy (how the hell do you spell "Girdy" anyway? I'm just sounding this out here), was taking our drink order, she made a mention of how her sister had the same shirt as i was wearing. It was one of those (in retrospect) lame Hot Topic one-liner deals, maybe "You Call Me A Freak Like It's A Bad Thing" or maybe "I See Dumb People." I was really into that kind of predictable shit in high school so it's hard to remember exactly which overpriced piece of embarrassing fabric had adorned my torso at that exact juncture in life.

So, as was my wont at the time, i asked Gerdie if i could possibly marry her sister. Gerte didn't think that would be possible, for some reason. After she left the table, the joke resonated with the group for a while and i was built up to do something foolish. Not that it took much (then or ever, really; i'm pretty easy to goad into doing stupid stuff whether i'm drunk or not).

When Gyrdi returned to take our food orders, i requested "A six-way chili with a side of your sister's phone number." In an astonishing turn of events, she actually gave me the number.

Naturally, my compatriots then persuaded Gerrrdi to bring me the restaurant's phone so i could give her sister a little jingle right there and then. If this wasn't already a superbly bad idea, and i mean literally any part of this whole situation, from getting the phone number at all and on, i went ahead and did it.

"Hello?"

"Hi! Is this Girdi's sister?"

"Yeah..."

"Will you marry me?"

Things went expediently downhill from there, and i was eventually forced to give the phone to Gherdi so she could smooth things over with her irritated sibling. The table laughed, they cheered, there were high fives. I think. I like to imagine that it went that way, anyway.

So then there was dinner, it was amazing, so on, so forth. As we were leaving the restaurant, i spotted Gehrty across the dining room and shouted...nay, bellowed, "GOODBYE EVERYBODY! I LOVE YOU GIRDEY BUT I LOVE YOUR SISTER MOOOOOOOOOORRRREEEEEE!!!!"

Yeah. That happened.

Hot Stormtrooper Lovin'

So Amanda + i were just reading this very informative Cracked.com article, the last point of which had to do with stormtroopers. And so Amanda got to musing.

First of all, let's address the original idea that the stormtroopers are just guys who happened to sign up for service in the Empire, none of this clone bullshit from the prequel trilogy. Do stormtroopers have families? Where do their families live? Are there now just like a million widows out there in the Empire who are against the Rebel Alliance since the destruction of the first and/or second Death Stars? And all their children who are going to swear revenge on the Rebel Alliance for killing their fathers! The Rebel Alliance is DOOMED! So all these children will become the new Rebels, standing against the New Republic, and who the hell knows what they stand for besides revenge? Maybe we'll just get three million bounty hunters. And really, all of their dads weren't bad guys. They were just doing a job, or their duty, military service to the Empire. And really, these guys were probably children if that when the Empire came into power, so the Empire is all that they know. They don't even remember the fall of the Old Republic.

But then, what if all of their families were living ON the Death Star? It makes perfect sense, if you take the Star Trek model where there were families on the Enterprise. Under this theory, the Rebels have committed a genocide at least as bad as two Alderaans! And what about all of the cooks, and probably shopkeepers, and such aboard the Death Star? The stormtroopers can't be on duty all the time! They have to eat sometime, right? And sleep, and get their hair cut, and buy clothes...they've got plenty of things. They need to do all the stuff that normal human beings do. So the Rebels have just killed all of these people who were just trying to go about their normal every day lives! And all the small businessmen, who just thought it was a sturdy business model to cater to all the spacebound people on that giant station. Now we also have to deal with the widows and orphans from the cooks and shopkeeps! ANOTHER Rebel Alliance poised to take down the New Republic.

So that's one aspect. But what if the stormtroopers are, in fact, all clones as demonstrated in those abominations that came out more recently. If the stormtroopers are clones, we still have to consider their families. Where do their families live? Even if they're clones, they're still the clone of a man, who has his basic desires and needs. He's going to want a family, and need food and shelter, and even if he doesn't want a family, he's gonna want something to fuck. Clones still have basic human needs and desires. Just because he's a clone doesn't mean he's not a person. Or does the Empire just say, "you are just a clone. You have no rights. Fuck you." If that's the case, why haven't the stormtroopers rebelled yet? Then the Empire's just fucked! These people are not going to work for you. So then, what about women who are married to stormtroopers? How do women tell their husband from all the rest of these clones? Even if they see him in uniform, they could go up to a random stormtrooper and be like, "Hi honey! Oh, wait...you're not my husband." So how do they tell them apart? Do they, like, brand him in the face at the wedding? Like, "I do." "I do." BAM! Right in the forehead. This would explain why they have to wear the big stormtrooper helmet. This would also help women identify whether the man is single or not. Forget this wedding ring bullshit, where they can slip it on and off. He's got a brand on his head! It should curtail cheating a lot. Women couldn't be like, "oh, i didn't know!" "Bullshit! HE HAD A BRAND ON HIS FOREHEAD!" Then there's the babies of the clones. How similar are all these babies going to be? And then if they're raising clone babies on the Death Star, when those babies grow up, are there going to be inbreeding issues? This opens a whole new can of worms. All these carefully-calculated clone genetics are going to start breaking down! Man, that would be fucked up.

Also, what about all the people who went into the Empire who would've been Rebels had they just been given a chance? Luke was going to go into the Academy to be a TIE Fighter pilot before he met Ben Kenobi and his family got killed. What about all these people who would've been like, "Hey, i could make a difference! The Empire DOES suck! Fuck this stormtrooper shit! Maybe i'll be hunted like a wild animal and killed, but at least i'll be doing it for something i believe in!" The Rebels just killed a huge potential base of supporters on that Death Star.



...so that's about as much of Amanda's rant as i could transcribe. She was going pretty fast there, there were some real gems. After this, she continued on about Luke and Leia not fucking during the three years between Episodes IV and V. She was pretty on about this.

Louder (and more disgusting) Than Love

Here's a short one that i was recently reminded of.

One lazy Sunday morning when we lived at Woodridge, we were sitting in the living room doing nothing in particular. I had to make a trip back to the bedroom to retrieve something. Our bedroom shared a wall with the building manager's bedroom. The building manager was a fat, disgusting, lazy liar named Lucas. I'd love to give his full name, since he's kind of become a public figure in the Madison music scene recently, but i'll take the high road for now. Until it becomes profitable to blackmail him. I'm probably kidding.

With my objective in hand, i started to walk out of the bedroom, but stopped when i heard a woman moaning. I paused for a moment, but the moaning stopped. Was Lucas watching porn?

After a moment, i heard the moaning again. No, i decided. Lucas is definitely having sex.

Amanda called back from the living room, wondering what was taking so long. In a loud whisper, i beckoned for her to come to the bedroom.

"Why?" she asked.

"Lucas is having sex!"

"No way!"

So she came back to the bedroom, and we stood there quietly for several minutes, but there was nothing.

Amanda now thought i was mistaken or something, so she decided to return to the living room and forget all about Lucas's appalling sex life.

She'd no sooner set foot in the hallway when Lucas's voice practically shattered the wall with: "OOOOOHHHHH YEEEEAAAAHHHH!!!!! FUCK ME FUCK ME FUCK ME FUCK ME!!!"

We both stood there for a moment, choking back laughter and tears as best we could, lest we alert Lucas to our aural voyeurism. Back in the living room, we just let out for minutes.

The Farewell Address

I was rooting through some old files and i happened to find the farewell address that i sent out to all of my coworkers on my last day at WPS. So i thought i'd share.



To: (names removed to protect the guilty)
From: Trevor Triggs/WPSIC
Date: 04/26/2007 07:18PM
Subject: So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Well everybody, it's been a long time. Some of you have been with me for longer than others, all the way from training through here, having four supervisors in 2 1/2 years (if you count Mark) and traveling all the way from Nordby to CP1 (a good change), but this is the end of the road for me. I'm off to bigger, better, and far lazier things, such as watching television and sleeping. I wanted to write a really long winded speech about, you know, stuff, but i can't really think of anything else right now. I'll probably think of a great College Graduation-level speech in my car on my way home, but forget it by the time i get there. So, i guess there's really nothing left to say except so long, we've had some great times, and call me next time you have a potluck. And since i'm not going to be around, everybody else needs to step up the level of crap they give Ben, I'm not sure Angelica can handle it on her own, although she is pretty good at it. You can always get a hold of me by email at [removed].




In conclusion, you guys are great, and i'm really going to miss you all.




Except for Becca.

---

Trevor Triggs
Captain, WPS Corporate Swim Team

Billy Idol Will Destroy Your Home

Recently i've decided to give the whole sobriety thing a go. It's not that i drink often anyway, it's just that when i do, i get trashed as fcuk. I was just looking back through my archive to find alcohol-related stories, and was surprised to see that Phone Books is the only one. I'll have to rectify that soon, i think, because i have a lot of good drinking stories. Or, more to the point, Amanda has a lot of good stories about me drinking.

But anyway, what led to this decision, this giving up of the alcohol, was last week Wednesday when Dan and i went out to the Knuckledown Saloon (you know, where we filmed the bar scenes for Ed Wood Part II) after my kickball game. Normally, after kickball, the team goes out to Slice's, a small bar near the field where they provide the kickball players with free tater tots. But it was a late game, and everyone was complaining about "working in the morning" or "having kids" and other such nonsense. I wanted my damn tater tots. So i went home and baked myself up a big batch of those fuckers, and texted Dan that i was feeling "bar-y." I burned my hand on the toaster oven, a wound which is still oozing weirdness juice a week and a half later. Dan, coincidentally, had just gotten off of work.

We were at the Knuck until they kicked us out at bar time. Dan drove me home, because i was in no shape, and then he was like, "You know, i could use another drink!" So we stayed up until 6am and finished off my supply of Captain Morgan (about a quarter of a handle, plus almost half of a smaller bottle) and even broke into the amaretto. Amanda's brother, who lives with us now, came downstairs at 4am to put away some mashed potatoes that he'd made himself for dinner and left out, only to find that i had already eaten them. So instead, he poured us all a round of shots and then went back to bed.

6am i went to bed. 7am i woke up puking. Despite the copious amounts of booze i generally consume on these events, this was my first experience puking from drinking.

I was still hung over on Friday morning. It was seriously a 36 hour hangover.

But enough about that. Here's another drinking story which Amanda's wanted me to blog for a while now.

Last Halloween, we went out to Rocky Rococo for dinner with Amanda's whole extended family to celebrate her sister's birthday (That's how her family does things - the whole extended family shows up for every single birthday. We eat out a lot.). Rocky Rococo, for those not in the know, is a pizza place based in Madison. They don't get out much - 38 of their 40 locations are in Wisconsin. Their mascot is an insane Italian man with no eyes that always shouts "HEY HEY!" and impersonates either current or famous movies in their ads.

I hate their pizza. I think it's terrible. But it's a big thing with her family, so we go there for probably 80% of these birthday dinners. So i always get the salad bar ("The Garden of Eatin'"). When you get the unlimited salad bar, you also get a muffin.

At this particular birthday dinner, i did not eat my muffin. I just wasn't in the mood for a muffin, i guess. Filled up on salad. So i wrapped the muffin in a napkin and stuck it in the cupholder of Amanda's car as we left. We went directly to Bob and Ashley's Halloween party from there.

We walked in and my costume was immediately confused for Spider from Powerman 5000. I guess i have to admit that Spider and Billy Idol share a hairstyle, but really. I was wearing fingerless gloves and a fake leather vest. Spider wears some kind of spacesuit, and he doesn't do that awesome angsty sneer that i couldn't get off my face all night.

The party ended up featuring me and Ken so absolutely, completely wasted that we spent the end of it rolling around on the kitchen floor, because we couldn't get up, sort of beating each other up for absolutely no reason and to absolutely no results. Eventually Alyssa decided it was time to get Ken out of there. She had to put his shoes on for him, because he couldn't do it himself. Amanda let me stay for a little while longer but we were out of there soon enough.

Once she got my drunk ass home, she was trying to get all of our stuff out of the car and into the house (really, thinking back, i can't come up with anything that this would entail) and she charged me with the duty of bringing my muffin in the house. That's it. I had one job, and it was to get that muffin safely into the house. It may as well have been god damned brain rocket surgery science.

As we were heading into the house i was jibbering nonsense about where to put the muffin once it got inside. My first thought was to put it on the counter, but no! The cats would definitely get it there! This muffin needed to be kept safe!

Obviously, i should put the muffin in the cupboard to keep it away from the cats. But no! There are MICE in the cupboard!

There were not mice in the cupboard. It had been a year since we'd seen a mouse or any indication of mice living in the house. There was no reason for there to be mice in any of the cupboards.

"The mice only go in the bottom cupboards," Amanda explained to me gently. From their previous habits, this was true - they'd never gotten into the upper cupboards. I was appeased for the moment. I put my muffin in one of the upper cupboards.

Minutes later, Amanda was taking care of the dogs for the night and i was still standing in the kitchen. Clearly, i had already forgotten what Amanda had just told me about the mice in the cupboards. Suddenly, with Amanda out of the room, i shouted, "WHAT AM I DOING?! THERE ARE MICE IN THE CUPBOARDS!" and i grabbed the muffin out of that cupboard as though i were a cop pulling an innocent out of a riot or something.

I think Amanda was trying to get to me so she could reason with me some more, but i had already solved the problem. There was only one safe place for that muffin, and that was in the refrigerator. I shouted the results of my findings: "THE MUFFIN NEEDS TO GO IN THE REFRIGERATOR! IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO BE SAFE!"

I imagine that the refrigerator itself cringed in fear as i bellowed that strange battle cry at it, shot my arm straight out and yanked the handle back like a bad stop-motion animation that's missing some tween frames. If you understood that analogy, congratulations! We are film school dorks.

Now that the refrigerator door was opened, i wound up like some baseball star and just fucking pitched that muffin into the refrigerator. It crashed into a bunch of stuff and made a huge mess of things, of course, but i wouldn't find that out until morning. When i slammed the refrigerator door, some magnets and things fell off; not all of them survived.

And all for the love of a muffin.

The next day, Alyssa shared a similar story with us about Ken. When they got back to his apartment, he asked her if she wanted to see a trick. I guess the first trick was him trying to slide down the stairs on his feet, like some cartoon character, or some snowboarder somewhat lacking in board and snow. She prevented him from doing this.

Once they were in the apartment, he asked her again if she'd like to see a trick. She reluctantly acquiesced. So he grabbed his desk lamp, jerked it upward in much the same manner that i had opened the refrigerator, and slammed it back onto the desk, demolishing it. He then threw it across the room and went to bed.

In the morning, Ken asked Alyssa what the hell happened to the lamp.

You've Got to be Kidding Me.

Today we had to rush one of my cats, D, into the vet for an emergency appointment. D has nystagmus, a weird disorder of the eyes which causes her to constantly see the world as shaking back and forth. Most animals with nystagmus can only walk in circles, but D's brain has compensated for it and she's able to run with the best of them. However, she cannot jump. I don't mean this physically; her legs work just fine, she just can't judge distances properly and won't jump up to high locations as cats are generally wont to do and won't jump down once she's gotten to one. She'll climb if she can, though. Anyway. Today D found herself on the wrong side of the baby gate we currently have across the upstairs bathroom. Usually, the gate on that bathroom has holes wide enough for a cat to pass through, but for various reasons we've had to rearrange our gates in the house. So, with D in the bathroom, smacking the gate around and trying unsuccessfully to push herself under it, i decided to come to her rescue. I walked up the stairs and picked her up, and then i had intended to carry her down the stairs to sit on the couch and pet her. However, also probably due to the nystagmus, D does not like to be picked up. She clawed me in the hand and sprang out in the most opportune direction with all the fervor she could muster. Unfortunately, i was facing the stairs when this happened. She went flying down the whole flight of stairs, her back half hitting the bottom step with a terrifying crack and/or thud as her front flopped onto the carpet below. She then took off running for the basement for some reason, speeding down two more partial flights of stairs (we have a tri-level house; our staircases average 7 steps each) before i caught up with her on the bottom, in the basement. Why she rushed down there, i'll never know. I carried her back up to the couch and set her down next to Amanda, who you may recall is a Veterinary Technician. As i did, D let out a horrendous yowl and flopped over, limp. I was looking her in the eye when it happened and i swear they glazed over and went vacant. Panic set in and for a moment, both Amanda and i thought she was dead. We were about to rush her in to the UW Emergency clinic when she suddenly came back and started to act normal again. We watched her for a few minutes and Amanda determined that she'd probably be ok to make the longer trip to our regular vet clinic, which she did, and everything was fine. Amanda took her to work tonight anyway to keep her under observation. But there's nothing funny or entertaining about that story. That's not even the reason i set out to write this tonight - i hadn't actually expected that part of the story to be so long. So here's the TL;DR version of everything i've already said: my cat went to the vet, and it reminded me of another story. Last year, my other young cat, D's sister Seras Victoria, ate a dose of the dog's Rimadyl. In less than a second she ingested just over the lethal dose of Rimadyl for a cat her size. We immediately threw her in the car and drove her over to VES (Veterinary Emergency Services) on Madison's East side because it was closest. $400 later, Seras was ok, except for that we had to monitor her closely for the next month since there was a high probability of kidney failure. While we were in the waiting room at VES, as they were torturing my cat in the back room trying desperately to get her to vomit, my cell phone rang. It was Bill, the placement director for MMI, the school i was on the verge of graduating from. He asked how i was doing and i gave him a synopses of my current state, to which he was vaguely sympathetic but in a purely businesslike way. "So, i hear that you're the outdoorsy type and you like to hunt," he said with all earnestness. How do i respond to that? Slack-jawed, that's how. "What?" "I hear, that you're the outdoorsy type, and you like to hunt." "Did you mean to call Jesse?" i asked. Jesse's outdoorsy. He likes to hunt. He was in my class. Bill asserted that he had not, and in what was probably some kind of breach of a confidentiality agreement of some kind, informed me that Jesse was not eligible for the job and told me why. Not that Jesse wouldn't have told me himself, it just seemed a little unprofessional for Bill to be so forthcoming. "Well, i don't know where you heard that from, because that could not be farther from the truth." Seriously, it couldn't. If i were a type of wildlife, i would be a mushroom. I prefer a cool, dark, enclosed environment where i don't have to move around too much. I work a job where i sit in front of a computer. I'm aspiring to a better job where i sit in front of a computer. In my spare time, i sit in front of a computer. While i paced the waiting room at VES, waiting to find out if my furry little child was even going to survive the rest of the damn day, Bill went on and on talking about how great of a job this would be for me, where i would travel up to Canada during the ass end of winter, wake up and sit on a frozen lake at 4am every day, and film a bunch of guys shooting ducks. Ducks, for the love of god! Ducks! Can you read my screen name over there? The one that says, "Dr. Ducks"?!?! Let's recap all of this: i'm in the waiting room where the closest thing i ever plan to having to a child is probably dying a horrible death, and i am being offered lucrative sums of money to make snuff films of someone killing my namesake. I told him i'd think about it.

Tervor the Destroyer Goes to Hollywood

The kobold rogue known only as Tervor the Destroyer strode confidently into the office of his shady Thieves' Guild contact. The innkeeper and sometime crook seemed somewhat surprised to see him.

"What can i do for you, Tervor?" Sabin inquired.

"This job that i'm working on for you...is there another thief or group of thieves working on the same assignment?"

Sabin paused. "Not as far as i know. Why do you ask?"

"I was ambushed last night," Tervor explained. "A group of thugs...four of them...they appeared to have a great deal of specific knowledge related to my quest. They all had Thieves' Guild tattoos."

"Well," Sabin offered, "i can investigate this matter for you. Can you give me a description of these men?"

The kobold proceeded to describe the leader of the culprits, and was sure to include the tidbit about how he'd previously seen this man in Sabin's establishment.

"Your description matches a few different men that..."

"Well," Tervor broke in. "Maybe this will help." Tervor reached into his Bag of Holding and extracted a bloody severed head, which he plopped nonchalantly onto Sabin's desk, as though it were anything less disturbing.

Sabin stared at it for a moment. Cautiously, he proceeded: "I...am familiar with this man. I don't know him, exactly, but i have seen him before. I will find out who he is and why he was following you."

"Excellent!" Tervor exclaimed, turning to walk out of the office. "I'll check back with you tomorrow, or you can send word to my room at the Salty Oyster." He motioned toward Sabin's new paperweight. "You can keep that."

Alyssa's Cleavage Destroys Society

First of all, a very happy birthday to my lovely girlfriend Amanda! Yaay!

Hopefully this year will be better than last, when i dragged her out to a boxing ring in Janesville for a video shoot for Ed Wood Part 2, which she ended up not even needing to be at.

No, this year, we are heading to Chicago to see one of her favorite bands (hell, one of mine, too): Biffy Clyro.

This is our second time this year driving to Chicago to see them. Hell, they come all the way from Scotland; driving to Chicago is the least that we can do. Last year, we also saw them twice, over one weekend in March: once in Chicago, and once in Minneapolis.

Unfortunately, they didn't headline the shows last year. Had we known they would be doing headlining shows this year, i doubt we'd have made the trips last year at all. We were pretty thoroughly disappointed at their short 25 minute sets (7 songs in Minneapolis, only 6 in Chicago), almost as disappointed as we were with the Mall of America that we'd spent the day at (it sucks, unless you're into clothes for some reason). But we were still happy just to have seen Biffy; at the time, they didn't come to America very often. And for as short as their sets were, they were hella powerful. I'm bringing the word "hella" back.

So as we were hanging around the venue in Minneapolis (The Varsity Theatre; weird ass bathroom in that place), Alyssa started to notice an awful lot of people taking a gander at her boobs. This in itself is not unusual, but she reported to Amanda and i that it seemed like a disproportionately high number of people inspecting the goods. We wondered if Minneapolis had some kind of a tit shortage.

Biffy played, then some other band played, then the headliner came on: Manchester Orchestra. I'd never heard of them before. They seemed alright for a while, i was digging their sound. The crowd (and it was packed) was certainly into them. Even though i was halfway back from the stage, everyone around me was singing along and getting excited when their favorite songs were played and so on. There was a guy not far from me who kept updating a document in his Blackberry with the set list. I was cool with all that; i love cult bands. I love dedicated followings who genuinely enjoy everything a band does. I follow a number of cult bands myself. At the time, i thought i could see myself getting into Manchester Orchestra. At the time.

Midway through their set, the band took a break and frontman played a couple of acoustic songs. The first one, i was really enjoying...it had a great guitar riff driving it. Then he got to the chorus and all the pieces to the puzzle assembled like Voltron on a crucifix.

"Rejoice...in the name...of the Lord...!"

Wait what?

Suddenly i felt a little uncomfortable. If i hadn't been taping we might have just left then, but i'm pretty adamant about finishing a show once i've started. And they were alright otherwise. I enjoyed their music, but as the show wore on i started paying more attention to the lyrics and the...shall we say, strong Christian overtones. I'd looked them up before the show, i'd found no indication of this, nothing to indicate that they were a Christian band.

Let me make something clear here: i'm not knocking Christianity, per se, nor Christian music. There is an amount of Christian music i enjoy. A small amount, but it is there. But i also like rap music, and on the same token, i'm not going to go to a rap show. I would be awkward and uncomfortable mingling with the genre's largest demographic (namely, thugs). Similarly, i'm awkward and uncomfortable stuck in a large group of Christians who are out doing Christian things. It's just not for me.

After the show, Alyssa and Amanda came up to me (we don't typically stand together at shows, since i have to get farther back to record) and voiced their displeasure at how things had turned out.

"When i heard the words 'rejoice in the name of the Lord' i said to myself, 'THAT'S why everyone's staring at my cleavage!'" Alyssa said, slapping her hand over her pentacle necklace.

-Epilogue-
Now that i've had that thought, i'm going to need to go photoshop Voltron onto a crucifix.

Lefty Solo, Pearl Smuggler

I've got a suspicion that my mom sometimes reads my blog. So i'm going to go ahead and file this one under, "Things A Mother Should Not Know About Her Son." Not that this will deter her from reading it.

When i was in seventh grade, i sprained my right wrist. Funny thing is, now i can't even remember how that happened. All i know is that this spurious sprain would forever alter one of my most basic hobbies/habits: i started masturbating with my left hand. At first it was awkward, of course, but since i had the advantage of growing up in the Internet Age (very early in the Internet Age, but in it nonetheless; this was about 1997 or '98, and i'd say that even though it had been around for a few decades, the Internet didn't really catch on until '95ish), i soon realized that this was an advantage. It leaves the right hand free to operate the mouse.

A group of my friends and i had a long-running inside joke about inventing a one-handed keyboard for this purpose. It wouldn't necessarily have to be left-handed.

So, far into the future, on one of those crazy high school nights, i found myself at a forensics meet in a far-off land (by "far-off land" i mean the next town over, about four miles out). As i returned from delivering my prose, i happened into a conversation between two of my contemporaries just in time to hear one of them accusing the other of spending a large amount of time with his right hand, or something to that effect.

I broke in, "Dammit, am i the only guy who uses his left hand to masturbate?"

My friend Abby, herself just walking into the conversation in time to hear my contribution, inquired: "Well, are you left-handed?"

"No," i answered.

Then, right in the middle of this foreign lunchroom, she shouted out, "YOU IDIOT! You've been doing it WRONG! You need to use your right hand to get MORE POWER!!"

Black Friday

Frankly, i'm rather surprised that more people haven't made that connection.

I am, of course, talking about this post's title, as it is a reference to Rebecca Black's horrendous monstrosity and crime against music (or, in a broader sense, ears), Friday. If you've spent the last few weeks in solitary confinement or don't have internet access, by all means, watch this thing on YouTube. In fact, it's gotten so bad that if you go to YouTube and simply type "r" in the search field, this is the first result. At the time of this writing, it has 89,654,549 fucking views. In the perspective of how many views the average YouTube video gets, that is several veritable assloads.

When this pile of crap was first thrust upon me by my sadistic, evil associate Christi (also known as "Satan" or "Beelzebub"), my reaction was that it was so horrible i couldn't even joke about it. It's an assault against all that was good and holy.

From my Facebook, March 19, 2011:

I've long held that One Of Us by Joan Osborn was the worst song in the history of recorded music. Then Train released Hey Soul Sister and i had to reassess that belief. But it turns out neither of those is really that bad. Because it turns out this was not a joke: (link)

I could write an entire thesis about why this song is awful.

And i probably will. Because dear god, there is so much wrong here. So. Much.

I kept waiting for it to turn out to be a joke, like Lonely Island was going to pop out of the background or something, but it was like waiting for a punchline that never came.

i mean, "We we we so excited." REALLY?

Ark Studios must be destroyed with fire.

That was the original post, plus five comments i made within two minutes. I wish i had saved the chat window from the conversation i had with Christi/Satan while i was watching it. I kept posting my thoughts as the video dragged through its duration, MST3K-style. Stuff like, "Jesus Christ, is that USHER?!?!" I was too angry to be witty.

After that, i went home and showed it to Amanda. That's when i started laughing, because i was watching her face while she watched it. From there, i started showing it to other friends, and by the end of the day, i was responsible for five of the (at the time) 30 million views.

In short, Friday has become the new 2 Girls 1 Cup. You show it to your friends to get reactions, and their reactions are hilarious. So while The Onion's article about Rebecca Black getting rich off of our hatred for her had initially just made me angrier, i've come to grips with it.

In fact, i believe that she deserves every dollar she makes off of that video. Because frankly, there are comedians and comedy movie makers who have made far more money off of things that have not made me laugh nearly this hard. While the music itself is shit, and the video itself is shit, the spirit of the thing is so god damned funny that i just keep making jokes about it, and hearing jokes about it, and laughing so hard that sometimes, i excrete urine.

Plus, stuff like this parody happens, and you just couldn't have that without the original.

So i want to say thank you, Rebecca Black, for making life a little more surreal and a little more lighthearted and funny. Now if you could just stop taking yourself so seriously, we'd be golden.

Thanks for the laughs, Rebecca! Let's not ruin it by making another song, huh?

Semi-Public Nudity

I apparently have a problem with public nudity.

This might come as a shock to many who know or have known me, particularly while drunk.

Amanda and i got out to the gym far later than usual on Sunday night. It was actually about 2am Monday when we walked in. There was exactly one car in the parking lot. There were exactly zero people using the equipment as we trod into the locker rooms. And so i said to myself, thank god! There will definitely not be any naked old men standing in the middle of the room, facing one another with arms crossed, talking about what the fuck ever it is that naked old men talk about while naked and in locker rooms.

So, when we finished our workout around 3:30, there were a few more people starting to pop up at the gym, perhaps the beginnings of the "before work" crowd. So i walked into the locker room, and was immediately presented with two naked old men, standing there, facing each other with arms crossed, loudly (loudly!) discussing...ingrown hairs. I spent the entire time it took me to change trying my damnedest to ignore their astoundingly single-minded discussion about ingrown hairs, the reasons they get them, how they might be related to their particular brand of razor, and exactly what size is appropriate to "pop them like a pimple." As i'm sure any standard human being is aware, when you are trying your damnedest to ignore something, it makes it that much harder to succeed.

Honestly, can't you put your clothes on first? Or at least make an effort to be changing while you have this highly inappropriate discussion? I'm not ok with this. Not. Ok.

As i was telling Amanda about this on our way out, she inquired as to whether this happens often. I said, let me put it this way:

Last time that we went to the gym together, a couple days prior, we went swimming. When i came back in, in order to find a vacant shower stall, i had to pass between two occupied stalls in which naked old men were standing, with the curtains open, facing one another. You can imagine my discomfort.

I have a well-documented aversion to interacting with others while my wang is out. Or while their wang is out. Amanda thinks this is funny. Amanda always finds my discomfort funny.

Amanda is also concerned that i may be a homophobe.

My friend Jesse also brought this point up once, while i was telling the New Zealand shower room story at school last year. Jesse, also known as my conservative friend Jesse, also known as my rural Wisconsin redneck goat farming Conservative friend Jesse (i only use these descriptors because i feel it's important to set the tone for his comments), finds an interesting paradigm between more accepting persons (liberals) and actual homophobes. He says, where he's from, where being gay is generally not tolerated, guys talk while peeing all the time, and also in other wang-out type situations. They don't really think about it. Whereas in areas where homosexuality is largely accepted, people get weird about their genitals in the presence of others. He, too, then accused us city-dwelling folk of being in denial of our own homophobia. At the time, i made a vague half-agreement, saying it was something interesting to consider.

After further thought, i decided that he's wrong. Because i don't want strange women talking to me while i'm peeing either. It's got nothing to do with gender and everything to do with the fact that i am peeing, or showering, or any other activity that i generally do in private. I'm not comfortable with two naked old ladies standing in the middle of the locker room discussing their ingrown hairs either.

As far as i'm concerned, when you need to be naked in a locker room, you should do it as quickly as possible and without thrusting your nudity upon others. Conduct your business and get out. This is not an ice cream social at the Happy Valley Nudist Colony. I am uncomfortable with your body.

I'm guessing that Amanda will be the only one to find this post humorous. Anyone else is probably going, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? Meh.

Anyway, if anyone wants to engage in the wang-out/homophobia discussion, feel free to leave a comment. Some comments would be nice. I rarely get those. And usually when i do, they don't make any damn sense.

Update: I feel that this validates my position.

Update 8/24/2011: Also this.

Pumpkin Bukkake

There's been an alarming number of instances in the last couple weeks where i've been able to slip the word "bukkake" into an otherwise normal conversation. An alarming number. No shit.

All of this talk about bukkake reminded me of the last time that i saw the famous/infamous comedian Gallagher. I put that link to Wikipedia there in case some of you have forgotten, which wouldn't be surprising, really.

Gallagher was an integral part of my formative, teenage years. My parents of course wouldn't allow me to view his routines as a child; but once i'd attained that magical age of 13, all bets were off. The word "teenager" just seems to imply a certain bit of added responsibility, or a greater worldliness, even though i couldn't say i felt any different than i had the day before when i was 12. I imagine that this feeling goes for just about everybody.

So one night, my parents sat me down in front of the TV after my brother had been sent to bed and we watched a number of Gallagher's home videos in a row. These mini marathons continued for the next few nights, and afterward i had consumed all Gallagher material that was officially available on home video (VHS. Remember VHS? I don't.)(At least i try not to.).

Gallagher changed the world for me. Maybe not immediately; but i continued to throw those videos in every now and again over the next several years. My favorite was always We Need A Hero. In fact, some pieces of his monologue still crop up in my speech patterns; i can't tell you how often i've wanted to, when addressing a male friend by his full name (this most often happens with Dan), i want to append, "You need to smell like a man" to it and then soak them with beer. I almost always refrain, since i know that they won't get the reference. But still.

Eventually, Gallagher started touring again and made a stop in Madison. This was sometime near my birthday that year, whatever year it was, and my brother had since aged into the "Gallagher-able" range. Our parents of course bought four tickets.

You may have already deduced that this was well outside of Gallagher's prime. He was already a cantankerous old man, a far cry from the cantankerous young man we all remember from his HBO specials. That first time seeing him, i remember him walking the halls before the show, and my dad walking up and introducing himself to him, and me getting to meet one of my (arguably) idols. He seemed a nice enough fellow at that time; the show hadn't quite sold out so he passed us a couple extra tickets for free and asked us to call some friends up, which we did, and they came out to the show.

Coming to the end of the performance, Gallagher had to admit that he was, in fact, aging, and call up some help from the audience to work his famous Sledge-O-Matic. For those unfamiliar, the Sledge-O-Matic is a comically oversized wooden mallet used to smash items and send their remnants hurtling toward audience members. Usually, the items are food. He's best known for smashing watermelons.

My brother and i both got on stage. I got to hit a "chinese homosexual pie," a pie made out of rice and fruit cocktail. Terrible? Absolutely. Funny? If you'd been there, you'd have (probably) laughed. It's all about context. Anyway.

I seem to think that i saw Gallagher a second time before the final time, but i can't remember for sure. All i know is, that last time that i went to see Gallagher (which shall remain the final time i see Gallagher), he had completely fallen to shit.

Gallagher was probably high as a kite being flown by another kite when he took the stage that evening. When he repeated jokes that were familiar from his previous routines, they felt forced and scripted, and those were the better moments of the performance. He spent most of the two or three hours pacing the stage and walking up and down the aisles of the theater spewing racist stereotypes and generalities and jokes he probably stole from Carlos Mencia (who in turn stole them from Joe Rogan, but who the fuck cares?), going so far as to accuse one darker-skinned member of the audience of being Columbian, and therefore an obvious drug smuggler. I spent most of the show with a polite grin on my face, but hollow disappointment and, eventually, anger in my eyes. As Gallagher himself said in We Need A Hero, "I hate it when my heroes let me down!" It was funny when he said it in 1992. Not so much when i thought it in 2007. I think it was 2007.

Well, when it came time to Sledge-I-Fy some food that could have probably been sent to a starving third world country and caused more smiles and laughter than Gallagher's entire career, i of course made my move toward the stage. When it came my turn to wield that enormous mallet of legend, a pumpkin pie sitting on the desk in front of me, Gallagher up and popped me in the face with a second, hidden pumpkin pie.

I stopped and slowly turned to look at him, a dramatic move ripped from sitcoms everywhere when someone does something shocking and hilarious. I may as well have put those words in quotation marks, but eh. If i'd been in the audience, i probably would have thought that was funny too. He made some smartass remarks about my appearance, what with the pie on the face and such, but i couldn't understand them. I don't think they had monitors on the stage, so he really couldn't hear his own voice. Maybe that's why he spent so much more time in the aisles than on the stage.

Well, being only a pawn in Gallagher's little game and without a microphone of my own, i proceeded to do what i'd come up there for. I wound up with the mallet and let loose on that pumpkin pie.

Now, a Sledge-O-Matic is difficult to aim. It's heavy and it's not well balanced. You've kind of got to pick a general area and just hope for the best. Well, as luck would have it, i hit that pie squarely in (what would have been, from my perspective) the top right quadrant. The result? The pumpkin pie filling shot straight back and to the left, the bulk of it hitting Gallagher himself straight in the fucking face.

I couldn't really see much, all i knew was that the whole audience was laughing. I slowly panned over toward Gallagher and saw what had become of his head, and he was doing the same slow, dramatic turn toward me that i'd done to him moments ago. I laughed as he wiped pumpkin from his eyes. I set the Sledge-O-Matic down and, on my way off the stage, leaned into his microphone and said, "Hey! You kind of look like me now!"

A friend took a picture of my face after the show. I have it saved in a special location and labeled, "Pumpkin Bukkake."

You Ruined My Baseball Bat!

I was recently conscripted by a friend of mine to do some editing on a video project. It was after a shoot one night, he bought me dinner and then gave me a quick tour of the TV station that he worked at. During the tour, he informed me of a project the station was working on, a youth camp with kids from around the neighborhood where the station was situated. They were filming a sort of documentary about the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect which is damaging trees all across North America. It's a particularly big deal in Madison's Atwood neighborhood, since they've got a veritable buttload of ash trees.

The program was sure to be a success, given its topical nature. It was also being backed by a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, who had the intention of distributing it to certain educational outlets. Problem was, they didn't have anybody available to edit the piece. Being a recent graduate from a film school who was looking specifically for editing work, i accepted. I came down to the station a couple days later to get the footage and discuss the particulars of the project with the guy in charge.

There was very little in the way of direction on the project. I was given a number of tapes which contained skits performed and filmed by the kids, interviews with actual forestry and agriculture experts, some unscripted outdoor adventures, some other random footage of the kids dressed up as the emerald ash borer (that is, green face paint, Aviators, a fedora and some of those head-boppy ball things), and the disparate elements of a music video. My job was to turn all of this into magic.

I spent couple weeks browsing through the footage, dumbfounded. There seemed to be no logical way to link all of the footage together. No way to arrange it so that it would make any kind of sense or tell a linear story. So, after throwing away a few different rough cuts, i decided to at least try and get something done with it. I just started with the basic improvements on the footage, like overscan correcting, color correction, a feeble attempt to fix the audio, and trying to piece together the music video. While i was doing that, which helped me get a better feel for the footage, i decided to take a non-linear approach to the project. I split the skit into chunks and interspersed the interviews among them. This somehow felt more natural and gave the piece a watchable flow. Otherwise, having the whole story together either preceded or followed by a block of interviews would have had people turning the damn thing off early or else fast forwarding through it. I had a teaser of the music video at the beginning and then put the whole thing at the end, with the credits running over it, which worked out surprisingly well. I thought that this was also the only way to get people to watch the credits.

In the end, i was pretty proud of the final product, given what i had to work with. I felt kind of bad that i took so long to finish it, it is only 12 minutes after all, but they hadn't really given me a deadline, and the contact person i was given for questions about the project, who was not in the employ of the station and was not anyone i had ever met, hadn't been answering my emails during the course of my work. When i received a call from the station manager inquiring about my progress after i'd had the footage for about six weeks, i told her that i had a rough cut done, and she became ecstatic, like Christmas had come early. I took it down to the station a couple days later for a viewing and to get some feedback, and what i got was, "This looks better than i had ever expected it to." Words can't express the great, fuzzy feeling that swelled inside of me; i had been very worried that they wouldn't like what i'd done with it, or that they'd want me to put back in some of the stuff i had left out because it, frankly, sucked. They didn't even really have any suggestions for me; i told them what i needed to do yet, and they asked when i'd have it by. And that was that.

From there, i put together a graphics package for it including lower thirds and logos, and an awesome end animation of the kid who played the main emerald ash borer turning into a cartoon. Feeling industrious, and more than a little embarrassed by the audio which was so bad i couldn't really fix it, i decided to score the entire project. I came up with ten songs, using the loops provided with Garage Band, a music-making program on my pretty new Macintosh. I knew that the main emerald ash borer theme which they'd provided me (the basis for the music video) had been constructed in Garage Band (since they'd told me), so i tried to use as many of the same or similar loops as i could from their project, to give the score a cohesive feeling of belonging.

Even though i'm of the opinion that my score sucks (i only used eight of the songs in the piece, one of them was absolutely terrible and the other is a suite based off the whole of the rest of the soundtrack, in other words just a different arrangement of the other nine songs all together), i kind of like listening to it. So i've decided to release the whole of it to you, and anyone else, over the internet for the low low price of free. Also, i'm releasing this under creative commons, so it's royalty-free if you want to use any part of it for your own video projects or whatever else you might need music for. If you do use it though, please let me know, so i can check out your work. I just like to know what's going on with this stuff.

I've found that i kind of like working in Garage Band, too, as limited as it is. So you can probably expect me to poop out more compilations of my bad loop-based music in the future. Maybe you'll like them. Maybe you won't. But you get what you pay for.

Here's some links!:

The completed emerald ash borer documentary
The complete emerald ash borer score
The score is not hosted in the best possible way, i'm afraid. To download, hover over the icon that says "TrevorTriggs-EABscore" and then move your mouse to the black triangle in the upper right corner of the icon. Then click "download." If it asks you to log in, just click Skip. It'll still let you grab the file. It's a zipped archive with all ten tracks included.

About the Score

1. You Ruined My Baseball Bat
2. Rough Estimate Millions and Millions and Millions
3. I Climb Trees For a Living, If You Can Believe That
4. 100% Fatal
5. Emeraldashborer, All One Word
6. You Ruined My Guitar
7. You're Going to Edit This, Right?
8. I Hear You Like To...Infest...Ash Trees
9. Stop Making Me Self-Conscious
10. Now I'm Playing Crappy Music (EAB Suite)

The titles are all lines of dialog from the documentary, although #7 was edited out and only half of the quote for #3 was left in. I think that #3 is the best song on the score. #7 really, really fucking sucks...i didn't even finish it. I don't know why i even saved the file. But it does kind of flow nicely into #8, which is my second favorite. Anyway. That was a bunch of irrelevant rambling. Judge for yourself.

(#4 is pretty good, too).
Enjoy! Or don't.