“You’re a horrible driver,” my wife tells me as she merges onto westbound Interstate 8 from the 805—the last leg of our return trip from Lake Arrowhead. This is hilarious for two reasons. First, I’m one of the best drivers in the world: I never tailgate, rarely speed, drive with both hands on the wheel and have successfully trained myself not to stare at beautiful women for more than three seconds (five seconds if it’s a busty redhead with lots of tats).

The other reason her comment is funny is that at the moment W. says it, she is tailgating a hazardous-waste transportation truck at 90 mph while shaving her legs and playing Bejeweled on her iPhone.OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but she is tailgating at high speed, and I’m clutching the dashboard so tightly my knuckles are changing colors more often than a mood ring embedded in one of Russell Crowe’s ovaries.

I’m a bad driver? I think. Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle “monosyllabic”?

It’s true. This woman stinks up the entire roadway when she’s driving on it: She doesn’t check her mirrors. She’s a habitual multitasker. She thinks “blind spot” is a section of the highway where cops can’t see you speeding. And while the rules of safety dictate that we steer with our hands on the 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock positions, my girl’s hands are always at 12 o’clock and QWERTY—that’s one hand steering, the other hand texting.

But of it all, it’s the tailgating that scares me most. I tell her, “Babe, any accident investigator will tell you that driving too closely is the leading cause of accidents because reaction time is greatly redu—.”

“Ed,” she says, cutting me off, “how many cars have you wrecked in your lifetime?”

“That’s not fair,” I blurted.

“It most certainly is fair,” she answered. “How many?”

“Well, let’s see. I crashed my 280Z, my Horizon, my friend’s Mustang and, oh, there was the seaweed-green Gremlin that some guy was trying to sell me. But I crunched that one without actually driving it, so it’s just three.”

“What about the camper?” she asks.

“Oh, c’mon,” I protest. “You can’t count the camper.”

“Why not?” “Because it was a camper shell mounted on the back of a pickup truck, and the pickup part of it was never actually damaged in the, um, incident.”

“Honey, you drove an 11-foot camper under a nine-foot bridge, which stripped the camper shell clean off the bed of the pickup and deposited it on the middle of the road, where it lay in a giant heap of metal, wood, glass and porno magazines.”

“OK, you can count that.”

“And what about the time you wrecked two cars in eight hours?” Oh, snap! I forgot I had told her about that debacle. It happened in New York, during the summer of 1980, after my high-school commencement, driving my Mustang home from a graduation party, around 3 a.m. and quite drunk in the face when a strange, bug-eyed bird beast—a cross between a harpy and Marty Feldman—jumped in front of the car, causing me to swerve and plummet into a massive, axel-snapping ditch.

Unharmed, I walked home, went to bed and dreamed dark, nervous dreams.

The next morning, I asked Dad if I could borrow the family car—a silver Dodge Aspen station wagon—so I could return to the scene and assess the Mustang’s damages. Dad reluctantly gave me the keys, and off I drove, for about a mile, where a sedan pulled out in front of me and I slammed into its side—a classic T-bone.

“So I told you that story, huh?” I ask W.

“Yes, and you also told me what happened to the Aspen afterward.”

“That it sustained about $1,500 of damage and took months to pay my parents back?” “No,” she snorted, “I mean about a year later, when you killed it for good.”

“Oh, you mean when I took it to see The Kinks at Hartford Civic Center but, instead, drove it right into the back of a Mack truck, totaling the car and my kneecap, which required reconstructive surgery, months in rehabilitation and a lifetime of knee problems—yeah, I guess you can count that one, too, but keep in mind, that’s the accident that makes me so frightened of your tailgating. I’ve seen what can happen!”

“Whatever. The point is, you had seven accidents to my zero accidents.”

“But, honey, don’t you see—those collisions are exactly what makes me a better driver. Most of them happened when I was a stupid kid. I learned my lessons and have become the safest driver in America, whereas you drive like a bungling bank robber after the dye packs explode in the getaway car.”

“Well, you drive like an old lady,” she says. “You drive too slow and herky-jerky; you leave the directional signal blinking and miss exits because you’re too busy ranting about something Sarah Palin said instead of paying attention.”

“Well, OK,” I respond. “I do blabber a bit when somebody is in the car with me, but you should see me drive when I’m alone— I’m awesome!”

“Well, alone is the only way I would drive with you,” she says as she speeds up to get a closer look at the “stay back 100 feet” warning sign on the rear of the hazardous-waste transportation truck.

Originally published in San Diego CityBeat
09/15/10

The first thing I thought—when I heard about the backlash surrounding the Jerry Brown campaign staffer who called his opponent, Meg Whitman, a “whore”—was: What’s this now?! “Whore” is an offensive epithet? That’s news to me.

Apparently, Whitman had been offering pension-reform exemptions to California law-enforcement unions in exchange for their support, which prompted the staffer in question to use the word in question. Then, during the last debate, moderator Tom Brokaw asked Brown why he had not admonished the staffer for using a term that, Brokaw said, “many women have compared to the N-word.”

Brown replied that he did not agree with the N-word comparison but wouldn’t elaborate. “I don’t want to get into the term and how it’s used,” he said before issuing a second apology.

Well, if Brown doesn’t want to “get into the term and how it’s used,” I will, because I’m sick of so many words being arbitrarily removed from the lexicon without any real analysis of what they mean, whom they affect and why. If I’m to be expected to stop using the W- word—a word that has brought me overwhelming joy and ebullient laughter throughout the years—there had damn well better be a good reason. I intend to prove that no such reason exists. Consider it my line in the sand.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists three entries for the W-word. Here is the first:

Whore: noun. 1. a woman who engages in sexual acts for money: prostitute; also: a promiscuous or immoral woman.

Right away we can debunk the theory that the W-word and the N-word are “comparable” in nature. When you look up the N- word in any reputable dictionary (including Merriam-Webster), the first thing you see is a notation, in italics, that it is “offensive” or “offensive slang” or even “extremely disparaging and offensive.” The word “whore,” however, includes no such notation in any of the same reputables.

This seems reasonable.

The N-word is a foul epithet that vilifies a black person for no other reason than being of African descent. The word “whore,” however, describes a person’s behavior, a person’s choices. The fact is, there are people in this world, good or bad, who take money for sex, just as there are people who take political currency for pension exemptions, bribes for legal protections, covert contributions for bureaucracy bypasses and so on. These actions are similar to that of a prostitute and there is nothing wrong with pointing that out. It’s called a metaphor, and whore metaphors (metaphwhores?) are found repeatedly in literature, from The Bible to Hamlet to The Geto Boys’ Big Book of Dating Tips.

Of course, my lefty, pinko trollop of a wife and her slutty little sister-in-law disagree. They say “whore” is sexist because it is typically used to describe women, that nobody calls men whores.

Not so. Just type “manwhore” into Google and you’ll receive 150,000 hits, including links to a movie called Diary of a Male Whore, the Cheap Trick song “He’s a Whore,” a multiple-choice questionnaire called “The Manwhore Quiz” and a 1991 book by P.J. O’Rourke titled Parliament of Whores, which gleefully eviscerated our male-dominated government.

However, it’s our second Merriam-Webster definition that ends the debate on the matter of gender specificity:

Whore: noun. 2. A male who engages in sexual acts for money.

Look, I understand the inherent revulsion to this word. It comes from all those dickheads out there (“dickhead,” incidentally, is an aspersion applied only to males) who use “whore” to define all women. Now that’s sexist. I would never point at some random female walking along the beach and say, “Look at the rack on that whore over there!” I wouldn’t even say it about an actual prostitute. It just seems too harsh a word to describe these hard-working women of the street. But I gladly use the word to describe a no-good, conniving, candidate for governor. I use it to describe a friend of mine who craves recognition, too. I call him an “attention whore.” Hell, I even call my nephew Noah a “greedy little grenade whore” because he hogs all the explosives when we play Call of Duty. Want to know who else I call a whore? The California branch of the National Organization for Women (NOW), that’s who.

When asked about Brown’s staffer’s comment, California NOW President Patty Bellasalma affirmed that “political whore” was an “accurate statement” about Whitman. But after receiving a shit-ton of criticism, she changed her tune and declared it “hate speech against women,” which makes Bellasalma something of a public-relations floozy. Because it can only break down one of two ways: Either she always had a problem with it but, for political reasons, defended the Brown campaign anyway, or she never had a problem with it but said she did to appease her peeps. Either way, she pimped out her worldview for a few extra tricks, which brings us to the third definition:

Whore: noun. 3. a venal or unscrupulous person.

And there you have it, a slam dunk. Not only does the third definition make no mention of gender, but, also, the word “venal” exactly defines Whitman’s alleged track record (Venal: adjective 1. willing to sell one’s influence). Therefore, if Brown’s opponent unscrupulously trades exemptions on pension reform for votes, I can freely call her a whore without apology. If I absolutely had to apologize for something, I would apologize to prostitutes, for lumping them together with a shameless hussy like Meg Whitman. She makes them look bad.

Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat
10.27.2010

“‘It’s very hard living with a man who is learning to play the violin,’ she said, handing the detective the empty revolver.” -Richard Brautigan

My friend Larry is a formidable Scrabble opponent. We’re usually pretty even, but the last time we played was a holocaust. The prick had subjugated every reachable triple word score, wielded two-letter words like daggers and scored a handful of bingos before I ever scored one. By the time we got to the endgame, I was behind by 150 points, with nothing in my rack but redundant vowels and a board so tight it had all the scoring potential of Gary Coleman in a slam-dunk competition. So I forfeited.

There is an ongoing debate between Larry and me about the ethics of quitting. Larry, like a lot of Scrabble players, thinks you shouldn’t stop until that last tile is played and all points tallied. He says Scrabble – like life – is about the journey; it shows integrity and sportsmanship to see the game through.

I, on the other hand, am a shameless quitter. I have no problem quitting when defeat is inevitable. And not just board games, either. I quit college. I quit women. I quit reading mediocre books right in the middle. I walk out of sporting blowouts. I quit watching the movie if the movie doesn’t quit sucking. I start new writing projects without finishing old ones. I quit jobs. I quit friendships. I quit smoking cigarettes, but couldn’t hang so I quit quitting. Then I quit again. Then I quit quitting again, and so on-until I had quit and unquit smoking 75 more times before I actually quit.

I even quit music. At 13 years old I tried violin lessons, but immediately started sucking, so I quit. At 15, I took piano lessons, sucked instantly, and then quit. At 16, I took up the clarinet and quit before I ever blew a note correctly. At 18, I took up guitar, didn’t suck right away, but then showed signs of sucking, then a bit more sucking crept in, until finally full-blown suckage commenced, then I quit.

Maybe you’re thinking, Wow, all that quitting sure is a waste of time. But that’s not how I see it. I believe you’re saving time by not pursuing the things you can’t do or don’t enjoy. Life is too short to suffer crummy movies till the end, and to this day I shudder to think of what unspeakable horrors I might have witnessed had I stayed till the end of The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.

And maybe you are thinking, Whatever happened to the Try, try again’ theory? The problem with the Try, try again theory is that try-trying doesn’t always work. I know that your leaders and role models want you to believe that anything is possible if you just try-try. But that’s bullshit. Martin Luther King Jr. try-tried to end bigotry. Marsha Clark try-tried to try O.J. And the San Diego Chargers try-try-try every year to advance in the playoffs.

Trying don’t always do it. Oh, sure, I could have stayed with the guitar, could have tried real hard to be a great axe-man just like the other zillion aspiring guitarists out there who are trying their nuts off to achieve excellence, yet never pass the level of mediocrity. They waste their years aspiring to greatness and the most they ever get for their troubles is 50 bucks and a pitcher of Guinness for their monthly gig at O’Sucky’s.

Or worse, the Never Say Die attitude actually works for them. They strive and toil and–though their musicianship doesn’t improve much–all the hard work opens some corporate doors and they eventually become big-time rock stars.

Ugh.

Now you’ve got this utterly average asshole–and all the utterly average assholes like him–caterwauling their mediocrity on the radios, and the jukeboxes, and car speakers, and polluting your otherwise tolerable existence.

In this way, quitting is a noble gesture. To spare others of your ingloriousness is the ultimate sacrifice. That’s why the violin had to be abandoned. There’s no telling what murderous clamor my lute might have unleashed upon the world had I continued.

And thank God Jewel is a quitter. I mean, what if she hadn’t quit trying to publish more poetry books after the critics trashed her debut, A Night Without Armor. What if she responded to the bad reviews by saying, “When you fall off the horse, you got to get right back on,” and kept releasing more and more poetry books with abominable new poems like “I Love You Like a Person Who Loves a Lot” and “My Van Still Smells Like Poltz,” and inside your head you’re screaming, “No, Jewel, no! You got it wrong! If you fall off the horse, then you should stay the fuck off horses!”

And what if Jerry hadn’t pulled the plug on Seinfeld? Did you really want to see a 17th season, when Jerry’s cute, bespectacled nephew comes to live with him, and George and Elaine fall in love and give each other smooches every other scene, and Kramer’s newest stunt is to jump over an “Afro-American” on water skis?

Some people say quitting is the easy way out. I say the opposite. Quitting is hard. Continuing as you were, using the same tired formula, writing the same tired jokes for the same tired characters–that’s the easy part. It takes balls to quit. Quitting means starting something else. Quitting rocks. Quitting is good. I am a quitter.

Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat circa I-have-no-fucking-idea-when

This was supposed to be a different column. It was supposed to be a column about Juan Williams’ being fired by NPR for saying that he is afraid to fly with traditionally dressed Muslims. It was going to be called “Sheiks on a Plane,” which was supposed to include a scene in which Williams runs through the aircraft shouting, “I have had it with these motherfucking sheiks on this motherfucking plane.”

This is gonna be sooo funny, I thought as I brought my piping hot coffee into the office and excitedly began typing out my brilliant idea—for a couple of minutes, anyway, until the creature arrived. It was a fly, and when it flew in the door and landed on my coffee cup, everything came to a screeching halt.

For two hours, we were at war, with him dive bombing my head and landing on my stuff, and me hunting him down with an Esquire magazine until losing him. Then I would search for bit, fail, give up and return to work—at which point he would return, forcing me to chase again, over and over again, for about 10 cycles.

I cannot tolerate flies in the least. Sucks for me because I live in Ocean Beach, which is like Cancun for houseflies. If that weren’t bad enough, my house is against the alley, near the garbage cans, so they swarm and swirl outside my house all day and somehow—like a barricaded house in a zombie apocalypse—a few of them always manage to get in.

Every morning, depending on the time of year, I wake up to about 2 to twenty flies in my home. At that point I have but one mission: destroy. Before showering, before breakfast, before coffee even, I must rid the house of every single fly so that I can continue my day in peace.

It’s called pteronarcophobia.

To be honest, I don’t quite get that word, nor does it accurately define me. I understand the “ptero” part. Ptero means winged. But “narco”? as in lethargic, sleepy? Hell no. There’s nothing lethargic about a housefly. And the one in my office is freakishly speedy, like he got into my coke stash somehow. Furthermore, while I am definitely fearful of flies, the “phobia” suffix leaves out the other, equally-important, half of the equation: hatred. I fear and hate flies, as do most people with this condition. So I took it upon myself to tinker with the word. I dumped “narco” and replaced it with “tacho” (meaning “speed,” as in tachometer) then added “miso” (meaning “contempt,” as in misogynist) and put it all together to come up with, “ptero-tacho-miso-phobia (tero-tacko-meeso-fobia), the fear and loathing of flying insects, specifically, the fly.

So, what is the reason for my pterotachomisophobia? It all began in 1986, when I saw the remake of The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum as a scientist who turns into a murderous member of the musca domestica species. There’s a scene in which his girlfriend catches him regurgitating on his meal. When she recoils in horror, he explains that this is how flies externally digest their food. The acidic vomit liquefies the solid so it can be sucked through their straw-like proboscis, and it occurred to me then that when a fly lands on my food, it’s probably puking on it. They are also fond of defecating, urinating, salivating or simply shedding any or all of the horrifying pathogens they carry in their disgusting little leg spurs.

At any given time, that teeny little housefly—sitting on your coffee cup, cutely rubbing it’s forelegs together like a kitten cleaning his paws—could be a bounty of typhoid, cholera, dysentery, salmonella, tuberculosis, anthrax, hepatitis, cysts of protozoa or the eggs of helminths.

When I see a housefly, I envision a dead raccoon festering under the SoCal sun, with him and a hundred of his friends crawling over the thing until something startles them and they all take wing, each hurtling toward a different surface on which to deposit its biological mayhem—like my coffee cup, on which the creature rubs its forelegs together to shake off every single cyst and egg it brought with him.

I take a swipe but the bastard is fast. I chase him around the room, knocking over pictures and plants until he finds refuge in some cranny that I can’t locate. It’s a viscious cycle, and I can’t get any writing done! So I Google “Lifecycle of the common housefly.”

I was under the impression that they live for only three days and thought, Well, maybe I can ask my editor for an extension and then wait for it to die. But the little upchuckers live 20 days! And, judging by its size and speed, this one was young— probably only a few hours has passed since it was a mere maggot munching on the infected innards of a dead raccoon, the thought of which makes me want to externally digest my monitor.

It’s midnight now. Deadline is tomorrow. My best hope is to ignore the fly and keep working on Sheiks on a Plane. So I write, “The problem with firing Juan Williams for his comment is that he is rubbing his forelegs together and dropping the cysts of protozoa into my goddamn coffee again!”

I watch with contempt as the creature crawls deeper into the cup. If I could, I would drop a nuclear bomb on his head and tolerate the radiation poisoning. I hate him so much. I hate him the way sharks hate surfboards. I hate him how hipsters hate Styx. I hate him the way Mormo—suddenly, he takes wing and heads toward the area of the door. In a flash, I leap from my seat, rush toward him and maniacally wave my hands shouting, “Out, fly, out!”

The beast is discombobulated as I use my hands and body to herd it out the door. Clearly, it does not want to leave, preferring, I’m quite sure, to torment me further. But my shouting and waving has startled him and he bounces off my chest, the wall, and my chest again before conceding and careening out of the office.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the rear abdominal segment on your way out!” I shout, as I slam it shut.

Peace then. Elation. Emancipation. After a few moments, I peek to see if the coast is clear. It is. I walk to the kitchen, pour a glass of victory wine and return. Breathing easily, I start typing. My brilliant column about air-bound sheiks, it appears, will be completed after all. Before long, I am in the zone.

Then the unthinkable happens.

“Honey?” says my wife, as she opens the door. “Have you seen my wallet?” at which point the little vomit-monger zips over her shoulder, lands on the rim of my freshly poured glass of victory wine and barfs a few thousand anthrax spores. Reflexively, I wail. The sound is guttural and dampened, like a mouthless banshee being gang-raped by a grove of pine trees.

“What’s wrong?!” my treasonous wife asks.

“I have had it with this motherfucking fly in this motherfucking office,” I howl, with bloodshot eyes and throbbing neck veins. She backs away, slowly, quietly. When I’m on deadline, and blocked, I’m prone to demonic outbursts. At these moments, my wife has learned, it’s always best to retreat and shut the door.

“May the cysts of million protozoa infest your pancreas,” I scream at her, as the fly rubs his forelegs and drops a few thousand more Helminths’ ovum into my wine. I sigh, and delete the Sheiks on a Plane title, replacing it with “The Fly,” thereby tendering my unconditional motherfucking surrender to a motherfucking insect.

Edwin Decker
Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat
11.10.10

As the date for my yearly holiday flight to New York approaches, I’ve been wondering: By which method will I choose to have my privates persecuted? Will I elect to be fondled by a highly trained genitalia inspector, or allow agents to take a radioactive close-up of all the cysts that have emerged in my rectum since I first got in the security-checkpoint line?

I recently read that two-thirds of the population favors the new full-body scanners. Even I will admit that the caveman cowering in the subterrain of my brain feels an iota safer about flying now that we have them. So, I don’t begrudge the public’s support of the new measures. I do, however, begrudge some of the ignorant, reactionary arguments used to justify that support—such as the oft-repeated position that it’s better to tolerate a little indignity than be killed by terrorists.

“If you don’t want to die on the plane,” remarked a caller on Sean Hannity’s radio show recently, “you should be saying, ‘Scan, baby, scan!’”

And BusinessInsider.com blogger Henry Blodget titled his article about the subject, “Sorry, Folks, We’d Rather Be Body-Scanned than Blown Up In Mid-Air.”

What horseshit. The choice is not between getting scanned and being “blown up in mid air.” It’s a choice between scanning and the minute possibility of being blown up. Actually, since no security scheme is foolproof, the choice is between the minute possibility of dying in the air by terrorism and a slightly higher possibility of dying in the air by terrorism.

So, the questions are: How much higher is that possibility? Is it mitigated by the new security measures? And is the difference sizeable enough to justify the myriad physical, emotional, financial, chronological and libertarian costs of it?

“The people who are making a big deal about the airport security just need to grow up because it’s there for their own good,” wrote a commenter to SignOnSanDiego.com.

Oh yeah, commenter to SignOnSanDiego.com? Well, suck my cyst! This is a big deal. I am grownup! In fact, this is what grownups do—we weigh our options and consider consequences.

“If these new machines prevent one plane from being blown up over the next decade, they’ll have been worth it,” wrote our boy Blodget.

Really? One plane in 10 years—about 300 people—is worth all that time, money, energy, restrictions on movement and invasion of the privacies and personal spaces of—well, let’s see, at least 1.5 domestic million flyers a day, multiplied by 365 days per year, multiplied by 10 years is, approximately 5.5 billion passengers. Sorry, but 300 casualties are perfectly acceptable when weighed against the impact on 5.5 billion people.

What’s that you say? I wouldn’t be calling the casualties “acceptable” if it were my wife or child. Well of course not. But it doesn’t change the fact that “acceptable casualties” are a necessary configuration of society. Take the speed limit. In 1987, there was a debate over whether to increase the national maximum from 55 to 65 mph. Everyone knew that the increase would cause between five to 15 percent more traffic fatalities, but we raised it anyway.

Same is true with air travel. Forget terrorism, if we really wanted to save more lives, we’d demand the airlines retire their planes five years sooner. We’d make them triple the pilot’s salary, quadruple inspections and double the landing gear. We’d make them put a parachute under every seat and seat cushions that inflate to fully stocked life rafts.

So, spare me your ignorant hostility and blind allegiance to the illusion of safety. How about we have a non-reactionary, well-considered, grownup debate about the pros and cons of employing full-body scanners at the airport? I’ll start.

PROS

1. Better odds: The odds of being blown up in plane during a terrorist attack will be reduced from a one in 10.40894 billion chance, to a one in 10.40895 (or so) billion chance. Yay!

2. Job creation: The full-body-scanner industry is booming!

3. Social advantages: Can catch up on all your texting responsibilities while waiting to be frisked or scanned.

CONS

1. If it ain’t broke…: There have been no successful, airborne terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001. Why the sudden need to increase security?

2. Radiation: Experts are conflicted as to whether body scanners emit safe levels of radiation for some people. Until we have an extensive, independent report on the subject, it’s not right to implement them.

3. Slippery slope to Orwellian apocalypse: People think you’re nuts for suggesting such a thing, but do the math. Body scanners are peering under our clothing. Optical scanners are becoming more prevalent. Parents have begun embedding microchips in their children. Cameras track your offenses at intersections. And the GPS in your cell phones can track you everywhere else. Isn’t it obvious where this is all headed?

4. Drug transportation: You know, all this terrorism terror has really made flying extra stressful and difficult for us drug users. Oh, how I long for the day when flying with narcotics was as easy as stuffing a baggy in your ass and walking funny for a bit. Now I have to find an unsuspecting mule in the food court, slip the baggie in his or her food, then fish it out of his or her caca on the other side. Thanks, full body scanners!

5. Costs (time and money): At $150,000 per scanner, per gate, per airport, the impact should be obvious. And since time is money, you have to consider the millions of lost man-hours of all those people who’ll be standing in line longer instead of inventing gizmos, curing cancer or developing new porn sites.

6. The terrorists win: As much as I detest using that phrase, it’s never been more relevant. By definition, terrorists seek to keep us in a persistent state of fear, which stresses our quality of life, depresses the economy and causes us to make irrational decisions about our security—such as over-focusing on air travel and under-focusing on just about everything else.

Originally published in San Diego CityBeat

Ed Decker
12.08.10

Operation Santa 2010:

My wife, Willow, and I have been spending the holidays in New York where most of my family lives. Around the second day of the visit, my little nephew, James, (who is my sister Barbara’s youngest son) said that some of his friends at school were telling him there was no Santa Claus and he intended to prove they were wrong by providing video evidence.

I told him it was a swell idea, but that it was difficult to catch Santa on film because kids are always trying that sort of thing and he’s gotten pretty good at rooting out hidden cameras. My reasoning for crushing James’ dream like this was because I didn’t want his hopes to get too high, then shattered when no Santa appeared on camera.

However, the following day I got to thinking. Wouldn’t it be great if we staged a visit from old Kris Kringle, caught it on film, and then left it for James to find on Christmas morning?  I talked to Barb and Aunt Willow about it and  loved the idea so much they bought a Santa suit that same day.

Code Word Poop:

On Christmas Eve, James and I devised our master plan. It was his decree that only he, Uncle Mike and I could know where we were going to hide the camera (for fear that someone was going to mess with it). The plan was to call me when he was about to go to bed and provide the code word which, of course, was poop. Upon hearing the code word, I was to sneak over to his house, hide the camera, set it on a timer, and aim it at a plate of cookies which he had laid out for Santa for, as he called it, “bait.”

Of course, this is what he thought the plan was. The real plan was to receive the code word, wait a couple of hours for him to fall asleep, then sneak into the house with Aunt Willow and Uncle Mike and execute the operation.

Auntie Willow’s job was to man the “Santa Cam,” while Uncle Mike filmed the operation from a different camera to document what we were doing for the “Making of Operation Santa” documentary.

At 11pm, the phone rang. I picked up, said, “Hello,” and James whispered, ever-so-softly into the mouthpiece, “Poop.”
“Poop,” I whispered back and hung up the phone.

Aunt Willow helped me put on the Santa suit at my parent’s house (leaving the headgear off because it’s freaking hot in that crap). While dressing, I began getting into my role as any method actor would. “What’s my motivation?” I asked my colleagues. Am I a Jolly Santa looking to bring cheer to the children of the world, or a bitter, exhausted Santa at the end of his rope? They wanted Jolly Santa, which was cool, but I wanted to add a touch of scary, Axe-Murderer Santa, creeping around the house acting weirdly.

Anyway,  we piled into the car, drove over to my sister’s house, parked down the road a bit, walked down the dark, quiet street, toward the house, up the driveway, through the gate, through the patio door, through the front door and, ever-so-carefully, slipped inside the house.

Keep in mind, it was utterly nerve-racking. We were sneaking around in this fairly small, old home, with James asleep directly above us. We were the Keystone Chumps to be sure, with floorboards squealing, random bursts of stifled laughter and the three of us (particularly me) bumping into walls and tables–basically running jackhammers in the place–despite being scared to death of waking James and destroying his faith in Santa, not to mention his faith in Uncles Ed and Mike and Aunt Willow to boot.

Did I mention Bianca? Bianca is a sweet little West Highland Terrier, who knows and loves all three of us and is not much of a barker anyway, so we did not foresee a problem. And it seemed we were right about that because we came into the living room, all stealthy and axe-murderer like, and Bianca just sat on the couch wagging her tail.

Willow and I went into the pantry where she put on my beard, hair and Santa hat. Then we exited the pantry, walked through the dining room and back into the living room where Bianca saw me and began freaking out. First it was a high pitched yelp, followed by another, then another. At the time, none of us knew WTF. We just froze in place, staring at each other in terror and hoping–the way you hope that the earthquake will stop rumbling–that Bianca would stop yipping. But it only got worse. And when she launched into a full blown barking attack, Willow and I raced through the kitchen, down the cellar, and shut the door behind us leaving Uncle Mike frozen in the living room, basically standing there waiting for little Jamesy-Lou Who to show up so he could spin some magnificent lie.

However, once in the cellar, Bianca stopped barking. We knew then it was the jagged Santa beard and hair that got her tits in a triangle. So, I removed the Santa headgear, walked into the living room, and let her re-smell me. Then I put her in my lap and whispered sweet nothings into her ear while Willow placed the white beard, hair and hat back on my head so Bianca could witness the transition. Once finished, Bianca did not start barking again. She was nervous, but ultimately seemed cool with it.

Santa calms piss-puppy

Then it was showtime. Willow pressed record on the cam and I did my little show, putting presents under the tree, sliding in and out of the camera’s view and eventually going for the cookies. After eating a couple, I kneeled to pretend to feed Bianca a cookie. She looked at me with wide, horrified eyes, wagging her tail with humming-bird-like speed, and proceeded to piss all over my sister’s couch. (Sorry Barb and Jim).

It was obviously time to go. We wrapped up the shoot, snuck out of the house, crept up the driveway, and ran down the cold, dark street laughing and snorting little chunks of ice-snot out of our noses.

The Reaction:

The following morning, before opening presents, we watched the videos. There were eight files. I told James I had set the camera up to record short, random increments to give the appearance of failure. The first seven files we looked at were nada. Just a view of the cookies and Christmas Tree with accompanying white noise. On the last file, when James had all but given up hope, Santa’s leg appeared on the screen. The fun began when James saw it and remarked, “Woah!” Then announced to the group, “We got something!”

Seriously, it was the best Christmas ever.

After we watched the video, like, 89 times, James began pacing the room as if shell shocked. At one point, he fell back onto the couch in the Jesus-Christ-Pose and said, “I’m stunned.” He also kept saying, “Now I have proof!” and asked if I would please post the video on YouTube to show his skeptical friends. (Keep this in mind if you plan on leaving any comments there). Oh, and by the way, friends and family: don’t get any ideas. That was my last Santa appearance. Being in a Santa suit blows pie. It’s hot and itchy and dogs hate you. Still, it was worth the effort. Here’s the video we showed to James. Enjoy!

Anyway, that’s our story. Hope you all had as good a Christmas as we did and have a great New Year’s Eve!

Uncle Ed
12.25.2010

(All video and stills provided by Uncle Mike)

Santa kisses the air above Mrs. Claus' head

One of the advantages being a childless uncle is that you get to enjoy, in significantly smaller doses, of course, some of the experiences of parenting. Most are fabtacular, such as watching the kids tear open presents you bought them, or when they run into your arms as you first walk into the room, or watching with pride as they perfectly serve your dirty Stoli martinis the way you trained them.

Then there are the other experiences—the ones that remind you why you’ve never procreated. Having to clean up after a massive diarrhea mishap in the Target café, for example, or those times they get all screamy and jumpy and arguey in the space between you and the TV, or having to say “Who’s there” every five seconds during their interminable, knock-knock-joke-telling phase.

These are the moments that give me pause when considering parenthood, ’tis true, but it’s a recent experience that has permanently removed any lingering doubt. I’m talking about the nightmare known as the children’s piano recital.

The event, dubbed “A Holiday Recital,” was performed by the students of Betty Kaiser, a local piano teacher. My 10-year-old nephew, Noah, was one of the featured performers. For the record, I have no issue with the concept of a children’s piano recital and have great appreciation for any parent who endeavors to tame their demon progeny with the gift of music. A recital is exactly what these little ghouls need to take them to the next level. However, just because a piano recital is good for aspiring musician-kids doesn’t mean it isn’t also going to suck the life force out of anyone within earshot.

Let’s be honest: The sound of a person learning a musical instrument is as pleasing to the senses as seagulls fighting over a disembodied tongue lying on the sand. However, the sound of an adolescent learning how to play an instrument is as pleasant as seagulls fighting over a tongue which is still connected to the mouth of a screeching Yoko Ono, lying in the sand.

You know how these recitals go. The kids hunt and peck each note like monkeys trying to find the umlaut symbol on a typewriter. To make matters worse, they were scared out of their brains. The first girl who got up there, a little brown-haired cutie in a red dress, played “Carol of the Bells” with the same look on her face as Liberace when he performed for the Westboro Baptist Church and Nazi Gun Club Benefit Bake Sale.

Then there was the boy whose lips were pursed so tightly that it seemed as though a black hole had formed in his mouth and was sucking all the matter from his face. He was followed by a girl who was so aghast at being on stage that the wisps of her breath rising from her mouth spelled out the words “Help me.”

As for Noah, he didn’t seem frightened. Nor was he that horrible a player, considering he only began six months ago. However, the piece he chose was a lyrical and melodical abomination known as “The Dreidel Song.”

“I have a little dreidel / I made it out of clay / And when it’s dry and ready / The dreidel I shall play.”

OK, can we all agree that Jewish children got screwed by their religion’s glorification of the dreidel? I mean, c’mon, it’s just a top. I’ve had tops. They suck. They don’t do anything. Not like Rock’em Sock’em Robots or Tranformers. The only thing lamer than tops is a song about tops.

“It has a lovely body / With legs so short and thin / And when my dreidel’s tired / It drops and then I win!”

Question: what kind of dumbass game is won by a piece that gets tired and drops? Seems like that makes you the loser, yes? Secondly, a dreidel doesn’t have legs. It’s got a fat, squat torso, which hardly qualifies as a “lovely body.”

“Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel / I made it out of clay / when it’s dry and ready….” and isn’t that all the song does all day? “Dreidel, clay, dreidel, play, dreidel, spin, dreidel win,” like the song itself is a top—which is to say that it spins pointlessly in place. That’s what I was thinking anyway, followed by the thought that this was all obviously some sort of karmic punishment.

See, I, too, took piano lessons when I was a lad of about 10 or 11, and watching these kids bludgeon their songs reminded me of how I tortured my family by playing “Michael Row Your Boat” on the living-room piano for four days straight, with my mom and dad on the couch taking turns punching each other in the head in hopes that their ears would swell and close.

Anyway, the recital ended without incident. No one ran out screaming, nor was much blood shed, save for some pulpy trickles leaking out of a few ear canals. I learned a lot from that incident. And as a survivor of the dreaded children’s Holiday Recital, I feel qualified to offer advice.

My advice is this: When the parents of an aspiring musician invite you to a recital, you tell them “Yes” (giving the illusion of support for the endeavors of their offspring). Then, on the morning of the performance, stab yourself in the face, thereby providing a valid excuse as to why you didn’t show. Painful? Yes. But far less so than actually attending the thing—regardless of how many skin grafts were necessary.

Ed Decker
01.05.2011

Image by Karyl Miller (http://www.millerreport.com/)

“The 20-year legal fight over the cross on Mount Soledad took another turn Tuesday when a federal appeals court ruled the towering landmark [is] unconstitutional”

—San Diego Union-Tribune, Jan. 5

I love this ruling. I do believe that a giant, Latin cross on the city-owned peak of the tallest mountain in the area is an example of government “establishing” a religion. I also believe this issue is complex and nuanced. I believe is reasonable, for those who want the cross to stay, to pose such questions as:

1. Is the seemingly endless legal battle worth our time and money?
2. At which point does the historic and the religious become inseparable?
3. What does the word “establishment” exactly mean in the context of the Constitution?

On these questions, reasonable minds can disagree. However it is difficult to find reasonable minds in a group that interprets the words of a 3,500-year-old Testament—written by a bunch of toga-wearing winos—literally, as if it were, you know, a Bible or something.

In the case of the true believer, “reason” has nothing to do with it. Their arguments tend toward the ridiculous and reactionary—such as the opinion (articulated in the U-T article cited above) that the Soledad cross “is a secular landmark amid a larger [war] memorial and has no explicit religious meaning.”

Secular landmark? No explicit religious meaning? Question, when God was passing out brains, did you think he said, “pains” and ask for a dull one? OK, sure, the cross may have had a couple of now-obsolete meanings that predate Christ by a few hundred years. However in this country, in this century, saying the cross is a symbol of something other than Christianity is like saying “My Ding-a-Ling” is a song about Chuck Berry’s retarded brother.

The cross is the central symbol of Christianity. Every believer worth his weight in Frankincense owns and displays one somewhere, whether in their homes, adorning the bodies or dangling from their rearview mirrors. The only Christian who doesn’t have a cross in his possession is Christ himself (crosses make Jesus squeamish), so let’s please not entertain this “secular landmark” notion any further.

Another example of an unreasonable reasoning by religious reactionaries is the recurring, false analogy between the Mount Soledad cross and the Ground Zero mosque.

“I think it sucks,” wrote one of my god-fearing Facebook friends. “We can build mosques near ground zero, [yet] tear down crosses, all in the name of a First Amendment?”

Now, this friend is usually a smart fellow. I was astonished that he hadn’t divined the obvious difference between the two situations: The cross is on public land while the so-called Ground Zero mosque was to be built on private property. What was even more astonishing was, after pointing the difference out, he didn’t seem to understand why it mattered, which tells me that he’s hysterically blinded to matters regarding faith.

Finally, another utterly unreasonable reaction to the ruling was from the American Center for Law and Justice, which said the ruling is “a judicial slap in the face of veterans.”

Now, if the good folks at the American Center for Pandering and Tearmongering had done some research, they’d have learned that there are plenty of vets who applaud the court’s decision. Indeed, it was a veterans’ group that nudged it forward, via The Jewish War Veterans of the United States v. Rumsfeld.

Jewish vets love crosses the way Marie Antoinette loved guillotines, so it’s unlikely any were offended by this court ruling. Nor will Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu soldiers feel dissed. OK, sure, maybe the Christian soldiers might be all butt-hurt about it, but it’s not the solider part of them that cares, it’s the Christian part.

I asked a former neighbor of mine, Sergeant Seth Reil, of the Marine Corps K-9 unit, what he thought about the “slap in the face” comment. Sergeant Reil, it should be noted, handled the bomb sniffing dogs that sussed out enemy explosives. As the first person to enter a suspicious zone, it was and  extroardinarily dangerous job.

“The Christian community has completely discounted the sacrifices made by members of other religions . . . or those who don’t worship a higher power at all,” said Sergeant Reil. “[It] has ‘slapped’ veterans in the face with their bigotry and intolerance. As a veteran, I fought for freedom for my family, and yours, not for a cross on a hill.”

That’s the thing about this, It’s-Just-a-War-Memorial-and-Has-No-Explicit-Religious-Meaning bullshit. If it’s really about commemorating American soldiers, then put a symbol up there that represents all of them, like the U.S. flag, because, when you think about it, there’s only one thing American soldiers have in common, and that’s America. I ask you, what vet could be offended by Old Glory? What American, for that matter? It’s a no-brainer!

What’s that now? Not a fan of the flag idea? “Been there and done that,” you say? That’s alright, I have three more ideas:

• Erect a 100-foot statue of Jimi Hendrix playing guitar beside an enormous, functioning stack of Marshall amplifiers. Every day at noon, pipe Hendrix’s live, Woodstock version of “The Star Spangled Banner” through the amps. Set volume knobs at 11 and blast it across the land.

• Keep the cross where it is, but also include, of equal size, the religious symbols of every soldier who ever fought in any U.S. war. Those would include Hinduism, Islam, Rastafari, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shamanism, Zoroastrianism, Druidism, Wicca, Vodun, Baha’i, Mormonism, Buddhism, O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, Estonian mythology, Klingon, Eskimo, Scientolo—ah, to Hell with this idea, just ditch the damn cross!

• Forego symbols altogether and honor past and present soldiers with something actual—something that matters—like immediate troop withdrawal, and a kibosh on the insane, perma-war mentality of the military industrial complex.

Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat Magazine

Ed Decker
01.19.11

I received an e-mail recently from my friend Andrew, the bar manager of the Viejas DreamCatcher, who told me about a little incident at Cabo Cantina in Pacific Beach. He said he wasn’t allowed inside because he was wearing an Oakland Raiders Jersey. I have been told this is a Cabo Cantina house rule.

“Have Charger fans become the bratty kid at the playground that says, ‘If you don’t play my way I’m taking my ball and leaving’?” Andrew asked in his e-mail. “Or am I just a salty Raider fan that should stay home during the playoffs?”

Well, Andrew, asking if a Raiders fan is “salty” is like asking if minnows are skittish. So, yeah, you probably should stay home during The Super Bowl (and the rest of 2011, too), but that’s hardly the point. The real question is, “What’s up with Cabo Lame-tina?” Do they fear and/or loathe Raiders fans that much?

Sure, I’ve run into my fair share of Raiders turds. I once watched in horror as one of them chewed off the ear of a Chargers fan and spit it at my feet. But I’ve seen just as many, if not more New York Jets jerkoffs, not to mention Minnesota Vikings vermin, Broncos bastards and Patriots pricks, and Lord knows you can’t projectile vomit in a bar anymore without splattering the legs of at least a couple of Cowboys cocksuckers.

The point is, there are some in every bunch. You can’t assume that a guy who’s wearing silver and black is going to be a problem customer any more that you can assume a dude wearing powder blue with yellow lightning bolts will have a predilection for playing dress up with Barbie dolls.

Whatever. Cabo has the right to refuse service, and I respect that; but, seriously, Cabo Cantina, when did you become such an elitist pussy? Is this a place to watch football or is it the Oxford Club of Distinguished Gentleman? Because I don’t see no chamber trio in the corner. What I see are lots of television showing football games. Football! Where rivalry is not only welcome—it’s the effin point!

I despise this whole Wrong-Team-Allegiance-Bar-Entry-Refusal thing. I’ve encountered it myself. I can think of three instances when I witnessed someone being denied entry based on Wrong-Team-Allegiance. The first time was when I was hanging with a group of Redskins fans.

Now, as a devotee of the New York Giants, I used to hate the Washington Redskins—until Lawrence Taylor snapped Joe Theismann’s femur on national television and it was the end of the Redskins as we knew them. These days, what I feel is more like pity. They’ve been so bad for so long that the Indian on their logo has a single tear streaming down his face like Iron Eyes Cody on the old anti-litter PSA.

It’s so sad. That’s why I let some of them hang around me—to bring joy into their otherwise miserable lives. And on one particular Sunday about three years ago, shortly after Washington upset New England in a regular-season game, I went bar hopping with a small group of Redskins-Fan-Friends (RFFs). When we arrived at the front door of a now-defunct Boston sports bar, my RFFs were denied entry because of the color of their Skins.

I couldn’t believe what the doorman was saying. I figured he must be a disgruntled rogue and that no bar owner in his right mind would turn away business for such an infantile reason. So I asked for the manager, and as sure as Plaxico Burress got all his guns on safety, he supported the doorman’s ruling.

“Wow,” I declared to the manager. “Are you guys so butt-hurt about that devastating, embarrassing, morale-crushing, vagina-smarting loss to the lowly Redskins that you’re actually going to turn away our business?”

He didn’t respond, just glared. I glanced over his shoulder and inside the bar to see all the pitiful New England fans moaning and wailing and hugging each other in grief, as if they just found out Ted Williams’ head had been cryogenically stored with a Yankee cap on it.

I had my answer.

Now, I know a lot of people will say, well, maybe Lame-o Cantina has this “No Raiders’ Colors” policy in place to protect the Raiders fans from bitter Chargers fans. But I don’t buy it. For one thing, you ever fight a Chargers fan? It’s like fighting a bowl of yogurt. Secondly, the Chargers weren’t even playing that day. It was the second round of the playoffs, during the Steelers-Ravens game, so the Chargers and their fans were probably at home, having afternoon tea with Barbie and friends.

Either way—whether it’s the Cabo management being jerks or their Chargers-loving customers, or if it really is in the Raiders fans’ DNA to spit body parts on the floor like a cannibal’s belligerent baby being spoon fed in a highchair, I have to ask: What the hell is wrong with you people!? You do realize it’s a game right? There’s no need to demonize your rivals. Even the guys who play on your beloved teams have friends on rival teams. If your devotion to a team is more serious than the guys who are actually on said team, well, it might be time to consider pursuing something—I don’t know, something more, something fulfilling, something like a life, perhaps? As in, get one.

Fat chance, though. I know some of you are going to write letters of outrage, or stop me on the street, or accost me on my barstool about how angry you were when I insulted your beloved Redskins, Chargers, Cowboys, Vikings—whichever—for the sake of satire, missing the point of satire, as you missed the point of football: that it is all about the fun. If you don’t get that, you’re doing it wrong.

Ed Decker
02.02.11

Read my column about the ear biting incident

Some of you may remember a recent Sordid Tale about an encounter that occurred outside my favorite neighborhood slaughtering hole, The Tilted Stick, during which a guy named Scotty and several of his friends ambushed me because it was his opinion that I wasn’t local enough to patronize the establishment.

Well, two Sundays ago, Scotty and I crossed paths again.

I’ve dreaded our imminent reunion, largely because I didn’t want to be in the position of having to accept or reject his apology: I didn’t want to accept his apology because, well, how rotten-to-the-core must you be to gang up on a person over such absurd matters as his place of residence? On the other hand, I’m not a grudge-holder. I don’t give a crud about Scotty, except for the comedy of him, which I enjoy sharing with you. So, no, I didn’t want an apology, though I always assumed one was forthcoming.

Imagine my surprise to learn that not only was he not going to say “sorry,” but that this jackass would actually try to instigate another melée—“jackass,” incidentally, being the perfect word to describe him, as he is not quite a tool, not exactly a douchebag, nor hoodlum, hooligan, thug, punk or pissant, but, rather, a raging jackass with whom—on a lazy Sunday evening—I once again came face to face.

As it happened, the same two bartenders were present, as were several of the same regulars from the night of our first altercation. We were drinking and having a good time when Scotty came in. He made his rounds, hugging and shaking hands with everyone he knew. At first, he was oblivious to me, thankfully, as I enjoyed covertly observing him mingling about as if he were The Man, utterly ignorant of how not The Man he really is.

Everything went fine until about midnight, when I casually swiveled my head to steal a glance of my archenemy and—sure as rectums don’t like rolled tacos—Scotty was glaring at me with sweltering, red eyes.

“Is your name Ed Decker?” he asked.

“Yup,” I said, gearing up for a teary-eyed apology that I did not want.

“Are you the guy who writes lies in the newspaper?”

Wait, wait—what!? I thought. This is supposed to be the part where he tells me how drunk he was that night, how he acted like a jackass and that he is sooo sorry, followed by a slap on my back and an offer to buy the next round.

“Everything I wrote in that article was true, dude, and you know it!”

“Not the part about my mother having ‘scotch-sopped titties,’” he said, eyes glazed and burning red.

Oh, comedy gods, I thought, thank you for this gift you have given, the gift of the great giant jackass who brings joy to my otherwise joyless existence.

The passage to which Scotty referred came in response to his initial accusation about my not being local enough to be in The Tilted Stick: “I’ve been boozing in this bar since before [Scotty] was sucking on his mama’s scotch-sopped titty-milk” was the exact quote.

“Dude,” I said, “that wasn’t a lie, it was a joke—a yo-mama joke.”

“You don’t joke about my mother.”

“I wasn’t joking about your mother. I was joking about yo-mama. I don’t know your actual mother.”

“That’s right, you don’t know her, so you don’t talk about her.”

“I wasn’t talking about her!” I spat again, trying to explain  what a yo-mama joke is. “I was talking, in essence, about you!”

I really get a kick out of these Yo-Mama-Joke-Over-Reactors—the ones who become enraged at the mere mention of their mother. I never understood this response. If you never met my mother and know nothing about her, any insults to her character will carry zero weight. You could say my mom fucks baboons in Taiwanese whorehouses to support a $300-a-day huffing habit, and I wouldn’t blink. I happen to know, for a fact, that my mom is sweet on Sumatran orangutans and nitrate poppers. Point is, you don’t know my mother any more than I know Scotty’s. Like my mom, I’m sure his mother is very normal and nice. It’s hiz-mama that’s all messed up.

You following this, Scotty? Your mother probably doesn’t drink at all. But yo-mama is a lush! See the difference? Let’s try some more: Yo-mama drank so much when she was pregnant, she thought you were a beer belly. Or, yo-mama was so hammered when you were born, when her water broke, it was 90 proof.

In her defense, yo-mama wanted a natural childbirth—Natural Light! In summary, your mother is probably a sharp, grounded woman, but yo-mama musta been a stumbling rum-whore to have given birth to a jackass like you.

Anyway, being that Scotty was never quite able to grasp the concept, he reacted the only way a one-dimensional jackass knows how to react when confronted with even the most mildly intellectual premise, and that is to kick back his stool and challenge me to fisticuffs. And, being a bit of an un-intellectual jackass myself, I kicked back my stool and accepted the challenge, at which point everyone in the vicinity rushed to separate us. The bartenders ushered Scotty toward the door as he shouted that I should join him outside, while two or three of the regulars held me sternly in place saying things like, “It’s not worth it,” and promising to buy me a beer if I didn’t follow Scotty outside, which sounded like a great deal for me since I didn’t want to fight in the first place.

When he was gone, we drank and laughed about the comedy of it all. Thankfully, no one jumped me when I left the bar, though I was pretty skittish on the walk home—and I guess, in that sense, the jackass-orists always win.

Hey all! I’m happy to announce that Danielle, Alicia and I have selected the three bands for House of Blues New Music Nights and that the pledge drive for these bands has officially opened.

For those in the dark, last month, House of Blues issued a call for local bands to apply (using Sonicbids) for an upcoming concert series called New Music Nights.

This was done in three cities: Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Diego. For the San Diego chapter, they charged Danielle LoPresti, Alicia Champion (of SD IndieFest fame)  and me to read and listen to the submitted press kits and choose the best three. Well that process has been completed and the three bands we selected are featured on the New Music Nights Website (along with the six bands from the other two markets).

Here’s where you come in. If you are a fan of any of these groups, or simply a fan of San Diego music in general, you can visit the website, listen to the three bands, and “pledge” to see them play at the House of Blues on July 11. By pledging, fans will receive a $5 coupon off the $10 show. The band with the most fan pledges wins the right to play at all three, previously mentioned HOB venues, plus a $1000 dollar travel stipend. The deadline for pledging is June 8 so hop-to-it. The more San Diegans we can inspire to pledge, the higher the chance a San Diego band will win. Deadline for pledging is June 8. As further incentive, Danielle, Alicia and I will be at the July 11 show giving away tickets to upcoming House of Blues shows.

Voting is simple. . .

1)      Click here.

2)      Click on the artist for whom you would like to pledge.

3)      Select “Pledge to see this artist.”

4)      Fill in the optional information and “Like” the FaceBook page.

5)      Hit continue, and you’re all set! You will receive a coupon for $5 off the event, which you can print from the confirmation page.

Below are the three San Diego bands we chose and my impression of each based on their Sonicbids electronic press kits (EPKs).

theBREAX

San Diego is not really known for its hip-hop scene, but believe me, there is vibrant one bubbling just beneath the surface. And rising to the top of that scene is hip-hop and spoken word specialists, theBREAX, which has a sound, style and quality of production that set them above the rest.

Consisting of two former Baltimoreans and an Armenian refugee, theBREAX is instantly identifiable as the real deal. I couldn’t tell you who their influences are since I’m not—you know—them, but atop the ice cream sundae that is their music I hear plentiful sprinkles of Jurassic 5, Saul Williams, Black Sheep, Boogie Down Productions and Michael Franti.

What I like best about theBREAX—aside from their incandescent beats and the different cadences of the various lead vocalists— are the lyrics, which are smart and genuine and range between funny, serious, uplifting and angry–sometimes all in the same song (though not in the bad way).

On their EPK, they write that they, “decided to make music that could help change the world.” I find that choice of words to be refreshing because, unlike many hip-hop bands with “socially conscious content,” theBREAX are not so full of themselves as to believe their music will change the world, only that it could “help” change it, that it is part of a movement toward change and not the movement itself. I like that: high goals, moderate ego. I don’t often make lofty predictions, but I think these guys might go big, as in nationally big, which would be excellent because it would finally put San Diego hip-hop on the map.

P.S. The spoken word is kickass too!

The Inheritance

It’s a good thing the band doesn’t play like they write press kits. “Look no further for a Powerful Rock/Pop band that has a totally unique sound!!” says the opening sentence of the bio. “Finally, a Band that can DELIVER!!! No one sounds like this Period!”

That’s a total of six exclamation points and 12 grammatically unnecessary capital letters in a three-sentence paragraph.

HOLY FREAKING CRAP!!!!!!!

It’s as if they’re yelling at us to like them. Gratefully, their music doesn’t do that. Oh, they know how to mount a crescendo and break it back down in a fury of guitars, drums and vocal caterwauling—but it’s precise, and appropriate. And when the music does reach the point of poetic bellowing, it’s not like they are bellowing at us, rather, to us—as if calling for assistance from the bottom of a canyon. I can’t say what their influences are, but I hear abundant doses of Gwen Stefani, Pink, The Pretty Reckless, and even Avril Lavigne (not in the bad way).

The Inheritance was founded by brother and sister team, Ian and April Hoey, who gathered some friends to make what they call, “Power-Pop Experimental Rock” music. I’m not really hearing the “experimental” part so much, but Power and Rock? Hell yeah!

The Soup

Goose pimples formed on my arms when the first acoustic notes of “Enemy” trickled from my speakers, as if the notes were clearing a small forest foot path for the singer to follow. “Enemy” is a soft but ballsy breakup ballad with the mood of Morphine and the styles of Wilco, Stones, Beatles (circa “Blackbird”) and Ween (circa “Japanese Cowboy”).

The EP immediately takes a musical U-turn before arriving at track two, “Down Hill March,” which is appropriately named for the way it struts, and conjures the tex-mex style of Stan Ridgeway and the delicious sarcasm of Warren Zevon.

“Cope,” is a paranoid bi-polar romp (Modest Mouse meets The National), “Postcard” and “5^th of May,” smolder in a completely different manner than the first two, as much as they differ from each other, and ditto how they differ from the last two: “The Great Awakening” and “No Worries,” all of which make for an EP as schizophrenic as any of my imaginary alter egos (though not in the bad way).

So there you have it, three great San Diego bands jockeying for your love and appreciation. Why not show them a little and pledge in their favor. Then come hang out the IndieFest hotties and me at House of Blues on July 11 for a night of kickass local music. Oh and don’t forget to “share” and / or invite your friends to the Facebook app.

Ed Decker

Giant poster of Pope Paul II at Vatican

As many of you know, I was in Italy with family recently, and happened to be at the Vatican while they were gearing up for the heavily anticipated beatification ceremony of Pope John Paul II.

What a spectacle!

Beatification is the last stage before canonization, which is when a particular holy-person is recognized as a saint. To be beatified, the Holy-Person-in-Question (HPQ) must have performed a Vatican-approved, posthumous miracle. Then the HPQ must perform a second miracle to be canonized.

The first miracle has already happened. A Parkinson’s beleaguered nun prayed directly to Deucey (my pet name for Paul II) and lo, was her disease promptly cured. The alleged miracle was investigated by the Vatican’s top theological and, ahem, medical experts and approved by current pope Benedict XVI, leaving Deucey to perform only one more miracle—which explains why your devout Catholic grandmother constantly keeps checking the back of her tortillas.

It is important to note that this process does not make the HPQ a saint. It merely recognizes that they have always been one, that God deemed them a saint a looong time ago, before they were born probably, and I gotta say, if I were an un-canonized saint—chilling beside the pool at God’s palace, trying to enjoy my ambrosia margarita while all these Vatican assworms were demanding I show them a second miracle, I would jump down onto the dome of St. Peter’s and say, “Listen up pissants! I’ll show you as many miracles as I freaking feel like showing!”

Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of controversy surrounding Deucey’s canonization, largely because Pope Benedict is rushing the process. He waived the traditional five-year waiting period and pushed the rest of the phases through so quickly, the beatification of Deucey is now on record as being the fastest in papal history. Which makes me wonder, when Deucey is canonized, of what will he be a patron?

As you probably know, there is a patron saint for just about anything you can think of. There is a patron saint of train travel, a patron saint for financial success, a patron saint against shipwrecks, a patron saint against witchcraft, a patron saint for bankers, bakers, bikers, beggars, bruises, butchers, butlers, beekeepers and babies. There is a patron saint for blackbirds, blacksmiths, blackheads and black people (the patron saint of Negroes is Benedict the Black). There – is a patron saint of bartenders (my man, Saint Amand of Maastricht). There is a patron saint for greeting card manufacturers (St. Valentine) because, you know, blessed are the greeting card manufacturers! There are also highly silly or embarrassing patronages, such as patron saint against scabies, warts, hernias and hydrophobia and I hope, when Deucey is canonized, he’s assigned one of those embarrassing patronages, something like, “patron saint of fromunda”—because the whole thing stinks!

That’s why Benedict is rushing Deucey through the process. Because any discussion of his potential sainthood must include the fact that it’s largely his fault that The Lord’s Church became such an enormous smoking and sparking engine of sexual molestation. (Talk about a Deus ex machina!). So, the instant some miracle-hungry Bible clutcher finds a grease-stained tortilla that vaguely resembles a man’s face, Benedict and his Vatican experts will rubber stamp it as a miracle faster than anyone can say, “Hey! That taco stain looks like Lady Gaga!”

They’ll canonize Deucey even though any clear-thinking person (who, um, happens to believe in saints, angels, praying and miracles and stuff) knows no real saint would’ve let the abuse scandal happen. Any clear-thinking person (who believes in holy dead people who return to Earth in the form of magical ethnic foods) knows that not only is the former pontifex maximus not a saint, but that he’s the exact opposite: He’s an Aint: as in, the Patron Aint of Letting Children get Systematically Sexually Abused (oh, and also, of diarrhea and dingleberries).

And he let it happen alright. Consider the case of Father Marcial Degollado, who continued to receive Deucey’s protection even after a guilty verdict. Consider assface Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, whom the former pontiff scuttled out of town (moments before his arrest) and rewarded with the ultra-cushy job of Archpriest in charge of Basilica Maggiore in Rome—instead of granting Law the more appropriate title of, Arch-Pederast in Charge of Lava Pit 36 in Hell.

Arch Assface

Deucey did not punish a single child-raping scumbag or any of the high-ranking scumbags who shielded child-raping scumbags. Because he either didn’t know what was going on (which means “The Holy See,” didn’t see shit) or he knew and kept oiling and gassing the engine—the Rapus ex Machina—anyway. So it will take more than your standard, Cure-One-Case-of-Parkinson’s kind of miracle to make me believe that asshead was a saint. Admittedly, I’m a bit of a miracle snob but, c’mon—curing Parkinson’s? Cancer? That shit don’t impress me. Diseases go into remission. It’s rare, but it happens; and it’s just plain silly to confuse our ignorance about disease with divine intervention.

I was talking about this with my wife’s parents. We pondered the age-old question, “How come God never heals amputees?” I’m sure lots of people throughout the centuries have prayed for their limbs to be returned, so why has that type of miracle never happened? Because that type of miracle would be a freaking miracle! The real deal! It’s the kind of thaumaturgy Deucey would need to show me in order to even consider canonizing him. Here are a few other miracles I’d accept from Paul II:

• Replace every gun on the planet with a toy bang-flag gun.
• Instead of frogs, make jalapeno poppers fall from the sky.
• Make NFL players and owners suddenly realize their greed and agree to reduce everyone’s salaries enough that parents can bring some of their kids to a game without having to pawn the others.
• Make all traffic-control video cameras also record the bedrooms of the City Council members who voted for them.
• Make Fox News self-aware.
• Make a strip club ATM that doesn’t charge more than the amount you’re trying to withdraw.
• Make the CEO of every oil company suddenly realize his greed and—actually, just smite all the oil company CEOs.
• Turn Newt Gingrich into a newt.
• Sara Palin / Michelle Bachman lesbian sex tape—free download!
• On your next taco appearance, turn the guacamole back into an avocado.

Are you hearing these prayers, Deucey? Screw this Curing-One-Person-At-A-Time, noise! How about curing everyone who got AIDS because of your medieval, anti-condom crusade? Or, if you really want to impress me, go back in time and un-molest all those kids whose lives were destroyed on your watch. Now that’s a miracle I could rubber-stamp.

Click here to order your limited-edition Vaticondoms: The Condoms with the Pope on the Package!

My man, Saint Amand of bartenders

Hey all, good news regarding the House of Blues New Music Nights competition. As many of you know, House of Blues is running a three-city music showcase competition (If this is the first you are hearing about this, click here). What you didn’t know is that San Diego’s premier hip-hop outfit, theBREAX, is currently in first place, with Los Angeles’s Brian Buckley Band in hot pursuit at second.

So those of you who haven’t already, we implore you to jump over to the New Music Nights site and push theBREAX over the top with your pledge. They’re great and they deserve it. Deadline is June 8 so hip-hop to it.

Ed

Drawing by Jesse Egan

I’ve been serving booze in this town since 1985. That’s 26 years behind the plank. Truth is, I could have quit a long time ago, having parlayed other skills into a decent freelance business, but I really do love bartending, and believed I could do it forever.

Well forever came early last month, when I was informed by the powers that be that my services would no longer be needed.

Now, this is not going to be a screed against my former employers about how they could have fired such a hard working, honest, efficient, speedy and spectacular bartender (with handsome features and genius tendencies). They had their reasons, which I respect. For the record, though, I did nothing wrong, apart from the fact that I got older and the bar (710 Beach Club) got younger. In dating parlance, you could say that we had “grown apart.”

Indeed, the news of my unemployment came the day after my 49^th birthday—a fact that has hit me pretty hard. Not because I’m getting old, per se (I typically don’t sweat birthdays), but because it probably means my bartending career has come to a close. I mean, let’s face it, in this economy, there aren’t that many bar openings available, and the ones worth having are going to the young and fun babetenders.

Well, polly wolly doodle if that don’t suck my nuts! Bartending has been a part of my identity for as long as I can remember having an identity. It’s how I know everybody I know, and that’s how everybody I know knows me. Christ, I haven’t worked at Winston’s Beach Club for 15 years, yet people still ask if I can get them on the guest list, which is really annoying because only friends have the right to request guest-list privileges, and if they were my fucking friends, they’d know that I haven’t worked at Winstons for 15 years.

But I digress. The point is, I’m not a bartender anymore, and it’s time to face the fact, time for closure. Hence this column, which is a bittersweet farewell (or good riddance) to the people and things that were part of my life for so long. For instance, I would like to send a heartfelt farewell to my former co-workers and bosses at 710 Beach Club. It’s been a brilliant 12 years. Thanks for all of them.

Farewell to my customers—regular or infrequent—who never gave me no guff. Your business was greatly appreciated.

To the sumptuous cosmo-metro mamas, the busty, blondie, beachy babes and the “Just-flew-in-from-Louisiana” Susyannas—who grinded each other’s pelvises on the dance floor in a Technicolor, quasi-lesbo grope-show—fare thee well, my fairy fays.

But, to all the drunken trolls who approached them and said or did something trollish, thereby bringing the Technicolor lesbo-grope show to a screeching halt—good riddance!

Good riddance, in fact, to all the buffoons who inappropriately touched or leered at any of my female customers.

Good riddance to all the jukebox hoarders who played $20 worth of Celine Dion and Lil’ Bow Wow while Johnny Cash paced  in the green room, guitar slung over his back, waiting to go on.

And to all you impatient bastards who like to bang your bottle on the bar to summon the bartender, I bid thee a mighty middle-fingered good riddance. May the bottle break in your hand and sever a nerve.

To all the moocher-Minnies who rested their ample breasts on the bar and fake-flirted with me to get a freebie—I say, “hidey, hidey, hidey ho–ho’s.” However, to all those ladies who rested their breasts on the bar for no other reason than their breasts were tired, well, hidey, hidey, hi my lovelies.

To every band that rocked out, even on the nights when no one was there, but played like the room was full and your stomachs empty, and said “please” and “thank you” when you ordered on your bar tab, and were just all-round good guys—goodbye, farewell, good luck. But to all the bands who bitched incessantly—on and off stage—and brought down the mood of the room with your grumpy, faux-rock-star demeanor, then had the balls to act like I sold your sister to slavery when I said your bar tab was a mere $75—good riddance. May your next million gigs be played at the Shady Meadows Senior Assisted Living Facility and Resort.

And to all those off-duty bartenders who asked for the (wink-wink) bartender discount, adios, mofos. I didn’t give you the bartender discount because you aren’t a real bartender. A real bartender never asks for a discount.

To all you last-call lizards who never could quite grasp the concept of closing time and refused to leave, even as the clock ticked ever-dangerously toward the 2 a.m. mark, and held on to your nearly empty bottle of backwash so tightly that I had to pry it from your hands and literally push you out the motherfucking door—oh, man, oh man, good riddance to youse.

To the Baileys Irish Cream—arriverderci! You always fouled my sinks right after I changed the water.

Au revoir, while we’re at it, to being hunched over the sink washing glasses all night.

Auf Wiedersehen, broken glass in the ice bin (you cut me the deepest).

Don’t let the door smack you on the way out, bar rot.

Catch you later, San Diego vice squad and undercover minor-decoy operation.

Buh-bye, sloppy, excessive-high-fiving white guy.

Ciao, garnish-tray gobblers (it ain’t a buffet!).

Hasta la vista, “I-lost-my-beer-now-give-me-a-new-one-dude” (It’s not my job to babysit your beer.)

See ya, sticky, broken soda gun!

Cheerio, cherrys, and the industrial-sized jar you came in, filled with the chemicalized maraschino syrup that causes hand-cancer.

Too-da-loo, fruit flies.

And tautugniagmigikpiñ*, slimy lemons and limes. I will miss youse all the way Maria Shriver misses her housekeeper.

But to the rest of it—the people and things that make bartending great—fare thee well, fare thee well and a-polly wolly doodle all the day.

Ed Decker
06.07.11

*Tautugniagmigikpiñ is how Alaskan Eskimos say goodbye.

“They defended [Bill Clinton] for his indiscretions in office but want Anthony Weiner run out of town….”
—Michael Medved

“What Weiner did was worse than what Larry Craig did. So, why shouldn’t he have to resign as well?”
—Commenter on USAtoday.com

There’s a lot of this going around. A lot of these scandalistas like to compare Congressmember Anthony Weiner’s debacle to other famous political sex scandals, to determine how much he should be despised and what should become of him. Of course, the comparisons are mostly partisan and lack uniformity, which is why I have developed the following formula—so that we can objectively discern whose sex scandals are worse than whose and where Weiner ranks among them.

For the purposes of this formula, each scandal category receives a point value between one and 10. For instance, Standard Adultery—the offense of (yawn) regular old cheating with a consenting adult—is worth one point. Add five points if the spouse is terminally ill. Add five Hypocrisy Points for any Bible-humping, family-values politicians caught fooling around; add another five Hypocrisy Points if a politically active opponent of gay rights is caught consorting with a member of the same sex. Tack on seven Corruption Points for any laws broken in relation to the affair (not counting the crime of adultery because that’s an idiotic law). Add seven points if it’s one of those creepy, non-consensual sexual exposer-type of transgressions (like whipping out your phallus during a private meeting with the president of the local NOW chapter). Make it 10 if he touches or gropes her private parts, un-consentingly.

For siring a love child, the points range from one to 10, depending on how the child was treated by the offender.

No points will be added for lying (everyone lies about sex, so it’s a wash) or if the affair is with a prostitute. Yes, I know, prostitution is illegal, but let’s be honest: Blowing politicians during lunch breaks so they can stay focused on running the country is why prostitutes were invented.

Now, with that formula in mind, let’s analyze some modern-day political sex scandals:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: Ten points for being a creepy, non-consensual Genitalia Groper and five points for the love child. He does not receive the Standard Adultery value because he married a Kennedy-babe and federal law states that if you marry a Kennedy-babe, you must cheat on her. 15 points.

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig: As much as his Family Values and Gay Rights hypocrisies (10 points) turn my stomach, the only law he broke is a dumb one. I mean, seriously, why can’t you pick up dudes in the bathroom? Add one point for Standard Adultery, but subtract one point for the comic value of his hilarious “wide stance” defense. 10 points.

U.S. Rep. Mark Foley: This is difficult to grade because he didn’t actually fornicate with anyone (that we know of); however, he was sending sexually explicit messages to several underage male pages (which is illegal, earning seven points, plus 10 points for Family Values and Gay Rights hypocrisies). 17 points.

U.S. Sen. John Edwards: I never realized what a total douche-nozzle John Edwards is: He had Standard Adultery for one point, a love child for the full 10 points (Edwards pushed for abortion, then denied paternity), the Cancer Bonus (wife Elizabeth was very sick) and a shit-ton of (alleged) corruption—such as his spending thousands of public dollars on gifts for his lover and funneling more than $900,000 of campaign funds to cover up the affair. 23 points.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich: If Edwards is a douche-nozzle, Gingrich is the dirty, yeasty vagina it goes inside: We have Standard Adultery, the Cancer Bonus and a Multiple Sclerosis Bonus (he cheated on two wives—one with cancer, the other M.S.), a Family Values Hypocrisy and an Impeachment Hypocrisy (eight points) because he actively sought to remove President Clinton for doing the same exact bullshit he was doing. 24 points.

President William J. Clinton: It always bothered me how Clinton’s defenders persistently griped that he was “impeached for a BJ,” as if that were his worst or only infraction. Clinton’s sex felonies are so many, so egregious, that I don’t have the time or desire to add them up, what with the perjuries, the rape accusation, the fact that he used the state police as his personal sex-transit system, the persistent trapping of women in his office, the groping and the exposing of his tallywhacker like a coked-up monkey in a Vegas cathouse and, of course, how he deployed a team of operatives to viciously attack and destroy his accusers in the press. ? points.

U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner: Well, there’s no Family Values Hypocrisy, no corruption, no perjury, no minors, no non-consensual touchies or exposies, no love children, no attempts to destroy the objects of his desire. There isn’t even a Standard Adultery deduction because he never actually had sex with actual women. At best, he receives a half-point for his virtual affairs. As for the recently emerged photo of Weiner in women’s clothing, don’t even try it, Malph! He was 18 years old. It could’ve been a prank. It could’ve been Halloween. Or maybe he just likes wearing women’s clothing—that’s his business. It’s all his business. They should have left him alone to do his job. 1/2 point

Ed Decker
06.22.11

For those who have been following the House of Blues New Music Nights competition (powered by Sonicbids), the results are in: L.A.’s Brian Buckley Band took the most pledges. Congrats to them. All that’s left now is the best part – the showcase. Each of the participating House of Blues Venues (L.A., Las Vegas and San Diego) are showcasing three local bands followed by the Brian Buckley Band as a reward for receiving the most pledges. The San Diego showcase is going to be spectacular. It’s on July 11. We’ve got three excellent bands, hand-picked by the organizers of San Diego IndieFest, and me.

Here is my impression of each, based on their Sonicbids electronic press kits (EPKs).

theBREAX

San Diego is not really known for its hip-hop scene, but believe me, there is vibrant one bubbling just beneath the surface. And rising to the top of that scene is hip-hop and spoken word specialists, theBREAX, which has a sound, style and quality of production that set them above the rest.

Consisting of two former Baltimoreans and an Armenian refugee, theBREAX is instantly identifiable as the real deal. I couldn’t tell you who their influences are since I’m not—you know—them, but atop the ice cream sundae that is their music I hear plentiful sprinkles of Jurassic 5, Saul Williams, Black Sheep, Boogie Down Productions and Michael Franti.

What I like best about theBREAX—aside from their incandescent beats and the different cadences of the various lead vocalists— are the lyrics, which are smart and genuine and range between funny, serious, uplifting and angry–sometimes all in the same song (though not in the bad way).

On their EPK, they write that they, “decided to make music that could help change the world.” I find that choice of words to be refreshing because, unlike many hip-hop bands with “socially conscious content,” theBREAX are not so full of themselves as to believe their music will change the world, only that it could “help” change it, that it is part of a movement toward change and not the movement itself. I like that: high goals, moderate ego. I don’t often make lofty predictions, but I think these guys might go big, as in nationally big, which would be excellent because it would finally put San Diego hip-hop on the map.

P.S. The spoken word is kickass too!

The Inheritance

It’s a good thing the band doesn’t play like they write press kits. “Look no further for a Powerful Rock/Pop band that has a totally unique sound!!” says the opening sentence of the bio. “Finally, a Band that can DELIVER!!! No one sounds like this Period!”

That’s a total of six exclamation points and 12 grammatically unnecessary capital letters in a three-sentence paragraph.

HOLY FREAKING CRAP!!!!!!!

It’s as if they’re yelling at us to like them. Gratefully, their music doesn’t do that. Oh, they know how to mount a crescendo and break it back down in a fury of guitars, drums and vocal caterwauling—but it’s precise, and appropriate. And when the music does reach the point of poetic bellowing, it’s not like they are bellowing at us, rather, to us—as if calling for assistance from the bottom of a canyon. I can’t say what their influences are, but I hear abundant doses of Gwen Stefani, Pink, The Pretty Reckless, and even Avril Lavigne (not in the bad way).

The Inheritance was founded by brother and sister team, Ian and April Hoey, who gathered some friends to make what they call, “Power-Pop Experimental Rock” music. I’m not really hearing the “experimental” part so much, but Power and Rock? Hell yeah!

The Soup

Goose pimples formed on my arms when the first acoustic notes of “Enemy” trickled from my speakers, as if the notes were clearing a small forest foot path for the singer to follow. “Enemy” is a soft but ballsy breakup ballad with the mood of Morphine and the styles of Wilco, Stones, Beatles (circa “Blackbird”) and Ween (circa “Japanese Cowboy”).

The EP immediately takes a musical U-turn before arriving at track two, “Down Hill March,” which is appropriately named for the way it struts, and conjures the tex-mex style of Stan Ridgeway and the delicious sarcasm of Warren Zevon.

“Cope,” is a paranoid bi-polar romp (Modest Mouse meets The National), “Postcard” and “5^th of May,” smolder in a completely different manner than the first two, as much as they differ from each other, and ditto how they differ from the last two: “The Great Awakening” and “No Worries,” all of which make for an EP as schizophrenic as any of my imaginary alter egos (though not in the bad way).

So there you have it, three great San Diego bands jockeying for your love and appreciation. Why not show them a little and pledge in their favor. Then come hang out the IndieFest hotties and me at House of Blues on July 11 for a night of kickass local music. Oh and don’t forget to “share” and / or invite your friends to the Facebook app.

Ed Decker

I love the Fourth of July. I am totally down with celebrating our country’s independence from British imperialism. The only thing I can’t stand about this particular holiday is the excessive playing of patriotic music.

Not that I have anything against patriot songs, as a concept—they just tend to be artless bursts of propaganda and often downright false. Now, it is true that sometimes I worry that I think this way about national anthems because my soul is a cold, black, petrified chunk of coughed-up lung cancer, but I just spent the last couple of days perusing the anthems of the world at Nationalanthems.info, and it confirmed my suspicions: Most national anthems are enormous pieces of patriotic caca.

You know how these things go: Every country is the best country. Every motherland is the most beautiful, inhabited by the bravest and most industrious people, who are loved by God more than anyone else. And they all have passages about opposing tyranny from other countries, which is funny when you think about it because, if all the countries are fighting tyranny, then which countries are doing the tyrannizing? Well, all of them, of course!

Even the most brutal dictatorships in history had anthems against tyranny. Take this passage from East Germany’s national propaganthem: “Risen from the ruins. . . / Germany, united Fatherland / Let the light of peace shine, so that a mother never mourns her son again.”

“Germany, united”? Oh, that’s rich. They built a fucking wall through the middle of Germany.

“Let the light of peace shine so that a mother never mourns her son again”? Really? How many mothers’ sons were shot trying to cross that thing?

The hypocritical anthem of Gaddafi’s Libya asks you to “Seize the forehead of the tyrant and destroy him!” which is appropriate, I guess, considering the propensity for despots to have offensive foreheads.

The American confederacy had an anthem, which called for “Freedom or death,” which meant, I guess, they would die before giving up their freedom. . . to keep slaves.

Incidentally, the only modern country without a national anthem was Afghanistan, during the reign of the Taliban, which prohibited music. It’s probably why they were so easily defeated—they had no anthem to rally behind. It’s too bad, because they could’ve easily gotten around the no-music problem. For instance, say they wanted to sing the anthem before one of their national sporting events, like a public flogging perhaps; well, they could randomly pick someone out of the crowd, have him sing the anthem, then shoot him in the head for breaking Sharia law.

Even better, they could’ve had someone perform the anthem in slam-poetry form: [Snapping fingers] “Afghanistan, oh great Afghanistan / Greatest when ruled by Taliban / Of which the west is not a fan / Death to all Americans.” [Snap, snap, snappity snap]. “Sharia law is our mandate / Lo, you may not masturbate / or even think to fornicate / And certainly not homosexualate.” [more snapping].

As for “The Star Spangled Banner,” it’s a little embarrassing to admit, but I never thought about the lyrics before. I just assumed them to be more artless propaganda and have always tuned out the song. So, I was quite surprised to learn, upon deeper analysis, that our anthem doesn’t suck at all.

The first thing I noticed was the brilliance of the title: “The Star Spangled Banner.” I never even thought about what that meant before. In fact, it occurs to me that, until a few minutes ago, I didn’t even know what the word “spangle” meant. Naturally, I looked it up.

I must be the only idiot in the country not to know that spangle , in this context, means to shimmer or shine. Regardless, what great imagery! The stars on the flag are (metaphorically) sparkling, like 50 little beacons of freedom on a banner of stripes. Not bad title imagery as far as anthem go.

Then there is the story behind the lyrics. As is commonly known, “The Star Spangled Banner” was originally a poem by Francis Scott Key. It was about how he witnessed the 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British navy on Sept. 13, 1814. Less known is that Key was actually watching the battle from the deck of a British ship, with a small group of Americans with whom he’d been detained. From the deck, they watched in horror as the British armada besieged Fort McHenry with everything it had. They knew the country’s sovereignty lay in the balance, and when night fell, it got so dark and smoky that they couldn’t see what condition the fort was in—only the flag, which eventually became obscured by smoke and darkness, too. It was not till the next morning that Key was able to see that the flag had survived, meaning the fort had survived, meaning America had survived.

“Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light? / What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?”

I never realized it before, but that stanza is Key telling his pals, “Hey, fellas, look! Remember the flag that flew during last night’s shit-storm? It’s still freaking there!”

“Whose broad stripes and bright stars / thru the perilous fight / O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming.”

Can you imagine that feeling, watching from the ramparts of the enemy’s ship as his countrymen sucked on British cannonballs all day and into the long, scary night of blackness—black but for the exploding British rockets that illuminated the flag? The next morning, when the sun rose—and he saw his flag, his country, still intact—Key must have thought, Well, holyfrickinshit, man, I have got to write a poem about that!

Now, I’m not all that crazy about the land-of-the-free-home-of-the-brave business, since all the other countries’ anthems have the same sort of free / brave lyric—which tells me that free / brave people don’t just live in America, they live everywhere. However, with a minor rewrite, something to make it more realistic, more self-actualized, I could learn to love the ending more.

How about this?: “O’er the land of the largely free, and the home of some brave.”

Happy birthday, America. We’re probably not the best, but we’re definitely top 20, and that’s something.

Ed Decker
7/4/11

Well, it’s that time again – time for another vicious bloodletting known as a spoken word performance. Whose blood will be spilled is to be determined – could be yours, could be mine.

Regardless, it is my honor and pleasure to read at the fabulous Ducky Waddles Emporium, located at 414 N. Coast Highway 101 in Encinitas (760-632 0488). The show is part of the ”Poetry Ruckus” series sponsored by Ruthless Hippies. Open mike begins at 7:15pm and I go on at 9pm. Tickets are free if you purchase a book, but if you don’t, well, it’s still free. (Clearly I need a new marketing plan).

Looking forward to drawing blood. Hope to see you there.

Ed

Barzilla image by David Lonteen

Imagine my delight when I read this headline on the Orlando Sentinel website:

“Lightning strike at Caylee memorial ‘could be a sign from the angels.’”

Apparently, a few hours after Judge Belvin Perry sentenced Casey Anthony to time served, lightning struck a 60-foot pine tree near where the body of Anthony’s daughter, Caylee, was found. It was also the spot where a makeshift memorial for the toddler had sprung up, with flowers and stuffed animals and whatnot. There were no witnesses to the actual lightning strike.

Naturally, the god-slobberers were all over this.

“Indeed this was God….” said a commenter on the Sentinel website.

“Goes to show ya what can happen when you play with the devil,” said another.

Tammy Vicino of Orlando said the lightning strike symbolizes “celestial justice for Caylee because ‘there was no justice here on Earth.’”

Then there was this poem, called “Lightning Struck a Tree Today,” with all of the author’s typos and gloriously atrocious grammar intact:

Lightning struck a tree today

near where they founr our dear Caylee

God & Angels both agree

that her mom, Cassey is guilty.

She then added, “Proceeds will go to Caylee.org,” which raises the question: Proceeds from what? Her anthology of “Vacuous Message Board Poetry (Volume 1: Select Infanticide Poems)”?Isn’t it incredulous that in the 21st century—with a mountain of science explaining how weather works—people still believe there’s a man in the sky who hurls incandescent spears of fire to express wrath or deliver vengeance?

Look, I’m not all that stunned or outraged by the Anthony verdict. I’m one of the few people who feel the prosecution fell slightly short of their burden of proof. However, assuming she was guilty, and God does enjoy, ahem, hurling incandescent spears of fire to express his wrath or deliver vengeance, wouldn’t you have to agree that this wasn’t one of those times? If you believe in an all-powerful Supreme Being who created every living thing and every non-living thing (such as Nancy Grace)—then wouldn’t that Supreme Being have a better sense of timing and accuracy?

The timing was certainly ineffectual. That lightning bolt hit the tree several hours after sentencing. Laaame! It should’ve been immediate. Actually, it should have been two days earlier, when the verdict was read. The sentencing was just anti-climactic. Any deity with halfway decent PR skills knows that verdict readings are the best time to send celestial messages of wrath and vengeance.  Not to mention, it was the verdict that would have launched God into a tirade. He would have roared, “That’s fucking bullshit!” and marched directly over to his Locker of Celestial Weapons of Wrath and Vengeance, retrieved the brightest, sharpest lightning bolt (plague and pestilence being a bit much for this situation) and dropped it right between the squiggly 666 marks on the top of Casey Anthony’s dome as she hugged and kissed her lawyers.

Certainly, that would have been a more effective message than striking a pine tree, in the woods, several yards from her memorial site, unseen by anyone. The only message that sends is: God hates sap.

“That is what I call Karma,” Michelle Cooper told the Sentinel reporter about the lightning strike, to which I say, “Yeah, girl, Karma! That’ll teach a tree to be all tall and shit.”

God’s accuracy was awful, too. Clearly God wasn’t aiming for the tree. He was aiming for the spot where Caylee’s body was found, 20 feet from the tree—which is bad aim even for a bunch of retired army buddies playing drunken-fat-guy lawn darts. However, for the Almighty—who doesn’t drink and is quite buff—well, let’s just say the 2007 Republican presidential debate it ain’t.

Remember that lightning strike? When moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Rudy Giuliani about his soft stance against abortion? Just as Giuliani began to answer, lightning hit the building and fritzed his microphone. Now that is timing and accuracy!

Another fantastic example of timing and accuracy was an incident in 2003, when lightning struck the steeple of a church in Ohio—at the exact moment the preacher was shouting up to the heavens for God to give him a sign. Of course, nobody said, “See, God hates churches,” even though it caught fire and sustained about $20,000 in damages.

Speaking of churches and lightning, after Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod in 1753, it was condemned as an instrument of Satan. The reason? Because lightning is a display of God’s displeasure and it is blasphemous to interfere with God’s will.

What followed was predictable, sweeping, church-incited hysteria resulting in lightning rods being torn from roofs throughout Europe and America, and more than a few “witches” being burned for meddling with the will of God:

• In Boston, Rev. Thomas Prince, pastor of Old South Church, blamed the lightning rod for causing the Massachusetts earthquake of 1755.
• St. Bride’s Church in London had been destroyed by lightning several times before they put up a lightning rod.
• In Austria, the Church of Rosenburg was struck so often and with so many casualties that the peasants feared to attend services. It was not until 1778, 26 years after Franklin’s discovery, that church authorities finally permitted a rod to be attached. Then all trouble ceased.
• In Germany, within a span of 33 years, nearly 400 towers were damaged and 120 bell ringers were killed before they got around to installing a rod.
• Then there was the most infamous case of the church in Brescia, Italy, that scorned lightning-rod technology despite having 200,000 pounds of gun powder stored in its vault. When lightning struck in 1767, a large section of the city was destroyed and 3,000 people died.*

It took churches decades to accept the science of the lightning rod and thousands more lives were lost because—well go figger—lightning prefers tall things. I guess that explains why our little bolt in Orlando hit a tree and not the spot on the ground where they found Caylee. But wait! If God was aiming for the shrine, and the lightning was aiming for the tree, doesn’t that mean that the will of lightning is greater than the will of God? I imagine the Lord thy God being quite frustrated by that conversation.

Lord Thy God: OK, Lightning, I want you to strike Casey Anthony on the head as soon as the verdict is announced.

Lightning Bolt: Sorry, I don’t believe in the death penalty.

God: Grrr! OK, well, we have to send a message of some sort. How about you jolt the memorial site?

LB: Nah, I’d rather hit a pine tree.

God: A pine tree!? But why?

LB: Cuz they think they’re sooo cool being all tall and shit.

Ed Decker
06.20.11

*Thanks to Evolvefish for the history of the lightning rod
BONUS FEATURE

More Vacuous Infanticide Poetry
by Edwin Decker

“Lightning Struck a Tree Today (Part 2).”

Lightning struck a tree

near where they found Caylee

God’s and angels both agree

you must be batshit crazy

What is this 1383 A.D.?