Where the hell have you been??? 

I’ve been waiting here like a schmuck for months! “Going out for cigarettes”? I call bullshit! 

You’ve been out with your tarts again, haven’t you! 

Dry humping on the escalator! 

Making mustaches with burnt cork and chest-waxings! 

Feeding your jerk-tissues to the pigeons!

Well, I’m not gonna let it slide this time no sir! You’re going to pay and pay hard! PAY HARD, DO YOU HEAR ME?????

Plus, it’s my birthday.

Your friend, 

Stevie

      60’s Rock Makes Taint Dry. Look, We’re Soaking In It!

   This week marks the beginning of a new year, and, in this age of information, a new year brings a greater expectation of change than in decades past; exciting new technology and devices, anti-biotic resistant infections, and topical creams guaranteed to make my penis larger. A visitor from the 1970’s would surely be stunned that sex without a condom is like playing Russian roulette, pornography can be accessed by mobile phone for free, and most radio stations are still playing the same music they were in the 1970’s.

    Listening to rock and roll music in the seventies was a great adventure. The style was as healthy and wide spread as a contemporary pubic patch. Each song clearly harkened to its influences, whether they were blues or folk based, and demonstrated ever ameliorating artistic techniques. Just as a big, thick bush traps odor and funk, the great music of the 60’s and 70’s held all the stank of the originators of the style as well as the palpable excitement of genuine musical energy. After twenty years or so, groups and artists like Yes, Paul Simon, Frank Zappa and Steely Dan had developed the form to such a great degree that rock music was no longer a lesser musical form than jazz or classical music, and, it retained stirring animation. By 1973 rock and roll was bigger, harder, and pulsating more than Jerry Sandusky at a Cub Scout Meeting. 1973 was the year Pete Townshend, possibly the greatest musical giant of all alleged kid touchers, gave us Quadrophenia; a true opera, featuring the composition technique of the ‘leitmotif’ (a reoccurring theme representing a character or an idea).

   And then, one day in 1978, it stopped. The wide spread development of rock and roll as a musical form, the great steam train of musical ideas that we all rode comfortably for so long, hit the wall at full speed and all that was left was disco, The Bee Gees, and Frampton Comes Alive. I am still reeling from this blow to the head, this intellectual force-fucking. It seems that people who were born to dance; women, gays, minorities, teens and slow adults could buy way more records than a bunch of music lovers could ever hope to. Our pockets were simply not deep enough to keep the status quo.  And so it remains to this day that the popular music experience is as if Walmart has opened an entertainment division and has given us more cheaply produced crap than anyone could possibly need, to be taken home and totally forgotten. Lovers of progressive rock and roll music are left to wait for their savior, like God’s chosen people wandering through a desert of lifeless crap, waiting for long haired, bearded saviors in the image of Jesus, Ian Anderson, and George Harrison. I just hope it doesn’t take more than 5,000 years and that nobody tries to exterminate us while we are waiting.  

DID YOU HAVE ANY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS? - Marie from Van Nuys, CA.

To be more positive, say yes to more things and stop shitting. It’s messy, doesn’t smell great and Baja Fresh refuses to accept it as payment.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CHILDREN’S BOOK? - James from Houston, TX.

“Little Baby Black Cock Goes To The Zoo”

WHO DO YOU ADMIRE? - Ajay from Butte, MT

Ted, the homeless man who jumps in my cupboard everyday at 3:18 and furiously masturbates until I give him a muffin, and my dad.

WILL YOU BE APPEARING ON TELEVISION ANYTIME SOON - Larry from Las Vegas, NV

No but I will be performing my one woman show, “Tits And Apples” at Soledad Prison every Friday in March. Tickets still available.

Hey, thanks for writing!!!!

And so, another year has come to an end; 

another page is about to be turned by the big, moistened thumb of Fate; 

another notch in the belt of the Fat Reaper has been gouged out with the rusty awl wielded by the Lazy Drunken Cobbler; 

another quadrant of map space has been spanned by the Colossal Cartographer with her Majestic Tarnished Compass; 

another strip of litmus paper has been turned purple by the Brief Belcher of Bathos.

In other words, we’re all another year closer to Death.

HA!

Did you think it would last forever? Of course you did! But I’m here to help.

Why not spend your remaining moments…

…with ME!  

The undertaker will be struggling for hours to wrestle the smile off your face(s) and whatever spontaneous evacuations occur at the hour of eternal decease will be faster and more satisfying. Trust me. For I will be there.

Happy New Year and love,

Steven

PS: This is the year Colin Powell returns as a baby to save/destroy the world. Just as Arthur C. Clarke predicted! (see photo)

                                        “No Teeth, No Music, No Problem”

  Many of the inhabitants of my county have lived there throughout their lives; some of them taking houses in the very same town that they grew up in, and others, only a stone’s throw away. 

  They are quite easily identified by their toothless smiles, simple reasoning and an aggressive scratching of their privates which would indicate some sort of living matter on or in them. 

  In addition to these qualities they have indigenous accents and use colloquialisms like “youse two should have a sleep ova” which also serve to identify them. One common quality, especially amongst the leathery women-folk, is a sandpaper like voice, possibly the result of the combination of ingesting cigarettes and alcohol, and performing oral sex on meth dealers. These qualities are distinctive but not distinguishing. They are not limited to my region and are shared by many other people. 

   In other parts of our great country—and the world over—certain regions are noted for having been hubs or birth places of great artistic phenomena. Nordic regions have laid claim to spawning the Medical Waste Sculpture era and in Southeast Asia, The Quadruple Amputee Ballet is a source of national pride with its synchronized flopping and rolling (viewed from the side it looks like one stump). 

  In the world of music (our subject of interest) Kansas City, New Orleans, New York, Vienna, and London each have a heritage so historically noteworthy that each merits a social study of equal scope to its musical significance. Since I am in no way qualified to perform this study, I will leave it up to you. In the mean time, I will provide food for thought, subsequent regurgitation, and ultimately, internal bleeding and death.   

   Let me begin in England by pointing out that the “British Invasion” contained as many pale, malnourished, dentally-challenged geezers as an Alabama nursing home. This gives evidence to disprove the notion that poor nutrition and gum disease alone were responsible for the great popular music output of post-war England. An absence of any Alabama Invasion lends further merit to this theory. It also hints at the idea that irritating accents are no guarantee of artistic distinction.  

   Generations prior to the one that brought us the Marshall Stack and the Groupie gave us the greatest music city in history, Vienna. For more than a century Vienna stood as the capitol of music performance and education. This may have led to the assumption that rich pastry, big puffy dresses, and rancid smelling wigs are integral to musical greatness. One need only look to Oprah to know they can be mutually exclusive.

  Here in America, the birthplace of Jazz—New Orleans—carries a very special importance. The music that defines our great country was discovered here and went on to shape generations of musicians. The mystique of this region is so profound that residents insist that some of these artists are immortal and are present in the streets to this day. I think it was just the combination of flooding and shallow graves. 

   After WWII, thanks to genocide and nuclear superiority, the USA was given the gift of displaced, raped and robbed musicians and conductors. They came here from Europe, with pinkies extended, and lent their considerable abilities to our burgeoning orchestras, helping them to become among the greatest in the world. Haughty, dandy divas and maestros wearing ascots and tiaras looking so far down their noses at us it’s a wonder any music was made at all. New York became the center of everything musical until the 1970’s and 80’s at which time Leonard Bernstein personally drained all the semen from every 20 year old homosexual in the tri-state area.

  I hope you are inspired to seek out the unique qualities, artistic and social, of your region. There may be no British Invasion brewing, but I’m sure there’s more than one solitary, middle-age man waiting to regale you with local charm or cut up a little kid.

(Steven Mandato)