This is a good idea. Caffeinated Lip Balm.

Gerard Damiano died.

Few would argue that Damiano was one of cinema's great artisans ... the film that made his name, Deep Throat, is listless as erotica and depressing as comedy, but The Devil In Miss Jones stands as the gold standard in existential pornography and he also made the first puppet-themed XXX film (Let My Puppets Come), so let's hail him for his successes, shall we?

While we're on the subject, my soul sister Noelle recently started a food-related blog called Simmer Down! to document the recipes and restaurants that make up her life. As everyone who knows me knows, I don't care for food, I find it a nuisance and subscribe to the Richard Hell theory of eating being an addiction no better or worse than heroin or cigarettes ... if I could get my nourishment from liquids and pills I would be perfectly happy just eating a handful of marshmallows every few hours or so. But check it out if you're not like me.

Got fuckin' lit last night at Tyson's birthday party and left my flask behind, the leather & chrome bottle I got from Mike R. years ago in Chicago. The old lady and I stayed later than usual and weren't even Detroit sober, so we left the car and enjoyed a crisp, brisk walk home at the end of it all. This morning I made the walk of shame to pick up the car, although in the haze of my hangover I probably still wasn't in prime driving condition. It was an exceptional party in that I actually knew at least 40% of the people in the room at any given moment, so it was a very comfortable place to drink Rebel Yell and tell lies. I had a good enough time that the hangover is the best of all possible hangovers, productive in the way that a cough can be, the emotionally purging type that makes you feel like you actually accomplished something by getting so loaded. I believe I did.

Deming on Dolemite

From the All Media Guide blog. He quotes me at the end, because he just can't help hisself.

Just uncovered a treasure trove of early-80s Lansing/Michigan hardcore punk videos on YouTube. Crucifucks, Meatmen, Necros, Negative Approach, Violent Apathy, even Army of God! Sorry, no Fix.

I posted a few of my favorites on Frenzy of the Visible, but they appear to all come from this guy in Texas who attended MSU "back in the day" and monitored the basement scene with a Public Access TV show called SYNTAX. Anybody remember this guy? I didn't move to Lansing til 1986, so I missed the city's hell-raising hardcore heyday. Anyhow, he's selling DVDs of this stuff, and I'm weakening.

Lori made a similar announcement on her blog, but in case you aren't hip, our home phone number (the one what ends with 4583) will be shut off on October 27th. So don't use it. My cell phone number will suffice from now on ... shoot us an email if you don't have it, want it, think you need it, etc.

The Baseball Furies - GREATER THAN EVER
The Baseball Furies might actually be dangerous, but they're more likely to hurt themselves than anyone else, and Greater Than Ever sounds like a shopping cart full of broken bottles hurtling down a steep hill, hilarious and terrifying at the same time. The Furies' brand of blithering hate-boogie is an uneasy compromise between the proudly amateurish pop of first-wave '77 punk and the hedonistic swagger of coked-out cock rock, played at a bristling speed of pharmaceutical origin. Unlike most neo-garage ne'er-do-wells, the Furies aren't just bragging about their debauchery in song, they're digging into the compulsions that fuel these excesses and exposing the steaming, stinking innards for the straight world to see. Abstract rants about proudly squalid lives and paranoid revenge fantasies are slobbered forth while spastic, slashing riffs struggle to escape the rock-solid backbone that keeps the whole mess intact. "I Hate Your Secret Club" is a white funk temper tantrum that gives the finger to the world's elite, "Archenemy" slows the tempo but not the intensity for some righteous New York Dolls riffing and "Antenna Attempt" declares the band's philosophy through broken couplets like "I want the world and it's mine to take it/If not so then I'll violate it" and "End of mission is death if I fail/I gotta de-program radio." It's not easy to capture psychosis live on tape, but the Baseball Furies truly sound like they've been kept awake for days in a locked room and let loose in a crowded bar for a binge of frightening proportions. FRED BELDIN