How Not to Drive

Or, middle-aged man yells at cloud (part 1,643)

We have a winner… Before I get started with this week’s edition of Message from the Underworld, I want to announce the winner of last week’s book giveaway. Thanks for all your responses to my question about your go-to karaoke song. Some people posted their answers on Twitter and others emailed me directly. For the purpose of the contest, I only considered those who responded in the comments to this newsletter. And the winner is… Kevin Dunn. Congrats, Kevin! I’ll reach out to you and we’ll figure out what you’ve won…

Actual sign here in Paradise Hills

One thing I’ve noticed since COVID-19 restrictions have lifted here in Southern California is that people have been driving like maniacs in and around my neighborhood. Have you noticed this where you live? 

For much of the pandemic, there was nowhere to go. When Nuvia and I went on our daily walks around the neighborhood, we saw lots of other people out and about, getting exercise, walking their dogs, and soaking up the sun. Even those who weren’t interested in these things left their homes to sit in their cars and smoke weed. 

We live in a condominium so the weed smoking made sense. If you share a small two-bedroom condo with your partner, your parents, and/or your kids, you’re going to need a place to smoke your ganja. On one occasion, we saw an older white gentleman walking out to his car with a big-ass bong. No judgment. We all had to do what we had to do to get through 2020.  

But this behavior wasn’t just limited to surrounding streets. We also observed this phenomenon at the stupidly named Parkside Park. As we did laps around the park before heading home, the smell of marijuana drifted from multiple cars parked along the street. We suspected Parkside Park had become the spot for meet-ups that parents and partners might not approve of, but we didn’t witness any drama, just the absence of drama, which is what weed is for, one supposes. 

But now that people can go places again, we’ve been sharing the roads with cars driven by people that may or may not be assholes. Did all the pot smokers get in their cars and start acting out their Mario Kart fantasies?

(If this is starting to sound like Next Door, you might want to bail on this edition of Message from the Underworld, because it’s not going to get any better.)

What I’ve observed

Cars blowing through stop signs. In the past few weeks, I’ve seen more people run stop signs than in all the years I’ve lived here combined. I’m not talking about the California roll, where you slow down a bit and then roll into the intersection without ever coming to a complete stop (Nuvia is the queen of the California roll), I’m talking about people roaring through it like the stop sign isn’t there. It’s not accidental. Lat week, I witnessed someone go through two stop signs in a row. One is a mistake (maybe), but two is full-on fuck-it mode. To be honest, it surprises me how much this aggravates me, but where will we be if people start treating stop signs as optional? It’ll be anarchy! 

Cars overtaking me on side streets. I’m not the fastest driver in the world. There’s something about going through the experience of being a parent and having a child safety seat in your vehicle for years that knocks the speed demon out of you. Were there a few Saturday mornings when the freeway was relatively empty and we had 20 minutes to get to a soccer field on the other side of the county? Sure. But the need for speed, what little of it I possessed, is pretty much gone now. There are fatalities on Southern California’s freeways just about every day. I don’t want to be one of them. Also, it’s been years since I’ve had anything like a commute, which is like daily training for vehicular combat. I’m not a slow driver. I’m a mellow driver. I’m aware of the circumstances around me, but I’m laid-back about when we arrive at our destination.

Just this last week we were overtaken on suburban side street on two different occasions. Once while I was behind the wheel, and once while Nuvia was driving, and let me tell you, she did not take it very well. She took that shit personally. Nuvia is a different person behind the wheel. If you act a fool in your car, Nuvia will let you know. She will mad dog you like nobody’s business. (If you have a beef with Nuvia, I suggest you not bring it up with her while she’s driving because you will get the most aggressive, most confrontational, most adversarial version of Nuvia there is.) 

Donuts. Have you noticed the intersections near you are scored with skid marks? It seems like once a week I can hear someone in the neighborhood doing donuts down the street. Screeching tires, smoking rubber, marking up the asphalt, the whole show. Who does this? WTF is going on? 

I have a theory as to why there are so many idiots on the road right now.

Why There Are So Many Idiots on the Road Right Now  

While we were locked inside our homes, an entire year’s worth of children became eligible to obtain their driver’s license, and they all hit the streets at once. While the eyes of the world were focused on Brood X, we should have been paying attention to the swarms of young assholes getting behind the wheel of their parents’ vehicles and terrorizing our streets. And, no, I don’t entirely blame Vin Diesel* for kids driving through San Diego like Steve McQueen, but that shit isn’t helping. 

*I was going to link to the trailer for F9, but I truly believe it’s the dumbest thing in the universe, and you can’t link to the dumbest thing in the universe without some kind of karmic crackback.

So, friends, take this as a warning. The zillennials have hit the streets and they’re treating the rules of the road like a side-part wearing, climate-change denying, race-baiting Karen. 

Also, if my nephew is reading this, I’m sure you’re a safe, sane, and responsible driver who would never run a stop sign. Or smoke weed out of a big-ass bong in your dad’s car. Definitely don’t do that.

PssSST… Meat Puppets Edition Part II

I’ve been in the salt mines these last few weeks, working away at revising the Corporate Rock Sucks manuscript. I’ve been slashing through the book, killing off my darlings, and flaunting my godlike power by occasionally bringing them back to life again. So far I’ve consigned over 100 pages to the cut file, which is an actual Word file where I put all the sentences, paragraphs, and pages that don’t make the cut. 

For every hour I spend revising the manuscript, I spend another hour on the endnotes. While much of the information in the book comes from conversations I’ve had with musicians, producers, promoters, etc. I also did a ton of research. No single volume is capable of exhausting it’s subject, and I want Corporate Rock Sucks to be useful to the next generation of writers, critics, and journalists who write about SST Records. 

I’m about two-thirds of the way through this pass. I know I sound like a broken record, but I don’t know where I’d be without the help I’ve gotten from my team of early readers. It’s an enormous privilege to have such smart people weigh in on the manuscript at this stage of the game. With their help I’ve been able to improve each and every page in ways big and small. 

Speaking of broken records, I bought a new turntable. When the Do What You Want came out last year, I posted a video where I played the promo flexi that Bad Religion gave away. Some joker commented that I should use some of that Bad Religion money to upgrade my cheap Crosley record player. He had a point. I blew out those cheap, built-in speakers ages ago. So I finally bit the bullet and bought a new wireless turntable. I still need to get some new speakers and a new amp, but I’m happy with the product so far.

The first thing I did is spin some of SST’s early releases. The earliest original pressing I have is SST 009, which is the Meat Puppets debut. The recording of this album is infamously muddy. Both Joe Carducci and Spot talked to me about the recording of the album, and I’m saving those details for the book, but long story short: the Meat Puppets took a bunch of drugs and recorded the album in a way that made it impossible to mix. The drum sounds on the record are so muted it sounds as if Derrick Bostrom is in some distant corner of Unicorn Studios. Hard to believe these guys would be a handful in the studio, right? 

Right. That said, I wasn’t expecting Curt Kirkwood’s guitar to come through so clean and clear. It was like hearing the record for the first time. It’s not my favorite Meat Puppets record, but I like it more every time I listen to it. 

The album still had the lyric sheet when I bought the record at an actual record store here in San Diego. It’s amazing to me this little artifact of the Kirkwoods’ imagination still exists. If this kind of thing interests you, in future installments I’ll post scans of press releases, photos, and SST catalogs. 

Be careful out there.