"R.I.P. Skull Fracture"

Over the last two months, we’ve played a handful of shows—a few bars, a house party—and they all went well, or at least pretty well, but we’ve come to the conclusion that Skull Fracture’s days are over. It’s a good time to stop; I dont want to be thirty-five and playing basement shows with bands with names like Kill Your Parents, Drug of Choice, Death Grip, Warpath, and Jeffro Tull. You know?

We still have some copies of “Blunt Force Trauma,” a five-song 4-track demo we recorded with all our songs on it:

1. Live Fast and Die Stupid
2. Wrecking Ball
3. Now You Die!
4. Blunt Force Trauma
5. Make Your Own Dinner, Keith, ‘Cuz I’m Playin’ Drums!

They're two bucks. Just contact us through the website. It’s been fun. Fred and I are already discussing a new group, The Sacrificial Lambs. The first album: "Like Lambs To The Slaughter!"

Goodnight!

"Fifth-Grade Birthday Party"

*Dedicated to Jess*

It was my fifth-grade birthday party and, man, I had to deliver. You see, I had just started at a new school and this birthday party was a lovely opportunity to put myself in good stead with my fellow classmates—well, actually just the boys (we were all ten and eleven so girls weren’t really in the picture yet). Anywho, I had the situation on lockdown: I (my mom) rented out an arcade—yes, an arcade—and she gave each partygoer five dollars in quarters—actually, some greedy ones more—to play the awesome video games at my awesome arcade-rented-out birthday parté.

Everything was going swimmingly. Then came time for food, then cake, then presents.

This is where my awesome party became significantly less awesome.

Most of the presents were not very good, HOWEVER, things took a turn for whatever exists below worse with two particularly atrocious “gifts.”

We’re talkin’ monstrosities here, people.

Exhibit A: Five dollars and a birthday card from three people. Yes, three—count ‘em: one, two, three—people. But then things crashed through rock bottom when the following was bestowed upon me: a T-shirt, the design of which, depicted “God’s Creation” by Michelangelo with a twist—the finger of man was not touching the finger of God, but rather the utter of a cow. ?!?. And check this out: it said Milkalangelo beneath the design. And perhaps what stung the most is that a lot of these kids were/still are wealthy-to-extremely wealthy. What I’m sayin’ is, I’m pretty sure they could of afforded more than a birthday card and five bucks spread three ways. And as far as the Milkalangelo shirt, it was clearly a T-shirt to be worn in public with great trepidation.

"Some Days You Just Can't Win"

It was the last day of my junior year of high school and—read the next five words with a southern drawl—I had myself a problem: I didn’t have a ride home.

Important background information: At this point in my career as a human being—I was seventeen—I did not yet have a license, so I was one of those guys who should of had their license, but didn’t.

Failed the driver’s license test three times.
Three times.

Anyway, so having no license—three times?—I was almost always escorted via automobile to and from school by either of my good friends, Matt Mazzoni—Mazzoni!—or James B. Downs. How-ev-er, because of the way our exam schedules worked out, neither of the lads chauffeuring services were available, so I got done—improper English—should be “I finished”—my last exam and the ride-home situation was a Ted Nugent song and a free-for-all.

Okay, something I should of mentioned earlier: my—like I own it?—high school was/still is in the city—actually, the ghetto. “City of Compton/City of Compton”—and young men ages thirteen to eighteen who were, and hopefully still are, members of the human race matriculated, and again still do, from all over, some from another state, New Jersey, to aforementioned school, little old me hailing from the a suburb a good thirty minutes away, and so it was a take-what-you-could-get situation and I snagged a ride with a kid I kinda know. But guess what?—That’s what—We’re not going home; the kid and his buddy, who’s riding shotgun, have some booze in the trunk because they’re, and everyone else in the car, going to a shady spot where people drink.

So we were drivin’ along—sing this part jovially in your head: la, di, dat, dat, da—and the driver, who’s driving way too fast and also not paying attention, BOOM! rear ends this car and being an idiot and not wearing my seatbelt, I fly forward, slamming my forehead against the back of the driver’s headrest, and then snap back and hit the back of my head against my own headrest. It hurt.

Panic. We just got in an accident, and we’re all underage, and there’s booze in the vehicle.

Whatta we do?

Gotta talk to the other driver. Gotta call the cops. The alcohol: Gotta get it out of the car. Hide it somewhere.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, driver turns back to me.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“Just say you’re all right to the cops.”

Friend hides the beer, which is concealed in a paper shopping bag, behind a tree on the side of the road; cop shows up; the whole rigamarole.
“We’re safe to drive home.”
Cop leaves and clearly we don’t go home, but instead the friend grabs the bag, we pull away, and then go to the shady drinking spot where I don’t drink because I don’t drink at this point in my life, but still hang out, and somewhere along the line for some reason I can’t remember the kid leaves, or maybe, and understandably, I don’t want to continue on my journey home with him and I am again sans ride home and it has started to rain.

Nugent is playing “Free-For-All” again.

I end up squeezing into this other kid’s car, a Buick if memory serves, and there’s like six people in this car, me on someone’s lap, and we drive back to the new driver’s hometown, all of which the other passengers are denizens of, and not unlike Dio’s 1990 album, The Last In Line, I’m the last in line. Oh yeah, and it’s pouring by now. A deluge if you will; and if you won’t, who cares? Now I live only three miles away, about a ten-minute drive round trip, but my new driver has already driven thirty minutes or so and apparently that’s his absolute limit. It’s POURING out and this guy tells me he’s not driving me home. The train stops here.
“Are you serious? I only live like three miles away?”
“Nah, I’m not doin’ it.”
Pause. It hangs in the air. He’s serious.
I ask him again and again get denied. I can’t believe it, but HE IS NOT budging, so I say forget it, get out of the car, start walking, and after a mile or less I’m completely soaked—everything: my body, my clothes, my book bag, my books and notebooks, my shoes, my new leather purse. Everything. And I’m also walking on this small grass hill because God forbid there be a sidewalk, and so all I’m trying to do is not slip down it and get killed by a car when GOOSH! a car zooms by a huge puddle and a wave of water nails me. It’s like something out of a movie and I laugh because it’s perfect. And when I finally get home, I take a shower to warm up and stave off pneumonia, and the next day I awake to find I have whiplash, which goes away after a few days.

Whatever. At least it was summer.

"Philosophy of Farful"

Humility is the chlorine in the pool of life—So make sure to check your levels often!

"Marriage"

I almost got married to this really beautiful girl in college, but it turned out she didn't like me and also had a serious boyfriend. But for one precious, fleeting moment I saw us at the altar: I in a camouflage tuxedo, she in traditional female Amish garb, and it was perfect. Perfect.

"Clothes Make the Man"

Once, in my eighteenth year, I applied for a job with a popular convenience store and was accepted into their training program, which took place very far away from the store at which I would presumably be working.[1] The manger of the store then explained to me that there was a dress code—khaki pants and I think a button-down dress shirt; I can’t really remember—that I had to adhere to whilst going through said training.

Fair enough.

But then I showed up to my first day of training wearing off-white khaki pants and was told that I had to go home. Acknowledging my mistake but also finding this extreme strictness over khaki pants fucking ridiculous, I politely asked if I could take part in the first day of training while wearing my unacceptable off-white khaki pants, promising to definitely wear khaki pants the rest of the days. To me, this sounded reasonable; to them, it did not. I was denied and they sent me packing, so put off by their khaki-pants fanaticism, that I bagged the whole idea of working there.

[1] Does anyone else find this as strange as I do? No offense to anyone who has or does work at a convenience store, but is an elaborate training program in a remote place really necessary? Also, if you do take offense, read the rest of the story and I guarantee you you’ll feel vastly superior to me.

"Philosophy of Farful"

Anger is a poisonous fuel that will destroy a man's engine--that engine being his soul.

"File Under: 'Disaster'"

Looking back, it all started with the woman’s son.

I was at my best friend’s fifth birthday party, happily playing with a toy, when BAM! I got clocked and went down like a ton of bricks. Unbeknownst to me, this woman’s son wanted to play with the same toy and felt the best way to handle it was to punch my ass out and take it from me.[1]

Now fast-forward the tape of my life ‘til where I’m twenty-three and we’re ready for round two.

So this kid’s mom owns and runs a filing business that does, amongst nothing else, filing work and, I, twenty-three years old and fully recovered from her son’s beating, have just completed my junior year of college (I’m not dumb or a slacker—I didn’t got to college straight out of high school) and am sorely in need of some summer-time employment. So, bing!, idea, I decide to try working for her and I give her a call.

This is where things get weird.

Somehow, despite the fact that I totally know this woman, having spoken and spent time with her on numerous occasions; that we share a close mutual friend (the family of the kid whose birthday party her son punched me at); and that my older brother worked for her before and she knows my mom and her son, who I went to high school with and hung out with some—we end up getting along all right—knocked me out and that I saw and talked to her days before placing aforementioned call, she has no idea who I am. But, after I explain some of the above connections, she seems to remember me and, voila, I land a four-day filing gig, which is to begin on Wednesday, run through ‘til Friday, at which point we skip the weekend, and end on the following Monday.

Work. Day one. I get picked up and the woman is still a bit hazy on who the hell I am, but again with me throwing out some of our connections, she remembers me—again.

Down to business: I’m the new guy, and being the new guy, I feel it’s imperative to get off on the right foot work-wise and also not to overstep my bounds, so I try and focus intently on my work and I don’t really speak unless spoken to. Overall, the day goes without incident and I feel good about my first day’s performance.

This brings us to: Day two. Again, I work hard, but I decide that I need to chat it up more, bring something to the table talk-wise, you know? So I try and pick my moments, but as I have a tendency (I do it pretty much all the time) I get overly excited and overly talkative—gregarious, if you will—and talk probably too much. There is also a great deal of concern that day about the speed at which we must complete the job and she mentions to me that I need to work faster, and so I try to up the quickness with which I file. Then on the ride home, I, again probably talk too much and it is decided, the possibility having been brought up that day at work, that, because another one of her other jobs is behind, people will need to be shifted to that job, and subsequently my presence will not be required on Friday and that she’ll call me about Monday.

This turn of events strikes me as not good. But I shrug it off. I’ll be back in action Monday, I tell myself. However, as I laid in bed that Saturday night, having not yet heard from her about Monday, I suddenly got frightened and began to wonder if she was greasing me off—by the way, for anyone who doesn’t know what getting greased off means, it’s basically when someone is trying to get rid of you by ceasing any and all contact with you; also don’t feel like you’re out of the loop or not hip or something because you haven’t heard this term, because I totally made it up and no one else except me uses it.

ANYWAY, I again assured myself that she wouldn’t do this, seeing as how it seemed very unprofessional and something even I wouldn’t do, yet by Sunday I still hadn’t heard from her, so I called her to inquire about the details of Monday and that’s when she TKO from Tokyo’d me Piston Honda-style, saying: “You know what, John. Your work was meticulous: absolutely no mistakes. But I’m afraid speed just isn’t your forte.” She then went on to explain that speed had to be one’s forte in the filing business and that, this, meaning me working for her, was not going to work out, which meant, more or less, that I was headed for the welfare line[2].

Crushed, I sat in my kitchen strumming my acoustic guitar as my mom attempted to console me until my younger brother, upon entering and hearing the news, made fun of me, claiming that a monkey could do that job (perhaps, a monkey whose forte was speed) and I sat there, punch-drunk, nothing left to do but laugh at myself, especially at the fact that I had to call her just so I could be given the boot properly.



[1] To his credit, it worked: he got the toy.
[2] I think it’s fair to say that overall I have not done well with this family.

"Philosophy of Farful"

The path to Enlightenment can be a dark one.

"Lights, Camera, Minimum Wage!"

A lot of people take jobs at video stores for the money, the fame, the lifestyle, the parties—But, me, I got into it just for the money.

At the time, I was eighteen years old and in the process of putting together five hundred bucks so I could buy some musical instrument and/or accessory[1], and I already had about half of the money together, but where was I was gonna score the rest? Answer: a gig working at a very large, very popular, and very successful video store chain that rhymes with Glockbuster.

I applied, was interviewed, and landed the job.

Now in case you haven’t been paying attention to the story so far (shame on you!), I wasn’t planning on having what you would call a lasting occupational relationship with my new place of employment—like I said before, I just needed to make the other half of that five hundred bucks—and being the immature idiot I was back then (and still occasionally am now), I had, before even getting hired, put together this clandestine idea—and subsequent clandestine plan—where I figured the following: One, if so inclined, can obtain a job and work it for roughly two weeks—without working hard at all—due to the fact that the first week of the job is more or less the training period—during which your performance can be lackluster and mistake-ridden—because you are, after all, new, and then you have about another week until they, whoever you are working (not very hard) for, finally get fed up with you and fa-fa-fiya yo ass. But by then, it’s been about two weeks, and you have your loot, and you’re in the clear. Seems perfect, right? (Assuming your situation is almost identical what mine was.) But like so many things in life, the perfect plan turned out to be not so perfect, and many things went wrong.

The plus’ of the job: As an employee, you got to rent five movies a week for free, and this kid, who I went to camp with when I was younger and who is a living legend, worked there for, I think, one day that I did, but then was organizing videos and just couldn’t take it anymore and quit very quietly and without incident right then and there. I couldn’t believe this. However, a co-worker, who wasn’t phased by this at all, told me it was no big deal and happened a lot. (By the way, I know that second one was a weird thing to consider a plus.)

The minus’ of the job: They played this TLC music video/promotional ad for something or things round the clock, and it was so annoying that, after about an hour, you wanted to shot yourself in the head. Droves of people would return a video or videos, only to discover that there video or videos were late and they had incurred a late fee, and they would righteously announce how they weren’t going to pay it, and then I would explain to them that, because we had their credit card on file, they most definitely were going to pay it, and then they would get even more angry and ask to see the manager, and sometimes he was there, but sometimes not, so sometimes they got the assistant manager, who told them the same thing the manager would of told them, which was the same thing I had told them in the first place—we had their credit card on file: they were paying the late fees. End of story. And then they would still be all huffy-puffy and go off about how they were never going to rent movies from us again. But then, after like three weeks usually, they would be back, sheepishly renting whatever movie was popular at the time[2].—And another thing: Why would they get all mad at me? I mean, it wasn’t like the late fee money was going in my pocket. I was making like six-fifty an hour, for crying out loud. I couldn’t have cared less. In fact, as far as I was concerned, people were free to loot the store.

Getting back on track.

Duuude, this job was seriously hard. It was like the hardest job I’ve ever haaaad[3].
Now, to Glockbuster’s credit, they ran a very tight ship—but sadly, I was on this ship and not really down for all this tightness[4]. Check this out: At the end of the night shift (which I worked at least a couple of times), we had to go through every movie on every shelf and make sure they were all lined up perfectly. That still haunts me.

Okay, every story has an ending—even that movie, The Never-ending Story, and its two sequels.

I missed a day of work.

Honestly, I can’t remember why I missed it—I think it was just an honest mistake—but that led my boss to call me, and rightly so, be very angry with me and demand that I come in on a day I wasn’t previously scheduled to work, which would have been fine if this particular day hadn’t happened to coincide with my older brother’s graduation from college.

Quite the pickle.

To the point: He told me if I didn’t show up that day, I was finished at Glockbuster and I told him I probably wasn’t going to make it. He said you either show up or your fired. I responded, well, if I’m there I guess I still have a job, and if not, I don’t.

I went to my brother’s graduation. I had to. It was a big day, a major achievement.

Career at Glockbuster: Finito.

In the end I didn’t make all the money I set out to, but I got close enough to buy whatever I wanted to buy; my friend, Matt Mazzoni, who worked at another Glockbuster, heard about my not showing for work and my quitting/getting fired and ripped on me about it; and lastly, they never asked for the shirt back and I kept it. However, since I didn’t work there anymore, I had no place to where it. What can ya do, ya know? Ya know?

[5].


[1] For the life of me, I can’t recall at all what it is that I wanted.
[2] You can’t beat the late fees at Glockbuster. Ya just can’t.
[3] Good thing I wasn’t planning on staying more than two weeks. Maybe my perfect plan really did have something to it.
[4] Again, good thing this job was basically a scam.
[5] Who am I, Chuck Klosterman?

"Philosophy of Farful"

A healthy spirit is much like a healthy tree: firmly rooted in the rich soil of positive thinking.