Okay people. I have a serious issue I need to discuss with you. I was just pitched a story that I have to share, and it’s a story that has affected me at a very personal level.

When I was 16 years old, I had saved my pennies to buy a kick ass electric guitar. I needed something better than a Fender Hot Rod Telecaster, or a Gibson Flying V. I needed a Hondo Stratocaster. Hondos were made with designs based on the designs of lame models like the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul. But unlike Fenders and Gibsons, Hondos had life! The 1986 Hondo guitar I was salivating over was made in Korea and was a mind sucking black with a blazing white pickguard. I loved the frets because they promised to scrape my fingers, releasing my rock ‘n roll blood making me feel alive! I was told that the jack would make the most awesome sound when I was playing, something akin to “grrrblapphhhbrrrriingzzzzphhhh.” The pickup switch was even more incredible because somehow it was supposed to mimic the sound of the jack, but completely backwards. Very satanic dude.

I gathered my pennies together (which happened to be in my father’s wallet) and took them down to the guitar store on Broadway in downtown San Diego and there she was in the display window. I could smell her pheromones through the glass. It was all I could do to keep my pants on as I ran into the store and bum rushed the display to embrace my new love.

When I got her home, I plugged her in and started jamming. But what was this? No blood on my fingers. No “grrrblapphhhbrrrriingzzzzphhhh” from the jack. No nothing of the rock ‘n roll Satanism I was promised. I’m like “WTF?” I looked the guitar over and saw something curious on the headstock. The Hondo label was affixed rather shiftily. I took my little pinky nail and started scraping at it. What was under the Hondo label was the most shocking thing I have ever seen. It said “Fender.” I heard about counterfeit guitars on the market, but I never thought I’d be duped.

Fast-forward 23 years. David Szabados of Legendary Tones has heroically championed the persecution of counterfeit guitar manufacturers and is trying to spread the word virally. Check out his YouTube video below and do your part by spreading the word for consumers to do their research before plunking down a load of cash for a sweet Paul Reed Smith.

I’m in a Chinese restaurant, I order whale blubber pot stickers, then I look down at the table in horror. The image of a whale suddenly appears from small water spill. I immediately cancel my pot stickers and swear off whale blubber for life. No more perfumes, soaps, candles, margarine, you name it. I mean, I’m like really, LIKE REALLY freaked out by this. I made a huge decision in my life. I’m moving to the Thuy Tu communal house in Phan Thiet, Vietnam to join the whale cult. I will no longer be blogging, as that is not allowed there. I will still hold weekly trivia contests to create “songs for winners” and I eventually plan to start my own cult focused around this (while still devoting 20% of my time to the whale cult of course). I’m leaving in the morning. Please send me good wishes and help my wife provide for our children’s piano lessons and capoeira classes. Peace, love, and harmony y’all. Chào buổi tối!

Sometimes I get a little too cocky. I think I can write hit kid’s songs, make award-winning snacks, and give a Sassoon haircut. What you don’t know is that four out of five songs get panned (”If you do drugs, I’ll fuckin’ kill you” aren’t appropriate lyrics), snacks have induced fits of gagging (don’t try to mix cabbage in a smoothie), and my hair cutting abilities aren’t worthy of military barber’s assistant. I really had high hopes for my hairstyling career. I was going to prove to the world in this video that I could give a kick ass cut on my first try. While the end result wasn’t that bad, it took me almost an hour to accomplish. I kept cleaning it up and cleaning it up until there was nothing left but a $5 buzz cut. But you know, for the most part my kids don’t really care about all that stuff. We have a deal that if I wrong them in any way they’ll get an ice cream and a crisp $20 bill. They’re going to be fat and I’m going to be broke by November, 2009.

When my boy had his third birthday, I thought I’d forgo hiring an entertainer and just do it myself. I procrastinated and procrastinated until there were just 10 days left. I finally sat down and realized that it wasn’t too hard to write songs for a three year old boy. First off, I wrote a song about my musical persona, Crash Lightning, with just two lines of lyrics. Piece of cake. Then I wrote a song about my kid and how he likes to poop. No brainer. The I wrote a Halloween themed song. Not too hard. Finally, I ripped off Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” and made my own version, “Master of Mischief.”

Okay, now I’ve got my daughter’s seventh birthday in just five days and I told her I would write some songs. Dude, seven-year-old girls are way more complicated than three-year-old boys! There’s the “High School Musical” obsession, the clothes obsession, the art obsession, the new earring obsession, and the draaaama. Gotta step up my game. My problem is I only have time to write one song, but I’m having trouble narrowing down the subject matter. Can anyone give me some advice? There’s something in it for you if you help.

Let’s talk about the goodness of Anonymous Postcard for a minute. It’s so many things rolled into one, I don’t know where to begin. And yet it’s so simple. Love something? Hate something? Just have something to say? Submit a claim to Anonymous Postcard and artist Tucker Nichols will repurpose a found object, write your claim on it, and send it to the intended recipient. The great thing is that people actually respond. When I first saw this website I became obsessed with thinking about a lifetime of claims I could submit, potentially saving me from having to go into therapy.

For Christ’s sake, I live in Berkeley. Every day I practically have an epileptic seizure from all the crazy shenanigans all up in my hee-haw. (Do you know I’ve owned the URL “www.lovehateberkeley.com” for several years?) Now every time something horrible, terrific, or perfectly mundane happens, I think “claim.” I’ve got too many claims swimming around with the rocks in my head that I haven’t even been able to submit one yet. Here’s a perfect example of one taken from Anonymous Postcard:

Claim No.:
005820080911

To:
Employees of Panda Gifts, New Orleans, LA

Claim:
A co-worker who was on a business trip to New Orleans last month brought me back a voodoo doll. It’s nice. I keep it on my computer. It looks like this.

The instructions on the tag say that I can “place a personal item (like hair) inside the cloth to capture a part of [a person's] soul.” It comes with pins that I can stick into the doll, to cast a spell on that person.

Here’s my concern: Do you guys wear hairnets when you put these things together? Because I don’t want to stick pins in this thing thinking I’m hurting my boss, when really I’m hurting someone in New Orleans. Y’all have suffered enough.

Good stuff man, good stuff.

You know how a lot of blogs have “photo of the day” posts? Screw that. I’m doing photo of the night. I do all my blogging at night anyway, so it makes sense. People might think that it’s actually a photo of the night, like I’m really into planets, stars, full moons, and UFOs. It’s not, and I’m setting the record straight right now!

So, my old lady was checking herself out in our bedroom mirror and noticed she had antlers. She didn’t want to be photographed, so I took one for the team. I know, it’s a lame first “Photo of the Night,” but it reminds me of this book my grandmother had when I was a kid. It was all of these crazy happenstance photos, like a guy playing soccer, but the soccer ball just happened to be right in front of his head, so it gave the appearance that his head was a soccer ball. And what about the picture of the two cows standing parallel to each other, but their heads are in opposite directions giving the illusion that you’re looking at a two headed cow.

In our latest episode of Band Practice I think I might have found Jim Morrison’s lost lyrics on the bathroom floor. He’s rumored to have a practice space in the basement, so the lyrics could very well be his. They go like this: “This is what we call sane, the highly unlikely, the corners in our mouth, kick, vs. while I’m down, kick, vs. while I’m out.” If that isn’t J-Mo, I don’t know what is. And it sounds hella fresh paired with the band practicing behind the “vote republican, it’s easier than thinking” door.

In this episode, we’re very lucky to have the famous drummer Bill McClintock join us all the way from Carmel, Indiana. After my pathetic attempt at air drums, Bill shows us how to rock in the hallway. And Derek, well, I had to cut 10 min. of footage of him humping and licking the door. He really put it best at the end of the video, “run.” Enjoy…

We were a little upset that HBO was shining us on with our first pilot, but we decided to stick with the series. We even have a theme song. So let Kid Lightning and Thunder Boy take you on a tour of their rehearsal studio in search of the ultimate sonic bliss.

I was surfing for the SNL skit “Astronaut Jones” on YouTube the other day and came across a couple of dudes doing this parody.

Nothing extraordinarily special about the video, but for a second I thought the guy with the beard was me, only his hair was a little too short. Seeing this almost look alike, and the fact that someone commented, “clown haircut” on one of my videos, got me thinking that maybe it’s time for a haircut. Then I started reading the comments on this video and realized that johnny07652 is NOT a fan of the hipster-style cut (or the beard).

johnny07652
What’s with the beard? Is it supposed to be funny? Because it’s not. It just looks like a hipster douchebag with a fake beard trying to be funny and failing. Really lame.

twopoint0
What crawled up your colon?

johnny07652
You must be a giant hipster asshole. Newsflash - matted down hair is not stylish, it’s fucking GAY. Go fuck yourself, hipseter douchebag.

blakelovesmebest
you r such a horibel person

johnny07652
Fuck you, Hipster asshole. People with hair styled like yours should be burned at the stake, fucking stupid sheep following whatever MTV dictates you should have for a hairstyle, faggot hipster Motherfucker.

That settles it. Now I’m on a mission to try to get johnny07652I to like that haircut. I’m getting a haircut like that tomorrow and then I’ll take a sexy photo of myself and send it to him. I’m sure his next comment will be “I’m so sorry foundmyrosebud01. I feel like a different person today. You see, this gentleman emailed me a picture of himself with your hairstyle. All of a sudden it was like a light bulb went off in my head! I got in touch with my inner self and realized that my true identity is concealed in that haircut. Peace and love to all. P.S. Have you seen the video of the fawn cuddling with the cat? Sooo precious. P.P.S Hey blakelovesmebest, you’re a fucking GAY douchebag motherfucking hipseter faggot speller. Asshole.”

Suck on this johnny07652.

Spencer Owen, congratulations on winning the third trivia game for a song and video about you, by me.

Here are the top ten things I know about you.
10. You like to frequent California Pizza Kitchen
9. You have a big fan base in Scandinavia
8. Your hair grows at an alarmingly fast rate
7. You like Boredoms, R. Kelly, Prince, and 48,397 other musical artists
6. You have an obsession with Paul Simon’s “Graceland”
5. You wear vintage blazers to work
4. You met your girlfriend at one of your performances
3. You think L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology is fascinating
2. You were the only person in L.A. without a driver’s license and actually relied on public transportation
1. You never turn down a banana if offered one.

Song to download:
spencer-owen-song

LYRICS:
Banana! Banana! Banana! Banana!

Hey man on the telephone
Thrift store blazer on a Tuesday morn
at the movies with a large popcorn
When you were in LA you had to ride the bus home

Beck and Tom Cruise got something in common
‘Cause of them L. Ron Hubbard ain’t eatin’ top ramen
You got more potions than an Amazon Shaman
Is that how you picked up your lady when you were onstage jammin’?

Never been known to turn down a banana
You eat them ridin’ a horse in Montana
You eat them at Mardis Gras in Louisiana
Do you eat them on the plane back from Scandanavia?

Have you ever had a race?
Between the hair on your head and the hair on your face?
Twenty bucks says they both come in first place
Your hair is on crystal meth tweakin’ at a fast pace

Hey Spencer Owen
You keep the fresh beats flowin’
Do you dig Purple Rain
Play it my party that I’m throwin’

Hey Spencer Owen
Do you like the brothers Cohen
California Pizza Kitchen
If you’re headed I’m goin’

These are the ways of Spencer Owen
As he’s flowin’ through the universe in style
Let’s turn up R Kelly and Prince
And we will be here for a while

Question:
The Dead Kennedys and Beck each dissed on the same major corporation in one of their songs. What’s the corporation and what are the song titles?

If you don’t know, you should still answer as creatively, stupidly, or boringly as possible. You still might be a winner.

To answer, simply comment on this post. Your comments will be held unpublished by me until I pick a winner, so you don’t have to worry about everyone seeing your answer.

Good luck…