Word of the Day: hokum

Today’s word is so delightful in its phonetic jaunt that you might be tempted to think it’s a term of endearment – it is not.  At its core, “hokum” is a linguistic middle finger dressed up in folksy clothing.  It’s the sweet-sounding assassin of shitty ideas, bad writing, and con-artist theatrics.  Merriam-Webster, may God have mercy on their stuffy woke souls, defines it as “nonsense” or “unsubstantial material presented as if it were significant.”  More pointedly for our purposes, it’s also a literary indictment – a tire iron to the knees of hacky prose and storytelling cliches.  I’m looking at you, James Patterson industrial complex?
It’s a term that slinks out of the American vernacular like a whiskey-soaked conman, promising truth but delivering a swift kick to the cerebral cortex with a steel-toed boot of bullshit.  The word dates back to 1917, birthed from the American theater scene.  It likely evolved from “hocus-pocus,” which itself is just medieval bullshit Latin for “I’m fooling your dumb ass.”  Hokum came to refer to the corny, manufactured sentimentality peddled on stage by second-rate vaudevillians.  Flash forward, and today we have hokum in chain bookstores, high-school drama productions, and at every Netflix-funded rom-com Bulgarian dump yard.

Hector Mengel was drunk in a way that would make Hemingway sit up in his grave, slack-jawed with secondhand liver pain.  The Mountain Lion Saloon was his temple, tequila the sacrament, and the congregation was a couple of barflies who hadn’t seen sobriety since Woodstock ’99.
“Writing’s gotta be real,” Hector slurred to Marty, the kind of tragically bald bartender who always looked like he just lost a fight to a squirrel.  “You start doing it for the clicks and the algorithms, you’re no better than those hokum-slinging MFA pricks who keep comparing their stepdads to the mists of Yorkshire.”
“Inspiring,” Marty droned as he chipped away at what could have either been line rind or unclaimed dental work.
Hector tipped his chair back – weightlessly at first, until gravity got possessive.  The crash was museum worthy.  Flat on his ass and buried under an avalanche of spilled booze and shame, Hector waved blindly toward a pack of peanuts someone kicked out of reach.  The crowd of zero laughed with gusto.
Just as he lumbered upward, muttering curses that would make sailors call HR, the door flung open.  Enter Brittney Stone, her reputation a howling storm known across two counties and recently defamed at the Yellow Pages Yelp party.
“Hector, you bigoted windbag!” she shouted, slapping a dog-eared printout of his latest op-ed on the bar top.  The title appeared to be “Is Dipshit the Only Flavor Modern Poetry Knows Anymore?  Discuss.”  She jabbed her toothbrush-thin finger at his use of the word “triteness.”  “Your metaphors are rotten cheese!”
“I’ll have you know,” Hector wheezed, retrieving his now-drenched fedora from the floor, “that my metaphors are artisanal cheese.  Funky by design but adored in Paris.”
“This?  This right here?”  She held up the printout like a preacher flaunting sins in the Psalms.  “It’s hokum – pure, cattle-grade, waffle-stomping hokum.”
Hector stood.  The bar stilled.  “Says the woman who rhymed ‘ablaze’ with ‘my gran-pappy’s malaise’ in Fecal Creek’s poetry mag.”
It devolved quickly after that.  A couple of punches were thrown, Brittney chugged someone else’s gin, and Hector left with both a black eye and four new haikus rattling in his whiskey-slick head. 

N.P.: “Camino” – Calva Louise

August 10, 2025

 

Fecal Creek, this sweltering armpit of a town, is a place where the heat doesn’t just sit on you – it climbs inside you, like some malevolent spirit, and starts rearranging your organs for sport.  It’s the kind of heat that makes you question your life choices, your ancestors’ life choices, and whether or not you’re actually in some kind of purgatorial simulation designed by a sadistic deity with a grudge against mammals.  But hey, 105F is practically a cold front compared to the usual Dante’s Inferno we call summer.  So, I guess we’re supposed to be grateful?  Grateful that the sun has decided to only lightly roast us this year instead of slow-cooking us like a brisket?  Sure.  Fine.  Whatever.

But let’s talk about the real problem here: the goddamn wildlife.  The coyotes, the mountain lions, the feathered sociopaths with wingspans that blot out the sun when they fly over.  They’re all out there, lurking, scheming, waiting for the moment you let your guard down.  And let me tell you, dear reader, these fuckers are getting bold.  The mountain lion on the Ring cam at 3 a.m.?  That’s not just a thirsty cat looking for a drink.  That’s a declaration of war.  That’s nature saying, “Hey, remember when you paved over my hunting grounds and built your little stucco McMansions?  Yeah, well, I’m here to collect.”

And those goddamn hawks.  These aren’t just majestic symbols of freedom soaring through the skies.  They are airborne thugs, feathered enforcers of some avian mafia, circling overhead like they’re auditioning for a Hitchcock reboot.  They don’t just look at you; they size you up.  They calculate angles, trajectories, wind speeds.  They’re running the numbers on whether they can snatch your 7-pound puppy and still make it back to their perch without breaking a sweat.  And the bastard turkey vultures are the cleanup crew, the ones how show up after the hawks have done the dirty work, picking the bones clean and leaving nothing but cold Darwinism.

It’s not just the animals, though.  It’s the principle of the thing.  The sheer audacity of these creatures to act like they own the place.  And maybe they do.  Maybe they’ve earned it, what with us humans being too busy sipping oat milk lattes and debating pronouns to remember that we’re supposed to be the apex predators here.  But I’m not about to let some coyote or hawk or mountain lion punk me out in my own backyard.  Not today.  Not ever.  Fuck no.  I’ve got a sidearm, a shitty attitude, and a deep-seated need to remind the animal kingdom that opposable thumbs and firearms trump fangs and claws every time.

So, yeah, dear reader, I suppose I’ll be out there until the rain comes again, scanning the skies, patrolling the yard like some deranged suburban commando, ready to thrown down with anything that moves.  Because this is Fecal Creek, goddammit, and if the heat doesn’t kill you, the wildlife just might.

Post Script:  Holy shit, dear reader!  I was talking about the arrogant wildlife in The Creek with a friend over lunch, and said friend told me something I could not believe: there are both scorpions and tarantulas in Fecal Creek.  Jesus!  Of course I assumed he was fucking with me, because I’ve lived in this part of California for almost all of my life, and I have not once seen either scorpions or tarantulas.  I just assumed we were too far north for such wicked creatures, but no!  I was wrong.  According to the interwebs: “the California common scorpion, Northern scorpion, and the Black hairy scorpion can be found around residential homes.”  And “the tarantulas around here live in burrows and come out at night to hunt for food, which can include insects, lizards, and even small mammals,” like 7-pound puppies!  So this means during full moons when I go out back wearing nothing but a sheen of Vaseline, a cowboy hat, and a smile, and dance around like a savage that I might be trodding upon a fucking tarantula?  Well, fuck that, dear reader!  I’m going to have to find more suitable accommodations post haste.

N.P.: “Headhunter” – La Muerte

August 9, 2025

 

I’ve been pretty misanthropic most of my life.  Not aggressively so, just kind of consistently disappointed in humans for myriad reasons.  But I’ve really spent a lot of time and energy trying to grow past that and become more understanding and patient with my fellow humans.  I’ve hung out with Buddhist monks, worked with counselors on empathy, compassion, and perspective taking.  And I’ve made a lot of progress, particularly in the last five years or so.  Living in a “big” small town has been helpful, I think, as opposed to some sprawling metropolis where you neither know nor want to know who the other city dwellers are and how they spend their time.

My view nowadays tends to be that the people I see around every day are basically good people: they get up every day to go to work (whatever that may mean in their cases) in order to take care of their loved ones.  In doing so, I believe they mostly want to avoid conflicts, problems, and hassles if they can be at all avoided.  Basically, for the most part, they just want to be left the hell alone.  Which is fine with me.  I can certainly work with that.  And I’m pretty much at peace with my fellow man.

But then I go to Costco.  And all that quasi-Disney shit goes right out the window.  All of that hard-earned progress, all of that inner peace, all of that carefully cultivated compassion for humanity?  It evaporates the moment I step into that fluorescent-lit coliseum of chaos.  Costco is where why misanthropy goes to stretch its legs, crack its knuckles, and say, “Oh, you thought you were over me?  Cute.”

To be honest, it always seems to start before I even enter the parking lot…people in The Creek are notoriously poor drivers, but for some reason, in that part of town, they are especially idiotic: stopping for no reason, have a sort of “contemplative” phase of going when the light turns green…it like they need a few seconds to consider the implications of releasing the brake and pressing on the accelerator.  So I’m always in a rapidly darkening mood by the time I get to the parking lot, which is less a place to leave your car and more a gladiatorial arena where SUVs and minivans battle for dominance.  There’s always some dickhead who decides that the rules of physics and common decency don’t apply to them, cutting across lanes diagonally like they’re being chased by a swarm of Africanized bees.  The transgressions are too numerous to list, but I’m convinced that Costco parking lots are where people go to audition for the role of “Biggest Shithead Out There.”

Then, assuming you’ve managed to find someplace suitable to leave your car and survive the hike to the actual doors of the store, you’re stopped dead in your tracks by half a dozen jackasses who somehow just realized they were at Costco and thus needed to present their Costco IDs.  So they just stop pushing the cart they just got…just stop, dead in their tracks, and start pathetically fishing through their pants pockets and wallet looking for their cards.  Get the fuck out of the way! Jesus!  Some of us can whip out our cards they same way ninja can pull out a shuriken.  I navigate around these dolts quickly, but they’ve done nothing to slow the darkening of my mood.  Then I finally step inside.

No matter how many times you’ve been there, the first thing that hits you is the sheer scale of it all.  It’s like someone took a regular grocery store, fed it steroids and meth for a year, and then dared it to fight God.  Everything is bigger, louder, and somehow more existentially threatening.

And then, of course, there are the people.  Oh, the fucking people.  Incapable of situational awareness or walking in a straight line, they meander aimlessly, pushing carts the size of small boats, stopping dead in the middle of the aisle to contemplate the mysteries of life – or, more likely, whether they really need 48 rolls of toilet paper.  Pro Tip: they do.  We all do.  It’s Costco.

Then there’s the weirdness throughout the free sample gauntlet, which is less about trying new foods and more about watching grown-ass adults devolve into feral scavengers.  I once saw a man elbow a grandmother out of the way for a tiny paper cup of microwaved ravioli.  Which was bad enough, but then I kind of respected him for it.  That’s what Costco does to you.  It makes you question your morals, your values, and whether you, too, would shove an elderly woman for a bit-sized piece of cheesecake.

The weirdness continues at the checkout line as I look down at the cartful of things I didn’t know I needed: industrial-sized tubs of baba ghanoush, a 12-pack of scissors, a kayak.  I’m almost positive all the employees hate all the customers.  How could they not?  We’re the worst.  Well, not me…I’m a fucking dream, The cashier scans my items with the dead-eyed efficiency of someone who has seen too much.  And I’m sure they have.

I need to lean on Costco delivery more.  It will help my world view.

N.P.: “Toccata And Fudge” – JUNKYARD REBEL

August 7, 2025

The last couple days seemed like they were spent running all over California putting out fires, solving problems, and making decisions.  It was kind of nuts.  But at the end of it, I was reminded of something I’ve been meaning to share with you, dear reader.

Lately, if I’m getting kind of depressed, or thinking things aren’t going well, or that we are all completely doomed, I’ve gotten much comfort and psychological release by watching Corey Feldman concert/live performance/what-have-you videos.  There’s something deeply cathartic about seeing a grown man throw himself into the tar pit of public humiliation with the sincerity of a first-grader showing off their macaroni art.  Feldman on stage is a spectacle so awkward it transcends cringe and lands somewhere in the realm of performance art.  Except the performance here isn’t intentional.  It’s like he’s both unaware and immune to the schadenfreude he triggers, a modern Icarus soaring on wings constructed entirely from false confidence and dollar-store glitter.

There’s no need to sugarcoat this.  Watching Corey Feldman crash through his Michael Jackson, rock-star fantasy feels like scratching an emotional itch.  It’s like seeing every embarrassing mistake you’ve made in your life, only televised and equipped with bad choreography.  For your consideration – and perhaps your morbid delight – here are my top five most skull-curdling moments from Feldman’s apocalyptic concert video collection, in no particular order:

  1. “Here he comes…the Comeback King!”  The chanting.  Oh sweet lord, the chanting.  So just before his show is supposed to start, Corey sends the poor hapless bastards that comprise his band out on stage to attempt to lead the audience in a chant “to get Corey to come out.”  One has to feel sorry for these band members…they’ve been bouncing around L.A. trying to get big gigs as session players or, anything, really, and they finally get the call: a regular, paying gig.  But it’s in the backing band for Corey Fucking Feldman.  Shit!  Can you imagine?  Of course they’re going to take the gig…you don’t turn down work in L.A….a gig is a gig.  But this gig means going out on stage on the patio of some low-rent beer garden in North Hollywood and trying to get the people who have paid some nominal fee to see what the hell Corey Feldman’s doing these days, and the band members have to basically cajole the audience into chanting, “Here he comes…the Comeback King” over and over.  The band chants it over and over, waiting for the crowd (such that it is) to join in.  They don’t.  They never do.  Instead, what they get is scattered pity applause from a crowd of approximately seventeen people (including venue staff), most of whom look like they were lured in with free drink coupons.  Free drinks!  “Come on,” the poor lead singer whines, “let’s get Corey to come out.”  No effect.  It’s a trainwreck wrapped in a fantasy wrapped in $12 FedExed charisma.
  2. So Corey eventually comes out onto stage, and the tens of people there cheer half-assedly.  But those cheers are almost immediately silenced when Corey starts shutting the band down a full five seconds into their set, shouting, ‘Start over!  Start over!  C’mon guys…”  Somewhere in the wasteland of Corey’s mind, there lives this bizarre idea that if a song starts badly, he can just stop it, snap his fingers, and have fate itself do a do-over.  The band look at each other, then at Corey, then back at each other as they kind of shrug and start playing again.  Watching it feels like being at a séance except the only ghost conjured is his career, and it refuses to stay dead.
  3. Soon he launches into his rendition of “Cry Little Sister,” from the Lost Boys Soundtrack (which movie Corey was in back in the mid-80s).  He heads to the mic to start singing, but misjudges the space between the mic and his face, and WHAM.  His face meets the microphone on a tragicomic slow-motion collision that somehow feels inevitable (and also like something directly out of Spinal Tap).  The moment hangs there for a second, like the universe itself pausing to consider if Feldman deserves this.  Spoiler again…he does.  He actually says, “Ow,” and then tried to continue the song, with the precision and grace of a bird smacking into a glass door.
  4. Thriller, with no thrills.  Here’s where Corey’s pathology breaks new ground.  With a wardrobe that looks like the clearance bin from Spirit Halloween and over-choreographed moves straight out of a middle school talent show, Feldman attempts to resurrect the gilded ghost of Michael Jackson.  The moonwalks are less “gliding on air” and more “dragging a reluctant dog across linoleum.”  To call it an homage is an insult to homages.  It is actually far beyond derivative.  It’s like watching someone mime their own midlife crisis to a bad cover of “Billie Jean.”  If MJ’s spirit is out there, it’s rolling its spectral eyes so hard it’s affecting the tides.
  5. Feldman once decided – because of course he did – that he should rise above the stage clad in an angel costume with wings so cheap they looked like they were assembled from dollar-store placemats.  Suspended by what I can only assume were the same wires used for high school theater productions, he floated just high enough to make it awkward but not convincing.  Combine that with his dead-eyed expression as he yelped lyrics about “saving the children” or some such shit…it was just awful.  At this point, not only did I pity his band, but I almost started to pity him, hanging there like your grandpa’s ball bag.

This is a man who took his status as a beloved ’80s movie icon and chose to weave it into a tapestry of unchecked “musical” hubris.  And he’s the kicker – it’s not even mean to roast him like this.  The man seems impervious, an invincible cringe titan, trucking along, dream intact, as if sheer determination will one day form it into a coherent reality.  You almost – almost – have to admire that kind of kamikaze commitment.
For me, Corey Feldman’s live performances remain a monument to the human ability to fail spectacularly while refusing to quit.  And there’s something beautiful about that, in the same way watching a dumpster fire is beautiful.  Yes, it’s absolute chaos, but damn if it isn’t hard to look away.

N.P.: “Paint It Black” – The Tea Party

Word of the Day: triturate

 

What it is, dear reader.  Today’s Word of the day is “triturate.”  Just saying the word summons memories of 10th-grade science classes I probably attended with a hangover from Bartles &James, trying to grind down some uncooperative substance in a mortar and pestle while wishing I could do the same to the pounding in my skull.  But I digress.  Today’s word is deceptively fancy for what it means:

Triturate (verb): 1) To crush, grind, or pulverize a substance into fine particles or powder, often for medicinal purposes.  2) Chew or grind (food) thoroughly.  Fancy word for smashing stuff to bits.
Comes from the Latin triturationem, which means rubbing or grinding, derived from tritura, the action of threshing corn.  Imagine some toga-clad Roman farmer grinding wheat into flour and muttering to himself, “Ah, triumphant trituration!”  Or not.  It’s your brain.

Well, here we go again…another weird event I don’t really want to be attending.  Mgmt gets free tickets for all sorts of shit, and then no one wants to go, so eventually, they say, “give the tickets to Jayson…he’ll go.”  Which is true, alas. 

Today’s weirdness is something called “Bayou by the Bay,” which is a bunch of New Orleans’/Cajun stuff (mostly food and music), brought to this purgatorially humid fairground, as if San Francisco didn’t have enough culture of its own and needed a bunch of live Zydeco from the swamplands.  Whatever…it’s free. 

After pre-gaming in the parking lot, I wanted to eat.  I wandered into the fairgrounds, the smell of deep-fried everything and the twang of accordion hitting me like a wall.  The air was thick, not just with the prenominated humidity but with the kind of indescribably energy that comes from people who are way too into crawfish.  We passed a guy in a sequined vest playing a washboard strapped to his chest, and I thought about returning to the parking lot for more strong drink. 

The food stalls were lined up with several species of southern weirdness.  Gumbo, jambalaya, po’boys, beignets – each on promising a little slice of Louisiana heaven.  I didn’t know what most of that shit was, so I made a beeline for the “Gator on a Stick” stand, because if I was going to commit to this experience, I might as well go all in.  Besides, I always enjoy eating animals who would otherwise be eating me. 

The guy behind the counter was a caricature of Cajun charm, complete with a straw hat and a thick accent I could barely understand.  Eventually he handed me three skewers of what I assumed was alligator meat, though it could’ve been anything, really.  It was grilled to a leathery brown and glistened with some kind of glaze that smelled vaguely of teriyaki. 

“Enjoy,” he said with a grin that suggested that he knew I wouldn’t. 

I found a picnic table under a sagging tent and took my first bite.  Or tried to. Dear God.  The texture was somewhere between chicken and rubber, leaning heavily toward the rubber end of the spectrum, and the flavor was mostly just the glaze.  I chewed.  And chewed.  And I chewed some more.  After a solid 15 minutes of attempted trituration of what was basically dinosaur meat, I realized I hadn’t actually made any progress…the gator seemed completely unaffected.  

The Zydeco band started up on the main stage, and crowd was eating it up – figuratively, of course, if they too were attempting to eat this rotten lizard meat.  People were dancing, clapping, and shouting happily at each other under a huge banner that said “Laissez les bon temps rouler!” which I assumed meant, “Let’s get sweaty and pretend this is fun.”  I ignored these people and kept chewing.  This was clearly no Cajun snack…this was a Sisyphean trial, a culinary gauntlet thrown down by some cruel, toothy deity.  My teeth gnashed, my temporomandibular joint screaming in protest, but the gator refused to submit.  Not a single fiber gave way, no matter how I chomped or cursed.  I imagined my saliva pooling uselessly, a pathetic attempt at softening what might as well have been vulcanized rubber. 

Two hours in, my mouth was a war zone, my pride a tattered flag.  But I didn’t quit.  Not because I’m noble, but because I’m too stubborn to let a dead lizard win.  The sun kept burning, and I kept chewing, chasing the faint hope that persistence might transmute this torture into triumph.  Spoiler: it didn’t.  But damn if I didn’t feel alive, locked in combat with that unyielding piece of prehistoric jerky, the world reduced to me, my teeth, and a fight I’d already lost. 

Eventually, I gave up.  Twenty-five dollars and two hours of my life, gone.  It lives on, though, in the part of my jaw that clicks now when I try to eat steak.  A little souvenir from the gator that refused to be ground down, bitten through, or tamed. 

There you have it, sexy reader. Triturate: grind it, crush it, make it submit—or, like me with that gator, learn to live with the ache. Now go forth and chew on something that fights back.

N.P.: “Rock Roll” – Executive Slacks

August 4, 2025

Well, shit, dear reader…it’s Monday.  This particular Monday seems to bring with it what I consider a rather undue amount of pain-in-the-assness.  So much so that I was inspired to write a haiku about it.  Behold, dear reader…this is called “A Case of the Mondays”:

Coffee scalds my soul,
Emails breed like cursed rabbits.
Fuck this goddamned day.

Shakespeare’s shitting himself, I’m sure.  Anyway, it isn’t all angst and annoyance today…today we raise a toast to Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born in this day in 1792.  Who da hell is Percy Bysshe Shelley, I can hear you ask.  He was the dude wrote Ozymandias.  If that’s not ringing any bells for you, congratulations: you’re one of four people who made it through high school English class without this poem getting crammed into your brain via a wheezy substitute teacher.  So for you four (and anyone who might need a refresher, here’s a fast-and-filthy breakdown:

Some ancient king, Ozymandias, wanted the world to think he was the man.  He had this massive statue erected in the middle of nowhere because, well, that’s what insecure people with too much money and too many artisans lying around did back in the day.  The pedestal basically screams, “Look at my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” – except, plot twist: the empire is kaput, the statue’s a wreck, and the “mighty” are now mostly sand dunes auditioning for a Mad Max sequel.  Shelley delivers the whole thing like a mic drop at history’s least fun open mic night.

This is basically a restatement of yesterday’s post about “ubi sunt.”  The overall message of Ozymandias is a reflection/reminder of the impermanence of power, legacy, and human achievement.  Through the imagery of a ruined statue in a desolate desert, the poem reminds us that even the mightiest rulers and their grand empires are ultimately, like everything else, subject to the ravages of time.  So whatever huge problems you think you’ve been dealing with for a while, dear reader, are, ultimately, nothing.  Everything you’ve ever said, done, or felt, is, ultimately, nothing.  And no matter what you achieve in this life, no matter what, will be completely forgotten almost immediately after you die.  In fact, you will be forgotten almost immediately after you die.  You’ll be remembered by your children, maybe somewhat by your grandchildren, but once they die or stop remembering you, you will be forgotten.  No matter what.

There are, from my perspective, two ways of dealing with this: 1) get really depressed about the complete futility of absolutely everything and kind of give up on life, or 2) lean into this guaranteed irrelevance and quit worrying so goddamn much about every little one of your problems.  Maybe even take a risk, dare to live a little…because whether you have total triumph or humiliating failure, it won’t matter at all in a few years because no one will remember it.  (How’s that for a fucking Monday, dear reader?)

So a very happy birthday to Mr. Shelley.  Now go reread Ozymandias and then knock over the nearest metaphorical statue of anyone who takes themselves too seriously.  Percy would’ve liked that.

N.P.: “Cherub Rock” – Razed In Black

Word of the Day: Ubi Sunt

 

I know, I know, dear reader: that’s two words, and they’re not even English.  What the hell?  And I hear ya.  But my wine-dark psyche is absolutely full of ubi sunt these days, so I thought you might want to get in on the action.  Ubi sunt (pronounced OO-bee SOONT) is short for “Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?” – “Where are those who were before us?”  Roll that around in your head for a beat.  Ubi sunt, the Latin rhetorical question (and more-than-gently existential earworm), asks a deceptively simple question with jagged edges.  On its surface, it might seem to be pining for the “good old days,” but peel back the layers, and what you have is a blunt-force meditation on the ephemerality of all things – you, me, the on-loan future, this whole absurd circus act we call existence.

Etymology’s simple: Latin, medieval, rooted in the kind of poetry monks scribbled while contemplating skulls and candlelight.  Think Beowulf’s mead-hall musings or those old French chansons wailing about dead knights.  It’s a motif, a vibe, a whole damn mood – nostalgia on the surface, but dig a little deeper, and it’s a skull-rattling meditation on mortality, the fleetingness of every goddamn thing.

I’m pretty sure if you’re still reading, you’re either a Ren Faire kid, a caffeine-riddled lit major, or a hyper-literate goth stumbling through existential malaise.  In which case, the following examples of ubi sunt in the wild are for you: try out The Wanderer, an Anglo-Saxon poem dripping with melancholic ubi sunt.  Or Villon’s Ballade des dames du tempt jadis, which asks, “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”  Spoiler alert – they melted, dickhead.  What emerges from these texts isn’t just nostalgia but a mosh pit of mortality, loss, and the brutal and cruel recognition that the people, things, and selves we once knew are irreversibly gone.  Did I just describe your internal monologue at 2 a.m.?  Sorry, dear reader, that’s my specialty.

These days, I’m spending way too much time staring into the void, wondering what the point is when The Reaper’s got us all on speed-dial.  Life is a cruel little carnival ride – bright lights, cheap thrills, and before you know it, the carny’s kicking you off into the dirt.  Ubi sunt isn’t just some dusty Latin phrase; it’s the question clawing at the back of my throat when I’m three whiskey’s deep, wondering where the heroes, the lovers, the friends, the whole damn parade of my younger days went.  Where’s the kid who thought he’d burn brighter than a supernova, then die before anyone else?  Where’s the fire that used to keep me up all night, scribbling manifestos on bar napkins?

The significance of ubi sunt, for me – for us, you and me, compadre – is that it’s a mirror held up to the relentless churn of time.  It’s not just nostalgia for the good ol’ days (though, Christ, don’t we all miss those?) but a reckoning with the fact that everything – everything – is temporary.  Your triumphs, your failures, the nights you felt invincible, the mornings you woke up tasting ashes – they’re all slipping through your fingers like sand.  The medieval poets got it: they’d wail about kings and warriors moldering in graves, their swords rusting, their names fading like smoke.  Me, I’m wailing about the bars that closed, the friends who drifted, the dreams that got lost in the mail.  Ubi sunt forces you to face the transience of it all, the way life’s a poker game where the house always wins.

And yeah, sometimes that makes it all feel like a pointless folly, a cosmic joke told by a comedian with a sick sense of humor.  I sit here on this Sunday afternoon, nursing a glass of something amber and unforgiving, and I can’t help but think: what’s the fucking use?  Why keep scribbling, fighting, loving, when it’s all gonna end up in the same trashcan.  But here’s the thing, dear reader…a little spark in the dark: ubi sunt isn’t just about despair.  It’s about defiance, too.  It’s about raising a glass to the ghosts, to the ones who came before, and saying, “I’m still here, you bastards.”  It’s about writing one more sentence, kissing one more woman, throwing one more punch, because even if the void is waiting, you can make it wait a little longer.

So, here’s to ubi sunt, to the ache of what’s lost and the fire of what’s left.  Where are they now, the ones who were before us?  Gone, of course, but their echoes linger in the stories we tell, the drinks we pour, and the words we hurl into the night.  And where are we?  Right here, for now, spitting in the face of oblivion.  Keep raging, keep writing, keep living – because even if it’s fleeting, it’s ours.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a bottle and a chapter to finish, and a universe to curse.

N.P.: “Left For Dead” – Tribe of Judah

August 1, 2025

 

Ugh, dear reader.  Your boy was laid low by a particularly pernicious case of The Crud.  Not just your common corner-store head cold, either – no, this was full-on pestilence, like consumption but with fewer dramatic gasps and more snot.  I’ve been sweating through my sheets like…I dunno, something that sweats inordinate amounts in the night, throat raw enough to be legally declared sushi, and my voice was just shot to hell.  Imagine Tom Waits gargling gravel in a hurricane.  It’s be a goddamn opera of misery with yrs. truly singing lead.

Alas, life, of course, refuses to press “pause” just because I’m horizontal and leaking from the face.  Which brings us to more pleasant things, a couple of things that made me smile whilst suffering the sickness.  To wit:

  1. The days, dear reader, are getting noticeably shorter, while the nights are stretching their long, velvety fingers further and further into our lives.  This is the ever-shortening runway to autumn, the season that smells like woodsmoke and tastes like apple cider donuts.  And
  2. Halloween is just 91 days away.  Just enough time to make panic decisions about costumes, pretend you’re thrilled when someone inevitably starts barking about pumpkin spice season, and stockpile a metric shit-ton of candy you have no intention of sharing with children.

As you know, dear reader, I love Halloween.  Think it’s great.  And I can’t wait for it to get here.  That said, however, a week ago…ya know, back in July…as I was driving skillfully through a college marching band, my eye was caught by something orange, black, and familiar: a sign for a Spirit Halloween Store.  In fucking July!  Then, the next night, I walked into the Fecal Creek Costco and couldn’t help but notice a 20-foot skeleton standing in the middle of a huge Halloween section.  Also in fucking July!  Again, I’m all about Halloween, but god damn!

Here’s the thing: Halloween is great in its own right, but a big part of why I love it has to do with all the other decidedly fall/winter things the holiday brings: Fall, and cooler weather, longer nights, the smell of rain on dead leaves.  And it’s the kick of “the holiday season.”  Time to watch horror movies and make beef stew.  It’s the same reason seeing pro football on tv makes me so happy.  I don’t give a shit about football, and fuck the NFL anyway.  No…football on TV means fall and winter are upon us.  Doing anything Halloweeny while it’s 100°F outside is grotesque.

Anyway, so much for all that.  We have a bit of D.P.S. business: today is Herman Melville’s birthday.  Uncle Herm was a master of deep-sea metaphors, perverse literary masochism, and radically labyrinthine sentences.  He took a whale, shock it so hard it became an existential crises, and then made everyone read 800 pages about it.

For the non-English majors joining us this evening, Melville is the mad bastard responsible for Moby-Dick, a painfully massive tome about a Captain obsessive war with a big-ass whale (it’s a bit more complicated and layered than that, but we’re not going down that rabbit hole tonight, dear reader).

Cheers to you, Herman.

N.P.: “Love & Happiness (Ghetto Filth Remix)” – Wiccatron

Review: The Greasy Strangler

The Greasy Strangler

Reviewed by Jayson Gallaway on 28 July 2025 .

3 out of 5

Watching The Greasy Strangler is like being locked in a sauna with a deranged performance artist who’s determined to make you laugh, cry, and question your life choices—all while slathered in a thick coat of Crisco. It’s not just a movie; it’s a goddamn endurance test.  It’s a test of your mental fortitude, your gag reflex, and your ability to embrace the truly bizarre. And in the weirdest ways, it might be a masterpiece.  It’s a 93-minute assault on your senses, your dignity, and your ability to keep a straight face while watching a grown man slather himself in Crisco and murder people, then step into an almost violent carwash whilst totally nude to clean up after the fact.  It’s like if John Waters and David Lynch decided to make a baby and then left that baby to be raised by Troma Entertainment.   And I’ve gotta say, I loved every ridiculous second of it.

The  plot, such that it is, kicks off with Big Ronnie and his son, Big Brayden, who live together in an awful suburban hovel, in their underwear, introduced as Disco Walking Tour guides who wear matching pink turtlenecks and show their customers local landmarks that were significant in the history of disco (these landmarks are all fictional, seemingly made up on the spot by Big Ronnie).  Big Ronnie and Big Brayden share an extremely unhealthy relationship, and an even unhealthier diet.  If the phrase “Would you like some grease with that?” ever needed a visual representation, this is it.

The oily affair begins when Big Ronnie, who has an unexplained proclivity for getting slicker than a used car salesman at a water park, claims to be the titular Greasy Strangler, to which Brayden responds by accusing his father of being a “bullshit artist.”  [Accusations of bullshit artistry are a recurring theme in this movie).  Ronnie goes from zero to greasy faster than you can say, “two thousand bottles of baby oil.”  After dousing himself in the oleaginous ooze, Ronnie strangles the life out of anyone unlucky enough to cross his slippery path.

At this point, it’s probably worth mentioning the soundtrack: it is weird as fuck, thus making it perfect for this movie.  The soundtrack was composed by Andrew Hung, a renowned British musician, and was released on October 7, 2016.  It is this reviewer’s opinion that Andrew Hung, however lovely a person he might be, should be shot in the balls for crimes against musicality.  That said, it must also be admitted that Andrew Hung has had vastly more success in composing music than the reviewer has, prompting the question, “What the fuck does Jayson know about soundtrack composition wince he hasn’t sold a single CD?”  Which is a perfectly reasonable question that I cannot reasonably answer.  But I’m the one writing this review and would gladly debate anybody about the nightmarish and perverse qualities of this soundtrack.

Some notable tracks from the soundtrack include, “Brightly Coloured Pills,” “Get on the Greasy,” Go Home to My Bed,” “Gulp!,” “You Didn’t List, Oh No,” and “Amulet.”

It’s worth noting that the LP edition was limited to 1000 copies.  It’s also worth noting that Andrew Hung’s compositions for the film have been praised by various musical perverts for their originality and fitting accompaniment to the film’s eccentric narrative.  And so much for that.  Now, back to the plot.

Quick cut to Big Ronnie and Brayden meeting up with the poor participants of their Disco Walking Tour.  Big Ronnie points to a random doorway claiming it was in this very doorway that the Bee Gees wrote the lyrics to “Night Fever.”  The walking tourists immediately get into a series of skeptical arguments about the veracity of Big Ronnie’s disco claims, and the absolute necessity of free drinks.

It’s this last bit that warrants further attention and, perhaps, deeper analysis: for my money, it might be the best scene in the movie.  The scene unfolds when one of the disco tourists, a man with a thick accent, repeatedly interrupts to demand the free drinks that were promised in the tour’s promotional material.  His insistence grows increasingly desperate, and the repetition of “Free drinks!  Free drinks!” quickly becomes a mantra of absurdity for the whole group.  Of course, in true Greasy Strangler fashion, the scene takes the mundane frustration of unmet expectations and cranks it up to eleven, turning it into a grotesque spectacle of awkwardness and absurdity.

Big Ronnie, naturally, responds with his trademark blend of disdain and delusion, dismissing the tourists’ complaints with the wave of his greasy hands.  The whole exchange is a masterclass in anti-humor, where the joke isn’t in the punchline but in the sheer, unrelenting weirdness of the situation.  And it makes me cackle.

Meanwhile, Big Brayden, the not-so-mini-me, falls for the bespectacled Janet, whose taste in men is as questionable as the food hygiene in the Ronnie household. And things just get weirder from there.

This far into the review, and I fear I’m not doing the in-depth analysis of this hour and a half of absurdity.  First, let’s dissect our greasy duo.  Big Ronnie is what you’d get if Colonel Sanders went on a bender with the Marquis de Sade at a lube factory.  The guy’s a walking heart attack, a grotesque lothario who thinks “seduction” involves grinding his hips and repeatedly whispering sweet nothings like “hootie tottie disco cutie.”  Big Brayden is pretty much Napoleon Dynamite got trapped in a vat of Vaseline.  He’s a man-child in the most literal sense, with an Oedipal complex that Freud would need a chainsaw to cut through.  Together, they’re like the Laurel and Hardy of sleaze – if Laurel and Hardy were prone to naked choke-outs and disco-drenched debauchery.

The performances are…well, they’re performances.  Michael St. Michaels as Big Ronnie is a revelation, a man so committed to his role that you can almost smell the grease through the screen.  Sky Elobar as Big Brayden is equally unhinged, delivering lines with the kind of deadpan sincerity that makes you wonder if he’s in on the joke or if he’s just as confused as the rest of us.  And then there’s Elizabeth De Razzo as Janet, the love interest caught in the middle of this greasy love triangle, who deserves some kind of award for keeping a straight face throughout her scenes.

Full disclosure, dear reader: I’ve seen this movie several times at this point.  Yesterday’s viewing was no less strange and bewildering than the first.  And ultimately, I really don’t know what to make of this thing.  The reptilian part of my brain wants to recoil in horror and label the whole thing as garbage.  But that would be dismissive.  One solid conclusion I’ve drawn from every viewing is that, say what you will about the movie, everything about it was deliberate.  Unlike movies like “The Room” and others where the writer/director had some grand, lofty vision of what they were going to make, and then, due to stark budgetary realities or just incompetent filmmaking, the result had little or nothing to do with the original vision, I get the feeling that The Greasy Strangler is pretty close to exactly what the filmmakers intended to create.  As weird as every single element of this movie is, it inarguably has a consistent aesthetic throughout.  And there’s no getting around the fact that I and pretty much everyone I know who has seen the movie has watched it repeatedly.

Of course, The Greasy Strangler is not for everyone.  It’s not even for most people.  It’s a movie that revels in its own weirdness, that dares you to look away and then punishes you for not doing so.  It’s gross, it’s offensive, it’s deeply, deeply stupid – and it’s also one of the funniest, most original movies I’ve ever seen.

So, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys a good cinematic trainwreck, who finds beauty in the grotesque, who laughs in the face of good taste and decency, this is the movie for you.  Just don’t watch it on a full stomach.  Or a first date.  Or with your parents.  Actually, just don’t watch it with anyone you respect, because they will never look at you the same way again.