About Jazz.

Assholes.

I hate jazz. There, I said it. I hate jazz, hate it to death, and I hate the people who listen to it. I hate every second of non-musical "hey guys, look at how many notes we can play in sequence" wankery it results in, and I hate the people who tell me that I'm supposed to "appreciate" that crap. More than anything, though, I hate the endless parade of uppity white people and resulting near-uselessness of a decent-sized chunk of Robinson Street that's going to happen when the annual Jazz in June debacle hits this town tonight. (The first night might already be over by the time I finish typing, but eh, details.) It's a true nightmare, the worst time of the year to live in this town, (or any of the other places that do it around this time of year, probably due to them thinking that alliteration is so clever and people being too unoriginal to do it in January or July) and a bigger celebration of unchecked whiteness than anything the Ku Klux Klan has cooked up so far. I mean, just look at this dude they've got playing on the first night, allegedly featuring the blues:

"Bring me a little water, Sylvie. In a factory-sealed plastic bottle. Thanks."

Now, I'll be honest. I don't know this dude right here from Adam, and for all I know, he can probably play the shit out of a guitar or whatever, but that ain't no blues man. He looks less like a dude who should be playing the blues professionally than he does the leather jacket-wearing kid from out of town who shows up as a new student at Bayside High to give Zack Morris a hard time, before it finally gets revealed that he was a geek at his old school, and the whole leather jacket tough-guy thing was just an act. That, or the coolest guy in the room at an all-gay German techno rave. But either way, that motherfucker ain't never had the blues. But you can rest assured that come Thursday night, a crowd full of people in golf shirts and tennis visors will pause from exchanging business cards long enough to stop and marvel at just what an "authentic blues experience" they're having, as they sip the wine they brought from home with the actual goddamn wineglasses they brought from home - I am being serious here, and they actually do that. Witnesses have confirmed this. But that's just the way things go at an event like this.

The Man, discussing the latest Miles Davis compilation with his peers.

You see, way, way back in the old days, jazz wasn't so bad. I mean, it was still pretty bad, but it wasn't the bullshit "look at how cultured I am" form of music, where people mainly just have the records around the house to be seen. I mean, let's face it - No one - NO ONE - ever listens to jazz in a room by themselves. Jazz is something that people can only listen to if they have someone around to witness the fact that they're listening to jazz. You see, Jazz People are insanely artificial people who are physically incapable of doing anything that's not grossly pretentious, and that's why when you go to a Jazz Person's house, you always get greeted with something like, "Oh, hello there. I was just relaxing to some rare recordings of John Coltrane. Would you like to step out on the balcony and smoke a clove cigarette while the Earl Grey steeps in the kettle?" Meanwhile, you'll never go to the house of one of your other, more "street-level" friends and get something like, "Oh, do come in. Gus and I were just perusing the latest GWAR compact disc. Would you like to step out on the porch and smoke some Kool menthols while we wait for the ice cubes to harden for the grape drink?" You'll never hear that shit, because Good People don't do that shit.

But before I got sidetracked, I was going to say that jazz wasn't always worthless crap it is now. It was an actual honest-to-god form of music, born from when the folks we dragged over here to pick our cotton got their hands on some European musical instruments and decided that The Man's music was a bunch of crap. Eventually, it led to pretty much every form of music alive today, but somewhere on the way there, jazz happened. And this whole vibrant culture popped up around it, and what with him not being vibrant at all, The Man hated it. To be involved with jazz in any form was a shameful and disreputable thing, only for street people and winos, and the Man's fear of this whole thing actually even helped lead to today's marijuana laws, because The Man figured if he could stamp that shit right out if he just started busting the people involved for those funny cigarettes they were smoking. But you see, somewhere along the line, something changed. Something changed, and the vibrant, freeballing jazz culture turned into a stuffy, stuck-up game of pseudo-intellectualism and "look how many more records I have than you do" dick-waving, and a form of music that sucked - but was at least creative and original - turned into one that just simply sucked with no substance to it at all. And what was it that happened? Same thing that happens to every form of music. White people stopped being scared of it.

Moments before some white people evicted him from his house and took his trumpet.

Somewhere along the line, The Man decided that jazz really wasn't so bad, took that shit, snatched it right up, called it his own, and then promptly fucked it all up until it was unrecognizable. Shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone, I suppose. The way I figure it, it's the same thing we did with the blues, (remember the dude from a couple paragraphs ago?) rock 'n roll, most of the major monotheistic religions, the vast majority of the North American continent, and the act of calling people "dog." Don't ask me why; I guess taking darker people's shit and eventually screwing it all up is just in our DNA somehow. I mean, we've been trying really hard on rap for about twenty years so far, too, and while we haven't completely taken it as our own yet, you must admit, we already have managed to completely cut its balls off.

"Cause yo' ass is grass cause I'ma blast / Can't bury rap, like you buried jazz"

But anyway, here we are in modern times, where jazz has become the single most absolutely white thing on the planet, pretending to be loved and adored by the absolute worst white people on the planet. Jazz People, who will be crawling all over this place soon. (In a shopping center parking lot, a few doors down from a Starbucks, appropriately enough) If you don't know how to spot Jazz People, it's easy. They're the people with entirely European ancestry whose homes are covered in a borderline-racist mishmash of vaguely Asian, vaguely African, and vaguely Native American decor. Jazz People are like that; they try really hard to be all "multicultural," and as far as it usually ever gets is pretending that the Dave Matthews Band is "world music" and accidentally driving through the black section of town once or twice, with their doors locked and their teeth chattering the whole time. Jazz People are the people who sit behind you in groups of five or more at the restaurant, and you can tell they're there, because every single person at the table laughs this forced, mirthless laugh at eerily, mechanically regular intervals, squinting their eyes, thrusting their faces forward, and baring all their teeth while doing so, in essence making the only face that Kate Plus Eight ever makes.

JAZZ FACE.

Young Jazz People all work at Starbucks. They also all have four-year degrees in something like sociology, English, communications, or philosophy. They all drive a Prius that they can't afford, because they all work at Starbucks. They spend most of their time driving around in their Prius, which they can't afford, wondering why someone with a degree in sociology, English, communications, or philosophy can only find work at a Starbucks. Jazz People drink Pabst Blue Ribbon to feel kinship with the working man, when the working man only drinks it because he's broke. Jazz people don't "like" music; they "appreciate" music. Jazz people claim to "appreciate" all forms of music, and hold their "diverse" music collections up as a shining example of this, but pretty much anything they have that's not just regular old pop music (and sometimes this even includes jazz) is almost always just a small handful of "greatest hits" compilations. Jazz people pretend to know what snooty indie rock reviewers are talking about when they mention "angular guitars," when the people who coined the term still probably haven't figured it out themselves. If you claim to not like jazz, Jazz People will you that you're not listening to it the right way, (which I always figured was with my ears, but who knows, really) and that you have to "listen to the notes that he ISN'T playing," as though that means anything at all. But you know what? I AM listening to the notes that he isn't playing. Because the notes that the asshole tootling away on the flute isn't playing just so happen to be the exact same notes that Judas Priest IS playing.

LEAVING A TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION THAT'S SECOND TO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE

So Jazz in June starts tonight, and you all have fun with that, Jazz People. Have fun with your bottled water, your boxed wine, and your stupid beret that you only wear once a year. Have fun using your iPhone to update your Facebook status with how much you're loving the show, secretly wishing you had planned ahead like the guy a few feet away who straight-up brought a folding table, a chair, and his iPad to do the same. Have fun with the mosquitoes, and have fun being bitten by them for three hours, because you had to be seen by your Jazz Friends at an outdoor show in 90-degree heat, while you probably could have just waited a few days and seen the same people perform for a five dollar cover charge somewhere up in the city. Also, have fun with the inevitable mountain of smash-ups and fender-benders that will inevitably result when minivans, SUVs, and wine coolers all converge in a small space.

Just stay the hell away from me.

Rundown of Recent Events

Haven't posted in a while, (ha, like that's new) and I'm not yet sleepy enough to attempt going to bed, so here's what's been going down lately:

Me and Sarah totally got an apartment together, and it's totally rad and I feel like an adult and stuff. I kinda feel bad though, because I've had a huge head start on crap accumulation, so my crap outnumbers hers like forty-to-one, and it's like an apartment full of my crap with only trace amounts of hers. I'd have pictures, but the place is pretty much a shambles right now, and the empty-apartment photos from a week ago are on a camera I can't find that connects to the computer with a cable I can't find. We'd invite y'all over to hang out, but once again the place is a shambles, I don't trust you creepy internet types, and there is basically nowhere to sit. We got a beanbag chair, and that's about it. We gotta work on that. Maybe just throw down some mats and act like it's some sort of Asian thing. I dunno. Overall, I must say that it is nice to live somewhere with more than one window, a double sink, air conditioning capable of actually cooling the place down on hot days, no dripping ceilings, and actual separate rooms. Also, no creepy next-door neighbor covered in really prison-looking tattoos asking me if I smell something dead in the parking lot. And no crazy, possibly retarded, probably meth-addicted upstairs neighbor screaming obscenities at her twenty cats or actual goddamn pet opossum. And no other upstairs neighbors who apparently spend their free time pushing their furniture around like it's a Nintendo puzzle game, just for recreation or whatever. And no older next-door neighbor waking me up at night with the most horrifying death-rattle of a cough in the dead of night, walking past my window to her stupid van. And no more half the parking lot being taken up by two dead cars and a freaking motorboat. Jesus, I could go on for days like this.

On a related note, while looking up info on the place, I came across my landlord's Myspace profile, (that I'm not linking to or hinting at in the slightest, because this dude in question can literally render me homeless with but a phone call) and the dude seems like a walking mid-life crisis, and it kind of horrifies me. Like take one of those bro-dog fratboy type dudes who all inevitably end up watching an episode of The Ultimate Fighter and then deciding to dedicate their lives to Ultimate Fighting, despite the fact that they only know of Ken Shamrock through his WWF stint and have never even heard of Royce Gracie, but then make him over forty and apparently decadently wealthy. Scary stuff.

On another related note, here is an open letter to what I'm pretty sure is our next-door neighbor: There are bumper stickers and window decals. And that's where it ends. When the stickers expand past the bumper, cover the trunk, and threaten to begin covering the license plate and brake lights, it's time to consider getting into some sort of treatment program. It's like Dale Earnhardt Jr. moved next door, right after signing a sponsorship deal with left-wing politics.

On a down note, the two new fishies from the last post checked out within a couple weeks of entering the tank. I'm gonna try again with a couple more otos eventually, this time armed with the knowledge of the drip-acclimation method. R.I.P. Otocinclus #1 and Otocinclus #2.

Finally, on another down note, apparently, during the period when I wasn't paying attention to the internet, Mitsuharu Misawa died. If you don't know who that is, don't worry, because that probably just means that you're a normal human being with a future. Anyway, he was pretty much King Shit of Fuck Mountain when it came to the Japanese pro wrestling scene back in the days when it still made money or mattered to anyone at all, and a lot of the pro wrestling basement nerds (and I can't knock those guys too hard, because I was one of them for a while) will tell you that he was the best there's ever been. Apparently, he got dropped on his head one too many times, and after the last one, he never got up and just died right there in the middle of the ring. And you just know all the dorks are putting the "that's how he would have wanted it" spin on the thing, but fuck that, the dude basically got killed (and depending on who you ask, spent the last few years of his life in a concussion-induced, half-retarded fog) because of taking a fake sport way, way, wayyyyy too seriously. And I hate to be that dickhead, but back when Shinya Hashimoto died a few years ago, I told you so. Not to mention the whole "Chris Benoit had the brain of an 85 year-old Alzheimer's patient when he killed his family" thing. Looking back, I'm getting more and more ashamed of being such a huge fan of that "drop people on their head and hit each other for real when possible" brand of wrestling back in the day. I should be ashamed of liking normal wrestling back in the day too, but eh, I'll deal with one personality disorder at a time. Anyway, R.I.P. dude. He's elbow-smashing angels now.

TEN THINGS THAT WILL BE ILLEGAL WHEN AM I KING: PART ONE

Introduction: This is a thing I was really planning on doing a Random Shit about, but never could bring myself to type out a whole long thing, so I figured I'd do it in installments here. So what that means is that it'll eventually get abandoned when I move on to bigger and better things, so just smile, nod, and enjoy the five-to-seven of these that I actually bother to type up.

FIRST: THE FORD MUSTANG.

This showed up on Google Image Search with he word "douche" under it, so I knew it was the picture to use.

THE REASON:
In case some of you had forgotten, on the eleventh of September in the year 2001, America suffered the largest attack on American soil in over fifty years, in a tragedy where 2,974 people lost their lives. In the years that have followed, new government agencies have been formed, wars have been fought, and entire ways of thinking have been changed in the hopes of preventing something like that from ever happening again. Meanwhile, the very next year, (2002, if you didn't know that) the number of highway fatalities in the United States reached the staggering number of 17,419 deaths, which is nearly six times the number of dead in the 9/11 attacks. And after careful scientific research of my own design, which has consisted mostly of driving around from place to place when I need to get some oatmeal or ham or something, I have determined to within a margin of error of 0.015% that every single one of these tragic deaths was caused by someone driving a Ford Mustang. It's simple a proven fact: Mustang drivers speed, they pull out in front of you in the rain, they make right turns from the left lane, they try to pass you ten feet before a stop sign, and chances are pretty good that they even hate freedom. Every day my life is subject to deadly danger at the hands of kids in these 3,500 pound death-missiles, who only seem to be driving for someone else's benefit; that is, Cody or Tyler or whatever yuppie-ass name the guy has probably figures that Amber or Skyler or whoever will be a lot more likely to put out if he just makes sure to bring her within a hair's-breadth of fiery incredible death at least once over the course of the night. Makes no sense, but it's true. If you doubt my research, go driving in a moderately-sized city on the days of Friday or Saturday after 5:00 PM. If you never have to stomp on the breaks or swerve to another lane to avoid a collision with a Mustang, it means one of two things: Either you forgot to swerve or stomp the brakes and were actually involved in an accident with one, or you're just a god-damnable liar. So the point I'm trying to make here stands, and will stand under any sort of scrutiny:

The Ford Mustang automobile is a greater threat to the safety of the nation than Islamic terrorists could ever hope to be.

And that, gentle reader, is why the Ford Mustang will be made illegal when I am king. What's that, you say? Mustang-drivery is merely the symptom of a larger problem, and the car itself is not to blame? Well, the act of baby stabbing is merely the symptom of a larger problem, yet baby-knives are still illegal, last time I checked. My logic is flawless. So yeah, the Mustang was a cool car in some ways, and I guess it had a good run there for a while, but I'm sorry, it's time for it to go.

THE PUNISHMENT:
From now on, in addition to having their chests forever marked with a damning letter M, (for Mustang) all current Mustang drivers will now be forced to drive one of these:

Well, unless it's a gay Mustang driver, in which case I'll give them some naked lady mud flaps or something.
My word is law, and I have spoken, for I am The King.

NEXT TIME: Mohawks on small children.