life is throwing.

An onslaught of haymakers

are trying to finish off

what work with little reward have done…

and are doing.

Hands aren’t calloused yet,

but my soul is buried in scar tissue

and my feet…

those dogs are barking.

I drink some coffee

from a place I tend to frequent

when the sun starts to descend.

Rather than finding my center,

my jaded conscience

is now trafficking in unfiltered thoughts

and unfettered stream-of-conscience

internal dialogue

(when not chain-smoking.)

There is a line in The Old Man and the Sea that goes:

“A man is not made for defeat…

a man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Then, I remembered

that Ernest Hemingway took his own life.

Tomorrow is payday,

which for a moment,

lessens the pain of life’s punches. 

©2012 José-Ariel Cuevas

So my best piece of advice for those who want to write an iOS app: fucking don’t.

Seriously. Keep your job in marketing or keep writing websites for a living.

There are a shit-ton of reasons why:

First of all, it’s not a livable business model for everyone.

I have a reasonably successful app in the App Store, and you know what? It pays less than a shitty part-time job. I have a few others in the store that aren’t as popular, and they make about a dollar a week, combined, if I’m lucky. Generally speaking, you will be in the class of apps that get largely ignored. For every Angry Birds, there are thousands upon thousands of apps that barely get a few downloads, if any at all.

You’re going to have to invest a serious amount of time and effort into an app, because if it’s not of any quality, there’s no way you’ll even be considered in the marketplace. Building quality takes a metric assload of time from even the brightest developer. If you can get away with doing that much work while still holding down a job that lets you live, then go for it, but dumping on your regular employment to focus on this will probably mean you’ll bankrupt yourself so you could add “iOS Developer” to your resume.

Second, your idea sucks.

No, it really does. Let me tell you why, by asking you some questions:

• Does your app require a vibrant, large community of users to make it compelling?

  If yes, and your community doesn’t already exist, you have failed. You will very likely fail, too, if you are building off of an existing community. You can’t make a social network out of thin air; it took luck and tenacity seven years ago, and it’s harder to create a new network today. I mean, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to build another Facebook, or supplant Facebook with something new, I’m just saying it’s way more difficult than it was when Facebook first appeared.

  But really, if your selling point is that it will be a wonderful and useful app as soon as you have enough users, you fail. Your product is not compelling at all, so you won’t attract users, so your product will never be compelling.

• Does your app require lots of manual updating on the server-side by people, instead of automated processes?

  If your app provides a compelling service that is not easily automated, you will either spend an insane amount of time manually managing things, spend a ton of money to have other people do this work for you, or you won’t put the investment in and your user experience will suck.

• Does your idea present an entirely new and different way of looking at something?

  This is a hard one. Yes, innovation is a wonderful thing, but for the most part, people are stubborn and won’t want to budge from something that’s familiar. Maybe you could revolutionize the grocery list experience, but it’s more likely you’ll just present a too-steep learning curve and you’ll just baffle people.

Third, you suck

Mobile apps are not easy to write. They’re easy enough to build, if you are even half competent at writing code, but making a good mobile app is incredibly and subtly hard. You need to consider difficult and nebulous areas like interface design and human interaction; you have to be good at graphic design (people who say the look of an app, or its icon, are one of the most important things about an app are full of it; looking good is important, but hardly vital); you have to be able to think about asynchronous code paths and ensure that you don’t drain the battery or run slowly.

Fourth, people suck

Your customers will be hateful infants. They will tear you to shreds when they review your app, for even the tiniest inconvenience they experience. They’ll send you poorly-written, venomous emails that highlight their incompetence more than any problems with your app, and will demand their money back. If you’re not established enough to have a dedicated support staff, you’ll be nailed to the hull for all your dumb customers to devour. Being face-to-face with the public is a shitty place to be.

Lastly: get out of my way

I’m trying to make some goddamn money off the App Store. I’ve got a driveway to pave.

“I’m just glad that I came by when I did.”   Imelda, the clerk’s sister, came in with a club sandwich and some lentil soup from the place up the road.  She still had her hair cutting kit in her hand when she found Albert in a pool of chunky vomit.  She stripped him down to his new underwear, helped him back into the bathroom and into the tub for the second time that day and ran warm water over him. “My husband run off.  He was a drunk.”  Giving him the stink eye.  “I ain’t a drunk.”  Albert mumbled as the water ran.  His side was throbbing.  His internal organs were over used and he didn’t know why.  She just looked at him with a look that said ‘Yeah right fucker.’  “You want to change your clothes?”  “Yeah.”  “You want me to come back?”  “No, please stay..I’m…trying to feel a little more human.  Thanks for all of your help.”  “Needed to wash your hair again anyway.”  She said.

Al finished washing off the his own vomit, but when it came time to exit the tub his foot still wasn’t working and he nearly went down again.  “What the fuck??!!” he screamed before changing out of the underwear he had neglected to take off before entering the tub.  He changed into fresh clothes; on the bathroom counter were K-Mart track pants and a wife beater.  Imelda directed him to sit backwards on the toilet.  He was so exhausted and ill that he put his head in his hands on the cold porcelain and moaned while she cut his shit-locks down.  ’8 years!’ he thought.  After forty minutes of work and another hair wash, using the shower this time, he looked in the mirror and thought that he could pass for a member of the Eagles.  ‘And only 34.’  Where had his good looks gone? ‘My teeth!  Godammit!  Am I on Meth?’’  He had been awake for a while and didn’t feel the urge to smoke anything.  A cigarette maybe, or a small bowl of weed to settle his stomach. 

Imelda ushered him to another room two doors down; apart from the shitty landscape and being on the opposite wall, he couldn’t tell the difference.  His sandwich sat unopened.  He didn’t want to test his stomach.  The soup was cold but he felt that he might be able to keep that down.  He couldn’t taste it.  He collapsed on the bed and fell asleep instantly. 

This time he awoke to a gentle rapping on the door.  “Al?”  Some more knocks and a little more forceful. “Albert.”  “Coming.  Ugghhh”  He stood up.  Was the room spinning or was it him?  ‘Why the multicolors?’  He wondered.  He was able to shuffle over to the door.  “Jon?”  “Yeah.  It’s me.  Open the door.”  It was dark outside and a very large man in a suit was staring back at him.  He didn’t have a neck.  Definitely not Jon.  “Who the fuck are you?”  A tired face peered out from behind the goon.  “Hi Al.”  He stubbed out his cigarette.  Al looked at the man blocking the door with his bulk.  “Umm…who’s the side of beef?”  “That’s Mike.   We’ll get to that later.”

“Eight years.  This where you’ve been this whole time?  What a shit hole.”  “I don’t know, they seem to be taking good care of me and I’ve only seen this stripmall…and under the overpass up there.”  “That’s the whole town.” “Oh.  I had a bracelet on.  It said Peak Psychiatric Hospital.  I think they gave me something.  My body feels like shit.  It hurts to move, my fucking foot won’t work, my organs are vibrating and everything spins when I stand up.”  “I’ll look into it,”  said Jon.   

“What is the last thing that you remember?” pressed Jon. “It is really hard to remember anything.  I was walking home from the hotel bar… and… there are some flashes.  Walking along a road… getting thrown out of a bar… laughing faces… headlights.  But that’s it.  Has it really been eight years?” He looked up at his best friend, his brother, more than a brother.  “Give or take,” said Jon.  “Jesus.”

“How about you Jon?  Still have our business?”  “Booming.  Too well.”  Jon looked almost as bad as Al felt. “We do just as good in the down-times as the good ones just like you thought we would.  Better in the bad, even.  People are scrambling to make deals and will pay anything to save their asses or sell their divisions off.  Remember that $500K convertible loan we made to that Russian guy?”  “Maybe.” Said Al looking at Mike.  “Well they’re…mmm…how do I put this?  Running the planet now so we don’t have to worry about money.  Well,  I do have to take Mike with me everywhere but that is another story.  Got into a bit of straight ahead corporate litigation a while back and there have been some threats.  I used to think the little guys were dangerous!  Remember the guy who came to the office with a gun?  Well, the big boys look for any weak points at any time and will even set you up for a fall if they have the chance.  It’s like being in politics.  Speaking of… well… we won’t go there quite yet.”

“It sounds like you are doing well Jon.  You still look like shit though.  But who am I to talk?  Where’s Candice?  I figured that she’d be here with you.”  “Shit.  I didn’t want to be the one to have to tell you this Al but the years… they got long and she thought, like we all did, that you were dead.”  “Figures.”  He longed to see her more than his best friend.  “Who’s she fucking now?  Did she get married?  Have kids or something?”  He asked to the floor.  “Yeah, twins.  We’re friends on Facebook but her husband is the jealous type so we don’t see each other often.  Fucking douche bag”  “Face… what?” Al said, his mug all screwed up at his best friend. “Can I see her?” “I’ll see what I can arrange.  For now we need to get you better.  Get in the car.  Mike will you get his things?”  Jon glanced around the room.  “Well… um… come with me Al.  There’s a helicopter waiting to take us back home, to San Francisco.  We’ll make you whole again.”

There’s a point early on in the book that kicked me in the groin, good. After traveling with the Man and his son for a while through the ashen landscape, we get to this quick exchange:

He woke in the night and lay listening. He couldnt remember where he was. The thought made him smile. Where are we? he said.

What is it, Papa?

Nothing. We’re okay. Go to sleep.

We’re going to be okay, arent we Papa?

Yes. We are.

And nothing bad is going to happen to us.

That’s right.

Because we’re carrying the fire.

Yes. Because we’re carrying the fire.

I had to put the book down for a moment after reading that; it was a moment so precious and beautiful that it knocked me on my ass. The “carrying the fire” theme took so much weight — it came out of nowhere to hurt your heart, and it became something to hang onto through the gathering darkness. The Man’s inevitable end and the son’s uncertain future kickstarts off with him carrying the fire to another family. It helps you in your fall. The fall becomes your journey because of it’s grace.

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh God. Yes.

Contrast this with the way this shit was handled in the movie that was made out of the book. Standard book-is-better-than-movie stuff aside, it just hurts, the way they handled this theme. How did they handle it? Viggio fucking explains it to the kid. Yeah. Instead of an unexplained, horrible moment of beauty that comes out of nowhere, this trope becomes instead a piece of throwaway dialog during a quiet scene.

It’s so anemic, so worthless that I can only imagine it was the product of some creativity on the part of a bunch of movie executives. I imagine the dialog went something like this:

Mammon: Hmm so there’s this part about carrying fire in the book.

Belphegor: Yeah it’s a powerful metaphor and it’s really important to the story, huh?

Mammon: We gotta have that in the movie, because otherwise it’s an artless exercise in retelling a story, but there’s no way all the dipshits watching the movie will understand what it means.

Belphegor: Easy! We will have our hack writer make it so the character explains the metaphor to the kid!

Mammon: Huzzah! Let mediocrity reign! Clearly people will put up with this shit and keep shoveling money at us!

You see, they could have kept this part of the book intact, unexplained and powerful, and it would work both ways. If you got it, or read the book, you’d clutch your heart during that scene. If you didn’t get it, it would sail over your head as easily as Viggio’s clumsy explanation does, because you’d be waiting for more violence and cannibals and shit anyway.

It’s OK if not everyone gets it. Art is funny that way. People see different things based on their experience and intelligence. Yes you can have widespread appeal without everyone understanding what each little thing means.

Now this is how I want to spend my birthday.  The anticipation has been building for years.  I have listened to Henry Rollins for over ten years go on about his goal to out-perform Iggy on stage (only Rollins thinks it’s a competition by the way).  The show we are going to tonight is a rebooked one.  The original show was postponed in July due to Iggy breaking his foot at the first show on the tour.  Fucking awesome. 

The Warfield is at 6th and Market streets.  This is my least favorite corner in San Francisco.  The crackheads, meth addics, and newly released from jail schizo-crack/meth-addict-hooker-zombies all vomit downhill from the Tenderloin using Taylor and Mason streets like a winter Olympic slalom.  The slalom flags are swapped out for shiny objects, drugs, and tourists (victims) to harass for money.    There are people passed out in the streets and alleys during daylight hours in summer.  I haven’t seen that since I was last in Detroit.  Luckily for us the show is now on the cusp of winter and only the die hard zombies who can battle the elements are roving about.  Fun.

My girlfriend and I are waiting for the box office to open which turns out to be in an hour.  We grab dinner at Show Dogs across the street from the venue.  Today, Sunday, is my actual birthday.  There was a great party yesterday in the Mission (thanks Babe!), I’ve been drinking since Thursday and have to work tomorrow.  I ordered a chicken sausage, some BBQ fries, and a coke.  

Enjoying an after dinner cigarette, Pickle walks out of the fog of war at 6th and Market.  He sees that Show Dogs is closing up as he greets me, mumbles something unintelligible, and then I hear “closed”.  He then goes for a burger across the street.  Why a restaurant in a major US city would close at 6pm on a weekend is something that I’ll never understand.  San Francisco is supposed to be out there, in the land of “fruits and nuts” as some in the Midwest call California, and a brew pub being open past 6pm should be mandated by city charter.  Stay crazy San Francisco!

Over an hour later and the box office is still not open.  Three people who work the door at the venue each tell us a different story about when it will open.  I look around.  There are two lines.  The ‘Main Line’ and three or four people waiting by a tree which may or may not be the ‘Will Call’ line.  We think.  We get into the very unofficial looking ‘Will Call’ line.

My crew might have to sell a ticket (Pickle’s wife is sick) so I use this time to ask a couple of obvious scalpers what price they would buy a ticket for.  “Twenty five.” One guy tells me.  I laugh in his face.  “There’s still tickets at the door, man.”  “Not this close!  Been sold out for weeks!” I reply.  While in the will call line I notice off in the distance there is a homeless looking woman, doing the homeless shuffle, pestering the people in the main line.  Keep an eye on that one.  After ten minutes the girlfriend grabs her ticket from will call and we head to the end of the main line.

I hate waiting in line on this block.  “Selling cigarettes here!”  One guy spouts.  Just announce to the world that you’ll steal anything from anybody why don’t you?  I keep an eye on that joker too. Oooh, another scalper, “How much will you buy a ticket for man?” I ask.  “40 bucks for floor.”  “Thanks”  That’s more like it.  The next one is selling at face value.  Righteous.  Supply and demand.

Momus and his wife show up and we meet in the main line to shoot the shit. After a while a short soccer mom looking lady comes up to us, “If you bought your tickets using your American Express card you can get in that line over there.  You get in early. Make sure to check out the booth towards the back to pick up some free goodies.”  That we will lady.  Thanks!  This turned out to be $15 in free booze and a Warfield t-shirt! Rad!

At the last second I see the homeless woman menacingly creep up on us “Do you have a dollar?” she screeches far to close as I’m reaching to protect the girlfriend.  She has blood coming down her forehead and onto the rest of her face.  “Get lost” I say in my most menacing voice.  She spins unsteadily and heads back off towards the main line.

——————————————————————————-

Short Text Conversation:

Momus:  We’re in line.

Penemue:  Is there a buffet?

After some chuckles at Penemue’s expense (No one, including me,  got the joke apparently) Pickle asks me if I have ever been to the free buffet that they have at the Warfield with shelled crab and oysters. Thinking that may be another AMEX promotion or something I respond “Nope.”  “That’s because it doesn’t fucking exist!”  Greatness.  When Penemue got inside the venue  I asked him what the fuck he was talking about and he said, “Fat joke.”  Got it, Momus is chubby.  I’m a little slow sometimes.

——————————————————————————-

A little later the AMEX lady comes back, the one with way too much makeup.  She must be from LA or something.  Now she has some security-ish looking guys from the venue and looks to be pointing out the bleeding homeless woman who’s been getting in everyone’s face.  These two guys look like they could give two shits.  They look over towards the ever increasing main line, mumble something to each other and head back the way that they came, never to be seen again.

Fifteen minutes later the bleeding homeless woman comes back, but this time I see her coming.  “GO AWAY!”  I say menacingly.  She scuttles off again.  Pickle is a shade of Kosher dill and I make sure to watch his eyes.  He’s had violent encounters with the street zombies of this town before.  “I just threw up a little in my mouth,”  he tells me.

We get inside to our usual Warfield Spot.  We really should name it something.  The best spot at our favorite San Francisco venue.  We’re on the floor.  Not in the pit but the next tier so we have a great view over the horde.  Right side middle.  Not too close to the walkway, to be away from the assholes trying to nudge in after the show starts, and right on the front rail complete with a drink shelf.  Damn we’re good.  The cocktail waitress is Sarah.  I saw her in the pit and we needed to get another round.  She heard her name above the insanity, our drinks were waiting when we got back.  Awesome.

Iggy and the Stooges start off with Raw Power.  This was the first ever post on BayAreaButchers (Go Momus!).  Iggy was a rabid dog.  

I timed it.  In the first 20 minutes he had broken his mike stand, almost took out a roadie with said dead mike stand, and stage dived TWICE during my favorite song of the evening, “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog.”  Iggy then went full bore at the bassist’s huge speaker stack and took himself out!  He’s 63 and can outperform anyone from our current rock generation.  Iggy was born 10 years BEFORE my dad!!

The Stooges even brought up people from the pit on stage at one point.  Unreal.

Penemue goes into the pit and Momus quickly follows.  I see them rocking out for a bit to get the lay of the land and then Penemue takes off to skull crush the pit wannabes.  He wins.  Double bonus points for first strike.  Momus comes right back with a move that I like to call ‘professional crowd surfing’.  It’s like crab walking when you were playing in grade school except you are on top of a throbbing mass of people.   You aren’t crab walking on the floor but on other people shoulders and heads.  Most people crowd riding don’t do anything and then fall on their asses.  Then someone, somehow, and I’ve never seen this at a show, flips Momus (2:28) head over heels like a pancake while he’s still crowd riding.  Unbelievable.    When they return Momus is panting with a huge smile on his face and Penemue yells, “I touched Iggy!”  Momus and Iggy were the only crowd riders that night.  Winner?  Momus.

Never got to see Iggy bleed, but he exuded a force of will which infected the whole audience. 

Keep practicing Rollins.

There was an instance that stood out: this woman walked by, dressed in a flannel-type shirt and skin-tight acid washed jeans. She had the trappings of a suburban, garden-variety, Olympia-drinking hipster. I couldn’t stop thinking about her jeans, or how everything that is old, is new again. Certain articles of clothing should remain dead and buried, but circulation-killing acid washed jeans seen to be one head of a multi-headed, never-dying hydra monster. Another head of said monster reared as she talked on her phone, “… I don’t like that place, there are too many beaners there.” Her racist remark was as casual as her checkerboard Vans. What made her vile comment even viler was that she seemed to be Latina as well (or at the very least, was of some ethnic background.)

Racism is like this old byproduct of humanity’s early days. And in-house racism seems extra-special to me. It is done with underpinning of class, a colonial mindset. A few Latin Americans have perfected this mindset and have added a few pages to the playbook that has survived since the days of the Conquistadores. A cursory glance of either Univisión or Telemundo is recommended to see how class and race are shaped by pop culture. (Side note: Among me and my friends, we always joked how Argentina, the whitest Latin-American country, with their history of Fascist-leanings and their noses forever in the air, were able to do what all the Conquistadores couldn’t.) Soap operas (novellas), especially in México, are their bread and butter. No matter if it is set in a city or in a ranch in some rural outpost, the template never changes: the main and secondary characters are either whiter than blinding light, or are light-skinned mulattos who can pass; the servants and thieves were the usual shade of indigenous brown.

These images reverberate throughout. Go to any part of México where cosmopolitan sensibilities and rural ways of life converge, 9 out of 10 times, you’d hear city denizen call rural folks “naco”. “Naco” is the equivalent of “white trash”, but with a tad more racial animus towards darker-skinned hinterland people. This hatred then gets internalized, which is evident in phrases I remember hearing as a child: if the child came out light skinned, adults would say, “¡qué bonito y güero! (How cute and white)”, and if the baby came out with black hair, brown skin and brown eyes, “¡Lástima que te salió! (Too bad he came out indigenous-looking). These comments were usually said in jest; the truth as people see it usually lies below, thinly covered.

One would like to think that old-world customs stay behind as people immigrate (legal or otherwise) to the new world. Migrants from the parts of Latin America that my family came from are usually poorer and darker skinned than most. But something happens when they cross the border and set foot on U.S. soil… they take up the same, oppressive demeanor that they suffered under (even more so when they became legit, American citizens). Self-defeating classism can be as benign as one  giving “American-sounding” names to their offspring, or dropping the mother-tongue in favor of English (usually, by the 3^rd generation, the descendants are more than likely to be monolingual English speakers); or it can be as bigoted as anything that a skinhead might yell back at them. My Dad was especially judgmental over the men my sisters dated; he preferred to see them date Mexicans over all others. He wasn’t too fond of the Anglos my sisters dated, and when one of them brought home a black dude, my Dad… well, he was genteel enough to greet him with a cold indifference.

On the surface, the sons and daughters of immigrants seem to shed these mores and ideals and forge their own identities growing up American (whether subtle or clad in American-Flag festooned Zubaz pants). Most of them were open to all that they were, and thrust themselves in the diversity of inner city life. Some though, swallowed whole the propaganda of the far American Right (about the dangers of multiculturalism and immigrants—this, despite their last name and skin tone); the ease with which some of them say “wetback”, or “go back to where you came from” is both unnerving and unsettling, as if with each hurled invective, their skin would get whiter.

I have been on the receiving end of a few racist words thrown my way, it served as a reminder of who I really was, and that no matter what I did to forget the blood that coursed through my veins, my ethnicity will always be a part of me. The first and only time I was called “wetback” by a Mexican-American was as much of a shell-shock as the day I learned that there was no Santa. This happened on the red-line in Los Angeles, I was listening to some Pérez Prado, rather loudly, and this older man tapped my shoulder to get my attention. I took off my headphones and turned around, and that’s when he said ”lower that beaner shit, where do you think we are?” He soon got off at the Vine St. station, and I soldiered on to my stop (Hollywood/Highland), rather stunned because that guy looked more Mexican than me and the guy selling roses outside the station. Even though this man looked like he has seen some better days, the fact that he was born here and the music I was listening to was in Spanish, made him feel superior to me (despite the fact that I was born here as well).

All these thoughts and flashbacks rushed through my head, turning my leisurely pursuit into this meditation on race, class and immigration. I put my book away and thought about it some more. No matter how far along in time we progress, some old habits persist and prosper inside closed-minded hosts (even if they are dressed like a liberal-type.) My phone suddenly goes off, breaking me away from my train of thought. My friend had just sent me a text, asking me if I was downtown. I said I was. He then asked if I wanted to get a drink, to which I said yes. At the moment, I sure needed it.

©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas

I’m shot out like a Bulleit.

Another one and I will live again.

Rising from death like the phoenix:  From the slave to the free.

My night wakes up faster than a sunrise and they walk in to brighten the day.

My turn.  The table is set for me to make my run, so I smile like a devil and pull the trigger on cue…

“What’s with the fence?” asked DMZ, referring to the twenty five by fifteen foot black, see though, chainlink-like screen hovering behind the stage.  The surrounding Palm Trees could be seen through the screen, an atmosphere creating feature of Coachella stages I’ve not seen elsewhere.  

“Hopefully we’ll find out soon, my feet are not happy.” I whine weakly.    

“Suck it up fat boy,” quips the wife in good humor.  She’s excited, having listen to some pre-festival Devo and found they made her happy like few other bands.

With that the black ‘fence’ came to life, sprawled with brilliant colors and fast paced clips of the bands early years interspersed with animated Energy Domes.  Devo took the stage, dark silhouettes in front of the now opaque screen, and launched into a song off their new, at the time unreleased, album Something For Everyone.   It’s quickly clear Devo has been upgraded.  No longer handcuffed by the limited audio technology in the 80’s (which they used to brilliant effect) they sounded better than ever. The new song was catchy, the late-night crowd was moving, we were all slowly compressing as the song and screen drew us in closer and closer.   

“Don’t Shoot” they shout in precise unison, “I’m a M-A-A-A-A-A-A-N” belts Mark Mothersbaugh.  It was Devo in the modern world.  The screen, beautifully sleek and simple, turned the show into an instant party.   

Twenty minutes later, after their most known hit Whip It, standing on wobbly legs in the desert thirty minutes past midnight, slowly moving forward as the one-song fans streamed out towards some horrible headliner, the three of us now even with the sound booth, they change costumes for the second time while the origins of Devo video captivated the remaining audience, they blew the crowd away with their iconic covers of (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Secret Agent Man, and a well choreographed performance of Uncontrollable Urge.  

A truly unforgettable live show and now I’m forever a diehard Devo fan.  Since that unforgettable night in the desert, we’ve now seen them at The Warfield for my birthday (a story I’m incapable of recalling due to a bucket of whiskey, aka the birth of Soapbox), most recently at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, and soon at the legendary Fillmore.  At the Warfield show the whole crowd starred at the ceiling in frenzied anticipation as Mark pointed at Godzilla tearing the roof off.  We’ve been to a handful of shows at the beautiful and intimate Moutain Winery overlooking the south bay, but Devo is the only band that had the crowd standing and moving all night.  We expect the Fillmore show to be nothing less than a dance party celebration of our accelerating devolution.  Devo’s music is thoughtful, honest and fun, and their live show is entertaining and energetic, where dancing is irresistibly contagious.  During what appears to be our decline and fall, Devo is a welcome addition back, and I hope they continue to make new music right up till the end.

Tonight wasn’t really any different, so I walked into the lower height until I got to Molotov’s.  I decided to have a beer to unwind, and right after I ordered, the bartender put Slayer on the jukebox.  That was exactly what I needed, and I was content.  I bullshitted with a hardcore punk chick for a few minutes while I had my beer, then headed home.

I cut over on Fillmore, to try and catch one of the last trains towards my house, over by Duboce Park and the Midtown Safeway.  I’ve walked through here before, and it’s a boring part of town.

I started down the street with my hood up, headphones, listening to South Of Heaven, but without the volume all the way up.  I inherited my father’s paranoia, and sometimes it shows.  I saw a typical San Francisco street denizen up ahead of me, flailing his arms and ranting about some bullshit at a wall.  While that it isn’t typical of the neighborhood, it is fairly common in this town, so I kept my eyes sharp, and maintained my pace.

(I see you had your mind all made up you group of
pitiful liars. before i woke to face the day, your master
plan transpired.)

As I got to the point where I needed to pass him, he saw me coming and asked for a cigarette.  I continued to walk as if I hadn’t heard him; looking at the next intersection.  He blocked my path, forcing me to stutter-step to try to get past.  He repeated his question and I told him to fuck off.  It was at this point that I saw another bum standing up in the shadow of the doorway he had been ranting at.

(Something told me…)

They were both twenty-something drop outs.  It was clear that they weren’t yet broken by the street life, but still had been there for a while.  I managed to get around the guy, and stepped up my pace a little.  They both had that slightly emaciated look that all these bums get after enough time of living on drugs and crumbs.  I have a job, a house; I eat well, and still play sports.   Those differences between us was about to become very helpful.

(This job had more to meet the eye.
My song is not believed?)

I don’t know if it was Thing 1, or Thing 2, but just as I saw their shadows passing me on the sidewalk, a foot hit the back of my knee, and caused me to drop.  I rolled forward, twisted, and rolled up onto my feet.  I knew I was in trouble.

I jumped quickly to the right as they were coming at me, throwing a hard, quick punch with my right hand, and nailed Thing 1 across the cheek.  He fell, taking his buddy down, but my momentum was off, and I stumbled towards them, grappling with the air, and their arms aiming at my legs.

One of them caught me, and I went back over them, dropped, rolled on the ground again and bounced up.  I knew I was outnumbered, and had to just brawl.

As soon as I had recovered my landing, Thing 2 was coming at me, so I pulled the same move, and he dropped the ground.  I back stepped quickly to not end up between them, as Thing 1 stood up.  I jumped at him and threw a one, two, combo, and dropped him on top of thing 1, who scrambled up and charged me.

(My words some-what deceiving?  Now I’m un-whole.)

I was able to push him away, but Thing 2 managed to get up, and hit me across the jaw.  Before I could catch my balance completely, he landed another punch.  I dodged another couple, and that’s when things get blurry.

I do remember breaking his arm.  I do remember throwing a knee into the face of Thing 1.  I do remember getting hit once or twice more.  I do remember them both on the ground.

That’s when I started kicking.

(You’ve waged a war of nerves
but you can’t crush the kingdom.)

I wish I still had my steel-toed boots on from work, but I had switched to my street shoes.  Kicking someone in the face in Vans just isn’t as satisfying, and kind of hurts your foot.  I just have to be grateful that I am in decent shape, while most of these bums aren’t.

(Can’t be what your idols are. Can’t leave the scar.
You cry for compensation. I ask you please just give us…)

After a few kicks to the head of each, and a few brutal crunching noises followed by the groans of the desperate and broken, I took off, knowing they weren’t getting up and coming after me.  I booked it down to the nearest trolley station.  Checking my phone I knew I only had a few minutes before the train arrived.  I needed a beer, so I ducked into the grocery store and grabbed a big boy Racer 5, the 22 ounce version.  By the time I got back out, I had just enough time to run to the stop and watch the last train roll by, empty, with a “Sorry, No Passengers” sign instead of a destination.  Fuck.

(5 minutes alone…)

That was annoying, but my adrenaline was still pumping, so I hoofed it down to the 16^th Street Bart Station, to try and catch the bus up Mission, and get back home.

I walked up to the bus stop, saw that it would be there in about a minute, and leaned against the light post, smoking my cigarette.

(I read your eyes, your mind was made up. you took me for
a fool.)

Some fucker at the bus stop decided to ask me for a smoke.  I was not in the mood.  I said no, and he asked again, and I said no again.

(You used complexion of my skin for a counter racist tool.)

This bastard decided that I had been rude because I wouldn’t give him a cigarette, and as I saw the bus rolling up, I also saw him walking towards me.  He stuck his middle finger in my face, and told me to go fuck myself and my mother.  He said it in English, then repeated himself in Spanish, just in case I didn’t get it the first time.

(-you can’t burn me-)

I wanted to kick his teeth in.

(I’ve spilled my guts out in the past. Taken advantage of because you know where.)

My bus was there though, so I went to jump on, and watched him get on before me.

Being the late night bus down Mission, it was jam packed.  As I glanced around, the same asshole that had just cussed me out met my glance, and ducked down real fast.  Apparently he thought he could be tough, because he was going to escape on the bus.  I snorted to myself, thumbing the bottle of beer that I had been so tempted to smash his face in, then turned towards the door as the bus reached its first stop at 17^th.  I didn’t get any more shit from that asshole, but as soon as I got off the bus at 24th, I had to deal with it again.

(I’ve come from my past.
You’ve waged a war of nerves but you can’t crush the kingdom.)

I hopped out the back door of the bus, and glanced over to see some cute girls walking out the front door.  Tall, thin and well-dressed, they made for quite a pleasant sight in the slowly emptying station.  I decided to pause, light myself a cigarette, and enjoy the view.

Some other dipshit saw me light up and tried to get my attention by whistling.  Even though I heard him, I ignored it and stared at this girl’s ass until she started across the street, then cut towards Valencia, which is sort of towards my house, though not directly.  The asshole yelled, but I continued to walk.  He ran up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder, not knowing how close that made him to being hit over the head with a glass bottle, and made the sign language for a cigarette.  I said no, and continued walking.

(Can’t be what your idols are. Can’t leave the scar.
I bury your compensation. I ask you please just give us…)

He didn’t follow me, and I walked home. 

(5 minutes alone…)

Damn, I needed to piss.

(5 minutes alone…)

Classic Hitchens after the jump.

h/t to Penemue for the title