Generally don't post on Fridays, and certainly not this late in the day, since the Internet pretty much closes for the weekend, or so I am told by fellow blogger Greg Kim.  But a couple reasons I write.  1.) I was contacted by a former classmate in Miami, who has asked if I will appear via Skype for the writing class she is now teaching re: blog writing.  It's funny to me that she thought she had to ask.  I've been pretty clear about my willingness to appear in any and all forums to promote my singular agenda: taking over the world getting publishers to notice me.  My pimping knows no bounds.  The topic she would like me to discuss with her class concerns writing in exile (i.e., living among the fray and fringed).  Good topic.  I've always felt marginalized.  Or as marginalized as a good looking, well-off, white guy can be.  Marginalization is a state of mind, a lifestyle, a decision to build walls high on your hill, where you are safe from those who wish to do you harm.  Even if these enemies are entirely manufactured and the result of what your doctor calls "delusions."

But the other thing that caught my eye was this, which is trending high on Yahoo News, the only reliable news source (http://tinyurl.com/d26otq).

Internet Addiction

SIGNS, SYMPTOMS, TREATMENT, AND SELF-HELP

Risk factors for Internet addiction and computer addiction

You are at greater risk of Internet addiction if:

• You suffer from anxiety. You may use the Internet to distract yourself from your worries and fears. An anxiety disorder like obsessive-compulsive disorder may also contribute to excessive email checking and compulsive Internet use.
• You are depressed. The Internet can be an escape from feelings of depression, but too much time online can make things worse. Internet addiction further contributes to stress, isolation and loneliness.
• You have any other addictions. Many Internet addicts suffer from other addictions, such as drugs, alcohol, gambling, and sex.
• You lack social support. Internet addicts often use social networking sites, instant messaging, or online gaming as a safe way of establishing new relationships and more confidently relating to others.
• You’re an unhappy teenager. You might be wondering where you fit in and the Internet could feel more comfortable than real-life friends.
• You are less mobile or socially active than you once were. For example, you may be coping with a new disability that limits your ability to drive. Or you may be parenting very young children, which can make it hard to leave the house or connect with old friends.
• You are stressed. While some people use the Internet to relieve stress, it can have a counterproductive effect. The longer you spend online, the higher your stress levels will be.

How do people become addicted to the Internet?

To relieve unpleasant and overwhelming feelings

Many people turn to the Internet in order to manage unpleasant feelings such as stress, loneliness, depression, and anxiety. When you have a bad day and are looking for a way to escape your problems or to quickly relieve stress or self-soothe, the Internet can be an easily accessible outlet. Losing yourself online can temporarily make feelings such as loneliness, stress, anxiety, depression, and boredom evaporate into thin air. As much comfort as the Internet can provide, though, it’s important to remember that there are healthier (and more effective) ways to keep difficult feelings in check. These may include exercising, meditating, using sensory relaxation strategies, and practicing simple breathing exercises.

For many people, an important aspect of overcoming Internet and computer addiction is to find alternate ways to handle these difficult feelings. Even when your Internet use is back to healthy levels, the painful and unpleasant feelings that may have prompted you to engage in unhealthy Internet use in the past will remain. So, it’s worth spending some time thinking about the different ways you intend to deal with stressful situations and the daily irritations that would normally have you logging on.

Whenever people hear I used to be a junkie, I almost invariably hear a variation of the following:  "Never did hard drugs.  Used to smoke cigarettes though.  Which I hear is harder to quit than heroin."  Like it's a pissing contest or something.  No, no it's not.  Quitting smoking is removing a splinter to kicking dope's Chlamydia test. To quote Jules, they ain't in the same fucking ballpark; they ain't even the same fucking sport.

Took me a while to figure out why people always say that, or why they will introduce some other element of having been addicted to something.  There is no glamour, no glory in being addicted to anything, and being addicted to drugs is about as low as a man can sink.  You do awful, awful things that you will be ashamed of for the rest of your life when you are an addict.  You allow yourself to be humiliated and relegated to a second-class citizen, and will seriously do just about anything for a fix.  There are great number of addiction stereotypes that aren't true, like you don't make any real friends while you are using, or you'll never have a high as good as your first. But that one is true.  If you are one of the lucky/blessed ones to get clean, you will have a lifetime of memories to look back upon and cringe endlessly over.

So why is everyone in such as race to compare dick size?  The word "junkie" gets dropped so casually, attached to everything from "pop culture" to "fashion."  Way back I received some hate mail (http://tinyurl.com/3z9ny4w), and if you read that letter you'll infer the same twisted logic.  I don't want to say "jealousy" because only a brain-dead turd could possibly envy someone giving handjobs for nickel backs behind the Gas 'n' Go, but it's not that far off.

When I hear about stuff like "Internet Addiction," I have the same reaction, as though there is pride in affliction ("Ooh, me too, me too!").  You can spend too much time online, sure, and if you look at those high risk categories, I am pleading fucking guilty, right down to the "moody teenager" defense. But "addicted"?  It reminds me of Bob Saget at the AA meeting in Half Baked.

Some doctors say it's hard to define addiction.  But I think the "I sucked a dick for it" is a pretty good barometer, whether figuratively or literally (and, no, I never got that bad.  I was about...a...week...away).

That's probably enough for today.  Besides I haven't checked my e-mail in seven minutes.  And I might've missed that acceptance letter from Norton!

They Don't Know Nothing about Recovery

When I was in Miami, I had a band, briefly.  We never got around to even naming the damn thing, that's how short we were together.  But we didn't sound half bad.  It was my first band since climbing on that wagon.  This was one of the songs we covered.

It's a pretty standard take on the classic junkie tale, but it has a catchy beat and clever lyrics, and I love the energy and pop/punkish qualities.  I especially like the chorus:

                       They don't know nothing about redemption /
                       They don't know nothing about recovery...

I really hate the term "recovery" (recovering from what?  Cancer?  Being a dumbass?  From having dug yourself a hole and climbing out?).  But here, for whatever reason, I embrace it.  Maybe it's singer Tom Gabel's impassioned delivery, the way he makes it seem like he owns the word, like there's some real urgency behind it.  Usually, the word feels like a wet noodle, an all-encompassing, perfunctory catchphrase for a new healthy and positive club that's replaced the old unhealthy and negative one.  I never felt part of that club.  I have certainly used the expression, but I always feel like a phony when I do, like a devout atheist attending Midnight Mass to make his new mother-in-law happy, or wearing vintage '80s T-shirts with ironical facial hair.

The Litquake festival http://www.litquake.org/ is underway in San Francisco, 8 whole days where it truly feels like books and writing matter.  My reading series, Lip Service West, will be part of the Lit Crawl this Saturday.  I'm sure I will be bombarding you all with more details in the coming days.

It's hard to get out to readings these days.  Finding babysitting for my own gig (and, yes, I will be reading at the LSW event, though I still don't have any idea what) was tough enough.  With Justine in grad school and working extra shows as a faerie, finding a babysitter to buy a couple hours so I can go to someone else's reading is too much work.  But I wanted to go to tonight's event.

Tom Pitts, ex-junkie and former running partner (who will also be reading this Saturday night for LSW), called me the other day and asked me if I wanted to go. I don't leave the house for many people; I'll leave it for Tom.  "Re Write: An Evening of Prose from Writers in Recovery" did seem pretty apropos.  Plus, the night was being sponsored by several publishers who specialize in the field of the junkie memoir.  I figured I'd...schmooze.

And of course I didn't schmooze.  Because I am a social retard.  The world of addiction and recovery is pretty incestuous; everyone knows everyone, especially when a lot of the smarter addicts and drunks who kick the habit turn to writing about it.  I am friends, or at least acquainted, with many of the readers who read last night.  Like Wendy Merrill, who has read for Lip Service West in the past, and the always hilarious Bucky Sinister, who I've met a half dozen times, but who like Jim Hall, still has no idea who I am (http://tinyurl.com/43hxr6u).  Tim Elhaji also read.  I never met him, but Tim recently published one of Tom's stories.  Unfortunately, I missed his reading, which I hear was excellent, because Holden wouldn't let me pass him off to the babysitter, clinging to me, little tears filling his eyes, crying Da Da...  What kind of heartless bastard isn't melting over that?  Cutest goddamn thing the way he'll hold onto you when he wants you (conversely, there are many times when Mama is holding him when he'll just push me away).

There were a few more readers I didn't know, but the evening closed with my friend Alan Kaufman (who may not have recognized me either.  I think I need to get out more).  Alan's new memoir Drunken Angel comes out in November.  Alan is one of the most gracious writers I know, and was kind enough to blurb my memoir, Junkie Love.  The guy has repeatedly gone out of his way to help my career, and if something ever breaks for me, I will owe him a great deal.  The very least I can do is plug his first memoir Jew Boy and his remarkable (fictional) account of his days in the Israeli Army, Matches.  The mutherfucker can flat out write.

The memoir--my memoir--was why I was there, in part.  I mean, I wanted to hear Alan, and it was nice to actually go out at night with a friend, even if it was just to a reading.  But I, too, have a memoir, and a career I want, and I was hoping to meet...someone.

But the shit really depressed the fuck out of me.  And I didn't have the heart to schmooze.

And I think it's that goddamn word.  Recovery.

All the writers drew heavily on AA rhetoric and dogma in their respective pieces. There was a time when I would bash AA any chance I could, mocking their reliance on a Higher Power, their subjection to the group/mob mentality.  It took me 18 rehabs before I got clean; and every time Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob were shoved down my throat, I revolted like this Bruce Springsteen song.

When they said sit down, I stood up.  (Which actually makes controlling me exceptionally easy.)

Every time I'd come back through those hospital doors, a little older, more beat up and ragged, missing shoes, no jacket in the dead of winter, a new court case hanging over my head, some new girl driving me nuts, blisters lining my lips, giant sores on my face that I tried covering up with pancake makeup, they'd say, I told you so.

"When are you going to realize, Joe, you can't beat this thing through will power alone?  When are you going to realize there is only one way out and that you can't do it on your own?"

Except I did do it on my own.  Took a fucklot of time.  But I dug in my heels and I did it...

I was very proud of that.  I saw it as I somehow had fought the good fight and won. Except no one had ever been fighting back.  All these counselors and 12-Steppers were just trying to help an addict who needed guidance (and a firm hand), and say what you want, but AA (NA) fucking works.  I was an idiot to fight it the way I did, especially when you consider that my biggest sticking point was my refusal to believe in God (and all that Higher Power stuff is nice; but it's a Christian program. You close meetings with the Lord's Prayer, it's a Christian program).  But I ended up backing off that claim, returning to the faith of my youth.  We were married at St. Marks.  My son was baptized there.  I write for the church newsletter.  And these days I actively practice much of the AA philosophy.  I just don't go to meetings, or have a sponsor, but I draw heavily on all those slogans I used to mock as trite before.

In the end, what does it matter?  I got here, too, regardless of the crooked path I took.  And despite knowing how foolishly I acted in rejecting AA, my tenacity of having to fall and fail on my own, there is still some satisfaction I glean from knowing I did it like Frank and the Boss.  But I also probably missed out on a lot too.  Not the least of which, I am still saddled with just a few "character defaults" that AA might've helped me get rid of.

I always thought of AA as brainwashing ("Well, maybe your brain could use a little washing...").  Of course it's not.  There is a great deal of breaking down to build back up, because your best thinking got you there, you can't be trusted as an authority on your own life, which is why I kept failing.  I do envy the look I see in the eyes of AA graduates, the peace and growth I know I lack.  But I am also still 100% me, and AAers will say that's the problem.  Admittedly, I am a miserable, angry bastard.  I can be petty, trite, violent, and temperamental.  And I can get sick of myself (like Jerry says on Seinfeld, "Just once I'd love to go somewhere without me...")  But who doesn't?  At least once in a while.

This is the path I chose.  I know there are people who may get tired of hearing about the drug stuff (believe me, I get tired writing about it).  But two events define my life: the addiction and the accident.  The one thing they have in common (besides my being incredibly stupid to have landed in the mess in the first place) is I powered my way out through hardheadedness and sheer will.  And I am glad I still have me--stubborn, ornery, donkey souled--to help me out.  'Cause I don't think the fight ends simply because you put down the bottle or spike.  It goes on and on and on...

And this guy can be a neurotic mess at times, especially when the heat is on, and he can act like an impetuous child when things don't go his way, but I can't think of any guy I'd rather have by my side when the chips are down.  Or rather when those walls spring up.  Because they will.  And it takes a certain kind of guy--call it stupidity or determination--who will bang his head hard enough and long enough to pave/carve/get his way.  Or he'll die trying.

Colorado Cowboy

Spent the weekend at our family ranch in Colorado.  Just like a real cowboy. Always wanted to be a cowboy.  I mean, what boy growing up didn't?  Despite the fact that being an actual cowboy probably would've sucked all degree of slimy horse cock (http://www.cracked.com/article_16643_the-5-most-overrated-jobs-all-time.html).  It's ingrained in the fabric of every boy's rough rider corduroys.  I sorta liked the Lone Ranger.  Never much gave a shit about John Wayne.  I really wanted to be Heath from Big Valley.  

Truth is I was a wormy, skinny little kid, with a penchant for stabbing pitchforks in the ground trying to catch gophers, and as the oldest I was probably more like nebbish Jarrod.  My brother, Josh, would've been Nick.  My bastard, younger half-brother, Jason, probably would've been Health.  But who the fuck wants to be Jarrod?  What good is an accounting ledger and actuarial acumen going to do you in the middle of a shootout?

Justine, Holden, and I were at a wedding, which was held at the family stead. Second wedding in as many weeks.  And is there anything Joe loves more than spending a weekend celebrating and honoring another couples' love and committment to one another?  I mean, it's right up there with anal fissures and getting tested for chamlydia.

But I love the ranch.  I think I want to buy it, or another one just like it, for my boy. A boy should have wide-open fields in which to roam, a place where the deer and the antelope play, where seldom is heard "You lookin', meng?" or "What choo vant, vato?"  It's a simpler life out here, where driving to get milk is a day's activity, and the cineplex is just now getting around to showing Avatar.

The ranch is in a little town called Longmont, but it's not too far from Boulder, and if I were ever to move here and find myself missing dirty, stinking hippies, it would only take half an hour or so to be immersed in a sea of huka shells and hemp. Everyone rides a bicycle in Boulder, and I am pretty sure it is where those annoying "Life Is Good" coffee cups and T shirts originated. 

But Longmont itself is pretty goddamn desolate.  They got horses and ranches and you can see the Rocky's, and the nearest neighbor is a mile away.  I know what you're thinking: "But, Joe, you're such a people person.  How could you stand it?" To me friends are like most major organs; two is nice, but you really only need one to survive.  And if I moved here, I'd have Soupy.

*

The first time I met Soupy was at Joe D.'s crash pad/rehearsal space.  This would've been around '96.  I was very excited because I had just gotten married.  I was 26. And I was very high on drugs.  I was looking for Gluehead, and I was talking very fast, and dropping in several references to the fact that I'd just gotten married, because I thought that was very cool, and I was proud that I had a wife, however stupid that may sound now.

This guy in flannel is sitting on the ratty couch, and he hasn't been saying much, but by the fifteenth time I mention my wife, he looks over and says, "Oh, and I'm sure you make a terrific husband."

I liked him right away.

Turned out Soupy played bass, and we played together many times.  I think we did. Yeah, I am pretty sure we did.  Better than the music, however, was the ease with which I could talk to Soupy.  There are very few people you meet in this life where you instantly feel at home, some sort of almost familial connection.  There's Matt.  I know there must be someone else.  But not too many.  I've mentioned on here before how one of the greatest misconceptions about drug use is that the friends you make when you are using aren't your real friends.  While it's true many of your using buddies will be lying, thieving cocksuckers who try to steal your DAT, my best friends today are all people I knew from my darkest days.  It helps that everyone got sober around the same time, because I don't know if I'd be saying the same thing if I was always having to loan out $20.

Soupy left SF some time around the turn of the century, like Tom Pitts and so many others, including me.  I ended up finding him where you find all those who once were lost but now are found: The Facebook.  This was like two years ago.  It was funny because after having not seen the Soupy in almost ten years, it just so happened Justine and I were heading out to the ranch, which is about 20 minutes from where he lives now.  It took a while to convince him that I wasn't on a mission from Gluehead to shank him.  We met in some log cabin, and we picked up right where we left off, zipping and zapping, like a day hadn't gone by.  I've had (comic) routines with many friends, before and since Soupy, but I have to say our act is probably the most organic.

After the wedding this past Saturday, Justine, Holden and I met Soupy for lunch in town.  For all those in SF who wonder what he is up to now.  He's pretty...sturdy. And he wears a lot of flannel.  He is definitely not going through a mid-life crisis. Soupy lives at the end of a long, dirt road, drives a large truck, and raises alpacas (probably).  That's a picture of us at the top of this post.  Through it all, he somehow has retained his sharp, keen wit, and hanging out with him is as effortless and enjoyable as it always was.  Even if he tricked me into pissing in the urinal with the big newspaper cutout about the Yankees' losing to Detroit.

And I know I can get pretty sentimental about this stuff.  But I don't make many new friends.  I have a few, but the truth is, unless I met you before 1996, we're probably not all that close.  It gets harder to make friends as you get older, which is why I tend to cling so hard onto the ones I already have.  It's important to me that people from those dark days see me now, see what I can do.  Because no matter how bad it got, I always believed I was someone better.  And I want to give these people who stuck by my side this better version of me.

Breaking Bad

Man, my nerves were shot.  After a long Sunday of watching a sick, screaming kid on my own, nineteen hours of a Yankees / Red Sox double-header marathon, trying to squeeze in my work-work in between the whiplash graphics of NFL Network's Red Zone, which is essentially football for the ADHD generation, as my fantasy football team continued to fuck me (thank you, Mike Vick, for apparently being made of balsa wood), and a visit from my dearly beloved great grandmother (in law), who though I love dearly, feels the need to tell you everything you touch, eat, drink, or even think about is going to give you cancer and kill you, I was a shaking ball of angry nerve.  I felt like this.

So it was with great joy that the time came to relax with a little Breaking Bad.

OK.  Maybe watching Breaking Bad on Sunday night isn't the best thing for frazzled nerves (especially when you go in to check on your sleeping son first, smell the unmistakable stench of giant dump, and wrench over whether a good parent wakes him up or let's him sleep in his own poo).  But like any good drug habit, it's tough to skip a fix.

We watched the movie Limitless Saturday night.  There's this funny interview a couple months ago with Zach Galifinakis in Rolling Stone, which is a good excuse to include some Between Two Ferns.

They're talking about how Zach loves to say inappropriate things at inappropriate times.  So when his Hangover co-star Bradley Cooper called to tell him his girlfriend broke up with him, Zach says, "Oh, you let her see Limitless?"  Limitless is a pretty shitty movie.  Inoffensive, but shitty.  I wouldn't even mention it, except for its ridiculous treatment of drugs and addiction, which is pretty standard for Hollywood's ridiculous treatment of drugs and addiction.  They never get it right.  I shouldn't say "never."  There's been Drugstore Cowboy and Trainspotting.  But they are the exception that proves the rule.  And on TV?  Forget it.

Except for Breaking Bad.  Which is, for my money, the best written show on TV.

I know a lot of people won't watch because of the subject matter.  In case you don't know what that subject matter is, the show's about a high school chemistry teacher who finds out he's got cancer and so starts cooking methamphetamine to leave some money behind for his family.  It's a fucking brilliant premise and there is no reason I shouldn't have thought of it first.  It's set in the Southwest, and features two of the best acting jobs you'll ever see, Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcom in the Middle, believe it or not) as the chemistry teacher, Walter White, and Aaron Paul as his surrogate son/cooking partner, Jessie Pinkman.  Their performances are, week in, week out, consistently nuanced and elaborate, layered, pained, complex and believable.

The show excels on so many different levels.  I fucking hate Walter's wife, Skylar (played by Anna Gunn).  In the first few episodes, she's more than just a shrewish bitch, henpecking her cancer-addled husband (she doesn't know he has cancer). But as the show goes on, you don't necessarily like her any more, but you see how necessary she is.  She's a strong female presence, who serves both as foil and accomplice.  I don't think a lot of writers would have made her so strong.  But she needs to be exactly the way she is, and you see why the further we get (we're in Season Four); she'd have been steamrolled by now, made irrelevant.  Instead, you have another dynamic, pushing and pulling, with her own motivations, as selfish as the rest.  And you have Water's son, Walt. Jr. (RJ Mitte), who has cerebral palsy, another perfect touch, which allows Walter Sr. the need to have a fully able-bodied son in Jesse (even if that "able body" is a complete fucking mess and drug addict). Then you have Hank, Walter's brother-in-law DEA agent. But instead of this being a convenient detail after the fact, it serves as the catalyst for Walter's getting involved with the meth production in the first place, when Hank takes him along on a raid in Season One.  Last season introduced criminal, cutthroat mastermind and forever chill Gus and his creepy old dude henchman, Mike.  A tightly coiled spin out of control.  The center cannot hold.

Vince Gilligan, who brought us The X Files, another one of the best shows TV has ever seen, is the mastermind, creator and writer.  Every facet of Breaking Bad is virtually flawless, from cinematography, to dialogue, to best of all, its depiction of meth addiction.

OK.  There is one detail Gilligan and Co. got wrong.  Walt and Jesse supposedly cook the purest meth around (99% for Walt, 96% for Jesse).  Yet, there was a scene where Jesse was smoking from a glass pipe and it was burning black.  Every (recovering) meth addict knows, the purer the meth, the less residue left behind. What gets burned black are the impurities.  96% pure would burn clean.

Which is why I would like to offer my services to Breaking Bad and Vince Gilligan. Vince, if you're reading this, drop me a line.  I've done my share of meth.  I can fucking write.  Let me help you.  Salary is negotiable.

Seriously, if you're not, watch this fucking show.  If you're the type to be offended by the subject matter you wouldn't be reading this blog (except maybe you, Laura, but that's OK.  I still love you.  But everyone besides Laura, you need to watch). Shows like this don't come along often.  And they don't last forever.  Next year is the last.  Catch up on it.  You'll be glad you did.

Celebrity Rehab: the Hills

We all need to feel like we are good at at something.  Even better when you know somebody who is good at something you aren't.  Like for instance, I can't fix a fucking thing.  I'm a goddamn unopposable-thumbed primate with a hammer.  I can barely hang a picture; it'll take me three hours to hang drapes.  The last thing I had to assemble was a drawing desk Justine bought me (when I briefly, and unadvisedly, toyed with the idea of getting a second Master's in graphic novels). After several hours, I gave up and just glued the fucking thing.

So when I need something assembled, I call my buddy Rich.  He installed the flat screen on the wall, hooked up the wireless cable, rerouted the Internet.  (He's also good for fiscal advice.  Love-related?  Er.  Not so much.)

But everyone offers something.  Me?  I am the go-to guy for all things drug-related.

Like when my friend in Miami C-Love was having problems with the downstairs neighbors at his condo on the beach a few years back and called me for advice.

"They keep me up all night," C-Love said.  "The landlord needs to evict them.  I think they're doing drugs.  Their door was open the other day and I could see all these lighters, like with their tops popped off, all over the bed and floor.  What's that mean?"

I explained to C-Love that his neighbors had a crack problem.  Crackheads pop the lighters because, being crackheads, they opt for the .89 lighters (eschewing the fancier and more expensive $1.99 Bics).  They can't wait in between hits and so they overheat the lighters and the tops pop off.

These days, I get mostly these kinds of inquiries: "I think So and So might have a problem with [insert drug name here].  What can I do to help?"

The answer to these is simple.  Not a fucking thing.  There's a great scene in the movie Drugstore Cowboy by Gus Van Sant (for my money, the best drug flick out there)

where after Bob (Matt Dillion) cleans up, a counselor asks him why he doesn't become a counselor himself, try to help other junkies.  Bob says No thanks.  The counselor asks why.  Bob says (I'm paraphrasing), "Because no one--and I mean no one--can tell a junkie to clean up until he is ready." These calls I get are usually from concerned friends and family who think if they can only say or do the right thing, step in and somehow explain to their loved one that they are going down a bad road, they can avert the inevitable tragedy.  Ain't gonna happen.

Not that I don't try to impart wisdom.  I mean it's one of the few things I've done successfully (brief [un]fortunate relapse following my second divorce, notwithstanding).  When I used to encounter resumes and other applications that asked to "list accomplishments," I would mull including "successfully kicked heroin."  But I thought the magnitude might be lost in that particular forum.

Anyway, I bring this up because I received an e-mail the other day from regular reader Duane S., who currently lives in--but is not from--Texas.  He writes,

Hey Joe,

I hate to do this to you on a Monday morning but I want some advice or maybe it is more accurate to say I want your thoughts.  Sorry for the subject of the email [rehab] because I was trying to figure out the best subject but figured less is more.

Anyway it appears that the city of Houston decided that they will give permits to a house nearby that will house recovering addicts.  It seems that it will be a halfway house for lack of a better word.  Needless to say the local community is somewhat up in arms about this development.  The house will be less than a half mile from the elementary school.  To make matters worse, they stopped bus service to this school this year, which means many kids will be walking by this house to and from school.  My oldest son would be included in that.

So here is my quandary.  I understand some of the concern, I mean as a parent, who wouldn't have some concern?  Top that off with a rather conservative community and, look out, you have a potential bomb here.  I also believe that these people deserve a second chance; we don't know their story, and who are we to judge?  I would be lying if I said part of this [doesn't] stem from your story.  There seems to be this stereotype that all addicts are from the inner city and gang members.  Berlin, CT, [our hometown] does not qualify as "inner-city." 

So, I would be very interested in your thoughts on the matter, because they are having a meeting tonight about it and I am sure it will be highly charged up.  I don't know how many people will be on the pro or at least the understanding side of it, but I think it needs to be represented.

Thanks,

Duane

And this was my response:

Duane,

That's a tough one.  As a former addict, I'd say, fuck yeah, they deserve a second chance.  Some of my best friends--friends I still have and hold dear today (an ex-junkie pal, now sober and a father like I, was just in my wedding party)--benefitted from such programs of tolerance and understanding.  Furthermore, you're right; ex-addicts, even the urban ones, are rarely "gang members"; they tend to have been so beaten down, are so ashamed, that they'd probably make safer neighbors than the ones you currently have across the street, docile, meek, and all that.  The real hardcore types aren't making it into a halfway house. Halfway houses interview--stringently--to see who can get in (after a six-month stay in a long-term treatment program, I once interviewed and was rejected.  They saw my attitude still sucked.  And they were right); you get the best of the bad apples, the ones who have already had the mealy, bruised parts treated and peeled away.  By the time they get to the halfway house, they are back on display. And they know it.  Residents are generally required to attend meetings, and are fucking serious about their sobriety. And if someone does fuck up and get high or drunk, they are spotted immediately and kicked out. Managers of these residences understand the tenuous relationship with the community at large, and within their own house, as well; they can't abide by anything less than 100% compliance.  

As a parent, however, I'd be every bit as leery as you are.  As a homeowner, I'd be worried about my property value.  And as dad, I'd be concerned for my child's safety, even though what I just told you is 100% true and I believe it.  Logically.  As a liberal and a Christian, I'd feel guilty as shit for even thinking these things.

Hope that helps.

joe

And that concludes this week's edition of Celebrity Rehab: The Hills.  If you or a loved one has a problem with the pipe, the spike, or the butter knife (I made that last one up because I needed a 3rd drug tool, preferably one that rhymed), send your questions to Candy and Cigarettes.  Or you can save your time and just tell them what I once heard while hanging out with my old pal Mike Henry after a reading by Alan Kaufman.  The subject of a mutual friend came up, a guy who was still "out there." This woman said, "I saw [him] the other day.  He looked like shit.  I just wanted to tell him: Stop doing that...and eat something." 

Stop doing that.  And eat something.  Best advice on drug addiction I ever heard.

Get Set Go: Ordinary World

Continuing our series of awesome bands that haven't gotten their due (http://tinyurl.com/5tgtaen), and stealing a page from my buddies at shitforfuckheads (http://shitforfuckheads.blogspot.com/) (seriously, remind me never to piss these guys off with a shitty record.  Or, rather, don't let them hear anything I did from '91 - '99.  Check out the hatchet job they do on the Stones' Dirty Work.  Hilarious.  And totally true.), I thought we'd kick off this week with Get Set Go and one of the best records you've never heard, Ordinary World.


I am "friends" with Get Set Go on Facebook, and recently, I along with all the band's other friends, received a mass (highly apologetic) e-mail message, looking for help getting their next record off the ground.  Which to me is astounding.  I have no idea how a band this good, original and irreverent, does not have a major label throwing piles of money at them to do whatever the fuck they want to do next.


You very well may've heard of Get Set Go, especially if you watch Grey's Anatomy. I don't watch the show, but thankfully my friend in Miami, C-Love, does, or did, when he heard this gem:

I don't know if this is the original clip, because like I said, I don't watch the show.  But after C-Love turned me onto this song, I had a new favorite band, as this song played on heavy rotation.  So rarely has a song so deftly captured my innermost feelings.  OK.  Not so innermost.  Never been much of a people person.  But even those of you "every day is a gift; that's why it's called 'the present'" types have surely had at least three and a half fleeting shitty minutes where "I Hate Everyone" speaks to you.


If it were just this one song, I'd chalk it up to catching lightning in a misanthrope's bottle and go listen to the Replacements some more.  But after "I Hate Everyone," I went and downloaded the album from which it came, Ordinary World, which proved to be as complete and close to perfect a record as I've ever heard.  I've listened to the band's other songs and albums, and they don't disappoint (most notably "Fuck You [I Want To]"), but I don't have time to review their entire musical catalogue.  In fact I don't have time to even give OW the shitforfuckheads treatment and go track by track.  Because Ordinary World is over 20 songs.  Yet, I am doing all a disservice not doing so. 


One of the strengths of Ordinary World is just how well-cratfted and fucking good every song is on it.  Get Set Go is basically this guy Mike TV.  I mean, he writes it all, sings it all, not that the rest of the band doesn't bring a lot to the table (I know my brother, Josh, has a huge crush on their violin player, Emily).


Anyway, like DJ Lance, let's break it down.  Here are some of my favorite tracks.


Crying Shame


There's that scene in High Fidelity where Rob, Dick and Barry are listing the Top Five Track Ones, Side Ones.  And this would be on mine.  It captures what the record is all about through an economy of language seldom heard in pop.


'Cause I don't want to get a job / I've stolen all I can rob.
I don't know how I will get by.
Something in me thinks / I've had one too many drinks.
I've spent too much time getting high.


I wrote an entire memoir trying to express this sentiment.  It took me 60,000 words; it took Mike TV a couple dozen.  There's always the musical inclination, even an unwritten rock rule to want to kick off the record (like a mixed tape) with a killer, but here's it's just an acoustic guitar and vocal, a little harmony, and it yields more despondency and heartache than Gordon Lightfoot on benzos.  True ache without wallow.  Try pulling that shit off.


Get Thru the Day


Here's the killer.  Get Set Go's greatest asset (besides lyrical acumen) are the hooks that bore into your brain and don't leave.  I am a melody guy.  For me, pop (like commercialism) is not a dirty word.  I like big, catchy choruses.  And when you can do that with some heavy guitar chugging and driving force behind it, all the better.  This song is about every addict's dilemma: trying to find a way to get through the day (tougher than it sounds).  And you don't need narcotics to be an addict.  Addiction is about yearning, still being unsatisfied long after the dregs and lees have been lapped.  Drugs, sex, cigarettes, a goddamn milkshake.  Doesn't matter.  You want more more more. And the shelf-life for satiation ain't shit.


Ordinary World


Like I said, I am highlighting choice tracks, my best of the best.  Which means I am leaving off several terrific selections like the one that comes before this, "One Hundred Locks," which could easily be the single on a billion other records. But here it's like batting only .280 with 25 HRs and 87 RBI for the Yankees; you're batting 7th.  "Ordinary World" has the feel of "Crying Shame" without sounding anything like it.  It tells the story of Peter and Mary, two world-class fuck ups, and I know it makes my brother happy because it has a violin solo. Narratives in rock are not easy.  For every "Bobbie Jean," there are a hundred "Take the Money and Run."  But through the examination of two unrealized lives, Mike TV shines an unflattering light on the bad, greasy skin of an entire generation.


I Hate Everyone


We covered this one above.  But I'll say it again.  So rarely has a song so poetically captured how I feel most every minute of most every day.


Lift Me Up


I don't know Mike TV's life story.  But I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say we've battled similar demons.  I'm basing this simply on paying attention to the lyrics and not being a dumbass.  And whether that's drugs or mental illness, which are usually the same thing anyway, I can't say, but one of the defining characteristics of both is the wildly vacillating between extremes.  You can feel elated by a really good sandwich one minute, and crushed by a parking ticket the next.


So who's going to save me tonight?  It's usually a girl.  The Smiths figured out this winning formula a while ago: pair miserable lyrics with uplifting major open chords.  Get Set Go exploit this dynamic throughout Ordinary World, and it may be blasphemy, but I'll say it anyway: I'll put what Get Set Go does as on par with the best of Morrissey and Marr (the Gods of Emo forgive me). Although "Lift Me Up" is the rare instance where both music and words strike a similar upbeat chord: 


But it's not getting me down 'cause there's a girl /
Spins my world around and it's for sure /
That every time I'm lovin' her / The world collapses under her /
And all that's left is her and me.

Not sure I believe the speaker.  Not sure he believes himself.  But the degree to which we can attain happiness in this life is often dependent upon the degree to which we can swallow our own self-prescribed bullshit. 


Murder by Millions


I saw Daniel Tosh last Thursday.  Fucking hilarious.  Nothing is off limits with Tosh.  Domestic violence.  Osama Bin Laden.  Kids with cancer.  He has this bit where he's like, "If you are one of these people who says 'There's nothing funny about blank,' we can't be friends.  Everything can be funny if the joke is written well enough."  I live in the Bay Area.  There are lots of things we aren't supposed to find funny.  Like when I take the food scraps Justine throws in the compost out of the compost and throw it in the trash just for the hell of it. Because there's nothing funny about global warming.  What I'm trying to say is we live in a sensitive world.  I try to find the joke in everything (albeit with dark, black humor) because if you don't laugh, you'll end up running out your house, screaming down the street, and so, outside of my kid, there isn't much I hold sacred (and Holden is a redhead).  This is all a long about way of saying that some people will see the humor in this song.  And for those of you who don't, we can't be friends.  Oh, and also, BEST CHORUS EVER.  Hook, catch, reel you in.


A Little More / Won't Let Her Go


Part of any album's success is contingent upon song order.  Even in this world of single digital downloads.  Because when you find a truly great (complete) record (admittedly a growing anomaly), it tells a complete story, and here the story is wanting too much, going down hard, and reaching up for those things you love and think can save you but never can.  It's about the shared sickness of the wounded.  One of Mike TV's lyrical gifts is an ability to straddle both worlds, to be both light and heavy-handed, comical and serious.  You never feel like his words are pedantic or didactic, but there is some real fucking weight to them. "A Little More" tackles alcoholism without sounding at all like it's tackling alcoholism.  Which is good.  Because (sincere) songs about alcoholism are practically impossible to pull off (notable exception, "Here Comes a Regular" by the Replacements).  "Won't Let Her Go" is every addict's love song, with the absolutely brutal opening lines:


She doesn't close the door /
As she visits the bathroom /
The sound of flushing water /
Comes a little bit too soon.


Man, I wish I wrote that.


And it gets even better when we hit the end of the song and the lament for days that ain't ever coming back ("When we were young / oh, we were young / and we were everything.")


Ouch.


Die Motherfucker Die


Having studied creative writing in a graduate program, I had the...pleasure...of reading many accomplished poets, Liz Bishop, et al, and I know Billy Collins, Robert Hass, and Sylvia Plath are good poets.  But one of my problems with grad school is I didn't give a flying fuck about "bats o'er a win'ers morn" or whatever the fuck poets talk about.  I am not saying Ted Roethke isn't a great writer, just that I don't give a shit about his subject matter.  And if I don't care what you're writing about, I can't care what you're writing about.  When I first heard "Die Motherfucker Die," I felt like Satan at the end of this Kids in the Hall clip:

At last, a song that speaks to me!  


This is rock 'n' roll.  This is poetry.  My favorite track on the record.


And here is the tune.  Learn the words and sing along.

Like I mentioned earlier, this record was on my mind because I received a message that Get Set Go, inexplicably, doesn't have a label sufficiently backing their next effort.  I normally don't get into social causes.  But this disturbs me greatly.  I see it happening more and more.  Another one of my favorite bands and singers, Brent Best of Slobberbone, recently solicited fans to buy his next record before it's finished.  Basically asking fans to send in their $10 just so he can get the damned thing recorded.  Which I did.  And I also contributed to Get Set Go's Kickstarter project.  Gladly.  Because while god-awful American Idol retreads and tone-deaf retards like Ke$ha have no expense spared, and the same goddamn Katy Perry song gets shoved down my throat daily (slowed down or sped up, it sill sucks), the fact that bands like Slobberbone/Brent Best and Get Set Go are forced to shill for themselves smacks of grave injustice.  One more reason for the motherfuckers to die.


So Candy and Cigarettes would like to do its part.  Here is the Kickstarter site where you can buy Get Set Go's next record, Fury of Your Lonely Heart, and do your part to promote the arts and be guaranteed some brilliance in return. And if you bid enough, the band just might come to your house and get drunk with you.


http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/707987144/get-set-go-loves-you-so-much-we-might-explode