JRussell's BlogNO!!!!

A Reminder that I Can't Remember What I Was Just Thinking About

For some reason I’m never really thinking about the city of Richmond as the city I’m currently in; it always comes out in my mind as the setting of a story I’m telling. Whether I’m riding my bike through cobble stone alleys or cooking up an Uncle Ben’s rice bowl while I listen to my “vicodin mix”, it just never feels like the present, its just a story I’m think of that I’ll probably never tell anyone and regretfully never write down either. I’m living a much simpler life, more routine than ever before and I guess that isn’t bad, never really had any structure before, which is I could never implement a Tom Vladeck-style muscle-group-per-day gym regiment and the subsequent groove of glories I never got: expensive t-shirts and private school girls, but I had a mesh hat before it was cool, hell, my trademark was once that bloodstained trucker hat with the Majority Rule patch, but then my head got too thick for hats or my neck expanded making hats not very flattering to the JRussell cephalic experience, either way, once that shit got trendy I wasn’t wearing the mesh hat, except for my thrasher phase but that’s all about the flip-up bill, which makes me look more like one of those fat retarded overgrown children in a sailor outfit. In another piece of writing I stumbled on the question “Why did I have to grow up?” which to me really skipped the whole “wait, I fucking grew up?” thought process, except for all of those times I skipped class and went to the Burger King on Connecticut Avenue hoping to chill out in the ball pit, which was always closed or there was a homeless person (Dr. Shitstain) sleeping down there in the “kidz area”, so instead of being a kid, I had to settle for eating a crossiant-wich at that table made out of the Batmobile like every jaded adult, but hey, free refills, underwash. (nods head). I was stole a pin from dad’s place that said “I want to grow up, not blow up”, and I guess that’s still pretty true, the pin is long gone through, we’ll I lost in London while high on robotussin so that I sound more glamorous to those who don’t actually know me. Some times I really fear that my honesty rather than glamour is the biggest mistake of these days.
In ‘High Fidelity’, the main character and record store owner Rob goes out with this girl named Charlie during his college years. She’s the stunning rock’n’roll girl who was “different, dramatic, and exotic”, in the book she knows friends of Johnny Rotten, in the movie she makes a pre-Osbournes reference to Ozzy that was supposed show how aware of pop culture she was. Rob says she’s the kind of girl he’s wanted to meet ever since he wanted to meet girls. So they go out and its awesome, he wears a sleeveless Moon Ska Records shirt which is totally awesome and she wears one of his Pretenders shirts after sex, also just totally awesome, but she dumps him for the dreaded Marco (not the cool kind of dread either) and later explains with a sigh that Marco was (pause) more glamorous than Rob. And Marco was glamorous, how could someone named Marco not be glamorous. Its like asking how someone named Rocko couldn’t be an intimidating douchebag. But me, I’m just a JRussell, and them JRussells are a dime a dozen, decidedly not glamorous because to me it seems fake and like cheating people into thinking something you’re not, whether that be a poet or an outlaw or anarchist or businessman. The legacy you leave is the lies you kept up. Assume a virtue and you will become it. I would say that humanity defends or encourages faking it to make it, but that’s the smelly cynic with the messy room talking, this could all easily be the name of the game that I’ll never roll the dice in. I’ve been in stores with the kids can buy glamour instead of records and burritos; some stores were okay I just didn’t see anything I liked, other stores made me feel like a total outcast which I was fine with, another store fills me with rage because they exploit and rape and capitalize things that were once really meant something. Urban Outfitters killed CBGBs.
I’ve never been there but I’ve read stories of Sunday matinees and how everyone fucked Debbie Harry, can I please pay $34 for a CBGBs shirt that looks its been worn by a rocker, look, fake pit stains, now I don’t even have to sweat, Urban will do it for me. Without that place, where could someone buy a fake Atari system or pseudo-DIY Stooges shirt. While I’m glad to see girls in Stooges shirts, its just seems so contrived. A lot of this glamour of the kids seems contrived. Partying for example, especially here in the college seems to be excessively contrived. To me at least, a good party is real organic, whether that means just chilled out in someone’s backyard or basement with some good tunes or it’s a wildly anarchic shower of sweat and stolen beer and youthful spirit soaked in distortion and hoarse voices, its all organic, its not contrived, shit just happened, wonderful surprises. But that’s not what I’m getting here for the most part, which I is why I’m way more comfortable doing my own crusty thing than have my crisp hat tilted sort of to the side like they do on the MTV this month. I have never seen kids, young adults, whatever college douchebags with popped collars are, try so hard to make their party like “the” party. From dressing up to the incredibly hip, apparently hired DJ, to the living light shows, to the fucking cash bar. If I ever had to have a cash bar, it’d be a Johnny Cash bar. Just “their” parties are never fun, they’re a headache, to me. Maybe if I forced a sorority girl to get dangerously intoxicated and took advantage of her then I would see the light and “get” the pecking order here. The “dance floor” is a fucking disaster. If dancing was dancing from any period pre-1990’s, I’d be so down with it, but this has just become an excuse to get girls to kiss, which of course has lost all shock, its just another thing to get a picture of and put it up on your photobucket photo gallery. I’m the kind of the dude who’d down with dancing, whether skanking or circle pit or dead head spin-y dance, or like fucking “Earth Angel” slowdance. I’m no fucking purist, I’m not saying that contemporary dancing is filthy or offensive, the sexual revolution has obviously won, but today’s dancing is like some acid caricature of the grind or whatever. Its so insincere, I hate white people. I hate clubs. They don’t even try to pretend they’re not faking their shit. “WE’LL CREATE THE BEST PARTY YOU’VE EVER PAID TO PRETEND TO ENJOY”. Like I found that you really have to drink (a lot) to enjoy those settings at all. When Will and I went to Lulus during one long night one Labor Day weekend in DC that I never completed writing about, it was the whole college night, 18 + night. It was one of the worst hours I’ve ever spent in a brick building, and I’ve been to some fucking awful brick buildings in my time. Again, the dance floor is a joke, the DJ wasn’t really mixing, he was just playing the Outkast hits, which I’m not complaining about but I know I’d make a much better DJ, rather than this dude who just jerks off to the charts. That night I heard that fucking Kevin Lyttle song so many times it was theme music that I never ever wanted to have. There’s so much of the dance party world I don’t know about though, but I’m not buying in yet. I just want someone to have a party with some soul for fuck’s sake. Is this what makes people drink excessively? To tolerate the rest of the world? To forget that you’re not having, as was mentioned elsewhere in this here blog world. But there’s plenty of things to do instead of drinking to numb one’s self. I’ve found the library to a great resource, like the internet is a wealth of information but I just find myself killing time more and more, and assorted message boards and playing Text Twist. But the library is great, it’s so refreshing, it’s like a really good salad for the mind. I spend a lot of time in thrift stores flipping through their records and t-shirts. I’m currently looking for a good sweater to wear the hell out of, which of course is an emo kid cliché, but I once a had a sweater and it was awesome. It was a tan v-neck that fit fucking great, that had soulful blue slurpee stains, that gave it character and I don’t know where that sweater is. I look through the sweaters, which are currently on prominent display for the whole holiday sweater kick, and, well, I can’t really tell which are the men’s sweaters and which are the women’s sweater, I’m assuming they’re in two sections because it really seems that way, either that or there’s just some incredibly queer sweaters at this thrift store. It would make sense, the place is operated by gay dudes and I think receives a lot of donations from the gay community, which explains all the Barbara Streisand tapes and Original Cast Recording LPs. But I got myself some kick ass dubbed Cure tapes for a quarter apiece, so I’m cool with it. There’s plenty of “Cosby sweaters” but none that can replace my kick ass sweater that I lost, so now I’m just a boy sans sweater. My United Airlines hoodie is falling apart and I just feel emptier. One time I got a button down longsleeve shirt, it was called my “confidence shirt”. The day I got that shirt was a good day. December 19th marks one full year since I bought that confidence shirt with a 35 cent copy of The Clash’s Combat Rock on vinyl as well as AC/DC’s For Those About to Rock and an original, not remastered ‘Kind of Blue’ LP. That was a good night for the JRussell. But now the confidence shirt is no longer glorious, and the boy isn’t confident enough to wear the shirt. Its missing a button and the collar is curved vertically so the neck resembles the wings on a hot rod, which makes the boy look like a popped collar asshole. But contrasting to unstoppable flying collar are several stains, some are most definitely fudge, hot fudge stains, others are most definitely blood stains, reminders of the crazy winter nosebleeds, the hours spent soaking the high school bathrooms, spraying plasma on the mirrors and it just wouldn’t stop. Wear the confidence shirt, bleed all over it. I wore this confidence shirt to a mother’s day dinner I believe at Café Deluxe. It offended my mom that the shirt was stained, I thought the fact that I was wearing a button down shirt instead of a t-shirt of the mayor smoking crack with two hookers would be a good thing. I even told her that this was most tastefully stained shirt, I thought she’d be upset if I told her the shirt was blood-stained, so it was just fudge stained until I ordered ribs, when it became rib stained.
Here I am rambling about stains, how could I allege to not being glamorous. Black Flag wrote ‘TV Party’ as a joke, but its becoming more of a reality than it should. I’m not making an effort live like a song, but its getting too close, which is why ‘Damaged’ is such a great album, talk about sincere, that shit keeps me in line. What was Black Flag doing instead of passing out on the couch (tonight!)? Fuck it, they were on tour. I really long to go on tour, DIY punk rock ups and downs, what a community. I would have wanted to be one of the hard Flag roadies like Mugger, freak out the crowd with opening act, The Nig Heist, get chased out of the club by greaseball owner or beat up simpleton skinheads, oh man. At least they’ve got something to write about. I have friends in Richmond who did a two-week Southern tour, they got banned from the city of Chattanooga; those boys know how to have a good time, I’ve got to hit the road with them. I don’t know, I guess all those good times are part of living in the moment, and its hard to live in the moment when you’re thinking of everything as a story to tell, the letter you’re going to write instead of the thing you’re doing.
I’ll be in DC soon, that’s the place to “turn it all in for late nights and impossible dreams”.

Whole Like a Host

I got something cookin' for this BlogNo, let it cook children.
Let it settle.
They say let cool for a minute for a reason.
How many times will we have to learn the hardway.
Dancing around the 3-step instructions, tearing out the page for the one time only recipe.

Patty Ball?

PieToaster: what was that kickball with a bat game Mr. patty made up?
spid36: hmmm
spid36: lemme think
spid36: Batti Ball
spid36: no idea
PieToaster: you remember it right?
spid36: i remember playing it
spid36: I also remember him sitting up on this incredibly tall chair, and I hit the ball and it smacked him in the head

luasnehoc: patty ball?

PieToaster: what was that kickball with a bat game Mr. patty made up?
WatzukeJD: ohh fuck
WatzukeJD: uh
WatzukeJD: some ridiculous name
WatzukeJD: something ball

PieToaster: what was it called?
wingsofthedove17: shit
wingsofthedove17: i dont remember
wingsofthedove17: patty ball?
wingsofthedove17: i dont know
PieToaster: Smitty Ball!
wingsofthedove17: YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

PieToaster: will
PieToaster: you went to deal right?
Merced 99: suplaya
Merced 99: yeah
PieToaster: what was that game Mr. Patty made up that was like kickball with a big red bat?
Merced 99: holy
Merced 99: shit
PieToaster: the name?
Merced 99: i can't remember
PieToaster: think you bastard
PieToaster: the name
PieToaster: or the girl dies . . .
PieToaster: are you fucking serious?
PieToaster: what's the name of the fucking game?
PieToaster: lives are at stake you selfish fuck
PieToaster: the name
PieToaster: of the game!??
Merced 99: i can't fucking remember!!!!
PieToaster: that's too fucking bad
(the next morning)
Merced 99: what's the name of it???
PieToaster: you wouldnt tell me
PieToaster: I don't know
Merced 99: i didn't and still don't know!!!
Merced 99: Patty Ball?
Merced 99: eli might remember

nebagakid: i have no idea
nebagakid: but that is funny
nebagakid: dudee, come and visit us
PieToaster: you remember the game right?
nebagakid: smitty ball
PieToaster: sweet
PieToaster: that its it
nebagakid: sweet