I guess they'll soon be after me

Sinners, Smogtown & Punk Rock Bowling

Before we begin I want to direct you to a link to my story about the Underground Garage Cruise for the LA Times, which I wrote during a layover at Miami International Airport after disembarking the boat Tuesday morning and before flying home to San Diego that evening . Or you could just reread last week’s recap of the voyage.

I mentioned in Sunday’s Orca Alert! that I was going to post some movie reviews today but I’ve changed my mind. (Also, paid subscribers: no Orca Alert! this weekend.) Also, hello new subscribers! If you like what you see and want to support the work that I do please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

I have some thoughts about diegetic music (the music that is part of the fictional world of the narrative) and non-diegetic music (the music that only the audience can hear) in Sinners, but I’m not sure how much fun that would be for you, especially since I didn’t know what these terms meant until a couple weeks ago.

My two cents: Sinners is great cinema but as a vampire flick it’s kind of hokey. Also, while lots of folks have pointed out the movie is about how white America has sucked the blood out of Black culture, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera, what I really want to know is the back story of the Irish step-dancing vampire. This guy:

Diddly-dee, my pretty

I’m really interested in the music we carry around in our heads, the music that is always going off in the background of our thoughts, and serves as a kind of internal score to our lives.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I’m heading to Punk Rock Bowling tomorrow and the festival represents the first time I realized my own private soundtrack, my mental mix tape, was shared by lots of people I didn’t know.

For most of my childhood and protracted adolescence I felt like I didn’t know anything about anything, but this was especially true when it came to music. As I moved around the world was exposed to music I found arresting and exciting, I felt like an outsider looking in. Even when I was 24 and went to Lollapalooza 2 I didn’t feel like I’d found my tribe. Not even the LSD I took in the parking lot (I peaked during Jesus and Mary Chain) could do that. But I felt it at Punk Rock Bowling.

Punk Rock Bowling turns 25 this year and this story takes place at least 20 years ago, back when I went to the tournament to actually bowl. Back in the beginning that’s all it was: a bowling tournament. The shows were part of the award ceremony and they were so much fun they expanded from there.

I remember stepping on to the lane in the middle of a match and Smogtown’s “I Am the Cancer” came on, one of my favorite songs on one of my favorite records. I couldn’t believe the soundtrack to many of my wildest nights was being blasted over the sound system at a Las Vegas bowling alley. That was a revelation to me.

It was this song.

I rolled a thunderous, no-doubt-about-it strike. (It’s not really important to the story but I thought you should know.)

Punk Rock Bowling used to be held over President’s Day Weekend and one year I wore a scarf my mother made for me that was covered in shamrocks. It was my lucky scarf, which was important because in the bowling tournament that year (and every year it seemed) our team was competing against ringers and we needed all the luck we could get.

Anyway, I lost the scarf somewhere and one of the other participants in the tournament saw it, picked it up, and gave it back to me when she saw me the next day. She was a total stranger from Canada, I think, but that weekend she was part of my found family of punk rockers who’d come from all over the world to gather in Las Vegas and blow off steam while listening to some righteous music.

I still have the scarf.

Miscellaneous Mayhem

If you’re reading this on Wednesday then I’ll be at Fingerprints Music in Long Beach tonight! I’ll be chatting with Nate Jackson and Daniel Kohn authors of Tearing Down the Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County to the World, which was just released yesterday.

In fact, I may be in the car and driving up the freeway this very moment, which means you can drop everything and get in your car and we can both be driving to Long Beach together. Doesn’t that sound exciting?

Just make sure you look both ways before you cross the street.

If you’re going to be in Las Vegas this weekend, hit me up! If you liked this newsletter you might also like my latest novel about healthcare vigilantes Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. I have more books and zines for sale here. And if you’ve read all of those, consider checking out my latest collaboration The Witch’s Door and the anthology Eight Very Bad Nights.

Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get my deepest gratitude and Orca Alert! on most Sundays. It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, culture, crime, and killer whales.