Flaming Pablum

Fuck Trump, Fuck Barr, Fuck The DOJ...

London Acquiescing

Some of you might remember a pair of posts from 2018 wherein I delved into the curious story of Dave Marin, a fellow traveler on the roads of rock ’n’ roll pedantry.

Dave’s singular quest was to rectify a long-held discrepancy between the memory of his first-hand experience witnessing a specific moment at a Clash show at the Palladium on East 14th Street in the comparatively carefree days of 1979 and the documentation of same on the back cover of The Clash’s celebrated third album, London Calling. That singular moment, of course, was the smashing of Paul Simonon’s star-crossed Precision bass guitar, a fleeting moment of rage prefigured by Pennie Smith’s fateful snapping of a photograph of the instant just prior. While that photograph went onto become inarguably one of the most iconic images in rock history, Dave maintained that the archivists in the Clash camp got the date of the show in question wrong on the back cover, and it had become his mission to amend that particular oversight ever since.

Last night, Dave shared some happy news…

Hi Alex. Just to put this to bed, today “The Clash” official Twitter account sent out the following: “20th + 21st Sept 1979 The Palladium NY Take The 5th Tour. Paul Simonon smashed his Fender P Bass on stage in frustration towards the end of the show. Pennie Smith captured the moment and it became London Calling album sleeve, which dated the image on 21st. In fact it was on 20th!” Take care. D

Today, after being on loan to the deeply dubious Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, the remaining pieces of the bass guitar in question are back with Paul Simonon. The Clash officially disbanded in 1986, in the wake of the arguably abortive Cut The Crap album. Lead singer/songwriter Joe Strummer passed away in 2002. The Palladium was razed in 1998, and a NYU dormitory was built in its footprint. Today, the exact spot where Paul took his bass to task is the produce aisle of a Trader Joe’s that I was actually in yesterday afternoon. 

And Dave Marin? Now he can fitfully sleep through the night.

Paranoid at 50

Been seeing a lot of stories in online outlets that normally wouldn’t touch the subject with a ten-foot pole about the 50th anniversary of Paranoid, the sophomore LP by Black Sabbath. While the band’s status as the preeminent heavy metal band remains unchallenged — sure, Zeppelin could certainly compete in the heavy department, but lacked the focus and purity of their black-clad Brummie brothers — Black Sabbath never seemed to have been taken quite as seriously by the — for lack of a better term — respectable establishment. Having original lead singer Ozzy Osbourne cash-in his well-earned gravitas as a genre-defining pioneer by becoming reality-show fodder in the mid-90s certainly didn’t help. But longevity wins, I guess, and now high-brow periodicals are being forced to reconcile with paying homage to a band whose music they’d normally write off as artless, sonic piffle for teenage delinquents smoking dope behind the local 7-11.

Ozzy may lack Lou Reed’s untouchable cool, Iggy Pop’s leathery pliability, Lemmy’s irrefutable badassery and David Bowie’s divine penchant for chameleonesque reinvention, but make no mistake — despite whatever clownery he got into during his years with the Sabs and during his frenetic solo career, the man has more than earned his place in that same pantheon of iconoclasts. And, let’s remember, he was only one quarter of the original Black Sabbath — a unit whose respective components were all equally vital to its proceedings. From the dark lyrics and ponderous thunder of bassist Geezer Butler to the explosive riffs of innovative guitarist Tony Iommi and the weighty swing of Bill Ward’s drums, Black Fucking Sabbath was an ensemble to be reckoned with. Mess ye not.

I first bought Paranoid when I was in seventh grade, lured in by the endearingly hammy heaviosity of “Iron Man” and my classmate Chris H’s assertion that I “needed to listen to more evil bands,” he and I having both cut our teeth on KISS. While the plodding pound of the song that indoctrinated me definitely paid off, experiencing the LP in all its weighty fulsome gestalt was a genuine revelation, with one oddball exception — the cover art.

While I’ve always assumed the blurry figures on the sleeve of Paranoid were meant to visually symbolize the subject of the album’s sprawling opening salvo, that being “War Pigs,” the execution seemed a bit botched. And when you consider the still-chilling and genuinely iconic sleeve of their first album, how this cover slipped by the decision-makers at their record label remains a mystery. Wearing what looks like pink felt and brandishing weapons better suited to a grade-school production of “Camelot,” the figures on the cover lend an overall visual impact that skews more towards silly than sinister.

That one bit of goofiness notwithstanding, opening the gatefold was a different experience entirely — revealing the four strikingly hirsute members of Black Sabbath in an otherworldly, sun-bleached field, staring directly at the viewer with grimly unblinking expectation. They looked like they’d just finished digging a shallow grave and were now ready to push you — dear, unsuspecting listener — right into it.

Dropping the needle on side one, of course, laid waste to any remaining doubts. I could go on and on about the entirety of the record— from the proto-punk chug of the title track to the cosmically jazzy meandering of “Planet Caravan” to the lysergic stomp of “Fairies Wear Boots” and all points in between, but it became a canonical favorite from that point forward. Any purple prose I could spool out here simply pales in comparison with the experience of simply listening. 

You may no like it. You may not understand its appeal. You may not get it. That’s okay. There are probably Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison albums you can go concern yourself with, if that's your thing.

But with regards to Paranoid, just make damn sure you respect it.

The Science of the Lamb

If I was a fraction as cool as I sometimes like to pretend I am, I could blithely rattle off a litany of pithy factoids about Crash Course in Science, a sort of primitive electronic trio from Philadelphia. But, I’m just not that cool, alas, and must cop to the fact that I only learned about them today.

Posted by one Weasel Walter, erstwhile member of the Flying Luttenbachers and current guitarist for Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus, on a Facebook group about No Wave, “Cardboard Lamb” by Crash Course in Science — below — dates back to the grainy wilds of 1981. The band were allegedly fixtures on the NYC club scene, and released an EP around the same era, along with making appearances on New Jersey's own "Uncle Floyd Show." I'm not sure what transpired between then and now, but they’ve gone onto release two full albums since 2010.

Not sure if the “ahead of their time” flourish is entirely applicable, but CCiS dd seem to prefigure a lot of more minimalist electronic pop of more recent years — Cold Cave kinda springs to mind, what little of them I know.

In any case, I was more struck by the footage in the video below. While I know as recently as yesterday I made a declaration that I feel slightly uncomfortable lapsing into anything overtly nostalgic during the turbulence of the COVID-19 era, but this clip does hearken back to decidedly simpler age. Study the visuals, and you’ll notice the big Con Ed plant at the eastern end of 14th Street and what looks like the Williamsburg Bridge as two of the primary locations.

What is it all about? Hell if I know.

No More Time For Looking Back

The last time I posted the picture up top — an artful shot of the interior of Rocks in Your Head, a former, beloved record shop on Prince Street in SoHo, purloined from the wilds of Flickr, if memory serves — was January 2012, and it accompanied yet another entry of mine that weepily lamented the passage of time. Over the course of the last fifteen years, this blog has been largely defined by posts like that — sepia-toned homages to the Manhattan of my youth, a veritable lost continent peppered with places like Rocks In Your Head that were otherwise extinguished by gentrification, spiraling rents, shifting cultural sensibilities, the sickly convenience of new technology or a potently unwieldy combination of all of the above. This blog has frequently acted as one long fist-shake at the tirelessly amorphous topography of this urban environment, where sentimentality is for the weak and significance is perilously relative.

I wish I could recall the specific luminary in question, but I remember reading an interview with a certain woman— it was someone along the lines of Deborah Harry, Tina Weymouth or even Lydia Lunch — and the question was posed to her, “When did Downtown die?” I’m leaning towards it being Debbie Harry, but her immediate response was September 11th. If I recall correctly, she didn’t mean to suggest that the Downtown Manhattan of 2001 just prior to that event was as thriving and multifaceted a bohemian wonderland as it had been in the 70’s and 80’s, but rather that the seismic upheaval brought on by the horrific rigors of that fateful day firmly bookended the end of an era. The fanciful bubble had been popped in the most jarring of ways by the outside world, and there was never going to be any return to those days.

Whomever she was, she wasn’t wrong. While that transformation was already underway, New York City changed dramatically in the wake of 9/11, “bouncing back” in a trajectory that leaned very heavily in favor of monied exclusivity. In the past nineteen years, the city has gone onto become way more prohibitively costly, largely at the expense of all semblance of its former character, to say nothing of vast swathes of its former residents. Apologists will cite Heraclitis’ mantra that change is the only constant, but even a passive observer would concede that the metamorphosis of New York City since 2001 has been sharp, and vertically steep.

As the new city emerged — one feverishly pockmarked by chains and big box retailers and increasingly less by longstanding mom’n’pops — blogs like mine and far more scrupulous, focussed and studious ones like Jeremiah Moss’s Vanishing Downtown and EV Grieve (to name my favorite two) appeared to document the carnage. While my blog is inexorably entwined rather narrowly with my own personal experiences and recollections, those two — and others -- presented wider vistas as to the ensuing effects on whole neighborhoods. I may have been preoccupied with vanishing record stores, punk bars and live music venues, but they were scrutinizing the tolls taken on the city’s fragile cultural ecosystem writ large.

After a while, the more brazenly nostalgic aspects of these types of endeavors made them easier to diminish. Reverently sipping Gem Spa egg creams in our authentic CBGB t-shirts, we were just stubborn, aging die-hards pining for the fabled "bad old days" and failing to appreciate the amenities of the new iteration of New York City. Of course we don’t want the old site of Bleecker Bob’s to become a frozen yogurt emporium. Of course we don’t think 14th Street should become a new tech hub. Of course we are offended by the notion of a newly bespoke Chelsea Hotel. Of course the reimagining of Chumley’s as a chic, tony bistro pisses us off. Etc. Etc.

Then, as if someone hit the smart bomb button in a giant game of “Defender,” the pandemic arrived.

Age-old speakeasy bar? Fuck you, you’re closed. Newly minted nouvelle Indian bistro? Fuck you, you’re closed. Niche curio shop for left-of-center gift ideas? Fuck you, you’re closed. Neighborhood institution helmed by third generation of proud proprietors? Fuck you, you are closed.

Like September 11th before it, the historical impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has rendered such provincial concerns moot and mute in a manner no scale of gentrification could ever match. Sure, lots of places are still hanging on, but the rulebook has been torched and businesses of all stripes are frantically trying to innovate on the fly and improvise a tenuous way forward.

Here in the throes — again, notice I didn’t say wake? This isn’t over yet — of the COVID-19 era (or the Trumpandemic, as I was calling it), virtually every New Yorker is now a brazen nostalgist, albeit of a possibly shallower calibration. While I may continue to sigh wistfully while passing the former site of a comic-book shop from my distant childhood that is now a cell-phone emporium, your average mask-wearer on the street is now nostalgic for just seven months ago, when he or she could walk out of their pricey condo and get a friggin’ boba tea and a new vape pen without worrying about contracting a viably lethal respiratory infection. No one has time to look back. We must all collectively look forward and figure out a future.

As a result, my usual, old habit of floridly ruminating ad nauseam about the New York City of my particular yesteryear feels less relevant than ever — which is saying something. Because, honestly, who could really give a rolling rat fuck about a favorite lost dive-bar I used to get drunk in back in 1989 when approximately 150 bars and restaurants here have permanently closed since March 1, 2020?

But, you know what they say about old habits. They die hard.

Walking home from a quick visit to my temporarily dormant office yesterday afternoon, I passed by the former site of Rocks in Your Head on Prince street, the record shop pictured at the top of this post, which closed in 2006. In the wake of the departure of Rocks in Your Head, the basement-space in question played host to a real estate agency, a concern that set up a rabbit-warren of office cubicles where racks and racks of rarefied LPs used to be. Evidently, said agency also recently fell prey to the conditions of COVID-19, and the space is now entirely vacant. I could not help peering in and capturing the photo below from roughly the same vantage point as the photo above.

Throw your support behind you favorite aspects and local businesses of New York City old and new, and may we all get through this.

Desktop Dump: Back to The Office Edition

Popped back into my office, today, for the first time in six months. My desktop was chockablock with extraneous crap. Here are some visual items I'd obviously set to one side for a later use that never materialized. 

Downtown Music Gallery when it was on the Bowery...

An old interior shot of Rocks in Your Head in SoHo. This shop closed, after many years, and became a real estate agency. I walked by over the weekend, and that concern has since closed up shop. The space is now vacant. 

The iconic old rooftop of El Teddy's on West Broadway. This building was razed and a condo was built in its footprint. The space that had been El Teddy's is now a hardware store. No idea where the crown ended up. 

An old shot of the exterior of The Pyramid on Avenue A. Still there, last I checked. 

The brothers Ramone. 

The west side of Broadway around 8th Street. Taken from a film. 

The show I didn't go to. 

Nixed sticker concept. 

No idea. 

Lafayette Street a long, long time ago (1975) as captured by Rich Allen (not to be confused with one-armed Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen).

Lou Reed with vacuum cleaners. 

 

 

If You Mess With The Bull, ... You Get The Horns

Listen, I know I’m super guilty of being a too literal about deeply silly shit, but this meme keeps popping back into my Facebook feed, and it’s making me apoplectic.

The implication, I’m assuming, is that John Hughes’ iconic characters of suburban Chicago high school students can each be summed up by the rosters of bands they’ve each been assigned. Speaking as both a stupefyingly pedantic music geek and a former bona fide high school student from the very same era depicted in “The Breakfast Club,” …. I HAVE SOME ISSUES. They are as follows…

1. There is NO WAY ON EARTH John Bender, The Criminal — played by Judd Nelson — would have been a fan of Joy Division, much less Tubeway Army. Did the individual who created this meme ever see the movie? In one pivotal scene, the kids repair to Bender’s locker to fetch his “doobage” and the interior of same is decked out with invocations of The Doors and The Scorpions, suggesting Bender was a fairly devout adherent to classic rock and metal. Joy Division’s tortured ruminations of existential dread would just not have been on his menu. Moreover, Gary Numan disbanded Tubeway Army circa 1979, and really only made a solitary dent in the mass American consciousness with “Cars” that same year — which would have come out when Bender’s character was in eighth grade. I doubt he’d have cared about Numan’s chilly synthesizers, to say nothing of the likelihood of even being aware of his former band.

2. Assigning Alison the Basket Case — played by Ally Sheedy — a list of ersatz goth & indie bands is truly lazy. For a start, the Pixies didn’t even EXIST in 1985, so it’s impossible she’d have been a fan. It’s a herculean assumption that she’d dig The Cure, The Smiths and The Banshees simply because she wears black. Not sure WHERE the assertion that she’d have liked the fun-loving B-52s comes from, but DID ANYONE ACTUALLY SEE THE FILM? Alison, during their lunch hour, actually whips out a copy of the cover of Prince’s 1999 and stares longingly at it, meanwhile, Prince is nowhere on this list. Do details no longer matter?

3. There is precious little indication throughout the film of what music Brian The Brain — played by Anthony Michael Hall — might have listened to, apart from the pot-smoking dance sequence. To blithely assume he’d have been into conventional mainstream pop like Hall & Oates strikes me as a dismissive move. Conversely, to assume a suburban Chicago high schooler would have even been aware of seminal-albeit-comparatively-obscsure New York punk stalwarts Television seems like something of a heroic leap.

DON’T BUY THIS REVISIONISM!!!!

"Sinking Ship"

Former New York Dolls lead singer David Johansen has always been endearingly disinclined to do what was expected of him. Despite being a preeminently influential figure of proto-punk, when the `Dolls fell apart, his solo career plied a much more conventional brand of rock that came largely free of the pugnacity and sloppy spectacle of his former band. He later completely shifted gears and became kitschy lounge singer Buster Poindexter and, later still, indulged his love of country and blues with the Harry Smiths. Yes, there was the fleeting New York Dolls reunion that briefly found him squeezing back into the skimpy togs, but I never got the feeling that his heart was truly in that chapter. I may be wrong.

In any event, here in 2020, David has released ostensibly a protest song. Long have people been ruminating on the absence of proper protest music of the variety that marked previous periods of upheaval — from the hippies in the 60’s to the punks in the 70’s through to the hardcore kids in the 80’s. David has decided to throw his hat into the ring and call out the strenuous disarray caused by the Trump Administration. True to form. however, David has not channeled his former glories as a tight-trousered rock hellion bellowing over loud, blistering guitars. Instead, it’s a spritely calypso cover of Winston Edward Peters’ “Sinking Ship.”

See what you think…

Where We Are

VOTE!

The Pointless End of Summer 2020 Survey

I know I recently suggested I wasn't going to do one of these, as I didn't really feel it warranted discussion. But, at the moment, it's raining like mad out here in Quogue, and I am, in a word, bored. We're here for three more days before it's back again to the city for good and the kids start their hybridized in-person/virtual learning school year. 

If we collectively consider Labor Day to be the very end of the season, technically, we have about another 9 days before Summer 2020 is officially over. That said, as I mentioned not too long back, Summer 2020 felt like it was over — for me, anyway — upon the arrival of Isaias, which seemed to prematurely snuff out the verdant warmth brought on by June and July. Sure, the calendar still says August, but everything currently feels like it’s in a declining slope towards Autumn. Summer seems pretty much over.

Then again, Summer 2020 hasn’t been like any other summer. It almost seemed like an afterthought while we collectively grappled with the pandemic ... and everything it brought with it. With normal summer activities either sharply compromised or just flat-out cancelled, the usual associations of summertime seemed incidental and ultimately non-applicable. We went though the motions, but we kept reminding ourselves that this wasn’t your average summer. Next year — God friggin’ willing — will be different.

But, y’know, as bizarre and unsettled and muted as it may have been, … it was still summer, so I figured why not dust off the End of Summer Survey, last taken in 2019. I've also augmented it with a host of other stupid questions: 

Defining Moment of Summer 2020:
As mentioned way back in March, when the pandemic turned New York City upside down, my wife, kids and I took my mother up on her offer to let us use her house out on the Eastern End of Long Island, which made for a comparatively more expansive place to remote work and remote school, as opposed to our intimate Manhattan apartment. We stayed there through the end of May, until my mom came back from Florida. When she did, we had to clear out, and ended up basically subletting a cottage in normally rented by some friends of ours from North Carolina. While it was about as roomy as the abandoned bus in which they found the body of Christopher McCandless in Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild,” The Lamb Cottage, as it is called, more than met our needs for the summer in between periodic returns to the city.

A lot has happened in the three months we’ve been here, but if I had to slap a “defining moment” on any of it, I would say our initial mastering of a particular dish called Beer Can Chicken, wherein you coat a whole chicken with the rub of your choice, shove a half-consumed can of beer (we used Stella Artois) up its slimy posterior and then precariously perch it standing upright under a closed grill. This is not as simple as it sounds, but the end results were spectacular each time.

Best Purchase of Summer 2020:
I can’t say I did a lot of purchasing this summer, not least because for the most part, most shops were closed. Inspired by a then-impending interview with funk legend Bootsy Collins, I went on a big Parliament kick, which inspired me to buy a t-shirt with the cover art of Mothership Connection on it, which I probably wore more than any other garment, this summer. That’s about it.

Best Book You Read of Summer 2020:
I would say it’s a toss up between Trevor Ristow’s “Waiting For Another War,” which I wrote about here and here, and the memoir of Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz, “Remain in Love.” It's largely a fun, illuminating read, but like so many other rock memoirs, it has a way of poisoning preconceptions about favorite music. While he's obviously a tirelessly nice guy, the sour grapes Frantz feels about David Byrne (and, for that matter, Brian Eno) is unfortunate. I'm not suggesting he's not entitled to feel that way or that any of it is untrue, but there's a dirty laundry aspect to it that's a disservice to the band. I don't think I ever thought of Talking Heads as a perpetually harmonious family, but learning about how frequently weird, callous and inconsiderate Byrne was and how petty and petulant Eno was maybe wasn't something I needed to know. Still, it was an enjoyable read.

Best Movie You Saw During Summer 2020:
Well, obviously, no movie theaters were open this summer, but beyond that — I cannot say I watched too many whole films. I did recently watch “Gimme Danger,” Jim Jarmusch’s documentary about The Stooges, and thought that was pretty amazing.

Best Gift You Received of Summer 2020:
For Father’s Day, my wife gave me some lovely new underwear. That sounds pretty tame, I realize, but they’re genuinely pretty nice.

Biggest Loss of Summer 2020:
Don’t really know where to start with this one. Very mercifully, no one in our family has contracted COVID-19, as yet, although we do know a few folks who had it. There are several local businesses in Manhattan that were forced to close their doors because of the pandemic, and those are all very sad. There’s so much loss going on in the world, at the moment, that it seems petty trying to quantify it all.

Song That Best Sums up Summer 2020:
I can’t say I’ve really latched onto any new music, in the past several months. Sure, I did get the new eponymous long player by Human Impact, which is the supergroup I mentioned (and didn’t go see live) back here that features former members of favorite bands of mine like SWANS, the Unsane and Cop Shoot Cop. As much as I dig that album — its ponderous bleakness fit the world’s circumstances just a little too well. My favorite track from the album is probably “Consequences."

Happiest Memory of Summer 2020:
This will invariably sound like a hokey cliché, but in as much as the pandemic has turned everyone's life upside down, it has afforded us the opportunity -- nay, mandated the requirement -- of spending an inordinate amount of time with our kids. Being that they're both teenagers now, under normal circumstances, they might have both been otherwise loath to spent so much time in our company. That has been our silver lining, during all of this. 

Saddest Memory of Summer 2020:
The state of the world, at the moment, has provided more than enough material for this. Where does one begin?

Scariest Memory of Summer 2020:
Watching some of the video of initial unrest in the wake of the death of George Floyd was pretty jarring. 

Word That Best Describes Summer 2020:
Transformative.

BONUS QUESTIONS: 

Single greatest album of all time is …..
Funhouse by The Stooges

3 Books You Read This Year
- "Remain in Love" by Chris Frantz
- "Waiting For Another War" by Trevor Ristow
- "Girl to City" by Amy Rigby

What’s Your Favorite Rolling Stones album?
Today, I'm saying Emotional Rescue, and you can bite me.

3 Last Albums You Purchased:
- Human Impact by Human Impact
- Gymnopedies & Gnosseinnes by Erik Satie
- Live at Goose Lake by The Stooges (which has not arrived, as yet). 

Your favorite James Bond film was
Toughie, but I have a very stubborn affinity for "The Man with The Golden Gun."

3 songs you never want to hear again:
- "Santeria" by Sublime
- "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi
- "American Pie" by Don McLean.

3 albums you own that you wouldn’t want to leave on your coffee table when your in-laws were coming over:
- Scatology by Coil
- Dial 'M' For Motherfucker by Pussy Galore
- Freaks, F_____s, Drunks & Junkies by GG Allin

The most physical pain you have ever experienced:
Kidney stone in 2008.

First Record You Ever Bought With Your Own Money:
Dressed to Kill by Kiss

Notable Moment From This Summer:
I had to bury a dead bird that showed up in the back yard of the Lamb Cottage. It was missing its head.

Recommend three books:
- "Please Kill Me" by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain
- "Downtown" by the recently late Pete Hammil
- "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris.

Beers on me. What’ll it be?
Almaza (great, albeit hard to find Lebanese beer)

First Concert You Went To:
Devo at Radio City Music Hall, Halloween 1981

Last Concert You Went To:
End of Hope at Niagara's on Avenue A, February 2020

Recline your seat-back on airplanes: Yes or No?
HELL, NO.

3 Favorite words
- Sepulchral
- Vespertine
- Defenestrate

Song That Will Remind You of Summer 2020:
"Bitch" by the Rolling Stones

David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar or Gary Cherone?
DLR without a moment's hesitation.

Recommend 3 TV shows:
- "Ozark"
- "Endeavor"
- "Mad Men" (we're currently re-watching ... it's as good as you remember it).

Last Movie You Saw in a Theatre & Where:
Michael Apted's "63 Up" at the Quad Cinema on West 13th.

My preferred way to listen to music is via:
Vinyl, Cassette, Compact Disc or iPod, but never streaming.

Worst date movie ever:
Toss-up between "Dead Ringers" (about twin psychotic, coke-crazed gynecologists) and/or "Last Tango in Paris" -- Fun fact: I saw both of these on dates. Neither ended well.

Your favorite member of Monty Python?
Michael Palin

3 quintessential summer songs:
- "Shout To the Top" by Style Council
- "Summer's Cauldron/Grass" by XTC
- "Listen" by Tears for Fears

3 Biggest Pet Peeves
- People who order a "cheese pizza."
- People who recline their seat-backs into my lap on public transport.
- The tenacious vernacular of "hate on." One does not require a surface on which to put that verb into action. One does not hate on, hate over, hate alongside or hate under. One just hates.

Fried or Scrambled:
- Fried. Sunny side up.

3 Things You Wish You Could Do:
- Cook with stylish proficiency
- Play guitar
- Credibly speak another language.

3 Things You Miss Right Now:
- Live music
- My friends
- The illusion of certainty.