I am so sick of the other Geoff Geis
From his myspace blog:
“If u do not know me do not bother reading this.
Current mood:confused, uncertain, depressed
I have three choices at this point. One- I don’t want to gaze upon the world anymore, its corrupt, its ugly, its ignorant. We haven’t evolved, only adapted better technology. This saddens me to the point where I feel I don’t want to wake up to another day of it. Two- Seek revenge for not only my friends who have been taken from me but also for those who have been tortured and made to suffer to death. Evil exists out there and most of u have never really seen it. It is allowed to prosper because we make money off of it and as long as we continue to make money from it we allow it to live and simply prod it wif a stick occasionaly. Three- I have a person back here who would be greatly hurt if I chose one or two and this is the only reason I stay at choice three. Each day however I want to give in and let myself embrace one of the first two choices. Really not sure what to do anymore. I seriously need advice but there really is no one I feel I can access at this point. Its so hard to think clearly when u have images in ur head that wont go away and remind u why u feel this way. To most of u the news is just text, its real- but its not. Simply a movie. To me its as real as it gets. Sometimes I think I can feel what others are forced to endure and it reaches a point where i cant take it anymore. I feel sick to my stomach on a regular basis. I can hardly eat sometimes. Then the anger comes. Sometimes I punch my wall when I know my neighbores are not home in their apartment next door. To be honest a punching bag will not do it because I need the pain accompanied with the blow to remind me how much anger I have thrusted out with and also to remind me how real my situation is. I feel so gaddamned helpless. All I can do is google news article after news article and try to read past the bullshit as I peice them together and figure out what is stable information. I still feel trapped. I know this must sound like the biggest emo wad of shit to u all but I need to do this, I need to talk about what Im feeling or I am gonna lose it and do something final. I have one more week til I see the person in my life that keeps me stable and I wonder if I can make it. Every day the media pushes me closer to the edge. My life is walking a tightrope right now and the end is very uncertain. Anyways, I need to try and stay strong for my gurl, Its not fair if I put her through this. If anyone sees me on aim please feel free to hit me up and talk to me, I need support at this point very bad. Im gonna take a nap, all I can do is try to sleep the time away. Its better then being conscious and waiting to find out the bad news. ”
Imaginary Baked Potato
If you look hard, you can see the imaginary baked potato drifting around in front of his eyes while he’s interviewing that poor guy.
Not everybody is a perfect person in the world: Part of qwesi.com’s “Ohio State Is A Respectable Place” series.
“Not everybody’s a perfect person in the world. Everyone kills people, murder people, steals from you, steals from me, whatever.” - T. Pryor
This is a sharp contrast to the talking points being peddled by the Buckeyes during the week leading up to last year’s game against Southern Cal, when Ohio State wide receiver Ray Small said, “Here at Ohio State, they teach you to be a better man. [At USC], it’s just all about football.”
Football and killing, Ray. Get it straight.
give him the damn tile samples
I was flipping through channels the other night and I came across this gem:
From the show’s website:
With Tackling Design, Keyshawn showcases yet another one of his hidden talents and marks his place in the world of design and home furnishing.
Johnson will apply his love for furniture, fabric, and finishings to real-life settings as he helps clients renovate areas of their homes that require a bit of a design flourish.
The series follows Johnson as he tries to manage this cast of disparate assistants and exacting clients, all the while tackling a variety of interior design dilemmas with an eye for subtle sophistication.
As Keyshawn likes to say, “my designs speak for themselves…as long as everyone gets out of my way and lets me do it right!”
Side note:
Upon Googling Keyshawn Johnson, it occurred to me just how long it took for him to lead storied Southern Cal back to No. 1.
Eight freakin years - - most of which he wasn’t even playing for Southern Cal.
Review: “TYLER WANTS SOME HEAVINESS”
My good friend Dave Bekerman recently made me a metal mix-cd called “TYLER WANTS SOME HEAVINESS.” I asked him for the heaviest shit metal could muster, and promised him a qwesi.com review in return. He did not disappoint, and neither shall I.
1. The Dillenger Escape Plan - “When Good Dogs Do Bad Things”
This one would be far better without vocals, except for the low rumbly repetitive ones about 1 minute in. Without them, they sound like a group of professional, well-practiced, on-the-dot musicians doing their thing and succeeding. With the vocals they sound like a group of professional, well-practiced, on-the-dot musicians doing their thing with an obnoxious college girl’s un-showered fantasy man expressing himself inappropriately on top of it - which I guess is alright.
2. Mayhem - “In The Lies Where Upon You Lay”
Really, metal? This is what you’ve got? Because to say it’s totally not heavy enough would be an understatement of criminal proportions. This is theatrically heavy. Nothing about it frightens me, and everything sounds like it was recorded in guitar center by guitar center employees (nice Yamaha keyboard stock-sound drum reverb, guys). I wouldn’t listen to this one again.
3. Pantera - “Suicide Note Pt. II”
This one is rad. Good musicians, well-executed. They really play together effectively, though the song didn’t need to be 4:20… or was that on purpose? If it was, I like the song less.
4. Celtic Frost - “A Dying God Coming into Human Flesh”
Ah, this one thickens everything up nicely. Ooh… texture in metal… metal textures - can you even see my mustache? This one is certainly adequately heavy, once it gets over its feminine oracle-self intro, and I’m really glad he’s talking about doing something-or-other to human flesh.
5. Mastodon - “March of the Fire Ants”
This is some good metal!! It reminds me of the time my family was at my grandmother’s house in Massachusetts - we had just arrived from the airport, and she had made some food for us at her house. One of the dishes was… wait a minute… this instrumental jam starting around 2:30 blows! Boo self-serious guy-rock to it’s core… anyway, one of the dishes was tuna salad, but at the time my parents, sister and I all thought it was chicken salad, and we didn’t find out until days later that it was tuna salad. We all had quite a laugh.
6. Exit-13 - “Societally Provoked Genocidal Contemplation”
This one wins heaviest guitar tone so far, but it also leaves me wondering when it was recorded. My guess is early-mid 90’s at the latest. Boy, drum recording sure has gotten badasser since then. Also, why can’t I understand anything the singers on this mix are saying? Oh no… just before 3:00 in they had to go break it down all college-jam style… thereby ruining the song and any respect I had for them. Seriously, if they had just ended this one before this unfortunate occurrence I would be raving about this song. Then again, if I hadn’t shaved my mustache then it would still be on my face.
7. Sigh - “Inked in Blood”
Is this one of those metal bands with a keyboard player? Is that acceptable to hardcore metal heads? Or are those real string sounds? Is that acceptable to the aforementioned metal heads? Anyway, this track is totally unabashed - no wanky dorm room jams here, just a solid asskicking from start to finish. Way to go these guys - I will definitely listen to this one next time I need to annihilate some shit.
8. Slayer - “Necrophobic”
I can always get behind a song that’s 1:40 and features 2-3 tempo changes, singing that doesn’t make me embarrassed for the singer and a shreddy guitar solo. Good choice here, Dave, though the title confuses me - how is Slayer necrophobic? Granted, I can’t understand what he is saying, and I didn’t go to alllyrics.com to look it up, so maybe he’s poking fun at the necrophobic n00bz of the world. I hope that’s what they’re doing, anyway.
9. Strapping Young Lad - “Happy Camper (Carpe B.U.M.)”
This one rages fantastically - Strapping Young Lad indeed!
10. Austrian Death Machine - “Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers”
I think this might be my favorite one. Maybe. It’s hard choose, but it’s also hard to bet against “Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers.” I especially like how his hellgrumble about 1:50 in sounds like the sound that comes out of the burp-catching machine in Pete & Pete when one of the Petes burps in the wrong tube. This one might win best band name/song title combo if I wasn’t feeling so damn non-commital right now.
11. Macabre - “Vampire of Dusseldorf”
Ah, what a wonderful winding tale! That vampire of Dusseldorf must surely have only the best intentions for our impending encounter! Surely he won’t slit my throat, strangle me, drink my blood or anything like that….
12. Death - “Flesh and the Power it Holds”
Man, I really hate faux-complex music. Faux-complex rhythm, especially, meaning this one starts off on the wrong foot. Also, was this vocal part inserted for comedic purposes, or is it supposed to sound scary/intense? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t seek to mindlessly rip on stuff, especially music, but the only redeeming part of this song comes at 5:24, when they all stop playing for a couple seconds. Sheesh! Who thinks an audience wants to her 8:24 of this?
13. Dissection - “Night’s Blood”
What differentiates this track from that last piece of oldmanshit is that it doesn’t try to do anything too complicated - they don’t insert complicated-sounding bullshit, and they don’t try to fool anybody into thinking they’re better than they are, which I, as a listener and creator, totally appreciate. It also sounds like it was recorded at The Smell, which I appreciate, though I wouldn’t have made this song any longer than 3 minutes.
14. General Surgery - “Crimson Concerto”
This is definitely more of what I’m looking for out of Metal in general. Nothing too fancy here - just some straight ahead rocking done by dudes probably wearing leather or some other animal (human?) skins. I also dig the lo-fi quality to the whole thing, as well as the weird, semi-dissonant Slash’s retarded nephew guitar solo towards the end, along with the pitched-down evil monster vocals that come in and out. I approve, and I also really, really like their band name.
15. Acid Bath - “Cheap Vodka”
Another good one here for many of the same reasons listed about the previous track. The only thing I would change would be to remove the Vedder-esque vocals starting at 1:30. Thank goodness (or thank evil?) the real Acid Bath singer returns just in time for the song to end.
16. Carcass - “This Mortal Coil”
I like this one too. It sounds like the typical riffs that all metalgods-in-training continuously fuck up while shredding at guitar center, except for the fact that Carcass created these and is executing them flawlessly, in a way about which I, mr. uberbiasedagainstguitarcenterandthepeoplewhomaketerriblemusicwithinitswalls, cannot complain.
Alright Dave, I kinda like metal now. I don’t love it, but I think that if I was ever going to love it I would have started somewhere around age 12, which I didn’t. I was too busy listening to jazz at that time. Thanks for the mix! Though you forgot to include “Blame it” by Jamie Foxxxxxx and T(yler)-Pain.
Black Matt Leinart?
You probably remember “Moroccan Christmas,” an episode of the television series the Office that aired in December of 2008. A subplot of that episode revolves around a seasonal business run by salesman/oddball farm boy Dwight Schrute: the hoarding, and then the marking-up and re-selling of popular childrens’ toys to desperate parents who are shopping at the last minute for their childrens’ Christmas presents.
At the end of the episode, Toby Flenderson (the office’s HR rep, who is as limp and pathetic as his last name implies he is) decides that he wants to buy one of the toys - a doll similar to Barbie - from Dwight. His daughter wants one, and Toby decides to buy it partially out of love for her but partially to send a passive-aggressive message to his ex-wife. Unfortunately Toby makes his decision too late, and Dwight has already sold the last doll to Darryl Philbin, who also works in the building. Having already told his daughter that he had the doll, Toby desperately buys that doll from Darryl at an even higher price before noticing that the doll is, like Darryl, black.
Toby’s fucked, of course. He ends up stuck with a black doll because he doesn’t want to offend Darryl. What an oaf! It’s a pretty funny joke, I have to admit.
So anyway… that was a long way to go before getting to the topic that I wanted to discuss: people that are depicted as black who aren’t really black.
Black Barbie was perhaps a bad example with which to start: actually, she makes a lot of sense to me. African-American children should have dolls that look like them - they have to learn important concepts about beauty and fashion that will allow them to participate just as fully as their Caucasian sisters in our vapid consumerist economy. How else to sell lipstick to little black girls?
Dolls are cool toys because children can make personal narratives with them. I used to create my own GI Joe stories when I was a kid, as did countless other dudes - and yes, I learned terrible lessons from that too, although the lessons were altogether different (and far more violent) than those learned by the girls my age who were playing with Barbie. And despite my criticisms of her, Barbie is versatile in this regard - an imaginative child can give her personality, thoughts, and actions. She can use Barbie to play out her fantasies for herself about growing up, she can modify her appearance, etc.
What I’m getting at is that dolls are very personal. Thus, ethnic Barbies make sense, even though the original Barbie was quite white. Barbie isn’t supposed to be any color - if girls are going to fill Barbie with their own personality, then they should have the option of a Barbie who looks like them.
We’ll move on.
Surely you are all familiar with Black Bart Simpson?
Some of the black kids at my elementary school had bootleg Black Bart Simpson shirts back in the day. I understand the impulse behind them - kid had a flat-top after all, and it’s hard to tell what someone’s ethnicity is when they are pee-colored and don’t particularly even look human. And while he began as an actual character in an episodic piece of art, Bart was also a product that for a while achieved ultimate pop-culture ubiquity. He was even a doll! I can see why people wanted to personalize him - and besides, he is a fictional character. It’s not like they were mis-representing a real kid.
So while I understand all that, the shirts always struck me as odd. Fictional or not, Bart Simpson is yellow. He’s present on television, on a daily basis and all over the world, in one color: yellow. He does not resemble Barbie in that regard, and he is also (by virtue of the fact that he is a character first and a doll second, unlike Barbie) far less flexible when it comes to personalization.
But whatever, Black Bart is just weird. Nothing but weird.
This, on the other hand, goes a bit farther:
Matt Leinart isn’t even fictional. I can attest to the fact that he is a real, living, human being. And just as Bart Simpson is yellow, Matt Leinart is white.
So what gives? I mean I think I’d understand it if African-Americans tried to take a really good white player as their own. If they are in the market for a quarterback, it would be quite understandable to go for someone like one of the Manning brothers or even Brett Favre. But Leinart? His biggest NFL achievement is warming the bench during his team’s failed Super Bowl attempt.
Maybe black people are just trying to creep up on us by picking someone who is ho-hum? I mean, if Peyton Manning’s doll was black I bet it would be big news - somehow Leinart has slipped under the radar, though.
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Tags: action figures, barbie, black bart simpson, football, matt leinart, nfl, southern cal
Posted by Geoff in Deep Social Commentary, Esoteria, USC Football | No Comments »