"The Nuge" is Loose!
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As swine flu threatens to punish the North American continental land mass, I am reminded of "the Bruce Springsteen" moments that gives one pause. The most popular of the crowd-pleasers, like "Born in the U.S.A." go for the ganglia-lizard-reptilioid reflexes but others hit you like the burred nettles in the wild catching on your flannel clothing. This I consider, before sending off a butterfly packet of "The Michael Experience" to a publisher-- the left side, a conventional "cover letter" and the right side, something a little bit more "true" to who I am so hopefully any junior understaffer won't panic around in circles like a squealing piglet.
Speaking of piglets, I've been joking with everyone I know who lives in the southwestern or western part of the United States that they can move to St. Louis to avoid the disease of swine. But then again, Missouri is not bereft of pig farms as I poke my relatives in the ribs with a cold bone of morbidity. All I'll say is "don't huff no bad shit" (-- drugs included).
For what's it's worth, Michael has his nose stuck down on Entrepreneur, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Sports Illustrated, Soldier of Fortune, AdBusters, "Mad" Magazine, Wired, and any militia-type catalogue you can get your hands on. You'd be surprised what you'd find in there "if you stay frosty" and follow the references to a bigger book or greater concept. Newspapers are the first draft of history while magazine writing is deeper if it's done well.
Right now we're living in a great state of ahistoricity "when everything has been done" and is just swirled around in a blender to kick out new marketing plans followed by blind adherents, when death by overdose is never far away.
I got a ground-floor view as someone growing up in the changing culture throughout my adolescence as history as we knew it drew to a close with globalization and the media and telecom mass mergers. There was a lot of madness going on back then and I remember the Kurt Cobain/slacker crowd pointed their finger at the redneck/ fundamentalist/militia crowd without able to see the three fingers pointing back at them in a curled fist.
But then you had Ted Nugent coming back at them as he stood on the bed of a pick-up truck and wailed at the goofy "I'm O.K, you're not" song, "Kiss my Ass" when he went on against pansies, socialists, the United Nations, and Janet Reno. The gist was, "they could go suck shit" as "Terrible Ted" leered on with a grinning expression, his hair hanging out in wisps in sweat-stained thrust-a-motion. He was bent over, talking out his asshole with two gripped hands offering to veto your feeble protests with a belch.
Billary beware! Liberal "Gomers", fuck off!
(Then the "Gomers" in the audience clap and hoot).
Seen at a state fair near you. . . . . don't catch the flu.
Some people can be smug in their self-righteous good fortune, but Ted Nugent was sent by God to fill that role of guitar demigod and right-wing spokesman. Yes, the top concert draw in 1978. He used to dress up like a caveman and swing from a vine over the audience's heads. He may be a primitive, misogynistic asshole, but he's OUR "Top 40" primitive, misogynistic asshole. And to tell you the truth, a good deal of his catalog fucking sucks. Most of it is meat n' potatoes fare. . . . . with a few golden chunks scattered throughout on the quavering peak of a transcendent moment, like an eagle feather held up to the sun.Only with someone like Nugent could the bottom fall out of his career, and could he waste his money on hundreds of guitars and dubious investments in mink ranches and end up flat-out broke. . . . . yet have the talent to crawl back from the brink of bankruptcy brasher than ever.
And more insufferable, too.
Getting back to basics of grubby white male consciousness, there should be 1 (one) answer to every problem. . . . . like putting 50¢ in a soda machine and getting your flavor of choice. Logical. Rudimentary. Like a saw and lathe. Not like a slot machine where the answer is unpredictable, the implications frightening. If one wanted to be fancy with statistics, they could befuddle their liberal enemies by pointing out that correlation does not mean causation. It works for the tobacco companies, for the Marlboro Man telling the sign-carrying screechers to rot in hell, but can be equally befuddling when record company apologists use the same arguments to make you look like "the unreasonable one" when you decry lyrics that inspire violence.
But you know deep down, there's only one answer. . . . . like killing car-jackers and child molesters. You might even be open-minded enough to smile down at a little Chinese girl who halts out her immigrant's tale about coming to this country, her parents' not speaking English well, and how she's drawn to mathematics "because there's only one answer" while secretly grumbling "how the chinks are taking your jobs". Yes, suspicion. . . . . lots of suspicion for little people from foreign lands that are altogether alien to the Western mind.
Where do we go from here? When the smokestacks were dying, the railways were turning to scrap-heaps, the economy was getting lighter but Americans were getting fatter and gray-hued and more depressed. But at least Russia was feeling the benefits of the free-market economy, up there in that Moscow ice-box where you probably didn't know about the black market in guns and flak-jackets as soldiers went unpaid for months.
But there was the promise of high-tech science, "computing with light" or "living in nano-tubes" or whatever kind of far-out shit they were talking about. You wouldn't hate that Alpha geekess on NPR radio so much if you could sleep with her and put that mouth to good use.
This is America. . . . . with one foot in the grave and the other on Ted Nugent's guitar strap.
See you at "Hooters".
Click here for the video!!
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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
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(Rheeee of Crickets)
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("I heard that, Missy!")
© 2010 by Insufferable Industries
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