If It's Gotten This Bad, What Else Could Go Wrong?

     This new smokescreen issue of “Civility” is nothing but a new way of saying, “Please, be quiet while we get away with human rights violations and murder.”  Standing quietly by and only voting twice a year while interment camps are being built and children are being murdered by the police is no longer an option.  Filling the streets and letting these bastards know that we are coming for them has to become part of the process.

     At this point, silence is complicity and further normalizes abhorrent behavior.  Turning a blind eye to the destruction of due process while coming up with lame excuses to go along with it is failing the generations that will come after us.  The common cry of “Keep your politics out of my apathy” needs to be countered with “Your apathy caused my politics.”

     Given the rich history of racism and police brutality in Western Pennsylvania, the murder of Antwon Rose, Jr. is not surprising.  Tragic and heart breaking, yes, but not surprising.

     The growing list of victims going back to the death of Jonny Gammage and up to the beating of Jordan Miles is inexcusable.  I've seen a kid in handcuffs have his head bounced off of the hood of a car for reasons that were certainly unclear.

     And as for racism in Western PA, there was a study done a few years ago on which part of the country Googled racist terms or searched for hate groups the most.  The tri-state area, with Ohio and West Virginia, came in first place.  Way to go everybody.  We can add that to our Super Bowl rings and Stanley Cups.

     It was only a matter of time before a local police department added another unarmed black man to the nationwide list of victims.  Charges were filed earlier today (6/27/2018) against the officer but the outcome of trials of this sort are all too predictable.  How dare we think that authority should be held accountable to the same standards that we are and face the consequences of its abuses?

     I can tell just by looking at some of the cops on local forces that they were washed up high school football players that only signed on because they needed a job.  The way they carry themselves does not exude a desire to serve their community or some sort of greater good.

     I have noticed the most commonly shared dumb white opinion of the incident is “Why did the kid run?”  Well, why didn't the supposedly trained police officer do some actual police work to find out who Antwon was and show up at his mother's house to ask him a few questions instead of opening fire?

     With the increasing amounts of people marching in the streets and protesting for a multitude of reasons, I have heard on more than one occasion that we should all get over it and stop disrupting everyone else's lives.  This usually comes from a person that venerates the “Greatest Generation” and glorifies growing up in the 1950s.  If you go by the white washed version of history, the “Greatest Generation” fought World War II to defeat the global rise of fascism.  All the while treating German POWs better than the black soldiers that they fought alongside of.  Most of these people fail to realize that fascism and the erosion of our rights is a slow burn that spreads like a cancer.  If you don't snuff out the early signs of it, by the time it becomes apparent, it's already too late.

     The local yinzers seem to be running out of patience with the protests that have been popping up all over the area.  They seem to be worried that they're going to be five minutes late for work.  Maybe they should try being a little less afraid of their bosses and realize that they aren't as important as they think they are.

     The streets of Pittsburgh are frequently blocked with snow in the winter, construction in the summer or an accident that was caused by some idiot texting while driving.  I don't mind road closures due to civic and moral outrage.  I've got an iPod plugged into my car that has approximately 50,000 solid jams on it so I'll be okay.  Compared to being shot three times or having my child stolen from me, sitting in traffic for a few extra minutes is not that big of a deal.  Perspective.

     I'll see you in the streets.  

O, Apu, You've Done It Again

     A few weeks back, I was at a birthday party for one of my relatives when I was approached by another family member with the question, “So what's this about them trying to kill off Apu on The Simpsons?”  The political leanings of this relative are so far to the right that I'm not sure how he doesn't walk in circles so the chances of this thing going south, rapidly, were very high.  Engaging in a political conversation that involves race and a cartoon character was not the way I would have preferred to spend an evening with the family.

     I was fully aware that explaining something outside of his worldview would be the same as breakdancing on a landmine covered in dog shit, regardless of how delicately I handled it.  No matter how it turned out, it was going to be messy.  I took the path of least resistance and tried to explain the situation objectively and without taking a position in order to convey the information.  In hindsight, that was clearly a mistake.  I should have responded by sharing a story about a fictional growth on my ass.

     I started out by relating Hari Kondabolu's documentary The Problem With Apu and the very valid points that Hari made throughout.  Unfortunately, it had been a few months since I had seen the documentary so the information wasn't as readily available in my brain as I would have liked it.  But I'm fairly certain that if I had a Power Point presentation and note cards at my disposal while Hari Kondabolu was standing next to me, I still wouldn't have been able to get through.

     I tried to frame the argument in terms of school bullying because we were both picked on at school when we were kids.  I thought maybe he'd be sympathetic to the fact that ever since Apu first appeared on The Simpsons, a poor imitation of the character’s fake Indian accent has been used to demean anyone that remotely looks like they're from that part of the world.

     I made the fatal mistake of moving too quickly with the information after he seemed receptive to the idea of people getting fucked with because of the color of their skin when they're only trying to get through their day.  Concepts of representation or the lack thereof don't really go over that well with someone that thinks inclusion is another way of pushing Whitey to the back of the room and all of these “other” people didn't do anything but complain and ask for handouts to get to the front when it's actually a lack of empathy on his part.

     Having to stop to explain who Amos and Andy were, when I equated Hank Azaria stepping into a voiceover booth to blackface, was when the conversation started veering toward a phone pole.  Then I stepped on the gas and headed straight for it when I started mapping out the scope and depth of the history of white world supremacy.  Going back to the Crusades, then through European colonization and slavery up to Jim Crow laws.  The look on his face was as if I had jumped up on the breakfast table and shit in his cereal.  I forgot that I was dealing with someone whose idea of white supremacy is pointy hats and bed sheets and who is also not really open to big ideas.

     He tried countering with how offensive Looney Tunes cartoons were and maybe people should get over it.  My pointing out that Warner Bros. now has a disclaimer at the front of Looney Tunes that says, “The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time.  They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society.  These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today.  While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of today's society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed,” didn't sit too well.

     The next thing I knew, I was getting yelled at about how Cletus The Slack Jawed Yokel is portrayed as poor white trash and Apu is a successful business owner and nobody sticks up for Cletus.  Luckily, this conversation was interrupted and I was able to escape without shouting, “Shut the fuck up, you fucking racist!!!”

     Just because I have been a fan of The Simpsons since I was in 6^th grade doesn't mean that I would side with a television show over other human beings.  I don't know what kind of affirmation of his opinions he was looking for by trying to engage me but I hope I didn't give it to him.  I still want to know when the last time he watched an entire episode of the show was but not badly enough to ask him.  What kind of bearing Apu and The Simpsons has on his life can't be all that much so I don't know why a TV show is such a bug up his ass.

     I have seen practically every episode of The Simpsons, which has been on television for nearly thirty years.  Maybe it's time the producers of the show updated their mental software from the early 90s to a more current version.  But they probably won't because they're trying to run out the clock until the plug is pulled on the show.

     It's not about political correctness overtaking our culture.  It's about not wanting to be an asshole toward my fellow humans.  Everybody's day to day is hard enough as it is.  Why should we make it more difficult for someone else solely because we want to hold on to an old idea?  Especially when that old idea is a cartoon character.

I know I've posted this video before but it's still applicable so here it is again:

A Garbage Day Saved By Wire

     This morning, I dragged my carcass into the office of my soul suck of a day job to find the temperature getting up to damn near 90 degrees.  Normally, it is a bit warm in the mornings because the AC shuts off overnight and then has to catch up but this amount of heat was way out of the ordinary and on the verge of oppressive.

     The management started calling around to get the HVAC guy on site to get the air conditioner repaired.  The management was able to find out that, apparently, the AC did not breakdown.  There was some sort of company initiative to lower electricity use so they went around and turned off the ventilation systems in unoccupied office space.

     The key terms here are “unoccupied office space.”  The company was unaware that there was an office full of people sitting in one of their own buildings.  It's nice to know that I am such a valued employee that my employer doesn't even know that I exist.

     It seems that the AC was able to be turned off remotely but could not be turned back on in the same manner.  I was sitting in my sweatbox of a cubicle with a severe swamp ass and bat wings issue going on waiting for the HVAC guy to show up to flip a switch.

     To at least get some air flowing, there was an attempt to open the windows only to find out that all of the windows had been bolted shut.  This had to be another company initiative to prevent employees from pretending that they worked in an iPhone factory and taking a flying leap.

     A couple of box fans were found somewhere in the building which led to the dunderheads that I work with arguing over which way the fans should be aimed because some of them didn't want the air blowing on them.  A compromise was made to set up the fans in such a way to ensure that relief was brought to no one.  Let me remind you that these people are adults that somehow figured out how to tie their shoes and learned how to use a doorknob in order to leave their houses.

     I swear that most of their behaviors are intended to see if today will be the day they drive me to jamming my pen into my eye.  And for those of you who have been following along, Dorf The Asshole, who has taken on the aroma of dog farts of late, was smelling extra dog farty in the excessive heat.

     Several hours later, the HVAC guy finally made an appearance, flipped the switch to turn the AC back on and nothing happened.  It seems that the remote shut off fried the whole system and he couldn't figure out how long it would be until it was up and running again.

     The management had already decreed that the company dress code would still be in effect, regardless of how long the AC is broken.  So if the air isn't back on any time in the near future, shorts and a t-shirt were still out of the question.  This was just in case we get paid a surprise visit by company muckety-mucks even though these same muckety-mucks didn't know we still worked for the company and occupied space when they decided to shut down the ventilation system.  That makes perfect sense.  Now I have to walk around with my balls tucked into my sock so they don't drag behind me because of some mythical visit from my “superiors.”

     How is this my life? Luckily, I was greeted by Wire reissues in my mailbox when I got home.  The band's first three records Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154 were recently remastered and rereleased on Wire's own label.  I haven't had a chance to do the Pepsi challenge yet but so far it sounds like the mastering on Pink Flag leaves the old Four Men With Beards mastering in the dust.

Am I Getting Too Old For This?

     I ventured out of the house last Friday to see Code Orange play at Mr. Smalls.  I almost didn't make it off of the couch because I was aware of the cluster fuck of traffic that was between the venue and myself but I'm glad I went.  Not so much for the music but for the few things I learned about myself while watching the opening acts.

     I got to Mr. Smalls early enough to grab a pre-show burger and get my usual spot behind the soundboard.  I was greeted with a, “What are you doing here?  You are getting way too old for this shit,” when I ran into the house sound engineer that I went to high school with.  I tried to counter with, “Well, you're here too,” only to be swatted away with, “At least I'm getting paid to be here.”  It didn't help matters when the much younger woman that was running lights said, “I think it's cute when the older punks come out to these shows.”  That's when it sunk in that I was officially the coffin dodger in the back of the room instead of the perpetually 22 year old that's too cool for school image of myself that's been stuck in my head for the past several years.

     Just as my final thread of self-esteem had been incinerated, the stage manager came back to alert them that the start time was being pushed back by twenty minutes for some unknown reason.  At that point I'm feeling really old.  Trying to make it through four opening acts and a headliner suddenly felt like an insurmountable task and there was not a cup of coffee in the place.  Then I saw the list of run times for the bands.  Each opener had between 20 and 30 minutes.  Things were looking up or so I thought.

     I have been a fan of Code Orange since I picked up their second LP I Am King a few years back.  I had seen them open for Anti-Flag a few times and they also opened for the Black Flag reunion band, Flag.  I was impressed after seeing how they handled themselves in the up hill battle that is being the first band to go out in front of an unfriendly audience that doesn't care about the first band to hit stage. They had a very “We don't give a fuck about you” attitude and ran right through the crowd's apathy each time.

     It's been rather enjoyable to see the weird kids from the local performing arts high school, CAPA, grow into this world wide metal phenomenon.  Even though most people from Pittsburgh could give two shits about them because Code Orange isn't some sort of 90s cover band.  They're playing bigger stages and hitting the festival circuit and, more importantly, the records keep progressing and getting better and better.  Their latest, Forever, is a slab of brutality that finds its way into my ears on a regular basis.

     Their set the other night was another display of how Code Orange is evolving by leaps and bounds.  They put together an hour long audio/visual assault on the senses that felt like it could have gone off the rails at any time if it were in the hands of a lesser band.  Code Orange was in control of the mayhem every step of the way.

     At the board for the lights, there was a piece of notebook paper with lighting cues for each song in the set which included a series of convulsion inducing strobe lights all over the stage.  Just before the band came out, the sound guy turned to the lighting engineer, flipped her off, and donned a pair of sunglasses to protect himself from the coming onslaught to his rods and cones.  I suddenly wished that I had a welder's mask in my pocket.

     At one point, the bass player ended up bleeding profusely from the head but he certainly didn't let some mere flesh wound get in the way of him finishing the set while diving in and out of the crowd while still playing.  These kids mean business and after being together for ten years already they show no signs of stopping any time soon.

     The most disappointing part of the evening were the four opening acts.  They were all cut from the same stylistic cloth of the jock, bro-down hardcore band.  None of them even displayed a variation on the theme.  All four bands were indistinguishable from each other.  If this is the state of modern hardcore, then there is a lot of work to be done for it to reestablish the form and get it out of its current rut.

     Each band seemed to be more interested in posing, jumping around and flexing than they were focussed on actually playing.  Playing stop time only works when everyone stops and starts at the same time.  Maybe if the members of these bands spent less time in the gym and more time in the practice room they would sound a little better.  My disdain for jumping jacks, alone, would prevent me from being the singer in a current hardcore band.

     I couldn't even say that trading a few hours of calisthenics for a few more hours of working on lyrical content would be beneficial.  All I could hear was something along the lines of “Bark, Bark, Bark!!!”  I'm sure it could be loosely translated to “I hate my mom, I hate my Dad, why don't any girls like me” or some such silly white boy nonsense.

     I was left with a very “Back in my day...” feeling after seeing these bands.  Moments like that always remind of the Ian MacKaye quote from the documentary American Hardcore.  It was something along the lines of, “I didn't leave hardcore.  Hardcore left me.”

     The one upside after seeing these bands fall flat has been the heavy music palette cleansing I've been going through over the past few days to get the taste out of my ears.  Large doses of Eyehategod, The Fix, Turmoil, Snapcase, Helmet, Rollins Band and, of course, Code Orange.

     Maybe I'm not getting too old for this shit.  Maybe it's hardcore's stagnating lack of forward progress that can't keep up with me.