The Duke Spirit

As I pulled into the parking lot of Nick’s Fat Boy one Thursday night some days ago on a mission to score a dose of food-molded grease and pseudo-edibleness, I heard a song on the radio that caused my ears to poke me in the head and say, “Hold off on that nourishing bag of fat and listen to the rest of this.” So I did, and was glad, even though, due to the delay, my bag of fat ended up being a little more coagulated than I prefer. The song had a sleeky vibe – the kind that fills you with a cool warmth basted with lurid, subconscious tingles. The song was The Step and the Walk and the band was The Duke Spirit.

The Duke Spirit is a rock and roll band from Great Britain. All I know of them I have learned from the Internet, so I encourage you to learn about them from there too, because I don’t feel like regurgitating it here. But I will tell you they are fronted by the adorable, yet savage, Liela Moss - she of the saddened muse. The rest of the band are a bunch of English gits. And I mean that in a good way, since I’m American and don’t know what a “git” is, but it’s foreign, so I find it endearing.

After voiding my Duke Spirit virginity that fateful Thursday evening, I put the word out about them. Most ignored my preaching, but one man turned an interested lobe in my direction. I asked him, “Is that an interested lobe you are directing at me?” And he said, “Indeed, it is an interested lobe.” Then I asked, “What does your interested lobe want us to do about it?” And he said, “The interested lobe wants us to attend a The Duke Spirit event at our next earliest convenience.” That convenience coordinated with our space-time path about a month later at The Empty Bottle in Chicago.

Prior to the show that evening, I met the man with the interested lobe at a small barstauraunt aptly named The Small Bar on west Division Street. The Small Bar is decorated with unapologetic brick walls spotted with window pane paintings by an artist whose only artistic ability was reflected in xe’s choice of painting surface. The crowd consisted of those who find it chic to be served by greasy fat guys with unkempt beards, so we fit right in. The manager even offered me a job. The interested lobe man and I each ordered the tater tot platter; him with a side order of cheeseburger and me with the BLT. They only served the real gusto of Schlitz in cans, so I chose Miller High Life in a bottle to quaff. I think he ordered a caraff of Lobe Lube to sip during dinner, but I don’t remember exactly. As we mawged by candlelight, we discussed the temporal advantages of having all the Olympic swimming events conducted at the same time in the same pool. We also discussed our expectations of The Duke Spirit. We didn’t have any. In fact, we had confirmed our intent to attend the show with a conversation of “You still wanna go?” - “I guess.” the day before. Good guess.

We arrived at The Empty Bottle just in time to catch the last two songs of the first band. I was sweaty and irritable after a lengthy walk from The Small Bar to the intersection of Western Avenue and Cortez. The greasy, fat waiter would not give us a piggyback ride to the show, even though we tipped twenty-three percent. Consequently, the first band sounded like “Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh” to me. I was glad to have missed most of their set.

The Empty Bottle presents itself with unabashed dinginess posing as avante-garde. The facility is a blown apart brick building with painted car doors hanging on the walls serving as enigmatic viewing ruptures. There were also some multi-media paintings created by someone with no artistic ability trying to be artistic by blatantly revealing xe’s non-artistic ability. I know bad art when I see it - I've made enough of it myself to know.

Before I became too critical of The Empty Bottle’s décor, the second band took the stage. I don’t remember their name, but I referred to them as the Hurky Jerky Funtime Band. The singer/guitar player and the guitar/keyboardist took each song they performed as an opportunity to get in some flail aerobics, while the bass player rocked back and forth at the hips like souped-up dippy bird. I think the drummer was sitting on a pogo stick. I’m not sure what they were doing musically, but it had ingredients of the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Yes, The Brady 6, The Wiggles, Madness, Cyndi Lauper and that band from the bar in Star Wars. To their credit, I must admit there was about a three minute span during their show that sounded pretty cool, until they interrupted it with a palmed-keyboard solo and gobble chant. It’s career suicide to either have “Funtime Band” in your band’s name or in your band’s personality. Most people don’t know this, but Black Sabbath was originally called The Black Sabbath Funtime Band until they realized they could not get a recording contract. They lopped off the end of their name and the rest is history. Luckily for us, the H-J Funtime Band did the same thing with their set, before long.

While we waited for The Duke Spirit to begin, I conducted some people watching. Here are my thoughts: Darn, I forgot to wear a giant red bow in my hair. Why is that guy wearing a heavy leather jacket indoors on a hot summer night? On a hot summer night, Meatloaf. I gotta know right now. Do you love me? Will you love me forever? Speaking of forever, when is the show going to start? Look at that old guy. I’m glad he’s here. That means we’re not the oldest ones here. Golly, that bartender is pale. I wish these girls would stop rubbing on me. Oh, wait. It’s the other way around. That’s OK, then. I need another beer. Maybe I should pee before they go on. People are starting to move towards the stage. I’ll just hold it.

The Duke Spirit came at me like a charger of nitrous oxide filling up a punching balloon. I was thrown backward and my bones started to melt. Their sound was argumentative yet soothing, with a consistent adherence to the doctrine of fluctuating compliance. Yeah, that’s about right.

I was unfamiliar with most of their songs, so I had to learn as we went along. Liela’s voice was that of an angel who chose to be in a rock band rather than benefit from the acoustics of an empyrean sound system. The gits in the band were solid and stayed out of Liela’s way as she attacked the microphone stand with fury only to hold it gently, but with strength, as if she were holding an insecure lover. For the first half of the show, I didn’t know what was happening to me. In retrospect, I realize I was drawn to their music while it slowly enveloped me. It wasn’t until they performed Wooden Heart that I discovered that I was engulfed. Liela had engulfed me. That song made me feel like I was in an embrace with a lover after the lovin’, Engelbert Humperdinck, or maybe with an arbitrary drunken skank who had just puked on herself after the lovin’. Either way, I awoke from my daze lying on the floor of The Empty Bottle spooning with the drunk chick who had been standing in front of me, who had just puked on herself. I would understand your heart, if I could feel it, indeed. And if you didn’t smell and feel like puke.

I knew then that I dug this band. And if I hadn’t by then, I certainly would have later when Liela instructed us to all show her our arm pits, in an attempt to get us to clap with our hands in the air. She told us that if she couldn’t smell our armpits it just wouldn’t be good. I've been asked to do weirder things - I'm in. It was at that point she understood what it felt like to know that every straight member of her opposite sex wanted to make love to her that night. I felt close to her knowing that she and I were the only ones in the room to know what that felt like at that moment. They finished us off with an obligatory encore and sent us on our way.

On my way out I strangled the merchandise table girl because she was out of The Duke Spirit CD, Neptune. If you are reading this now, merch girl, I apologize. I was in the midst of an engulfment rage. Don’t worry, I bought the CD a few days later.

The man with the interested lobe and I walked back to our cars, both appreciating our surprised enjoyment of the show. He wiggled his lobe at me and I drove away. All the way home I relived The Duke Spirit show in my head, while I blissfully burped up tater tots.

A Ginormous Plea for Xe

Throughout history parents have faced countless obstacles when attempting to raise their children. From the time cavepeople needed to protect their children from disease festering mammoth poop (“Don’t play in the mammoth poop!”), to ancient Rome when a child’s bane was marauding barbarians with hot pokers (not to mention memorizing all the declensions of Latin nouns and conjugations of Latin verbs), through the Dark Ages when parents were challenged by general ignorance, wishing they had advanced technology such as mammoth poop, to American colonial times when the choice to coerce radical children to be true to the throne was a life and death decision, to modern day intangible atrocities like media driven feaux-role models such as Lindsay Lohan and George W. Bush, we parents have had to conquer a lot of adversity to ensure the socially acceptable development of our spawns.

Allow me to describe one of my typical days of protective parenting. I wake up and take inventory of all of my children to make sure none have run off or have been abducted. Then I examine the Sponge Bob cartoon to make sure his nose does not resemble a penis too much. Since I have the TV on, I flip over to Oprah to make sure her guest is not some doctor chattering on and on about vaginas. During my trip between channels I am bombarded with cash thirsty advertisers attempting to suckle at the teats of my children’s ignorance, enticing their smoldering impulses and wants. I can’t believe I am talking about my children’s figurative teats. When I accidentally land on the E! Channel’s Top Ten show about Britney Spears’ favorite alcohol and pharmaceutical combinations, I throw a brick through the television set.

Next, I have an appointment with our town drug dealer. He has agreed to leave my kids alone until they turn eighteen if I agree to buy a quarter ounce of pot from him each week. I do this because I’m willing to sacrifice myself to be a good parent. On the way home, I sand blast gang symbols off our police station and stop by the public water works to make sure there are no fecal remnants or lead in the water supply. When I arrive back home, the kids are awake, each eating a bowl of sugar disguised as a cross-marketed movie protagonist, so I force feed them each a handful of Grape Nuts and make them stare, Clockwork Orange style, at a poster of Euell Gibbons for an hour. I know this is backward to the desired affect of A Clockwork Orange, but it’s fun putting those clamps on their eyelids, and what the hell else am I supposed to do with my Euell Gibbons poster?

After breakfast, the son decides to play video games while the daughter breaks out her army of Barbie dolls. After thirty seconds of watching my son command his animated rat-like creature to decapitate helpless animated Globulolians with a serrated petrified fish head, I take a pair of scissors and sever the power line to the video game console to save him from further depictions of senseless violence. When I regain consciousness from the electric shock blackout, I notice a large line of naked Barbies sitting on the couch. The daughter tells me they are waiting in line at Customs for their full body cavity search on their way to Canada for some frolicking. Time to spray paint some clothes on Barbie and put them in the crawl space.

This is all getting too much. I cannot continue to relive another day like this, especially since I have to do it again tomorrow. I need to stop recounting my day now. But I will tell you that our lunchtime conversation included subjects such as obtaining tattoos, you can’t get cancer if you soak the cigarettes in turpentine first, analingus is not really sex, can I go over to Mary’s house to look at her dad’s gun collection, entering contests on Internet pop-up adds are easy to win, skateboarding off the roof, murder is just another way to get ahead in the world, mustard stains are icky, and Billy says if you love your dog you can’t get arrested for bestiality with it. After putting up with all of this, and the activities that rounded out the day after lunch, which I do not have the strength to talk about, you would think the last obstacle of parental hindrance I would have to face would be a reference book company.

That’s right, Merriam-Webster has undermined my parental integrity. I’m not afraid to say it. I don’t care what kind of word henchmen they may have on staff to patrol the speaking public. Many of you have seen that they have recently posted the newest words to gain acceptance into their pompous lexicon. Even though I used the term “pompous lexicon” I claim to remain not bitter. One of those words is “ginormous”, which, technically, is a depound word, albeit, not a very inventive one, combining the words “gigantic” and “enormous”, meaning gigantic or enormous.

Let me cut to the parental usurping chase. Over the past year I have been admonishing my son for using that word. Still he continued to use it. I tried to explain to him that it was merely a fad of illiteracy, appealing to only those who were weak minded enough to resort to such verbal crutches, relieving themselves from any responsibility to linguistic propriety. To which he replied, “Huh? People are relieving themselves? Like pissing? What?” Eventually my cajoling rendered him apologetic every time he used the word in front of me. “Sorry, Dad.” From his fluency with the word, I could tell he was wielding it freely while cavorting with his friends and the general public. At least his apologies to me revealed he was aware that he was saying it and that it was wrong, on some level, to use it. That is, until Merriam-Websterdecided to validate the wordship of ginormous against my better judgement.

The son no longer apologizes to me when he uses the word because it is in the dictionary. What’s worse is the frequency of his use of ginormous has increased, and not always in grammatically correct ways. “Dad, I’m going to ginormous mow the lawn ginormous, but I need gas ginormous money for the mower. Ginormous, ginormous. Oh, and one more thing – ginormous.” What’s worst of all is, because of Merriam-Webster’s need to be hip to sell more dictionaries to illiterate and incorrigible teenagers, my son no longer believes any of my parental guidance. Sure, drinking and driving is dangerous. Sure, studying will help my grades. Sure, if I don’t wear a rubber I’ll end up ruining my life by disease or by parenthood, or both. Sure, Jerry Springer isn’t a news program. You were wrong about ginormous, how do I know you aren’t wrong about those things? How do I know they won’t make heroin legal someday, either?

So, I’ve given up parenting the son. I hope he knows how to use a mop. What really gets me is that ginormous is now officially a word, but useful words like xe and depound go unnoticed, and are probably not even considered for acceptance by the snoots at Merriam-Webster. Especially, xe. That word has the power to change our entire language for the better. No longer will we have to awkwardly tap dance around gender specific pronouns in attempt to be non-offensive or non-committal. Xe can free society from the manacles of conformed expression. What we need is to get the word out (both literally and literally) so that more people use xe. Use of the word on this blog and message board is not enough (apparently - but you would think it would be enough based on the scholarly exposure we provide). “Important” people need to start using it in print. We need a marketing campaign to brainwash young children to use it so that the number-crunchers at Merriam-Webster can determine, if they include xe, they will sell more copies of their rad expression manual to unsuspecting young gibberish speakers. The acceptance of xe requires a grass roots campaign the likes of which has not been seen since Temptation Eyes. WHO’S WITH ME?!?!?!?!?!

(Note: if you are unfamiliar with the words xe and depound, please click here and here.)

The Devil's Business

I’m going to start a business. Being a shrewd entrepreneur, I will search for a line of business where my chief competitor will exploit my operations to bolster her/his success. In fact, the mission of my business will be to deter customers from patronizing my product, while reinforcing the attraction of my competitor’s product line. I stand to make millions, nay, billions. I’m surprised no one has yet adopted this idea.

Does this sound like a good plan? No, it doesn’t. It sounds like a moronic plan. It is a moronic plan. But, it has been attempted, and it continues to be used today (depending upon your mythological beliefs, that is. If your beliefs do not coincide with the following verbiage, humor me, and suspend those beliefs until I am through.)

What kind of a numbskull would be so bold as to employ the previously described strategy? Look no further than the nearest pit of eternal damnation in your neighborhood. That’s right, the genius I speak of is none other than the devil, himself. Or herself. As a devout feminist (as convenience calls), I firmly believe that a woman can achieve the depths of dastardly infamy as well as any man. In this scenario, though, it seems more fitting to present the classical male image of old gooseberry. Consider the stereotypical image of a man’s dumbfounded expression when he is caught in a dubious and imbecilic activity. That is the look I imagine the devil would express if he eventually realizes he is being played for a fool and is damned (pun intended) good at it.

Succinctly, the arrangement, as I understand it, is this. God offers to people an afterlife of euphoria, marked by constant bliss and everlasting pomp. In return, all he, or she (again, as with the devil, it is my belief that the “almighty” has every right and possibility of being female. My generation has been taught to believe that god, if in fact there is one, is male. But in the interests of equality, those of us who think of ourselves as “sensitive to the issue”, in an attempt to flaunt our righteousness, will use the phrase, “or her/she” in situations like this [if you believe the lord can be either/both genders], where the sex of the object of the pronoun is ambiguous or unknown. Contrarily, we are not being “sensitive to the issue” because we are still putting the “male” first. The possibility of womanhood filling the role at hand is merely an afterthought in these circumstances. It is rare to see the opposite phrase [her, or him] written where the object is assumed female first and male as the afterthought. An effort needs to be made to split time equally between the sexes when making references. Better yet, a neutral pronoun, similar to “it”, needs to be created which will encompass both female and male forms. I propose the word “xe”, pronounced zheh, which can be used as a subject, noun, possessive, whatever [very versatile – kinda like the “f” word]. I chose this word because we don’t have enough words beginning with the letter x and it sounds silly. For example, “The teacher reached to pull down the map, and xe ripped xe’s drawers”. Okay, now back to the original sentence:) asks is that we remain true to xe and be good. It seems like an equitable deal.

Lucifer takes a different approach. His intent is to corrupt souls by coercing people to perform sinister activities in opposition to god’s will. It’s easy work and not a bad foundation for a strong company, because being bad is generally more convenient and is definitely more fun (provided the conscience is discounted) than being a goody-two-shoes. With a large sales force, consisting of various demons and tortured spirits, and an extensive legal staff (input crooked lawyer joke here), satan has positioned himself and his operation to procure innumerable clients.

One major flaw exists (and it is a doozy) in his scheme. Our buddy, the archfiend, does not provide fair compensation for those who fall prey to his enticing sales pitch. To those that honor his solicitation, he rewards an eternity of anguish and a seat on a Bunsen burner. This is no incentive to be bad. Sure, some of us will be roped in by the diversions available inherent in an ignominious temporal existence he claims to provide, but when it comes to closing time, most of us will realize the implications of the final sale and choose to shop elsewhere. Would you patronize a car dealer who, in an attempt to attract your business, promises to jab you with a pitchfork forever if you buy his car, even if the car can do zero to sixty in a nanosecond?

The silliest part of this whole set up is that the essence of satan’s promotion initiates impetus for people to favor the virtuous path (based on an average score throughout a life span. All of us stop in at Beelzebub’s Boutique to pick up a few things every now and again. It’s like a convenience store.) Satan’s payoff is a deterrent to the presence of the behavior his wishes to promote. His product drives customers away, directly to the door of his competitor.

Please do not mistake me for a holy roller. My intent is to examine this strange arrangement between the ethereal worlds. I am not taking sides on this matter. It befuddles me to think the devil would agree to this pact. He has got to be an idiot. Unless, he is working with god to compel people to goodness. Can he be taking kick backs from god? If this is a case, I have a newfound respect for old scratch. I don’t remember reading anything in the Bible about the creator and the fallen angel being in cahoots. Then again, I haven’t read much of the Bible. I can’t seem to get beyond the book of Genesis where they are explaining who begat whom, and how long everybody lived. It seems as if the writers did not have a clear direction of where they wanted to go with the book. I think, initially, they were just trying to fill space to meet the publisher’s first draft deadline.

This conspiracy theory involving an alliance between god and satan may be worth investigating. It may lead to another business idea. I think the government may already be employing it. I will contact my congressxe.