The Obama Deception

M-1 fighter Toni Valtonen has a swastika tattoo

what nonsense What amazes me are the number fighters who utilize Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai and try to espouse some sort of white supremacist leanings. Meanwhile if they didn't embrace these non white origin fighting styles they'd be obsolete dinosaurs. M-1 needs to get their shit together and decide what they're trying to promote. Since Fedor is such a big wig in that scene they need to get his brother Alexander (who also has swastika tats) on board and denounce this fascist bullshit. Stop skirting around and saying it's about being not pc, white nationalist, and reactionary to current trends. Call it what it is, hate and bigotry with a very rich history drenched in bloodshed and atrocity. Be men not cowards.You can live like Mussolini are you willing to die like him?

Fedor Emelianenko visits Tiger Schulmann's of Manhattan

Fedor rolled into town and made an appearance at Tiger Schulmann's. He made a stop at Farrell's show on Sirius. Farrell admitted that he trains at the facility which is nifty and admirable. I think we're both part of that demographic that has been more or less deemed as soon to be extinct by most conventional mindsets.
We're supposed to just eat our psyllium husks and monitor our blood pressure and stools. I tell these fux at work that I skateboard, do yoga, chi-kung and want to re-vist some tae kwon do/kick boxing they look at me as if I'm out of my fucking mind. Which is a good place to be.
Anyway, Farrel did a decent interview with a drowsy Fedor who had to speak through a translator which is really tough to sit through, as most of our Americana like "wedgies" doesn't translate well into other languages. I once worked with a Ukrainian and 99% of my attempts at humor tanked. Oh well.
MMA has turned into a one time ignored area in news media sites like Topix. Now there are a slew of experts commenting on the sport and there exposure has been two or three years tops. The most recent fighters are the greatest and best, any references before UFC 44 lost in obscurity. A lot of hostility has been directed towards places like Tiger Schulmann's for incorporating MMA into their name.
The voices say it's McDojo MMA and there are more sincere people out there. Meanwhile I think every martial arts place around town is offering some sort of MMA and some Billy Blanks geared "cardio kickboxing". I'm not going to say what's the real deal or not. I've seen what I would've deemed real deal come and go out of business due to reasons that would be considered obnoxious bullshit at any place of employment.
I understand the need for traditional martial arts and the whole shebang. Though I wonder when you're speculating on someone else's mma credibility, why you're spending months on katas with the kids. Where would that serve as useful. It looks beautiful when perfected, but the only thing that horse stance to downblock to forward step will get you in a ring or on the streets is mouthful of knocked out teeth. That's a whole other story. Stop the hating and be glad people aren't staying home and playing with their wii wii-s

Find Your Fight!

Caution English and grammar police, stream of consciousness piece follows:

A composite voice speaks, "gotta get yer fight on!" as Mystic Stylez era Three Six Mafia (at that time they were the far more menacing and occultist tinged Triple Six Mafia) beats kicks in. A montage film reel of me getting my ass motivated and back in shape rolls.
Public Image Limited proclaimed "anger is an energy." Adversity IS great catalyst if you allow it to be. Or you just roll with each metaphorical punch until you get one really that connects with yer jaw and knocks you down for good.
Punk Rock was a means of thumbing our noses at society and a lot of us embraced the apocalyptic, nihilist side of things and welp.. then we started to grow old. We've lasted too long and witnessed these horrific reunion gigs that should never have happened. We've been betrayed by all these truer than thou, harder than you, nailed to the X for life schmuckoids who've taken their bloated drunkard asses on tour to preach gospel that they haven't subscribed to in 20 years back to (m)asses. When you sift through the motivations behind these individuals/groups there as easily narcissistic and ego stroking as all the characters that were their targets in the 70s and 80s.
So what now? You don't want to be the puppet getting shoved around by the government and corporate entities. You don't want to get beaten down by these insurance/credit card oppressors. You can do a runner like The Business. Or you can not fall into debt. You can watch your health, eat real food and not all that boxed, high fructose corn syrup crap.
The most radical thing you can do, is take care of yourself. eat right, exercise, think positive thoughts and breathe. Never mind the bollocks of the shit boss. Mend that broke edge. Take that hate edge out on the treadmill.
I've had the most erratic gym attendance over the past year. Did the whole skim and bounce weightloss, lost a few, gained a few more and then back and forth some more. What the fuck? I had the fight and threw in the towel before the round was up. Gotta fight the good fight. I can get bogged down in all the isms and miss the immediate frontline that is drawn. Here, now, me... this is the battle ground. Now I gotta declare war and pummel through the mine field that is my mind.

With Swine Flu, a No-Pucker Zone?

The attention grabbing link from Ny Times reads: "

With Swine Flu, a No-Pucker Zone?

By JAMES BARRON

Fears of a global pandemic have left some air-kissers out there are wondering if they should be less demonstrative."

- This seems to be how all the "news" commentary is addressing the swine flu. Should we report coughing people to an airline stewardess?? Are we better off not washing our hands after pissing at work? What are the chances of us catching the plague if we take a dump at Moe's? I mean there are an awful lot of hombres in the kitchen there. Shit, what do i do? dust off the rave gear and wear a gas mask?? Back to question posed by the Ny Times: should they be less demonstrative?? No. Less trendy Yes!

Bedtime For Democracy.

so here's a disgusting piece on the "Sea Smurfs" that were created to keep the rabble in line, and to protect the uber wealthy.

thanks to democracy now for covering the piece. Tonight on CBS, katie couric asks the candidates one of those moronic babah wah wah questions.

Everyday is STILL Halloween

and bela is still undead. someone figured out somewhere that there is an unwavering loyalty to the gothic realm. Though if you clicked on Projekt records' web site, you'd see somehow while all these other indie trends have come and gone... the goth have remained unscathed. However.. the people wearing those giant trousers with "bondage" wraps.. come on. You look like you're more about Electric Boogaloo than say Propaganda Magazine video II (which is no longer available at 112 video in Medford, because some genius felt it be wise to shit can all the vhs tapes. Good luck on finding Corpse Fucking Art on the checklist of Netflix.. morons.] Anyway here's the link from the NY TIMES piece.
Psst.. now if only we can get some more kids to listen to Romeo's Distress by Christian Death.

Mo Rocca - strongman badass

I know, i know sounds like an oxymoron. Here is a funny clip of Mo on NBC. worth watching... otherwise I wouldn't be posting it.

New Milford Makes a Statement: Farming Is Staying

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/24farmct.html?ex=1377230400&en=cf64980dda7f77be&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalinkIt's nice to see people sticking to their guns and thinking out side of the big box.

ramblin

Here’s the cover of BYOFL 97 that we did with Maximum Rock N Roll which is now an awesome website www.byofl.org. anyway.. here’s a rambling piece.

It’s been a while since I wrote anything even remotely related to the Model Citizen columns in Under the Volcano. One of the things I noticed after the fact was how much of an expert editor ol’ Black was, and a lot of my “good” writing was the end result of that editing and not necessarily what I was writing. The above thought has been a state of mind that has been crippling in a lot of ways. Since the zine isn’t in print anymore, Rich isn’t editing “my work” anymore, and I’m faced with the fact that I feel my work is shit.

So then I don’t write, I go into long periods of stagnation. No writing, no music, no art. When I’d try to break out of this funk my brain would beat me up, write a line.. delete.. write a paragraph…delete. Over and over and over.. nothing produced. I often get asked why I never pursued writing as a full time gig or more seriously since I possess a wealth of knowledge in regards to music, art and “culture” and I really have no answer. In order for me to write I have to have certain conditions and constellations in alignment and often times all the “things” I need don’t occur. Some people can relate to what I’m saying, most don’t.

Other times people would ask me, please stop writing. One of the arguments I received back in the day on my “work” series of pieces was that they were exhausting, redundant, and hopeless. Which is funny because I would run into “fans” while I was merchandising washing machines at 4:30 in the morning and they would love that shit because they realized the piece was about them. The people that get lost in the rank and file. Clocked in and breaking their backs for some crumbs. I found their opinions more sincere and valid the those who wanted to hear the scoop on the latest hoopla stirred by this weeks scenesters.

I did meet the anti MC people halfway. I said this a million times and here is a million and one. I stopped writing reviews because I felt that since I was trying to sculpt my own noise projects, my opinion of someone else’s stuff was irrelevant. There are a lot of bad poetic phrases and clichés I would never use in my own work. There are a lot of images and parameters that I wouldn’t use as founding stones or formulas to adhere to. One would argue that this is why all of my endeavors have been monetary flops. BUT I’d rather have a monetary flop then pen some ditty that ends up being covered by the KIDS BOP all stars.

So I stopped reviewing music to avoid any conflicts of interest and I thought this would be appreciated. All of my loyal musician “friends” stopped calling me because I was a dead end in the promotion spectrum. Which is okay. The people who never asked me for anything in this “business” are still my friends. The leeches and misers come around from time to time, throw out some lip service and usually try to pick my brain as to who should they try to utilize to hawk their goods. I have to tell them the truth, I don’t know anyone anymore.

Who’s a good opening act with a following? I just repeat what everyone else is saying.. uhh.. Vampire Weekend are pretty nifty, there’s also this group called Voxtrot who remind me of Housemartins meet The Smiths. I don’t know if that last comparison was written some where but that’s my take on the track that I heard.

Then I realize they're looking for a Pantera esque meets Fight opener for the HC kid who's first entree to "hardcore" was some bastard spawn of a bastardized hellspawn of hardcore punk rock and not the actual thing. You know the type of act that isn't embarrassed by the poster merch, the over priced tshirt merch and a group with the aspirations of playing some sneaker sponsored tour outside the Mall or Amerikkka.. and this is something I just can't relate to, can't stomach and I'm sure I sound like a crotchety shit bag, I can NOT tolerate. If you want to a rock superstar cool, be it. Don't disguise your intentions with glitzy videos cut with rapid image riot footage and civil disobedience icons... cuz that's not you and you're not fighting that fight. You're essentially the bread and butter for the smart bomb tech share holders.

So where am I at? The essence of Model Citizen is the angry, disgruntled shit worker rants. At least that’s what I imagine them to be. I’m always pissed off about something. Though there has been a big different in the past three years of writing is welp… I have accepted that I have a pretty good life.

I have the greatest girl in my life. There’s a picture of us if you scroll down. We have an awesome rabbit, who is slowly building trust in us. The hardest thing about writing is, it doesn’t always have to be about venom. The engine isn’t solely running on hate. There is a lot of love. There’s a lot of positivity. There are a lot of moments where I realize I have a great girl by my side, she’s with me through the thick and thin. I’m a lucky man.

I’m sorry if this is running all over the place but like I said earlier.. I haven’t written in a long time and I’m just letting this roll.

Small space composting

The SubUrban renter's dilemma – small space composting.. We drink a lot of coffee, read a lot of papers and get a load of junk mail. I was trying to figure out how to get some composting BANG out of the aforementioned materials. I was thumbing through this book the other day entitled The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant, Deborah L. Martin.
I actually was very inspired. In it they had a solution to my problem, and it was simple. Take a garbage can, put some holes in it and then voila. You have a composting can that you rotate and mix around without having to shell out the big bucks.
I found two nifty videos that will help you visualize better as to what the hell I’m talking about.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271521142/bctid1409430679


http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271521142/bctid893738512

wholly cats

It's the original Model Citizen logo!!! - This is what ran with my column in Under The Volcano fanzine. Nothing screams unique voice of reason than some corel draw (if I remember correctly it was cd 3) clip art and stock house "ska" font. Very high tech for poor punk rockers in the early 90s.

My MiSo

There are these moments that I am glad to be attentive enough to experience. Awake, in the moment to recognize the substance from the trite, meager and irrelevant. That stuff comes and goes, passes by and is gone..

Then there it is, that special thing. The feelings of Elation, joy a visual representation of the spirit that provokes it, radiates it.. it is of someone who I refer to as my better half, my soul mate. The one who I will spend the rest of my life with, the one I will have a child with. The co-author of that work in progress entitled “the future.”

She brings me joy, I think to myself. I smile..look in the mirror to witness the visual. It comes when my panic turns to calm, holding her in my arms, chasing our fuzzy bundle of joy around the kitchen.

I got up at 4am this morning, turned to my side.

felt her warmth, listened to her breathing.

Thought to myself, I am very very lucky.

Went back to sleep, pleasantly dreaming ‘bout our future.

Nebraska has a clue, how 'bout you?

So many people get outside of their hipper than shit metro area and make the assumption that nothing progressive is going down.If you thought all the anti sodomite banners, tires hanging on trees along I-80 is what Nebraska is all about. Mmm.. perhaps think again. READ THIS.
The link is to NY TIMES article, which always starts with a dumb ad first.

A NEW BEAT

Melissa bought me a nifty set of cocktail drums for my birthday.
Playing, performing and composing music has been an interesting journey. Considering I really wanted to quit taking lessons at school my third year in.
--here's bit and pieces of the story--
The first year I was learning drums from someone who wasn't a drummer in this echoey closet at the back of the Eagle Elementary cafe-torium. I held sticks in a matched grip with my thumbs up, which should've been caught and corrected (due to the fact that you can develop tendinitis had it not been). So we'd alternate in this room from snare to practice pad. bang, bang, bang. You'd leave the room with your ears ringing. Which starts the beginning of my hearing damage.
The second year we had a cooler teacher. They stuck him in a different closet next to the janitor's office. He left his window open all the time and so he could get his smokes in without having to smoke wherever the teachers smoked during those days. real cool, real mellow teacher. I ran into him some time in the late 90s and thanked him. He was also happy to see I was still playing.
Third year. UGH... i was being taught by a music phd who wanted to be referred to as Doctor. Even worse than the actual Dr. were the other drum students. It was no longer the same three kids, but three more and they were...em... jerk offs. They had egos and perceived themselves as being older and more talented "percussionists" with influences as boring as whatever ranting and raving drumming moron that was in print at that time.
"I'm really into Rush, yawn, yawn. ", says blowhard 1.
"I've been playing the shit out of Suicidal Tendencies, Crucifucks and Run Dmc"
"Run Dmc, those black guys, that's not music!", says Blowhard 2 (Remember: This is 85 or 1986)
Blowhard 1 "what was the other at band?"
I ask "Crucifucks or Suicidal Tendencies?" .
"Dr Douchie, Greg said the F-word."

tangent: Blowhard 1 was a "talented musician" fat fuck. Story is he'd get upset with his brother and steal his knobs from his stereo to spite him. People stroke his ego at how good of a percussionist he is. Years later he becomes a teacher in Texas and can't hack. The fanfare is removed and he's a whack hack. Academics.. you have to love them.

Dr. Douchie gives the older kids the priority, my cohorts get stuck playing all the percussion toys. Which sparked my interest in creating disharmonic tones, improvisation and some chaos. One of the best moments of 86 was randomly kicking over a ride cymbal in the midst of a concert performance. smashingly brilliant. BH 1&2 faces' turned red with embarrassment. Mission accomplished.

YEAR 4 - had to of been tough on the ol' Doc. The untalented toy players now have to carry the "band" and welp.. we couldn't give two shits about doing so. Having been painted as dimwits, we thought well.. might as well make people miserable and enjoy it. Sight read? What do you mean Doc? I'll just rattle these things here and there and hopefully it makes sense. The highlight of the year was meeting up with the other elementary kids and finding equally jaded souls bashing drums and bending ago go bells for no good reason. These are the people who were going to get me through middle school. I think the ol Doc retired from elementary school music instruction and took on a more sophisticated job doing a 1800s reenactment band for more high brow music connoisseurs.

YEARS 5,6,7 (grades 7-9).
The instructor was a complete douche face wolfman jack looking guy who'd throw fits, toss chairs, music stands and have temper tantrums all the time. The drum line (yuk yuk yuk) also received instructions from a semi uptight asshole and whatever bendover boy aspiring professional percussionist he'd had taken under his wing.
One of the funniest lines I received from a bb who quit second instruction in was "oh.. you like black flag, you should check out Missing Persons. They're my favorite band." I had to explain to him I was given a writing punishment for humming Mental Hopscotch in third grade. He said in a real serious "Mental Hopscotch..great..great song." Out of his fucking mind.
Blowhards 1 & 2 had whole new entourage of equally boring and "talented' sidekicks to discuss Rush, Journey, and all the other exciting music that 15 year old percussionists listen to. I found some new cohorts who were into metal. Punk and hardcore was still to foreign since..welp.. since MTV didn't play it and Record Town/Tape World didn't end cap it.
So I went through the motions played rip off jazz, since we never would play license fees. bad latin-y turned marching band shit. did my time. played awful music. stopped following the confines of "traditional" music further and further. Got a hold of a mix tape from some friends that had Einsturzende Neubauten, Birthday Party, Lydia Lunch,Premature Ejaculation on it. I got further away from what other kids were into at the time like: NKOTB.
Ninth grade hit. my last year as a "band musician". hearing still getting hammered every other day. even in the acoustically designed band room.
--more poorly written composition later--

Dr. Greenthumbs

Caution: as with any of the poorly crafted structures that you will find posing as blogs here.This is another example of time travel, mish mashing verb tenses and me hopping from state to state apparently by the use of Tardis. So if you're wondering, is it me that is not able to follow ol' Groovy? chances are it’s not you, it's my stinky writing.

DR. GREENTHUMBS … So we started this grow box in the new apartment. Started with some seeds and some soil. Though, I guess we can leave to the experts to decide as to whether or not the stuff is good or a big over priced bag of shit [not literally, otherwise they'd say that stuff was swell]. We also bought a $13 grow lamp. Slowly we started to turn our dungeon into a rather nice place for things other than chia crafts to grow.

Now we have to backpedal, almost a whole year to be exact. Melissa and I are at some community college vegan awareness convention in Boston. Neither she nor I are vegan but being made aware of how to incorporate more vegan food and veggies into our lives sounded nice, so we attended.

The place is packed, which you would have to expect since it is a city and the convention (if that's what you want to call it) was free. There were also a whole shit load of free samples. In fact there was more product for you to get for free than there was information. Not much talk of community supported agriculture or booths with info on how to turn your 700 sq foot apt. into a sweet urban garden. Nope, nada, nut tin, not a ting man. Which I guess is more of a sad reflection on the state of affairs these days. People want to bitch about Whole Foods buying up Wild Oats and then continue to shop at the over priced entity that they demonize, and do nothing else.

You don't have to sell your soul to the armys of the living dead man. No, you can ralign your self with the diy underground, and do it quite literally. You can make yerself a 100% bonified do it yourselfer grow box and sow your hipster 100% organic roots in no time at all. Grow your own veggies.

Let’s stop this bullshit replace one consuming passion with another. This was ultimately the formula that I'd say snuffed out so many of my "gen-x" contemporaries in the 90s. So if you really want to rage against the machine this time man, then there's a way to do it. Take some of that rebellion and turn it into plowshares. (OR… PLEASE INSERT YOUR OWN PRO HOME GROWN PINKO COMMIE INSPIRATIONAL PHRASE HERE)

After metamorphosing into a cattle and being herded through the vendor room, I'm left feeling a bit down that I didn't get the phone numbers from some ol' HGP taggin' friends of mine and that well… I hadn't received any suggestions as to how to become the urban green acres mofo that I would like to be. (thank you Eddie Arnold).

So fast forward through the rest of our Providence habitation and all of my Patchogue reoccupation to now. Melissa and I start the aforementioned grow box. In fact here's a picture of the thing:

Since we use sitemeter for our online postings we realize that we've become popular. Not because anyone gave a shit about my column in Under The Volcano or miss the Model Citizen in any shape or form. Most people are hiting this site because they think I have some hydroponics hints, or other useful information on homegrowing their chronic, and other suggestions on how to spend their next 4-20 in the high life. Which was funny since our intentions were to get our salad and salsa ingredients from fresh and sound sources.

We were looking to save some dough, get some nice produce and welp.. throw a monkey wrench into the gears of the agri-terrorists inc. who are orchestrating this global food crisis.

Since there is an interest in our grow box, we're going to pen some useful how to-s. including how to repurpose some of those junk racks that you buy from target and S-Mart into something f'n sweet. The result is nice especially when you compare them to what the catalog growers are charging for them.

ARGH!

insert bullwinkle theme here.

I've got nothing. The writers block is creepin'…AGAIN! Beware of the blob

BE BUSY

this is my horoscope for today. It's somewhat appropriate, starting yesterday and following up til next week. things ARE going to be busy. (details later)...I've got to run.

Why be so modest when the whole world is singing your praises? Okay, maybe not the whole world -- but a significant enough group of people for you to feel like it's the world that's responding. This is a wonderful time for you, when people are finally paying attention to all the good stuff you're doing and recognizing what a good person you are. So accept their applause and take another bow -- you deserve it. Things are going to start happening now. Get ready to make some tough decisions and be busy!

Steve and Barrys Lake Grove

So I finally had the opportunity to check out Steve And Barry's Lake Grove, NY location. A few months back I dissed some of the S&B locations for their chaos presentation, poor customer service and staff who welp.. didn't lift a finger to straighten things up, fold clothes, re-sort shoes and sneakers. Etc.

THIS WAS NOT THE CASE AT STEVE AND BARRY'S LAKE GROVE. Lake Grove , was organized. The staff didn't appear as if they were being enslaved and tortured to work there. As I approached the Starbury sneakers, an employee was organizing all the shoes and reporting back to a manager and accounting for his work. Overall appearance of the store was sharp and clean. I wasn't left with the impression that a bomb had gone off. I'll be back for the super cheap gear. It was a real nice surprise.

A nice surprise.. especially after being tortured by the bossa nova casio 80s keyboard sounds that were pumping out over the sound system next door at DSW. Ugh. I don't know, I have to read if there's a study somewhere that suggestions that certain sounds can cause a violently ill reaction. I felt like I was going to puke the entire time i was in there.

New rants and raves

To differentiate the media aspects of what I tend to write about from my own personal on goings I started a hip new locale. It's located at:
LEWD PUNK RIOT!!!