Back at the MOG Ranch again... Kudos to the infamous 'MOG Brain' for my 3rd 'Featured P/L'... Being the whore that I am--(have I mentioned that I am a so-called 'professional DJ' who never went professional? Now a moot distinction since the entire profession (radio-wise at least) was eliminated decades ago...)--I got in touch with my Livergulch roots just enough to do the trick... Too bad most of my 'real' P/L's get zero interest... Ah, but I should know better by now, what was it Frank said...(see 2nd featured P/L...)?

SOAPBOX DEPT.

While MOG lacks lots of stuff in their supposed '8 Million Song' library, I've noticed that when it comes to obscure labels, MOG often has most, if not all, of their catalog(ue)... So far, I've looked at: Ninja Tune, Morr Music, n5MD, City Centre Offices, Darla, Anticon, Merck, Merge, Static Discos, and Ghostly International--and their stuff is almost always on MOG! To further investigate, just bring up a given label's website, click on 'Artists' [duh...] then start typing the artist's names into MOG's almighty search box. If you are looking for labels to investigate that are even more obscure, just go to Darla's website and work your way through their copious 'Exclusive Labels' list.

Don't forget to ACTUALLY PURCHASE the best stuff you find--musicians can't live on your 5 bucks a month MOG fee... What? You think riffs grow on trees???

As for what's lacking on MOG... Well... I'm glad I'm no longer a rabid fan of 70's Rock bands, b/c there is: no Beatles (Oops! That's a given...), no Zep, no Eagles, no 'Band', no KIng Crimson, no.... how many more are on this list...? I do understand having no: Coil, or Chris & Cosey, or A Certain Ratio, or Invisible Scratch Pickles, or Two Lone Swordsmen, or Damian Lazarus, or Peace Orchestra (Peter Kruder), or Kruder & Dorfmeister, or Arto Lindsay, or Smith & Mighty, or cLOUDDEAD??? ) Not to mention the 1st Bent, or Lemon Jelly...??? It seems they're weird and/or obtuse one and all, so who gives a rat's patoot if they're absent from the search menu...

As an eye opener, take a gander at some of the things MOG does have... Have you noticed how many total 'vanity' releases, needful obscurities, and general useless fodder comprise MOG's storied and lengendary '8 Million Song' music library...? After all, how many truly GOOD songs have ever been written? 10? 20? 200,000? Hmmmm... Good question... Finally, what's up with MOG's "No album found at this time for this artist"? What does that mean? Don't give up? Check back later? Or..."We're MOG, our ass is covered for 'normal' music afficionados, so... DEAL WITH IT YOU SNOB!?!" (Whaddya expect for 5 measly bucks a month?)

REVIEWS:

Pale Sketcher - Can I Go Now EP - Really cool guitar, (a sad rarity these days...where'd the 'riffers' go?), nice melodies, ethereal, albiet overprocessed a la 'Telepopmuzik', vocals--what more do you require? I know! Each mix has a TOTALLY DIFFERENT APPROACH, not the mere knob twirling and effects tweaking that constitute a so-called 'remix' these days... These guys have seriously subtle chops! Can't wait for the full length...

Syntaks - Ylajali - Long, slow arrangements of riveting ambient avant pop from this Danish duet. Heavenly choruses weave about--some serious artistry goin' on here... Definitely an upgrade from previous instrumental noodlings.

Fax - Zig Zag - I've always preferred large portions of fat guitar licks with my technopop, and Mexicali's Fax doesn't scrimp. This disc exudes joyous happy thoughts throughout--no tortured art anywhere in evidence... Nothin' but perky, fun, bubbly stuff in large doses--buy it if only to provide a mood elevator that isn't pharmaceutical in nature... Oops... Isn't that the aforementioned ciudad's main industry? My bad... (Actually, I would probably be getting my medical care in Mexicali right now if I didn't have full medical--I'm sure this morning's bracing chemo cocktail cost my insurance company a pretty peso or three...).

PLAYLIST DEPT.

P/L 23 Summer Smoothies XI - Get Sideways With It... 'Nuff said... Out now!

P/L 24 Ve Luv Der Germans (sort of...) Out sooner than now!

STORY TIME

Brown Shoes Don't Make It... Quit School... Why Fake It? (Mothers of Invention - 1968)

Back into the trusty time machine I borrowed from Calvin and Hobbes. The year is 1974, back when I looked like Jesus, I had just landed back in the Gulch with a big fat 'L' tatooed to my forehead. Reading the want ads when you've dropped out of college is no fun at all--it seems employers have this dogged insistence that applicants have this thing called 'experience'. Yes, Catch-22 takes on a special meaning when you realize that you can't get experience w/o getting the job, and you can't get the job w/o getting experience... I then found an ad seemingly tailored to my needs--it seemed that the Curry Co. was looking for workers in Yosemite Village. No experience was necessary, just hair above the collar (bye bye pony tail), white dress shirts, black slacks, and black dress shoes. My Dad was kind enough (and happy enough--to get rid of me) to give me a ride to the park. I was hired on the spot (little did I know that they would have taken anyone with a pulse). Okay then, I thought, I can do this thing, how hard could it be...

They started me off as a busboy for the Village's main lunchtime cloth napkin style destination (read: tourist clip joint...). It was there I learned that a waitress is bad if the customer's tip consists only of loose change embedded in the mashed potatoes. Even worse--the loose change tip is trapped within a full water glass that has been left inverted on the table by the clever use of a plastic menu and quick hands... Try to retrieve the tip and you trigger a table top Tsunami... Ha Ha! Anyway, the last laugh was on me, as said lousy waitress went out of her way to have me fired. Next thing I know, I'm downstairs at their cafe flippin' burgers. After realizing quickly that fast food frying is harder than it looks, and failing miserably at it, I was assigned to janitorial services. I wasn't even skilled at being unskilled. Things got really out of hand when I realized during bathroom duty that ordinary civilized people revert to deeply disturbing levels of savagery while on vacation. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I was politely informed that my services would no longer be required.

It turned out that I was predestined to be screwed over after 2 or 3 weeks--schmuks like me were (are?) hired to fill in the unavoidable gap between when their regular crew went off to college and the end of the tourist season. "Oops! Sorry", said the Curry Company's rep, did we forget to tell you that the position was only for a couple weeks? Ouch! So much for that plan. Devastated, I gathered my belongings and hitchhiked my way back home. It was then I learned a basic rule of 'thumb' (har har) for bumming rides--even if you've been waiting for HOURS--never accept a ride that drops you off in the middle of nowhere. At least I got to hang out in Yosemite for a while, so it wasn't all bad...

My next 'break' came when I learned that the local Holiday Inn was hiring dishwashers. It was here that I found out when some manager says you're hired, that's not always the case. I should have known something was fishy in that my first day on the job was Thanksgiving Day. Of course the restaurant was packed all night with people too lame and/or lazy to cook their own bird. I managed to keep up with the demand for clean dishes and silverware, but the ever expanding pile of pots and pans proved to be overwhelming. The place closed for the night and like a fool I kept working until the job was done--which was around 5 AM. When I reported back to work the next day, the guy whom I had unknowingly replaced said "Who the hell are you? You don't work here!" He laughed when I told him how hard I worked the previous shift, "Oh! You're the sucker they hired so I could take Turkey Day off... Thanks man!" When I then confronted a manager, I was informed that the guy who supposedly 'hired' me was not authorized to do so--and thus I was not going to be paid at all for my laborious scrubbing. After much squawking, I managed to extract a few bucks from the Holiday Inn turnip--but only for the regular shift--all that early morning slavery was deemed 'unauthorized overtime'. Lesson learned: If there's no W-2 form, there is no job!

Next up was a brief gig working for a company that repaired smoke and water damage. We used TSP as if it was tap water to scrub off the smoke stains (actually we just managed to redistribute the nicotine--the house belonged to an old beatnik couple who chain-smoked Pell Mells (which just happened to be my brand at the time... Now I'm smoking Marlboro Special Blends whenever I cheat on my nicotine patch (like right now)--so far, contracting stage 3 cancer has just got me to cut way back (3 packs a week as opposed to my previous 30!) but not completely quit (Sorry Doc(s)) isn't addiction a hoot?). When I mentioned that we were using the product unsafely, the foreman started laughing so hard that tears welled up in his eyes. He said there was a simple solution to my concerns--I could quit. The water damage gig was cool, we just had to replace a carpet. It turned out that some rich guy's (actually Mr. Denevi of camera store fame) indoor pool had overflowed. Seeing that amazing house with all its pricy amenities really got me feeling sorry for myself--a loser like me was never going to live in such luxury. (Which turned out to be true--I still live in a rented bungalow @ age 55. The nice thing is that I no longer worry about so-called 'success'). This fine job then evaporated without explanation, as shaky jobs often do...

Then came the carpet cleaning job--this was where I realized that I would never cut it as a con artist. We were relentlessly pressured to push the so-called carpet 'treatment' upon the customers--that way we could earn a hefty commision to supplement our meager minimum wages. Trouble was, the 'treatment' was a total rip-off--instead of being the advertised soil 'repellent', it was in fact a strong attractant of dirt. I just couldn't bring myself to rip the unsuspecting customers off, so instead of conning them, I would actually clean their carpets. On a couple of occasions though I had a hard time not selling the treatment as some customers had been so well-conned by the previous 'cleaner', that they insisted upon my applying it--they actually had become convinced that it was a miraculous 'product'. It's amazing sometimes that people can be so darn gullible... What was really annoying was the weekly payday ritual--the carpet cleaning company was so financially shaky that only the first few paychecks would cash--anyone hitting the bank after that was out of luck. What this situation caused was a no-holds barred race to the bank as soon as the checks were issued. You know you're a loser when the company you work for is always running out of money...

My Waterloo this time happened in a ratty neighborhood by the Nimitz freeway in Hayward. When the customer, an ancient drunken ex-floozy, opened the door (resplendent in her tattered housecoat and Lauren Bacall style cigarette holder, did I mention I'm old...) the stench that was overwhelming. It turned out that the yapping little rat dog that was nipping at my ankles had turned her white mohair dining room carpet into the doggie equivalent of a litter box--just about every square foot sported a neat little pile of poodle poop. I immediately retreated outside recoiling in horror, telling the lady that there was no way in hell that was going to clean her disgusting carpet. Her response was, "You clean my carpet or I'll have you fired young man!" I saved her the trouble by quitting the stupid job, thus ending my short-lived carpet cleaning career. (Ever steam cleaned a filthy carpet on a really hot day?)

Of course the fun part of losing all these loser jobs was going back to my folks to explain that yes, yet again, their son wasn't even any good at being a loser. Then things started looking up. As I mentioned in a previous blog, a friend of mine going back to an Eastern college set me up to inherit his position as the graveyard foreman and furnace operator at a tool bit company right down the road from my folks house. I loved the job itself, it was dangerous, it took a lot of skill, and you got to do lots of cool quasi-scientific stuff like monitoring pressure and temperature, and calculating specific gravities. My problem was being the supposed 'foreman' over people who were way older, way bigger, and WAY dumber... When I told them to do something, they'd just laugh at me. When I threatened to report them, they would counter that by promising to kill me. As a result, I'd do most of the work, especially Friday nights, when they'd show up drunk more often than not.

Despite my slothlike 'co-workers', I was getting along okay--the big red 'L' stamped on my forehead was finally starting to fade just a bit. Then, of course, they hired the biggest bully in town. Not surprising, since the job was a true graveyard shift, i.e., midnight to 8:00 AM, and paid barely over minumum wages--they weren't going to be hiring The Gulch's best and brightest (they all worked at the Rad Lab (now called Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) which was a block down East Avenue... I couldn't work there BTW b/c my dear old Dad worked there and it would thus violate government anti-nepotism statutes). I had worked with knuckle-draggers before, but this guy was special--his favorite activity was to beat the crap out of people just for the fun of it. What made the situation much worse was the fact that I had been 'seeing' his ex-girlfriend for a while and he didn't take too kindly to that. Still, weeks of seeming calm ensued--he said over and over that we were cool, that he didn't care what or who 'that bitch' was doing now--but I knew all along that if he showed up for work drunk, that all bets would be off.

Sure enough, that Friday night (actually Saturday morning...) finally arrived. He came in roaring drunk, so drunk that I dared to advise him that maybe he should go back home and sleep it off. Instead, he was all smiles and laughter--telling me what a great guy I was. After a while he seemed to calm down a bit, so I let my guard down. Bad move, b/c at some point he strode up to me, grinning fron ear to ear, then, without saying a word, he Sunday-punched me with everything he had. Of course, my backside hit the deck like a sack of dirty laundry. He then pounced on my semi-conscious body such that his knees were pinning down my arms (he had a lot of practice at this sort of thing). Next came a seemingly endless series of lefts and rights. Just picture Ralphie pummeling the yellow-eyed bully in 'A Christmas Story'--trouble was, I wasn't yellow-eyed, was hardly a bully (my pugilistic skills are akin to those of Ralphie's little brother) and this psycho was definitely NOT Ralphie! The blood began to fly about freely as he set to work rearranging my face; he then became further enraged because somehow he couldn't knock me out. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the other employees--who were laughing hysterically (like all true 'Livermorons', they love to see 'sissys' get the holy crap beat out of them)--finally pulled the sadistic son-of-a-bitch off me.

I returned to work on Monday with my face sporting various and sundry new hues and contours. My attacker was gone, as he thankfully got himself arrested over that weekend beating up someone else even worse. Conservative estimates held that this guy had beat the livin' crap out of over 100 guys. No one ever dared turn him in, fearing he'd kill them when he got out--which he did, in fact, eventually do at some point to some sorry bastard. My attacker (Mr. Psycho jr.?) was replaced then by a fellow who really had a screw loose. His claim to fame was being dishonorably discharged from the Army for sadism! That is not an easy thing to do people... Anyway, he soon hears all about the 'fight' (read: ambush...) and decides to make it his mission to teach me how to fight. He did, in fact, give me some excellent tips regarding how to: disable, and/or maim, and/or kill, someone quickly with a few simple, very barbaric, moves--moves that entailed such things as: tearing or biting off your opponent's testicles, gouging out their eyeballs, ripping their windpipes out, biting their jugular vein (he was very technical, almost scientific, in his descriptions)--not exactly the rules of pugilistic arts as the Marquis of Queensbury envisioned...

Needless to say, another 'Friday night' arrives and this dude shows up 2 hours late, totally plowed. "Let's go right now!" he slurred as he staggered his way in, next thing I knew he'd socked me good right in the face. As I recoiled from the impact, he (Mr. Psycho III?) screamed, "Hit me!" Of course I was reluctant to hit him and was just looking for some way to get out of there alive. One of the main issues was the setting--it was, after all, an industrial plant and thus there was a blunt and/or sharp object pretty much in every direction. Anyway, it soon feel into a rhythm of 'POW!', "Hit me!"; 'POW!', "Hit me!"; 'POW!', "Hit me!" (What is that, a waltz?)--as before, I proved that I can at least take a punch or ten. Eventually I came to realize that Mr. Psycho III just wasn't going to take no for an answer, so I finally, and with extreme malice, hit him. Somehow, my right cross caught him just right and knocked him out cold (or did he just pass out...). His co-workers carried him off and someone drove him home. I, meanwhile wiped off my blood-soaked face, and nursed my wounded hand--it felt like I had broken every knuckle. I guess I did have some saved-up stuff in that punch, as it was the first, and, (at least so far, 35 or so years later) the last one I ever threw.

So now it's time for a belated pop quiz... (sorry to my first 66 readers you missed it...)

POP QUIZ 4 Essay Qs (20 pts max. each)

1) Explain, using the concept of impulse = change of momentum (Ft = m(v2-v1)), why it made such a BIG difference that Mr. Psycho III gleefully leaned into my punch, rather than turning away as people who are not insane are prone to do...

2) Explain, using the equation for pressure, i.e., pressure = force / area (P = F/A), why a sharp weapon can penetrate human flesh so much more efficiently than a blunt object, with the same mass and density, applied with an equivalent amout of force.

NOTE: Since no one has submitted their answers to any quiz thus far, you bloggers are all earning a solid F in this class. Gee, just like the preponderance of my students in the real world--ah but they have a good excuse, as most all of them face daily the prospect getting pounded, stabbed, or shot by people much worse than Mr. Psycho III, all they have to do is leave their home--if they are lucky enough to have one. Lately I've had to teach Phys and Chem to way too many kids living in vans and station wagons... They are screwed from the get-go... But, then again, I had a 17 year-old student once who legally emancipated herself from her loser-ass parents, got a job, got a roof over her head, then re-enrolled in school. She entered my class 4 months late, made up the work in two weeks, aced everything I could dish out, and earned the most amazing A+ I've ever seen in my 18+ years of teaching. What a bright young lady she was.