"Do You Watch Buffy?"

We're starting to run out of pint glasses here at the Fitzner Safe House. The latest casualty, which came at the hands of ma belle femme, was a piece of "Roachenders" merchandise. It was obviously an accident: the soapy 16 oz sippy slipped unexcitingly from her soaked hands while doing dishes. I hesitated a split second before setting the shards in a sack. 


This hesitation was a funeral. I really loved this glass, as it was a relic of my former life spent perpetually driving and sleeping in an under-windowed, yellow Ford Econoline. The Roachenders were a street punk band from Providence, RI that I met in 2001 touring with my first band, Tanka Ray and it was around then that I snagged this personalized pint glass. Their band name is clearly a ganja reeference, but the glass just had a giant close up of a roach face on it. I know, right? Badasss.


Now I must admit, it was a miracle that it even made it all the way back to Kansas City let alone survived the subsequent decade. Nevertheless, I vowed to give my wife flack for the blunder and found this to be a decent segue into the memories conjured at the funeral of my Roachenders pint glass. 


I immediately thought about my first time in Providence. The show we played was humdrum but the guys in the band were a hoot. Their drummer, a  thirtysomething old school tough-ass dude who went by the name of Bob Bitter, played host to the three of us. He fed us and got us drunk and we shot the shit until the blue threat of sunlight came through his second story window. At some point previous, he asked me to come to his room with him. I hesitated of course, but he gave me a look as if to say "not into rape, or boys" so I followed him.
He closed the door behind us and opened his top drawer. 
"This is a secret, alright man?"
"Sure, yeah. Not a problem."
Was it going to be drugs? Because I wasn't really into drugs, especially the kind you sneak away from 6 other people to do. He moved some clothes aside and pulled out a stack of bound paper.
"It's a script. Do you watch Buffy?"
"The Vampire Slayer? Um I've caught a few, yeah for sure." Never seen it. I saw the movie a few times.
"Well it's probably my favorite fucking show and I wrote a script--and they used it. And Joss Whedon--you know Joss Whedon? No? Well he does the show and he sent me a fucking check for Five Thousand Fucking Dollars!"
"What? Really? That's, uh, that's awesome dude, I mean I was pretty sure you were gonna rape me." 
"HA! Fuck you man. Fuck you. I really like you guys, good job tonight", Bob smiled and admitted. "Make sure you get a T-shirt or something before you go tomorrow."
"Can I have a pint glass?"
"Oh fuck yeah man, of course" and off we went to pound enough beers to wash away many old thoughts and memories. But not this one.
----
I woke up 4 hours later on the living room/dining room floor to the sound of my cell phone ringing. It was my mother, asking me to come home immediately because my grandfather had died during the night. 
"I can't mom. There's 15 shows left."


I miss Bob and I miss being on tour. I miss my pint glass. But if I'd known that I was going to cling to my teenage self until I was damn near thirty, I might've asked her to smash the glass and join me in a moment of silence the second I got home from that tour.

Dawkins vs. Tyson

I'm waaay down with both of these dudes. They each make great points in general (and in this video) that are easy to understand even if you aren't a science buff.  In fact, there is a crop of "rockstar" scientists that have done a great job fighting the uphill battle of keeping science relevant in today's starfucker society.

Here are some other scientists I've been rocking out to recently:

Michio Kaku...looks really cool and futuristic to me, probably because he has long silver hair. Plus he knows all about space, and he proves it here.

Greg Graffin... yeah, that Greg Graffin. Who is also this Greg Graffin. His Master's thesis was basically a giant survey on religious belief given to many of the world's most prominent scientists in varying fields and  guess what: they're almost all atheists! Like, 99% of them. Big surprise right? Well, it kinda was a surprise because the scientific world is usually best served keeping mum on the subject.

Bonnie Bassler... She is awesome because she helps us learn about "quorom sensing" or, in rockstar terms, how bacteria talk to each other. Her work has helped support the idea that groups of bacteria travel around in an organism like gangs roaming the streets, and when they run into one another they make a CONSCIOUS decision whether to fight or flee, based on strength, numbers in both groups, etc.

Oliver Sacks...has written fascinatingly (and heearrrtbreakingly) on cognitive maladies, specifically prosopagnosia (the inability to distinguish facial features from person to person) and  amusia (the inability to process music and pitch). In general, he has made great strides in explaining how music works in the brain to us dummy audiophiles. Plus, for a frumpy old bearded man, look how cute he is!

Also, HAPPY 70th BIRTHDAY RICHARD DAWKINS! Keep up the great work you god-damned heathen.

Shibuyaeggman??

Read here about Fox News screwing up! Again!

A Greek Meets the City’s Bravest

     Last month my mother fell and broke her hip in the bathroom for the second time in as many years. She floats high above her hospital bed at Lee’s Summit Medical Center on a cloud of Vicodin and Antitussives, struggling to cram any one thought into sentence form during our conversation. I’ve recently asked her about things, certain things, and where they happened. I’ve been asking her more rapid fire lately, like when I was 11 and interrogated her to find out who my real father wasn’t. I should take it easy on her, but I figure all this thinking she is doing when I’m around may keep that brain of hers from any further atrophy. She certainly has tales to tell, more than I do. She’s led a pretty wild life.

     One place she lived was Chicago, Illinois, on the North Side in a community called Albany Park. This is also where I was born, in Swedish Covenant Hospital on 19 January 1982. She worked in a bar on Lawrence & St. Louis called “Bonanza Lounge”, which boasted “the longest bar in Chicago” long after the boast was true. The owner was a Greek man, 20 years my mother’s senior, who knew very, very little English when she first met him. She used to tell me a story about him, about when he first moved to the States. He lived in a little brick 2-story and on a hot summer day it caught on fire while he was cooking. Well, in Chicago, some of those buildings are so damn close together that you could jump in the neighbor’s window, which is exactly what he did. He lived on the second floor, so I imagine this leap of faith looked pretty cool from the outside, but it was nothing short of frightening from the old neighbor-lady’s point of view. Not knowing the word for “fire” in English, (its “[fayr]”, btw), he began screaming: “SMOOOKE!!! SMOOOOOOKE!!!”. At this point in the story my mom always laughs, imagines aloud the elderly neighbor-lady thrusting a Pall Mall in his direction. Honestly though, what could be more frustrating? Disaster strikes and you might as well not have a mouth. Before the lady could mace/shoot/stab the Greek, she noticed the smoke through her window and undoubtedly dialed the city’s bravest.

Anyways, I think that’s how the story goes. It’s been awhile since I heard that one, and my mom is now fast asleep, unable to confirm the particulars. I sneak a bite of her pudding, tell her goodnight, and slip out of the 48”-wide door of her temporary digs.

It's Friday, White People

¡Dar La Luz!

Everett Nichols was born last night, a year to the day that my nephew Charlie Fitzner was born. I fell asleep early to the soothing sounds of my snoring daughter Ophelia only to wake up @ 1am and find this fantastic news waiting for me. I think I'll pay a visit to this new human tomorrow.

 All hail Prince of the Grislies, heir to the Sweatpantian and Crush Move Thrones of King John Boy!

Deep Marsh

"Deep Marsh", by Five Style. One of my all time favorite jams. Actually, this is Heroic Doses playing the Five Style song, but the composer and guitarist, Bill Dolan, is seen here shredding. This footage is 14 years old and was just posted a few months back by a person to whom I owe a beer or two. In high school Drama class, me and a classmate put this song on and told this other kid who was incessantly freestyle rapping to have a go at it. We knew the slowdown part at the end would trip him up, and it did, and we giggled like schoolboys. I first heard this song in 1998 on KKFI 90.1 FM on a show called "Country Jesus Hillbilly Blues" and it still blows my mind. John Herndon was on the kit for Five Style's studio recordings but Ryan Rapsys from the posthardcore Chicago band Gauge looks like he has the beat under control.

Dear Diary...

'blog one. Already at a loss for characters. I thought it'd be fun, ya know? Type about things. Tell some stories. I mean, I've been around a few. So here I go, espousing the ways of the 21st century crybabies.  I'm a bit too long-winded for Twitter. I'm already an alcoholic, so I'd better not start Facebook now. Besides, I really don't care what you have to say. Okay, bad start. I mean I wish I wanted to see what everyone was thinking about all the time, and then write back what I was thinking, bam, without even proofreading it. Alas, I do not, and so I think a diary, (and this is a diary), is better suited for my frame. I mean it's sartorially sound. I mean I wear it well. I think. Hmm. I better ask around about how to do this.