I’d rather fight

Kneecap, Bob Vylan, Jordan Harper, Kyle Seibel & Brian Eno

This morning I woke up with a Limp Bizkit riff playing in my head. “Everything is fucked. Everybody sucks.”

As Trump and his cronies force the tax cuts and spending bill through Congress, masked men disappear people off the streets, and right-wing ghouls celebrate the opening of a new bush league concentration camp in Florida, things are looking pretty fucking bleak.

But everybody doesn’t suck. Kneecap’s performance at Glastonbury last weekend was a glorious rebuke of the British government’s attempts to censor the Irish artists. In a hilarious self-own, the BBC cut away from Kneecap’s performance to showcase Bob Vylan. Yes, this Bob Vylan.

You think the BBC should have done its homework? While Kneecap was flying the Palestinian flag, Bob Vylan was leading the crowd in chants of “Death death to the IDF.” What did they expect from the man who sings “No liberal lefty cunt is gonna tell me punching Nazis ain’t the way”?

Less than 24-hours after Kneecap’s set, the British government dropped its charges against Kneecap’s Mo Chara and the US government revoked Vylan’s visa. Kneecap keeps insisting that Kneecap isn’t the story—the story is the genocide in Gaza—but the censorship of artists is driving the narrative. When are the artists sitting on the sidelines going to realize they can’t afford to wait until the fascists come for them?

Because it’s already happening.

You know what else doesn’t suck?

Books. Here are a few that kept me engaged during these trying times. Links are to Bookshop.org and purchasing books this way is another way to support Message from the Underworld.

The Last King of California by Jordan Harper

A dark and violent study of how monsters are made. The Last King of California is more of a character study than a complex, multilayered epic like Everybody Knows. While I don't share Harper’s fascination with the white power gangs of Southern California, I couldn't put this one down and I think it has some of his finest prose. The novel is set in the same world as She Rides Shotgun, which is being made into a film to be released at the end of the month.

Hey You Assholes by Kyle Seibel

When I was in the Navy one of my supervisors was a sadistic little boatswain’s mate named Lofton who told the most fucked up stories about shipmates who had been maimed on the job because of their own stupidity. They were teaching tales—“That’s why you never stop over a mooring line under strain”—but he took great pleasure in telling them to the FNGs. His horror stories from the beach were even worse. One favorite involved something called black syphilis and they only got more disgusting from there. When he went on liberty he wore tight-ass wranglers and an even tighter Hustler t-shirt. If he got very drunk, which was often, he convinced himself that he was an expert in kung fu.

I thought I was done with people like Lofton until I cracked open Hey You Assholes. Seibel, who is also a Navy vet, has a knack for rendering broken, deeply flawed men in ways that are much more sympathetic then the way I’ve portrayed poor Lofton, who coached me on how to work the UCMJ when I got into trouble for my own alcohol-related incidents. An engaging and entertaining debut.

Boxing and the Mob: The Notorious History of the Sweet Science by Jeffrey Sussman

I knew that boxing is the easiest sport to fix and that its beleaguered history is full of fighters controlled by organized crime, but I didn't know the mob's influence extended to some of the biggest fights of the modern era. Sussman presents a fascinating rundown of the men who controlled the sport by coercing boxers, manipulating managers, buying contracts, and paying off judges and referees. It’s wild to think that much of boxing in postwar America was ruled by a man who’d been a hired gun in Murder Incorporated. Not much poetry in the prose but Boxing and the Mob has everything you ever wanted to know about fixing a fight.

What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory by Brian Eno and Bette A.

On the surface this looks like the kind of cute, illustrated book you pick up while waiting in line at the bookstore, but What Art Does is much more than that. It starts by opening up the definition of art to include everything that isn’t married to function. For example, hair styles as art, and not just for the stylist. A silly walk is art.

From there Eno moves into the interior and discusses how art allows us to feel an enormous range of emotions from a safe place. He calls these “fiction feelings” and makes a compelling case for how these fiction feelings teach us to be human. There are moments when I felt like the book was written expressly for me:

Through art you can investigate the kind of feelings you want to have, and where to get them. Art gives us the chance to answer the question: what is it that I really like?

This investigation into our likes can be done through artworks as elaborate as a novel, as vague as an abstract painting, as direct as punk, and as subtle as a slightly tighter pony tail.

The whole book is like this. Eno is very, very good at talking about art in a way that isn’t pretentious or condescending. He also isn’t trying to sell you a concept or a masterclass. Eno believes we are conditioned to go through life avoiding things we don’t like, but what if we made seeking things that give us a joy a priority? Wouldn’t that be a more rewarding way to live?

Thanks for reading. Today is a good day to upgrade to a paid subscription. 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 (but not last Sunday, but definitely this Sunday). It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, culture, crime, and killer whales.