intruder alert: the doktor invades the page!

[in an effort to assist the doktor in his completion of a court ordered 4000 hours of community service, i am donating some cyberspace to the degenerate. as always, proceed at your own risk.]

Dateline: Sunday February 20th
My place (the exact details are none of your concern)
With apologies to Johnny Wadd St.Clair

I’m sitting about the house, slowly losing myself in the new QOTMFSAge disc that Joshua was kind enough to supply me with, trying to lose myself in light of loosing the Good Doctor, marveling at the desperation, and their sheer talent, when the phone rings. Not wanting to be bothered at the beginning of what promises to be a true almost-masterpiece of “RAWK”, I let it ring. I can’t be bothered, I’ve waited for this for so long. That, and the K made my legs feel like rubber. Couldn’t get up.

Well into the third song, Everybody Knows You’re Insane, the phone rings again. Slightly annoyed, I decide to let it go on. Now into the fourth song it rings again. I take the bill out, get up and stumble a figure-eight to the phone. I look at the phone to see if this hapless nuisance is the same idiot that just called twice. “Why God, why? First my freedom, then my love, then the Doctor, and now this! Haven’t I been your humble, loyal servant? Haven’t I been punished enough Lord? When will I be able to taste the fruit? When Lord, when? Fuck. When?!” Of course it was the same hapless idiot. Lars. One of the last people I wanted to talk to on this strange and atavistic evening of new concoctions, and new music, and new news about old writers.

“Someone else had better be dead! What is it? What do you want? I obviously don’t want to be bothered. SPEAK MAN!” I say in the nicest voice I can muster. Believe me, the last thing I want to do is send this skin bangin’ little freak back to the ol head shrinker at a cost of $40,000 / month. But you see, when dealing with Danes, you must be firm and clear. All those Scandinavians are weird and weasely. They will take any opportunity presented to them to whine, and cry like a bitch with a skinned knee. They are not to be trusted. They have their bad points too.

“Where ya been? Its been a hella’ long time” Lars says.

“First of all, Bars-o-fun, you ain’t in NoCal, SoCal, or any other foreign country, so cut the hipster-doofuss shit. I ain't in the mood for it. And I’ve had enough of you wanna be cross-dressin homos when I was out in Vegas. And I’ve really had it with you Scones.”

“My name is Lars, and I’m Danish.” He sounded indignant.

“’the fuck ever. They’re both delicious. Secondly, it none o yo damn bidness where I been. I’m a busy, busy man and have no time to spend on you white people. And if ever there was a white man, you’re it. So let’s get down to brass tacks. Waddaya want?”

“Why are you so busy? What are you doin?”

Aw fuck. Here we go. I know if I’m vague about this all, he’s just going to 20 question me. So I can either cut the shit or hang up on him. But I also know that he’ll just keep calling.

“Josh Homme sent me a copy of Lullabies to Paralyze for me to review, and I’m TRYIN to get through it… if only my phone would stop ringin.”

“Well how come you haven’t reviewed any of our stuff? You’ve been a fan forever, and we’ve sent you discs.”

I could tell there was no beating around the bush on this one. “Yeah. You remember those toy guns that shoot the little colored discs? Well I made a real one that shoots CD’s. It uses the rail-gun principal and fires these things faster than a fucking cannon. When they hit, all you see is a cloud of dust. For all intents and purposes, they vaporize upon impact. WHOOP! Well, your discs… I fired them at old people that drive too slow. Once they get out of their cars.”

“Huh?” I could just smell that feeble mind working.

“Yeah. I think they’re still looking for me. Look man. I was a fan, like 16 years ago. By the time we met, I was only barely. You’ve told me yourself, that you guys haven’t put anything out of worth since the Garage Days Re-revisited. While it could be argued that …And Justice For All, was pretty ok, the production, and the engineering on it blew and relegated the bass and drums to a muddle. And of all of you, Jason was the coolest, and look at what you morons did to him. I hear new stuff on the radio, and I have can’t stand the 15sec it takes me to find the dial to turn it THE FUCK OFF!”

“Awwww. C’mon man, that ain’t fair. You know that we’re all…”

“Listen, I don’t want to hear it. At least he did something good. Quit and joined a good band: Voi Vod. OK fine. He leaves. And what do you guys do? Hire Robert Trujillo. Ok, he’s good, but look what you did. You stole Ozzy’s and Jerry Cantrell’s bass player.”

“So? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well why did you have to do that? You know who you should’ve hired.”

“Yeah, Joey Vera.”

“Yeah, Joey. But no. You had to steal. Which is what you’ve been doin’ since the beginning. Which is why I ain't listenin to any more of your stuff.”

“Now wait a second”, he says. I just know he’s going to try to inject some civility and reason back into this conversation. “All you’ve been doing is writing and ripping off people named Thompson, Lucas, Groening, Nixon, Smith, and Raymond J. Johnson Jr.”

“Hey, I’m… I’ve been writing on the guitar…”, I try to defend myself.

“Yeah. And its crap. I’ve heard what you wrote. I’ll give you that it’s original, only because nobody would write anything so fucking awful. I’ve heard better sounds coming out of…”

“Alright. When you’re right, you’re right. But I’m working on it. YOU. You’ve built your whole careers ripping off others.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Its all right there in your liner notes. You played others songs, and presented them as your own.”

“Everybodys got to start somewhere.”

“But that’s not the worst of it. Then you use Dave Mustaine’s stuff for three albums.”

“Two.” He trys to correct me.

“Uh, excuse me, Mr. Honkey? I’m sorry. Did you forget about the court case you lost? I didn’t. On top of that, you stole from yourself. Try. Go ahead and try to tell me you didn’t rip Master of Puppets off of Ride the Lightning. I dare you. I double dare you motherfucker. You stole from yourself.”

“Awwwww man. I didn’t call for this.”

He had me going and was presenting his neck, and I wasn’t about to let it pass… “Then you have the nerve to take kids, FANS, to court for downloading unfinished songs. You should just be happy that anyone wants to hear the finished product of that clap-trap that you’ve been putting out for almost 20 years, let alone a “work-in-progress”. I mean for fucks sake man. Stained and Nickelback rip off Metallica better than Metallica now. You guys are a parody of a parody of yourself.”

“Now wait, we’ve sold a billion records”

“Yeah, maybe that’s why you have to go to a shrink, guilty conscious. Not over sucking dick, like portrayed in the movie.”

“Nobody said anything about sucking…”

“and tell Kirk he looks like something Dave Navarro shit out. And to get some vibrato.”

“Kirks one of the be…”

“ and don’t get me started on James. Carpe Diem Baby?!!! Who the fuck does he think he is? It sounds like a bad Arnold Swartzineger saying. And that fuck-awful Grinch guitar he plays. He used to be the Pete Townsend of metal guitar. And now, he’s well, the Pete Townsend of metal guitar. Deaf and gay.”

“Man you’re brutal.”
”I didn’t even want to talk to you, you no-talent-ass-clown. I’m listening to the new QOTSA disc, and on top of it, I’m buyin it on day one. THAT is what a real band sounds like.”

“But he kicked out Nick and Mark and it ain't got no bottom end to the vocals”

“I’ll give you that you know all about bottom ends. But at least they didn’t put out any crap. I’ll also give you that they’d be better if they would’ve kept Mark and Nick, but they ain’t there. But at least they didn’t use that as an excuse for putting out garbage.”

“Alright. I get ya.” He sounds defeated, and demoralized.

“Hey. I got an idea for ya. How bout you get Nick to join you once Robert makes some money and sees how GAY youse guys really are and quits in the middle of tour. I might actually listen to some of your stuff again, if you let him write.”
“Hmmmm…. You might be onto something… What if I…”

I hung up on him. It was time to go, and I knew I blew his little mind enough for one evening. We left it at that.

Oh, yeah. The QOTmfSA album? It rocks. BUY it.