So my brief excitement was just squashed when I learned that this movie on TV �Double Teamed� is about �Twins Heather and Heidi Burge develop a budding high school rivalry and make it to the WNBA�, not about the �double teaming� we�ve all grown to know and love. Sounds more Lifetime than Skinemax though. Perhaps I should have noticed it was on the Disney Channel.

It�s now 12:30 and I have 2 full packs of cigarettes ready for the �Great American Smoke Out�. Fuck these people and their silly little holidays or whatever you want to call them. As a matter of fact, tomorrow, I am going to go into places where you�re not supposed to smoke and smoke. I think it would be fun to be standing in line at the bank and just lighting a cigarette and having it dangle out of my mouth. Or maybe walking into a clothing store with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth nonchalantly would work. I am going to do all of this tomorrow. I am going to smoke at my desk at work tomorrow! I am the boss of the office, and my boss is in another building, so why the fuck not? Just to do my part in the Great American Smoke Out I will also go to the doctor and see if I can be diagnosed with emphysema or lung cancer.

I just finished the book �Our Band Could Be Your Life� What a great book that made me a) want to play in my band even more so than I always have, b) listen to some old records again, c) feel a bit younger and like I was a part of all of this in some minor way. Well, I wasn�t in a big band or anything. Although my old band did get to open for the Adolescents, Reagan Youth, Dag Nasty, and Scream (who Dave Grohl was playing with at the time � as a matter of fact they sold the club out, my band got paid $25. Talking to �the drummer� and Peter Stahl, the singer we told them of our pay when Peter asked us. They then proceeded to give us $75 of their money they made! I�ll never forget shit like that. Or interviewing Keith Morris from the Circle Jerks at 15 for my silly little fanzine). I do however feel I got to witness some great bands that started this whole scene that is now mostly crap. Reading the chapters on Mission of Burma, the Replacements, the Minutemen, and Sonic Youth were probably the best parts of the book. The Black Flag story has been documented into the ground at this point, but to read about D.Boon and Mike Watt hanging out in a playground and playing rock music and not giving a fuck if it was �cool or not� was priceless. I went back and listened to the Replacements � Hootenany, and the Minutemen�s � Double Nickels records and they sound a million times better than some of the shit they are pumping out on the radio. Why even the college stations are playing some crappy indie rock that doesn�t hold a candle to 5 seconds of Zen Arcade, or anything Mission of Burma ever did.

This VH-1 Classics channel is the best thing that�s happened on TV. In the span of 3 hours (not continually) the other night I saw a video for Madness, the English Beat, Yes (Don�t Kill the Whale!- imagine my astonishment to come back from the bathroom, Wall Street Journal in hand, and seeing Rick Wakeman in the ocean playing keyboards

), Kansas, Journey, and Lita Ford. Okay, those last three are nothing to get excited about.

It is getting too late now. I was looking for a pic to put up on here that I thought I had on my hard drive but I guess it�s gone and this is the one I stumbled on though. This is from when the local newspaper did an article on my friends and I on anti-racist skinheads. Note the Smiths poster above my American flag. Heh.

before & after