Author: admin

When I was a teenager, I loved nothing better than putting on my headphones and listening to “Exile on Main Street” at a body-shaking volume (it being usually late at night when I got the chance). Later on in a misspent youth, quite below the legal drinking age, I made it in to a lot of the first punk bars in Detroit. Clubs like Bookie’s and the New Miami, for those who want to get nostalgic. And when tours were announced for bands other than Journey and Kansas and the Babys and whatever other kind of bastardized rock you can name, I snapped up tickets to those, too, and did everything I could to let the music pound through my body as if I were a jellyfish. After a triumvirate of the Ramones in November 1978, the Police two months later, and the Jam two months after that, I remember feeling like someone had rammed a spike down my ear canals, giving me unsettling pain to go along with the expected ringing in my ears.

The pain eventually stopped, but the ringing never has, and has actually gotten worse over the years.

We could never figure out why I got it quicker and more severely than any of my friends, some of whom were musicians (shouldn’t being in Big Black have had some kind of corrosive effect?). But such is life. Since losing my hearing was the worst thing that ever happened to me (how’d you like to be a writer and not be able to overhear conversations in public?) , I’ve badgered all my nieces and nephews to wear ear protection at concerts. Being smarter than me, they have actually followed my advice. And for anyone reading now, considered yourself badgered. Earplugs have never been easier to find at the store.

If you want to know what it feels like to have constant ringing in your head, check out this story on NPR about composer Brent Michael Davids. A sufferer of tinnitus (the medical name for the high-pitched ringing), Davids wrote “Tinnitus Quartet” to give audiences an idea of what it’s like to have this condition. Listen to that high A in the short snippet in the newsstory, and then imagine having that in your head day and night, every day of your life.

Ironically, even though The Jam was the band that broke my ear’s camel’s back, I didn’t even like them all that much. About three years later, they were one of my favorite bands

It doesn’t make you look like a Yukon fur trader.

It makes you look like a Yukon pimp.

You’ve got it made. Or so says the old joke about acting. But now it appears to apply to marketing as well.

The folks at Urban Outfitters—the same people who last year brought you the feel-good board game for all ages, Ghettopoly—are lending their unique tinsel touch to Christmas decorations. Now, for a mere $24, you can own a replica of that eloquent statement against the commercialization of Christmas, Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

No word on what they would charge for replicas of Zuzu’s petals, but it’s only a matter of time with these kinds of places, who cater to people with disposable income but no style, imagination or (apparently) sense of irony.

Reminds one of those gargantuan Christmas pageants that some megachurches put on, complete with choir, orchestra, and camel riders, that intend to hammer home Christ’s humble beginnings in the most outlandish manner possible. “Christ may have preached a gospel of humility, but really, this is the kind of birthday celebration he’d really like.”

Nothing sells like humility, baby. Milk it, milk it!

When you hand out the sweets at Halloween, do you give the kids the candy you don’t particularly want or like first? If you were down to giving a kid a Reese’s cup—I mean, a full Reese’s cup—and a roll of broken Smarties, you’d give the kid the Smarties, right?

I’m asking because some of the kids who came to my house may be surprised to find leftover Easter candy in their bags. Hey, beggars and costumed extortionists can’t be choosers. They might not even be surprised, and will just eat whatever gets tossed at them.

This weekend, the Cub Scouts were cleaning out their storage locker in the church basement, and were throwing out a bag of Easter candy. This year’s candy, I presume. My son, being admirably frugal, picked the bag out of the pile and brought it home to augment our Halloween candy. And I encouraged him. I thought it was a great idea.

First off, I always freak out on Halloween that we’re going to run out of candy. With every trip to the store, I’ll grab an extra bag of treats, just to have in reserve. When the kids stop home for a break, I make them pull out the things they won’t eat so I can pass them along to someone else. (And who can blame them for getting rid of Three Musketeers bars? Can we send this one to the candy afterlife like Maple Buns and Charleston Chews?)

These weren’t just any Easter nibbles. They were chocolate eggs. (I mean, Marshmallow Peeps would start to get a bit hard by now.) And, they weren’t just any chocolate eggs. These were eggs made of Nestle’s Crunch and Butterfinger and other attempts at crossover monopolization of holiday sweets. So, you know, nothing from the Dollar Store that advertises its chocolate as having “really chocolate flavor.”

When kids I didn’t know came up to the house, I didn’t slip them the Twix bars or the York Peppermints or the M&Ms. Those packets were all visible in the basket, nice and shiny. But I made a little pile of the chocolate eggs right up in the front of the basket, where their little eyes couldn’t see them, and grabbed a couple to toss into the first bags. (Dropping in more than one item always creates a sound that makes me look really generous.) All I’m saying is, if we’re going to end up with any leftovers, it better be the stuff that I’m gonna eat. I even ate one of the little eggs, and it was fine, just fine. I’m still here, aren’t I? It’s not like I really pimped them by handing out toothbrushes or religious pamphlets. Those kinds of people deserve to be deported.

And hell, it wasn’t Christmas candy. That would’ve been a little much. Well, maybe not. Does peppermint have a half-life?

Suicide Mistaken for Halloween Decoration