JHUS Staging

Tag: 2009

  • God, Glue-Guns, and Glory

    This curated-and-updated post was originally published Oct. 29, 2009, and centers around a situation in which Home Depot terminated an employee named Trevor Keezer for refusing to remove a pin from his work uniform, while working, that read “One Nation, Under God, INDIVISIBLE.” You may recognize this as one of the many Islamophobic slogans that was flying around during the decade or so after 9-11 (and to some extent still are). The company’s policy was that employees may not wear anything on their uniform that wasn’t provided by the company. While a great deal of noise was made in right-wing media over the whole thing and indeed a lawsuit was filed, there’s no indication it ever went to court, and indeed it seems to have just been quietly dropped after a year of right-wing media outlets trying to drum out outrage over the “discrimination” against Christianity.

    This essay is presented as originally written in the immediate aftermath of the event, with minor editorial corrections and edits. -jh

    I’m definitely missing my camcorder today as this pointless, divisive kerfluffle over some redneck getting fired for pushing his religion on people on the workplace.  What a great topic for a video rant…

    I find it hilarious that so many people get all het up and whiny about BOYCOTT HOME DEPOT THOSE ATHEIST EVUL COMMIES, but boy wouldn’t they feel differently if the guy expressing his religious views on his work uniform was a Muslim, druid, or follower of Cthulhu?  But no, it’s shove those noses in the air, start wringing your hands, and quick everybody get wrapped up in a my-god-is-better-than-your-god argument that solves nothing and distracts us from dealing with the very REAL and PRESENT and OBSERVABLE problems that we are wrapped up in.

    A friend on Facebook linked to the Today show’s little fan page there, where one such conversation is taking place.  it’s hilarious.  “It’s not freedom FROM religion it’s freedom OF religion!”  Uh…same thing, Captain Logic  Freedom of religion by necessity includes the freedom to not participate in any religion at all without fear of persecution or discrimination.  And then it’s the same tired old arguments that have been shot down time and time and time again over how this is a ‘Christian nation’ (it isn’t and it never was) or how anyone who doesn’t believe in Jethro Bodine’s particular concept of “God” is unpatriotic and evil and should LUV IT ER LEEV IT.

    Now there’s a proud American sentiment, eh?  You must worship according to our rules or be rejected from society.  Oh, hey, waitaminnit, that’s the whole reason we (well, YOU.  My people are native american, dutch, and black) left England in the first place, isn’t it?

    What I can’t figure out is where all of these ‘good Christians’ get the fancy bibles that are missing the first part of Matthew 6.  Especially verse five:

    And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

    This is one of the most important verses in the Christian canon, and one of the most overlooked.  In short, it says “you keep your religion between you and your god, rather than displaying it openly so that you can make money or impress people with your piety.  ‘God’ does not care if your friends are impressed with how holy you are, so STFU and keep it to yourself.  Anything else is stagecraft and hypocrisy.  I AM, that which I AM, and I do not need to pursue or convince my creatures of my power, nor need I for you to pursue or convince them on My behalf; they will choose to come to me.”

    I’ve seen this behavior at many large companies I’ve been employed by over the years, people decorating their cubes with their little holier-than-thou displays of bible verse and self-aggrandizing piety.  It made me terribly uncomfortable, afraid to express myself openly.  I even had colleagues ask me what church I attended – love that assumption that I attend ANY church, let alone that it’s anyone else’s damn business which one.

    (Sidebar:  One of the precious, self-righteous jerks I observed made the remark that one of HD’s competitors offers a standard military discount, so they were a better store anyway.  My first thought:  WTF lady you sent your husband off to die so you could get a good price on f’n gutters?!  How callous.)

    I don’t have anything against believers, personally.  I just don’t believe that your beliefs give you the right to force those beliefs on anyone else, particularly when you’re in a public-facing customer service role; it’s obnoxious, unwelcoming, and exclusionary to anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs – which, frankly, is the entire point of doing it so let’s not kid ourselves. 

    You want to blog about Jesus and pray in your facebook status, that’s no skin off my nose in the least. I don’t want to be prayed over at Home Depot or have my soul saved at McDonalds or get into a long discussion about my religious beliefs when I try to buy a slurpee.

    I still can find no Christian principle is supported by wearing buttons and slogans on my clothing to push my views on other people when I’m at work.  That guy wasn’t being paid to proselytize, he was being paid to stock shelves or run a cash register.  When I’ve had corporate jobs I haven’t decorated my workspace with political or social or religious messages.  Of course I have opinions, that much should be no secret by now, but I also have enough grace and respect for others to not make their work day uncomfortable by broadcasting them in that forum.  That’s not where they belong. 

    Believe what you want.  I won’t hold it against you, in and of itself. Do I have things to say about these issues?  Of course…but not when I’m working for someone else.  If I’m stocking shelves or building databases or whatever, I’m being paid to do that, and all of my time save that which is necessary to attend to the necessities of human body function – i.e. eating, drinking, restroom, and a short step-away every few hours to ‘cleanse the palate’ and clear the head for more effective work function – should be spent doing that.

    But more than anything else, what really chaps my ass about this whole thing is the smug tyranny of the majority, that obnoxious and distinctly un-Christian attitude that so many self-proclaimed followers of Jesus display to the rest of the world.  You know, that condescending crap they wrap around themselves that screams to the world, “I am a member of a special club, and if you don’t do things my way you can’t join my special club, and then I and all of my special friends will make fun of you and not rent apartments to you and not let you eat at our restaurants or date our daughters or work for us, because YOU are not one of US, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it because GAWD is on MY SIDE.”

    This root and its derivatives are, and have always been, among the fundamental causes of human misery.

    Isn’t it ironic that so many followers of the “Prince of Peace” will cheerfully do violence and wage war in his name?  Isn’t it ironic, that so many followers of the man who said “Be ye kind one unto another, tenderhearted, forgiving…” (Ephesians 4:32) are so cruel and heartless in their dealings with one another.  That the religion which gave us the concept of pride as sin should give rise to such pride-filled followers; that the religion which purports to teach us that judgment lies solely in the hands of the Almighty should generate so many adherents who incessantly judge others on their mode of worship, their sexual habits, or whatever else, rarely if ever exercising such strict judgment on themselves.

    Every one of us – every one of us – has skeletons in our closet.  We are all human, we are all fallible, and we are all in this together.  Anything that separates us one from another in the greater sense, as religion unquestionably does, is by definition genocidal…if slowly.

    The guy shouldn’t have had the pin on his uniform.  When the whole story’s out, it’s likely that he was asked/told/warned about this several times, and further that his decision to start publicly practicing his religion at work was intended to get him fired and provoke just this kind of self-righteous indignance, once again warming the fires that keep us from coming together as one people to solve our common problems, face our common threats, and improve our common state of being. [Ed. note 2023 – the eventual playing out of this case in one brief announcement of a lawsuit a year later followed by dead silence from all sides bears this analysis out entirely. He was in fact asked, told, warned, and even offered a company approved pin reading “United We Stand,” which is the same sentiment minute the Islamophobia/Christian proseltyzing. -jh]

    tl;dr:  deer xtians more cheekturning plz

  • Bill Hicks: The Dark Poet Rises

    Curated post, originally published Feb 23, 2009. I’ve made some edits to make the reading of it less tied to the original publication date.

    William Melvin “Bill” Hicks was not always the most moderate fella.

    “If you’re in advertising and marketing…kill yourself. You are fucked and you are fucking us, you are Satan’s spawn, kill yourself. There’s no joke here…I know you advertising folks are like ‘Oh I see what he’s doing, he’s going for that righteous indignation dollar that’s very clever,’ no…STOP PUTTING A GODDAMNED DOLLAR SIGN ON EVERYTHING ON THIS FUCKING PLANET!”

    Bill Hicks, “Revelations”

    As of the time I’m dragging this (now fifteen year old) post out of the archive, in a few months it will be fully thirty years since the passing of of one of the world’s greatest socio-political analysts, ever.

    Consequently, the guy’s been on my mind a lot lately.  But then, Bill Hicks has a way of always being on my mind, even when I don’t know it.  As I look back through my own writing over the years – I’m allowed, I’m an egomaniac just like almost everyone else – it strikes me sometimes how often what I’ve said unintentionally reflects back to an idea that germinated with or was reinforced or articulated or enhanced by something I heard Hicks say.  In much the same way Chris Cornell’s lyrics have followed, almost eerily, the track of my life, so Hicks’ opinions on everything from drugs to God to willful ignorance have, but usually without the melody.

    Hicks was a man of contradictions; a walking hypocrisy.  I can relate to that as well; on the one hand I really do believe that, fundamentally, whatever nickname our Creator might prefer to be called the ultimate purpose of human life is beauty, love, peace, and hope.  I want to spread that love, add to that beauty, give that hope, bring that peace.  On the other hand, like Hicks, I often find myself experiencing explosive anger, withering contempt and a heartfelt and passionate disdain for those who choose to live in deliberate ignorance, afraid to consider ideas that fall outside the scope of beliefs that many of them formed or had pushed on to them before they reached puberty. Why don’t people ask questions?  Why do people refuse to see reality when it’s standing right there?  How can people be so arrogant as to consistently confuse the Will Of The Almighty Creator And Shaper Of Universes with their desire for a Porsche?

    I don’t think that Mr. Hicks would be real thrilled about the state of America today; in that, I believe him to be among the greatest of Americans.  A friend does not allow you to walk around a party with a feather on your chin; someone who loves you does not leave your errors uncorrected.  A friend, a lover, wants the best for you, and I believe that Bill wanted the best for us, and for this country, and for the world…even if it meant kicking our asses and hurting our feelings to get it.

    Younger people, for whom Hicks is at best a relic of a previous generation, often underestimate his impact.  A very good friend of mine, in her early twenties, remarked to me yesterday that she wasn’t as “in love” with Hicks as I was.  I suppose that’s understandable – after all, you’ve got everyone from Denis “Pancreatic Cancer Saved My Career” Leary to Keith Olbermann channelling Hicks on a regular basis all over the place now…not to mention, of course, millions of blogs just like this one written by people who believe themselves to be every bit as witty and insightful as I am.  But back then…back then you could count on two hands the number of non-musical performers who had even attempted to say these things.  You know how many comedians there were in 1989 who would freely and openly admit to having not only done illegal drugs, but enjoyed them?  Five.  Carlin, Pryor, Williams, Hicks, and Kinison.  Even today, how many comedians could get away with this bit:

    “‘We have nothing against America, we just want to see George Bush beheaded and his head kicked down the road like a soccer ball.’ Gee, thats what I want to see, who’d’a thunk it, me and Saddam, we’re like this! *crosses his fingers*…”

    Bill Hicks, “Me and Saddam”

    If any comedian had said something like that on a stage between 2002 and 2006 or so he or she would be living in legitimate fear for their life.  Hicks was the guy who said he was “for the war…but against the troops.”  These days that kind of sentiment could get you shot.  As it was, Hicks dodged at least one pissed-off redneck with a loaded gun, and had his leg broken by a pair of others, for routines like this and his scathing takes on Christianity.  Then he turned the broken leg incident into one of his best bits…

    “I did that routine about Jesus at some club in Fyffe, Alabama…after the show these two guys come up to me back stage:

    ‘Hey buddy – come here (shoves Bill away – beautiful subtlety there)! Hey Mr. Comedian, Come here (another shove)! Hey, buddy, we’re Christians and we dont like what you said about Jesus!’

    ‘Yeah?’ I said, ‘Well, then…forgive me.’”

    Bill Hicks, “One Night Stand” and other recordings

    Hicks never flinched from putting himself under the same microscope as he did everyone else.  Although he cloaked himself in the trappings of stand-up comedy, he was much more akin to a motivational speaker or the ancient Greek philosophers; observing and reporting the world as he understood it, in the hopes that those listening would understand, learn, grow, and propagate.

    [When I originally wrote this article in 2009] 15 years after his death, as I look around this country and this world, I question how successful he was in that regard.  After all, we had to elect another Bush – TWICE! – before we clued in to the game of hate and fear that the hardcore conservative contingent in this country represents and embraces.  But then, you know, there’s this whole Obama election thing, which on the one hand definitely has a tinge of that “cult of personality” and mindless groupthink that has worked against us before, but also has an aftertaste of Joe Public being sick of the status quo.  I think that Nancy Pelosi and other hard-core left-wing politicians may be surprised to find that they didn’t actually win in November of last year; I think there’s finally a substantial portion of the populace who actually voted the “I have had enough of this shit” ticket.  maybe not a majority, maybe not even a majority of those who voted for the eventual victor…but it’s there.

    And it’s building, and getting bigger, and more cohesive, and the radical fringe is being moved out of the way and dismissed while those with more carefully-considered opinions seem to finally be stepping up to the plate.

    Maybe it’s too much to hope for…but this week, a decade and a half after the death of Bill Hicks…maybe someone finally gets it.

    Bill Hicks
    1961-1994

    [2023: All things considered…it was definitely too much to hope for. Indeed, reading this back fifteen years later it seems almost hopelessly naïve and starry-eyed. After the uplift of the Obama years, the Trump presidency dragged all the cockroaches and scum out into the light and made them the mainstream, and we probably won’t get back to even the pitiful level of social progress we’d reached in 1993 before my grandkids are my age.

    Then we have the problem of the people who have attached themselves to Hicks over the last fifteen years. Rather than a group of people deeply into spirituality and the turning of disappointed idealism into raging, scathing, razor-sharp wit that pushes boundaries, expanding the mind beyond its usual, culturally imposed boundaries and seeking new truth, most of the people I run into these days who claim an affinity for Hicks are raging little incels, gibbering conspiracy theorists, misogynist dough-faced egomaniacs falling short of being career domestic abusers only because they can’t get close enough to having a partner to become abusive toward them.

    They’ve taken the shadiest bits of Hicks’ routines – some of which frankly don’t hold up well three decades later – and make it a personality, while ignoring the fundamental, abiding love and concern for humanity that fueled all of it…which retroactively makes Hicks start looking like the pasty, bitter, anaerobic losers who have begun attaching themselves to him, rather than simply someone who was incredibly funny in his time and whose humor often carried perspectives that we have – and he undoubtedly would have – grown out of and rejected

    In the end they’ve largely reduced him to “do drugs, Elmer Dinkley, conspiracy theories.”

    Like so many of the people who informed and elevated my own perspective as a teenager and young man in the 80s and 90s, I really wish he’d have stayed obscure after he died. Not like he’s getting anything out of the attention now, and most of the people giving it to him clearly weren’t listening to anything he said other than the little bits that gratified their own frail and unwarranted egos.

    They’ve taken a complex and beautiful set of philosophies and turned it into an hour of dick jokes, and I pretty much hate them for that. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity over the years to end up getting to know, a little bit, over the internet, so many of the ‘Texas Outlaw Comics’ who were Hicks’ friends and colleagues. It helps mitigate the sting of watching him and his work be co-opted by the same losers he was trying to make take a look at themselves by dragging his own least flattering thoughts and impulses out onto a stage. Pisses me off.]

  • Why Rock Music Has Sucked For 15 Years (2009)

    Introduction & Argument

    Originally posted to LowGenius.Net 6-Feb-2009.  As I’ve been going through this process of tracking down and curating my old content, once in a while I come across something that still makes sense word for word.  This article is now in seventh grade, so to speak – twelve years old – and as I re-read it for spellchecking and so forth I realize that pretty much every word still rings, and I wonder whether that reflects my own stagnation in musical taste, or if I’m unwittingly just being the grouchy old man, or if this is just an ongoing and unfortunate reality that I desperately hope finds a cure. 

    In the end I suspect it’s probably a little of all three.  But I still wouldn’t change a word.

    And for the record I know there’s bands out there that don’t suck.  Some of them are friends of mine.  It’s a hook to get you to read the bigger point about the emotional commitment of the artist to their art and why that’s required for art to be great.

    Yes, I know.  It doesn’t all suck, but there’s not much room for nuance in a headline.

    And most of it HAS sucked, and sucked hard.  There’s always been a problem of style over substance in music, and in every other part of the entertainment business.  Unfortunately, over the last decade and a half, the suck has so far outweighed the substance that I’m really afraid a lot of people my daughter’s age (20) [she’s now 32 -jh, 2021] are losing the ability to even recognize quality music anymore.

    Why does it suck?  Oh, let me count the ways.  The world is filled with bands and performers who are, at best, marginally talented.  They rely on studio tricks and technology to substitute for talent, but the talent is only one part of the issue, and it’s a small part.

    No, the real problem is this:  what we’ve got now, by and large, is an entire generation of recycled imitative crap pretending to be the heroes they grew up loving.  There’s nothing wrong with having influences and incorporating those influences into your work; that is, after all, where everything starts.

    All these wannabe’s and pretenders spend years trying to learn how to imitate their idols, getting the chops and the techniques and the riffs and the styles down pat, but they don’t get it.  What makes great music is not how well you play your instrument, or how many notes you can cram into a single beat, or how fluid and tasteful your fills are.  What makes music great is one thing, and one thing only:

    The heart of the musician.

    THAT is what people don’t seem to get anymore.  It’s all just flash and show and technical know-how, and there’s not an ounce of genuine passion involved, except for maybe the passion for money, ego gratification, and easy sex.  Any asshole with corporate backing can make a record that will sell a half-million copies, but it takes something that you can’t buy, you can’t learn, and you can’t imitate, to touch hearts and move souls.

    What’s Missing

    Musicians don’t put themselves in to the music anymore…and what’s worse, the music public doesn’t ask them to.  Instead, it seems like people are going to concerts so they can hear the songs played note-for-note as they sound on the CD.  Not only is that not the point of live music, that’s directly contradictory to the very idea of live music.

    VOLUME does not make music good.  There is nothing even a tiny little bit special about seeing an artist go up and pantomime themselves.  If that’s what music is about to you, then you may as well just say to hell with it, save some money, and start doing “listening party” tours where the musicians aren’t even involved – just get five thousand people together in a hockey rink with a giant PA and play the damn CD!

    No.  Live music is about broken strings and spur-of-the-moment extemporaneous speeches and singers who are hoarse at the end of the night and blood and sweat and tears and most of all, it’s about power.  Not amplification power, but the power to move human beings.  Speaking as a musician, I don’t much care if I get every note right when I’m playing live.  What I care about is whether I can make you cry, make you laugh, make you angry or sad or wistful or hurt or horny.  I care about making you love and making you hate.  Even agreeing with what I say isn’t important, but feeling what I feel, THAT is what matters.

    It seems like today’s crop of musical impressionists have completely missed that point.  You know, Zeppelin had some really terrible shows, from a standpoint of technical musicianship [Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary Special anyone? -jh, 2021]…but people loved them because they went out there and put their hearts in to what they were doing.  They reached down, picked you up, and ripped your face off, and they made you come along on their ride for three hours whether you wanted to go or not.

    This is why 4 Peace remains my favorite “Kalamazoo Scene” band even though a lot of people would say they were far from the “best” band on the scene.  Not because they were the world’s greatest musicians – certainly they had legitimate talent and instrumental skill, but that’s not the point.   What made them my favorites was simply that when they picked up their instruments, everything else in their world stopped and for that half-hour or 90 minutes or whatever, their hearts and souls were right there on display, pouring out of their speakers and into your face with all of the fire and fury that four pissed off Gen-Xers could muster.  I don’t take anything away from any of the other bands on the scene, but that’s the band that, for me, consistently grabbed me by the throat and flat-out refused to let go until they’d had their say.

    By the same token on a wider scale, that’s why I’m still a huge Pearl Jam fan, and why I dig Chris Cornell much…and why I absolutely loathe bands like Staind and Puddle of Mudd.  I don’t care HOW great they are as technical musicians, all they are is shallow imitations of bands who actually went out and put their balls and hearts and souls in to what they were doing.

    Watch this: Pearl Jam, “Alive” (SNL 1992) [Sorry it’s a FB post; NBC yanks this clip within seconds every time it’s posted to YouTube.  Hilarious note: originally it linked to a file on Google Videos, that’s how old this article is. -jh, 2010]

    That’s what a band looks like when they’ve got their heart on.  More important, that’s what a band feels like when they’re in the groove.  You can almost smell the nerves and excitement – this was by far the most exposure they’d had at that point – but by the time Ed rips that first “SAHHHHHn” out, they’ve forgotten where they are, they’ve forgotten the cameras, the crowd, Sharon Stone, the millions watching at home…all that matters, all that exists in those five minds for that five minutes is the groove.

    The Magic

    You can’t learn that, you can’t imitate it, you can’t bottle it, you can’t package it, you can’t put a surcharge and $20 for parking on it, you can’t control it, you can’t capture it, you can’t imitate it.  All you can do is grab that sucker by the tail and hold on tight while it takes you where it wants to go.

    That, my friends ($1 J. McCain) is the magic.  That is why I’m a musician.  Not because it gets me laid or makes me money or gratifies my ego, although it does do all those things at times.

    I’m a musician because I have to be.  Because whether it’s just me playing with myself (pun definitely intended) in a basement, or me and my band, whoever they might be at the moment, playing to a couple thousand people, that magic, that power, that undefinable thing that leaves me hollowed out and spent in a way that no sex, no money, no fast car, no drug, no woman, no THING ever could…that’s what matters, and I don’t give a rip if you can fool ten million people into buying your pathetic imitations and flimsy, saccharine parody:  that is what the people and friends I respect from John Lennon to John Riemer have and were born having…and that is what almost nobody who so callously refers to themselves as musicians in 2009 could ever understand because they don’t have it, they can’t have it, and they wouldn’t know what it was if it slapped them in the face.

    I don’t need a record contract or a multi-million-dollar tour or fifty grand in flashpots or computer-controlled laser shows, and I don’t much care if Britney or the Jonas Brothers or Coldplay are selling millions of records while I sit in a drafty shack in rural North Carolina re-rolling smokes from the butts of the ones I hand-rolled earlier.  I don’t need a billion hits on a MySpace page [chuckles in 2021] or a billion dowloads of MP3’s to prove that, because it’s mine and nobody can take it away, nobody can water it down, nobody can say it’s fake or not good enough or not ‘accessible.’

    That is what’s inside me, and that is what flows through me when I play regardless of who, if anyone, is watching, listening, or even gives a rat’s ass, and that is what is most emphatically NOT in 99% of the shallow, commercial crap that pollutes the airwaves today, and the best and worst part of it is that it doesn’t have to be a big secret, it doesn’t have to be hidden or kept private or kept away from anyone finding out.  It can’t be stolen, it can’t be taken away, it can’t be bought or sold.  It just is.  Some of us have it, some of us don’t, but it’s sure doesn’t seem like anyone who is passing themselves off as a musician or rock star in 2009 could ever come close to understanding what that feels like.

    And THAT is why rock music has sucked for 15 years.

    [All of this applies to my writing, too.  If you pay attention you’re probably seeing a theme by now.  I’m real big on authenticity and sincerity and meaning it.]

  • It’s Your Dime (2009)

  • I Can’t Stand Intolerance (2009)

    [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7B0a5kCCq0[/embedyt]

    Recorded at Bronson Park in Kalamazoo, Michigan during the same session as “Holiday Rant (2009),” this piece builds on a couple of specific points in that show related to racism and bigotry.  Essentially, a restatement and analysis of Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance, but about eleven years before it became popularly known as that.  As always, keep your eyes and ears out for themes and bullet points that I continue to hit today, including pokes at various facets of “big picture/root problem” issues that I believe we have now begun the process of truly evolving away from.

    Also notable for being one of the few times I’ve ever used the n-word in a piece that wasn’t specifically about that word, and for being the first time I discussed the fact that I’m part black in public.

  • Holiday Rant (2009)

    [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7LHYCPHShk[/embedyt]

    In this video holiday rant from December of 2009, JH goes off on racism, materialism, hypocrisy, and much more.  Shot at Bronson Park in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

  • US Education is Broken (2009)

    [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpmVCFCoWt4[/embedyt]

    I’ve been saying for a long time that the education system in our country is broken.  It was never in tip top condition, but it was headed the right direction through most of the fifties through the seventies.

    Then with the rise of the Reagan era, public education started being propagandized as a burdensome cost on society, rather than an obligation of self-interest.

    This is another of the videos I cut in Winters, CA, in June of 2009.  Again, you’ll find some themes that I’d already been pounding on for decades when this video was shot, and I continue to press today.  This is how I was thinking about it in 2009 – how do you think it compares to the things I’ve said more recently?  Do you think it holds up to reality now? I notice that the way I framed the video, starting off with criticism of “liberalism” and “political correctness,” isn’t necessarily the same as I would now – the points are valid but misdirected, and the labels themselves have a very different sort of valence in 2022 than they did in 2009.

  • MTV Rant (2009)

     

    This is one of the first video rants I ever cut  It’s very rough and honestly kind of sucks in retrospect – the subject isn’t of any great value (oooh, mtv doesn’t play enough music, standup comedians didn’t get enough mileage out of that by 1902 or anything).  Still, it’s unquestionably me and my attitude, and of course by this point, in 2009, I’d been in and out of working in the wrestling business and the theater already, so cutting a promo wasn’t hard.

    I miss my hair 😛

    This was shot in Winters, California in June, 2009, on a VHS-C camcorder.  I don’t believe I have the original footage anymore; I haven’t gone looking for it since I lost everything in Salt Lake City in 2018, but it may have ended up on the hard drive I lost then.

    That shirt is my favorite and has its own funny story that I’ll tell some other time.  It was a gift from my daughter when she was in high school.  The irony that B&B is not, in fact, music is not lost on me.

  • Land Of The Lost (2009/2011)

    This is where a lot of things started for me. In 2009 I was invited by some “friends” to move to California. Turned out they were expecting me to service the lady of the house, which I was not really up for. When said lady carved my name into her chest, it was time to go. I’ve never told that part of the story until now.

    This video was recorded while I was on the streets in Woodland, CA in 2009, and originally published in 2011. It’s fair to say I’ve never really recovered, and as I write this in 2023 find myself again on the streets. It’s not easy to watch, but the folks who care about that sort of thing aren’t reading this site anyway.

  • The Cassie Edwards Drinking Game!

    The Cassie Edwards Drinking Game!

    Ain’t No Party Like A Savage Party

    (Originally published 24-April-2009. At that time, unbeknownst to me, Ms. Edwards’ career had – recently, then – been basically ended by plagiarism charges. She published two more novels after this article was written. As Stephen King said, no great loss.)

    I’m a reader. I read everything, from the Bible to the Qur’an to the Book of Mormon to Dianetics; from Patricia Cornwell and Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb to Shakespeare, Dickens, Lovecraft, Poe, King, Heinlein, Straub, Bradbury, Nicholas Sparks, John Grisham, Mark Twain…if it’s written down, I’ll read it. I don’t care if it’s a multi-volume novel or the back of a cereal box.

    This rather undiscriminating approach led me to discover what may possibly be the worst published writer I have ever read: Cassie Edwards. The fact that this woman gets paid to write is a stunning and mortal indictment of everything the western world stands for. This is the kind of author who makes you think “Jesus, I could be on the USA Today Best Seller list, if this is the criterion!”

    I’ve read exactly two of her books. Part of one was called ‘Savage (Something),’ and it bears the distinction of being the first book ever in my life that I just could not finish. It was that bad. Cookie-cutter plot, stereotyped characters that are so poorly-written that you’re not just offended at the racial stereotypes (we’ll get in to those below), but simply at the fact that someone got paid to write this crap.  The other part of one was pretty much the same thing.  And the one in my hand right now.

    A collage photo of fifteen Cassie Edwards novels, every one of them featuring a heavily stereotyped, shirtless, Indigenous, American man and a somewhat less melanated woman. Hair flows, etc. Every single title features the word "Savage," e.g. "Savage Mission," "Savage Passions," and "Savage Honor."
    There’s like 85 of these, and that’s just the “Savage” ones…I donated a stack of these to the local library and the county’s average IQ dropped 38 points.

    I’m sure she’s probably a nice lady and all (this is me trying to be too nice. she’s not a nice lady, nice ladies aren’t raging bigots generating billions of dollars in revenue by perpetuating horrible and ignorant stereotypes -jh, 2019) but this woman is to literature what Pauly Shore is to brain surgery. She’s so predictable and cliche that she doesn’t just get one drinking game, she gets a whole party.

    Disclaimer: Please Drink Responsibly. I emphatically do not condone or endorse the levels of alcohol you will ingest if you take this game seriously. I mean it. Alcohol kills people. Be careful.

    That said…on with the show!

    The Cassie Edwards Drinking Game – EZ-Mode~!

    This one’s simple: Open any Cassie Edwards novel. If you see an ellipsis – you know, the three dots? Like…this? Drink. This is actually how I came up with this idea – I found one of her “books” in a box, and thought, “I bet I can open this to ANY random page and find at least one ellipsis.” I tried literally a dozen times, and succeeded every time. I’m holding one of her books in my hands right now, I’ll test the theory just for you! The title of this book is “Her Forbidden Pirate.”

    (Safety note: I was tempted as I constructed this to say ‘drink for each ellipsis.’ DON’T. Do not even think about it. You’ll die of alcohol poisoning before the end of the night. I promise. Even if you’re playing the game with water.)

    1. Page 250-251. Ellipses: 1
    2. Page 296-297. Ellipses: 4
    3. Page 72-73. Ellipses: 0~! (For your party, now pass the book to the next person)
    4. Page 346-347. Ellipses: 7
    5. Page 196-197 (weird the 6-7 keeps hitting). Ellipses: 1
    6. Page 368-269. Ellipses: 8
    7. Page 162-163. Ellpses: 15. FIFTEEN FLIPPIN ELLIPSES IN TWO PAGES! THERE ARE MORE DOTS IN HERE THAN A DAMNED SEURRAT PAINTING! I bet if you ripped all these pages out of the book and pasted them on cardboard when you back away from it it’ll look like the old grayscale newspaper photos.
    8. Page 360-361. Ellipses: 2
    9. Page 126-127. Ellipses: 4
    10. Page 270-271. Ellipses: 5

    So that’s the EZ-mode game. I promise you, if you have enough alcohol you will not be able to play this game for an hour without getting so hammered that you can’t SEE the friggin dots anymore.

    Expert Mode: General

    This is a little tougher, because it requires you to actually read this useless garbage. Fortunately you’ll be blackout drunk before you finish, so you won’t remember any of it.

    Step 1: Head to a used bookstore and find the Cassie Edwards novels. Close your eyes and select one at random. If it has the word ‘Savage’ in the title, find a designated driver.

    Step 2: Drinks are assigned for each of the following ‘plot’ points. I’ve broken these up into three categories: “Savage,” “Non-Savage,” and “General.” The “Savage” points apply only to books with “Savage” in the title, because all of Edwards’ “Savage” books apparently revolve around some bizzaro-world version of Native Americans, and there are some special things to go with that. The “Non-savage” list applies, obviously, to her filthy and witless wanderings outside of the ‘ME JOHN BIG TREE’ sub-genre. “General” applies to both.

    • If the female protagonist is under 18, drink.
    • If the female protagonist is a virgin, drink.
    • If the female protagonist is a pure, untouched virgin, unfamiliar with the ‘sight’ of a man, yet cheerfully casts off her clothes and schtupps the male protagonist out of his wits within the first five chapters, drink.
    • If the female protagonist’s mother is dead at the beginning of the novel, drink.
    • If she’s not dead at the start, but dies before chapter 8, drink. Drink twice if the female protagonist is absent for the death because she’s illicitly snuck off to be with the male protagonist.
    • If the female protagonist’s father is an outrageous bastard, drink.
    • Drink every time you see the word “throbbing” in connection with any part of the male anatomy (especially that part).
    • Drink every time a bosom heaves.
    • If the female protagonist has a friend who is described as “not beautiful in the conventional sense,” “thick,” “bawdy,” or some other variant of “unattractive but we’re trying to be performatively polite about it,” drink.
    • If the female protagonist is raped by the male protagonist and enjoys it, drink (I’m not even kidding).
    • Any time a phrase describes something that simply cannot happen while simultaneously invoking a bad romance novel cliche, drink. (Example, “‘Oh, Royce, I love you so!’ she sighed breathlessly.” You can’t sigh breathlessly. You have to breathe to sigh.)
    • If the male protagonist is cast as some sort of criminal – pirate, grifter, highwayman, etc. – drink. Drink again if it turns out he’s not really a pirate/whatever.
    • If there is a subplot suggesting that the male and female protagonists may actually be brother and sister, drink twice. If it turns out they actually are, drink twice more. If they continue having sex in spite of that, please consider donating a bottle of MD 20/20 to the “Help Cassie Edwards Move Home To MygoshijustLOVEmyfamily, Southwest Virginia” fund.
    • If the male protagonist’s muscles ‘ripple’ at any point, drink.
    • If the male protagonist is described at any point as ‘chiseled,’ drink.
    • If the word ‘loins’ appears referring to anything but a steak, drink.
    • Any time a character speaks out loud to themselves in place of a block of thought, drink. (I’m convinced that Edwards is aware of no other literary style with which to render thought.)
    • Any time a sex act is described as ‘filling her,’ drink.
    • Any time female genitalia is described as ‘her wetness,’ ‘her dampness,’ ‘her moisture,’ or ‘her heat,’ drink. Drink twice if the word “dewy” or “dew” is used to redundantly describe the aforementioned moisture.
    • Any time male genitalia is described as ‘his hardness,’ ‘his need,’ or ‘his love,’ drink.
    • If the ‘plot’ of the book involves finding lost treasure, a misplaced inheritance, or rightfully reclaiming one’s birthright, drink.
    • If the female protagonist’s father dies, drink. Drink twice if he’s dead before Chapter 7.
    • Every time you see a snippet of verse from an obscure poet that reads suspiciously like doggerel from a Hallmark card, drink. Drink twice if it’s the preface to the first chapter! (Thanks Katie!)
    • If the mother or father of the female protagonist turns out not to be her mother or father, drink. Drink again if her mother was kidnapped by her father but decided to stay with him of her own free will because she just loves the bad boys.
    • Any time you see dialogue that rolls off the tongue like a brick – thick, stilted, unnatural, heavy, and in no way related to any mode of speech ever employed by a human being, drink. (Bonus points may be involved; see the ‘Non-Savage’ section)

    Racism Bonus Mode! ‘Savage’ vs. non-‘Savage’

    ‘Savage’

    • Any time a Native American starts a sentence with “Ho,” drink.
    • Any time a Native American speaks in his ‘native’ language, which is rendered as a series of italicized syllables with dashes between them, drink. If he repeats the sentence in English, drink again. If the phrase turns out to be a secret nickname for the female protagonist that ‘translates’ to anything involving flowers, sunrises, does, or bodies of water, drink twice more.
    • Any time a Native American’s skin is described as “bronzed,” drink. Drink again if it’s “shining.”
    • If the female protagonist has a medical condition caused by an obscure combination of herbs assembled by the male protagonist, drink.
    • If the male protagonist (and the Native American is always the male protagonist) is described as a ‘chief,’ ‘brave,’ ‘shaman,’ or ‘medicine man,’ drink.
    • If the male protagonist at any time wears a loincloth, drink.
    • If the male protagonist reluctantly but necessarily kills the father of the female protagonist, drink.
    • If the female protagonist is in a near-death situation and the male protagonist revives her by singing or invoking any form of smoke, drink.
    • If at any series of concurrent events the male protagonist is described as carrying a bow and arrow, hatchet, AND machete, drink.
    • If at any time the male protagonist is depicted wearing a headband, drink.
    • If the female protagonist is assimilated into the male protagonists tribe, at first treated with loathing and suspicion by the other tribeswomen but charming them within two chapters, drink.
    • If the male protagonist already has a wife, drink. If he maintains two ‘homes’ in order to avoid any suggestion of actual kinkiness so as to avoid offending the strange people who actually enjoy reading this crap, drink again.

    Non-‘Savage’

    • If any character of African descent is featured with a name ending in ‘-i,’ ‘-ey’ or ‘-ie,’ drink
    • Drink once if any Black character says one of the following:
      • afadin’ (“fading,” especially when used as a euphemism for sleep or death)
      • any variant of “you be” or “I be” when the verb should be “am” or “are”
      • fo’ (“for”)
      • y’all. Drink twice if “y’all” is used to refer to a single person. Drink three times if it’s rendered as “y’all” and “ya’ll” on the same page. (I’m not kidding. Page 250 of Her Forbidden Pirate.)
      • Reference to either protagonist as “miss,” “missus,” “mister.”
      • Drink twice if “mistah” or “mistuh” is involved.
      • Toast Stephen Douglass if “Massa” makes an appearance.
      • ‘Fore (“before”). Bonus drink if this appears in the same book as “fo’” (I’m not kidding.)
      • “Fret” in place of “worry”
      • afta (“after”)
      • sho (“sure,” usually immediately following “fo’.” A legitimate quote: “He’ll be fit to be tied, Massa Saul will. He’ll come afta’ us fo’ sho’!”)
      • “Land sakes”
      • Yes’m
      • and of course, the ultimate in badly-written dialogue for black characters, “sho’ nuff.”
    • Drink if you can’t quite figure out whether the Black characters are slaves or servants.  Bonus drink if it’s obvious that they are slaves, but the word ‘slave’ is never used.
    • Drink if any reference is made to whipping.
    • Drink twice if it involves “whuppin’,” “whupped,” or “whup.”
    • Bonus drink if this “whipping” business is referenced, close together, by the same character in at least two different ways. (“Massa he goan whup me, I’s goan get a whippin’ fo’ sho’!”)
    • Drink if a Black character refers to themselves in the third person.
    • Bonus drink if the character adds the descriptive, “Ol’” to their names, as in “Ol’ Mazie’s goan fix you right up!”
    • Drink three times if this Steppin’ Fetchit pantomime of Blackness offends you even though you’re as Caucasian as Al Gore.
      • Add a couple of you’re politically conservative and still offended.
      • Add one more if you or any living relative under 65 regularly uses perjorative slang for Black people (e.g. the “n-word”) and yet you somehow manage to STILL be offended at how casually racist this woman is. I am. I’m almost offended at myself for even mentioning all of this, but this woman’s insane caricatures of ethnic minorities need to be drug out into the light where they can be properly examined before being beat to death.
    • This next one is a little tough. Make a two-shot cocktail for the whole party for every page (NOT every instance, see the safety warning above) where you can find linguistic anachronisms in which a black character jumps back and forth between badly-rendered and obnoxious colloquial “black” speech, and badly-rendered, unnatural, and artificial non-colloquial speech. The only way to really explain this is to quote some of it. Please note that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the quotes in the list below is spoken by the same character, the same who spoke the “fit to be tied” sentence a few bullets up:
      • “Massa Bryce will arrive soon, posing as a Doctor Jamison. There is a new doctor in town with the name Jamison, one Massa Saul hadn’t met yet. Massa Bryce will disable the true Doctor Jamison momentarily until Massa Bryce will have time to get you on his ship.”
      • “Miss Natalie, your father depends on me to keep a watch on you while he’s gone…Land sakes, if anything’d every happen to you while he was gone, he’d take a bullwhip to me fo’ sho’…probably until I’d neva’ walk again.”
      • “You’ll stay on the estate grounds, won’t you?…I don’t like the look in your eyes. They be adancin’, Miss Natalie. Since your return from your outing yesterday you’ve been a different young lady. Did you by chance make the acquaintance of a man? Is a man why you are behavin’ so strangely…so defiantly?”
      • “Old Tami ain’t gonna do nothin’ to stir up trouble for Miss Natalie…The years have made you my own.” The idea here is to celebrate the insane juxtaposition of the oh-so-richly offensive colloquial “Black folk”-speak, or proto-AVE or what the hell ever nonsense this woman is trying to stuff into these poor caricature’s faces, often in the same sentence as speech rendered, by the same character, in such precise diction that it seems unlikely even a classically-trained butler would employ it. We’re not talking about code-switching; we’re talking about glaring continuity errors in writing, aside from the outrageous stereotyping

    Conclusions & Further Analysis

    So there’s your game.

    The process of assembling the ethnic stereotypes really brought home to me how truly ignorant, obnoxious, and offensive this woman’s writing is. This isn’t Mark Twain faithfully rendering the language of the antebellum south and the Black slaves who inhabited it – it’s not even clear that this novel took place in a time of slavery, only that it was pre-industrial.

    This isn’t even Stephen King letting loose with a string of racial epithets spoken in the head of a black sub-protagonist by an evil hotel trying to keep him away.

    This is an ignorant, unskilled, suburban white hack who has likely never so much as heard a live black person speak in any context…and from the way she writes dialogue, she’s never heard anyone else speak either. Her non-white characters are a throwback of every advance past stereotype our collective consciousness has taken in the last century.

    I really didn’t start this article to write some hard-liberal politically correct diatribe, and that’s really not who I am (ed. note: in the language of 2009 “hard liberal” would have been accurate, but “politically correct” never has been and still isn’t. I don’t avoid the use of slurs to be politically correct; I do it to not be a dick. I don’t care in the least what people think is “politically correct” or not. -jh, 2021).  My own background is a mix of over a half-dozen ethnicities that I know of, including Black, at least two Native American tribes, and several flavors of European ancestry. I’m not averse to a little off-color (no pun intended) humor now and then, as long as there’s a purpose to it and it’s not just some stupid racist ‘joke.’ I certainly have no problem with honest, historically-accurate portrayals of non-white culture – the Geers, for instance, write some really excellent historical Native American fiction.

    But this woman legitimately offends me, and I just don’t even use that concept very often.

    Worst of all, this is just one facet of many that make this woman a walking offense to the concept of movable type. The dialogue of her white characters isn’t any less ridiculous, forced, unnatural, and just plain crappy – it’s just lacking the colloquial quality that marks her as not only an idiot, but a bigot too.

    But it’s not just the nearly belligerent bigotry in her portrayals of minorities or her utter inability to write dialogue that doesn’t sound like a poorly-written play for grade-schoolers. Every character is a bad cliche. Every sentence she writes looks like it came straight from the diary of a slightly insane Nazi boy of thirteen whose entire concept of female sexuality is based on Porky’s movies.

    And do I really need to point out the patently ugly, sick, and thoroughly evil nature of constantly portraying women who are first forced into sex, and then fall deeply and forever in love with their attackers?

    People play ‘cruel tricks,’ hands ‘flail,’ color ‘drains’ from faces, blue ‘swims’ in eyes, everything is ‘damnable.’ Lips are inevitably ‘forced apart’ by tongues, there is always the obligatory ‘tangle of limbs,’ and slight, spineless women are ‘swept up’ into bulging, rippling, bronzed, shining, chiseled, heroic arms. Heartbeats thunder, one always ‘rises’ from a bed, heat rises in loins, hearts skip beats, and everyone is almost afraid of the next paragraph.

    Whether you’re like me and read basically anything that crosses your path, or you’re a romance novel aficionado, I can not say it strongly enough: avoid this woman’s “writing” like the plague. She is the ultimate embodiment of every bad cliche in the genre.

    Enjoy your drinks. Responsibly.