"DON'T CONFUSE YOURSELF WITH SOMEONE WHO HAS SOMETHING TO SAY...":

So says the man ("Hexen Definitive/Strife Knot," Perverted by Language, 1983), and I can hardly argue with him.  Indeed, I am lacking entirely for words of my own today, but the blog must go on, so allow me to indulge via YouTube embeds of one of the signal figures of my sorry existence, Mark Edward Smith and the mighty Fall...

1) Could this be the greatest music video of all time?  Were it not for Billy Squier's "Rock Me Tonite," I daresay there'd be no contest...

NO ONE HERE GETS IN WITHOUT PAYING:

(an exclusive excerpt from my soon-to-be-remaindered rock memoir)

May 16, 1990, Turmeric Beach: Well, it happened at last.  I passed the audition to be the new lead singer of Nobody In Particular.  Quite a change from delivering Grade-Q meat to junior-high-school cafeterias, but I believe I'm up to the challenge.  It's really funny how the whole thing happened, since I've been a fan of NIP ever since they played the Knights of Akron hall last Thursday.  The power, the charisma, the exemplary posture... their music transported me to a place I haven't been to since I drank from that beaker in tenth-grade chem lab on a dare.  Like then, it was a deeply spiritual and transcendent experience and I couldn't stop throwing up for three days afterwards.  I hung around after they finished their "set" (music lingo), and we hit it off immediately.  I'll never forget the way the bass player affectionately elbowed me in the face when I told him how his solo on "Chicken Lips" reminded me of that really cool Kajagoogoo song.  I pledged right there and then to make this band my life, to follow them everywhere they go, to be in the vanguard of a new breed of fans, "Nobody-In-Particular-heads" as I like to call us.  Well, me anyway.  But soon fate intervened, and suddenly my wildest dream came true.  Okay, perhaps not my wildest dream, which involves Pia Zadora, the Lincoln Tunnel and a three-legged unicorn with an egg beater for a horn, but close enough in its way.

THIS PROBABLY WON'T MEAN SHIT TO CHUCK D. EITHER:

Today marks the 78th anniversary of the birth of one of our greatest cultural referents, pop-cultural icons, and the man who single-handedly rescued the sequin industry, Elvis Aaron Presley.  And, I'm sure you would agree, the only way to properly honor the memory of this titan of American music would be to let one of the lesser members of his entourage run his mouth off for a few minutes.  This long-suppressed recording from the August 16, 2006 Wow & Flutter program features Red Bloostone, a man with intimate knowledge of the King of Rock 'n' Roll as far as anybody can prove in a court of law, interviewed by Robert Ham (no relation) (to Elvis), and includes some heretofore unheard factoids as well as several of the greatest moments in recorded Presliana.  Please, enjoy:

 Red bloostone interview by williamham 

(Gosh, I hope no one notices I just lifted a post from a year ago and presented it as new.  Huh - what does it mean when the red light on the voice-to-text software is on?)

PYTHONIC SIDEBAR #1:

So, apparently last night's episode of Family Guy started like this:

...much to the delight of many members of the comedigeekocracy.  Words like "witty," "brilliant" and "amazing" have been bandied about.  To which I can pretty much only shrug.  (Seriously.  Overwork has worn me out to the point that I have no control of my motor skills below the shoulder.  You would be equal parts impressed and horrified to see how I'm typing this right now.)

OBSCURITY MINUS 14:59 AND COUNTING:

I'm at the tail end of my fifth consecutive 10+ hour workday, and this Ham is fried.  So you will excuse me if I uphold my daily blog-duties by reviving a 15+ year-old piece I wrote, with a number of obsolete references, awkward writing and jokes that would be excised or rewritten if I had the time or the energy.  Not a bad concept, though, and more than one chuckleworthy passage.  Two.  There are two chuckleworthy passages.

I feel ebullient. I feel replenished. In short, I feel like the protagonist of one of the greatest works in the Western literary canon, Dame Judith Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret(the Red Badge of Courage of teen-menstruation novels). In other words, I GOT IT! No, notthat - the experimental ovaries I got were removed weeks ago (remember, do a background check before responding to those "NEED QUICK MONEY?" flyers you find under your windshield wipers), and even if they weren't, whether or not I'm regularly receiving the monthly curse (the original working title for this magazine, by the way) is irrelevant, and beside the point as well. I'm referring to that thing that that pale, short guy with the snap-on toupée promised everybody they'd get eventually. You know what I'm typing about. Don't make me repeat it. Oh, Jesus... you know... how everybody will gain public renown for a duration lasting half of the time it takes "Chihuahua on Fire" to win the $10,000 prize on America's Funniest Home Videos. All right, fuck it, my fifteen minutes of fame. I just buried the needle of the "tired cliché" meter attached to my hard drive (I should probably reconnect it to my computer), so I hope you're pleased with yourselves.

I knew it was coming to me, so I had to do it right. I sprung into action immediately, sustaining only mild facial contusions when I slammed into the wall. Picking up the phone with a grace rarely seen in these parts (a good thing on balance, as I don't believe those other parts should be made to bend that way), I dialed up the Consensus Bureau in San Atorium, CA, to schedule my quarter-hour of renown. This is key - if you don't set it up yourself, you're likely to wake one morning to find you had achieved and lost household word status while you were busy disgorging a beaker's worth of saliva onto your musty C3PO pillowcase. After a long, protracted interval on hold, listening to the piped-in sounds of the latest Tangerine Dream album (or maybe someone had just left the receiver atop the office dehumidifier), the Director of Ephemeral Eclat herself came on the line and told me I was in luck.

WELCOME TO THE MESSIAH COMPLEX (HOURLY RATES AVAILABLE):

(An exclusive excerpt from the posthumous memoirs of an anonymous member of the Turn Righteous at the Light religious cult, whose mass suicide two months ago shocked the world and made them runners-up in Deceased Fanatic's Home Journal's annual lethal cocktail recipe competition.)


By the time you read this, I will have gone on to a better place. Barring that, I will be dead. I am writing these words for the understanding and edification of future generations. And I am writing these words to practice my penmanship. I've been working on my loops. I, in addition to four hundred others of my kind, are holed up here in the Compound of Heavenly Peace and Affordable Hourly Rates (what the heathen would call the Motel 6 just outside of Oxnard), counting down the final hours, awaiting the Rapture. Hope it isn't late like it was yesterday. If I don't get my Rapture by noon, I'm worthless for the rest of the millennium.

They laughed at us, scorned us, and denied us our consolidation loans, but as you read these words, it is we who will have had the last laugh, provided we can get it in before the lethal dose of sinus medication kicks in. We are the Chosen, the remnant spoken of in Scripture, the elite who got their membership fees in before the March 31st deadline. It is we, the few who shall escape the wrath that will come down and lay over this pustulant Earth like a divine plastic couch cover from which the stains of mortal corruption may be wiped clean by the damp cloth of God and a little Formula 409. In just a few minutes, we will take our rightful place beside the throne of God, show Him our laminates, and be ushered into the highly exclusive V.I.P. (Very Immaculate Person) lounge in the heavens, where all is serene and your first two drinks are half-price. Hallepenjo!

It has been a long, arduous road we have travelled these many years (what the unholy would refer to as Interstate 19 out of Tuscon). Every member of the Turn Righteous At The Light flock has their own stories, but since the TV-movie and action figure rights for most of them have been sold, I am only at liberty to recount my own. 

MAKING LOVE TO A MUSKRAT WITH A YACHTSMAN ON MY KNEE:

Repurposed content that I didn't come up with myself (but should have, dammit) counts for something, right?  Good.  Day Four complete.

...well, heck, while I'm at it, why not embed another unusual Saturday Night Live musical guest performance?  This comes from the episode that is widely considered the worst SNL ever (to which I have only two words: Deion Sanders), and this either mitigates or reinforces that contention, depending upon where your tastes lie.  Certainly we're unlikely to see the likes of this on the show these days, or ever again.  So score one for Jean Doumanian.