Open letter to Safeway:

I appreciate that you wish to polish your image as a caring sort of corporate entity, but if I have indicated that I don’t have an extra dollar to give you for your cause d’jour, I don’t want any fucking attitude from you. If you would like to give me some free food, I would be glad to donate the money I would have spent to anyone you think needs it more than either of us do.

Yes, a dollar may very well sink the checkbook, not that it’s any of your business. You’ll notice the lack of whisky and cigarettes on the belt. What do you think I’m doing with the peanut butter, rubbing it on my chest à la Iggy Pop? No, I’m eating that shit. Until your massive database of everything I ever buy starts trending heavily toward non-essential items, don’t ask.

Furthermore, I am not in any way, shape, or form, Mr. Esau. That would be my father-in-law. It is not charming to pretend that you know or care who I am when you clearly do not. I am not going to correct you again. The next time you call me that, someone’s getting a punch in the neck. Actually, just forget it, I’m going to United Market.

Goodbye

Ciruelo (Plum Tree)

Up on a high branch, ebony crows are at it;
Fighting amongst themselves over the plump, ripe fruits
That float in their own bright green firmament, flashing
Like palerindas falling from a piñata.

Can’t those birds see there is more than enough for all?
Such a wasted abundance that broken orbs squish
Up between my toes in the cool mornings as I
Move to water the strawberries and tomatoes.

As a murder alights in the sycamore shade,
I tire of the squall and squabble from above.
Plucking a ripe bullet from its stem, I marvel
At iridescent low-rider reds and purples.

I’ve chosen my weapon to fit its flawless form.
In the afternoon heat, the leather pocket smells
Of sacred summers, of baseball mitts, and sandals,
And even of old bears passing down on Castro Street.

The yellow surgical tubing pulls tight and sings,
Its potential energy not to be tied off.
Today our cause is righteous and with careful aim
And consideration for the wind, I let fly.

Bang! The neighbors’ car windshield takes the hit. No harm,
No foul; no one coming out, thank God. The cuervos
Grasp the sky in a black panic to continue
Their argument elsewhere. All is right. All is plum.

Karl Strauss Brewing Company — Tower 10 IPA — 6.5%

Having peeps that wander down to San Diego now and again, I’ve heard good things about Karl Strauss, but for whatever reason, I have never been able to find their beers up in the Bay Area. Finally, I’ve been able to find two: their Tower 10 IPA and Red Trolley Ale.

The Tower 10 pours a light pumpkin color with a small, but tight head, leaving little lacing. The nose is all about the malts, which surprised me. I usually like my IPAs to be more hop-forward, but the balance works here.

It started out with ultra-smooth caramel notes with a sweet citrus finish, but I found that as the beer warmed, it gained a coppery aftertaste. Perhaps it’s the hops making their late entrance, but instead of piney/grapefruit goodness, I get to suck on a penny. Maybe this one’s gone south.

Pike Brewing Company — Pike Pale — 5%

This pale ale from the great north woods of Seattle pours with a wonderful nose of malts (I guessed caramel, but it turns out to be a mélange of pale, Munich, crystal, and malted wheat) all adding up to evoke the sweet breadiness of an English biscuit.

The Pike Pale pours with a tight half-inch head with more lacing than your grandma’s Irish curtains. Designated a pale, this “heirloom amber” is surprisingly well balanced, with its hop profile of Magnum, Willamette, and East Kent Goldings not really making their appearance until the brew warms a bit.

The clean mouthfeel lends itself to ultimate quaffablity—useful as Bay Area Indian summer temps begin to rise.

Jeff Johnson — Tattoo Machine: Tall Tales, True Stories, and My Life in Ink

Portland artist Jeff Johnson gives readers an unvarnished look behind the tip wall in his first book, Tattoo Machine. As part owner of the Sea Tramp, one of the oldest tattoo parlors in town, he sees enough crazy shit on any given night to curl the hair of the uninitiated and grizzled veteran alike; however, it is Johnson’s gift for language, metaphor, and unflinching introspection that gives the book its heart. Of course it’s a flaming heart with barbed wire and maybe some wings—but it’s a heart. You don’t have to care about tattooing to take something worthwhile away from this entertaining look at human nature and the art of self-expression.

Jonathan Lethem — The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

This collection of short stories from Berkeley-by-way-of-Brooklyn writer Jonathan Lethem explores the same sort of absurdist science fiction landscape as his novel Amnesia Moon. These seven pieces show the depth and breadth of Lethem’s creativity as he explores the outer reaches of this genre.

The stories that were previously printed in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine are among the standouts in this collection and speak both to the editor’s catholic tastes and Lethem’s ability to inhabit vastly different worlds and report back with chilling clarity.

The Happy Man, the lead off tale of a guy who spends half his time in hell and the other half trying to make up with his increasingly distant wife and troubled teenage son, sets the tone for the volume. In this troubling story, the reappearance of a ne’er-do-well uncle in his Earth-bound life begins to draw the two worlds into closer proximity. Lethem telegraphs his final blow but it is devastating all the same. This story stays with the reader and reveals the barely-disguised malice in our classic fairy tales.

Vanilla Dunk, is a slightly futuristic story of professional basketball in a time where the sport is in an advanced state of atrophy and has begun to consume itself like a snake eating its own tail. Powered exosuits give players the sampled skills of the greatest athletes of all time, turning the game into a live fantasy league.

Lethem uses the post-sport spectacle to probe the issues of race (when a white hotshot draws the much-vaunted skills of Michael Jordan) and fame like a tongue returning to the socket of a broken tooth. This is quite a different story than The Happy Man and it’s a testament to Lethem’s deft touch that one doesn’t need an understanding, or fondness for that matter, of basketball to enjoy it.

Not every story in The Wall of the Eye is a slam dunk, but the penultimate tale, The Hardened Criminals, shows what an incredible imagination Lethem possesses. To give away the story’s main conceit would be a crime in and of itself, but it ends up being a chilling indictment of the prison industry and the way that it is set up to strip away the humanity of those stupid, crazy, or unlucky enough to fall under its purview.

Lethem is a prolific novelist as well as short story writer and at times his prose reads dangerously close to poetry as in this introduction of the prison in The Hardened Criminals:

The prison was an accomplishment, a monument to human ingenuity, like a dam or an aircraft carrier. At the same time the prison was a disaster, something imposed by nature on the helpless city, a pit gouged by a meteorite, or a forest-fire scar.

21st Amendment Brewery — Brew Free! or Die India Pale Ale — 7.2%

San Francisco’s 21st Amendment Brewery is probably best known for jumping out in front of the microbrew-in-a-can trend. I was bound for the annual family stay at Lake Tahoe where I knew I was going to need some good beer, so a couple six-packs of a portable, beach-friendly IPA were just what the doctor ordered.

As tasty as it was straight out of the cooler as the thermometer flirted with 100 degrees, it was once I got back to the cabin and found myself a pint glass that this tasty, well-balanced brew was given a proper chance to shine. The Brew Free! or Die IPA pours a light-golden hue with a prodigious cotton-colored head with some serious lacing. Its looks alone invited interest from the macro-beer drinkers at the cabin.

I don’t wish to demean this beer in anyway when I say that this would be a good introductory IPA for those wishing to start developing a palate for them. It throws an inviting sweet citrus nose with subtle sourdough undertones. Not at all like the piney hop bombs that I usually drink; of course, those have the added bonus of keeping less resin-wrecked taste buds out of my stash.

All in all, very quaffable, with a velvet-smooth mouthfeel that reveals the underlying hops. Its drinkability and portability assures that I’ll be taking this beer along on all my summer water-related excursions.

Sonic Youth — The Eternal (2009)

At this point, you are either hip to what the Youth are puttin’ down or you couldn’t be arsed. Love ’em or hate ’em, you have to give them props for following their own collective muse for longer than a quarter of a century now. Remember when we were worried that their jump to a major label meant that Sonic Youth had “sold out?” Ha! Good times.

For what it’s worth, the band’s sojourn in the beige carpeted wilderness has finally come to an end, and they seem to have escaped unscathed. Maybe that’s because DGC/Geffen/CompuglobalHypermegacorp never really knew what to do with the band except leave them alone to make consistently engaging records.

Which brings us to The Eternal, the new album released on Matador, home to fellow squall merchants/musical geniuses, Mission of Burma. With the first atonal clarion clang of Sacred Trickster, the band announces a new-found drive and celebration of independence. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed the hazy, bucolic cruise through their Own Private Connecticut over the last decade, but I have to admit that from Diamond Sea, the closing track on 1995’s Washing Machine, through Do You Believe in Rapture? on 2006’s Rather Ripped, the serene, coolly psychedelic jams aren’t the ones I reach for when I want to drive like a lunatic or jump around the house scaring the animals.

With former Pavement bassist Mark Ibold onboard, replacing multi-instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke who left in 2005, the band sounds more focused, and hungrier than they have in a decade. Those of us lucky enough to catch the epic Daydream Nation shows in 2007 caught a preview of the new lineup that seems to have put a burr back under their saddle.

Trickster kicks off the album with a Kim Gordon vocal that calls to mind the concisely-fractured indie rock of ’90s milestone albums Dirty and Goo. Gordon’s songs have long been highlights of the sets that contain them; unfortunately, her compositions have been few and far between the last few records. As usual, she cuts straight through the bullshit and nails those with no imagination to rise above the cliché, whether in dealing with sexual politics or the business of rocking so hard for so long. What’s it like to be a girl in band? / I don’t quite understand / That’s so quaint to hear / I feel so free, my dear

As the last bit of heavy reverb dies away, Thurston Moore jumps in with a classic rock riff to announce a duet with his wife. Anti-Orgasm flips the meme of sex as violence on its head as it nihilistically proclaims that Anti-war / is anti-orgasm. Sonic Youth has the vortex of guitars sound down by now, but rarely in recent years has it sounded so vital. Around the two-minute mark, Ibod’s bass starts a counterpoint riff that adds a new dimension to the usual expanse of sounds. At three-and-a-half minutes, the band stretches out into a bit of what they have taken away from their flirtation as the punk rock Grateful Dead before Ibod’s figure reappears and brings the whole beautiful mess to a close.

Just as you think that they may be back to drifting however, Lee Renaldo’s What We Know kicks the paranoia up a notch and drives it home with a relentless riff recalling the band’s hardcore past. This strategy is also used to great effect on Poison Arrow, as percussive chordal stabs close out the track.

According to Billboard, The Eternal sold 19,262 copies in its first week and is currently 16th on the Top Digital Album chart. What does that mean in this post-everything marketplace of ideas? Probably nothing—but it could be that Sonic Youth is finally spending some of that famous indie cred. The mandate is rock.

Suggestion Box

Everyday upon entering the coliseum, I see it
Well crafted from exotic hardwoods
Stolen, I’m sure, from some forest primeval
Hand-polished brass hardware makes certain
All submissions remain confidential
Goddamn thing probably cost more than I make in a week

Passing by, I project poison through the smooth slot
A gill of gall in your hogshead of cream
The unspoken knowledge that if I told you what I really thought
The linoleum floor would rend beneath your feet
You would become helplessly entangled
In basement chain and sour mop heads—things you know nothing about

My first suggestion would be to get rid of that box

Unknown Instructors — Funland (2009)

Shakespeare had it right. You really can’t trust anyone that doesn’t appreciate music. All of our greatest thinkers eventually seem to come to the conclusion that we are only vibrations in the great void. Call it the Big Bang Theory, call it what you will, but how could one go through life closed to the most primal and necessary form of human expression?

I think we can all agree that 2009 has already been a son-of-a-bitch; but if you are open to it, just when you need it, out of left field comes a collection of tunes that cracks the rust on your brain pan, and that beat, Goddamn it, that beat …

Dropped into the late spring of our discontent, like a silver dollar dropped down an outhouse shitter, falls the third, and most cohesive, album from Unknown Instructors, an unlikely supergroup of sorts that push the boundaries of … well, everything.

On Funland, the planet’s premier punk rock rhythm section of Mike Watt and George Hurley consistently push each other in more and more complex jams supported by Saccharine Trust guitarist Joe Baiza playing at his most insectoid. Whereas Hurley played pretty straight-ahead on the last album, producers Baiza, Joe Carducci, and Dan McGuire saved the most Rashied Ali-inspired grooves for its follow up.

Recorded at the same time as 2006’s The Master’s Voice, Funland is no mere collection of second-rate tracks, but a cohesive work of art that follows a thematic surge. Of course, that theme is loose enough to include Pere Ubu’s père David Thomas wailing as if existentially wounded on Afternoon Spent At The Bar, Sunny; while elsewhere, poet Dan McGuire reprises his role as a modern-day Jim Morrison with a penchant for language rather than just whiskey and leather pants.

McGuire has an eye for the details of the less-than bucolic childhood that many of us aging suburban California kids can relate to. He remembers the forgotten places, the weed-strewn empty lots and trampled-down hurricane fences, but he’s not the only poet on deck.

Whereas Voice was a hard-charger right out of the gate with the swirling Swarm, Funland’s opening salvo is Maji Yabai (Japanese slang originally meaning something like, “Oh shit,” and morphing in recent years into something like “sick” or “bad,” but in a good way), an introspective Watt-spiel. This paints the scene in a peculiar midway twilight. The unmerciful heat of the summer sun has finally abated and that belly full of PBR and corndogs isn’t going to hold you. It’s time to make some decisions. As the buzz loosens its grip, you can opt to reinforce it with another flat cold one, or pop out to the car for something stronger.

Funland’s hard stuff includes a cover of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band’s Frownland, welding its odd gravitas to the album’s own weird sense of bacchanalian carny freedom. In addition to Thomas’s unique contributions, artist Raymond Pettibon’s unexpected jazz-influenced rap on Lead! proves that his take on Voice’s Twing-Twang wasn’t just an anomalous laugh. Pettibon has a surprisingly direct and, dare I say it, swinging delivery that may just cause me to rethink my idea of him as a quiet, misanthropic artist; or someone you might meet working the ring toss. It’s good to remember not to confuse the artist with his art.

Funland is all about pushing the boundaries of what you think you know about these musicans, and like the famous Tilt-A-Whirl, if you don’t hurl, you just might have the time of your life.