JRussell's BlogNO!!!!

One For the Duke

I've had this cooked up as a shirt design for a while. I figure now would be an appropriate time to put it out. Not much reflection though, the death of Hunter S. Thompson, by whatever means seemed inevitable, I just hope he gets his wish of having his cremated remains shot to sea out of a cannon.

This of course is from that time period when I couldn't get over that rhine-stone font. But I swear I'm totally over it. Can quit any time I want. Don't think. Drive.

Bloomin’ Epiphany

Ugh,

I feel fucking terrible; I don’t know why I did this to myself. No, yes. Yes, of course I know why I did this to myself. For years I’ve glorified these motherfuckers and this is their revenge. I can my innards slowly dying, turning into the filthy mush of bad horror movies. This chemical headache makes me feel as if my cinderblock walls collapsed on me. This is worse than salvia.
But I know why; I can’t refuse a bloomin’ onion.

I’ve had a bloomin’ onion before. Oh, I have. And all the spinoffs; onion loaf, onion strings, onion rings, one giants two and a half foot onion ring. I know I don’t feel good after I eat these, but they’re so delicious at the moment, so fucking greasy yet incredibly crunchy, maintaining that onion tang without all that raw onion bite. I’ve already mentioned the magnificence of grilled onions before, just multiply that with DEEP FRIED AMERICANA. The bloomin’ onion is like rare poisonous orchid of county fair cuisine; funnel cake is just as bad, but it certainly ain’t pretty, unless you’re really in to something that looks like strings and strings of cat shit and dead snakes. The bloomin’ onion is something else though, motherfucker is B-L-OOO-M-I-N-G, like one of those exotic fishes that kills any other fish that it touches, the kind really rich dudes buy to use as a metaphor of how like murder people and fuck their skanky Jersey girl secretary or something. Well, the fucking onion looks like the fish. I remember being a youngster and hearing the good man himself, David Letterman talking about how all he wanted for Christmas was a one thing, and that thing was the
STEAKHOUSE
ONION
MACHINE

(I feel so fucking filthy, I can feel my neck sinking to my chest)

Now I’m no county fair kind of dude, ain’t from a county. DC ain’t in a county, we ain’t got no sheriff, but if we did have a sheriff, I’m sure he’d be a real bad ass. Thinking back I can think of only three county fairs I’ve ever been to; the most memorable one would have to be Montgomery County fair, where I had to intentions:
1) Go to the demolition derby and hopefully watch a hillbilly run around on fire.
2) Go to the tiny dirt race track and watch a bunch of pigs race eachother. There were also a race with chickens I think, but they weren’t as entertaining as all those pigs that were high on meth.
The other two county fairs were on the west coast, one in Oregon that I don’t remember too much of, and one in Orange County California, I remember watching a bunch of chickens shit out huge eggs. I’m no county fair fiend, although I have wondered what it would have been like to do one of those clichéd, heavily drug induced, real fast paced runs through a county fair, with a girl, and like all the colors and lights of the fair would bleed across time and around the ferris wheel. But those carnie folk are horrifying when not huffing spraying paint from a sock, I can’t imagine what they’d look like with their faces melting off while they dip corndogs in to a vat of blood. Taking the green line Metro home from a free Bane show at University of Maryland, I saw the lights of a county fair while the train was still above ground and wondered the lowlife possibilities of PG county fair.
In more recent times, I tried to show my force on a bloomin’ onion at a spring street fair in Vermont, oops fuck, I mean “Bullshit Maple Fair”. A trio of fat dudes with long gray beards were cranking out the Johnny Cash and Chuck Berry covers while hippie burnouts danced with their grandkids, I dug in to this greasy horrifying bloomin’ onion. Mind you, it was the only item without maple that I could buy on the street. I got halfway through when I gave up. The Germans had just marched through Poland. I wanted to give the rest of those gluttonous beast to someone else there, because all those Vermonters seem harmless and all about sharing and eating the occasional incredibly fatty food item, it is the land of Ben & Jerry. In any case I left the half of the bloomin’ onion in an empty, dried out park fountain for the whatever “critters” to get their share. I felt ill and selfish and irritated and bloated after eating that half of the bloomin’ onion. I haven’t tried to eat a bloomin’ since that one afternoon in Vermont.
Until today.
Today was a brutal reminder of why no one should ever eat a bloomin’ onion.
The cafeteria here at school was serving up the dish to anyone who cared to swipe a meal credit again, which I did. I figured I’d have to, I mean, they’re probably not going to this ever again, I am of course the kind of dude who can cut through a bloomin’ onion and then ride off through Australian outback in a dune buggy trying to catch that rapping kangaroo that stole my red Brooklyn hoodie with all that cash I stole from mobsters like in those commercials for Outback Steakhouse. So I ordered myself that damn onion. I prepared myself with several glasses of water and a diet Pepsi, got a fork and knife and some onions, I mean napkins, all I think about is onions. Bloomin’ onions.
While I was sitting around waiting, while the onion was taking a dive a bath of hot oil bubbling up in total unhealthiness, I saw a girl walk by with a heavy duty biker messenger bag with the phrase “I EAT CARBS” printed on the bag. I was thinking, well fuck yeah, in a couple of minutes I too will be eating carbs. I remembered back in high school, a girl who was athletic yet surprisingly indie told me that “No, carbs aren’t the enemy you fat dumbass, you need carbs for energy, so you can work out obsessively, don’t you get it?”. I got it alright, and cancelled my gym membership, and drank soda and slurpees all summer. It was rad. So I started thinking, if I’m going to be eating all these carbs, and I’ll have this POTENTIAL ENERGY, I might as well use all the carbs and calories and units of energy and do something. So I started one of those train of thoughts where you plan out what you’ll do with your buzz. Like if you knew you were going to do a lot of shrooms, you’ll layout this Hot Tuna record and have that Comets on Fire album in your CD player, and be like alright “We’re going to the children’s museum, getting some fucking hot cocoa, chillin’ in the cave, then we’re going to watch old Tom & Jerry cartoons, all on SHROOMS, man. It’ll be blast, man. Fuckin’ A, man.” But in this case I was planning what to do with this bloomin’ onion buzz, go biking, down to the river, to that manmade lake or to the record store or lets go cowtipping. Ha, the buzz.
I went to the grill where my bloomin’ onion was being cooked. The cooked offered the plate of bloomin’ onion, I reached out over the sneeze guard, the heat from the grill touched the hair on my knuckles, I knew I was dealing with some serious shit at the moment. I sat down and started to eat this bloomin’ onion, I took it online like a slow dance, peeling off the petals of fried onion that fell off slowly, with the comfortable pace of good classic soul music, the tannish-yellow dippin’ sauce was like the tasteful Hammond B-3 organ in the background saying “yeah, go ahead, you feelin’ it, oh, yeah”.
I ate about a quarter of it before the waves of doubt and grease in my veins started to kick in. I thought to myself “No, don’t get discouraged, you fuckhead, finish the onion, seize the day, victory is ours, le disordre c’est moi, fucking conquer this bloomin’ onion, do it like the Boss would, you know, for the working class” So I kept eating but some force slowed me down, trying to oppress this mission to finish this filthy fucking onion dish. I looked around for this nemesis, on the cafeteria TV screen was none other than the indecent face of Jerry Falwell. Fuck you Jerry. I’ll finish this bloomin’ onion.
Ugh.
I can’t eat it, its truly terrible.
But no, fuck you Falwell.
Oh no
Waitafuck.
Maybe Falwell wants me to eat this bloomin’ onion
And to ban gay marriage.
And stop watching Spongebob Squarepants.
Fuck no.
But I dunno
Bloomin’ onion is pretty white trash.
And so is Falwell.
I give up.
Fuck this bloomin’ onion. I give up.

I don’t even know what Falwell is doing here. But I do know is that the phenomenon of the blooming onion is incredibly excessive and that I’ll never ever eat one again. They’re filthy and I don’t want any more disgusting than I already am. I guess it was just fun to say “BLOOMIN’ ONION, PLEASE!” and “ STEAKHOUSE – ONION – MACHINE.” all these years. I don’t man tits this young. I like my fuzzed out stoner rock and southern fried funk and in some small dose the occasional Zydeco throwdown, but this deep fry fuck fest has got stop for me. I still don’t feel any better, I missed a class because of how this onion fucked me up, but I think it’ll be alright. Attendance isn’t that big a deal in that class, so I’ll just email the teacher and tell him the story of the bloomin’ onion. He’ll probably dig it because he’s one of those young “cool” teachers that lets us say fuck and shit and talk about porn and Afro-beat Orkestras.

Filthy fucking dish.

New Season of Public Access

The public access show I'm involved with down here, Wednesday Night Explosion will be back for a second season or installment or whatever the fuck its called in a week and a half. I was actually fired from the show apparently, for making some reference to a girl in Johnson Hall who did porn, which riled all the fratboys, rugby players, skater boys, and whoever else was trying to score with her and said I had to be OFF THE AIR; I didn't actually know I was fired, they just stopped offering me rides to the studio and I started going to shows on Wednesday Nights (Panthers, Isis, . . .) but now I'm back, doing the announcing and whatever else. The first season we started off with an in studio performance with a good group of punks our age from Richmond called Olive Tree, who kick it with that rough but melodic mid-90's style screamo, with a nod towards Sonic Youth and dirty Minor Threat songs, good kids, lots of fun, over 100 calls to the studio during the 70 minutes or whatever. Other guests have included a terrible noise act, a good lo-fi group called Mandarin Dynasty, some lucha wrestlers, and some of the local arrogant sport jacket-wearing filmmaker crowd. We were the only the show with VCU students, with the exception of one other (Busted, Inc might be students) and this season there's like 4 shows with students from VCU. Suckerpunks.

Our season opener has a confirmed guest of Travis Morrison, who was in the classic Fort Reno DC bands, the Dismemberment Plan. So if anyone you have any questions you want to write in crayon and give to him, lets make that happen. If you got any stories about his sound being incredibly too "trebile-y" or you want to know about him and Ludacris, lets find out.

Camp. Rep. Yo