OFF! - Wasted Years

No matter how we start a conversation about the role of transgender people around the world, we are going to be wrong about it.  So we have to tip toe around a topic like this, so as not to offend our audience.  But nonetheless, it is better to turn toward a difficult topic rather than turn away from it.  The same goes for opinions on punk rock.

OFF! comes from an eclectic background of some of our favorite bands, i.e. Black Flag and Hot Snakes.  Things are a little different now, but we are happy to report that in a lot of ways things are still the same, like our old grease monkey pal who we used to refer to as "he" and we now refer to as "she."  We feel that a circle has been made.

Our mother didn't like the direction of Black Flag after Keith Morris, and she certainly didn't like celebrity politician Henry Rollins.  We remember her throwing his spoken word cassette tape out the window on our way to school one day.  Don't get us wrong.  Black Flag is the butter to our youth's bread.

OFF! also features Mario Rubalcaba of Hot Snakes, which further reels in our feelings about the transgender nature of the band.  OFF! wants to be something different.  It has transformed many bands of its past into its current identity.  However, all of those bands are contained here.  Nothing has changed.  All is well.  

The best part about this review is that as of this date, the album hasn't even been released.  So we haven't even heard it.  Nor do we want to.  Just like we don't want to hear about your opinions on transgender folks or punk rock.  Fuck OFF!

karat y chop

Little Man with a Gun in His Hand

We ain't feelin' lucky, Punks.  We ain't.  We're down on our knees with a gun to our heads.  The gunman is repeating a few things to us. 

First he tells us that ethics are subjective.  He keeps telling us that what's right for him is right for him.  He tells us to keep still and not make a move.  If we move, he'll cock back the hammer.  He even knocks us around a bit.  He tells us that the anxiety we are feeling is due to our low self-esteem, not due to the man holding the gun. 

Then he keeps going on and on about cultural relativity.  He claims that the "law of the gun to your head" is for our neighbors' sake.  It's for our family.  The purpose of the "law of the gun to your head" is to keep society in order.

Then we thought we would be clever.  We remembered our Dalton Trumbo.  We said in unison, "Give us the gun.  You can point the way, and we will point the gun."  But instead he remembered his Dalton Trumbo better than us.  He tapped Morse code on our heads with the cold steal barrel.  He tapped, "What you ask is against regulations.  Who are you?"

karat y chop

The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug

We have a few scientific lessons to teach about the series of Hobbit movies by Peter Jackson in an attempt to help him contain his movies to one single event, instead of spreading his vision out across multiple hours of effort and millions of wasted dollars. 

Lesson One.  Modern science suggests that our brains make up our surroundings.  Our field of vision is a fairly small focused section.  When we turn away from an object, our brains are creating in our heads the third dimensional space that surrounds us.  Quantum Mechanics also suggests that when we look at an atom, it is present, but when we look away, it disappears into a multiplicity of waves.  This is called the Observer Effect.  Atoms stand still when we observe them, but move around when we do not.

Lesson two.  There is an idea of a collective conscience.  We all look at the sky, and we say it is blue.  An individual can't tell the rest of us that the sky is purple, because the strength of everyone's common belief turns the sky blue in our minds.  This is inescapable.  Again, it seems that together we exude an energy that creates the world around us. 

So let's apply this to the Hobbit series with the question: are there three movies in this series because no one goes to watch them?  If we were to watch them, then it could be contained in one single event we call a movie.  But because everyone turns away from this movie, the event is contained in a never ending wave of multiplicities.  So please, everyone, go out and see this movie so we can end this fucking thing.

karat y chop

Psilosamples - Mental Surf

There's something about eating the mushrooms in our front yard that makes sound a little brighter.  As we worked our way through Mental Surf, the birds outside took notice and started to chirp along with the beats.  The ambulance sirens circling our neighborhood found their space for a solo.  The police choppers overhead beat their propellers to the music.

Our mood became a bit more giddy.  We couldn't help but jump around to the skittering loops and electronic beeps and bloops.  Moments from the album are very familiar to groups like Land of the Loops, High Llamas or Django Django.  The territory is familiar, but the experience is under a different kind of influence.

Furthermore, Karat and I are SB1070s.  After we ate the mushrooms from our yard, the language on this album was suddenly unfamiliar, like Spanish being spoken underwater.  The writing on the album, too, started to swim around and multiply in vowels, while the letters themselves began to flourish across the album art.

So here we are, naked again in the front yard of our apartment complex, dancing with the birds, listening to the approaching sirens, banging our heads to the reverberations from the police helicopter overhead, and speaking in a new found tongue.  The biggest coinkydink about all these things converging on our apartment right now is that we only discovered this album as if heaven sent to our doorstep after we ate those yard mushrooms.

chop

Skippy

Here's a vision of Skippy.  She's dead and she was replaced by Pearly.  We wrote her a poem:

Skip died of lethal injection
Her attitude was yellow bile

We told the warden to call it off
but she had already convinced herself
that morning at McDonald's

We called the warden again at dinner time
and she was fine 

We had already wept for yellow dog
and we ordered a pizza of
pepperoni
mushroom
and onion

karat y chop

Pearly

Good night, Pearly.  Pearly is dead.  She's been replaced by Bella.  Bella's previous owner beat her.  So she hides under the bed most the time.  We can't get her out in the daylight long enough to draw a picture of her.  Good morning, Bella.

karat y chop

The Oneness of Juju - African Rhythms

Hey whistleblowers, we have a track for you.  Check out "Every Way But Loose" by Oneness of JuJu.  Research turned up that this song was used in the video game Grand Theft Auto.  Like most Americans, we live in a small apartment, and our freeloading roommate quit helping us pay the rent when he fell into a paralyzing depression.  Much of his time is spent on the couch playing GTA 5, and we never heard this track.  We also started to think that "depression" is his codeword for "really great video game."

This track was produced in 1982.  Seconds into it, we made connections to bands like OUT HUD and !!!.  These later bands started around 1996, and we always wondered their influences.  We think we can put a finger on this one.

So now we are running naked around the living room couch with the stereo turned up, blowing whistles and kazoos in our roommate's ear.  Then we run back to our tiny bedroom and laugh our asses off.  He just keeps yelling at us from the couch.  We even got our children running around naked with whistles.  Our roomie is a registered sex offender, and he still won't get off the couch.  Must be one great video game or he sure is in one hell of a funk.  Afro funk! 

karat y chop