TEAM LAST CALL

Interview with AFI's Davey Havok

2009-11-05T00:13:00.000-05:00

Davey Havok is a dark and enigmatic rock star, waif-thin with androgynous good looks, a straightedge vegan who has become one of the voices of a brokenhearted and disenfranchised emo generation.
He’s also naked as a jaybird, as the hapless maid in his hotel is about to discover.
“I’m on the phone!” he hollers to the startled maid. “Thanks!”
When fully clothed, the 33-year-old singer spends his time shocking people in an entirely different way as the frontman of goth-glam punk band AFI. On the band’s newest album, Crash Love – the eighth record of the band’s 18-year career – Havok and company continue in their chameleonic ways, this time steering away from the electronica-tinged sound of 2006’s number one smash Decemberunderground and embracing a driving, melodic, bare-bones rock sound.
In anticipation of AFI’s November 12 show at the Electric Factory, Team Last Call tracked down the au naturale crooner to talk about why you won’t find him crying in a corner anytime soon.

Team Last Call: You’ve said that you’ve never been more proud of a record than you are of Crash Love. What prompted you to say that?
Davey Havok: It’s hard to step back from something you created and explain why it means so much to you. It moves me in a way that our music’s never moved me before. For the first time, when I listened to it through, I felt a sense that it could transcend any sort of era. That’s not to say it will, but I was struck with that feeling. I thought about it more – and I don’t think I’ve ever articulated this – but this is the first album really ever that I feel I can play for my friends and say, “OK, check out our new album,” without having to skip any songs.

TLC: Especially starting off in punk and hardcore like you did, you’re taking a huge risk by constantly expanding your sound, and it’s something you’ve gotten a lot of flack for. Have you reconciled yourselves to that?
DH: Absolutely. It’s something that we accepted very early on. It really comes from the ethos of being a punk and hardcore band. It was really because we just didn’t give a fuck. In the same way that we were playing punk and hardcore and didn’t give a fuck that anybody liked it, we continued to write and play what we liked and didn’t give a fuck if anybody liked it. Our hope is that people do like it, but if they have an issue with it, it doesn’t matter because we’re doing what makes us happy.

TLC: I can’t believe you keep getting away with it.
DH: Neither can I. Well, I can believe it in some respect, because the longer we’ve done it, the more our fans have come to expect that progression from us. Not to fear it, but actually in a way demand it. To release a record that sounds like our last record would be more of a detriment to us.

TLC: AFI attracts a lot of fans who feel like outcasts. Why do you think people react that way to your music?
DH: I think it really comes naturally from me. I really feel that likely it’s pervasive in the sentiment of the records because my feelings tend to be contrary to those of your general, average person. So if people connect to that and recognize that, it’s just something that’s part of the way I write.

TLC: Did you have music as you were growing up that served the same purpose for you?
DH: Pretty much everything I love was music from people who disassociated themselves from the masses in some way. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t a massive band, if you look at The Cure, for instance. But their perspective was not the average.

TLC: You seem relatively upbeat and sociable. It’s funny, because I’ve always had this idea of you, like, always crying in the dark.
DH: Most people do.

TLC: Do you care about that?
DH: Oh, no. It doesn’t bother me. Whatever people think of me is fine, however they want to envision me. I find it curious. I’m always intrigued by who people think I am and the persona they have created for me, what they think I’m into, what they think I’m not into. But I certainly understand that consideration, that I would be a bleak and miserable person, because a lot of my lyrics are very despondent. Luckily, I have the music to use as catharsis. If I didn’t, I might spend more time sitting and crying in a corner than I need to. Also, I think manners are very important. To be a sullen rain cloud when conversing with someone, be they your friends or a journalist, I think is inappropriate.

TLC: You are famous for your lifestyle choices, being vegan and straightedge. Why is that stuff the most important to project?
DH: I really think for the good of this world that, if I could have it my way, the whole world would be vegan and straightedge. So that’s why I feel it’s important to create an awareness of this lifestyle, create an awareness of the choices people make. To bring awareness about those lifestyles can bring a positive change, if only on the level of an individual.

TLC: It’s wildly entertaining, the amount of wrong guesses and suppositions you can find online about what AFI stands for. Do you have any personal favorites?
DH: I’ve heard we’re Christian, and that always tickles me. I’ve heard that I’m a junkie. I’ve heard that I’m a vampire. I’m a junkie vampire. That can be your pull-quote.

TLC: That quote just got boxed out in 24-point type.
DH: Thanks. I don’t spend a lot of time reading about myself or researching myself, so it’s hard to come by this stuff. It’s always pretty funny, and it’s rarely true.

TLC: Even the acronym itself. “A Flame Internal!”
DH: We’ve had people say it stands for something that doesn’t even have the right letters beginning the words. “Oh, that stands for Ah, Fuck You.” It’s like, what are you talking about?

TLC: You started this band 18 years ago at the age of 15, practicing in garages. Do you ever think about what you might say to that kid?
DH: Just do what you love, I’d say. Don’t try to write something that you think someone else will like. Write something that you like, and if they don’t like it, fuck ’em. That’s what it’s about.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Dethklok interview

2009-11-05T00:06:00.000-05:00

As you already know, Dethklok is the biggest band on Earth. Ever. The Norwegian death metal band boasts a fan base of millions who willingly risk life and limb (and often end up losing both) just to see Dethklok play. The band is so big that it ranks as the world’s seventh largest economy. So powerful that it’s been called “the world’s greatest cultural force.” So unreal that it’s a … cartoon.
Dethklok’s wildly popular animated series, Metalocalypse, returns this month for its third season on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. The series’ creator, writer, songwriter and resident guitar god, Brendon Small, is currently touring America with a live-band version of Dethklok, performing such timeless classics as “Bloodrocuted” and “Briefcase Full of Guts” under an animated screen. The band’s second album, Dethalbum II, debuted in September at #15 on Billboard, making it the highest-charting death metal album in history.

Team Last Call: I’m trying to imagine the initial pitch you made to the network for a cartoon about a death metal band that murders its own fans.
Brendon Small: I work for a network that is contrarian, so they got it immediately. It wasn’t too hard of a sell. I know they’ve gotten tons of pitches for, like, “It’s a band, but they’re zombies.” This isn’t a new thing. It started with The Archies. They made millions of dollars off of this band that didn’t exist.

TLC: So, you basically get to make cartoons, tell jokes and play guitar for a living.
BS: I definitely have the ultimate job. I can’t think of any other job I’d rather be doing. The only bad part is that I talked people into financing it, and now I have to deliver it. Even though it’s fun work and it’s satisfying work, it’s still work. I don’t take vacations and I don’t sleep that often. Right now I’m at that point where I’m like, “Oh, wow. I’m missing deadlines on the writing side because I’m on the road. I wonder how that’s going to work out?”

TLC: You’re out-selling and out-charting the “real” bands, some of which, like Mastodon, you’re even touring with. Does that get uncomfortable?
BS: I don’t believe that people would buy my record in place of buying a Mastodon record. I think there’s room for everything. I think the only person I would be in direct competition with is if there were another cartoon metal band out there. And hey, any other dildo that wants to go create a TV show and do what I did – why didn’t you do it first?

TLC: Dethklok is kind of like the gateway drug of metal bands.
BS: That has been the coolest part about this. The thing that I get is, “Hey, this is my first metal show ever,” or “I never purchased a metal record before,” or “I don’t even like metal, but I like Dethklok. What else is out there?”

TLC: Goodbye Hannah Montana, hello Cannibal Corpse.
BS: If I can do just a little of that, then I’m happy.

TLC: For the uninitiated, can you explain the purpose of a pain waiver?
BS: A pain waiver legally disallows any liability for anything that could possibly happen to you within the realm of Dethklok. So you trip, you fall, you die … You basically fill it out and you enter your credit card number, your pin number, your social security number, your date of birth and all that stuff, and then we have rights to film your dead body, we have rights to all kinds of fucked up stuff.

TLC: It even says that if the sight of you getting murdered disturbs the band members …
BS: They have the right to sue you. It’s pretty harsh, but you gotta think about the band. You gotta make them happy. If you bum them out by dying in front of them, then they can sue you.

TLC: What do you think is the grossest thing that’s happened to audience members at a Dethklok show?
BS: I’d probably say falling in love with each other. I think that’s pretty disgusting.

TLC: What was your personal favorite crowd massacre scene to write?
BS: It’s hard to go beyond what we did in the first show, which was, they do a coffee jingle and they pour scalding hot coffee on people in these gigantic vats, and then they put cream and sugar on top of them too, just to humiliate them even more. We could launch convicted felons into the sky and destroy them with a laser beam if we wanted to, but that fucking coffee thing, it’s hard to beat that. I think tarring and feathering would be kind of fun. Like, smearing their collective faces into dog shit would be a funny thing to me.

TLC: What powers does Dethklok’s music have?
BS: There are things that happen once they get together and start playing. There are even possible supernatural things that happen. Sometimes they get together and play and the weather starts changing.

TLC: What’s next for Dethklok?
BS: They’re in a very precarious place since we left them in the last episode. They’re basically without a manager, and they’re driving their own business right into the shitter. This third season deals with a little bit more of that “OK, we’re up here. Who the fuck are we now? Now what do we do?”

TLC: And what’s next for you?
BS: In the near future, I see a vacation happening. I won’t fucking do anything. I’ll sleep and put on 40 or 50 pounds. Eat some really good food. Kill a couple of trannies. You know, the American dream.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

All That Remains interview

2009-11-05T00:02:00.000-05:00

The Boston boys (and girl) of All That Remains became the toast of metal-town following the release of their most recent album, Overcome, which catapulted the band from Ozzfest second-stage anonymity to hard-rock radio celebrity. With the Top 10 Mainstream Rock success of “Two Weeks,” ATR showed that even metalcore bands can play Fall Out Boy for a day.
Incidentally, “metalcore” isn’t a label the band takes kindly. They’re an opinionated bunch, as Team Last Call found out first-hand during a recent interview with guitarist Mike Martin.

Team Last Call: Prior to “Two Weeks,” was radio success even on your radar?
Mike Martin: Not even close. We were actually thinking about not putting the song on the record, because when we heard it was all singing, we were like, “That’s weird.” I initially was just like, “Wow, kids are going to hate this so much.”

TLC: You’ve taken some flack for making your sound more melodic. Do you care?
MM: Nope. When a record comes out and sells five times faster than your previous record – which sold fairly well – you really don’t have time to care, because everything’s too busy going awesome.

TLC: It probably takes the edge off of little Billy’s mean blog post when you can finally have a good per diem.
MM: Or you get on stage and there’s a thousand people at your headlining show. It’s like, “Well, OK, the little jerkoff who’s masturbating to Internet porn all night in his mom’s basement doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.”

TLC: At this point, how do you measure success for the band?
MM: I guess you could already consider it a complete success, making a living off of it, making enough money. None of us have jobs when we go home anymore because we don’t really have time. We’re literally living off music. We’re playing every night of the week. That’s considered “making it” to a lot of people.

TLC: To be a touring musician and not going home to live in your parents’ basement is a success to a lot of people.
MM: Which all of us still do, basically, but whatever.

TLC: I’ve always heard All That Remains referred to as a metalcore band, but I just don’t hear it in the music.
MM: That just makes you smarter than everybody else, because we’re not.

TLC: Well, go on ...
MM: That’s the stupidest word for music ever invented, basically. It’s just dumb. If a metal band has dynamics in their music and it isn’t just this straight double-bass crap the whole time, it’s called metalcore. It’s just annoying and awful. We’re just a metal band, and that’s really all there is to it. It’s simple.

TLC: Which is worse, when people call you metalcore or when people call you a Christian band?
MM: I saw this one post like, “These guys are a bunch of Christian assholes.” Which is hilarious, because we’re the furthest thing from it. Just another example of people being completely ignorant and having no idea what they talk about.

TLC: When you get to those nasty sites like Lambgoat, sometimes it’s just best to turn off the monitor ...
MM: Lambgoat’s just straight-up vicious. I went on that website one time, and I was like, “OK, I’m never coming back.” I saw one comment that was like, “I hope this band flips off a cliff on their bus and dies.” Like that’s really necessary. Jesus Christ.

TLC: Is it true that [frontman] Phil [Labonte] is a conservative Republican?
MM: I don’t know what he is. I just know that he talks about politics a lot, and every time he does I leave the room. He sits in the front lounge on Twitter and watches MSNBC for 15 hours a day. He Tweets about everything that happens every 15 seconds. If you start talking politics with him, be prepared to be busy for hours and hours, and be prepared for me to not be in the room.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

October 2009 – The Most Delicious Way To Die

2009-10-05T23:30:00.003-04:00

It’s October, which means it’s time for Team Last Call’s annual Halloween column. Most of TLC’s previous October columns were devoted to scary subjects like Mark Wahlberg’s superfluous nipple and John McCain’s old man smell. But this year, we were really looking to raise the bar, to find a story subject that, like the realization that Larry King might still be sexually active, would haunt readers long after the column was over.

That’s when we came across the KFC Double Down sandwich, without a doubt the single most terrifying thing we’ve encountered in 2009. This bad boy is like the Steve Buscemi’s teeth of handheld food. At its core, the Double Down is a bacon sandwich, which is already bad news, only this bacon sandwich comes slathered in swiss and pepper jack cheese and the mayonnaise-based Colonel’s sauce. Oh, and instead of bread, the Double Down is held together by two deep-fried chicken filets. In summation, that’s a bacon sandwich in a bun made of fried chicken. I don’t know what kind of magnificent pervert thought it up, but he deserves a medal, and then deserves to be shot.

When we first heard about the Double Down, we thought it was a joke. So we decided to consult the leading authority on the subject, a website everyone should visit at least once a day: This Is Why You’re Fat (Tag line: “Where dreams become heart attacks”). Sure enough, we dialed up the site (www.thisiswhyyourefat.com) and there the sandwich sat, glistening and greasy like a breaded Rush Limbaugh. Our curiosity piqued, we decided to track down the folks behind the scenes at This Is Why You’re Fat, Jessica Amason and Richard Blakeley, to ask a few questions about the Double Down.

Team Last Call: Why was the Double Down a good fit for the site?

Jess: Needless to say, any meat-on-cheese-on-bacon-on-cheese-on-more-meat is a given for This is Why You’re Fat.

Richard: Cause that’s why you’re fat, duh!

TLC: What were your first thoughts upon hearing about the sandwich?

Jess: I thought it was what SNL’s Taco Town Taco was to Taco Bell, except this was KFC actually owning its own absurdity!

TLC: Did you, like most people, think it was a joke?

Richard: Yes, and a very good one at that, because there was a commercial to go along with it on Food Geekery.

Jess: The commercial sold it for me. I thought, “Well, they’ve gone and done it now, haven’t they? They’ve taken fast food to the next level.”

TLC: Have you had a chance to try one?

Jess: No, and honestly, I never had anything against the traditional sandwich structure. If it ain’t broke, don’t throw more meat on it!

Richard: I don’t eat chicken or bacon, so I’m not planning on doing it any time soon.

TLC: Is there another sandwich you’ve discovered this year as heart attack-tastic as this?

Jess: In the same spirit of “sandwiches 2.0,” I’m partial to the Pizza Burger. [A giant burger between two large meat pizzas, topped with eggs, bacon and colby and pepper jack cheese]

Richard: The Pattie LaBurger. [A triple bacon cheeseburger with deep-fried patties as buns]

It didn’t take long after its debut for word about the Double Down to circulate. “How can I get one?” everyone wanted to know. “And how bad is it for you? Would eating it kill you right away, or would it take a few hours? And why is Rush Limbaugh such a massive turd?”

Speculation about the sandwich’s caloric content was running wild. Men’s Health food and nutrition editor Matt Goulding wrote in an article, “Independent labs are estimating that [the Double Down] has around 1,200 calories and over 50 fat grams, based on what’s in the other KFC sandwiches.” But were those numbers to be trusted?

Not according to KFC public relations guy Rick Maynard, whom Team Last Call contacted in early September.

“There have been numerous incorrect reports in the media regarding the calories in a Double Down,” he says. “While we wouldn’t run final numbers on a product unless it is rolled out nationally, we estimate the Double Down at about 590 calories.”

Stop laughing. He’s serious.

While Maynard wasn’t able to come clean about the Double Down’s stats (he also claimed the sandwich has precisely zero grams of trans fat), he was able to take the time to crush our dreams of trying one for ourselves.

“[The Double Down] is a test market item that is available for only a brief time and in only two markets: Providence, RI, and Omaha, NE,” he says. “At this time, there are no plans to introduce it in Pennsylvania.”

At least we still have Pattie LaBurger.

Little Big Town interview

2009-10-05T23:25:00.003-04:00

It’s two in the afternoon, and Kimberly Schlapman is in a hotel room somewhere near Portland, OR, trying in vain to pacify her 2-year-old with ice chips.

As one of four members in Nashville band Little Big Town, Schlapman is wrestling to reconcile her two new identities: mom and country music star. Her life as it stands now is a blitzkrieg of diaper changes and meet-and-greets, with nightly stadium concerts peppered in for good measure. Despite the hectic schedule, however, she and her bandmates are enjoying one of the first truly peaceful moments of their career, which up to this point had been pockmarked with record label strife, divorces, and family deaths (Schlapman’s first husband died of a heart attack in 2005).

After more than a decade of trials and tribulations, the dust seems to have finally settled in Little Big Town. The release of the group’s latest album, A Place To Land, signaled the beginning of a healthy relationship with new label Capitol Records. All four members are happily married (two of them to each other), and the babies are coming in rapid fire. Team Last Call caught up with Schlapman (and daughter) to talk about tragedy, triumph and other aspects of life during Little Big Town’s pregnant pause.

Team Last Call: Until recently, your life as a band was just one tragedy after another. Do you feel like survivors to a certain extent?

Kimberly Schlapman: Oh, definitely. We have persevered through all kinds of stuff. We are definitely survivors, and we are survivors because we love the music and we love each other. When one of us is down, the other three pick up the load and carry that one along. We have a really special bond.

TLC: To be a band for this amount of time and to still have your original four members is amazing in and of itself, but then to go through that kind of adversity ...

KS: I’m proud of it. Karen and I had this idea about 13 years ago, I think, to do this band. We knew that we would have to put together the best vocal collaboration we could, but also, it had to be the right personalities that could live together, because we knew we’d be stuck together more than we would our families. Thankfully, I guess we made the right choices. Karen and Jimi ended up getting married, so that was the perfect choice for her.

TLC: I read that before you were successful, you were at a point where you would have qualified for food stamps.

KS: We made such very little money. My late husband was my provider. He had a good job, so it was OK that I wasn’t making anything on the road. But some of the members of the band didn’t have someone to provide for them. The four of us would drive ourselves in the van anywhere in the country that would have us play, just for gas money and to cover the van rental. There were many, many very lean years for our band.

TLC: Now you’re on the other side of the spectrum with these huge tours. You can hardly sneeze without being nominated for some kind of award.

KS: We’re just thankful for our journey. As we look back, we know that every part of our journey was meaningful and for a certain purpose. We wouldn’t want the easy road, looking back. Our journey is the reason we write the songs we write today and the reason we make the music that we make. I’m sure of it.

TLC: You guys are like a commune on wheels with your spouses and children in tow. What’s that like?

KS: We love it. We thankfully have gone from a minivan to two buses and trailers, so we’ve got a little room to spread out. We have the crew on one bus, and then we have the four of us and spouses and two babies on our bus. It’s fun. It’s a challenge. As a mother, it’s a challenge with a two-year-old to keep her quiet at times. But when we get down and get kind of drudged in the business part of it, it’s nice to have the perspective of a little infant child. We just love it.

TLC: It must be tiring, because you have downtime as a musician, but you don’t really get to punch a clock on being a mom.

KS: I’ve waited a very long time to be a mom. It’s the best job in the whole world. I wouldn’t trade anything for it. And it is challenging at times, and it’s tiring, definitely, but I’m used to it now. I think I’m just tired all the time and I don’t even notice it. I’m just used to sleep deprivation and just being run ragged. But my husband also comes out. He’s just my rock. He is my helpmate and is Mr. Mom out here on the road.

TLC: There really isn’t even a hint of controversy in your background. I think there’s something about being in the country market where having a clean image also seems to be expected.

KS: It is expected. I think it has a lot to do with how we were raised. Not that any other artists were raised poorly or anything. But we were raised to appreciate what we have and to give back. It probably is expected in our format, and I’m glad. We’re just normal, average people. We’re not perfect. We certainly know how to have fun.

TLC: What would you put on Little Big Town’s tombstone one day?

KS: I think this is a band that never quit and always persevered through the struggle, and it paid off. Why have we made it? Because we never gave up. The times when nobody wanted to hear our music, we believed that we were making music worth hearing. We pumped our arms. My late husband used to say, “Pump your arms!” And I think of that so often, because that’s what we’ve done as a band. We just pumped our arms through it and made it.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Punch Brothers interview

2009-10-05T23:21:00.002-04:00

At this point in his career, Gabe Witcher has a fairly sophisticated palate. He’s sampled the finest vintages of the finest strains of music, sniffed, swirled and spit.

Since the age of 5, the prodigious fiddler has performed with the most titanic of bluegrass legends, recorded on more than 300 records by artists from Willie Nelson to Beck, and contributed to film scores ranging from Brokeback Mountain to Toy Story. In short, the dude’s been around the block a time or two. But that didn’t stop Witcher from freezing up the first time he heard the composition his Punch Brothers bandmate Chris Thile had developed for the band’s debut – a 42-minute, four-part suite titled “The Blind Leaving The Blind.”

“I pressed play for the first time and it sounded like Super Mario Brothers on crack,” Witcher laughs during an interview from his southern California home. “It took me three or four days. I had to slow it down, get inside of it and read the score. Once I started to be able to hear it past the video game-iness of it, it started to make sense.”

That particular opus – the centerpiece of Punch Brothers’ debut album, Punch – was the launching point for the band’s sonic voyage into what the New York Times dubbed “American country-classical chamber music.” As unlyrical as that title may be, it’s as good a tag as any, although still barely vague enough to contain Punch Brothers’ expansive sound. Armed with banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar and upright bass, the five virtuosos deftly transcend the limitations of acoustic music and yield something literally and figuratively unheard of, something that breaches the worlds of both Bill Monroe and Bjork and inhabits every inch of the land between, from the complex grandiosity of classical music to the precise immediacy of pop.

Witcher puts it in simpler terms: “Music that we like, put through the filter of a bluegrass ensemble.”

“We’ll play a Radiohead song, and we’ll do Bach, then we’ll play Flatt & Scruggs, then The Strokes,” he explains. “Music is just music. It’s all made up of the same stuff. A good piece of music will translate through any medium, any instrument.”

Witcher and Thile, the latter most famous as one third of million-selling newgrass trio Nickel Creek, hit upon the concept for Punch Brothers (named after the Mark Twain short story Punch, Brothers, Punch) in 2006 while commiserating over recently failed relationships with the help of plenty of whiskey and several jam sessions. The idea to start a band came immediately, but didn’t come to fruition until Thile introduced the first tastes of “The Blind Leaving The Blind,” a meandering, yet intricately plotted piece pregnant with leitmotifs and counterpoints. The two dropped their other projects, rounded out the band with friends and likeminded musicians, young prodigies all, and set off like Magellan into the black waters of sound.

“It’s been the best, most positive musical experience that I’ve had,” Witcher enthuses. “One of the things that I think interests all of us as musicians is to come up with something that people haven’t heard before, that we haven’t heard before. We’re always searching for a new texture, a combination of instruments, a new form of song, a new way for a collection of notes to be ordered. Especially coming from the bluegrass world, there’s a lot still to be explored.”

Captured By Robots interview

2009-10-05T23:15:00.004-04:00

Meet JBOT, a musician who, tired of dealing with egomaniacal bandmates, decided to start a rock band with robots as backing musicians. He built the robots himself with tender, loving care, giving one a guitar, another drums, until the band was completed. On the seventh day, he rested.

Then tragedy struck. JBOT’s beloved robots turned evil, captured their creator and yanked out his intestines and eyes. Now JBOT lives a tortured existence under the cold, watchful eyes of the robots, who delight in nothing more than humiliating their creator during their nightly concerts.

Team Last Call interviewed poor JBOT in anticipation of Captured! By Robots’ October 26 concert at the Chameleon to see how long we have before the robots take over the entire world.

Team Last Call: Why did you build the robots in the first place?

JBOT: Just all the stuff you have to deal with when you’re in a band, everything from drunk band members to girlfriends to “Oh, I can’t tour because I have a baby now.” So I decided to build some robots to take the place of human band members and see if they would do what I wanted – and they didn’t.

TLC: When did you first know that things went terribly wrong?

JBOT: It was pretty early. I had a horrible coffee-spilling accident with the CPUs when I was making the first two, Drum Bot and Guitar Bot. I don’t know if that’s what made them go against me and be evil, but it was something. As soon as I plugged them in, they captured me. They put a chip in my head and activated this chip as sort of a method of control. It’s called a Biocerebral Chip. It’s almost like being hit with a cattle prod. Not that I’ve been hit with a cattle prod, but that’s what I would imagine it’s like.

TLC: You’ve been captured for almost 13 years now. Are things better or worse overall?

JBOT: In the beginning, it was all torture and bullshit, just constant abuse. The first couple of tours we did, it was just me and the Drum Bot and Guitar Bot. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the situation where you’re lonely and tired and working really hard, and all you get is people yelling at you all the time, but it gets old fucking fast. But their hatred of me has gotten less over time. I think we sort of have a functionally dysfunctional relationship these days. We’re like an old married couple because we’ve been together for so long.

TLC: Why do you think Guitar Bot in particular is so damn mean?

JBOT: I think part of it just goes down to the instrument. I don’t know if you’ve met many guitar players, but generally – no offense – guitar players are pretty much dicks.

TLC: Do the bots tell you what kind of music to play?

JBOT: They don’t really care what we play. Basically, they rock hard and they’ll rock with whatever we play. And if the music I choose is bad, they just use it as another excuse to rip on me.

TLC: As far as you can tell, is there any way to avoid the imminent robot apocalypse?

JBOT: I think it’s only a matter of time. I think the human race is on borrowed time as it is. It’s not going to be global warming that kills us. I think it’s a tossup between two: either asteroids or robots taking over. The most likely is going to be robots taking over.

TLC: I would think so.

JBOT: Yeah, I’m pretty good with trying to analyze situations with percentages and statistics. I’ve run the numbers.

TLC: If people come out to the show, aren’t we in a way financially supporting this plan for them to take over?

JBOT: I don’t think so. I’m a bad robot builder. That new Japanese humanoid robot – my god, that’s what we need to worry about. That’s the scary part. I think we’re safe for the next five, 10 years. But if you know you’re going go die tomorrow, are you going to cry today or are you going to go out and party?

TLC: I’m going to party with robots.

JBOT: Totally!

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

The Honorary Title interview

2009-10-05T23:06:00.004-04:00

As the frontman, mastermind and (presently) the only member of Brooklyn rock band The Honorary Title, Jarrod Gorbel has learned a few valuable lessons about surviving as a working musician. First, don’t sell out. Second, follow your heart. And third, never underestimate the binding properties of the burrito.

A recent evacuee of the major label system, Gorbel has mastered the art of fan relations. One of his best and most engaging ideas has been the auctioning off of “chipotle dates,” where fans can win the chance to grab a burrito with the singer-songwriter when he tours through their town.

“It’s always a surprise,” he says with a chuckle. “You would assume that who would sign up for these contests would be the teenagers, the younger demographic. But now it’s this 25-year-old teacher woman who wants to share burritos with us. It’s funny, but cool.”

Unorthodox, maybe, but Gorbel’s fan-friendly methods are part of what’s kept the indie crooner’s career afloat, despite his former label’s costly missteps. Gorbel founded The Honorary Title in 2003 as an outlet for his folky indie-pop songs. But when the band upstreamed from indie label Doghouse to parent company Warner Brothers in 2007, the major label powers-that-be had a decidedly different kind of sound in mind for the band. Namely, the biggest, most radio-friendly rock songs Gorbel could write.

“I had to put all my energy into these songs that were not my favorite, not the ones that I personally loved. I was trying to be something I wasn’t because I thought it would be a vehicle to do what I want all the time,” Gorbel recalls from a tour stop in Orangevale, CA. “[But] we’d go on tour, and the fans just wanted to hear my favorite songs, the ballads and the more folk Americana-influenced ones. So I said, ‘Fuck it. I’ll just do what I want to do.’”

Fast forward two years, and Gorbel is doing just that. He’s currently touring in support of a new solo EP that marks a return to the ’70s folk and alt-country influences that helped to frame his earliest work. Come early 2010, he’ll put an endcap on those major label years by dropping the band name altogether and releasing an eponymous album he recorded earlier this year with Rilo Kiley’s Blake Sennett.

“It’s scary in a sense, but it’s also a huge relief,” he says of the transition. “Finally I get to do everything I want to do. But then, I am backtracking. From the business outlook, it’s like starting over. But I do things hands-on, just by literally talking to fans in every city that we play. Fans of The Honorary Title, they understand.”

Until the album’s release, Gorbel says, his primary focus is on touring and building his fan base in the most honest and genuine way he can. “And,” he adds, “eating the finest burritos.”

September 2009 – Y I H8 TWITTER

2009-09-01T22:38:00.000-04:00

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wonder if any of my friends is eating a sandwich right now? And if so, is there lettuce? What about cheese?”
Well, I’ve got good news. The answer to those and equally important questions (“Is there mayo?”) can be found on the social networking website known as Twitter, where people of all ages, races, religions and sexual orientations gather to, through the miracle of wireless technology, slowly bore each other to death.
For the uninitiated: Twitter is a service that allows subscribers to create posts of up to 140 characters at a time and send them directly to other Twitter users. These posts – or “tweets,” as they’re called by people for whom dignity isn’t a priority – can be about virtually anything that pops into the author’s head, including, but not limited to, such popular topics as “It’s raining outside,” “I’m in the mood for tacos” and “Kittens are so cute.”
In other words, if an epiphany is what you’re searching for, Twitter might not be the tool for you. Conversely, if you firmly believe that the world needs to know each and every time you have oatmeal for breakfast, you might be the right kind of tool for Twitter.
Here’s a tweet from Todd, who is wearing a new shirt today. Here’s a tweet from Bill, who thinks that moms are hot. And here’s a tweet from Jill, who – OMG! – is eating a sandwich! And to think that you almost missed it! I mean, where would you be without this type of insta-communication in your life? Having sex, probably.
Ultimately, Twitter boils down to millions of people devoting their time to methodically narrating the minute-by-minute activities of lives that might actually be interesting if they weren’t spent almost entirely on Twitter. Oh, paradox! Fortunately for those people, being interesting is hardly a prerequisite for tweeting. Exhibit A: the single most popular Twitter user is Ashton Kutcher, who is dumber than ham loaf.
Some users take it very personally when you make fun of Twitter. “Stop the h8!” they say. “No 1 is 4cing U to look!”
Then they send out a tweet like: “Why do people PARK in a DRIVEway, and DRIVE on a PARKway?!?!!?? LOL! What’s up with that?! ROTFL LMAO OMG BRB L8R” and prove my whole point. Sure, Twitter has some attractive surface qualities, but underneath, it’s nothing but a mind-numbing wasteland of moronic half-thoughts and Hallmark Card platitudes. So basically, Twitter is Sarah Palin.
My young coworkers have tried for two years to convince me of the virtues of Twitter. “You should start your own account,” they say. “We can follow each other.”
“But we sit within 10 feet of each other for eight hours a day,” I answer. “Can’t I just, like, tell you what I’m thinking?” At which point they grab their phones and start sending out tweets about how Old Man Royer just doesn’t get it. Which I totally don’t.
But despite their ridicule, I have stood my ground and refused to start an account, based largely on my longstanding belief that stupid things are dumb. Twitter is just not for me. It’s not for you, either. Know who it’s for? Miley Cyrus, whose last tweet was (and I quote): “I am craving 1. Subway sandwich 2. Whopper from BK 3. A white chocolate mocha frap :( I’m veryy veryy hungee”
I don’t know what depresses me more: The fact that she actually used the word “hungee”; the fact that she thinks anyone would ever care what she wants to eat; the fact that her 1,660,046 followers really do care; or the fact that my coworker is one of those followers.
In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I did sign up for Twitter for a brief period of time, mostly because it’s hard to write about something you know nothing about. That’d be like a goldfish writing an article about space travel, or the Steelers writing a book about not looking stupid in gold tights. So, against every fiber of my being, including the fiber that says thirty-somethings shouldn’t be reading tweets written by Miley Cyrus, I created an account. I have to say, I was sort of excited. I was about to join the Twitter revolution, to discover what had millions of people so freaking cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs that they spent all day with their noses glued to their phones. I logged in, took a deep breath, put my feet up on my desk and waited for the winds of social networking to sweep me away.
Then it came, the moment I had been waiting for. My first tweet. And it said … wait for it … wait for it …
“I like dogs.”
OMG. L8R.

Moby interview

2009-09-01T22:34:00.000-04:00

Ten years ago, an impish wee-man known as Moby became the world’s most unlikely pop star thanks to the multi-platinum success of Play, a transfixing crosspollination of old gospel field recordings and modern-day house beats bolstered by the monster hit “South Side.”
While Gwen Stefani is no longer licking the back of his head in music videos, little else seems to have changed in Moby’s life. The self-proclaimed “weird, bald, middle-aged man” is still completely unequipped to deal with fame. He’s still hated by millions of people for no apparent reason. And he’s still churning out artful electro-pop that manages to be simultaneously poignant and escapist. His latest album, Wait For Me, is being hailed as his finest effort since his 1999 breakthrough. Ambient and subdued, it’s described aptly enough by Moby himself as a “hangover record.”
Team Last Call chatted with the baldheaded beatmaster prior to his North American tour to discuss his name, what he wants to think about on his deathbed and a certain phenomenon known as “nerd sweat.”

Team Last Call: Is it true that you got the name Moby because you’re actually an ancestor of Herman Melville?
Moby: That’s what my parents told me. Before I was born, they had decided that if I was a boy, my name was going to be Richard Melville Hall. And then once I was born, they looked at me and realized that was a very grown-up name for such a little baby. So as a joke when I was literally 10 minutes old, my dad started calling me Moby. I don’t think either my mother or my father anticipated that 43 years later I’d still be saddled with my infant joke nickname.

TLC: Wait For Me is getting an amazing response. It got on my radar because I flipped on NPR and heard the music critic call it your best album in a decade.
M: I try very hard not to read any of my own press. At this point, there are still a lot of journalists that just hate me for whatever. I could make the best record in the world and they’re still going to hate it. If I read good press, it makes me uncomfortable. If I read bad press, it makes me want to kill myself.

TLC: Why do people hate you?
M: I was actually talking about this the other day. Do you watch The Simpsons? Do you remember the Simpsons where Lisa had a bully? They realized that what the bully was responding to was the pheromones in Lisa’s nerd-sweat. That’s all I can think of. Maybe I’m missing something. It seems like there are probably more loathsome people on the planet than me.

TLC: Over the past couple of records, you’ve returned to making music for yourself, as opposed to satisfying expectations of a record label. Did you have some sort of epiphany?
M: The epiphanies that I have tend to be things that are fairly self-evident for most people. My epiphanies happen slowly over a long period of time. I rarely have one of those “Saul on the road to Damascus” moments, where the scales fall from my eyes and I can suddenly see things clearly. It usually comes from making the same mistake a few hundred times.
I guess what happened was, I never expected to have a record contract and I never expected to have any success as a musician. So then when Play became very successful, it certainly wasn’t a bad thing, but I was quite unprepared for any of the ramifications of success, the creative ramifications. After Play, suddenly I was getting more phone calls from the record company. I found myself trying to make records that the record company liked and that the press would like and that people would like – trying to please everybody. And especially with the album Hotel, I ended up with a record that I just wasn’t all that happy with. So I guess with Wait For Me, I just wanted to focus more on first and foremost trying to make a record that I loved, and then trying to make a record that another individual would love. Instead of generalizing about tens of millions of people, just trying to think of one other person at home in their living room on a Sunday morning when it’s raining outside.

TLC: Making an album like this is obviously not about trying to make millions of dollars and get free drugs. What is it about?
M: I have an answer, but I hope it doesn’t sound overly earnest, even though it’s true. At some point, I realized, I mean, life is short. Maybe we live to be 70, 80, 90 years old, but in the grand scheme, that’s not such a long time. I guess I just asked myself the question, “On my deathbed, what do I want to remember?” And I don’t want to remember meetings with record companies where they’re talking about collaborations with Top 40 stars. I don’t want to remember spending my time at celebrity parties. For me, one of the only things that I feel gives my life any degree of meaning is working hard trying to make music that I love.

TLC: That sounds honest, not earnest.
M: It’s hard. In interviews, you want to retain a degree of detachment. I think a lot of people, when they do interviews, they sound tough or they sound ironic or they sound like they don’t care. I’m neither tough, ironic nor apathetic.

TLC: You’re at a weird point now where you’re starting to sell more records out of the country than you are in the U.S. Does that matter?
M: It’s a bit strange. We just finished a European tour, and the shows there were a lot of big festivals where we’re playing to about 60,000 people a night. And then I’m looking at the North American tour, where on average we’re playing to around 900 people a night. Which is fine – I actually selfishly really enjoy playing smaller shows. But I think it was on the last record where I sold more records in Belgium and the Netherlands than I did in the United States.

TLC: Was it ever much of a priority for you to be famous in the first place?
M: I truly believed that I would spend my entire life making music in my bedroom that no one would ever listen to. If we had been talking 20 years ago, I would have guessed that my life would involve teaching in college and working in a book store. There’s never been any plan. When I found myself having success or being more in the limelight, it was very accidental. As a result, I wasn’t really prepared to deal with it. Now the way I deal with it is by almost avoidance – avoiding a lot of the institutions of fame that for me I just don’t see as particularly appealing. Most of the people who really pursue the world of fame, they have lives that I wouldn’t even want to have. Not that their lives are even available to me. I’m 43 years old. Being 43 and not able to dance does kind of limit your ability to be famous in 2009.

TLC: You keep talking about being 43. Do you feel cooked? What else is there?
M: All I want to do for the rest of my life is try and make music that I love. I’m not really too concerned about how the music is made or where the music is made or whether it’s successful. Honestly, that’s pretty much it. I mean, it’d be nice at some point to fall in love and get married. It’d be nice to learn how to put up drywall. It’d be nice to speak Spanish better. But pretty much the only serious goal I have in life is trying to keep working on music.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Stryper interview

2009-09-01T22:23:00.002-04:00

Armed with a quiver full of syrupy metal ballads and clad in zigzaggy, yellow-and-black spandex armor, the soldiers under command in California metal band Stryper single-handedly put Christian rock on the mainstream map in the ’80s.
While their peers on the Sunset Strip notoriously drank, snorted and shot themselves full of every available substance after shows, Stryper handed out free bibles. Needless to say, “odd man out” is an understatement. But despite almost constant ridicule, Stryper took their gospel to the Top 40 airwaves and set up shop at MTV with megahits like “Honestly.”
After a 12-year hiatus, Stryper reunited in 2003 and released a pair of albums, including 2009’s Murder By Pride. This month, the band welcomes original bassist Tim Gaines back into the fold and embarks on a 25th anniversary tour that includes a stop at the Chameleon on September 23. Team Last Call tracked down singer Michael Sweet to get the lowdown.

Team Last Call: What was the catalyst for this tour for you personally?
Michael Sweet: My wife passed on March 5, and right after she passed, a light went on in my mind and in my heart to heal. It’s not that Stryper needs immense or intense healing. It’s just that there’s still some things going on with the band, things from the past that I don’t think have completely been let go of. And I just thought, how cool would it be for all of us to get together, go out and do a tour together and not just tell people that we forgive and forget, but show them? Live it.

TLC: I read that you’ve got new yellow and black suits for this tour. Are you going to be rocking the spandex?
MS: Definitely not.

TLC: What’s the significance of the colors to you?
MS: Back in the day, there really was no significance. It was just a bright color, bold color. Then as we progressed and became Stryper, that’s when we found the scripture to go along with the stripes, Isaiah 53:5, “By his stripes we are healed.” That’s when we came up with the acronym and that’s when we defined the colors to be more like a warning that God’s message through this band is going to be presented.

TLC: It’s funny that even now, 25 years later, people still aren’t over the fact that you guys are a Christian band.
MS: We are that band that falls into the category of getting it from all sides. We really do. I’m not complaining. We’re used to it. We’ve been dealing with it for years.
We’ve always been a band that’s gotten it from the secular mainstream side for being a wimpy Christian band who, because we’re a Christian band, we must not be good. We can’t play, we can’t sing, we can’t write, we can’t perform. We must suck because we’re Christian. And the flipside of that coin is, from the church, we can’t be a Christian band because we’re metal, because we’re hard rock, because we look like we look, because we sound like we sound. It’s impossible, because of those things, to be Christians, so we’re hypocrites, we’re wolves in sheep’s clothing, we’re fake. So we’ve gotten it from both sides for years.

TLC: What’s the meaning behind the new album title, Murder By Pride?
MS: We all have pride. I feel like I have a lot. We’ve got to stand and put our pride aside and to just follow what it is that God wants for our lives and not let our pride cripple us.

TLC: You know, I’ve got to say, after being slapped around like the band has over the years, it seems remarkably ballsy to talk openly about stuff like that.
MS: We are four guys who blow it on a day-to-day basis. We sin, like everyone else. We’re weak guys, and we need God. We’re not ashamed to admit that. We all need God, man. It’s something that we’ll talk about and hopefully be humble enough to admit for the rest of our lives.

TLC: If you got to design it, what would you put on Stryper’s headstone?
MS: I would want people to read and know that no matter what, we always took a sincere, bold stand for Christ. I hope that that came through. Did we do some things kind of cheesy and corny? Yeah. But we tried.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Revolution, I Love You interview

2009-09-01T22:09:00.000-04:00

There are pros and cons to having a computer as a bandmate. He rarely comes up with song ideas, and almost never pitches in for pizza. On the other hand, he doesn’t drink the band beer, and if he ever gives you any attitude, you can unplug him.
No one has learned these lessons as well as Jason Reynolds and Rob Lindgren of Revolution, I Love You, an indie rock-dance-pop band from Middletown, Delaware, whose third member always seems to view the world in ones and zeros.
“It sucks, because the laptop doesn’t go to the diner with you after the show. It’s not much fun,” says Reynolds.
“On the other hand, breakfast is a lot cheaper,” Lindgren offers.
The laptop is in some ways Revolution, I Love You’s defining element, providing the fat-bottomed beats and buzzing bass that turns Reynolds and Lindgren’s eerie Brit-pop into something fiercely fun. Stripped of the ornamentation, the songs might come across as gloomy, if not downright creepy, with Lindgren moaning and crooning in half-time over droning keys and dark guitar lines soggy with reverb. But those chirpy, choppy beats wring out the melodrama and replace it with a winking dare to dance. In the words of Black Eyed Peas, Revolution, I Love You are not afraid to get retarded when necessary.
The band captured this dichotomy on its debut EP, noise. pop. deathray., released last year to rave reviews that drew comparisons to modern-day buzz bands like Menomena, Ratatat and other groups that, frankly, RILY had never heard of prior to recording the album. “I listen to a lot of Bright Eyes and Rob listens to a lot of The Smiths,” Reynolds shrugs, adding Squarepusher and Aphex Twin as electronica influences.
“When we first started writing the album, we wanted to make something expansive and strange, but we kept coming up with these quirky little pop songs,” Lindgren says. “So the goal became to make these pop songs work with our propensity for abrasive noise and weird arrangements.”
Lindgren and Reynolds have been playing in bands together since high school, but it wasn’t until they were in college that one of their projects finally started to take off. So they both quit school to pursue it on a full-time basis – just in time to watch all of their bandmates quit. It was around that time that Reynolds wrote a song called “Can I Get the Door for You?” that would lay the foundation for Revolution, I Love You’s ass-shaking future.
Reynolds recalls, “At some point, I said the now infamous words: ‘Why don’t you try putting a beat under that?’”
“I entirely misunderstood him,” Lindgren says. “Apparently, he wasn’t thinking of ’90s house when he said ‘beat,’ but that’s what he got.”
The success of that song was the impetus for RILY’s sound to-date; the dance odyssey had begun.
So they can talk the talk on the dancefloor, but can they walk the walk?
“I do the Lawnmower,” Reynolds deadpans.
“And I’m working on the Carlton,” Lindgren says. “But seriously, I wouldn’t brag, but I don’t think either of us would get kicked out of the club, either.”

August 2009 - Baby Says Goo Goo, Daddy Says (Lady) Gaga

2009-08-01T22:39:00.001-04:00

Last month, Team Last Call began an inspirational series of columns for English majors addressing issues like masculinity, grammar mastery and the remarkable way in which those two things cancel each other out.

As a general rule, all English majors are fueled by the same basic elements: Pringles, Little Debbie snack cakes and a crushing set of insecurities. And TMZ. We are not an outdoor breed, and as such shouldn’t ever be expected to participate in activities that involve dirt, shirtlessness or roughhousing of any sort. We also have poor motor skills and tend to struggle with things like 1) upper body strength, 2) lower body strength and 4) math.

But we have positive qualities too, such as our ability to write self-help articles. Which brings us to today’s column, in which we will examine the practice of writing for a living and how it relates to fatherhood. There’s nothing quite like theresponsibility for another human life to really drive home the point that, by nature of the fact that you’re an English major, you don’t know how to do anything. Yet, as a father, you’re expected to have all the answers – especially if you’re having a little boy. There are things that you as a father need to teach your son. Tough things. Manly things. Things you know nothing about, like carburetors and leaf blowers and … what do you call those things again? The ones that are always denting your car when you’re not looking? Wives.

No, you don’t know about any of that stuff because you, the English major, were too busy crying over Artax dying in the Swamps of Sadness to learn anything useful growing up. While the other little boys played soccer and earned their Boy Scout badges, you spent your summers pretend-making out with Winnie Cooper in your elbow and trying in vain to get past Soda Popinski on Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.

But it’s important not to let the past get you down. Just because you never learned how to “change a tire” or “fix a leaky faucet” or “develop pectoral muscles” doesn’t mean you’re not fit to be a proper male role model. Your son will simply have a different kind of father figure to look up to and emulate. The kind that has Lady Gaga on his iPod. On the plus side, by the time everyone’s kids are all grown, yours will be able to punctuate circles around the rest of them. Sure, he might be plump and dateless, but he’ll be able to write a sonnet like it’s going out of style. Which it undoubtedly has.

While some little boys grow up with images of their fathers fighting crime and rescuing kittens from burning buildings and felling trees with their bare hands, your kid will have visions of you curled up on the couch with a laptop balanced on your stomach, watching reruns of What Not To Wear when you thought no one was looking. But in your sedentary state, you’ll be able to teach him such invaluable manly lessons as 1) A scoop top and an A-line skirt can have a slimming effect on the hips, 2) It is too possible to make a meal out of Easy Cheese, and 3) As long as you’re wearing sweatpants, things like tissues and napkins will always be redundant.

Some little boys learn how to fish, or build furniture, or design little wooden racecars that speed down the track and win first prize like the one in that Subaru Forester commercial. You know the one I’m talking about. The one that makes you feel like a horrible father, even if you’re a teenage girl, for not knowing how to help your son build a car like that. Well, winning first place in the Pinewood Derby might seem nice for some kids, but it’s not in the cards for yours. Your son is going to enjoy advantages of a different variety. Other fathers could teach him how to drive a stick shift or properly grill a steak. I guess that’s exciting, if you’re into “knowing” how to “do stuff.” But only you, the English major, can teach him the crucial, panty-dropping art of correct semi-colon usage; you can also teach him the best way to hand a credit card to the plumber, how to eat his weight at Hot Diggity Dog and, most importantly, how to hide it from his wife when he gets home for dinner.

In summation, English majors have nothing to fear when it comes to fatherhood, apart from the certainty of failure. But other than that, you’ll do just fine. And who knows? If you keep your child focused on the right kind of activities, maybe in a few years he can show you how to knock out Soda Popinski.

Franz Nicolay interview

2009-08-01T22:16:00.001-04:00

“I don’t necessarily want to have the first line of my obituary be, ‘He played a good organ patch.’”

Ah, the plight of the sideman, the second fiddle, the often-faceless, underpaid, rarely laid unsung hero of rock and roll. As far as the breed goes, Franz Nicolay is among the more recognizable, as much for his kooky handlebar mustache as his high-profile gigs in The Hold Steady and the World/Inferno Friendship Society. He’s a magnificent musician, an accomplished guitarist and accordion player whose fired-up piano is often the match to the Hold Steady powder keg. But does Nicolay get the glory? Of course not. He’s a sideman.

So what’s a Number Two to do? For better or worse, the answer in most cases is “solo album,” which is music speak for “vapid, masturbatory disaster.” Ever hear a Gene Simmons record? OK then.

In Nicolay’s case, however, the solo album is a revelation in its own right – if not for breaking new ground musically, then for illuminating exactly where his bands get a good portion of their spunk from [he also performs in Balkan klezmer band Guignol and chamber-pop collective Anti-Social Music]. Major General, released in January, is a curious, vibrant record that skips audaciously from all-American barnburners to gypsy romps. Flanked by a roster of musicians that includes members of World/Inferno and Dresden Dolls, Nicolay bellows cathartically and operatically about everything from subway graffiti to Jeff Penalty, a replacement singer for the Dead Kennedys. The music can be melodramatic and over-earnest, but at least it’s honest. Above all, it’s obvious that the album is less of a vanity project than a means for Nicolay to find a home for some the nomadic songs wandering around his brain.

“I didn’t feel like I had much to prove,” says Nicolay. “I had just built up a collection of songs that didn’t have an obvious home in World/Inferno or The Hold Steady or any of the other bands. A couple of the songs I’ve had around forever, and I just felt like, ‘Even if I don’t ever play this song live, I just want to get it on a record and move on.’”

Major General is the beneficiary of Nicolay’s lifelong musical wanderlust. The songs cascade off each other, punk bleeding into gypsy bleeding into – was that a clarinet solo? When isolated, only a few songs (”Jeff Penalty,” “Dead Sailor”) raise the pulse the way a Hold Steady song might, but as a whole, the album captivates with its sheer scope and ambition.

“I get excited about novelty,” Nicolay says. “I’ll get really excited about Balkan music for six months, and then I’ll get really excited about the Beach Boys for six months. There’s always some tidbit that I’ll get out of each of them about ways to sing background vocals or where you put the glockenspiel overdub or how the string arrangement for a George Jones record differs from a string arrangement on a Divine Comedy record.And all that stuff goes in the cauldron and can bubble up in unpredictable ways.”

Nicolay brings his mustache, his guitar and his botanist friend (he’ll have to explain that one himself) to ABC for a special solo show this month.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Alash Ensemble interview

2009-08-01T22:14:00.001-04:00

Lancaster Countians get a crash-course in Tuvan culture when Alash Ensemble, a quartet of master throat singers, visits the area for a special performance.

Tuva, a Siberian neighbor of Mongolia and a republic of the Russian Federation, has inspired curiosity around the globe with its singular form of singing, in which the vocalist produces a low, guttural tone and, through careful manipulation of the vocal tract, splinters the tone into two, three or even four notes simultaneously. Depending on the singer’s specific mode of throat singing, the “extra” tones resemble anything from a whistle to a songbird to, in the “kargyraa” style, the cries of a yak. It’s a surreal, improbable-sounding exercise that requires excruciatingly nuanced control of muscles that most humans rarely, if ever, use.

The only thing as unlikely as the sounds these men are producing is the story of Sean Quirk, an Ohio-born, Wisconsin-raised man who now travels the world as manager and interpreter for the group.

Quirk first encountered throat singing while in school in St. Paul, Minnesota. His fascination with an album he heard by master singer Huun-Huur-Tu eventually led him to try the artform for himself – for better or worse.

“I started imitating a couple months after I first heard and was blown away by the music,” he says in a Fly Magazine interview during Alash’s latest North American tour. “I made a lot of bad noises.”

After learning what he could on his own, Quirk earned a Fulbright fellowship and soon packed his bags for the south of Siberia to study at the feet of the masters. Soon after arriving in Tuva in 2003, he met Alash, a group of young men as beloved for their steadfast commitment to tradition as their vision for marrying the music with modern influences.

“They had been an ensemble going on five years at the time and were all members of the newly formed Tuvan National Orchestra,” Quirk recalls. “Being of a similar age, and musicians, they and the orchestra took me on as a student in Tuvan music. Naturally, we became friends, as the orchestra kind of adopted me in a sense, to the point of letting me sit in on the bass doshpuluur [a Tuvan lute], a post which eventually became my official job in Tuva to the present.”

Over the next six years, Quirk would marry a Tuvan woman, have two daughters and set up a permanent home within the culture that still holds his fascination today.

“Nothing can describe hearing and feeling it live. I have been living there a long time and seen a lot of Alash shows, and it still gets me deep each time to hear it up close,” he attests. “People also shouldn’t just expect ‘fancy vocal tricks,’ but rather a deep and richly developed music involving instruments and vocals which simultaneously feels exotic and intimately familiar.”

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

July 2009 – Wooing Women (For English Majors)

2009-07-01T10:34:00.009-04:00

My wife and I found out a few weeks ago that we are going to be having a baby boy. Since that time, I’ve been busy making a mental list of all of the things I need to teach him about being a man, including how to blow a good snotrocket and how to wear blue socks with black pants.
Then I need to teach him how to properly woo a woman, which is something I know a thing or two about, what with me being an English major and all. English majors, if you didn’t know, have been proven by science to be the world’s single sexiest demographic, thanks in part to our way with words and in part to the fact that we can put total lies into print and make them look like actual facts.
I decided to major in English for the same reason that all young men major in English: zero upper body strength. But I also had a desire to pick up women, and I figured that one way to go about that was to learn the seductive art of language. Because everybody knows that nothing’s a bigger turn-on to a college girl than having her grammar corrected.
I could hardly wait to make the ladies swoon with my masterful grasp of semi-colon usage. “Come over here, baby girl,” I’d say. “Daddy is going to punctuate your sentence in ways you never dreamed of. You heard me right, sweet thing. I’m about to parse this verb from the infinitive all the way down to the subjunctive. Trust me when I say that as long as we’re together, my participles will never dangle.”
Pickup lines like these never really “worked” on high school girls, but I always chalked that up their own lack of sophistication. If they couldn’t appreciate some well executed iambic pentameter, then that was their problem. Except for the part where they wouldn’t make out with me, at which point it became my problem. But in college, it would be different. In college, the girls would recognize genius when they saw it.
In college, the girls did not recognize genius. It didn’t take long for me to discover the ugly truth that an English major is about as attractive to college girls as a lip fungus. We are simply not cut from the same cloth as people like McDreamy and McBulge-pants, or whatever his name is, with their “chiseled physiques” and their “salaries that are big enough to live on.” And that, I’m sorry to say, is the kind of man that college girls go for.
English majors, on the other hand, tend to be introverted, lumpy, melodramatic Beta Males who, generally speaking, aren’t considered to be “hunks,” except for in the following sentence: “Once the team captains had selected their players, all that remained on the gymnasium floor were a discarded jock strap and the English major, a blubbering, asthmatic hunk of dough in navy shorts and tennis shoes.”
We do have our good points, though, including our soft, uncalloused hands and our ability to weep openly during that one scene when Frodo gets stung by the giant spider and is carried off by the orcs into the castle of Cirith Ungol. Or maybe that’s just me.
But no matter how hard we try, we English majors will never be the objects of lust for those young college women. We will never be able to titillate them with our gerunds. And our writing, while eloquent and emotive, has zero alcohol content, rendering it virtually useless to nine out of 10 college girls. And the tenth probably has a unibrow or wears Crocs.
But Darwin be damned: in the end, we somehow always find a way to get the girl. I personally succeeded – and this is something I recommend to every English major I meet – by making fart jokes.
Women love it when you can make them laugh. Which is something we English majors rarely do, or at least not without getting naked first. But through the magic of fart jokes, I found a way to use my otherwise useless degree to attract a beautiful, intelligent, awesomely weird girl who under normal circumstances would have always looked at me like I had just stepped in a big pile of caca-doodie.
Fast-forward 10 years, and here we sit, awaiting the arrival of our son – who, by the way, has already been proven by science to be the single most beautiful, intelligent, awesomely weird baby ever. And that one’s no lie.

Sonic Youth interview

2009-07-01T09:30:00.001-04:00

Sonic Youth have been perpetuating (and defining) noisy indie rock since 1981. And no one is less impressed by that fact than Sonic Youth, who last month released The Eternal, an album so full of romantic wanderlust and sloppy ferocity that it sounds more like the work of a group a third their age. Apparently, 56 is the new 19.

Where The Eternal doesn’t stray is in its uncompromised approach to rock as a genre to be manipulated, exploited and plundered as a limitless art form. It’s gloriously loud, sparse in places, unnervingly complex in others. While it’s the band’s first indie release in nearly two decades, The Eternal is about as far from a swan song as you can get.

Team Last Call: This album is getting your usual spread of responses, from “This is the best album ever made” to “Here’s more crap from Sonic Youth.”
Steve Shelley: Right! It can go either way. I just try not to get too involved. [laughs] We put a lot of heart and soul into making records together. When you’re finished, you really hope that people will love it and you’ll sell a million albums. But we’ve been making albums for a while, so we kind of know what to expect to some degree: The record will sell OK and some people will really love it and some people will not like it.

TLC: Popular opinion is that The Eternal is a little more raw and ferocious than recent albums. Where do you think that extra fire came from?
SS: I honestly don’t know. Maybe one of the things that influenced this record was, just recently, we had gone out and played Daydream Nation in its entirety, which is a really, really well-liked record of ours. And it’s a bit more of a high-energy record than some of our recent records. We hadn’t played a lot of those songs in almost 20 years, so we had to go back and relearn that album. There’s certain things that you did 20 years ago that you don’t do the same anymore. I think it just made us hear things in our music that we haven’t heard for a while.

TLC: Sometimes it seems so unlikely that a band can make music as challenging as yours and still be able to headline a place like the Electric Factory. What resonates so deeply with your fans?
SS: I imagine it’s the same things that I love about my favorite artists. People are attracted to storytelling or a sound or “I like the way that guy’s guitar tone is.” I don’t know what makes a Sonic Youth fan, but I’m glad they exist. It enables me to play music and enjoy a lot of things that I didn’t really ever think I’d be able to do in this life.

TLC: You just ended a long relationship with the major label system. Does that seem like a big deal to you?
SS: It doesn’t bother me who we make the records for. We’re happy to be on Matador, and there are a lot of things that improved as far as our relationship with our label goes. The good side of working with Geffen is that they never, ever did bother us. When we were making our records, no one ever came by. No one ever asked us to do something differently. We did have all that artistic control that they promise you when you sign the dotted line. I think the things that we had a more difficult time with them were CD pricing a few years ago when CDs were still listing for $18.98, and just business stuff like how they marketed the band. And often we would start a new relationship with someone at the record label – and this happened more than one time – where they would be let go, like, the week before our new album would come out. These people are supposed to help you in the time of a new record.

TLC: You occupy an interesting space between living legends in one respect and, in the pop world, relative anonymity. What’s your perspective on that?
SS: I think we’re kept pretty humble as we travel along. [laughs] A lot of people have not heard Sonic Youth. A lot of people have heard of Sonic Youth, but they’ve never actually heard us. We’re not as popular as whatever music is on American Idol or something like that. But then, you mentioned legends and stuff like that – I think most of the band would deny even being rock stars to you, let alone legends. Thinking about rock star status or legend status is way down on the list of priorities when you’re just trying to live your life.

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Hank And Cupcakes interview

2009-07-01T09:29:00.000-04:00

There’s some weird love affair between Brooklyn and Bukowski that I have yet to figure out. As reviled for his boorish behavior as he was revered for his blunt, anti-literary poems and stories, Bukowski lived in a world of misery, misogyny and selfish conquest that hardly seems in line with the delicate sensibilities of today’s indie rock scene. And yet, three Brooklyn bands in a row – Chairlift, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart and minimalist pop duo Hank & Cupcakes – have declared their affinity for the old kook during Team Last Call interviews.

The latter even lifted their name from the writer, who called himself Hank in his semi-autobiographical books, and one of his countless sexual adventuresses, nicknamed Cupcakes for her legendarily ample bosom. But beyond their moniker, the husband-and-wife duo of Hank & Cupcakes share very little with Charles Bukowski apart from a brazen, devil-may-care approach to art and the prescribed notions of form and function.

Armed only with a drum kit, a bass guitar and a complete disregard for their own limitations, the two smack and slap their way through herky-jerky dance-pop songs that bristle with sass and sexuality. Hank steers the ship with imaginative, lyrical bass lines that provide both melody and pulse, carefully eschewing flashy showmanship for steady, artful loops. In that sonic sandbox, Cupcakes builds her castle, layering sturdy disco rhythms and fractured rock beats with sultry vocals chiseled on Pat Benatar’s battlefield of love. She plays the drums standing up for maximum vocal power, which is a spectacle, so much force being projected from such a diminutive package.

The same could be said for Hank & Cupcakes’ music, which, while almost comically minimalist, seems all the more ferocious plowing forth without the distraction of competing textures or countermelodies. It’s like the theory that the best way of commanding attention in a noisy room is to talk softly. But as Cupcakes explains, while the duo’s music is almost as much fun to hypothesize about as it is to hear, it’s hardly conceptual.

“There is absolutely no theory involved in what we do,” Cupcakes explains. “We just do it because that is what we find stimulating at the moment. We’re not committed to the minimalist thing. We have no problem adding 10 more players to the band if the music takes us there.”

The media buzz surrounding Hank & Cupcakes belies the fact that they’ve been performing in the States for less than a year. Prior to moving to New York last August, the couple had been playing in bands both together and separately for a decade throughout their native country of Israel. It wasn’t until after a six-month stint studying music in Cuba that the two decided to try their luck in America, where they stumbled upon the idea for their skeletal drum-and-bass arrangements almost accidentally.

“The plan was to come to New York with a tight rhythm section and find more musicians here,” Cupcakes says, “but pretty soon we found ourselves totally turned on by this new sound we were exploring. We started rehearsing on a daily basis and as we progressed, we lost the need to add more instruments to the music.”
The lovebirds preserved their sound for posterity in June, recording a seven-song EP (all in analog) that they hope will be ready for release in time for their trip to PA this month.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Julianne Hough interview

2009-07-01T09:25:00.000-04:00

“I hate when people are like, ‘So, if you had to choose …’ Why do I have to choose?”
Julianne Hough was born to dance. She was also born to sing, act, model, write novels, split atoms, cure cancer and apparently anything else on Earth she feels like doing. She’s not really into limitations.
Until last year, the 20-year-old Utah native was best known as the winner of two championships on Dancing With The Stars. She then decided to try her hand at music and, one Juicy Fruit commercial later, was the proud owner of the nation’s number one country album. Now Hough has her eyes set on the movie industry. At press time, the starlet was awaiting final word on her casting in the remake of Footloose, due out in June 2010.

Team Last Call: You were born in Utah, lived in London and then moved to L.A., and yet your first love is country music. How did that happen?
Julianne Hough: Even though I grew up in Utah, it’s very country music-orientated out there. I grew up listening to it with my family. I always felt like this is the kind of music I wanted to sing one day. When I was thinking about my career and where I wanted to take it, people were like, “Well, you should do pop music because you dance.” That’s not really true to who I am. It might work for a little bit, but I want a long career, and this is where my heart is. So we went for it.

TLC: You grew up studying dance, but you’ve called music your first love. At what point did music eclipse the other stuff?
JH: I grew up dancing, singing and acting. When I was in London, I was doing all three. I just more heavily emphasized the dance because I was competing rigorously with it. But the music has always been there. I’ve always wanted to do it. I want to entertain, whether it’s dancing, singing or acting. They all fit together. It’s not like I’m trying to be a singer and an astronaut.

TLC: I read about the audition you did for Footloose, so I figured acting couldn’t be far behind.
JH: As long as it makes sense. I really want to focus on one thing at a time and make sure I do the very best that I can at whatever I’m doing. But the music is the priority for me.

TLC: Since you’re only 20, some people are questioning whether you have the depth of experience to be an authentic country singer.
JH: It’s funny, even though I’m only 20 years old, I’ve lived a pretty crazy life already. I lived away from my family from when I was 10 to 15 in London. I’ve competed all over the world. I immediately graduated from high school and moved out and lived on my own with two thousand dollars – I haven’t asked my parents for a cent yet. Even though I’m 20, I’ve definitely had a worldly life. It hasn’t been sheltered at all. I feel like I grew up really, really fast and had to take on a lot of responsibility. So to me, my age and maybe how I look is 20 years old, but I feel like I’m, like, 30.

TLC: On 20/20, they called you “one of the best dancers on the planet.” Are they right?
JH: Oh my gosh! That’s amazing. That’s a huge accomplishment and an honor to be called that. I don’t know. I’m sure that there’s plenty of better dancers out there. I just happen to be shown on TV.

TLC: You were also number 25 on this year’s Maxim’s Hot List. Is that good news, bad news or no news?
JH: To me, of course it’s flattering, but it’s not like, “Oh my gosh, I’m 25 on Maxim!” I’m gonna take it and be like, “Oh, that’s cool,” and then I’m gonna leave it there.

TLC: What do you make of the fame that comes with being a successful singer and dancer? Is that part of what you’re after?
JH: I’m definitely not after that. There’s people out there who just want to be famous, and then there’s people out there that want to be recognized for their talents and their abilities. I want to do everything. I want to sing, I want to dance, I want to act. I want to do all that, and not because I need the recognition. I want to do it because I love to do it and I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else. It’s so fun and exciting.

TLC: Are you comfortable being in the spotlight?
JH: I think you kind of have to be. But I mean, I’ve noticed a lot of paparazzi lately. If I see paparazzi, I’ll go the other way. I’m not going to ham it up.

TLC: You’re portrayed as a goody two-shoes. Is that image true to life?
JH: I try to be as good as I can. I’m not going to try too hard – otherwise, I’m not going to relax and be myself. But I have nieces and younger siblings. If I were to look up to somebody, I’d want to look up to somebody who’s really cool and down to earth and is still a good girl. I want to be that person too.

TLC: It’s funny that you’re making news just for being well behaved.
JH: I try to be! I think I’m too busy to get in trouble. I don’t know how [other celebrities] get in trouble. They should be too busy to! That’s what my parents’ philosophy was when we were growing up: “Just put ’em in a bunch of lessons so they don’t get in trouble!”

TLC: You won Dancing With The Stars twice, your album hit number one on the country charts, you won Top New Artist at the CMAs. You’ve got all of these accomplishments and accolades. At what point do you think you’ll be satisfied?
JH: Oh my goodness. I’m the type of person that’s always grateful for everything that’s happened. But I want to learn more. I want to accomplish more. I want to just better myself as an artist and as a person. Nothing is ever perfect – it can be great and outstanding, but you can always strive for perfection. And that’s what I go for.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

June 2009 – From Zero to Hero

2009-06-02T22:18:00.007-04:00

First of all, no one can prove that I skipped a day of work just so I could see The Watchmen on opening day. And there’s no concrete evidence that I’ve seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy dozens upon dozens of times and/or can speak entire sentences in Elvish. Or that I know my Elven name is Fëanáro Pallanén.
It’s no secret, however, that I have certain tendencies, tendencies that make me go absolutely bat-poop crazy for things like wizards and spaceships and costumed crimefighters.
All of which explains why my head almost exploded when I heard about Shadow Hare, a real-life Watchman who made national news on CNN and TMZ in April after he broke up an attempted assault in Cincinnati. Dressed head-to-toe in a black and gray spandex suit, the 21-year-old Shadow Hare, with one brazen hop, put the word “superhero” right back into our daily lexicon.
I had no choice but to investigate. I started with what might be my new favorite website in the world, the World Superhero Registry (www.worldsuperheroregistry.com), which is run by a part-time hero from Phoenix named Kevlex. As its name suggests, the site serves as a catalog of the world’s active crimefighters, or at least those who satisfy the three superhero prerequisites: 1) they’ve got a costume, 2) they’ve performed documented heroic deeds and 3) they’re motivated by something other than money or fame.
“Partly due to the efforts of the World Superhero Registry,” Kevlex tells me, “the Real-Life Superhero community has grown from a few isolated idealists scattered across the globe in 2005 to today’s diverse and rapidly growing international community with hundreds of members.”
Hundreds of people running around in spandex suits and thwarting evildoers? I’d trade all of the mithril in the Mines of Moria to see that!
With Kevlex’s help, I was able to contact the two most visible Real-Life Superheroes – Master Legend (a 42-year-old crimefighter from Winter Park, Florida, who was featured in Rolling Stone last year) and Shadow Hare himself – to learn what makes a caped crusader tick.

Team Last Call: How did you start your crimefighting career?
Master Legend: I got tired of being a victim and fought back.
Shadow Hare: I started in a small town going against a small gang who called themselves the Warriors. I just got sick of knowing that rapists and drug dealers were running the streets. People shouldn’t be scared to walk past other people on the sidewalks.

TLC: Why wear a mask?
ML: I like to give fair warning of what I am.
SH: I don’t want credit as an individual for these actions. I don’t do what I do for publicity. I see myself more as an idea than a person.

TLC: It’s got to be a relatively thankless job. What’s your motivation?
ML: My brotherhood with all my superhero friends is the best reward I can ask for.
SH: My motivation is that in time I may be an example that we can all make a difference. To some, what I appear to do may be stupid. But if we all did our part, things would be so much better in this world.

TLC: Don’t you worry about getting hurt?
ML: My dad used to play Russian Roulette with my head. I have no fear, as I wanted that bullet to finally end my hell.
SH: If me getting hurt means that I take the pain from another, then I am not scared to face anything. I consider the pain I go through an occupational hazard. I have lost a job due to physical injury. It actually made me homeless for a while, but I persevered.

TLC: What’s been your worst injury?
ML: It’s a tossup between fractured skull or the internal bleeding.
SH: When I was attacked with a pipe. I had bruised ribs. Dislocated shoulder.

TLC: What do you feel has been your biggest accomplishment?
ML: Saving lives and helping the homeless. Also, putting away a few murderers and a child molester in prison. And yes, I kicked their rotten asses.
SH: That I have inspired hope.

TLC: How do you respond to criticism that you’re some sort of vigilante, or that this is a joke?
ML: I feel sorry for those who have inferiority complexes. Plus, I am not a vigilante with a targeted person in mind. I am ready to jump into action when needed with my ever-vigilant eyes.
SH: I don’t do this for publicity and can care less about personal criticism. I do this for the people as a whole.

TLC: Ultimately, what do you hope to accomplish?
ML: I already have accomplished it. That’s the forming of a worldwide team known as the Real-Life Superheroes. I cannot say I did it all. It was immense teamwork. It has been my vision since I can remember deciding to be a superhero.
SH: To show the world that no matter who you are, or what people see you as, we can change the world so much if we do our part.

Whether you’re sitting there snickering or sketching out the design for a costume of your own, you have to feel at least a twinge of appreciation for what these guys are doing. I mean, wearing spandex is an act of bravery in and of itself. Wearing it while engaging in hand-to-hand combat with criminals is nothing short of heroic. The fact is, these crimefighters serve an important function in society. Namely, they catch the bad guys so that the cops have more time to run around and not find out who hit my car. Who knows? Maybe someday a Real-Life Superhero will save your life. And maybe he’ll be dressed like an elf. And maybe his name will be Fëanáro Pallanén. We’ll see who’s snickering then.

Strike Anywhere interview

2009-06-01T03:49:00.002-04:00

For some bands, the worst thing that could happen is for things to go right.
Richmond, VA melodic hardcore band Strike Anywhere experienced that first-hand after November’s presidential election. After a decade spent railing against the administration as one of America’s most outspoken political punk bands, singer Thomas Barnett and company were left standing with a funny little feeling burning in their tummies: satisfaction.
It didn’t last long. Less than six months into post-George Bush America, Strike Anywhere is returning to the studio to record its next set of booksmart bombast, tackling everything from child soldiering in Africa to, as Barnett puts it, “the cost of the colonial legacy all over the world.” Fun! We talked to the dreadlocked vegan and activist in anticipation of the band’s June 13 set at the Champion Ship.

Team Last Call: When we talked last time, we had all kinds of juicy stuff to discuss in the middle of the Bush administration. Now in this different climate, with a bit of hope circulating, what subjects are in your crosshairs?
Thomas Barnett: There’s, of course, songs about the current economic meltdown and the bank bailout and all of that stuff. There’s even a song about the role of punk even when the environment changes into something less negative. I wouldn’t say positive.
We were in our town on election night in the heart of black Richmond, and it was the most stunning, breathtaking, wonderful thing. Spontaneous marches and people hugging each other in the streets by the hundreds – some crazy shit. It’s only going to happen once in our lives, and it happened when we were home at the capitol of the confederacy.

TLC: You almost sound optimistic about where society’s headed.
TB: I think there are slight windows opening up in the consciousness of everyday folks, people that don’t have a bunch of anarchist textbooks laying next to their bed, people who haven’t been 20 years deep in a punk scene or a radical scene or having had the privilege or luck to be in a university progressive community of ideas and debate. Those other millions of Americans who haven’t had any of those opportunities, there is a sense of, “Wow, we are supposed to be the government. We’re supposed to be helping ourselves and defending each other. There are things at stake beyond our particular survival.”
I think even the little bit of deliveries that have happened – Guantanamo being closed, discussions of torture – it’s going to be neat. I think it’s going to start something rising that no one’s going to be able to control, and that’s a very good thing.

TLC: When you’re up on the stage watching kids pummel each other in the pit, do you worry about the message getting across?
TB: Me and my bandmates are punk and hardcore kids, so we know that feeling. We can read people’s faces and understand that people are having their own moment. They’ve taken our songs and they’ve applied it to their lives in a way that surpasses anything that we were ambitiously or not writing about. The show is a fulfillment of that promise that starts with listening to the record in your car or at home or riding your bike somewhere when you really feel comfortable and open to the ideas. You figure out what you need from the song and then you bring that to the show.

TLC: On the other hand, since you guys are so message-oriented, do you think it’s possible for the music to get lost in the shuffle?
TB: It is so idea-based. We’re part of a counterculture that’s about ideas that are not your regular rock and roll song topics. But I think what my bandmates write is visionary and I’m honored to be with them. The whole thing is for us to keep growing and keep pushing it and staying true to what we love – not just playing music that is esoterically, artistically experimental that we’re not even sure we like, but to do things that move us. There’s a thing where hardcore is a dance form of music,too. There’s got to be something that’s not just cerebral and built on a self-reflection of a political righteousness. It’s got to be more about the humility of being a part of that moment. It’s definitely important for it not to become some weird academic, theoretical thing.

TLC: It can be a little intimidating.
TB: That’s the problem with a lot of super-political punk bands. There’s just that sense that they get kind of lost in a very exclusive world. Punk was also invented to stand against typical rock star bullshit and to be very critical and to look at the spectacular nature of commercial entertainment, and to make sure that it wasn’t just fooling us. This is about friendship and an extended global family of artists, radicals, dreamers, maniacs, teachers. There’s a dentist in Edmonton who works on our teeth and then gets in the mosh pit afterwards. It’s like that.

TLC: If you found another way of establishing that connectivity, another platform that lets you communicate better to the people you want to communicate with the most, would you quit the music?
TB: I can’t imagine that. I’m a real shy person. Having the music in this band is the reason why this whole part of my personality exists, I think. I think that it would be difficult for me to just speak like Henry Rollins or something. It’s also just wanting to be a part of something that everyone shares in.
It’s the collective catharsis about this that is bigger than just the ideas, and the song is the platform for debate and opinions and building a world within a world and giving people hope. All of that is intensely important to us. But I think it’s also just the emotional clarity, the communication, the dropping of pretense, the sense of intelligence and ferocity and the optimism that’s a part of a punk show – even with all of the contradictions in punk, all of the stupid violence and sociopathic personalities that are also drawn to it. That’s a huge part of why I’ve ever had the courage to write about the things that the songs are about and to express the ideas.
For me, it’s all about the music. It’s all one experience, and the effects it has on personality and on mentality are fairly transcendent. There’s no way to get to that state just planting a garden in your backyard. That’s not to say that we don’t carry the revolution with us in every mundane moment of our lives, waiting in line at the bank, all that shit. There’s a certain amount of fearlessness and hope that has to do with it being beyond the individual. The annihilation of the ego is what happens. That allows you to get past your fears or insecurities or arrogance. All of that stuff falls away, and that’s why the songs feel the way they do.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

The Sounds interview

2009-06-01T02:30:00.002-04:00

This month, Helsingborg, Sweden’s The Sounds return with Crossing the Rubicon, their third album of synth-accented glam-pop.
Awash in piss and vinegar, the record picks up right where 2006’s Dying To Say This To You left off, with the band plowing its way through athletic, menacing rock anthems with sweaty dexterity under the guidance of sassy siren Maja Ivarsson’s raspy yelps.
Team Last Call chatted up drummer Fredrik Nilsson about the new album and the Swedish cockiness curve.

Team Last Call: What were your goals musically with this album?
Fredrik Nilsson: We just wanted to make an album that was totally the band’s [idea] of what our music is, and not someone else’s. We did all the demos ourselves in our own studio in Sweden, and then we decided to not have any labels whatsoever involved in the process of making the album. The five members of the band, we financed everything, all the album costs. We got rid of pretty much all of our old labels in various territories. Right now we’re licensing the album here in the States to a record label, but The Sounds own the album.

TLC: Going into your third album, do you feel satisfied with where you are as a band?
FN: The only thing I really want now is for the album to be out. It’s much more fun to play the new songs when people actually know them. I’m sure by the end of the tour cycle I’ll be really sick of the songs and just want to write a new album, but that’s the way it goes.

TLC: You’ve always been plagued with comparisons to Blondie. I always thought it was unfair, until I heard “Beatbox” from the new album, which sounds exactly like “Rapture” …
FN: Blondie is a great band, but I don’t think any of us is a Blondie fan or has any Blondie records or anything like that. To me, that’s just a lazy thing that journalists do, is to compare a band to something else that already exists. I think that’s a really easy and cheap way. To me, that’s really boring. It has more to do with the look of the band than the sound of our band.

TLC: You also get grouped in with the whole ’80s revival scene.
FN: We all grew up in the ’80s, so it factors in somewhere, but we never set out to have an ’80s sound. It surprises me sometimes. As soon as there are keyboards on the tracks, they all refer to the ’80s, like that was the only decade that had keyboards.

TLC: You’ve got a reputation for being a really cocky band.
FN: I don’t think we ever considered ourselves to be a cocky band. We’re a self-confident band.

TLC: I meant cocky for Swedish people.
FN: They don’t like it in Sweden when you’re too self-confident. They have this saying – Jantelagen, it’s called in Swedish – that basically says you’re not better than anyone else. Everybody’s the same. Don’t think you’re better than anyone else, because you’re not. We don’t think we’re better than anyone else. We just think we’re really good.

TLC: People have accused you of not being Swedish enough. Is there such a thing as being too Swedish?
FN: Yeah, there is. I think you can only explain it to other Swedish people. But yeah, you can definitely be too Swedish. There’s a lot of people like that in Sweden. They’re very, I don’t want to say self-centered, but everything that happens in Sweden is really important and everything that happens outside of Sweden is not so important.

TLC: A lot of Americans know your music best from the GEICO caveman commercial. Is that good or bad?
FN: All ways of coming across our band to us is a good way. But if you see one song in a TV commercial and then you go and see the band, you might be in for a real surprise.

TLC: Maja is always making the Hottest Women in Rock lists. What’s it like for the rest of you to see stuff like that?
FN: All publicity like that is going to rub off on the band. It kind of makes me wonder where all the Hottest Drummers lists are, and why I’m not on them.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Love In October interview

2009-06-01T01:30:00.001-04:00

IKEA. ABBA. Fish. Meatballs. Sweden, you just give and give.

From The Cardigans to The Sounds to Refused to Peter Bjorn And John, Swedish musical exports have almost always been worth taking a chk-a-chance on (Ace of Base notwithstanding). That list expands in 2009 with the release of the self-titled EP from Love In October, a Chicago band led by brothers and Swedish expatriates Erik and Kent Widman.

Stuck somewhere in the quirk-rock spectrum between Dinosaur Jr. and Modest Mouse, the band flip-flops between blissfully fuzzed-out rockers and mellow dance tunes, anxious yelps and hushed croons, biting off Built to Spill’s manic guitar heroics one minute and the Get-Up Kids’ keys-accented power pop the next. (GUK drummer Rob Pope co-produced the band’s 2008 full-length.) Depending on the song, Love In October’s music comes across as either playfully dramatic or dramatically playful; either way, it’s Swedish through and through.

“I would say 75 percent of our sound comes from Swedish influences,” says Erik, the band’s singer, guitarist and pianist, who emigrated from Sweden to Michigan in 2000 for college. “I also had the privilege to have a really good music teacher who taught me a lot of Swedish folk music theory. Now I’m trying to take what I learned a long time ago and recall that, but then put it into a rock and roll context.”

The Love In October EP (released May 26) is the band’s third release since the brothers Widman reunited in Minneapolis in 2006. It’s the first, however, since the band stumbled upon its current sound. Previous records were more pedestrian in their approach, with a more obvious, swing-for-the-fences appeal that earned LiO dubious comparisons to Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and bands of that ilk.

“I don’t even know why we were doing it,” Erik shrugs. “We didn’t enjoy listening to our own music, so it was kind of like, ‘What the fuck are we doing? Let’s actually write something that A) we want to play, and B) we want to listen to.’ I think we kind of found our own path to go down.”

The move towards a more natural and raw sound has benefited Love In October in more ways than one. Aside from churning out a praiseworthy EP that nestles nicely on your iPod between Lou Reed and Lovedrug, the band has made major strides into the mainstream market with the placement of its song “Like Nothing Ever Happened” in national TV and radio advertisements for Shoe Carnival. With one catchy, quirky pop song, Love In October has more or less eliminated the necessity for the record deal it was chasing so earnestly in its first few years. The irony is almost too big to swallow.

“Now we write music to please ourselves,” Erik says, “and if anybody likes it, that’s good.”

Try less, get more. Sweden, I don’t know how you do it.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Cowboy Junkies interview

2009-06-01T00:59:00.000-04:00

Morrissey was once quoted as saying – presumably in between sobbing fits – that “we all need rain and good old depression.”

If that’s the case, then bring on the Cowboy Junkies, whose “gothic Americana” hymns have been ushering college students through breakups and breakdowns for over two decades.

Not that the Junkies are all doom and gloom. Oftentimes, what is mistaken for darkness is just the music’s sloth-like pacing; on their breakthrough album, 1988’s The Trinity Session, the Junkies managed to take both “Blue Moon” and the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” and turn them into drowsy, gorgeous mopers that creep along with all the ferocity of a sedated snail. It can come across as a real rainy-day downer; but, like Schindler’s List, it can also be edifying and ultimately just the slightest bit uplifting.

“It’s certainly dark, what we write about, but I think there are also glimmers of hope in all our stuff,” says chief songwriter Michael Timmins. “When people say that music’s depressing, I find that very inaccurate. I think that’s a misuse of the term ‘depressed.’ ‘Depressed’ to me is something that’s lacking any emotion at all. To me, a mindless pop song is more depressing than anything we ever did.”

For the band’s newest album, At The End of Paths Taken, Timmins spent some time pondering family life and the inevitable changeover that takes place as children are born and grandparents pass away. Family is a natural subject for Timmins, considering that two of his three bandmates – Margo and Peter – are his siblings.
“Everybody in this band’s got young kids and aging parents,” Michael says. “I just wanted to write about those relationships – up to your father and down to your kids – and how those affect one another.”

The album – the 11th in the band’s 20-plus-year history – has enough molasses-y ballads and folky meanderings to satisfy longtime fans, but is also characterized by some newfound tension. Songs like the swinging “Cutting Board Blues” represent the Junkies at their most rocking, while the spooky “Mountain” features the unsettling juxtaposition of Margo’s soft vocals and the spoken-word droning of the Timmins’ father reading an excerpt from his autobiography. “My Little Basquiat” seems to be the album’s centerpiece; the song creeps ominously along, with Margo singing achingly about her children, until Michael breaks down the door with bursts of buzzsaw guitar that voice the morbid fear that comes with loving someone that deeply.

As bands like Oasis so ably demonstrate, siblings don’t always make for the best work partners. But Michael maintains that the Timmins’ relationship is not only workable, but might be the very reason why the Junkies have persevered for so long.

“I think it’s helped us,” he says matter-of-factly. “A lot of brothers and sisters don’t, but we know how to communicate. We know each other’s personalities and we know each other’s moods, and we know generally when to back off.

“There are very few bands who last this long, especially with the original lineup. You can probably count five. There’s U2 and there’s … mmm …,” Timmins laughs. “But we still enjoy working with each other and performing and recording. As long as it’s fun, we’ll continue to do it.”

*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

May 2009 – This Crimefighter's Got Moxie

2009-05-01T16:42:00.000-04:00

By the time you read this, we will be just five months away from welcoming the next generation of Team Last Call into the world.
I have been doing my best over the past few months to prepare for the arrival of the baby – fixing up its room, learning to say “poop” without laughing, buying adorable Eagles onesies. You can question a lot of things in life, but my baby’s team spirit won’t be one of them.
Mostly, though, I’ve been eating. I’ve been putting on weight at an alarming pace over the past several weeks, which is what you can expect when you go donut for donut with a pregnant lady. My wife, for her part, has become an unstoppable cosmic snacking machine. A beautiful, glowing snacking machine, but a snacking machine nonetheless. Cookies, sticky buns, muffins, cakes, small woodland animals – if it crosses her path, it’s lunch. I haven’t seen our cat in days, and it’s starting to get a little awkward.
When not eating, we’ve been devoting our time to brainstorming names for our baby, which isn’t nearly as easy as I had assumed. Our first choice for a name, Zazel, was cast aside once we Googled it and found out it was the name of a very hardcore porn movie. For similar reasons, we also had to cross Rambone, Pocahiney and E-Three the Extra Testicle off the list.
After that first round of cuts, we were left with just a handful of names on our list of favorites. Then we found out that Michael Jackson had already taken Blanket, Prince Michael and Prince Michael II, and things started going downhill. A few minutes of research later, our list was left in tatters. Moon Unit and Diva Muffin? Taken by Frank Zappa. Daisy Boo and Poppy Honey? Taken by the Naked Chef. Moxie CrimeFighter? Taken. Pilot Inspektor? Taken. Jermajesty, Little Pixie and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily? Taken, taken, taken.
My wife and I agreed early on that we’d each have a certain number of vetoes when it came to our baby’s name, and I’ve already had to use a few already, like when my wife suggested Bumpy. I’m pretty sure Balloon was on her list, too. Likewise, my wife has overruled some of my personal favorites, including Bean and Awesome. And something about Conan The Dest Royer just didn’t hit her the right way.
True story: I once tried picking a name by flipping through a dictionary with my eyes closed, randomly stopping on a page and jabbing my index finger into the book. I landed on Presto-Chango, which I personally think is the best name we’ve come up with yet. My wife fails to see the attraction.
It’s not like we’ll take just any weird name, but I do want something with some character. Giving the world another Ashley, Madison or Jordan doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I don’t want the poor thing to bore itself to sleep every night.
There are some drawbacks to giving a child an unusual name, though. There’s always the danger that he or she might get picked on or made fun of at school, and I would never want that for my child, unless it became the president of Young Republicans or something and really deserved it. There’s also the risk that the baby’s distinguished name could give it an inflated ego and a heightened sense of superiority, which is how things like Rush Limbaugh happen. Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, Oxycontin is another really good baby name.
But there are a lot of pluses to having an unusual name, too. All an ordinary name can get you is second place. The Joe Biden to someone else’s Barack Obama. The Sam to someone else’s Frodo. The (insert name of professional golfer here) to Tiger Woods. The George Bush to ... well, anyone, really.
But when you have a unique name, everyone wants you to succeed. Nobody cares about someone named Lou Phillips. But Lou Diamond Phillips? Put that guy in the movies!
That’s why famous people are always changing their names. Engelbert Humperdinck was born Arnold George Dorsey. Queen Latifah’s birth name is Dana Owens. Sigourney Weaver’s real first name is Susan. And Rush Limbaugh is a talentless turd.
“Everyone I know with an unusual name loves it,” said Penn Jillette, proud father of Moxie CrimeFighter and Zolten, in an interview with the New York Times about his children’s names. “It’s only the losers named Dave that think having an unusual name is bad, and who cares what they think? They’re named Dave.”
Of course, having a good name doesn’t necessarily solve all of your problems. Despite the inherent advantages, many people with unusual names somehow still manage to be unsuccessful, whether it’s due to a lack of morals (Scooter Libby), lack of talent (Keanu Reeves) or lack of tusks when you’re clearly supposed to be a wooly mammoth (Snuffleupagus). So clearly there are no guarantees. But it certainly gives you a running start in life, and frankly, I think that’s something we owe little Presto-Chango.

Chairlift interview

2009-05-01T14:09:00.001-04:00

Brooklyn by-way-of Colorado band Chairlift caught America’s ear in late 2008, when iPod graciously decided to use its quirk-pop single, “Bruises,” in the ad campaign for the new Nano-Chromatic. (“I tried to do handstands for you …”)

That indelibly catchy single is one of maybe two exceptions on Chairlift’s otherwise thoroughly dark and creepy album, Does You Inspire You (re-released by Columbia Records on April 21), a surrealist take on ’80s electro-pop. It’s hardly a mass-appeal album, but with “Bruises” luring hapless pop fans in like a siren, it’s able to sink its teeth in long enough to infect.
Team Last Call caught up with guitarist, co-vocalist and super-weirdo Aaron Pfenning during the band's spring tour with The Killers.

Team Last Call: What’s the experience been like for you over the past year or so?
Aaron Pfenning: The experience has been so Technicolor. It’s gone from plaid to denim.

TLC: It’s denim?
AP: Yeah. That’s the fastest and easiest way to explain the last couple years.

TLC: Has it been difficult adjusting to all of the media attention?
AP: It doesn’t bother me. Media like YouTube comments?

TLC: Media like the 36-page press kit of interviews your publicist sent me.
AP: [Our publicist is] on top of everything. I guess we have surrounded ourselves with people that we really like to work with and that we trust. Essentially, we can kind of stay focused on staying free spirits. So I think that the attention, since that was your question, hasn’t really affected us much. We’ve still been in our own world.

TLC: Career-wise, have things gone like you’d hoped since the commercial started airing?
AP: I think so. I think the commercial was a huge baseball bat in the face, in a good way. The iPod commercial was like, wham. It just kind of all came together at once.

TLC: I don’t think I want a baseball bat to the face, even in a good way.
AP: Yeah, that’s probably the wrong way to explain it. Maybe a baseball bat to a baseball.

TLC: Do you remember seeing the commercial for the first time?
AP: I was actually in an Apple store picking up my computer. My computer was getting repaired. I walked in and one of the employees was playing it behind the desk.

TLC: Did you tell the person it
was you?
AP: I think I mumbled something about it and they just thought I was crazy. So I just paid for my computer and left.

TLC: There is a creepy, sinister thing going with your music. Where does that come from?
AP: I think dark music is far more interesting. Caroline [Polachek, singer] and I started writing music basically as a soundtrack for haunted houses. When we were in Colorado, I had a big shed in my backyard and she and I would just drink a bunch of yerba maté tea and just stay up all night coming up with really frightening music.

TLC: You’re portrayed as a bunch of weirdos.
AP: Uh-huh.

TLC: Do you think you’re, um, atypical?
AP: We’re not super-strange. We’re just a little bit off. Oddballs. I’ll go into a meeting with Columbia and five minutes into it I’ll realize that, “Oh, shit. I just said something that really freaked people out.” I totally have to catch myself. It’s not how most people talk or how most people think of things. Columbia, I have to give them a lot of credit, because they took a really big risk on a band that’s pretty far out there. Patrick [Wimberly], our drummer, he’s pretty responsible. He’s like the Great Gatsby of Nashville. He’s such a ladies man, and so on top of everything, whereas Caroline and I, we’ll just wander off, like we did today, and no one knows where we are and we lost track of time.

TLC: You’ve described your music as an antidote to living in New York.
AP: In the course of making the album, we realized how over-stimulated we’ve become living in New York. Constant going out to clubs and noise everywhere. You go from ice cream trucks and busses to cars and people yelling on the street, and then you go into a club and there are people yelling at the bar, all these wizards and techno magicians everywhere blasting things at you. There’s visual imagery everywhere. It kind of never stops. So we figured out how to make music that was a little more calming. It’s affective in the most minimal and haunting and memorable way.

April 2009 - Team Last Call Makes A Person

2009-04-01T01:03:00.000-04:00

In December, I started growing a beard that, while it’s probably just coincidence, definitely helped the Eagles get into the playoffs. It was a mighty beard, a beard of hope, a beard to light the way in dark times. It was a beard you can believe in.

Then, of course, the Eagles got trounced in the NFC Championship Game, and I assumed that my beard’s magical powers had fizzled out. As it turns out, quite the opposite was true – as I discovered less than a week after the Super Bowl, when my wife’s pregnancy test came up positive.

My wife and I had been trying to conceive for several disappointing – and, I might add, beardless – months by that point, and things just weren’t looking good. But then I grew my beard of virility and our dream was realized. And now, my face clad in furry manliness, I am preparing to enter the magical world of diapers and singing purple dinosaurs and sleep deprivation called fatherhood.

Our magical beard-induced pregnancy is terrific for a number of reasons, including the fact that I’ll finally have a proper photo for my profile on Facebook, where, unless you’re holding a baby, your friends literally can’t even see you. Plus, until the baby comes in October, we get to use the sweet parking spaces at the grocery store. And in December, we can give all of our friends and family the greatest gift of their lives, a Christmas card with our family’s picture on it.

One potential problem with the pregnancy is that I kind of don’t like kids. My sister’s kids are two of the most magnificent creatures on Earth, but beyond that, I just don’t care for children. The crying, the pooping, the complete inability to hold their liquor – it’s just not for me. And if they have any appreciation whatsoever of the Philadelphia Eagles, they certainly don’t know how to show it. They’re messy and selfish and think the whole world revolves around them, and so do I, and that’s a bad combination.

And yet, I sit here already dizzyingly, incomprehensibly, inside-and-out saturated with love for this baby of mine, which as I write is somewhere between the size of a strawberry and a plum. It has arms and legs and is just now starting to develop facial features, including what looked in the sonogram to be the beginnings of a fine-looking beard. It also theoretically lost its tail this week, which seems like a positive thing to me. Presumably, it’s also well along in the development of its Steelers-hating gland. Good baby.

It’s mind-blowing to think that there will soon be a little person running around that got half of its genetic makeup from me. There goes its career in the NBA. It can also forget about ever figuring out the square root of anything, or the difference between baking soda and baking powder, or how to change a tire. But while it’s stranded helplessly by the side of the road waiting for AAA to show up, it’ll be able to write lots of sarcastic jokes about its own ineptitude. That’s called a life skill.

My friends have been an endless source of support throughout these early weeks of pregnancy, taking time out of their busy schedules each day to e-mail and text encouraging notes like “Say goodbye to your freedom” and “Your life is no longer your own” and “You’ve just been given a life sentence.” Neat things like that. And they’re all dads, too, so I know they’re just loving this. Suffice it to say, I’m acutely aware that my life is about to change. Forever. But I have a feeling that whatever sacrifices I have to make won’t be anything my beard and I can’t handle.

In the months since discovering my wife was pregnant, I’ve been stuck in a perpetual state of what I can only describe as excitement with a side of white-hot terror. I think about the baby approximately once every five seconds, and each time say the exact kind of word that I shouldn’t use anymore now that I’m going to be a dad. Everything I see now is viewed through the eyes of an expectant father, meaning that everything is broken down into three basic categories: bad for baby, really bad for baby and Rush Limbaugh. For example, my car is a death trap that shakes and sputters and doesn’t have functioning seatbelts in the back seat, and is therefore bad for baby. My Jack Russell is genetically programmed to hunt down and devour small animals, and seems to find small children particularly tasty, and is therefore really bad for baby. And Rush Limbaugh is a lumpy, antagonistic, pill-popping demonic gasbag, and is therefore Rush Limbaugh.

The point is, the world seems like one big, bad, dangerous place when you’ve got a baby on the way. I’m already prowling around the house like a bear protecting its young from danger, by which I mean Rush Limbaugh, even though all I’ve seen of the baby are squiggly ultrasound images of it doing backstrokes inside my wife’s belly. I love that little strawberry to a terrifying degree. Elizabeth Stone once wrote of having a baby, “It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.” Now I’m starting to understand what she meant.

March 2009 - Gun For the Whole Family

2009-03-01T00:55:00.000-05:00

Part of my morning routine each weekday is to listen to WITF’s call-in program Radio Smart Talk, a terrific new show that I appreciate for both its insightfulness and the fact that it means one less hour a day of classical music.

Several weeks ago, Radio Smart Talk did a program about a new gun law that has already been passed in many parts of PA. Apparently, the “lost gun law,” as it’s called, is causing quite an outrage within the NRA community, which is a very bad thing, in that these people by definition like to spend their downtime shooting things. In order to smooth out the situation, I’d like to, in a completely unbiased and not at all gun-hating way, take a moment to more fully explain the law.

The several gun owners who called in to the program came across as intelligent and reasonable and not at all like the kind of people who would murder someone who made fun of them. That being said, I’d still like to clarify that I’m not interested in choosing sides or stirring up trouble that in any way could result in me getting shot a lot. I promise to be understanding and respectful of gun owners and extremely sensitive to the fact that they know where I work and what I look like. So any readers expecting to see a column full of fiery rhetoric about how owning a gun is “lame” or “dumb” or “super-lame and dumb” is going to be very disappointed.

It just so happens that I love guns. I also love NASCAR, plus Old Milwaukee beer, and agree wholeheartedly that Sarah Palin should be president because she’s hot. So clearly, there’s no need for anyone to shoot anyone else.

And now, without any further ado about the fact that I would totally marry a gun if I could, it’s time to take a look at the law. The “lost gun law” can basically be summarized as such: If you own a gun, and that gun is lost or stolen, your wife and children will be sold to a democrat. Just kidding! All it says is that you’re required by law to report your missing gun to authorities within 72 hours. That’s it.

As many gun owners have astutely observed, this law is a clear violation of their god-given rights, especially their right to lose their deadly weapon and not do anything about it. But here’s why the law is important: It will help to cut down on the widespread practice of “straw sales,” or the sale of guns by legal gun owners to people who have no business being anywhere near a gun, like a terrorist, or Dick Cheney. Which I realize is redundant. Under the old law, when a gun is discovered at a crime scene and traced back to its original owner, the owner can simply claim that he lost the gun. While the gun owner in this scenario is, technically speaking, an idiot, he is not a criminal, and is therefore off the hook. But under the new law, that person would at least be held accountable if he knowingly lost his gun, especially if he knowingly lost it under a bag of money handed to him by a felon.

How you can prove that someone knew his gun was missing is unclear. But even if the law has some imperfections, it’s sure to at least slow down the illegal sale of weapons. So to me, the law is worth passing, even if you can’t always enforce it. I mean, you’d never be able to enforce a ban on listening to Nickelback’s music, either, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.

According to the NRA, all this law does is “victimize the victims” of gun theft. And they’ve got a point. First someone takes your gun, and now you’re forced by law to report it? That’s oppressive. Next they’ll expect you to go crying to the police every time someone steals your car.

But all lawmakers are really asking is that 1) if you own a gun, you do your very best to not sell it to terrorists, and 2) if you do sell it, I mean lose it, just give the police a little heads-up that there’s a new deadly weapon on the streets. If it helps, think of your gun like a baby: There’s no law that prevents idiots from having a baby, but there is a law penalizing them for knowingly losing one. And way less people have been shot and killed by lost babies than lost guns. To reiterate, no one here is arguing a person’s right to own a gun. Gun ownership is protected by law, and I’ll support it until the day I die, which hopefully isn’t soon via gunshot.

There are some people out there, like Jesus, who say that owning a gun is wrong. Maybe if these crybabies weren’t so busy growing out their hair and hugging trees and “living their lives according to the Bible,” they’d have time to read the Second Amendment for once. The fact is, gun owners have a right to bear arms. And the only way they can get the bear arms off the bear’s body is by shooting it with their guns.

In summation, everyone on Earth can and should have a gun. That way, if anyone ever shoots you, you can shoot them back, and they can shoot you back, and all of your friends and your dog and your grandma can join in and everyone can run around shooting everyone else all the time, just like the Constitution says. God bless America.

February 2009 - Team Last Call throws a TV party

2009-02-01T00:50:00.000-05:00

The world is facing many crises theses days, from the economic recession to the trouble in Gaza to oh my god did you hear that Lindsey Lohan broke up with her girlfriend?

But none of those crises – at least as far as our local TV channels are concerned – is quite as monumental as the switch to digital TV, which, unless you’ve spent the past year in a coma or are currently dead, you already know happens on February 17.

The reason you know that is because, approximately every 30 seconds, a very loud person comes on the TV to tell you in a very loud voice that you need to purchase and install a digital converter box right now before the entire world collapses into a deep, dark void of penetrating nothingness for all time. Other consequences of failing to install a converter box prior to the 17th include, but aren’t limited to, oral herpes, certain death and, worst of all, not having TV. I also read somewhere that they’re going to start killing a baby bunny every hour, on the hour, until every last household in America has digital TV, although I haven’t been able to double-source it. Then again, I did read it on Wikipedia, so it’s probably not true anyway. Then again, I’m the one who posted it on Wikipedia, so it’s definitely not true (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_television).

It’s become increasingly clear to me that history will show the switch to digital TV to be the great challenge of our time. Sure, the war on terror is “important.” And global warming might “kill all life on planet Earth,” blah, blah, blah. Ooh, we’re so scared, global warming! Frankly, here in the age of digital TV, those issues have become peripheral at best.

AIDS and poverty already had their day in the sun. World peace is so 2008. We as a society are not going to be judged by how we handle some trivial issue of a bygone era. Our greatness will be determined by how we join together and rise up in 2009 to destroy all obstacles in our path – no matter how many human lives it costs – in order to ensure that every last man, woman and child on Earth has free and easy access to Dr. Phil.

It’s OK to be scared. It’s not every day that the world faces a crisis that makes the bubonic plague look like a case of the sniffles. And no one likes to see baby bunnies die, no matter how necessary it may be. But it’s imperative that we step up to the challenge. Do you think Neil Armstrong wasn’t afraid to take that first step on the moon? Do you think Ghandi wasn’t afraid when he resisted the British Empire? Do you think Aragorn wasn’t afraid to lead his dwindling army on a march against the Black Gate of Mordor in order to distract Sauron and his army of Uruk-hai so that Sam and Frodo could destroy the Ring of Power in the fires of Mount Doom?

Of course they were scared. What matters is that they pushed through the fear, and helped to make Earth, not to mention Middle Earth, a better place.

You might be wondering, “How can you compare the act of buying a converter box to the work of Ghandi, let alone Aragorn?”

Before you get all worked up, just take a moment to imagine a life without TV. I mean, think about it: No Sean Hannity. No NASCAR. No The Hills. No Deal Or No Deal. Yikes, right? A world without the wit and wisdom of Howie Mandel is no world for me.

In conclusion, Ghandi might have helped a nation gain its independence, but we are the ones who will ensure that, for generations to come, everyone still gets to watch every single episode of America’s Got Talent. Did you see the Rappin’ Granny? Oh, priceless!

Granted, there are a few drawbacks to digital TV, including the need to buy the converter box, and possibly a new antenna, plus a new TV. And the signal is all-or-nothing, so if there is any interference at all, all you get is a blue screen – but you can always just pretend that they zoomed in really, really close on a Smurf. That’s called making lemonade.

But clearly the negatives of digital TV are far outweighed by the catastrophic consequences if you don’t get it, which also include asphyxia, soreness and elephantiasis of the testicles. And yet, millions of Americans still haven’t gotten their converter boxes, so many that in early February – right after karma makes the Steelers lose the Super Bowl because their fans are dirty, awful, fat-faced traitors – congress might vote to push back the digital TV deadline to June 14.

America is playing with fire. It’s up to you and me to push this country forward, to fulfill the dreams of our forefathers, to fight and bleed and die under the proud flag of 24-hour Rock of Love marathons. Now, go get that converter box. If you don’t do it for yourself, for the love of God, do it for the bunnies.

Barry Manilow interview

2009-02-01T00:12:00.003-05:00

Barry Manilow is a lot of things, and “reserved” is not one of them. And the mawkish music legend is every bit as dynamic in conversation as he is on record, whether he’s talking about how he created the power ballad, hamming it up about his age or discussing the fact that he’s become a walking punch line.

In the past four years, Manilow, now 65, has padded his already staggering career numbers with the release of a series of albums covering the “greatest hits” of the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s (The Greatest Songs of The Eighties hit shelves in November) and a wildly successful Vegas show.

Team Last Call: Between this series of albums and the Vegas show, you’ve had what could be considered a real career renaissance over the last four years or so. What’s that been like for you?
Barry Manilow: I don’t consider it a renaissance. I never went away! I’ve just been doing my thing for all these years. Artists like myself, it’s like a roller-coaster. It just keeps going, and sometimes it’s very high and sometimes it’s low. But with me, the lows haven’t been too low, thank goodness. And the highs have been thrilling.

TLC: In the ’90s, your focus shifted to cover material, by and large, and I’ve seen you lament that fact in a few interviews. Can you talk about that?
BM: It’s all about Clive Davis and his wisdom about what records will sell. As a creator myself, I always want to create an original. But like he does with every artist on his label, he says, “It’s not always about being creative. It’s about what the public will like.” Since I’m an arranger and I’m a musician and producer, I can figure out how to make [cover material] work without feeling like I’m giving everything away. I see the fun in it. There does come a point every so often where I say, “Stop! I have to release an original thing. Stop! I have to do one for myself.”

TLC: I imagine it’s an interesting tug of war, with these albums debuting at number one, number two …
BM: If they all were released and they all just died on the vine, it would have been easy to just say, “Well, I gave it a try, and now I’ll go back to doing my original stuff and join the rest of the out-of-work composers and struggle along.” But [Clive’s] got this incredible talent of being able to zero in on what the public would like, so I am the grateful recipient of this man’s gift. Plus, my original stuff will never sell as well as what Clive gives me. But it will give me so much encouragement and so much inspiration that I can ride on that for the next couple of years, if he’s interested in coming up with some other cockamamie idea for a cover record.

TLC: You’re nominated for a Grammy for In the Swing of Christmas. What does that kind of thing mean to you at this point in your career?
BM: It’s a wonderful thing. They find me now and again and they give me a nod. It’s great. I didn’t expect that at all. What was interesting is that this Christmas album had nothing to do with Clive, had nothing to do with popularity, had nothing to do with charts. Isn’t that interesting? It had nothing to do with commercial success or having a committee listen to it and say, “Hey, we like this!”

TLC: People have this idea of Barry Manilow as a balladeer, like Johnny Mathis, but you’ve protested that in the past.
BM: Maybe some of the real big hits were ballads. But even my beautiful old ballads had a lot of passion, where Johnny, who I’m a great big fan of, sings much more gently. Keep in mind, I’ve always been on the border of rock and roll. As a matter of fact, people credit me for inventing the power ballad, which I think I might have done. “Mandy” was the first power ballad. They keep copying that style, with the piano and [how] the song builds and the key changes and the ending. They still do it. So therefore, I don’t know why people think all I do is sit at a piano and sing love songs. Boy, that’s about the last thing I do.

TLC: It’s been about 35 years since “Mandy” …
BM: Boy, am I an old fart! Holy mackerel! Thanks for reminding me.

TLC: Sorry about that. So, when you were that kid, being transformed into a pop superstar, are you thinking at that point, “I might have a career in 2009”?
BM: Oh, never. Never. But I’ll tell you what I did think: I knew I would land on my feet. I never thought I’d have this kind of career. But even when it began, it didn’t matter to me, and hey, it still doesn’t. I know that it sounds ungrateful, and I don’t mean it to sound ungrateful, but this career, the money, the huge success, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I get the opportunity to still do it, and for that I am grateful, so grateful to the public and to the record companies and to Clive. But I don’t do it for anything but [the fact that] I can’t not do it. If I hadn’t been successful, I probably would have been really unhappy – but I wouldn’t have stopped.

TLC: You’re bringing the Ultimate Manilow show to Reading. Do you ever sort of impress yourself with the amount of hits you pack into the set?
BM: Impress myself? [laughs] Yeah, sometimes it’s overwhelming. It is. That I can fill up 90 minutes with music that everybody knows – that’s pretty amazing.

TLC: So, you’re this hugely successful and beloved artist, and on the other hand, one of the most mocked. What do you make of that polarity?
BM: You know, the bigger you get, the more you get [ridiculed]. A lot of people like what I do, and a lot of people have trouble with it or they make fun of it. If that’s what happens when you become really, really popular, I’ll take it. They can make fun and I’ll laugh along. People making fun of me? Everybody gets it, but usually everybody gets it for about two years. I’ve [been talked about] for about 30 years, so I’m a very happy guy. People can say whatever they want.

TLC: What else is there for Barry Manilow to achieve?
BM: There’s always something in the pipeline for me. I’ve got five more ideas that I’m developing right now. There’s always five more. And I don’t even care whether they’re successful. I just love that I come up with great ideas that thrill me. That thrill me! And I don’t care whether they stick to the wall. If some of them don’t, it doesn’t matter. I’ve just got millions of ideas. I’ll be on my deathbed, and I’ll be yelling, “Wait a minute! I’ve got one more!”

Murder By Death interview

2009-02-01T00:06:00.002-05:00

On record, Murder By Death singer Adam Turla sounds downright menacing, his deep baritone resonating with a Mark Lanegan-meets-Glenn Danzig growl of apocalyptic foreboding. Over swinging, shuffling, post-punk Americana, he flings phrases about infidelity, plunder, whoring, destruction, murder, gods, demons and utter desolation with a detached snarl, mercilessly scraping the bottom of the barrel for the starkest stories and bloodiest plot twists imagination allows.
But on the phone, he sounds really menacing. On a mid-January morning, he fumbles with the receiver and, after some under-the-breath grumbling, growls a curt “hello.” Irritation. Frustration. Were I a character in one of his dark, sprawling concept albums, he’d probably have one of my legs gnawed off by some foamy-mouthed hound of hell.
Fortunately, a few minutes and one funny story about a drinking game called Wizard Staff later, Turla is in a decidedly better mood.
“I’m generally a pretty happy person,” he insists. “I’m doing our band’s taxes right now, though, so when you called me I was wallowing in a sea of misery. I’ve been doing it for 30 hours. It’s killing me.”
Turla’s doing some last-minute office work before he and the rest of Murder By Death hit the road for a February tour that will feature, for the first time, the band playing the entirety of its newest album, Red of Tooth and Claw, and its 2003 storyline sequel, Who Will Survive, And What Will Be Left Of Them?, in sequence, stringing together an epic adventure that involves burning towns, stabbings, adultery, divine interventions, lots of vomit, lots of piss, lots of whiskey and the shooting of the devil in a Mexican town. If Cormac McCarthy ever decided to write a Broadway musical, this might be the score.
Red of Tooth and Claw is far from an obvious prequel. In fact, many of the band’s (sometimes overzealous) fans are still not aware of it, which is something Turla intended.
“Who Will Survive … had a real cult thing going on – there were all sorts of stage productions and ballets, there’s a doctoral thesis written about it that someone sent me, just all sorts of weird, obsessive versions of it,” Turla laughs. “So when this album came out, I didn’t want to just pander by saying it was [a prequel] to get people to go out and buy it.”
Musically, Red of Tooth is a dark and sinister splattering of Americana ornamented with Sarah Balliet’s ominous, droning cello and careening rockabilly beats that throw the songs up on two wheels. With the exception of the borderline-optimistic closing track, “Spring Break 1899,” which Turla claims actually comes closest to his personal worldview, it’s a bleak and heavy listen. And even the last track isn’t exactly what you’d call happy.
“’Spring Break 1899’ is a really happy, ’50s-sounding, dreamy ballad, but the lyrics are about pissing and shitting yourself because you’re drunk and worthless,” Turla chuckles. “Happiness is not interesting.”
Turla may not use it as song fodder, but Murder By Death does have plenty to be cheery about, from its mountain of critical acclaim to the tours it’s landed alongside likeminded bands such as Against Me! and Lucero, as well as Turla’s longtime idols, The Pogues. But why dwell on the bright spots when there’s misery to be had?
“There have been years when we have zero money and eat beans for a month,” Turla laments. “Then again, … I think that making good material comes out of desperation, of necessity. So in that way, I appreciate being in this line of career and not ever having it be peaches and cream.”
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

January 2009 - Ode to Mr. Puddy, the World’s Most Constipated Cat

2009-01-02T00:44:00.000-05:00

This is an ode to Mr. Puddy, the world’s most constipated cat.

Mr. Puddy passed away on July 31 at the age of 17. He was a beloved pet, a good mouse-catcher and a role model for elderly, incontinent cats everywhere.
Puddy is survived by his parents, a Jack Russell, a cocker spaniel, a girl cat and a boy cat. His absence has lowered the pet-to-room ratio from an admirable 5:6 to a dismal 2:3. The magnitude of his loss cannot be overstated.

My wife and I loved Mr. Puddy to the utmost degree, or at least to the utmost degree you can love a cat that pees on your pillows. There were times when we wished for his death, and there were times when we wanted to kill him ourselves, but as more and more of our friends have children, I’m realizing that this is really the norm.

Mr. Puddy was our firstborn. My wife and I got him nine years ago on our first Christmas together from a friend who worked in a vet’s office. Peanut, as he was called then, had been brought in to be euthanized due to what his previous owners called a “bad disposition,” which is a euphemism for “he’s crotchety and pees everywhere.” We didn’t know that at the time.

All we knew was that a seemingly innocent cat was about to be put to death, and his name was Peanut. If there is one rule to live by in this world, it’s that you just don’t kill anything named Peanut.

We could tell right away that he was a dignified cat, the kind you could easily imagine in a top hat and monocle. But not, as we found out later, the kind that would actually wear a top hat if you put one on him. He would wear fake reindeer antlers at Christmastime, but that might say more about the Velcro chinstrap than Mr. Puddy’s yuletide spirit.

Mr. Puddy began peeing on our stuff the instant he touched ground in our house. Rugs, mats, recliners, couches, slippers – nothing was sacred. Some our friends were quick to judge, especially when he would pee on, say, their coats, or maybe their children. But those kinds of things really shouldn’t be left lying around our house anyway.

The truth was, we loved Mr. Puddy immediately, even if he was sort of an a-hole. He was ours, the first thing that was really, truly ours. Sure, he had his problems, but I could say the same thing about our friends’ kids. At least Mr. Puddy never peed his own pants.

Mr. Puddy’s other problem was that he ate obsessively. Eventually, he got so fat that he couldn’t even clean himself, resulting in a greasy, dandery stripe of hair running down his back that ranked just below Gary Busey’s teeth on the grossness scale. His fatness also made him lose the ability to meow like a normal cat. Instead, he emitted something closer to an “ech,” which we thought was hilarious. We would use it as a party trick, and people loved it. “Go get that cat,” they’d say. “Make him do that thing that’s funny!”

“Ech,” Mr. Puddy would say, and the room would erupt.

This became less funny the day that we realized that the “ech” was happening because, while Puddy had ballooned in size, we had never thought to loosen his collar. Underneath it was a perfectly bald ring that ran completely around his neck. We felt appropriately terrible, although it did make him look like clergy, which was sort of funny.

Years went by, and Puddy continued in his ways, peeing on our most valuable belongings with quiet, haughty pride. Then one day last July, he stopped eating. Just stopped. We were concerned, and took him to the vet’s office, where the doctor conducted a series of blood tests and x-rays. The conclusion was that Mr. Puddy was fantastically, colossally constipated, literally the most constipated cat the doctor had ever seen. This called for an overnight stay at the veterinary’s “feline resort,” which is like a human resort, except that instead of being pampered with massages and chocolates, Mr. Puddy was given a nonstop series of enemas.

We brought him home the following day, full of optimism that our now substantially lighter cat would resume eating. And he did. There was joy all around. The next day, however, the doctor called me at work to deliver some bad news: Some post-cat-enema testing revealed a tumor. It was cancer that was blocking Mr. Puddy’s intestines. Cancer that would require an operation that a 17-year-old cat just wouldn’t survive.

Within a few days, Puddy stopped eating again, stopped drinking and started bleeding out of his nose. By the time we took him back to the vet just a few days later, he was sunken and emaciated. The vet encouraged us to put him down.

Mr. Puddy was 8 years old when we’d adopted him, meaning we had ultimately more than doubled his time on earth. He’d had a good run. There was nothing else we could do. Plus, there wasn’t that much left in our house for him to pee on anyway.

Putting Mr. Puddy to sleep was far worse than I had imagined. We wept openly and cradled his little
body, warm and limp in the towel. His little chest was as still as an empty cradle. It wasn’t even real. Eventually, we signaled to the nurse that we were ready to let him go. We said a final, tearful goodbye and handed him over.

That’s when we saw it, a little yellow puddle glistening on the leather couch between us. It was pee. Mr. Puddy’s last pee. His final protest against the indignities of the world. One last hurrah, one last middle finger in the air, like a punctuation mark on his life.

“Farewell, cruel world!” he said. “Ech!”

One more ruined couch, one more notch in his belt. We laughed like hell. And somewhere up in kitty heaven, so did Mr. Puddy.

December 2008 – Team Last Call paves the road to victory

2008-12-01T00:42:00.000-05:00

Overall, 2008 has been a pretty fantastic year for Team Last Call, with the exception of not dating Scarlett Johannson. First, we pretty much single-handedly destroyed the Hummer empire, or at least the H1, which was discontinued earlier this year, leaving thousands of men across the country scrambling for new ways to advertise their itty bitty tender parts.

Next, we secured a World Series victory for the Phillies, primarily by drinking lots of beer and sending good vibes through our TV screen. And then within the same week we delivered the state of Pennsylvania to Barack Obama, which in turn got him elected as the next President of the United States of America. He called us that night from Chicago to ask if he could mention us during his acceptance speech, and also to offer a position in his cabinet, probably as Secretary of Awesome, but we declined on account of our humility and the fact that he didn't really call.

Team Last Call: 3.

General Motors, Tampa Bay Rays and Sarah Palin: 0.

However, while we've been on an enormous and unparalleled winning streak, we're not about to start resting on our laurels, mostly because we don't know what a laurel is. Instead, we're going to focus on our next mission, one that might prove to be our most challenging to date: helping the Philadelphia Eagles become the next Super Bowl champions.

We realize it might not be "realistic" or even "mathematically possible," but still, by adhering to the three point plan detailed below, we are confident we'll be bringing that trophy home, maybe.

Step one on the road to a Super Bowl victory is to purge Central Pennsylvania of Steelers fans. These people have worked their way into the mid-state like a toenail fungus. They're all over the place, with their bad attitudes and their stupid towels. They're just so … mavericky. They should change the name to the Pittsburgh 'Publicans.

Converting these people to Eagles fans is more than a mission, it's a moral imperative. We need all available resources to win this Super Bowl, and too much time and energy is being wasted on rooting for a team that wears gold tights.

Converting Steelers fans will not be an easy task. Don't be surprised if they get angry with you, or try to lash out at you in some underhanded, cheating kind of way. The Eagles did, after all, completely and utterly trounce their team in September, and they're probably still pretty embarrassed about just how terrible and idiotic and awful we made them look. So definitely don't bring up that game. The one where we totally crushed them.

A good place to start is by trying to understand where Steelers fans are coming from. Once you understand that, that's where the healing begins.

Think about it: If you lived in Central PA, and the closest major city (Philadelphia) hadn't won any kind of sports championship since 1983, wouldn't you be upset? Wouldn't you turn your back on your community, your friends and neighbors and loved ones, and desperately latch on to whatever team out there is winning championships, any team, anywhere, no matter how far away it was located?

Of course not, but Steelers fans would, and did. Now, some of these fans will say things like, "I've been a fan of the Steelers since I was a kid!" or "My whole family is made of Steelers fans!" or "I grew up in Pittsburgh!" These people are lying. Steelers fans are liars. And once you understand that fact, that's where the healing begins.

It's easy to get angry with a Steelers fan, or to think of him as something less than a fully developed human, like the singer of Nickelback. But that's the wrong attitude to take. The truth is, ultimately, you can't blame a Steelers fan for being a Steelers fan any more than you can blame, say, a tapeworm for being a tapeworm. Granted, a tapeworm doesn't technically have a "brain" or the "ability to formulate a thought," so there's another similarity. But still, compassion is what we need. Because everyone makes mistakes. And once you understand that, that's where the healing begins.

Once these people are brought back "home," once they've seen the error of their ways and have thrown out their truly terrible towels, we Central Pennsylvanians can once again unite under the great banner of the Philadelphia Eagles, like the bible says. So, that's step one.

Step two on the road to victory is to boost the Philadelphia Eagles' morale. Because the fact is, in the team's 75-plus-year history as a franchise, they have never, ever, under any circumstances, not once ever, won a Super Bowl.

So as you can imagine, the players' self-esteem isn't exactly soaring. This is exacerbated by the seemingly endless number of malicious jokes circulating about the team and its complete inability to not screw up – jokes that should never, under any circumstances, be repeated, including the following:

Q: What do you call 47 people sitting around a TV watching the Super Bowl?

A: The Philadelphia Eagles.

Q: How do you keep a Philadelphia Eagle out of your yard?

A: Put up goal posts.

Q: Why doesn't Camden have a professional football team?

A: Because then Philadelphia would want one.

So stop telling these jokes. Remember, a confident team is a winning team. Although Sarah Palin was pretty confident, too.

Step three is to just plain steal the trophy. I mean just straight-up sneaking into the winning team's clubhouse when no one's looking and grabbing the trophy right off its little pedestal. Because really, that's the only way we're going to bring that thing home this year. Or any year, really. And if we get caught, we can just frame some Steelers fans.

They should probably be in jail anyway.

November 2008 - Team Last Call’s dirty, sexy secret

2008-11-01T00:41:00.000-04:00

First of all, I didn't stay up TO watch Sex and the City, I stayed up AND watched Sex and the City. Two totally different things.

But the fact is that I watched it, and that was wrong. In my defense, I was up late working, and a rerun just happened to come on one of the three channels I get, because I'm the one guy in North America still using rabbit ears. "Going down with the ship" is a noble way to put it. Plus, the remote control was totally at the other end of the couch.

At first, I just let the show play in the background, glancing up from my laptop every now and then whenever someone said a word like "orgasm" or "boobs," which happened approximately 200 times a minute.

Sample dialogue:

Woman 1: "Your boobs look great. Did you orgasm last night? Men are dumb."

Woman 2: "My orgasm was great. Men are dumb. Boobs."

But then, subconsciously at first, I started getting caught up in the storyline – something about Sarah Jessica Parker hooking up with an old boyfriend, and then Kim Cattrall hooking up with an old boyfriend, and then someone else hooking up with an old boyfriend, and then the girls getting together to drink cosmos and say "orgasm" and "boobs" some more.

I could actually feel myself getting dumber as I watched, but was able to justify it as the price you sometimes have to pay for escapism, ranking it somewhere on the brain damage scale between sniffing glue and shouting "Drill, baby, drill." And it was just one episode, so I figured there was no harm done. I did worry for a moment about what kind of affect the show was having on my dog, but he was busy licking his tender parts, so I figured he was fine. Or was he doing it BECAUSE of the show? I wasn't sure.

Sex and the City is the kind of show that you can hate on principal, whether you've seen it or not; it's self-indulgent, silly and, like Sarah Palin, unapologetically aimed at the lowest common denominator of viewers – the kind that would brainlessly lap up an over-romanticized version of female empowerment in which a gaggle of 40-something ladies are morphed from sex objects into catty, high heel-wearing predators. Fierce! To make it worse, these ladies spend their time prowling a fictional world in which all men are portrayed as little more than pathetically unaware slabs of dudeness who can be lured into any bed with a can of Bud. But the joke's on them – some of us don't even need the Bud. So you just wasted, like, a couple bucks.

As I continued to watch the show, however, I realized how this portrayal of reality was actually viable, how the characters, in between their many, many orgasms, actually had some thoughtful things to say. I caught myself thinking things like, "I've seen worse," and, "Wow, this actually isn't a total disaster. Not bad." My expectations were set so low that, just by virtue of that fact that it wasn't a complete train wreck, Sex and the City seemed like a success. So there's another link to Sarah Palin.

A few nights later, by which I mean the very next night, I was doing some more late-night writing on the couch when, to my complete surprise, the clock struck 12:30 a.m. and Sex and the City came on again. Naturally, what with me being a dude and all, I wanted to turn it off as quickly as possible. The problem was, the remote was under my dog, who, when not licking his tenders, had spent his evening expelling gas at an alarming rate thanks to a doughnut left too close to the edge of the table. I decided to just call it a wash and watch the show.

Next night, same thing. There I was, sitting in front of the TV, no longer bothering to pretend I was working, watching Sex and the City and nudging the volume down notch by notch so my sleeping wife wouldn't learn my dark secret. I was hooked. It felt dirty, like I was sneaking out to my garage with a flashlight and a box full of gay porn. Only, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I wasn't gay. I just sort of kind of didn't totally hate watching this show. What did that mean? Oh, I was confused.

They say that a habit only becomes a problem when you start doing it alone. That's how I knew I was in trouble. Night after night, I sat there on my couch waiting for Sex and the City to come on with a sickening mixture of guilt and titillation, like a Republican lurking in a men's room stall.

But I wasn't totally alone. There in the dark, with my dog softly tooting in his sleep, I had Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte, laughing, crying, constantly orgasming and doggedly working their way through life's important questions, one boob at a time. Questions like: When Jack broke up with Carrie on a Post-it Note (of all things!), was it really because of her hair scrunchie?

I had to see that episode twice before I could really decide. Which means, of course, that I had indulged in my disgusting habit long enough for the reruns to become re-reruns. It was a terrible period in my life, full of self-loathing, sleep deprivation and denial. And it might still be going on today had my wife, who apparently wasn't fooled for a second, not finally confronted me about it. And by "confronted" I mean "totally made fun of me and threatened to tell our friends that I stayed up to watch Sex and the City." But I only stayed up AND watched it, I argued. She didn't buy it.

As Carrie once wrote in her column, "Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate." I'm not really sure what that means – not even the show's scriptwriters know – but it sounds neat. And sometimes neat-sounding nonsense is exactly what you want to hear. Just ask Joe Six-Pack.

But in a weird way, my mistake really did make my fate. If I hadn't made my dark descent into the world of Sex and the City, I would never have been able to write this column, which hopefully brought some joy to your life. And like I've always said, "Joy is the snowy mountain that life skis down."

October 2008 - (The forbidden column) Team Last Call’s Guide to Not Screwing Up The Election

2008-10-01T00:40:00.000-04:00

It's October, which means that Halloween is just around the corner, and we here at Team Last Call couldn't be more excited. Candy, costumes, an excuse for Young Republicans to wear drag in public – it's the best!

This year, we couldn't decide if we should dress up as a zombie or George W. Bush, so we decided to do both and buy a John McCain mask. It came with a complimentary trophy wife and a bottle of old-man smell. Unfortunately, it was almost 20 years past its expiration date. The trophy wife, I mean.

We know what you're thinking. "Here goes Team Last Call with yet another politically slanted column full of unfair – albeit borderline genius – jabs at the Republican Party, which I support because I am uninformed, out of touch and incontinent, and probably overweight."

Well, you're waaaaay off. This column isn't about swaying your opinion one way or the other. All we want to do today is to present the facts in a "fair and balanced" way, like Bill O'Reilly, but without the blotchy red face and compulsive lying.

We are not here to support Barack Obama, even if he can stabilize our economy, make our country safer, establish universal health care, reverse global warming, turn water into wine, raise the dead and give every American his own private mansion made of gingerbread and lollipops. Neither are we here to support John McCain – that's what his walker is for. We're just here to call it like it is.

You're not going to see us spreading any vicious rumors or lies, like the ones the Republicans have been spreading about Obama – how he is a terrorist, how he won't salute the flag, how he was sworn into the senate on the Koran instead of the Bible. I think my personal favorite is the McCain ad implying that Barack Obama is the antichrist. Totally. He totally is. Nice work. You nailed it. Oh, and he also co-authored the communist manifesto, eats kittens for breakfast and sneezes unicorns. So watch out for that.

There's also a good Republican line about how Barack Obama is going to raise your taxes. The part they don't mention is that your taxes will only be raised if you make more than $250,000 a year. If you make that much money and still can't deal with paying your taxes, you could always consider selling one of your Hummers. Or, in John McCain's case, one of your seven houses. If you can remember where you left them.

But you won't see us feeding you lies like that. Or lies like how McCain's attack dog running mate, Sarah Palin, wants to prohibit abortions even in the case of rape or incest – the kind of self-righteous stance people usually adopt until someone close to them is, you know, raped.

Other lies we won't feed you:

Palin wants to solve our oil addiction by drilling for more oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Palin has supported the Alaskan Independence Party, whose primary goal is to secede from the United States.

Palin has referred to the war in Iraq as "a task from God."

Palin doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming.

Palin's state leads the country in per-capita pork barrel spending.

Palin's gubernatorial inauguration was sponsored by oil giant BP.

And the reason we won't invent those lies is because they're actually all true. And here everyone thought her biggest problem was going to be her knocked-up daughter. Bonus irony: Palin supports abstinence-only sex-education. Oops.

But not everything the Republicans have been saying is a lie. They've made some really valid points about Obama, including the fact that he's entirely too good at public speaking (always a red flag) and the fact that he's simply way too popular to ever win the popular vote.

Clearly, Obama has faults. He's made mistakes. On the other side of the fairness coin, so has McCain. Like how he accidentally ran an attack ad that included a split-second frame showing Obama with the letters "H-A-N-G" above his head. Whoops! And there was the day in August when he defined the middle class as people who make less than $5 million a year. Zoinks!

But McCain's got his strengths, too, like how he's such a zany maverick. He's not afraid to rebel against the establishment, even when he is the establishment. Sure, he's voted with Bush over 90 percent of the time, but for the other less-than-10 percent of the time, whoo! He's crazy! He's a lone ranger! A loose cannon!

He's also, if elected President, about one french fry away from making Sarah Palin the leader of the free world. If you want to fixate on terror, as is the Republicans' wont, this one's a doozey. The self-dubbed "barracuda" proved in her acceptance speech that she can throw out bloody chum by the bucket-full to Republican sharks, but it's questionable what she has to offer beyond the rhetorical nuggets written for her by Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully. Once the teleprompter disappears, will her round-faced cuteness and her state's "proximity to Russia" really guide her through sticky foreign policy snafus? For her recently deployed son's sake, let's hope so. If nothing else, I guess she could always mock our enemies to death.

The upcoming presidential election is the most important one of our time. We Americans have a very big job to do on November 4, and that job is to not screw it up. For the third time in a row.

Like we said before, we at Team Last Call aren't here to "choose sides." Far be it from us to declare who's right and who's Republican. All we want to do is to present the objective truth, which just happens to be that Barack Obama should and must be the next President of the United States.

Jucifer interview

2008-10-01T00:10:00.001-04:00

As one half of Georgia-based noise terrorists Jucifer, Amber Valentine plays a lot of rolls: singer, guitarist, diminutive hell-fairy, pixie-faced crooner, wailing banshee. But contrary to popular perception, for as oppressively loud and heavy as her band gets with its pitch-black sludge rock, one thing Valentine and her husband/drummer, Edgar Livengood, are not is demonic – which, should you ever find yourself face-to-face with the duo’s wall of amps and apocalyptic incantations, you’ll be glad to know.
“Yeah, we’re totally Satanists. We drink blood,” Valentine quips during an interview from her RV, which doubles as the couple’s permanent home and tour bus.
“We do tend to get inspired by darker stuff, but we’re not out there burning churches and stuff,” she laughs. “We get up there and spew some really intense, fairly negative emotions, and when it’s over we’re free to be these fairly positive people that can have a normal conversation.”
Jucifer’s music is the kind that forces music journalists to make up entirely new adjectives, like “demonolithic.” (All rights reserved.) But for every bowel-battering nut-cruncher of a metal song, the band’s got a delicate, melodious ballad or orchestral swell that feels lonelier than a princess locked in a tower. It’s a confounding dichotomy, one that’s earned the band comparisons to everyone from Slayer to The Carpenters.
“I would just assume that most people who write music and don’t explore such extremes are actively suffocating part of their personality,” Valentine shrugs. “For me, personally, and for Edgar, it would be a very conscientious effort to keep [our music] in the same area all the time.”
Self-restraint was quite apparently not on the agenda when it came to the writing of the band’s latest release, L’autrichienne, a double album that, track by track, trudges unflinchingly through every agonizing story arch of the French Revolution, with an empathetic focus on the doomed Marie Antoinette. The album is, as King Louis XVI might have put it, a tour de force, both lyrically and musically, snaking its way from fortress-smashing metal riffs to whispy, despairing laments. Track one, “Blackpowder,” sets the stage with a furious re-telling of the Revolution’s beginnings. “Fleur De Lis,” the album’s 18th track, renders the heart as the soon-to-be-beheaded Antoinette is bid a plaintive adieu by her even-sooner-to-be-beheaded husband.
But heads don’t really start rolling until Jucifer takes the stage and plugs in the amps – all 15 of them. The band has gained notoriety for its ear-splitting blasts of white noise and relentless feedback, something that fans, understandably, either love or loathe.
“It takes a lot of balls to go up there and play that loud,” Valentine muses. “The people that come into our shows not knowing that sometimes run screaming with their hands over their ears. But that’s alright, because in the end, making art is about making the art that you want to make, and not about doing anything else, really.
“At that volume, sound almost becomes a physical thing,” she continues. “We feel like we’re almost making sculptures out of sound. And sound becomes sort of a different medium depending on the size and shape of the room and the placement of the amplifiers. It’s kind of like an endless experiment.”
Valentine and Livengood have been spreading hearing loss since first uniting in Athens, GA, in 1993. With the decision to forfeit a permanent residence in favor of their RV, the couple more or less relegated themselves to the touring life – an existence Valentine will be more than happy to live out for the rest of her days.
“At some point, are you going to be 60 years old and screaming your head off in front of a wall of amplifiers? I can’t really say no to that vision,” she laughs. “I’m even going to hope for 70 or 80. We’ll be headbanging in our wheelchairs and having bands like Jucifer touring the nursing homes. As long as we still get to bang our heads, it’s alright.”
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

September 2008 – A brief explanation of why I should receive free Cowboy Crunch burritos every day for the rest of my life

2008-09-01T00:38:00.000-04:00

As the editor in chief of a powerful and influential magazine, I feel that I am entitled to certain things in life, and those things are Cowboy Crunch burritos.

I discovered Cowboy Crunch burritos a few years ago at a certain eatery whose name, Neato Burrito, I'll omit out of deference to this magazine's advertisers. But I will say this: while the anonymous burrito chain in question doesn't contribute directly to my paycheck, it does make an insanely good burrito – life-changing, even, depending on whether or not, like Carrot Top, your life is so sad that it could be improved by a single burrito.

If you were to ask me to describe the Cowboy Crunch burrito in four words, and then to translate those words into Croatian using a free online translator, and then to change them back to English using the same online translator, the answer would be "total zest plus large," which is as good or better than my original answer.

The Cowboy Crunch burrito consists of barbecue rice, refried beans, Cajun chicken, ranch dressing, lettuce, tomatoes and – the secret weapon – crushed nacho chips, which give it an unexpected crunchiness, or as the Croatians say, "does surprise into a crisp." But once combined, those seven ingredients create something that, like Michael Moore's ass, is so much larder. Larger.

What first struck me about the Cowboy Crunch burrito were its compact design and stackability, the perfect conditions under which to ship large quantities free of charge to various editors of powerful and influential magazines. Which brings us full circle to my sense of entitlement. There is a grand old tradition in the publication industry, and that tradition is called bribery. It goes like this: you give me lots of free stuff, and I'll totally write about you. What I'm doing now is simply taking bribery one step further by writing about stuff first, with the assumption that I'll receive my "payment" after the fact. This is probably also a good time to mention that Tröegs makes really great beer and that Angelina Jolie, a fine actress, has been looking very pretty lately.

Bribery is a universal practice in journalism, embraced by everyone from columnists in your local daily paper to network TV anchors. Why else would anyone ever write an article? It's hard to do and it takes a lot of time, time that could be spent drinking – I don't know – a delicious and refreshing Tröegs Sunshine Pils. We just need the extra bit of "motivation" to put down our beers, sit down at our computers, log onto Wikipedia and copy and paste the text into a word doc. Bam – article. Anyone who says otherwise is being bribed by someone to lie about it.

I've tried reverse bribery before, to varying degrees of success. My column praising pineapple chicken wraps got me a free platter of them delivered to my door. On the other hand, my column pledging my undying devotion to Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream Soda got me nothing. As a side note, Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream isn't around anymore. I'll let you make your own assumptions about how those two facts are connected. I'm talking to you, Neato Burrito.

On a related note, I recently found a pretty hilarious document on Wikipedia called the "Ethics Code of the Society of Professional Journalists." Whatever that means. People say that English majors have no sense of humor, but check out this doozey: According to the "code," all professional journalists are to "refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity."

Hilarious! "Integrity."

I vaguely remember reading something about this code on the syllabus of my "journalism ethics" course in college, which I signed up for because I thought they were making a joke, like "serial killer ethics" or "republican ethics." But I had to cut class that day so that I could photocopy my older sister's term paper to submit it as my own. I'm kidding, of course. I was photocopying my own term paper to sell to underclassmen.

It's that kind of ingenuity that makes for a successful journalist, and that gets people elected President of the United States. Sure, it might make you a "bad person" with "complete moral bankruptcy" who is probably going to get a lot of e-mail from youvebeenleftbehind.com. But it also gets you burritos. Hopefully. And that's what really matters.

It's your move, Neato Burrito. I'm calling you out like a sheriff in a Western. Either fork 'em over, or face the very, very small possibility that I won't ever write about your delicious, miraculous Cowboy Crunch burrito ever again. It's your call.

Or as the Croatians say, "the case is call of you."

Interview with Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz

2008-08-08T00:12:00.003-04:00

It’s a mid-summer’s day in Paris. The windows are flung wide open. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. And Adam Duritz is complaining.
Whining, of course, is nothing new for the Counting Crows frontman, who has worn uncertainty and despair like a sheriff’s badge for the better part of two decades, even while living the supposed good life in the beds of various Friends stars.
Today, however, he’s got some honest-to-god reasons for being unhappy. Beyond being locked in his hotel room for an hour-and-a-half interview while his bandmates explore the Louvre, Duritz is reeling from his recent days’ activities, which have included three festival shows, one of them in 120-degree heat, and a severe case of food poisoning after an evening shucking clams.
“It’s been a hell of a few days,” he moans as he shifts around under the sheets. But even in his misery, it’s apparent that this is a new Adam Duritz, bathed and baptized in the waters of his own music.
On Counting Crows’ fifth studio album, the wonderfully jarring Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, Duritz not only shows his scars, but reveals the knife that formed them – a scythe of depression and mental illness that’s had him wandering through a half-life for the past 15 years. On the album’s two halves – the fierce and flailing Saturday Nights and the plaintive Sunday Mornings – Duritz, now 43, explores both his slow disintegration and the painful, floundering attempts at rebirth that followed.
Team Last Call talked to Duritz about his disease, how he almost lost those famous dreadlocks and why his long December might finally be coming to an end.

Team Last Call: You’ve described the Saturday Nights half of the album as the binge and Sunday Mornings as the hangover.
Adam Duritz: I was trying to point out to people that Sunday Mornings was not about redemption. So I said to think of it more like a binge and a hangover. But that brought up a lot of misconception that the Saturday Nights part was about partying, which it’s not. Saturday Nights, there’s nothing celebratory. It’s a record about disintegration and falling apart. It’s about, your life is going to hell. Some of it’s done drunken and on drugs, but basically, that’s just about disintegration.

TLC: The hangover seems very different from recovery, which is something you’ve explored before. “There’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last …”
AD: I think recovery is a hangover. When you’re hung over, your body’s putting itself back together. It just hurts like hell. If you wreck your life, you may decide to put it back together, but you don’t have the skill to do that in any way that does anything but hurt. You don’t know how to do any of it right. You screw it up over and over again.
So most of Sunday Mornings is about failure. It’s about trying to do the right sort of stuff, but it’s all about failure. That’s how my friend put it when we were listening to the record. She said, “Boy, the healthier you get, the sadder this record gets.”

TLC: You made this record during a weird span of time when everyone was busy hating your band and you as an individual. Did that have any affect on the writing or the approach?
AD: I think I decided to talk honestly about what has been going on in my head for the last 15 years because of it. It’s understandable – I write these albums about having a difficult time in life, and meanwhile, from the outside, you look at me and you say, “Well, I don’t get it. He’s traveling the world. He’s got a band. He’s selling a lot of records. He’s screwing all these girls.” – by the way, all of which is fiction. Seriously. It never occurred to me that the press was so fake.
If I had the love life I’ve read about, I wouldn’t complain half as much as I have. Although that’s not really true, because if you think heaven on earth is dating a movie star, then you’ve never met one.

TLC: So people read this stuff about you, and then you lose your right to be unhappy because you have this glamorous life.
AD: It seems so stupid to me. They’re basically saying, “Look, you’re rich and famous, so you should be fine.” God, I was like 6 years old the first time my parents told me that being popular in school and having money isn’t the be-all, end-all of life. Isn’t that the first lesson your parents taught you? Money doesn’t bring you happiness. Popularity isn’t everything. Prom queen doesn’t mean shit. I was probably 6 when I heard that. And now at the age of 43 I’m reading some moron writer who actually uses that as a basis for writing a review of the record. All I could think of is, “What a fucking mouth-breather, man! What the hell is going on in your brain?”
Nobody around me wanted me to talk about the mental illness [on this record]. And I said, “Look, it’s gone on for long enough.” I felt like the band was starting to suffer from my reluctance to be honest about things. You’re looking at someone who looks like they have a dream life, and they’re complaining about it. Well, I have a problem. I have a serious mental illness that makes the world seem like a hallucination all day long. And this is the truth that you’ve been shitting on me about all these years.
I didn’t want to become a public spectacle while I was falling apart. But I’m a lot healthier these days, and I feel like I can sustain whatever embarrassment will come from talking about having a serious mental illness. I’ll deal with it. But you just can’t take a free shot at me anymore for being, like, a fat pig who whines. I mean, you can, but the deal is, I have a serious mental illness and I gained a lot of weight on medication. I weigh 60 pounds less now. I’m on my two feet and I made another record. You just don’t get the free shot anymore.
All I wanted to make people do is review the record. You’re still allowed to not like the record. I have utter respect for people who don’t like my record. But review the record, not me.

TLC: A lot of younger bands have started naming Counting Crows as a big influence.
AD: That is where our fan base is. It’s not the people who bought August and Everything After and are now 40. It’s 17- to 22-year-old kids whose older brothers or whatever played it for them. So our fan base has never gotten old. It turns over every year. The “Shrek” thing dropped it right down to the age of 6. [laughs] But you know, those guys, Chris [Carrabba from Dashboard Confessional] and Ryan Ross and Brendan Urie from Panic [at the Disco], at a time when we were maybe a very un-cool band, they went to journalists who interviewed them and they said, “No, no. You’ve got it all wrong. Counting Crows is our favorite band. We get everything from Counting Crows.” And the first few journalists must have shit on them for it. They took a hell of a risk doing that.

TLC: I heard that your publicist wanted you to shave your head for this album.
AD: She said to me one day, “Look, I know this is going to seem really weird to you. Just don’t dismiss it out of hand. I think this might be a really good time for you to think about changing your hair. Make it clear to everyone that you’re a different person.”
I went home and I thought about it. But the truth of the matter is, my whole life I looked in the mirror and I didn’t get it. What I would see in the mirror did not feel like me. And the first time that ever really changed for me was the day I first put those dread extensions in. It’s funny, because it’s a fake thing. They’re not real. But I walked downstairs and down the street … and I saw my reflection and I stopped and turned and looked at myself, and for the first time in my life I felt like, “Oh my god, it’s me!” All the sudden in the mirror there was this crazy thing on my head that seemed like me. It was free and it was insane and it was mad, like me.

TLC: When you think back to moments like that, does that even seem like the same lifetime?
AD: It feels exactly the same. I think that’s one of the things that’s good about me, actually, is that I have not changed very much.
The truth is, you didn’t have anything to do with [your success]. You just made your record, and other people bought it. I always say that fame isn’t something you do to yourself. Fame is something other people do to you.

TLC: You’ve said that your goal is to simply leave behind a legacy that you’re proud of. What else is there for you to do in order to accomplish that?
AD: Children and art – that’s what Sondheim says. There are only two things anyone can really leave behind in this world: children and art.
I’m very different now. There are things I can have in my life like my parents have, like my friends have, that I couldn’t have had back then. I could have children, I could have a family, I could be in love, I could get married. In fact, I met someone, and she makes every day feel like it’s OK. Whether I’m a thousand miles away from her or not, I feel good.

August 2008 – You’ve got mail … from heaven!

2008-08-01T00:37:00.000-04:00

The website youvebeenleftbehind.com is one of those things that, like Cindy McCain's eyebrows, is at once hilarious and terrifying.

I first heard about the website on Wait Wait … Don't Tell Me, NPR's weekly quiz show. I almost broke my neck diving for the laptop to check it out, eager to get in on the joke. Only, it wasn't a joke. This website is as serious as the apocalypse. Literally.

Youvebeenleftbehind.com is a service that enables customers to send e-mails to friends and family, just like Hotmail or Yahoo – only these e-mails will be sent after the Rapture.

Specifically, the website is designed to enable individuals who believe they will be physically swept up to heaven after the Rapture (aka the Second Coming of Christ) to contact loved ones who have been "left behind" on earth.

By sending your recently damned friends a quick note, you can "snatch them from the flames" by convincing them to stop doing things that will make them go to hell, like listening to Nickelback. With any luck, your friends will repent and will be able to catch the proverbial second bus up to heaven, where post-grunge is definitely not allowed.

For just $40 a year, you can store e-mails to up to 62 of your closest friends whom you believe are going to hell, which is great news if you know a lot of Bush supporters. The website holds onto the e-mails until the Rapture occurs, at which point they will be sent automatically. You have the option of writing your own original letters or using one of the website's templates, including the popular "Nanny nanny boo boo, I'm in heaven, how 'bout you?"

According to the UK's Daily Telegraph, youvebeenleftbehind.com was created by Mark Heard, a "49-year-old supermarket shelf-stacker from Cape Cod, Massachusetts."

"He said he got the idea in 1999 while trading in shares online," the article explains. "It suddenly occurred to him that he would not be able to send his trading password to his wife if the Rapture suddenly took him."

This statement has some curious implications. One is that, while Heard believes he will be in heaven after the Rapture, he also thinks his wife isn't going to make the cut. He also seems to believe that, once she is left behind, in the middle of the Antichrist's rain of hail, fire and blood, his wife plans on doing some serious online trading.

"Surely," I thought while reading the article, "there must be some kind of misunderstanding." So I decided to ask Heard about it.

"Yes, unfortunately at this point in time, my wife of 17 years will not be making the trip to heaven," Heard tells me during a rather colorful e-mail exchange. "How can I say that? She is vocally not a Christian and has no relationship with God, nor does she desire one."

And you thought your dinner conversations were awkward.

According to Heard, the e-mails stored at youvebeenleftbehind.com will be sent out precisely six days after the Rapture, in what is known as the "tribulation period," during which those left behind will experience great horrors like pestilence, famine, disease and Fox News, which will be the only fully functional news team still on earth.

"I have a team of Christian couples scattered around the U.S. – four active couples and one alternate," Heard explains. "They are scattered to protect us from having the team wiped out by attack, natural disaster or epidemic. They are couples in case one is sick, injured [or] killed. If three out of four fail to log in [to the website] for three days, the system figures the Rapture has taken place.

"Also," he adds, "one team member is located near the server bank with access in case the net goes down or malfunctions."

This brings up an interesting question: Will the Internet even work after the Rapture? Does Verizon Wireless have an apocalypse contingency plan?

"I do believe that the Internet will be up and running," Heard reassures.

"Eventually, God will take it down, as he destroys the world system," he says. "That won't be until the second half of the tribulation, though."

So that's a relief.

All of the e-mails stored on youvebeenleftbehind.com are specially encrypted so that you can safely send login information and passwords for your bank account, investments, retirement fund, etc. to your doomed loved ones. Because if nobody claims your money, says Heard, "the Antichrist gets your stuff." And that's a bummer no matter how you spin it.

Heard says he will definitely not steal your private information and use it to buy himself a new car, so that's one less thing to worry about.

The idea for youvebeenleftbehind.com is, of course, genius, albeit in a potentially soulless, "exploiting the fears of others" kind of way. With a clientele "between one and 1,000" people, Heard is raking in up to 40 grand a year to do little more than provide an e-mail account with storage space the size of Bill O'Reilly's tiny black heart.

And the best part is that – if it somehow turned out to be a hoax – no one could prove it until, you know, the end of the world.

But I will give Heard this: He talks a good game, and if he sincerely believes in what he is peddling, it's hard to bash him.

"[There] are those that think we only set this thing up as an elaborate ruse to get personal information," Heard says. "Most of those calling it a scam are only repeating what someone else said. They didn't look into it for themselves.

"It has been interesting just how much this thing has turned into a ministry," he adds. "Since I launched You've Been Left Behind, the secular media attention has been insane. Over 125,000 unique visitors from 160 countries have hit the site. You've Been Left Behind has been on every Internet site, blog and newspage. It's been on National Public Radio, ABC News, Fox News, hundreds of news.coms, The London Times, The London U.K.Gardian, the front page of the Irish national newspaper …

"I must say that God has used this site to get up in people's face again."

Here's hoping there are no spam filters after the apocalypse.

July 2008 – Hand Off My Shrubbery

2008-07-01T00:35:00.000-04:00

Last month, I devoted an entire column to a cultural phenomenon known as TruckNutz, which are pairs of fake testicles designed to dangle from the bumper of vehicles so as to let everyone know that the owner of that car is an idiot.

As per usual, prior to writing my column, I conducted hours of extensive research on the Internet in order to ensure that I wouldn't have to come up with any of my own jokes. While conducting this research, I made many startling discoveries, including the fact that I can fit upwards of three Krispy Kremes in my mouth at a time.

Another profound discovery was how very many slang words there are for "testicles." For your reading pleasure, and also for my word count's pleasure, here are several of my favorite testicle euphemisms: balls, nuts, berries, jewels, danglies, plums, stones, rocks, bobbles, love apples, teabags, cajones, huevos, Rocky Mountain oysters, Montana tendergroin, hairy grapes and Dick Cheney.

Sample sentence: "The next TruckNutz owner who sends me an angry e-mail is getting kicked right in the Dick Cheney."

Euphemisms like those have existed for thousands of years, ever since the invention of the first dirty word, which was "glockenspiel." Some of these terms were created for the sake of political correctness, like "special needs" and "nail technician." Others were invented as replacements for swear words ("dog mess"). And others were developed in order to sugarcoat, "spin" or otherwise misrepresent the truth of a matter ("mission accomplished").

Some of the earliest euphemisms were what are now called "minced oaths," or words used to avoid profanity – "Gosh" instead of "God," "darn" instead of "damn," "heck" instead of "hell," etc. Many of these words date back to biblical times, making them some of the oldest words in the history of language, along with "apple," "serpent," "Israel," "begat," "camel," "Joseph" and "Technicolor dreamcoat."

Over time, however, many great euphemisms have been phased out of common language, much like punctuation and grammar. For example, no one uses the popular Elizabethan exclamations like "zounds" (a shortening of "God's wounds!") and "gadzooks" ("God's hooks!" – referring to the nails on Jesus' cross) anymore, except for people who are actually from the Elizabethan era, like John McCain.

Some euphemisms became so commonplace over time that they eventually were deemed to be just as offensive as the original term. For example, the word "crippled," once thought to be demeaning, was replaced by the less severe "handicapped." That, in turn, became offensive, and was replaced by "disabled," which was replaced by "physically challenged," which was replaced by "differently abled," which hasn't been replaced yet because nobody knows what it means.

Other euphemisms are so politically correct that they're offensive again. Like saying "vertically challenged" instead of "short" – how patronizing is that? I mean, really! Don't these people face enough tiny little challenges in their day, what with their stumpy little arms and beady little eyes? The last thing they need is to be insulted, no matter how adorable it is when they get "angry." Bless their little hearts.

Don't say "vertically challenged" – say "short," or even "impish" or "itty-bitty." Just don't condescend. Don't waste your breath on "gravitationally challenged" – say "fat." Don't mince your words with "morally challenged" – just say "republican." And don't beat around the bush with "intellectually challenged" – again, just say "republican."

Sometimes a word has so many different euphemisms that it's hard to keep track of which is OK to use. Take "fat," for example. There's "overweight," "obese," "big-boned," "curvy," "chunky," "plus-size," "great personality," "Dick Cheney" …

Who's to say which is right? It really gets confusing after a while. For instance, you could literally have a sentence that goes, "Dick Cheney has a really Dick Cheney Dick Cheney." What does that even mean? You tell me. And while you're at it, maybe you'd like to explain what you were doing looking at Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney in the first place.

Clearly, all of these euphemisms are getting out of hand. And the situation's only going to get more kerfluffled from here.

The younger generation has started cutting out words altogether in favor of text-message acronyms like OMG ("Oh my god!"), LMAO ("Laughing my ass off!") and BILLOREILLY ("Dog mess!"). The main problem with acronyms is that if you're over the age of 13, you can't really use them without looking totally republican. Plus, if you have to explain what the acronyms mean every time you use them, it sort of defeats the point. KWIM?

I think we should just wipe the slate clean and create a new batch of euphemisms so that people can successfully not swear in a way that everybody else can understand. Or better yet, let's create a whole new set of swear words that won't offend anyone, like shrubbery, doily and kitchenette.

Sample sentence: "Bill O'Reilly is a idiotic piece of shrubbery who should be repeatedly smacked in his doily until he stops talking such complete and utter dog mess. Kitchenette!"

That way, the swearer is able to vent, and can do so without upsetting anyone, like, for example, my mother.

And if you've got a problem with that, you can go Google yourself.

June 2008 – TruckNutz

2008-06-01T00:34:00.000-04:00

Every month, it's the same old routine. I write a column, the magazine hits the streets and 24 hours later, like clockwork, the Team Last Call office is flooded with fan mail. To the point where I have to be like, "Mom, stop it."

But in all seriousness, I don't like to brag, but I've been known to receive as many as one letter a day. I've got to hand it to them, my readers are an enthusiastic bunch, and I'd like to personally thank all 10 of them.

Each letter I receive is unique, if not illegible. Sometimes I'll get one from, say, a concerned republican offering helpful tips pertaining to my bodily orifices and the various objects I might want to consider shoving into them. Other readers send letters offering constructive criticism along the lines of, "What's wrong with you?" and, "I guess they'll give a column to anyone these days." To the point where I have to be like, "Mom, seriously."

Others write to me with questions about life and love in general, such as:

"What do you think about life and love in general?"

"Who do you think was the world's first fat person?"

"Do you think Fox News really just makes up facts, or simply gets them all wrong?"

"If Rush Limbaugh was the last surviving human male on planet Earth, would he still die a virgin?"

To which I respond: You've never actually read my columns, have you?

But by far the most popular question my readers ask – as you've probably already guessed – is, "When are you finally going to write a column about TruckNutz?"

Which is really coincidental, because I was about to do that right nowNutz.

TruckNutz, also known as Bumper Balls, are disturbingly lifelike pairs of fake testicles designed to dangle from the back of a truck, most often between a "Bush/Cheney '04" sticker and a decal of Calvin peeing on something.

These Nutz serve an important function, which is to let other drivers on the road know that the owner of this truck is the kind of man who would actually spend $40 on a pair of fake balls. And also, presumably, to communicate that he is tough and shouldn't be messed with, and the reason he shouldn't be messed with is because his truck has fake testicles.

"Look out, other drivers!" the TruckNutz say. "Nuts in your face!"

TruckNutz are available in plastic and chrome, and come with varying amounts of wrinkles and veins. They measure up to six inches in length and are available in a full spectrum of colors, the most ironic of which is blue. Some of them light up in tandem with the truck's brake lights for maximum testicle visibility.

If this is the first time you've heard about TruckNutz, consider yourself lucky. Studies show that even just reading about them kills brain cells, which explains that little hissing sound you're hearing right now. Prolonged exposure to TruckNutz has been proven to cause permanent damage to such important lobes as the frontal, the temporal, the hernial and the not-listening-to-Nickelbackal.

I've been doing some thinking about why TruckNutz are popular. There's the obvious theory that TruckNutz owners are compensating for certain unmentionable shortcomings, by which I mean their tiny winkies. But these people are already driving large trucks. How much more compensation do they need? Apparently, two balls more.

But there's got to be something more to the story, some little X factor that separates a man who rolls his eyes at TruckNutz from a man who gently scoops them up and whispers, "You complete me."

One entry on Wikipedia identifies this factor as "machismo," which is Italian for "back hair." Another entry, which I created myself, classifies it as acute idiocy. Whatever the factor is, it's apparently spreading, particularly in the South, for reasons that are too obvious to makes jokes about.

Not surprisingly, TruckNutz are receiving a good amount of backlash from a certain demographic of Americans, comprised primarily of people who don't enjoy having someone else's balls in their face. The outcry of these non-consenting ball-lookers has prompted Florida officials to pass a law fining any driver up to $60 for exhibiting his Nutz. In Virginia, a law is pending that would result in a $250 fine per Nutz.

As one might expect, the TruckNutz backlash is now experiencing a backlash of its own. Upset Nutz owners across the country are ferociously defending their right to dangle their Nutz wherever and whenever they want, like Bill Clinton. It's a matter of free speech, they say. In America, everyone has a right to express his beliefs and opinions. For some people, that means starting a prayer group in school or staging a peace protest. For others, it means hanging a fake pair of balls from their bumpers.

The last thing I want to do is judge. If some dude wants to invest his money in rubber testicles, as opposed to, say, ending world hunger or reversing global warming or sending supplies to our troops, that's his personal, private business.

I think the crux of the issue here is that, ultimately, TruckNutz are just in really, really bad taste. But unfortunately, there is no law against bad taste, or Howie Mandel would be locked away in Sing Sing on 126 counts of douchery. What we're left with, I'm afraid, is a world in which Nutz must not only be tolerated, but embraced. The sooner we can reconcile ourselves to this fact, the sooner we can shift our focus back to the issues that really matter. Like Miley Cyrus.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some mail to open.

Mom!

May 2008 - Fat caveman

2008-05-01T00:33:00.000-04:00

The other day, I was floundering around the park on my daily jog – my lungs wheezing, my face puffed up like a swollen tomato, my belly sloshing around like a trash bag full of pudding – and all I could hear were three little words banging around in my brain like shoes in a dryer:

I'm still fat.

I've been running for four months now, and boy are my legs tired ha ha ha. But for real, it's been four months, and as far as my scale is concerned, I've spent that entire time dumpster diving behind the Krispy Kreme factory. Which is hardly even true.

I can't help but wonder if there isn't something inherently wrong with the design of my body that I can spend hours of my week lumbering around my neighborhood and actually gain weight. Seriously, that happened one month. I don't even know why I bother to jog at all. I'm about as fit to run as John McCain. (Zing!)

All my 23-year-old coworkers need to do is think about exercising and they get skinnier. They lose an average of 15 pounds a day just by breathing. They lost another five in the time it took for me to type that. But not Old Man Royer. I just sit here writing bitter columns, eating my Lean Cuisine and swelling up like a bee sting.

Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being fat, other than the health complications, the self-esteem issues and the social stigmas. And the premature death. I'm just saying that being fat doesn't work for me. Because you never know when someone might walk up and say, "Oh, hello, 31-year-old dude with a receding hairline and zero fashion sense. I'd like to give you a multi-million dollar record deal!" When that moment comes for me, I'd like for my profile to look a little more Michael Phelps and little less Michael Moore.

But there is some part of my genetic makeup that refuses to not be fat. Which is how I know I'm related to Dick Cheney.

Sometimes I think about the world's very first fat person – specifically, what made him fat, and how it might explain my present situation.

I mean, someone had to be first. Somebody somewhere, at some point in the history of the human race, was the very first person to get a little junk in his trunk. Who was that guy? Where did he come from? Did he have a record deal? Did he like to put words in italics?

Simple logic tells us that fat people date back to at least 2004, when the first "Biggest Loser" aired. However, after consulting several top scientific resources, including Wikipedia and TMZ.com, I discovered that obesity can actually be traced back as far as Meat Loaf.

But the truth is, no one really knows for sure, so I'm forced to take the Fox News approach and just plain guess. What my gut tells me is that obesity actually extends back to the time of the caveman. I believe this in part because I Googled the words "fat caveman" and got a bunch of hits. I also believe this because I conducted a scientific poll among my friends, and not a single one of them has not ever not seen a fat caveman.

Cavemen, as we learned from the classic 1970s series "Land of the Lost," were small, angry, chimpanzee-like humanoids with jutting underbites, excessive body hair and little to no grasp of language. So basically, they were Nickelback.

Cavemen can also be identified by their extremely skimpy clothing and sexual promiscuity, as is illustrated in detail in 2004's direct-to-video classic "Bikini Cavegirl," in which a young female cavebunny accidentally transports herself into the future and, in order to get back home, takes the logical route of having sex with lots and lots of pasty white dudes with moustaches.

Cavemen lived a grueling day-to-day existence full of constant struggle. They had to hunt and gather, fight and kill. They had to scrounge for every meal. It was a dangerous, terrifying world full of hazards – from saber tooth tigers to tyrannosaurus rexes to seriously spotty cell phone reception. In summary, survival in prehistoric times took every ounce of a man's strength and energy. He had to be a lean, mean, death-avoiding machine. And that's what cavemen were.

Until one day, when one of them got fat.

How did this happen? It couldn't have been hereditary, since neither of his parents were fat. But he was the very first fat guy. Ever.

And it couldn't have been laziness. A caveman had to be on the move every day just to survive. Plus, if he stayed home, he knew Mrs. Caveman would never stop nagging him about how he should be out hunting for food like the rest of the men and how everyone else on their block had nicer cave paintings than theirs and how a strange charge showed up on their cable bill for a movie called "Bikini Cavegirl."

So why wasn't this caveman out hunting and gathering and burning lots of caveman calories? Was he on some sort of caveman disability? Was his union striking for higher caveman wages? Did he become the CEO of a caveman oil company, get rich, install himself as vice president of the cavemen government, start a disastrous war, pass a tax cut for the top one percent of the caveman population and get richer, fatter, balder and uglier while the caveman economy was on the brink of collapse?

Possible, but not likely.

And there are other questions, like how did the first fat person's friends react? Did they even have a word for obesity? "Hey, Thog. Have you seen Ogg recently? He's getting really … something."

If anything, I know even less now than when I began my research. I don't know who the world's first fat person was. I don't know why I gain weight when I jog. I don't know why you are still reading this column. All I really know is that my fatness is like 30 pounds of story fodder wrapped around my mid-section, and I'm going to milk it for all it's worth. Who knows – maybe one day it will help me become vice president.

April 2008 – Reality show hits Central PA

2008-04-08T00:32:00.000-04:00

For my entire life, it's been apparent to me and everyone around me that I am destined to be a reality TV star. It's my entire reason for existence.

I've got the looks, I've got the charm, I've got the shamelessness. I've got a boy-ish face, so I'm likeable, but I've also got long-ish hair, so you know I'm dangerous. And if there's money involved, I'm totally willing to show my tender parts on national TV. Plus, I'm short, so I can fit in a lot of interesting places that bigger stars can't.

I've got an English degree, so I could be the sensitive, bookish half in one of those mismatched-partners shows. And I have a big mouth, so I could make a show colorful, like Scott Baio. I also have a tattoo, so I could play the tough-guy role like Dog the Bounty Hunter, or maybe the lady from "Nanny 911."

In short, if there's a man out there who's got more to offer a reality TV show than I do, I'd like to meet him. So I could shoot him and reclaim that number one spot.

For all of these reasons and more, I'm so excited that a reality show is finally making its way to Central PA.

It's just been confirmed that "Whoopsie," which is tentatively scheduled to return to Fox this coming fall, will be filmed almost entirely at the Senorita Burrita restaurant in downtown Lancaster. This will be the second season of the popular reality series on Fox, and the third overall since "Whoopsie" first broadcast on FX in 2006.

Senorita Burrita was chosen out of literally thousands of potential sites as the setting for the show's next season. Although she was aware that her restaurant was being considered as a setting, owner Jen Foster admits that it didn't diminish the shock when she received the confirmation call.

"I'm excited, but a little nervous. I get stoked about it," says Foster. "I can't actually legally talk about when or how it will be filmed, but it's coming!"

Needless to say, serving as the set for "Whoopsie" will be an incredible boost for the California mission-style burrito shop, which opened its doors in 2003 at 227 North Prince Street, nestled in the heart of Gallery Row just steps from the famed Chameleon Club, record label and retail shop CI Records, mid-century modern furniture and art gallery Metropolis and vinyl wonderland Mr. Suit Records.

"I knew I had to keep it under wraps, but it was impossible," says CI's Jeremy Weiss of the recent announcement. "'Whoopsie' had been a favorite of mine. When I told the guys at work, they were like, 'What?'"

As for why Senorita Burrita was ultimately chosen, Foster can only guess.

"We've served Hulk Hogan, Gavin DeGraw, Henry Rollins," she says. "Maybe they wanted to do a show in a small town, but at a shop that attracts a lot of interesting personalities."

The show, of course, will benefit more than just Senorita Burrita. It's also sure to create many lucrative opportunities for the surrounding downtown businesses. Says Chameleon Club co-owner Holly Skiadas, "I expect the immediate neighbors to feel the impact, but only time will tell if there will be an economic boom for the 100 and 300 blocks of Prince."

As for details about the show itself, Skiadas, like Foster, isn't talking. "I am not at liberty to speak about the project," she says politely.

However, that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to speculate.

If it's anything like the original "Whoopsie," this season will involve a dozen or so contestants pitted against each other in "Survivor"-style challenges of physical and mental skill. It's safe to assume that at least some of these challenges will involve tasks like working the Senorita Burrita lunch rush with various handicaps like blindfolds, arm and leg weights and the now-infamous Whoopsie Weasel. Other times, the challenges may involve more behind-the-scenes tests, like handling employee schedules or placing produce orders. As Foster assures with a laugh, it's not as easy as you might think!

With me being (apparently) something of a "local celebrity," as well as a regular at Senorita Burrita, I was chosen to serve as one of the episodes' "local" judges. It's just one episode, but I'm optimistic about the opportunities it could lead to. Plus, my mom will finally have something to brag about to the ladies at church.

I've got to admit, even though the show is already in pre-production, it's hard to believe that it's actually going to happen here in Central PA. I keep trying to picture last season's contestants working behind the restaurant counter, and it's next to impossible. Brianne Washington in a Senorita Burrita shirt? Hotchie-motchie!

This year's roster of contestants is nothing to sniff at either. Among the people I was able to confirm so far are a few big personalities from last season (Tiffany Van Der Mar, Jimmy Kleese), as well as some B-list celebrities from other reality shows, including Tonya Marx-Davies from "Lunch Swap." Rumors are also being spread about an encore guest-hosting appearance by Marc Summers, but the producers absolutely refuse to confirm or deny it.

What they will confirm is that, as before, new contestants will be added to the show throughout the season as people are voted off – and they're looking for men and women from around the area. Filming could begin as early as this spring. Maybe you can be the Julianne to my Helio!

March 2008 – This party’s gonna be sick

2008-03-01T00:31:00.000-05:00

Last month, the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras took place within two days of each other, making it the most barf-tastic three-day stretch in recent memory.

Lord only knows how much alcohol was consumed and expelled during that magical time period. If Lindsey Lohan had anything to say about it, the answer is a lot.

"But wait!" you might be thinking. "What about this month? Isn't there anything to barf about in March?"

Actually, there's plenty to barf about this month. In fact, March might be the single barfiest month of the year, thanks to one internationally celebrated Irish holiday I like call "Throw Up Beer In The Back Of Your Friend's Car Day." Easter!

Just kidding. It's St. Patrick's Day. Or as Amy Winehouse likes to call it, Day.

So, why is St. Patrick's Day so throw up-y? Well, according to one reputable website, by which I mean Wikipedia, many American St. Patrick's Day celebrations center around "alcohol." And if it says it on Wikipedia, then you know it's true. Or that it's totally not true. You never know, which is part of why Wikipedia is awesome. It's like playing Russian roulette, only instead of bullets, you use facts.

For example, I looked up Tom Cruise on Wikipedia and couldn't find the words "creepy," "really creepy" or "super creepy" anywhere, so that shows you just how off it can be. I wonder if Wikipedia is where President Bush looked to see if Iraq had WMDs? Just a thought.

Anyway, the point is, a lot of people drink alcohol on St. Patrick's Day. As studies show, the abuse of alcohol can have some pretty horrifying consequences, such as hangovers, automobile accidents and voting for Mitt Romney. Who, according to Wikipedia, is made of 80 percent plastic. Then again, Wikipedia also claims that Romney has withdrawn from the presidential race. So there's an example of Wikipedia being right twice in a row.

But worse than any of these side effects, drinking can lead to barfing, which, according to several top scientists, sucks. And yet, no matter how many times they might learn this hard lesson first-hand, millions of Americans will once again end their St. Patrick's Day bowing down before the porcelain god. Calling Huey on the great white telephone. Mugging the porcelain tourist. Playing with the edible yo-yo. Giggling to Ralph over the porcelain intercom. Making a pavement pizza. Singing solo in the porcelain amphitheater. And other funny phrases I found online to boost my word count.

What makes it worse is that most people don't have the faintest idea what they're actually celebrating on St. Patrick's Day.

In fact, for a lot of people (Lindsey Lohan), St. Patrick's Day is distinguished from Mardi Gras only by the fact that the beer they're throwing up is green.

The real reason we celebrate is, of course, to commemorate the life and deeds of St. Patrick, who is famous for chasing all of the snakes out of Ireland, presumably by putting on a green plastic hat and throwing up Jell-O shots on them. This feat is all the more amazing when you consider the fact that Ireland never had any snakes to begin with. And that's an actual true, scientific, non-made-up fact. As opposed to this one: George Bush was forged in the fires of Mordor.

Which is a lie because, as Wikipedia points out, he was actually the one doing the forging.

I don't mean to give the impression that I did all of my research for this article on Wikipedia. That couldn't be further from the truth. I also did some research on pukeplanet.com, which is a website consisting entirely of pictures of people barfing. That's sort of bizarre in and of itself, but the truly remarkable part is how the website advertises itself as – and I swear this is true – "the best site for puke pictures on the web."

So if you've been less than satisfied with the puke-picture sites you've been frequenting lately, you know where to go.

Sometimes I think about St. Patrick's Day and all of the barfing and wonder how things got so out of hand. Like, 400 years ago it was a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. Now it's a day when people go out to bars, drink their body weight in green-tinted domestic drafts and blarney all over each other's shoes. It's like the entire holiday has been secularized, which is a really, really sad thing. I mean, what would Santa say if he were here?

Yeah, sometimes I get down about St. Patrick's Day. But then I think about those tiny little men in the funny suits who are always hiding their gold – What do you call those again? Republicans? – and I smile.

At least next year we won't have one of those in the White House.

Drive-By Truckers interview

2008-03-01T00:06:00.003-05:00

“We’re kind of like the dirty old uncle of the music business that everybody thinks is cool, but nobody invites when they have decent friends coming over.”
It’s not the prettiest metaphor Mike Cooley’s ever used, but it’s as good as any when it comes to describing the Drive-By Truckers’ place in the music world. For years, these torchbearers of Southern rock have been smothered with stadium-sized praise, but never really managed to graduate from the sticky-floored club scene.
“Greatest band on planet Earth” isn’t a tag that’s often bestowed upon a band that most of America has never even heard of. But there’s just something about the Truckers that makes journalists get all googley. The hell’s-bells triple-guitar attack; the blue-collar laments; the blue-collar celebrations; the bottles of Jack they pass around onstage; the burning honesty of the lyrics; the intelligence and wit; the wild abandon; and the fact that they seem almost completely unaware that they’re responsible for any of these things.
The departure of Jason Isbell, one of the Drive-By Truckers’ three frontmen, between albums resulted in a lot of nail-biting among the band’s fan base. But Cooley and his musical partner of over 20 years, Patterson Hood, didn’t get the memo to be nervous. Instead, the two holed themselves up and, with some unexpected help from bassist Shonna Tucker, sneezed out what might be the finest album of their career.
Brighter Than Creation’s Dark is, as Hood has called it, a “grower.” None of the tracks is going to make it to Top 40 in our lifetime – although lead single “The Righteous Path” could have given Neil Young and Crazy Horse a run for their money in the ’70s. But taken as a whole, the album is simultaneously the calm before, the eye of, and the aftermath of the storm, a revolving mass of earthquaking rockers, hushed ballads and instant alt-country classics.
Team Last Call caught up with Cooley in mid-February to get the Drive-By Truckers’ state of the union.

Team Last Call: Patterson called Brighter Than Creation’s Dark your best album, which I know bands are supposed to say about every new album – but is that something you agree with?
Mike Cooley: This really is. I don’t think there’s any argument. The songs overall, song for song, I think are better. I think we played better and broke some new ground.

TLC: I know you get squirmy around the word “mature,” but I think it does apply to this album. It’s more songwriting, less muscle.
MC: If you can get better instead of older, then “mature” is good. [laughs] But it’s like, you know, “Oh, they’re mature now.” And the next thing you hear is, “The big summer tour – Harry Connick Jr. with the Drive-By Truckers!” Ahh!

TLC: This time around, you individually are getting the most praise for the songs you contributed.
MC: I’ve always had my fans. Some of them are a little scary, but I think overall they mean well.

TLC: Pitchfork called you the “hell-raising, yarn-spinning fuck-up” of the band. Is that fair?
MC: I haven’t been a fuck-up in a long time, but when I was, I was a marvelous fuck-up. So that’s fair. I’m just finally getting press for it.

TLC: The songs on this album stick with the same dark themes you’ve been writing about for years – the tragic characters, drinking and drugs, murder and suicide. Where does that dark streak come from?
MC: It’s just more interesting to write about. [laughs] We’ve had plenty of close associations with all those things. It makes you think and affects you on a more emotional level than the happy stuff does. The tragedy is just a better movie. When you see somebody sliding down into the gutter, it affects you a lot longer.

TLC: You said in another interview that this has been a year of highlights for you. What did you mean by that?
MC: First of all, we ended last year with some much, much needed time off the road. That had more to do with the creative streak and the quality of the songs than anything, just being able to, for me, stay in my own space long enough to get it out and get it done. So I felt real good about that. And then we shifted right into doing the Betty LaVette record. Now all of the sudden I’ve got this chance to be a part of making a really cool soul record in Muscle Shoals. You grow up loving that music, and I figured being a part of something like that just was never going to happen. But it happened, and it was fun, and now it’s nominated for a Grammy. So, even better! [Editor’s note about the Grammy: no dice.] It’s just been a great year.

TLC FM: Isbell left the band after five years and three albums. Can you talk about what that was like?
MC: It was a friendly split. It wasn’t any big deal. It was time for him to go do his own thing. He’s talented, he’s prolific. And he’s done great. It was definitely a lot better than having somebody leave in the middle of a tour or making a record.

TLC: Did you feel like you had something to prove to fans who were concerned after he left?
MC: Not really. We were a band for five years before [he joined]. I think we just wanted to make a good record. We wanted to be creative again.

TLC: It was fun as a fan watching Shonna step up with songs of her own. I think having the different writers’ voices and perspectives is part of the whole Drive-By Truckers deal.
MC: It is! If me and Patterson had to write all the songs, we’d find a way to make it work. We’ve done it before. But her coming in with songs was kind of a surprise for us. We had no idea until we went into the studio.

TLC: You and Patterson have persevered through divorce, financial struggles, mental breakdowns, Isbell’s departure. What keeps pushing you forward?
MC: I guess we’re in love. [laughs]

TLC: When people throw things at you like “the greatest band in the world,” how do you even respond to that?
MC: I’m just glad I didn’t have to say it myself. [laughs] I didn’t get into this game to lose!

TLC: I read that you’re considering moving on without a record label.
MC: Since we signed to New West, it’s like, everything is different. I think anybody at a point of making a major decision needs to sit down and do a little thinking, because the traditional record company-artist relationship and business model is obsolete now. It just doesn’t work anymore. I don’t know what we’re actually going to do, other than try to maintain our fan base and build it. That’s what we’ve built everything on. We’ve never been able to rely on all the things that artists of the past could rely on a record company for.

TLC: But you never know – maybe New West will surprise you by landing you a tour with Hannah Montana!
MC: They could surprise me by having an original idea! [laughs]

TLC: That being said, do you talk about the things you still want to accomplish together?
MC: We’ve got this year to think about it. We’ve got this record out, and it’s on New West whether we like it or not. I would love to have kept this one for myself because I like it. But we’re going to tour behind it. We’re going to hand-deliver it to our fans like we always have. I’ve always lived by the philosophy that if you take care of what’s important, everything else will take care of itself. And our fans built us. They’re why we have a job. We’ll find a way to take care of them.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

Against Me! interview

2008-02-01T03:00:00.003-05:00

“Just watch out for ‘sensitive.’ If someone starts saying they’re ‘sensitive’ to you, it’s bad news!”
Against Me! singer Tom Gabel has learned a lot in the two years since he and his anarchist-punk bandmates made the jump from an indie label to Sire Records.
The list of industry terms he’s compiled on his Blackberry is probably the funniest evidence of this. From “viral campaign” to “cultural significance,” Gabel’s assembled an impressive database of bullshit words and phrases, with “sensitive” occupying the number one position.
“If someone at a record label tells you that they’re ‘sensitive’ to your needs as an artist,” he explains with a laugh, “it means that they’re going to be very, very manipulative, but in a very subtle way.”
Against Me! have also learned another word along their travels: sellout. The myopic punk crowd, ever concerned with rebelling against the mainstream, did a major-league freak-out when Against Me! ostensibly switched teams. What they didn’t consider was the novel idea that Gabel and his band hit upon: If you’re unhappy with what’s going on in the mainstream … change the mainstream.
With the release of their Sire debut, New Wave, in July, that’s exactly what they did. The record is being hailed as one of the most vibrant, colossal and fierce offerings of 2007 – the best album of the year, if you want to listen to Spin.
In the midst of the escalating hype, Team Last Call tracked down Gabel in his hometown of Gainesville, Florida, to talk about the thin line between sellout and revolutionary.

Team Last Call: It seems like everyone on planet Earth is freaking out about your new album. What’s that like for you?
Tom Gabel: Stuff like that, it’s nice, it’s cool, it’s awesome. Anybody who tells you that they aren’t happy to have their work appreciated is lying to you. But that’s not necessarily why you do it. It’s more just something cool to show your mom. “Check it out, mom! You can go to Barnes & Noble and get this magazine!” It’s like coming home with a good report card.

TLC: On New Wave, it seems like you’re moving in a more positive direction – less “this situation is screwed up” and more “here’s something you can do to change it.” What was the catalyst for that?
TG: I think it’s not so much, “Here’s something you can do.” It’s more, “Just do something!” Whatever it is, be motivated and try to be positive about things. There were personal things that happened in my life that were a sea change. But also, it was kind of taking a look at where we were as a band and feeling grateful and very fortunate and thinking, “This is an awesome situation to be in. Why not make the best of it?” I feel like it would have been really in bad taste to put out some self-bemoaning album as a major label debut. “Life is horrible. All these things suck!” I feel like it was a real opportunity to do something that wasn’t self-centered.

TLC: What was the motivation for you to move to a major in the first place?
TG: I never wanted to be a band that was defined by its record label, because I think that’s just ridiculous. So while Fat [Wreck Chords] was an amazing label and we appreciate everything that they’ve done for us, it felt like if we would have stayed it would have been stagnating. It would have gotten less exciting, and we could have just shit out a record every two or three years and kept doing the same thing. I think in taking risks and taking on challenges, that’s where you grow as a person and that’s where you grow as a band. So it was important for us to move on.

TLC: That’s not nearly as scandalous as it’s supposed to be.
TG: [laughs] Sorry! It’s boring. There’s no devious subplot. It’s a boring numbers thing. “This makes sense for these reasons.”

TLC: People have been yelling “sellout” at you guys for years almost every step forward you’ve taken.
TG: Totally. It was funny, when it was time to face this decision – “OK, do we want to sign to Sire?” – never was there a moment when we were like, “Oh, damn, we’re signing to a major label.” We just came to this point where it’s like, “You know what? No one else knows what’s best for us. We know what’s best for us. So let’s just ignore everybody else.”

TLC: So you’re not worried about that sellout perception?
TG: Not at all. Anyone who would really throw an accusation like that is an immature person. Usually, stuff like that is motivated by jealousy or motivated by complete ignorance and a misunderstanding of the situation. I mean, the idea that somebody else who is completely removed from the situation and isn’t in the band, who’s never been in a band, who’s never worked with record labels or anything like that, would know more about it than I do – it’s stupid.

TLC: You seem on your albums like you have this overarching sense of purpose. Where does that come from?
TG: I think a lot of it comes from – as cliché as it sounds – but it comes from punk in general. For me, the most important lesson I learned from punk was to question things, to question everything. A lot of that will then in turn be questioning myself, and that’s something that I constantly do. I question my motivations, I question the way I interact with people – everything – and that comes out a lot in my writing.

TLC: For a lot of people, major labels mean limousines and pimp cups. But I read that you guys still practice in a squat.
TG: It’s a glorified storage unit. [laughs] People have a deep misconception when it comes to major labels. They think you sign to a major label and then suddenly the label just pays for everything. You couldn’t be farther from the truth. As a band, we choose all the bands we tour with, we take care of all of our day-to-day business, we pay our own taxes, we take care of setting up our own tours. All our record label does is put out the record for us and put it into stores – and they set up this interview.

TLC: I keep reading these comparisons between Against Me! and Nirvana, or between New Wave and Nevermind. How do you even react to something like that?
TG: Well, I take it with a grain of salt. Obviously, people are making that comparison because we worked with Butch Vig, who recorded Nevermind. So it’s a really easy thing to say. But in general in the music world, especially right now with every music-related business magazine talking about, “This year, sales are down 50 percent! File sharing is ruining the music industry! What are we going to do? CDs are dead!” – it’s almost like talking about the next Nirvana is the music industry’s version of Christ coming back. “He’s returned!” It’s like a fairytale.

TLC: You guys are in a unique situation where, because of the whole “punk cred” issue, you can’t really go backwards.
TG: You have to keep progressing. You want to keep growing and you want to keep learning. You don’t want to regress – I almost fear that.
For me, playing in basements and VFW halls, we did that for years, and we’ve played some of the most amazing shows of our existence as a band in those situations, and I would hate to have the memory of that ruined by going back and trying to force ourselves into that again. You want to have the fondest memories of those experiences.

February 2008 – Big piggy fat-face strikes back

2008-02-01T00:30:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, I was hanging out in one of my favorite downtown pubs when I spotted a distant acquaintance across the bar, one of those friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend kind of deals.

"Hey, man," I said, "how's it going?

He stared at me for a moment, clearly puzzled, before a smile spread across his face.

"Oh, hey!" he yelled across the bar. "I didn't recognize you. Been packing on the pounds, huh?"

This was awkward on several different levels.

First of all, there's the inherent weirdness of having a near-stranger tell you to your face that you are fat.

I mean, in the dude realm, this ordinarily isn't a big deal. Getting called fat or hairy or ugly when you're hanging out with your guy friends is kind of par for the course. You don't get upset about it. In fact, you're usually just grateful it wasn't accompanied by a smack in the hoo-has.

But this guy crossed the dude line. Because "fat" is one thing. But "so fat that your face has devoured itself" is a different animal altogether.

And then there was the "huh." Without the "huh," he would just have been making a statement. A totally unwarranted statement, but a statement nonetheless. But the "huh" turned it into a question – a question that, according to the faces of everyone sitting around me, I was expected to answer.

"Hey, big piggy fat-face, you've gotten so fat that people can barely make out the normal human face inside your new fat fatty pig-face – don't you agree?"

I really didn't know how I was supposed to respond. I've always made it a point to carry around a few "backup pounds," just in case I was ever marooned on an island or something like that. You never know when your airplane might crack in half and dump you and a bunch of strangers on an uncharted mass of land inhabited by polar bears, body-snatchers, deadly clouds and mysterious government hatches.

But still, I've never been overweight enough for someone to actually call me fat. To my face. In front of lots of strangers. How is someone supposed to react in a situation like that? Britney, where were you when I needed you?

The way I figured it, I had two options available to me: 1) Take the childish route and punch him in the face, or 2) Take the childish route and punch him in the neck. Never underestimate chubby-kid angst.

But I didn't do either. I decided that my greatest weapon wasn't my fists, but my rapier wit. I'd give him a good, old-fashioned tongue-lashing, a devastating verbal assault, a kick right in the proverbial hoo-has.

So here's what I came up with:

"Yeah. Heh. I guess I have."

Zing!

I spent most of the following week thinking up other lines I could have used to stun him, including such classics as, "Shut up!" and "You're the one who's fat!"

When I wasn't busy doing that, I was obsessively staring at my own ass in the mirror and trying to decide if I really had gotten so fat that my face had imploded.

I consulted with a panel of experts, by which I mean my mommy, and was thoroughly assured that I hadn't gained a pound since high school. I just had a little extra cuddliness to me. Baby fat, is what she called it.

When I asked my wife what she thought about the issue, she tossed one of our cats at my face and ran out the door, which I chose to interpret as, "I am hot for your body, and I have to leave now before I am overcome with fiery passion."

But still, numbers don't lie. Especially the numbers on the tag of my pants, which reveal to anyone who cares to look that, from the waist down at least, I am officially rounder than I am tall. This is a shocking thing to realize. Like, if you tried to wrap one of my pant legs around my waist, I'd smack you. But then if you tried again, you'd discover that the pant leg doesn't go the whole way around. Something has gone terribly wrong.

I figure that a person can choose to react to being a fatty in one of two ways: by accepting responsibility and taking action, or by refusing responsibility and blaming someone else.

So far, I've got about 10 or 15 names on my list, all of whom in some way are responsible for my weight gain.

Mitt Romney, Tom Cruise, Gene Simmons – I know they all factor in somehow, although I can't prove it. Either way, they creep me out.

In the end, though, my list wasn't helping any, so I decided to take up jogging. Well, not so much "jogging" as "flailing around the elementary school track like a wounded walrus." After a month of jogging every morning, I somehow managed to actually gain about two pounds, which is kind of remarkable. But I stuck with it, and now I'm proud to report that I've lost a grand total of five pounds, which, if you're really bad at math, is practically 10 percent of my body weight. So take that, dude in the bar that I barely know. Now who's fat!

Oh, it's still me? Crap.

Team Last Call’s exclusive interview with presidential candidate Dave Barry

2008-01-02T00:29:00.000-05:00

As frontrunners in the field of political journalism, it goes without saying that we here at Team Last Call have been anxiously awaiting the official kickoff of the 2008 presidential race.

This month, the fun finally begins with the Iowa caucuses. As per usual, America is looking to Team Last Call to help it separate the good candidates from the bad, to distinguish which ones are virtuous, which are trustworthy and which are Republican.

We decided to tackle this monumental task by interviewing each and every one of 2008's leading candidates. It was the only way we could determine who among them was capable of leading this great nation of ours and who was a bald, bucktoothed, opportunistic 9/11-milker.

Unfortunately, none of them were available. But someone else was: Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist and perennial presidential candidate Dave Barry.

To this point, Mr. Barry's bid for presidency hasn't received much media coverage, due in part to the fact that he hasn't raised any money, participated in any debates or picked what we in the industry call a "political party." Despite that fact, Barry's campaign seems to be doing remarkably well. In fact, he claims to be currently leading every single presidential poll by a wide margin, a phenomenon that has somehow gone unnoticed by the media – until now.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the hope of tomorrow, the voice of the people, the single-most important fake candidate in the 2008 presidential elections, Mr. Dave Barry.

Team Last Call: All serious presidential candidates have a "platform." What sort of platform do you have, and where did you get it?
Dave Barry: I got it from the American people, with whom I agree about everything.

TLC: Would you say that you're more Republican-y or Democrat-ish?
DB: Yes.

TLC: What is your greatest strength as a candidate?
DB: I can make really funny noises with my armpit.

TLC: What do you think is your biggest flaw?
DB: I am too modest, considering that I am way smarter than everybody else.

TLC: Why hasn't the mainstream media picked up on the fact that you're leading in virtually every poll?
DB: I'm sure they have a legitimate reason, such as heroin addiction.

TLC: Do you have any skeletons in your closet that could damage your chances to win the presidency?
DB: Those were consenting skeletons.

TLC: Do you think your good looks will come into play during the upcoming election? How about Hilary's?
DB: How about Hilary's what?

TLC: Are you worried at all about being "Swift Boated" by another candidate?
DB: That was a consenting boat.

TLC: You might end up being the first president in U.S. history to make the Internets a major part of your administration. How did you first learn about the Interwebs, and how long did it take you to master them?
DB: Once I found out about the whaddycallems, tubes, it was a piece of cake.

TLC: As President of the United States, do you plan on learning how to pronounce the word "nuclear?"
DB: This will be my highest priority.

TLC: I've noticed that you have very many "highest priorities." Of these highest priorities, which do you think is the highest-est?
DB: I agree with the American people.

TLC: I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on the issue of illegal immigration.
DB: So would I!

TLC: Global warming – real-life crisis or left-wing conspiracy?
DB: Yes.

TLC: Americans are the fattest people in the world. Respond.
DB: Are you going to finish that?

TLC: Studies show that many American teenagers are unable to locate the United States on a map. How do you plan on fixing this national epidemic?
DB: We need to stop putting all these confusing foreign countries on the map.

TLC: I strongly dislike cilantro. As president, how would you go about officially making this an illegal substance?
DB: I am so with you on this. I can't believe people deliberately put that stuff into food. Why not just add a dash of rat doots while you're at it? The thing is, if we make cilantro illegal, we will immediately create a smuggling industry that will enable criminals to make billions of dollars. So we would want a piece of that.

TLC: If elected President, you would probably have the power to create an official sixth food group. What would that group be, and why?
DB: Ginger.

TLC: Scarlett Johannson never returns my calls. What do you, as president, intend to do about this?
DB: I will meet with her personally.

TLC: What can I, as a Barry supporter, do to help you win the presidency?
DB: You can (send money) tell your friends (to send money).

The preceding interview was conducted on Dave Barry's online political forum at www.realcities.com/mld/realcities/news/politics/qa_forum.html. Questions and answers are reprinted with the express-written consent of Mr. Barry himself, who, as far as you know, is a huge fan of our column.

December 2007 – Who wants to get Marshmallowed?

2007-12-01T00:29:00.000-05:00

We have a term in our household, "Marshmallowed," which is defined as such:

Marshmallowed (marsh-mel-ode) adjective: The state of having been tricked, duped, fooled, bilked, bamboozled, flimflammed or otherwise suckered into bringing a seemingly cute and harmless animal into one's house, only to have it turn into the devil.

I'll use it in a sentence: "Honey, the new cat just ripped off my leg and ran off with it into the woods. I'm afraid that once again we've been Marshmallowed."

My wife, you should understand, has a bit of a bad habit of bringing every injured, homeless or lost animal she comes across into our home in order to "nurse it back to health," which is wife-talk for "keep it and love it forever and ever." Dogs, cats, bunnies, horses, goats, warthogs – if she spots an animal wandering around by itself after dusk, that creature doesn't stand a chance. One minute, it's walking though a field, enjoying the cool evening air, maybe snacking on some nuts and berries; the next, it's trying to wriggle its way out of a box in our house, trapped on all sides by blankets and stuffed animals, most likely with a pink bow tied around its head, while my wife tries to feed it warm milk from a bottle.

Mr. Puddy, Maggie, Bonkers, Henry, Buffy, Teeny, Three-legger, Daisy, Marshmallow Kitty, Patterson, Miss Tiger: That, in chronological order, is a list of the many, many animals that my wife and I, by which I mean my wife, have brought into our house since getting married eight years ago.

A quick mathematic calculation reveals that we take in an average of 1.375 animals per year, a number that makes us, scientifically speaking, idiots. And of those 1.375 animals we take in, approximately 1.375 of them end up totally Marshmallowing us.

The term originated from one particularly cute and pathetic stray cat who, about a year ago, decided to start hanging around in our backyard. It was riddled with fleas, covered in mud, inexplicably shaved on the side of its head and looked overall like it had just very unsuccessfully tried to mate with a rhinoceros.

Considering that our house is the size of a walk-in closet, I was quick to declare to my wife, the cats, the dog and the other dog that there was absolutely no way we were going to be bringing another pet into the house.

"Oh, no way. There is no room for another animal here!" my wife agreed. "By the way, his name is Marshmallow Kitty."

Later that day, while Marshmallow Kitty sifted through his new litterbox in the middle of my office, I couldn't help but wonder exactly how much looting and pillaging I had done in my previous life to deserve this.

At the same time, Marshmallow Kitty did seem to be an especially sweet and timid cat. I sort of felt like we had done the right thing by taking him in. Of course, that was before he turned into the kind of beastly, bloodthirsty hellcat that, given the opportunity, wouldn't hesitate for a second to push your grandma in front of a bus.

The horror began the next evening when Marshmallow came trotting up to my wife, gave her a charming little meow and, for no apparent reason, hurtled himself through the air, latched onto my wife's shin and start shredding it like George Bush's military service records.

My wife grabbed the cat and chucked him across the room. Rather than running away like a normal cat, Marshmallow crouched close to the ground, growling like an idling tractor, his eyes glazing over with a diabolical sheen. Then, hissing ferociously, came charging back at my wife and sunk his teeth into her calf.

I quickly blasted the cat with our Waterbottle of Terror, and it scrambled out of the room, shrieking. The trouble was over. It had been a disturbing incident, but ultimately no harm had been done, with the exception of a little doggie unrest.

The next morning, as my wife was reaching into the refrigerator for some milk, Marshmallow lunged in front of her, sank his teeth into a loaf of bread and dragged it across the kitchen, finishing off two or three slices in the process. This soon became a regular habit, only sometimes the cat would forego the bread in favor of your leg. We would later turn this into a party game called "Truth or Open the Fridge."

The day after that, Marshmallow attacked my face during dinner, snatched an entire chicken leg from my plate and managed to devour the whole thing, bones and all, as he ran. Like, seriously.

The day after that, he sent a houseguest fleeing from the room after apparently mistaking her feet for a pair of plump, juicy rodents. It became clear to us at that point that Marshmallow Kitty had to go. For whatever reason, he had transformed from a sweet, homeless kitten into a little spitting, hissing gargoyle with a serious case of bloodlust, kind of like a shorter, skinnier version of Dick Cheney. And I'll be damned if I'm about to have some hairy little republican running around my house and stealing my chicken leg. Plus, he gave our nervous little dogs the runs.

So off to the Humane Society he went. It wasn't an easy decision, especially considering how much we love animals; on the other hand, it wasn't a difficult decision either, considering how much I love not having a cat lurch onto my bed in the middle of the night and try to remove my face with its hind claws.

Did we learn our lesson from the Marshmallow incident? Of course not, which is why, a few weeks ago, we welcomed yet another cat, Miss Tiger, into the fray. That makes five animals currently living in our house, which averages out to approximately .83 animals per room, 1.6 animals per floor and 2.5 animals per human.

Here's how I first learned about our new housemate:

Scene: My workplace, Monday, around 10 a.m.

The phone rings.

"Hello?"

" … um, hi."

"Oh god, you found another one."

Miss Tiger had apparently made the mistake of wandering around behind our house, all dirty and flea-bitten, with a rabies tag from 2001. So into our house she went, quarantined to – you guessed it – my office.

So, like … anybody need a cat?

November 2007 – Team Last Call pokes the bear

2007-11-01T00:27:00.000-04:00

Over our years together, Team Last Call has managed to piss off a wondrous variety of people.

We've received hate mail from a staggering cross-section of society, from members of the local government to doctors and lawyers to – from the looks of one letter – what we're assuming was either an angry toddler with a good understanding of conservative politics, or an angry conservative with the vocabulary and judgment of a toddler. Which we realize is redundant.

Most of the hate mail we receive is from one of three groups: Hummer drivers, republicans or people who actually listen to Nickelback on purpose. Put them all together, and you've got one big, seething, over-compensating, bad-taste-having group of people. Who can't spell.

Over the past few years, we've been called just about every name in the book. Some we appreciate more than others, if only because they at least show a little imagination.

Some of the more noteworthy ones include:

"Creepy Nazi freak."

"A hate monger and a criminal."

"A very small person with a very dark, hateful heart."

And our personal favorite:

"A gay."

Now, you might be thinking, "What is wrong with these people? I personally find Team Last Call witty, hilarious, illuminating and, above all else, really, really good-looking."

Thanks. We couldn't agree more. But we do have to admit that, with the possible exception of "a gay," we probably earned most of those names. We have a big mouth, and we know it. The way we figure it, if you're going to sit there poking a bear with a stick, you kind of have to accept some responsibility for the mauling to follow.

The problem is not that Team Last Call is mean. The problem is that we don't have an "off" switch. When we see something that deserves to be made fun of, we're drawn to it like Larry Craig to a bathroom stall.

We're not "out to get" anyone in particular, unless that person is evil, practices evil things or supports evil people who practice evil things. You know, Wal-Mart, Haliburton, Steelers fans – those kinds of people. Our motto is, "Hey, man, stop being evil or we will totally write jokes about you."

Apart from that, our main goal each month is simply to make lots and lots of jokes. Sometimes those jokes involve poking the bear. But other times, it's totally the bear's fault. For example, if that bear comes rolling down our street in a Hummer with a "Support Our Troops" sticker on the back, we really don't have any choice but to fire away. The joke is already there, right in front of our eyes. It's a punchline on wheels, getting ironically funnier with each gallon of gas it sucks down. We're not even writing the joke here. All we're doing is putting the joke into print. We are but vessels.

That being said, there is no easier way of writing a new column than by reprinting and making fun of our hate mail. We couldn't even tell you how many times we've been sitting at our computer, staring at a blank screen mere hours from our deadline when, like manna from heaven, into our inbox pops a little gem of incoherent meanness long enough to account for a good third of our word count. To the barely literate writers of those letters, we have this to say: thank you.

It is with that in mind that we would like to present you with Team Last Call's first annual Poke The Bear List, which involves a number of volatile subjects that we're sure will open up the minds of our readers, provoke discussion and, most importantly, make it much, much easier for us to reach our word count in future months.

We'll start with Hummer drivers, a favorite subject of ours if for no other reason that the fact that they, above all other readers, have so often shown their willingness to eschew things like spelling and grammar in favor of good, old-fashioned vitriol. Where would Team Last Call be today without such column fodder as, "If your [sic] not gay, then you have an inordinate fondness of the male genitalia"?

Clearly, it would be a pity to let this dialogue dry up. So, let's see … how about: Scientific studies show that people who drive Hummers are hung like gnats and, if their [sic] not gay, have an inordinate fondness for Larry Craig. Respond.

Next comes Nickelback, the Jerry Bruckheimer film of bands. These perm-haired knuckle-draggers represent the absolute lowest common denominator in music. They've taken art to a drooling, castrated, monkey-brained level that is only useful to the sexually confused jocks of red-state America who need a distraction from the fact that the towel boy makes them feel all tingly between their legs. Discuss.

Next we'll discuss the idiot developer who is lobbying to build a Wal-Mart location within our city's limits. This is the worst idea ever. Let's use a metaphor to illustrate:

Imagine that the city is your face, and that the developer is a plastic surgeon. Now imagine that the plastic surgeon is asking permission to purchase part of your face in order to build a gigantic ass on it. That is essentially what this numbnuts is proposing. Just imagine how many downtown shops a Wal-Mart would run right out of business. With this guy in town, it's clear that the last thing our city needs is another ass-face. Respond.

We'll conclude with the most obvious item on our list: George Bush. This one is such a no-brainer that it almost seems silly to write about it. Saying you don't like President Bush is like saying you're mad at Satan, or that you've had it up to here with theft and murder. It's just sort of implied. So instead of coming up with some kind of clever rant, we'll simply direct you to a helpful video that ably illustrates our feelings about ol' Dubya: Do a Google search for "asshole" and click on the first result.

OK, that's about all of the meanness we've got in us for the month. Now, for the love of God, let's see those letters. We took the time to make up a bunch of insults; the least you can do is return the favor. Ass-faces.

Tegan And Sara interview

2007-11-01T00:12:00.002-04:00

With the release of their 2004 pop gem So Jealous, Tegan and Sara Quin established themselves as the indie-pop world’s twin queens of cuteness.
In the years that followed, they toured with everyone from The Killers to Neil Young, graced the year-end “best-of” list of nearly every magazine that counts and were famously covered by the White Stripes. As if that weren’t enough to make the gossip columns, Tegan and Sara also caused a stir as the world’s first pop duo to be comprised of identical twin Canadian lesbians.
On their highly anticipated sixth album, The Con, Tegan and Sara continue on their journey into the darkest depths of indie-pop. Produced by Death Cab’s Chris Walla, the record is at once enjoyably depressing and confusingly uplifting. Front to back, it’s the darkest, spookiest 34-minute pop hook you’ll hear all year. Team Last Call tracked down Sara at home in Montreal to talk about life as a twin, a lesbian and … oh yeah … a brilliant musician.

Team Last Call: The Con has a really melancholy feel. The songs are like this big tangle of relationships and personal issues that you’re caught up in.
Sara Quin: I’ve never sat down and thought, “I’m going to write a really happy song. It’s gonna sound really happy and the lyrics are going to be really happy!” I always sit down and write songs that feel heart-wrenching.
There’s an introspective, melancholy nature to life and to relationships. I was just reading an e-mail today from this girl who was madly in love, and yet her e-mail sounded so sad. And I was like, “What is it about love that makes us feel sad?” I wonder if it’s the intuitive, maybe even subconscious understanding that ultimately you’re alone, and even if you’re connected to someone, it’s just a matter of time until you’re not. I know that’s kind of a pessimistic view of love and relationships. [laughs] I think that Tegan and I both have a tendency to sort of fixate on those topics, and we sort of both live on that emotional plane.

TLC: How does having a twin sister in your band affect the whole dynamic?
SQ: I think there’s something unconditional about the relationship that Tegan and I have. We’re related and we love each other. The relationship between us is different than, say, the relationship I have with my drummer. If I’m really pissed at my drummer, I have to think of a way to deal with it that is professional and appropriate. I’m his employer and we’re friends. There are these awkward things you have to navigate all the time with other humans. But there’s something about your family where you can bypass all of that and just get to the root of it. You can go, “You’re a fucking asshole. You’re driving me insane,” and then just move on.

TLC: “Identical twin lesbians” is like a music journalist’s dream headline. Do you think people make too much of it?
SQ: I certainly wouldn’t highlight that or focus on it. It’s as relevant or irrelevant as, you know, whether or not somebody is heterosexual. Me and Tegan being gay is just a part of who we are, and there’s no part of me that feels ashamed about that or uncomfortable about that. But on the other hand, how many articles start with, “White, heterosexual …”

TLC: Right! “White heterosexual singer-songwriter John Mayer is releasing a new album …”
SQ: [laughs] But I don’t write the articles. I don’t choose to focus on those things. We try to be interesting and talk about a lot of different things. I mean, I could talk for 10 years about my writing process and my life and my views on politics and philosophy. I’m an intelligent person, and I can pretty much riff on any topic you can give me. But ultimately, almost every article that has ever come out talks about exactly the same things and mentions that we’re gay and identical twins. It’s managed to not hurt what is a really satisfying career. We have a really great audience and support from the media, so I try not to complain too much.

TLC: As a fan of your music, I’m not quite convinced that I should really care about your sexuality. It’s more of a distraction than anything.
SQ: I always find it interesting that a guy will be like, “I mean, I really relate to your music. Why do you think that me, a guy, can relate to what you do, when you’re gay?”
In a weird way, we have so much in common, me and the hetero dudes. We both like girls! We’re singing about girls, you like girls – can’t we all just get along? [laughs]

TLC: So many things have happened for you guys in the past 10 years, any of which you could look at and kind of have your mind blown.
SQ: Oh my god, yes. I mean, looking at it all on paper is mind-blowing. But when you’re living through it, it’s just a job. It’s been 10 years of work, and there’s like 360 days of every year that are hard and boring. You’re out there fighting tooth and nail to get paid 50 bucks. Then something great happens, and you’re like, “Thank god! I was just about to quit!”
We really want to make sure that we establish a career that’s not going to disappear overnight. The fact that we can go out and tour, and a lot of times fund our own tours internationally, that’s really exciting to us. But at some point I’m going to have to figure out exactly how it is that I’m going to put shoes on my kids’ feet and retire at some age. In terms of our career, I just want to keep making records and keep playing bigger shows and meeting great artists and writing great records. I can’t imagine that ever stopping.

Jimmy Eat World interview

2007-11-01T00:11:00.003-04:00

There are essentially two types of Jimmy Eat World songs – loud, anthemic rockers and sensitive, syruppy pop tunes. On its new album, Chase This Light, the band sticks to the formula, but ups both the bombast and the romanticism. It’s like the band spent the past three years lifting weights all day and freebasing packets of Sweet’N Low all night. The rock songs are more athletic, the pop songs are more unapologetic; sometimes they’re even the same song. It’s Jimmy Eat World running at 11.
The result is the musical equivalent of a John Hughes film – something big, dramatic, joyful and borderline cheesy (and aware of it, and not caring about it) that evokes memories of high school football games, first kisses, breakups, makeups and the girlfriend you had for one week at summer camp. Basically, Chase This Light is the soundtrack to the moment when Samantha exits the church and sees Jake Ryan waiting for her across the street.
Team Last Call caught up with guitarist Tom Linton three days after the album’s release in mid-October. He was scuttling through the streets of Anaheim, rushing from an in-store signing session to a sold-out show, and still managed to sound chipper despite the fact that we were probably his 30th interview of the day. That’s rock and roll for you.

Team Last Call: Are you guys listening to a Disney soundtrack?
Tom Linton: [laughs] We’re, like, in downtown Disney and there are speakers above my head. We’re playing the House of Blues in Anaheim. I’ve never been here. I don’t think it’s connected to Disneyland – unless it is.

TLC: So, Chase This Light feels overall just much bigger, with a lot of those get-up-and-go songs. Was that a goal at all?
TL: Every time we put out a record, we just want it to be better than the last record. With this record, we were able to record it in Tempe in our practice space. I think one of the goals we had was we just wanted to have over 20 songs to choose from, and we ended up with almost 30. I think we definitely wanted each song to be different. Sometimes you buy records and a lot of songs sound the same. One thing we try to do is have every song stand out on its own, and I think we were able to do that on this record.

TLC: You guys have like two totally different kinds of fans – the people who have been following you for a long time and think of albums like Clarity as being one of those life-soundtracks, and people who got into you because of “The Middle.” Is it weird for you to be straddling that?
TL: It’s always nice when you put out a record to see new faces coming to the show. We don’t really put a barrier on people that like our records. We just try to make everyone happy. We go to the website and see what people want to hear and stuff like that.

TLC: It seems like eight out of 10 bands on MySpace list you guys as an influence. Has it been weird transitioning into, like, the daddies of indie-rock?
TL: It’s kind of weird. It makes us feel kind of old, like old men. We’re all in our 30s, but I think we’re playing better now than we have ever before. It’s flattering that people list us as one of their favorite bands. It feels good.

TLC: You’re about to hit the 15-year mark. Did you ever think you guys would be around this long?
TL: It’s definitely weird. I think when we all played in bands when we were kids – at least the bands that Rick [Burch, bassist] and I were in – it seemed like they would only last for six months or something. There were always people leaving the band. I think after one year with this band it was like a major mark for me. It’s pretty crazy that we’ve been able to play for as long as we have. Everything seems like it’s working out so far.

TLC: After all of the punches you guys took from records labels over the years, hopefully you’ve gotten the bad stuff over with and can do another 15.
TL: It’s definitely crazy. We’ve gone through a lot of stuff with record labels. People are getting fired all the time and bands are getting dropped. So I think it’s just something that we’re going to have to deal with – especially now with people not buying music as much. It’s an interesting time right now. We’ll see what happens.

TLC: People have always written about you guys like the little emo band that could. You were the first band that broke through the mainstream that people stuck that label on. Do you feel like you’ve maybe, finally, been able to shrug off that “emo” label?
TL: No, I don’t think so. [laughs] It’s funny, I was telling Jim [Adkins, frontman] the other day, like, every interview, they always ask, “All right, so you guys are like the leaders of emo?” Every interview people always bring up emo. I guess we just kind of laugh at it. We think it’s funny, and there’s nothing really we can do about it.

TLC: It’s funny, because you could make an argument that emo came and went before you guys were ever successful.
TL: Yeah, totally. I have no idea why it got tagged on us, but there’s nothing we can do about it.

TLC: So, what’s the experience been like now that this album’s out the door?
TL: I think all of our shows so far – we’re not playing stadiums or anything – but all of the shows have been sold out. The record got leaked on the internet a couple weeks ago, so a lot of the kids are out singing the new songs already. It seems like they’re all into it, so it’s all been good.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine

October 2007 - Team Last Call talks trash

2007-10-01T00:27:00.000-04:00

What do you think of when you hear the name "Team Last Call"?

"Integrity?" Sure.

"Class?" Can't argue with that.

"Fart jokes?" You bet.

All of those answers are correct. But there is one that is even correcter, and that answer is "solver of the world's greatest mysteries via rigorous research on the internet." Or as we like to call it, "the Truthnet."

Over the past few years, Team Last Call has become a frontrunner in the field of journalism, and we owe it all to the Truthnet. We were the first to report on, among other important issues, Mark Wahlberg's third nipple and the link between driving a Hummer and having very, extremely, laughably small genitalia.

This month, we will tackle what might be our most difficult question to-date: How do you throw out a trashcan?

It's a more complicated issue than you might think. Like, think about it: When you want to throw something away, where do you put it? That's right, in a trashcan. But what happens when that trashcan is the very thing you're trying to throw out? How do you throw a trashcan into itself?

It's a trippy situation. Trying to reason your way through it is like staring at the sun – you can only do it for so long before your senses are fried and you're sent reeling on a cosmic journey through space and time until you end up face to face with the gnashing jaws of the universe devouring itself for all of eternity while simultaneously stretching ever outwards into the limitless horizon of nothingness.

Whoa, dude. Consider your mind blown.

So, as you can see, this is a truly difficult question. Coming up with a solution is a nearly futile task – almost as futile as asking Miss Teen South Carolina, such as, to figure out why U.S. Americans, including people in South Africa and the Iraq, like, can't find the United States on a map, like, such as.

But, as Dan Quayle once astutely observed, "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." That's exactly how Team Last Call felt when it came to solving the trashcan dilemma.
We had a trashcan at home that was missing its handle, only had one wheel and had a gigantic crack in its bottom. (Then again, who doesn't? Zing!)

That's why we thought that, by dragging the trashcan out to the sidewalk and laying it on its side, it would be sufficiently apparent to the trash collectors that we wanted to throw it out.

But no, that didn't work out at all. When we walked out of our house the next morning, there was our old trashcan, all sprawled out on the ground like Lindsey Lohan. It was at that point we realized it was time to consult the Truthnet.

We started out on Google, whose very first link was to a YouTube video titled "How to Throw Out a Trashcan" that was so incredibly stupid that it became funny, transcended funny completely and came full-circle back to stupid. Kind of like one of the president's speeches. Zing!

Finally, after hours of painstaking research on such sites as evalongoria.com, we were able to dig up a few suggested solutions for the trashcan dilemma.

The first suggestion was to simply place our trashcan in an even larger trashcan. But what happens if you ever have to throw out the larger trashcan? You need an even bigger one? Clearly, we are walking a slippery slope here. If we follow this path, our trash bins will continue to get larger and more sophisticated until eventually they overpower the government, enslave the human race and turn the planet into one giant trash heap. Frankly, that's not a risk we are willing to take.

The second suggestion the Truthnet cited was to smash our old trashcan so that it couldn't possibly be mistaken for a can that was still in use. This sounded logical enough, so the following week we went outside and jumped up and down on our can until it was flatter than the Olsen twins. Then we dragged its carcass to the curb and went to sleep all tingly and excited for trash day.

Totally didn't work. We left our house for work in the morning, and there was our trashcan, peering up at us from the sidewalk in defiance. The situation was looking dire. We were starting to think that the only way we were going to get the can from our house to the trash heap was by dressing it up as Taylor Hicks' career.

But then we found it – an answer to the riddle that was so simple it was genius: a "free" sign.
It was perfect. After all, we live in a neighborhood where you can get rid of virtually anything that has a "free" sign on it. Broken appliances, stained mattresses, dead bodies – even Nickelback albums: you name it, someone out there is willing to take it off your hands. It's like that old adage: One man's trash is another man's really bad taste in music.

So back to the curb went our trashcan, this time accompanied by a piece of cardboard with "free" scrawled across it.

It worked like clockwork. That trashcan was gone faster than Paris Hilton's virginity. Just like that, the crisis was over. The great trashcan mystery had been solved. Now it's up to all of us to take this message to the rest of the world, to educate the people of America, including those in South Africa and the Iraq, about how they, too, can successfully throw out their old trashcans, like, such as.

September 2007 - Team Last Call takes on evildoers

2007-09-01T00:24:00.000-04:00

Dear readers,

We are writing today in order to address a very serious injustice that recently occurred here at Fly Magazine.

Last month, in anticipation of football season, we here at Team Last Call made a statement in one of our articles about the Eagles – the best team in the history of football – and the Steelers, who are to football what a three-legged donkey is to the Kentucky Derby.

However, Team Last Call failed to consider one important factor: before our articles go into print, they have to pass through the sneaky little hands of Team Art Department, which happens to consist entirely of Steelers fans. And which also happens to smell like cabbage.

Team Art Department basically has one main responsibility at Fly Magazine, which is to design all of the ads and articles. We know what you're thinking, and we agree – a one-armed monkey probably could do that job.

The only other job Team Art Department really has, other than listening to really, really bad music all day long, is to not mess with our articles.

And yet, in a shocking display of sneakiness and cabbage-smelliness, Team Art Department decided to switch our article around to make it look as if we were not only booing our beloved Eagles, but that we would actually consider supporting a team that prances around in little gold tights like a bunch of backup dancers left over from some mid-'80s Cher tour.

We here at Team Last Call would like to state unequivocally that we are most definitely not Steelers fans. And we never will be. Rooting for that awful team makes about as much sense as speeding around on a motorcycle without a helmet. Roethlisber-gotcha!

We would also like to assure our readers that this kind of trickery will never, ever happen again. Believe us, Team Art Department has learned its lesson. Oh, yes, we drilled it into their little pea-brains in a way that they won't ever forget. Trust us – they won't ever have the nerve to change our articles again.

How did we do it? We marched into their cabbagey office and [whined like a baby] for, like, half an hour. We told them right to their faces exactly how [awesome] they were being. Then we told them to eat [candy] and gave them the middle [candy].

No – don't pity them. Team Art Department had it coming. They were clearly [brilliant] in their thinking and should be [thrown a parade] for what they did. Their behavior had to be punished, and if the only way to do that was by [wearing ladies' underwear], then [wearing ladies' underwear] was exactly what we were going to do.

We don't mean to come across as overly [fat], but it is our duty to [lose some weight] before Team Art Department [is awesome] again. But we have to admit that it goes beyond just a sense of duty. This is a personal issue, too.

What these people don't seem to realize is that we put a lot of time and effort into our [Barbie doll outfits]. So to have someone come along and change our [Barbie doll's outfit] without asking us first is upsetting. In fact, it's infuriating, and it makes us feel as if our [pants] have been [peed in].

And it doesn't stop there – you can't forget about the readers. Our columns are a source of comfort and joy for literally [tens] of people each month. They count on us each month to [bore them to death]. It's obvious that Team Art Department doesn't realize just how [small] our [penis] really is.

Maybe you're wondering why we are [way overreacting] about this whole issue. We don't mean to be obsessive, but we just really can't stop [farting] about it. It really comes down to our great respect for the sacred institution of journalism. We're sure that on some level Team Art Department shares [our wife], but this recent display of mischief has us wondering just how [much more endowed] they are.

And this is not the first time Team Art Department has [n]ever made a mistake. In fact, just last week [Team Last Call got caught in a Victoria's Secret dressing room trying on brassieres].

[We should also probably mention that we constantly pick our nose in the office when we think no one's looking, and that we are bed-wetters. And we have herpes.]

The fact is, [Team Last Call hasn't written a single joke in about five years that we didn't steal from the internet].

Needless to say, we can safely assure you, the Last Call reader, that this little mishap will [always] happen again. You want the authentic Last Call column, and that's exactly what you'll [never see again] from here on out. We know that our column gives you [gas] each month, and we will do everything in our power to ensure that you experience that same kind of [gas] for years to come.

There. We feel much [fatter] now, and we hope that you do too. Now if you'll excuse us, we've got a football game to watch! Go [Steelers]!

August 2007 - Team Last Call Makes Its First Mistake

2007-08-01T00:23:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, Team Last Call wrote a column about the greatest beverage ever in the history of planet earth, Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream Soda, comparing it to such modern-day miracles as rock and roll, beef jerky and boobies.

Today we are here to say that we were wrong, and we're not just saying that because Dr. Pepper stubbornly refused to mail us a free case after our article came out.

Just kidding. Of course that's why we're saying it.

The problem is that Dr. Pepper has completely failed to grasp the fundamentals of the journalism business, in which Team Last Call is clearly a frontrunner. See, we in the journalism field don't really make what people on Wall Street refer to as "money." Because of that, we are forced to live almost exclusively on free handouts from the companies we write about. Otherwise, like, why would we write about them?

Speaking of which, don't you think that Krispy Kreme doughnuts are the best doughnuts ever created in the history of all doughnuts everywhere? We sure do. If we could, we here at Team Last Call (22 East McGovern Avenue, Lancaster, PA 17602) would eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts for every meal.

That's not to say that companies should be shy about sending free handouts before an article is written. The formula works just as well in reverse: the more willing you are to give out freebies, the more willing we journalists are to write about you. Which explains why Paris Hilton gets so much press. (Nice one!)

Here's an example of journalism in action: A few years ago, Team Last Call dedicated an article to its favorite lunchtime treat, the pineapple chicken wrap. Within a few weeks, an enormous platter of pineapple chicken wraps was delivered straight to our door, free of charge, courtesy of a completely anonymous source (Sandwich Factory). Team Last Call was exceedingly grateful for the kind gesture, and would like to take this time to reiterate that our favorite lunchtime treat is still the pineapple chicken wrap. If anything, it's gotten even more delicious over the years. Just thinking about eating (a free) one right now is making us drool.

That's what we call teamwork, people.

You would think that by this point a corporation as big as Dr. Pepper would know how to play "the game." It's not like we're asking for any kind of special treatment. These are universal rules that every journalist plays by, which explains why Bill O'Reilly spends so much time doing news segments on adult diapers. Or maybe he doesn't. We don't really know. But he probably should, because it would save him a lot of money.

Anyway, this whole situation is a real shame, because Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream Soda had a lot going for it, including an especially long name that really helped with our word count. But we're afraid we've been left with no choice. Dr. Pepper has violated a sacred trust, and for that reason, we are officially stripping Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream of its title as the "greatest beverage ever in the history of planet earth."

Look at it cover its face in shame! That's what you get, Dr. Pooper!

But there is a silver lining to this whole situation. We are pleased to announce that, once we recovered from Dr. Pepper's disgusting show of insolence, we discovered a new "greatest beverage ever in the history of planet earth," one that not only has a great taste, but, we're assuming, is willing to send us free stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you: Glacéau VitaminWater Endurance (Peach-Mango).

Like Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream, Glacéau VitaminWater Endurance (Peach-Mango) has a long name that helps us reach our word count much faster, especially if we keep repeating its name, which is Glacéau VitaminWater Endurance (Peach-Mango).

It also has a delicious flavor that we can't quite put our finger on. It tastes like peach, but at the same time, it somehow tastes like mango. It's like some kind of space-age mango/peach hybrid, like something Captain Kirk would find on the planet Meach in the distant galaxy Pango.

Glacéau VitaminWater Endurance (Peach-Mango) also has six totally different vitamins, which do lots of good, vitaminy things to your body. Dr. Pepper, on the other hand, has aspartame, which has been proven to cause – among other things – diarrhea, hair loss, hives, memory loss, nausea, hearing loss, tremors and death. And stinginess.

Clearly, Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream has met its match. Not only does Glacéau VitaminWater Endurance (Peach-Mango) have a long name, a futuristic taste and an abundance of vitamins, but it totally doesn't give you the runs. Or hives. Or death.

In conclusion, there's a new sheriff in Drink-town, and he's got a delicious, peachy aftertaste. And we here at Team Last Call (22 East McGovern Avenue, Lancaster, PA 17602) couldn't be happier.

Blonde Redhead interview

2007-08-01T00:10:00.004-04:00

Over the course of its last three albums, New York’s Blonde Redhead has morphed from a Sonic Youth-ish garage outfit into an atmospheric art-pop band that marries My Bloody Valentine’s droning guitars with the immediacy and imagination of pre-weirdness Radiohead.
To translate that into radio lingo, imagine Björk covering Coldplay, and then imagine that you just took a fistful of Ecstasy and are being washed away in the disco lights of a smoky nightclub, and that’s what Blonde Redhead sounds like.
The band’s newest release, 23, picks up where 2004’s Misery Is A Butterfly left off – trading in some of the melancholy for a new and curious energy. It’s a real indie-rock stunner, driving but dreamy, dense but not overstuffed, and absolutely cinematic in scope.
“We love film and we love soundtracks. We listen to soundtracks when we write. There’s a beauty in being able to imagine certain things while you write music, imagine pictures, imagine scenery,” explains drummer Simone Pace. “It’s hard to explain because I feel like it’s something that we have in us. I think our music could very well be written for film.”
On 23, the band’s co-vocalists, wife and husband Kazu Makino and Amedeo Pace, trade off spooky, space-trance melodies that wade through thick curtains of guitar. It’s at once firmly melodic and loosely psychedelic. The songs are propped up by Simone’s peppy, off-kilter dance beats, which illustrate just how much influence Blonde Redhead has had on younger NYC bands like Interpol, the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
The album is about as close to a pop record as a band like Blonde Redhead can make without totally bastardizing its sound. The songs are “get-able” on the first listen, thanks in part to a more economical approach to song structure, but on my seventh time through the album I swear I’m hearing songs I’ve never heard before in my life.
According to Simone, who checked in with Team Last Call in mid-July, the songs on 23 are mostly the result of the band members trying to concentrate as much on form as they were on creativity.
“We have a lot of talks before we start writing, actually. We talk about what it is that we want to do with the new album and how different it should be from the previous one. What’s the next stage, the next step for the band?” he explains in a soft Italian accent. “But a lot of it you think you’re deciding, but a lot of it just happens unconsciously.
“With Misery, we made ourselves free and kind of accepted as many ideas as possible that we could put into the music. This record, we kind of just stopped ourselves from going to that place again,” he adds. “We wanted the record to be more direct, but also to leave more freedom for the listener to imagine – without giving him all of the things to listen to – certain things on his own terms, with his own ears.”
Blonde Redhead’s story is almost as compelling as the music itself. The members are an interesting, if not unlikely, match, and their meeting up is nothing short of serendipity.
Kazu was an art student who immigrated to America from Japan to experience a different culture. Amedeo and Simone are twins who were born in Milan, grew up in Montreal and moved to Boston to obtain jazz degrees.
The three met each other by chance in a New York City restaurant. Shortly after that meeting, Kazu began taking guitar lessons from Amedeo. Then they all started a band. Then Kazu and Amedeo got married. And now, 14 years later, all three members still live together in a New York apartment.
“I spend most of my time with a couple, you know, which – you can imagine what that’s like,” Simone says with a laugh. “You really have to understand the situation and be respectful of some boundaries. I’m very close to Amedeo, but it’s a struggle. It’s not an easy thing. But we have lasted for many years now. I think we have a pretty good handle on it.
“Sometimes I feel like, ‘Gosh, I wish I could have my girlfriend with me when I go away,’” he laments. “But I think the trick is to try to find your own place and be happy within that place, and without thinking that somebody else is better off.”
Blonde Redhead has been a critical darling since almost day one, and that’s more than likely the way the band will go down in history. Rocking 60,000 people at Coachella is about as close as they’ll ever get to being an arena act. That being said, the band has a fiercely loyal fan base around the globe of the kind of indie rock kids and art freaks that will stick around as long as the band does.
“We’re always thinking about, ‘How do we improve? How do we get better musically? How do we help our audiences grow?’ But it’s not like we’re in control of the situation,” Simone says. “But it’s a pretty organic way of approaching the whole thing. We have had a really slow growth, but it hasn’t really stopped. It’s been kind of gradual, and hopefully it will keep growing.”

July 2007 - Team Last Call: World Police

2007-07-01T00:21:00.000-04:00

Team Last Call recently went on a trip to Europe, which – as far as you and the IRS know – was for the express purpose of conducting research for future Last Call columns.

Our plan, to the best of your knowledge, was to visit lots of European libraries, cathedrals and museums in order to expand our cultural horizons, further enabling us to report on global issues with the kind of fair and balanced approach you have grown to expect from Team Last Call.

But you know what's really boring? Libraries, cathedrals and museums. So instead, we went to a pub.

While we didn't technically "see any historical sites" or "eat any exotic foods" or "stop drinking beer for more than half an hour," we did sometimes watch foreign news reports on TV. Because the bartender wouldn't change the channel.

But you know what's a real downer? Foreign news reports.

"War in Iraq," blah, blah, blah.

"Global warming," blah, blah, blah.

"Genocide in Darfur," blah, blah, blah.

Hey, foreign press. Are you doing anything later? Because we're having a party, and it would be awesome if you could stop by and make everyone want to kill themselves.

It wasn't until we got back to our hotel and turned on an American news station that we were able to find a news story of any relevance – a story of real global impact, a story that illustrated both the starkness of the human condition and the promise of the great American dream: Paris Hilton's arrest.

The story was on virtually every American news channel we could find – CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN. Meanwhile, what were the European news stations reporting on? The G8 conference. Way to go.

This, of course, speaks pretty directly about the integrity of the foreign press. We can't say for sure whether it was censorship or just plain sloppy journalism, but they didn't even pretend to know about Paris' arrest. Either way, they really dropped the ball on this one. It's just one more illustration of why communism is bad.

It's no wonder that foreigners are always fighting and yelling and setting things on fire. You'd start a riot too if all you saw on the news were stories about murder and violence and other non-celebrity-related topics. Take a lesson from America: A little Brangelina goes a long way.

"Oh, we're so sad because our widdle biddy pwanet is getting weawy, weawy hot!" It's like, wake up, people! Britney shaved her head!

"A little less tears, a little more Spears," that's what we always say.

We're not trying to make Europeans look bad. Their teeth do that. (Nice one!) We're just saying that they're really out of touch with reality – not to mention reality TV. Did you know that some countries over there don't even have their own version of "The Biggest Loser"? We don't mean to insinuate that Europeans are lazy, but, like, how hard is it to get fat? We already gave them McDonald's. All they have to do is eat there!

And McDonald's is just one example of the many, many fantastic exports we've given to Europe over the years – for free! There's also American cheese, American football and Clay Aiken. And what do we get in return? A big, steaming pile of "No, we won't help you in the war on terror!"

Like, seriously?

It's like, no matter how morbid and boring and newsy their news reports are, Europeans just can't seem to get it through their heads that we are all in constant danger, every day, all the time, of being murdered by terrorists. All of us. At any moment. Murdered. By terrorists.

American new reports don't get all mopey with footage of dead soldiers being shipped back from Iraq. If we're going to be looking at a dead person, it's going to be Anna Nicole Smith. And we still know enough to live our lives in a constant state of fear!

What Europeans don't seem to realize is that terrorists are lurking around every corner, down every alley, behind every ethnic food counter. They're everywhere, and they hate freedom! They even hate Paris Hilton!

But the Europeans are too busy floating along in a dreamland of puff pastries and hand-rolled cigarettes to realize how close they are to dying. They spend their days lounging around with their tiny cups of coffee and skinny mustaches and tight pants and low stress levels, laughing in their stupid accents about how the war on terror is "wasting money" and "human lives" and "making the situation worse."

Listen, Europeans: We're not trying to imply that you're stupid. All we're saying is, you have what? At least four or five countries over there? And not a single one of you has been able to produce a Hummer? Way to go.

OK, point proven. There's no need to add insult to injury. We've already established that Europeans are lagging behind America in the categories of "obesity," "Hummers," "reality TV" and "Clay Aiken." It probably shouldn't be a big surprise that they're are also behind when it comes to being "paralyzed with fear" and electing people who "aren't smart" to "run their countries."

Well, not everyone can be perfect.

June 2007 - Team Last Call’s Guide to Cleaning (For Men)

2007-06-01T00:19:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, Team Last Call's wife went to Connecticut for a three-week work assignment, or what we like to call "three weeks when we don't have to change our underwear."

Team Last Call is not gifted in the area of hygiene. We have our talents, but washing ourselves isn't one of them. Neither is washing our clothes, the dishes or anything else that's inside, outside or in the general vicinity of our house. Or that starts with the letter "A," or any subsequent letter of the alphabet.

Our wife has a few theories about why we are so hygienically challenged, the main one being that we're just plain lazy, which we'll address as soon as we finish our beer. Truthfully, it's got more to do with the fact that we don't know where she keeps the washing machine. We suspect it's in the basement, but there are spiders down there.

The problem with our wife leaving us alone in the house is that she expects us to be doing things like washing the dishes and dusting and whatever it is she does with that loud machine with the hose and the suction that gives our nervous little dog the runs.

We've learned from experience that what we consider to be "passable" our wife often considers to be "a reason to yell at us." While we might think it's OK to, say, let the little doggie piles on the carpet just sort of wear away naturally instead of picking them up, our wife doesn't always share our viewpoint. She enjoys cleanliness, and has never shown even the slightest admiration for the fact that we can go a solid week in the same pair of socks.

Within minutes of her departure, the entire household deteriorates into a wasteland of pizza boxes, dirty socks and dog-hair tumbleweeds. We are left wallowing in our own filth with no food, no clean clothes and virtually no ability to hit the toilet. It's just like college, except the only person puking is the cat.

The root of the problem here is that we simply have different definitions of what "clean" means. Our wife says "tomato," we say, "Oh, yeah, that's been growing fuzz in the bottom of our refrigerator since you left. Last week it was purple!"

Our theory is that we should just agree to disagree. Our wife's theory is that we should just agree that I'm gross and need to take a bath.

We know what you're thinking: "If your wife's so uptight about the house being dirty when she comes home, why doesn't she just clean it?" That makes a lot of sense to us, too. Let's just say that our wife doesn't really see it that way. I mean, she does clean it, but she's got this whole hang-up about "This marriage is a partnership!" and "I'm not your maid!" and other things that are hard to not laugh at.

We are so, so dead when this article comes out.

Anyway, for all of you men out there who, like us, are forced to live your lives under a lemony-fresh hand of oppression, we are pleased to present Team Last Call's Guide to Cleaning (For Men). Because it's important to make your wife happy, but not at the risk of your beer getting warm.

The first and most important rule in our Guide to Cleaning (For Men) is this: "If you can't see the problem, it doesn't exist." We really can't stress this point enough. How much time has man wasted over the last thousand years fighting invisible bacteria? Think of how much delicious beef jerky and football you missed out on because you were busy scrubbing supposed "germs" off the toilet. It's time to stop this silly game. It's time to recognize the fact that – like global warming and civilian casualties in Iraq – these supposed "microorganisms" are just another fabrication of the liberal media.

But what about the dirt that you can see? Well, that's a different matter altogether. For that, we need to refer to the second rule in the Guide to Cleaning (For Men): "It's just going to get dirty again."

Simple logic tells us that if something gets messy once, it is more than likely going to get messy again. This applies to all kinds of household items – bookshelves, rugs, babies. Trying to clean items like these is clearly a complete waste of time. It's like going to the beach with a bunch of towels and trying to dry the sand every time the tide goes out. Who are we to try to fight the forces of nature?

We've obviously put together a pretty airtight case here. Nobody in his right mind would want to argue the points above. Unfortunately, there is still one more rule that all responsible husbands must follow, and it goes like this: "Clean the house."

If you really value your relationship, you're going to have to clean the house. Because no matter how much time you spend trying to convince her, your wife will never think it's cool that you can throw your sock at the wall and make it stick. Likewise, she's never going to get over that whole "marriage is a partnership" thing. If that's not convincing enough, keep in mind is that she's the only person you get to have sex with.

That's what we thought. Happy scrubbing.

May 2007 - On the eighth day, God created soda

2007-05-01T00:17:00.000-04:00

God's created a lot of cool stuff over the past few millennia – woolly mammoths, rock and roll, boobies – but His greatest creation to-date has got to be Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream.

We here at Team Last Call are totally and completely obsessed with this soda. We buy it by the case and throw it back like Paris Hilton at an open bar – the main difference being that we always remember to wear our panties.

In addition to having a long name that helps us reach our word count much faster, Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream is delicious. The experience of drinking Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream is like riding a unicorn over a rainbow and around the moon and landing in a magical utopia where no one fights or steals and the roads are paved with beef jerky and gumdrops rain from the sky and Howie Mandel has been permanently banned from television. It washes away the stress of your day and takes you to a different state, like Delaware. It also apparently gives you brain cancer, but we'll get to that later.

There are plenty of people who share my obsession over Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream. Since its release in April 2006, demand for the soda has far outweighed the supply. Stores haven't been able to keep it on shelves, making it harder to find than a fact in a Fox News report.

It's gotten to the point that fans have actually resorted to bidding against each other in online auctions (at one point, Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream was the second-most popular search on eBay), which is both sad and funny at the same time. Like Nickelback's music.

But once you taste it, you will understand how it's possible for people to become so infatuated with Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream that they are willing to do almost anything to get it, including selling their right testicle to a guy in the back of a van parked at the McDonald's on King Street. For example.

However, we are a nation divided – not by race, religion or political party, but by those who recognize Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream for the bottle of joy and redemption that it is, and those who are dumb.

In fact – and this is actually true – there are people who dislike Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream so much that they started an online petition to have it pulled from store shelves (www.petitiononline.com/drpepban/petition.html), which is stupider than driving a Hummer with a "Save the Earth" bumper sticker.

In the document, the soda is referred to as a "vile" and "repugnant liquid" that "tastes like a carbonated cough syrup and probably should not be ingested by individuals with an active set of taste receptors on their tongue!" On the cleverness scale, this rates somewhere between a ham sandwich and a mesh baseball cap that reads "Kill 'em all. Let God sort 'em out." But it's still smarter than Larry the Cable Guy.

At press time the petition only had 12 signatures – again, both funny and sad. But still, the very existence of the petition is troubling. Like, who gets angry at soda?

Taking the time to coordinate an anti-soda offensive is as pointless as walking into the middle of a field and trying to swat all off the oxygen molecules out of the air. Or sending 20,000 more troops to Iraq. I mean, isn't there something more constructive you could do with your time and resources? Like – oh, I don't know – fixing up New Orleans?

If there is one justified complaint about Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream, it's that it contains a high amount of aspartame, which is only a problem if you've got some kind of hang up about brain cancer, lymphoma, seizures and genotoxic effects. I'm pretty sure that genotoxic isn't even a real word.

If you want to get all technical about it, there are a few other slightly negative reactions linked to the ingestion of aspartame, including abdominal pain, arthritis, asthma, burning urination, chest pains, chronic cough, confusion, depression, diarrhea, dizziness, fatigue, hair loss, headaches, hearing loss, heart palpitations, hives, impotency, insomnia, joint pains, laryngitis, memory loss, menstrual problems, muscle spasms, nausea, numbness of extremities, panic attacks, rashes, slurring of speech, tremors, tinnitus, vertigo, vision loss and weight gain. Plus death. But, like, it tastes really good.

The way we figure it, if you try hard enough, you can link just about anything to aspartame. Like, if there is a large vat of aspartame on the floor, and you trip and hit your head on a cabinet and land face-first in the vat, there is a clear danger that aspartame could lead to suffocation. So watch out.

But isn't everything we do a calculated risk? For example, according to a severely outdated article we just found on a questionable website, one man out of every 500,000 dies during sex. Will that statistic scare men away from having sex? Of course not. A charging rhinoceros could barely scare a man away from having sex. And if you're going to die anyway, isn't having sex just about the best way to go? Well, that's how we feel about Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream.

We're not saying that we'd pick Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream over having sex with … say … you. We're just saying that while we're having sex, we'll also be drinking a Diet Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream soda. And if that's not a turn-on, we don't know what is.