Logistics of penis slicing

Hometown heroes, Pickaxe & Grudge

Greetings from San Diego!

Just got back from a trip to Virginia where I visited my brother and his family for Thanksgiving and to West Virginia where I spent the weekend with my dad at his mountain redoubt above Charles Town.

For the last few years he’s held a tree-lighting ceremony at his home. Many, many years ago he planted a small pine tree on the corner of his property. Now it’s 25-feet tall and he runs an extension cord from his house to light it up each holiday season. As dusk approached, a few dozen people from around the community showed up, some with musical instruments, to welcome the holiday season in song. Tree lights always make me feel like a Who in Whoville but it was too cold for that.

I grew up in the part of Northern Virginia that was once part of Washington D.C. All it took was a quick trip across the Potomac River to get to the District of Columbia. When I was on leave from the Navy or back from college, visits home always included jaunts across the river. I enjoyed goofing off with a video camera at landmarks like the Lincoln Memorial and was intimate with all the bars in Georgetown like Poseur’s where many kids of my generation had their first drink in a bar.

My brother lives in Haymarket, which is way out in Civil War battlefield country. It’s 45 minutes from DC when there’s no traffic and there’s always traffic. Aside from visiting the spot where Lorena Bobbitt sliced off her husband’s penis, there’s not a lot to do out there.

On this trip I made a couple of memorable excursions. I went across state lines to the campus of University of Maryland to watch the men’s basketball team steamroll Bucknell with my brother and my nephews. Then on Sunday night I met up with a former sailor, Bad Religion fan, and UAP enthusiast (Hi Thane!) to see a hardcore show in DC.

Although I saw my first punk show in Washington D.C. when I was 16 and made a few forays to the 9:30 Club to see Mr. Bungle and Nuclear Assault in the early ’90s, I have seen very few shows in the Nation’s Capital. To put it in perspective, I’ve performed more shows in DC as an Irish dancer here than I’ve been to as punk spectator. So I was very excited about the show.

Forty years ago Smash Records opened its doors in Georgetown and established a reputation as a purveyor of punk music and fashion. Now the record store is located in Adams Morgan in NW DC and it celebrated its 40^th anniversary with a show at the Black Cat. The following night, Smash hosted an in-store with two Baltimore bands, Gay Baseball and Grudge, and DC’s Pickaxe.

I met up with Thane for a vegetarian dinner at an Indian joint and coffee at an Armenian café before heading to Smash. Gay Baseball opened the show with some mellow and melodic indie rock before Pickaxe tore the place apart.

Pickaxe and Grudge are five-piece units with women at the front. Emily Rainey brings a dirty bluesy groove to Pickaxe’s songs like “Melpomene” and “Walmart Suicide” off the band’s brand-new EP Provocateur.

Pickaxe & Grudge

Grudge is fronted by Rhea Ramakrishnan, whose unrelenting attack complements the band’s sonic aggression, her small size in stark contrast to how tall her bandmates are. If Pickaxe is a hurricane, Grudge is the storm surge that destroys what’s still standing. At one point I thought the noise coming out the guitars sounded like garbage trucks colliding in space. You know, that sound.

After the show I connected with Pickaxe’s drummer, Dan Newhauser, who runs the band’s Instagram page, and he shared the band’s plans to put out another CD EP and then release all the songs on an album.

I said hello to Grudge’s singer Ramakrishnan but didn’t talk to her, which I now regret, because I’ve since discovered she’s an educator and a writer with work published all over the place, including HAD, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and this astonishing essay in swamp pink.

Part of making art is figuring out the logistics of how one can continue making art.

Amen to that.

DC: I’ve missed you. I’m looking forward to coming back.

Podcasts and publications

A few weeks ago, San Diego writer and Philip K. Dick enthusiast David Agranoff had me on his podcast Postcards from a Dying World to talk about my novel Make It Stop, which he generously compared to a mash-up of Fight Club and Dick’s Through a Scanner Darkly. The first half of the interview is spoiler-free but in the second half we go deep into the weeds of the book in a way that was oddly revelatory.

I was also a guest on The Ed non-Tech (EnT) Podcast with Matt Stranach that focuses on education, technology and culture. Matt was interested in my educational journey and we talked about some of the experiences, books, and people that shaped me—if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Later this week I’ve got a story in the Los Angeles Times that I’ve been working on for a long time, longer than any other story I’ve published for the paper, but it also feels like a beginning. I’ll probably post something about it in Substack Notes when it goes live, which has really taken off lately.

If you’re going to be in LA this weekend, you need to come see Joshua Mohr read from Saint the Terrifying and perform with his rotating crew of musicians, miscreants, and reformed scumbags that make up Slummy at North Figueroa Bookshop in Highland Park on Friday, December 5 at 7pm. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it. I’ve been traveling so much I’ve barely slept in my bed, but we’ll see what happens…

Thanks for reading! If you liked this newsletter you might also like my latest novel 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. I hope you’ll 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.