Tis the Season (for the Airing of the Grievances)

Festivus is here! And that means it's the perfect time for the perfect Barrelhouse group post: The Airing of the Grievances.

I'll get things started. Here's just a sampling of the things that are bugging the shit out of me this year (note that some of these have been elaborated upon in great detail in earlier posts, but, given that this is the holiday season, it seemed appropriate to air them again).

Radio: When was the last time you turned on your radio -- not your satellite radio, not KEXP on your computer, but the actual radio radio -- and heard something that didn’t totally suck? There's a reason people are turning away from traditional (music) radio: because it sucks. It really, really sucks. Special shout out to DC radio, which has to be the worst in the country.

Nicole Ritchie: She's not remotely good-looking or talented or interesting. So why is she all over my goddam Us Weekly?

Britney and K-Fed: Pretty much same as above. Although I have to admit I'm really looking forward to the K-Fed rap album. And also for the divorce. And the rehab. And the K-Fed appearance on the Surreal Life.

The War on Christmas: Does not exist. I'm so sick of hearing about this bullshit, the same kind of fake oppression that got out the homophobe vote last November. Special shout out to my parents' pastor: its especially hard to believe Christmas is under attack in a place that's 95% white christian and 4% white amish.

Fox: Cancelled Arrested Development. Assholes. Special shout out to the American viewer, who turned away from a smart, funny, fresh, great show. Assholes.

Hard Rock Kitsch: It's killing me every time I see a Bob Dylan t-shirt in Bloomingdales, or an AC/DC shirt in Macy's. Something is very very wrong with this. Every time a 12 year old girl buys a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt from Urban Outfitters, we all are diminished in some way.

USA: Can you believe the shit that went down this year? War. Torture. Domestic spying. Environmental rape (that nobody even noticed because the rest of the shit is so bad). Cronyism. Corruption. Coverups. New Orleans. Wow. Hell of a year.

Memoirs: There was a good discussion on this a week ago in this space. To paraphrase Mike, is all you have to do to get a book contract have a shitty childhood or drug riddled adulthood?

Desperate Housewives: Is no good. Finallly, it seems like people are noticing this. Which means in about three years the Golden Globes will stop nominating every single one of the "housewives" for best acress in a comedy. Special shout out to Felicity Huffman, who is great in everything but plays the worst mother ever on this show (special bonus shout out to the notion that having a whole shitload of kids and then being all hassled and hurried and bedraggled is like some kind of badge of honor that everybody should be grateful to you for -- you had the kids, you knew what you were getting into, you're on your own).

SNL: Sucks. Again. Really bad this time.

Tom Cruise: Is insane. Which is funny, but this shit with Brooke Shields and the psychiatry is just plain crazy and kind of dangerous when you realize there are morons out there who might be even marginally influenced by Tom Cruise.

Movie remakes: Stop it already.

Jim Carrey: Stop making that face. Why you gotta make that face at me, man? Seriously. Can we stop rewarding this guy and let him go all Michael Jackson already.

Ashlee Simpson: Sucks. Has no talent. Thinks she's a rocker. And doesn't look as much like Barbie as her sister. She is every single thing that is wrong with music, the radio, MTV, and the rest of the corporate rock machine.

Dr. Phil: This fat bastard is telling us all we need to slim down and getting rich selling crap to morons. Does anything about that sentence make any sense?

Brownie: He really did do a heck of a job, didn't he?

Beer Commercials: Mike had a great post awhile back about the commercials that were bothering him. With the exception of the new "lawyer" commericals for Miller Lite ("That's no scientist. That's Gene Simmons of KISS!"), beer commercials got even more stupid this year. First Coors claimed to be "cold-tasting" and nobody seemed to notice that cold is not, in fact, a taste. They also sent that asshole Pete Coors up to his fake mountain again and had him make inane comments that aren't remotely true ("sometimes we see the perfect tree...and then we just leave it alone"). Then Budweiser created a new label and called itself "Select" and put some uncomfortable looking dude out there to make a bunch of meaningless statements. Again, nobody seemed to notice or care. Which is probably good.

Chappelle: Dude, you had the best show on TV. And now we’ll never see another Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories. It’s not that I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m disappointed. Bummer.

We're an angry bunch. I know you've got some grievances. Air them!

Take That, You Perfect Plastic Little Bitch

"The girls we spoke to see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity, and see the torture as a 'cool' activity," said Agnes Nairn, one of the University of Bath researchers. "The types of mutilation are varied and creative, and range from removing the hair to decapitation, burning, breaking and even microwaving."

Girls like to torture Barbie, according to a new research study.

Which reminds me of Mondo Barbie, created by our friends Richard and Lucinda at Gargoyle. A great read all around, and worth the price of admission for AM Homes "A Real Doll," the ultimate sex with Barbie story.

(Yes, that is a category of story. Or at least it should be.)

Uncle Joey Must Die

It's hard to make jokes about television when television itself steals all the best punch lines and turns them into reality shows. Will people actually watch the upcoming "Skating With Celebrities?" I wouldn't think so, but then again I didn't think anyone would watch "Dancing With the Stars," and that turned out to be summer's big ratings winner.

Do people really care about ice skating? Probably not, but did people really care about ballroom dancing?

Here's the only reason I can think of to tune in: Dave Coulier will try to seduce Kristy Swanson by making those stupid Looney Tunes voices and she might get mad enough to remember the martial arts moves she learned on the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the film version starring Luke Perry, not the popular television series) and then she'll do what every American has wanted to do since season two of Full House and slice Uncle Joey's pasty white neck open with the blade of her skate.

Now that would be compelling television.

The Chronic -- WHAT -- Cles of Narnia!

Saturday Night Live is deader than dead, for maybe the fifth time in my lifetime, but this is really, really funny.

I haven't watched the show for awhile, so I don't even know if these guys are regulars or not, but this is a completely random fake rap song, with a kickass chorus ("The Chronic -- WHAT -- Cles of Narnia!"), a parody of product placement and maybe the Beastie Boys, a shout out to our boy Swayze, and references to dropping Hamiltons

"Reach into my pocket, pull out some dough.
Girl acted like she never seen a ten before!
We all about the Hamiltons, bay-bee.
And I'm Ghost like Patrick Swayze".

Check it out.

Press Release of the Week: What Would Jesus Buy?

Well, kiddies, it's the holidays, and you know what that means, right? Shopping, and lots of it! Proving your love to others by buying them lots of expensive crap.

That is, unless a group calling itself The Church of Stop Shopping has its say. The "church," which has been on a nationwide Stop the Shopocalypse tour, thinks Christmas is becoming too much about the shopping and not enough about some dude named "Jesus," who apparently was born in a manger on Dec. 25 many, many years ago and preached a bunch of confusing sermons and bought his friends and relatives really chintzy gifts.

"'When people get trampled for a $300 computer at Wal-Mart, when everyone wants to smell like J.Lo, and when even the Pope declares Christmas is polluted by consumerism, we are witnessing the Shopocalypse!" exclaimed Reverend Billy (a.k.a. Bill Talen) on Chicago's Magnificent Mile."

I guess I can't really argue with that. In my own personal visions of the Apocalypse, the rivers run red with the blood of the infidels, the moon goes black and everyone smells exactly like J. Lo.

Apparently Reverend Billy and his crew recently brought their Scrooge-like message to shoppers at the Mall of America. "What I want to know is, 'What Would Jesus Buy?' Would he wait in line at 5 AM to get a new X-Box 360 or drive his SUV cross-town to get 13 pairs of panties for a dollar? Last time I checked, it was his birthday we were supposed to be celebrating: why in the world is everyone else getting presents?"

Wait a minute, Rev. Billy. First of all, isn't Jesus like all magic and shit? Does he really have to wait in line for anything? My guess is, Jesus just pulls some old Play Station 2 out of a dumpster, waves his little magic God wand all over it and POOF: XBox 360.

Second of all, why is Jesus buying cheapo panties? What, sir, are you implying about our Lord and Savior? That he's some kind of pervy sniffer of women's drawers? Because maybe you're been watching too many late-night movies and should just stop your blasphemy right now before Jesus shoots down a magic lightning bold and strikes you dead.

And third of all, if Christmas is Jesus' birthday, and each of us has Jesus in our souls, then shouldn't each of us be getting presents to celebrate the birthday of the tiny Jesus in our souls? See, Rev. Billy, you may think we're buying each other cardigans and jewelry and shiny new Lexi topped with gigantic bows because we're greedy. But you are wrong. We're just gifting our tiny internal Jesuses. Because otherwise tiny Jesus gets sad, and lonely, and then he cries.

Oh, and if you're reading this, Mom and Dad, my tiny Jesus would really like an ipod Nano.

An Open Letter to the Guy on the Metro Wearing Your Bluetooth Headset at 8:00 in the Morning

Dear Guy on the Metro Wearing Your Bluetooth Headset at 8:00 in the Morning,

Let's cut to the chase. Nobody cares about your new bluetooth headset.

Nobody.

Your wife doesn't care. Your friends don't care. And perhaps most of all, the people on the Red Line from Shady Grove at 8:00 in the morning really don't care.

Hey, man, I'm a geek, too. I check the Woot every day. I have all kinds of gadgets I'll never need. I kind of understand the urge to say, Hey World, look at me! I can answer calls from my cell phone with absolutely no wires connecting my earpiece to my phone! I have a thingamagig attached to my ear, like a Vulcan or some kind of commuter cyborg! I am a hip, happening, technologically advanced kind of guy with 80 dollars worth of disposable income that I am unafraid to blow at the Verizon kiosk in the mall!

But come on, man. Is that thing even turned on? It's 8:00 in the morning. Who might call you? What kind of profoundly important commuter are you that you can't wait the twenty minutes to get to Farragut North?

Perhaps these lists will help illustrate my point.

People Who Do Not Need to be Wearing Bluetooth Headsets At All Times:

• The President
  
• The Vice President
  
• The Members of Congress
  
• The Supreme Court
  
• The Dalai Lama
  
• Bono
  
• Bill Gates
  

A List of People Who Are So Important They Need to Be Wearing Their Bluetooth Headsets At All Times:

• You
  
• That other douche bag a few rows away
  

It's a problem of translation. A misunderstanding. You think your bluetooth headset is saying "I am on the cutting edge. I am a hip, happening guy. I am The Man. I am so technologically advanced as to be admired by all who bear witness to me and my all-powerful bluetooth headset."

But what you're bluetooth headset is actually saying, and perhaps you'd hear this if the stupid-ass thing wasn't jammed in your ear at all times of the day, is "I'm a total fucking dickwad with a massive sense of overimportance."

I know you're waiting for somebody -- perhaps the cute blond in the little business suit and the iPod -- to ask you about your bluetooth headset. But how would that go? I'm curious. In your head, is this how it goes down?

Blonde: My goodness, what is that fabulously sexy device attached to your ear?

You: Oh, am I wearing that old thing? Yeah, I guess I am. That's just my bluetooth headset.

Blonde: I don't usually do this, but...maybe we could get off this train right now, get ourselves a room at the Doubletree, and you could tell me all about it.

I think I have a solution, a way to work this out so everybody will be happy. You see, there's another guy, maybe you've seen him -- he's on the last car every day, around this time. He's the one with the segway and the "Ask me about my segway!" look on his face.

Go to him. Ask about his segway. Tell him about your headset. Execute the geek technical reacharound that you know you're dying for. Then sit back, relax, and take that stupid-looking thing out of your ear.

Thanks, man.

Oh, and nice headset.

Does this make Franzen Tupac?

I imagine you all know about the pissing contest between Ben Marcus and Jonathan Franzen, though perhaps that's only because I live in Iowa City, where people talk about books the way people in D.C. talk about politics (that is: incessantly, until you want nothing more than to curl up on the couch with a beer and The Cartoon Network). For those who are unfamiliar, here's the very brief recap: Franzen, some time ago, wrote an essay called "Mr. Difficult" in which he complained that certain William Gaddis books were difficult to get through, to the extent that their difficulty seemed to be the very point of their existence. Marcus recently wrote an essay for Harper's in response, ostensibly making the argument that experimental writers are under attack but, in the process, taking so many potshots at Franzen that the point of the essay seemed to be to take Franzen down a notch more so than to make any coherent aesthetic argument. Of course I'm oversimplifying.

Leave it to Sherman Alexie to bring some perspective (and a sense of humor) to the issue. Here's Alexie's letter to the editor from this month's Harper's:

"Does Ben Marcus, educated at NYU and Brown, employed by Columbia, and published by Anchor, Vintage and Harper's, truly believe that he is an excluded experimentalist? Does he honestly believe that Jonathan Franzen, educated at Swarthmore, once employed by Harvard, and published by FSG and Harper's, is somehow more elitist? Or is Franzen the populist? Or is a populist elitist? Is there really much difference between Marcus and Franzen? This East Coast-East Coast Literary Rap War reminds me of the Far Side cartoon in which a lone penguin, suffering in a crowd of millions of exactly similar penguins, rises and shouts 'I just have to be me!'"

Feel The Madness: Macho Man's Music Career

“I'm the wrestlin' king but now I'm spittin' lyrics
Took a break from the ring cuz I want y'all to hear this
Comin' on a medium nobody expected
Been in the game for years and I'm still respected
Macho Man Randy Savage the true chief warrior
Critics I'm ignoring' ya to ladies it's euphoria
People on the streets say "Randy you the illest"
And I'm one of the realest so it's not hard to feel this”

…So begins track 1 of “Macho Man” Randy Savage’s album, Be A Man, immediately alerting the listener that this isn’t your traditional PG-rated rap album recorded by a fading wrestling star who may be best known as the spokesman for Slim Jim. In fact, Savage shatters all previous stereotypes of that genre, with his aggressive lyrics and catchy beats, serving notice to both the rap world and his rivals that he’s back and ready to battle for our love. Of course, most of his fighting is now done through wicked wordplay, but he still has that old fighter’s heart, as he shows in the title track, “Be A Man,” in which he calls out rival/partner/well-wisher/accomplice (it’s so hard to keep up with the ever-shifting and repetitive pro wrestling storylines, and, believe me, I tried for a very long time) Hulk Hogan, calling him a “real big punk,” for continually dodging Savage. Presumably, Hogan was too busy either bandanna shopping, filming his awful and contrived reality show, or simultaneously whoring and protecting his daughter to respond to Savage’s challenge. As a fellow wrestling legend, Hogan only owes it to Savage to engage in a Rocky V-style street brawl, especially since Savage seems to have forgotten that his feuds with Hogan were actually scripted and not real. Throw the poor guy a bone, Hogan—he’s too frightening to spend his twilight years on VH1, unlike you, who softened your image with highly underrated movies like Mr. Nanny and Santa With Muscles.

Beyond his continuing feud with Hogan, however, Savage manages to cover an impressive range of subjects, including pro wrestling, rapping, self-aggrandizing, and his major role in Spiderman, as Bonesaw, the pro wrestler who looks like Randy Savage. Outside of more pedestrian tracks like “Macho Thang” and “Gonna Be Trouble,” Savage does reach heights never before seen by anyone outside of Sir Edmund Hilary. He even manipulates the form and pays homage to the great poets by including poetry of his own. No, it’s not a haiku or a sonnet; it’s better. In “Remember Me,” he spits an acrostic for “MachoMan” so hot that you’d better wear earmuffs, lest you get burned:

“
M’s cause I push it to the Maximum,
A is for the aura that they try to become,
C is for the champ, five times
H is for Hollywood, I was in Spiderman
O is for Ohhhh Yeah!”

I’ll save you rest, because I don’t want to blow your mind.

Beyond this wizardly wordplay and staged bravado, though, Savage does reveal his soft side, in the song “Perfect Friend,” a tribute to Curt Henning (aka- Mr. Perfect), one of many pro wrestlers who died long before their time. To describe his lyrics with my dime store prose would be to cheapen his tribute, so I’ll let Savage speak for himself:

“Remember Mr. Perfect
He was always in command
His greatness was so obvious that all could understand
Brightened up a locker room
Made the time go by
He had personality
Gregarious, not shy.”

I had been writing a similar song for fellow Barrelhouser, Mike—who really does make the time go by, my favorite quality in a person—but Savage’s efforts shamed me, especially when I looked at my own line: “Talkative, not reserved.” I still plan to pay tribute to him, but I may have to try a different form, because Savage’s brilliance has precluded me from ever dabbling in rap again. And, I’ll have you know, prior to this life-changing experience, the kids thought I was pretty radical with the hip-hop music.

Some may look at this album as some kind of a joke, but those people, frankly are just plain ignorant, and they probably hate America. This album is a shining example of the brilliance that can be created when someone pours love, dedication, desperation for cash and salted beef snacks into their craft. I highly recommend it to all Barrelhousers, who can buy it used at Amazon.com, and would be best served by simply destroying the rest of their CDs before this one does it for them by executing a high-flying elbow drop on its competition in the CD case. I give Be A Man 5 enthusiastic Ohhhhh Yeahs out of 5. After all, Randy is the illest.

Things That I Hate

I've often been accused of being nice. I say "accused" because when people say you're nice, a lot of the time what they're really saying is that you're a pushover, a softie, a bitch. And while I like to think it's true that I am nice in the important ways -- I generally try to do right by my friends, I don't kick dogs, and if I were walking by a lake or a river and saw that a small child was struggling to keep from going under I'd more than likely dive in, even though I'd probably just end up drowning the both of us -- I do also hate certain things. Lots of things, actually. In fact, sometimes under the outward "niceness" (a product of my Southern upbringing) I'm actually bubbling over with old-man-style grumpiness and irritation. And so I thought perhaps it would be helpful for my psychological well-being if I vented a little bit about some of the things that get under my skin. A few of these are tangentially related to pop culture, while others aren't. But things have been slow lately around the ol' blog, which I feel gives me license to write about whatever the hell I want. Deal with it, chumps.

1. Marilyn vos Savant. Riddle me this, Marilyn: if you are indeed one of the world's smartest women, as you so proudly declaim, how come the best you've been able to accomplish is a tiny weekly column in the back of Parade Magazine wedged between ads for Precious Moments figurines and NASCAR commemorative plates?

2. Actually, I pretty much hate all of Parade Magazine. Those stupid celebrity bits in the beginning (and you can drop the act; we know you're making up those questions. No one is writing in to say "I just love C. Thomas Howell -- what a dish! Can you tell us what projects he's working on now?"). The "fitness column" that dispenses such helpful advice as "Oranges are good for you!" and "Try walking!" Q&A's with such stars as Angela Landsbury and Bea Arthur. That sickeningly cutesy feature in which "real kids" write about their problems ("Middle school math is hard!" "My cat's breath smells like cat food!") Let me just say this, as a general rule: if you're the editor of a magazine in which the most compelling weekly feature is the comic strip "Howard Huge," please, for the love of God, do humanity a favor and just stop publishing.

3. People who think that just because a movie is old, or French, or subtitled, that it's necessarily good. Or that any major-release movie of the last ten years, by virtue of its being shown at suburban googaplexes, is necessarily bad. You know what? Sometimes it's fun to watch things get blown up. Sometimes it's fun to laugh. But very rarely is it fun to watch a fedora float on the wind for thirty minutes while a slow organ dirge plays in the background. I'm not saying there aren't plenty of great foreign films, because there are. Of course there are. Just like there are some great old black and white films (I'm partial to Hitchcock, myself). But French people aren't immune from making bad movies (these are the same people who are still celebrating the collected works of Jerry Lewis). And the aging process doesn't make shit stink less. Fifty years from now, will there will be faux intellectuals pretending that XXX: State of the Union is a "lost classic"?

4. People who are so scared shitless at the prospect of silence they can't sit in a goddamn airport waiting area for twenty measly minutes without calling every single person they know on their cellular phone. I guess this complaint is fairly fresh in my head because I just flew yesterday, and the shuttle that took me to the airport was running early and so I found myself with some extra waiting time at the gate area. Where I then made the unfortunate mistake of sitting between two people who apparently were just scrolling through their cell phone contact list and calling people at random. "Hi, Aunt June? No, no, it's Steve. Oh, I just wanted to say hi. What? The airport. No, it's been pretty nice here. How's the colitis?" Is the idea of reading -- or just sitting quietly -- really so abhorrent? Perhaps I should be grateful for their calls, though. Perhaps when things go quiet, the voices in these people's heads start talking to them, telling them to find the nearest book reader and cut him up into tiny bite-sized pieces.

5. Ann Coulter. If I were to wish out loud for a team of terrorists to fly a plane directly into Ann Coulter's face, would I just be sinking to her level of discourse?

6. The annual complaint that Christmas is too secularized. Particularly because the "fix" is for holiday shopping outlets to more frequently use the term "Christmas" in their advertisements. Does no one else see the irony in this? It seems to me like you have two choices for a religious holiday. Either emphasize the religious and/or spiritual aspects of said holiday, which will necessarily make it rather quiet and subdued and the sort of thing only a small percentage of people will seriously celebrate. Or add some flash to make it more popular: fireworks, or lots of gifts, or a big fat man in a red suit who gets his jollies by asking small children to sit on his lap.

7. The glut of memoir writing. There was a time, not so very long ago, when to write a memoir a person had to actually accomplish something: scale a mountain, serve as president, lead an expedition to the North Pole, contract some horrible disease but then make a miraculous recovery. Now, apparently all that's required is a moderately unhappy childhood and an inflated sense of self-importance. I'm willing to make an exception if the person is a terrificly talented writer and not especially whiny and self-absorbed (David Sedaris = fine. Elizabeth Wurtzel = no no no no no).

8. People who use their blogs to incessantly whine and complain. Oh, wait. Scratch that one.

Like Nancy Drew for (almost) adults

You fellow Barrelhousers will no doubt be shocked at this development, but I haven't watched The OC in roughly six weeks. At first it was just because I had other, more important things to do on Thursdays. But then I realized that I wasn't too keen on going back into the fold, as the show had started its long train ride to Suck Town. The last straw (and the last episode I saw) was when Marissa went to public school and was suddenly surrounded by the cast of West Side Story.

So now I kind of feel like an addict making his first tentative steps toward sobriety. Look at all the people out and about on Thursday evenings! The lights are all so bright! Why are there bugs crawling all over my skin?!

Luckily, I have my methadone in the form of Veronica Mars, my new guilty pleasure TV addiction. On the one hand, I realize being addicted to Veronica Mars is one step up on the coolness ladder from being a devotee of Everwood. But on the other hand, the show's really entertaining. Veronica solves mysteries, so it's kinda like Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys (or Scooby Doo, minus the super-cool van). There are enough bitchy rich people to fill in for the Newport noopsies. And she has lots of cool surveillance gadgets.

So, is there any reason I should start watching The OC again? In a way, I feel like I've abandoned an old friend in his time of need. But the truth is that friend was starting to get kind of needy and melodramatic, always bursting into tears over the phone and burdening me with all his stupid problems. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to leave people alone to fix their own problems.

Hold Steady

I didn’t get it at first. I had heard a lot about this band The Hold Steady. All the usual places were telling me I should really like them: John Richards of KEXP, Pitchfork, Popmatters, Rolling Stone. I downloaded the newish CD, Separation Sunday, and listened to a few tracks. Here’s where I should mention that I’m simple. I like big, easy choruses. I like AC/DC, the Clash. I even like Rancid, just because they sound like a Clash chorus cover band. Shit, I have some Alarm songs rattling around my mp3 player right now.

So the Hold Steady didn’t do it for me. The band rocked. Even I could tell that. And the lead singer’s voice was an interesting mix of Joe Strummer and a homeless guy yelling at people at the entrance to the metro. Everything sounded a little off kilter, like maybe they were a little buzzed and a little pissed off. But no choruses to speak of, nothing for my simple brain to latch onto, and so I kind of forgot about the Hold Steady.

But then, and this pains me to admit it, I heard a thing on NPR. I should note that I know NPR is really not the place to hear about happening new bands, and here I'm thinking about the rave review I once heard of The Streets, which can aptly be called “Rap for people who listen to NPR” (as opposed to Dizzee Rascal, who is the glorious mess of an English rapper they really wanted The Streets to be). But I digress. They raved about the literate rockers and the charismatic frontman and what sounded like a smart bar band, maybe a little drunk, ranting short stories in packed, sweaty clubs. Now that sounded interesting.

I listened to it again. A bunch of times. I’m still pretty much listening.

The band’s own website describes them as “a spectacular mess of sprawling guitar, ferocious vocals, and well-channeled, raucous irritation,” and that’s a pretty good description. I might say “The Clash playing Bruce Springsteen songs while a sober Shane MacGowen shouts passages from Denis Johnson short stories.”

And they really do sound like short stories. Here’s a piece of Cattle and the Creeping Things (note: formatting isn't mine -- this is how they list the lyrics on the band's site, and they're about the only band I can think of for which this is appropriate):

they got to the part with the cattle and the creeping things. they said i'm pretty sure we've heard this one before. don't it all end up in some revelation? with 4 guys on horses, and violent red visions famine and death and pestilence and war. i'm pretty sure i heard this one before. you in the corner with a good looking drifter. two cups of coffee and ten packs of sugar. i heard gideon saw you in denver. he said you're contagious. silly rabbit. tripping is for teenagers. murder is for murderers. and hard drugs are for bartenders. i think i might have mentioned that before.

he's got the pages in his pockets that he ripped out of the bible from his bedstand in the motel. he likes the part where the traders get chased out from the temple. i guess i heard about original sin. i heard the dude blamed the chick. i heard the chick blamed the snake. i heard they were naked when they got busted. i heard things ain't been the same since. you on the streets with a tendency to preach to the choir. wired for sound and down with whatever. i heard gideon did you in denver.

Or this piece of A Multitude of Casualties:

it's a funny bit of chemistry. how a cool car makes a guy seem that much cooler. it's worth noting throughout history. kids come around corners to a multitude of casualties. we spent a few hours circling the city. like a hawk out on the highways. we were looking around for something that just died. we heard the deacon's hopeful eulogy. at least in dying you don't have to deal with new wave for a second time.

after your party we got off the grid. we just couldn't get with all those clever kids. now we forage on the frontage roads. we drive at nites i guess it just feels somewhat safer. we scrounge around for sustinence. we mostly eat it in the back half of the theaters. we spent a few years nodding off in matinees. high as hell and shivering and smashed. we were hoping for an action adventure. something loud that we could feel thru all the feminax. and after the movie we got off the ground. got in yr car and crawled around in lowertown.

Now imagine Shane MacGowan shouting that shit over a really tight bar band that’s playing something that sounds like a pissed off, sped up Darkness on the Edge of Town.

I never know how to end these things, so I’ll just say you should check it out for yourself. Here’s where you can grab an mp3 of Your Little Hoodrat Friend, which is my favorite song on the album and the one that’s rattling around in my head right now.