Nursing Home's Debut EP

While it's true that the band Nursing Home is heavily rooted in darker electro-based rock from the 90's (bands like Orgy and Mindless Self Indulgence come to mind), they're unique enough to firmly place them in the 21st Century. But that's kind of an odd quirk we have about rock-n-roll, isn't it? Nobody would say to a bluesman that his stuff reminds them of the kind of blues people were playing only fifteen years ago. But with rock and other forms of popular music, ten years on and a certain sound is considered ancient, a freakin' relic. Rock people have really lost their concept of Cosmic Time. A sad thought, indeed.

This self-titled debut album includes four songs and a short intro track. It's got a slower tempo than you might expect from this kind of music. It's appropriate, though, considering the themes on the album. Characters sludging through a drug-fueled life, the horror of the everyday. Life creaking along, slowly, slowly. A very nice artistic choice. Lyrics like "cocaine cliche," "I don't like the world I see," and "finally found the bottom of the rock," give you some idea of the kind of material we're talking about here. If you're familiar with Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, Bile, etc, you know how gloomy this kind of stuff can get. If you always need your music to be sunshine and unicorns, avoid this album at all costs.

These guys really remind me of the kind of music I was listening to during my wayward youth, and for that reason alone they can do no wrong. Don't misunderstand me, I'm glad that my musical tastes have expanded in the last fifteen years or so, but it's a good thing to be reminded every once in a while that all ain't right with the world and there are people who are genuinely suffering through the experience. There is a strange kind of beauty in this kind of gloom, which is something I've never quite been able to understand the reason behind. Maybe I should ask my psychiatrist.

My favorite tracks were the first two. "Car Crash Life," in particular would make a great alternative radio anthem. "It's so nice / Living in a car crash life," goes the chorus, absolutely soaked in irony. Like I said, beauty in darkness. And these guys have it.

I'll definitely be following these guys down the road. Maybe I'll catch a show next time I'm in Brooklyn. I'm excited to see what they can do with a full-length album.

Hey Jerk, When Are You Going To Take Me To Funkytown?

So for the past few decades I've been like, "Won't you take me to Funkytown?" and you always give me some lame-o cop-out answer. "Nah, can't do it, buddy," you say. "I'm sanding my cat." Or you say something like, "I'd really love to, but I have to pour pickle juice over my grandmother. I've been delaying for weeks and now she's well past due."

This is all so disappointing, especially since you've always said such awesome things about Funkytown. All that talk about people walking down the streets, swinging their hips to and fro, saying things like, "Heeey soul cracka!" and "Oh honey child, you've sure got some sassy toenails!" Is it true that we get to wear a glittery cape if we want to? And that this is a place where James Brown never truly died?

I'd just go to the place by myself, but I can't find it on Google Maps. Is it true that you can only get there via Sex Machine? Will I still be considered a virgin afterwards? Will God still let me into heaven?

These are important questions and they can only be truly answered when you decide you can spare just two minutes to take your penis out of the mayonnaise jar and answer them. Also, do you need to wear that poor weasle as if it was a loincloth? He's been complaining to me that your crotch smells like old peanuts and false hopes.

Daisy Kids Release First Single, Square In The Minor

Momma always said you ain't gonna play no harp with a shotgun. But I disagree. And the Daisy Kids' first single, "Square In The Minor" is proof.

The first official release from Thee Pause and Daisy Berkowitz, this track is full of practical advice for nursing homes and caretakers of all types. "Clean out your head with LSD" being the most practical piece of advice, naturally. And...bravo! Because LSD is good for a great deal of things, including sharpening your sense of humor, something you'll want to have when you listen to the Daisy Kids or follow them on Facebook. Thee Pause programs the beats for the danceaholics in the room and Berkowitz handles guitar and vocals. Add the kitchen sink and you have "Shoot the shit pipe," which is more than just a lyric from the song, but a mantra for the post-aquatic ape theory generation. If we're going to live up to the hype promised in Ancient Aliens, we're gonna need songs like these to help us call the mothership down so we can hitch a ride to the Lizard Planet. Great work if you can get it. And wear a hat, sunshine.

Saturnalian Penis Rites

Is anyone else really sick of bands that call themselves experimental but insist on using guitar, bass and drums while maintaining popular song structures and making use of rhythms, melodies and beats?  While there is no reason you can't make experimental with those, playing chord based hippie music and singing about forks does not make you experimental.  It makes you a lazy cunt.  If you want to be experimental, then learn to play a fork, not write a song about one.  Learn to harmonize with the sounds of your bowel movements and make a recording of that.  Wire a speaker into your mother's pacemaker whilst reading aloud from a road atlas.  That would be experimental.  People seem too worried about what "fans" think.  Not enough people just have fun doing it.

Sorry but you guys may be stuck with me for a few days.  Apparently the normal writer of this blog is being detained while he's being investigated for unlicensed sodomy with an underage equine.  We here at The Mugwump Corporation have no clue how the authorities got that idea about him but we're certainly sorry we caused it.  His situation could easily be rectified but that just wouldn't be as funny.  And if laughter is the best medicine then we could be giving ourselves cancer by allowing him to go free.

I promised to write a piece but I never promised it would be coherent or cohesive.  Or did you not know that Cronus ate his own children for a reason?  Since gender roles didn't apply amongst the gods, yet apparently they had human anatomies, it is obvious he did this so that his milk would be stronger for his surviving children (had he not developed a taste for them and continued eating them)?  I recommend all women who bear more than a single child at a time to do the same.  The surviving baby will thank you for it later.  Cronus, however, was representative of time and time destroys all.  So if you're not a god then beware the legal repercussions.  There is a man in Brazil who has holy milk in his penis that offers salvation to anyone who drinks it.  He has been locked up.  This is just another example of the man trying to keep us down.

 
The answer to last week's word puzzle is "Off on a tangent."  Since no one bothered guessing I won't post another.

We will be taking donations to get Patrick out of jail (when it stops being funny).  Email me personally if you would like to make a contribution.

Equum Copulatum

As some of you may know, Patrick King and I have been friends since before either of us had killed our first man in battle.  Still fledglings, we were.  We used to sit around and drink beer and weave stories like rugs of butt hair.  I lent him some taste in good music and he tried to do the same, but come on, who actually likes the Counting Crows?  I spent more time at his house than my own and called his mother "Mom," still do.  We even dated sisters and at one point decided to switch up.  I only say this to give you an idea of how well I should know him.  Last night, however, I was shocked beyond belief by his unforeseeable and unforgivable actions.

I'd just finished shucking a large pile of bearded clams.  My fingers were as slimy as could be.  Since I don't have any running water, I usually go wipe my hands in a pile of straw I keep for my horses.  As I was approaching the stables I heard my best mare Beulah making sounds of distress.  I opened the creaky stable door and hurried in, expecting that it was nothing more than a possum hissing at her.  Poor dear does scare easily.

There stood Beulah in her little stall, nostrils flared and ears held back against her head like a dog.  And behind her, his paunch keeping time to some rhythm I couldn't hear, was Patrick, fucking my prize mare!  It was ghastly, yet strangely beautiful and entrancing.  After a moment I gathered my wits and I did what any red blooded American would do.  I raised my loaded shotgun (because I only ever set it down to shuck bearded clams) and cried, "You poor bastard, git your greasy green bean outta mah gurl.  She was a virgin and you dun defiled her.  I was savin' her fer mah burfday."

Without even seeming to hear me, he gave a jerk, his eyes bulged out then rolled back.  He opened his mouth and a trumpet sounded.  A disco ball started spinning overhead and the camera panned to curtains blowing in the breeze.  Beulah whinnied, a horn began sprouting from her head and a jar of mayonnaise crashed to the floor.  For a moment they were both shining, I swear.  Horses and humans are the only animals that have hymens.  And most of us don't.  Patrick didn't.  Beulah didn't anymore.  I broke mine years ago when I wrapped my car around a tree.  And now I can never get pregnant.

The wreck also affected my memory.  Now I disbelieve truth and worship legends.  Or maybe I'm just a liar.  Beulah wasn't really Beulah for one.  She was my stallion Blue and he was certainly no virgin.  I had celebrated my birthday early.


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On a completely unrelated note, I've started making word puzzles.  Can anyone guess what this one is?  Leave your guesses in the comments.  I'll give you the right answer in my next post.  You may get the chance to feel clever for a moment.

First Week: Han Solo. Second Week: Meh, Everything Else, I Guess

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Welcome to my class, kids. You'll notice that the first thing listed on the syllabus is "Han Solo." This should be self-explanatory, but I'll elaborate a bit. We'll spend a few days on his hair, a few more on his bravery and a few more on wisecracks. I believe strongly that there's little about life that can't be learned by thoroughly studying Han Solo. Sure, Spinoza had a few good ideas, but could he teach Jabba how to get that weird stain out of his carpet, and look good while doing it? I didn't think so. Suck it, Spinoza.

Han Solo once impersonated my daughter just so he could look up at me with them little baby eyes of his and see if it couldn't make my heart melt. Well, melt my heart did, and right through my chest! After a while it congealed like ketchup and I wondered, gee, will I ever get asked to the prom like this? Would Goat-faced Martha ever look at me the same way again? Would it cause a scandal at the church? Would I ever be able to wear a Cosby Sweater in public again? These questions were all made irrelevant when Han Solo sucked my skin through a vacuum cleaner so that he could better see whether I had any guts. I was pretty as a peacock then, and I knew for sure that Hannah Saltmine would be keen on my taking her to the sock hop in January.

Did you know that Han Solo rides a giant falcon named Marky Mark and he controls it by reaching underneath the chest and yanking on either its right or left nipple, depending on which direction he wants to go? Han Solo uses a blaster because lightsabers are for hippies. When Han Solo found out that Luke Skywalker had kissed his own sister, he made up for it by kissing everyone's sister. Four years later, my sister is still smiling.

Even though nearly everything you need to know about life can be learned by studying Han Solo, we'll still look at a few other things, too. In the second week we'll cover the Greek philosophers, Elvis and modern plumbing. We'll also teach an alligator to hum samurai movie titles and watch plenty of Golden Girls episodes. Classes will conclude when we have destroyed everything anyone has ever held sacred and we transform ourselves into pure light that rides us all the way across the universe.

Students should pack a lunch.

Nubile Tortoise Trampoline Striptease

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You ever go to a party and someone gasps and then you look down and realize that you've completely forgotten to wear any pants or underwear? You definitely don't want this to happen, and especially not at your Granny's 100th birthday party, around fifty or so of her best friends at the retirement home. However, even worse is when they mistake your micropenis for an outie belly button and they poke it and go "boop!" and then give you a quarter.

That day, I left the place with over five hundred quarters.

What to do with that sudden windfall? Invest it, of course! And I found the perfect thing to put my money in: a trampoline tortoise! Not literally, of course, we wouldn't want the little guy to get all weighed down and not be able to bounce around anymore. No, we're putting this shit on YouTube. My friend Bobby, who found the little guy wandering around his back yard the other day, has agreed to let me share in the profits if I toss in some cash for the little guy's funeral. And he's so cute! He holds this little umbrella with his tail and he wears a tophat and says things like "Gee Whiz!" and "Motorboat my marmalade!" We figure he's bound to keel over and drop dead any moment now, and when it does we'll be the only people with exclusive video footage. Zoops! I figure we'll make about $364,843 in revenue, so I'll definitely make my money back. If not, it's back to the retirement home for a few more quarters!

Who Are The Daisy Kids?

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A new band? A crew of interdimensional beer pong champions? Psychedelic rockin' dance musicians gone completely mad? We have very little information to go on at this point, but what we do know is that this is a collaboration between Daisy Berkowitz and THEE PAUSE. It is, if nothing else, guaranteed to be just a little mind-blowing. Here's what they have to say for themselves at their official site:

TRack Race fans know all about the glittering gold sonics that await them whenever the guerilla game is on. Presence of The Daisy Kids is similar and different at the same time - like all humanity. You have heard the past before. NOW hear it again in the future. The lysergic experience ages well for those possessing fine camp fire wine and song. If you remember the Americana TV phrase that preys "stay tuned" - then do so.