DISCLAIMER: This installment of Caperin’ is pretty long. Don’t bother reading it.

Okay, everybody totally lied to me. When I was deciding between moving to Austin or Seattle, I was told that while the sky is mostly always miserably depressing in Seattle, it hardly ever snows and that everybody in Austin is involved in roller derby. Oh God, the snow isn’t even what I’m talking about. You see, when all of that snow came down last week and people were just driving straight off of the road, I got really hungry. Lately when I’m hungry I either want a Firecracker sandwich from Smarty Pants or Triscuits. The household was nil on Triscuits and I was informed by the roommates that driving to Georgetown from South Park would be a four hour disaster because officials from the city had essentially banned driving. I thought they were joking of course, but it became apparent as we drove down Corson (or Bailey or whatever road that is) that it was true. The Emerald City Goon Squad seemed to be waving all traffic coming the other way into the Taco Time parking lot instead of onto SR 99 South. We were in luck because there was hardly anybody on our side of the street. Said luck came to a halt when we entered Smarty Pants and were greeted by the Joseph Goebbels of bar service, who informed us that he’d sent the cook home “because the weather was bad.” Then he briskly informed us that they didn’t even have chips to eat, and that even if they did we wouldn’t be welcome to eat them there because he hated people and had decided at that moment to question his career choice of working with the public.

(MUCH MORE TO READ AFTER THE POLL).

• Joseph Goebbels, not wild about potato salad.

We hastened ourselves out the door and walked toward Jules Maes ”Saloon” (ew, gross). I should mention at this point that it was 8:15pm. I should also mention at this point that while we were making the three-minute walk, I called ol’ Benito Mussolini at Smarty Pants and told him that I was William Edward Boeing & that I was bringing a large group of very important Japanese billionaires into his restaurant within fifteen minutes because the billionaires had all raved about how much they loved the Troublemaker sandwich, but then I abruptly STOPPED talking at that moment and said that we were changing our plans because we’d just heard on the street that a poll was taken and he’d been declared the John Emil List of Georgetown and that the service at Smarty Pants was as hospitable as Ciudad Juárez.

• Triscuits: Eat 'Em If You Got 'Em.

As we approached Jules Maes ”Saloon” (ew, gross), Lacey informed us that we were going to have to eat tater tots. I wasn’t crazy about this idea, but tater tots would have to do, as long as I could eat them with mustard. We walked in and everybody was frantically stacking chairs onto tables, even the customers. We were told that the kitchen as well as the entire restaurant were closing because there was three-quarters of an inch of snow outside. I’m not going to take the time to explain that I’m from the Midwest and that much snow doesn’t really mean anything because that’s just boring and I certainly understand that King County decided to divert the funds for buying snowplows to instead hoard copies of Love Buzz by Nirvana on eBay, but it seemed to me that everybody was in a state of absolute panic. DUDES, SNOW IS AWESOME. LET’S GO SLEDDING AT LEAST. Cars are equipped with bumpers for a reason and driving with chains on your tires is really mean to the streets. I am serious, cement vegans would be so mad.

Alas, I eternally digress. As I’m an ultra-whiner, I demanded that we find SOMEPLACE in this neighborhood to eat; it was obvious that it was going to take the entire winter to return to South Park and I’d have to eat Lacey and Ruben somewhere near the Cloverdale Hastings Cutoff along the way. We made another stop at Via Tribunali, which looks like a rather tasty & expensive pizza shack. When we entered the restaurant it was mostly full and REALLY QUIET. Everybody turned and looked as if we’d just miraculously arrived from the impenetrable tundra. I was so happy—I was going to eat food, and it was going to be pizza. “I’m sorry, the kitchen’s closed,” Hanna Schmitz informed us. “We’ve run out of flour.” THE PIZZA SHOP HAD RUN OUT OF FLOUR. It instantly occurred to all of us that everybody was sitting quietly because they were deep in the fourth stage of the Kübler-Ross model of grief. To me, it seems that it could have been snowing frozen flakes of human blood outside and that would be EXACTLY as weird as a pizza shop running out of FLOUR. We’re talking about flour! It grows on trees! Okay, not exactly.

The day before the night of all of these things happening, I discovered Discovery Park with a person named Eroyn Franklin. Well, I didn’t exactly discover it, I mean, it was already there and it had a name and Eroyn certainly knew where it was.

• The apparent amnesia of Edward F. Lighthart. $600 tucked in his sock!

My point is that Eroyn had told me that she worked at a place in Georgetown called The Mix. (note: I wonder if it’s a terrible idea to write all of this information in a public forum before asking a person’s permission. If at times you’re asking yourself what I’m thinking when I’m writing Caperin’, here’s a good place for your answer: MOSTLY NOT AT ALL.) But as we walked out of the Pizza Shack That Flour Forgot, I noticed the sign for The Mix right across the street. It made all of the sense in the world to go toward that place and find out where to find food in what had been revealed as the most ghastly neighborhood in world. We walked in to The Mix and 11 ferocious dogs started barking wildly, like it was Michael Vick appreciation night. Four dudes were sitting in chairs watching a gigantic projected image of Yoko Ono, who was talking about art or music or hair or Thurston Moore and how he found the first Stooges LP in the bargain bin at Woolworth’s. There was a bartender as well, who greeted us kindly and we (I) calmly (frantically) exclaimed that we needed food ASAMFP. He transformed instantly into Mahatma Gandhi and said, “Go to the Shell Station on Corson. Order one whole fried chicken. Everything is going to be okay.” I’d like to take the space on this page and now in your brain to declare that whomever that person is, he totally rules.

HOORAY! So we passed the dour flourless pizza shack while its customers left like George Harrison’s guitar (uh, "gently weeping"); we passed the forever-closed-for-business tater tot “saloon” (ew, gross) and we passed Smarty Pants. As we passed Smarty Pants, we noticed that Mussolini-Goebbels was cheating at online Scrabble. He was also writing out plans to take part in those auctions of public storage spaces that people are no longer able to afford to rent. THAT’S GRADE-A MEAN STUFF!

• RAMPANT SMARTY PANTS

We drove to the Shell Station on Corson and it was brimming with miscreants. Creepers usually hang at gas stations and it seems that they REALLY like to hang at gas stations when it’s snowing. We arrived at the area that looked like it should be full of fried chicken, but it was empty. It was a glass case with a metal cage bottom that was full of chicken skin crumb-chunks. When I was 11 my mother told me that my father had decided that when I was born that he didn’t want to be a part of raising me. These two feelings were exactly equal in my head. Ruben asked a person behind the counter if there was a chance that more chicken was left, but I already knew the answer: There would be no more chicken, as there is no joy in the world. “There’s always more chicken! We always have chicken!” the chicken-man exclaimed. We all looked at each other with astonishment and I over-excitedly declared that dinner was on me. Lacey took this to mean that she could carry six-liters of Dr. Pepper at one time. We ordered a chicken mountain and I got a Snickers bar as well. We also ordered those giant potato wedges with hardly any seasoning. I’m well aware that they have a name; I just really don’t like the name that they have. Like how most women don’t like the word panties or moist, it’s just a word that I refuse to say. Also, from now on, it’s an item at the Georgetown Corson Shell Station that I won’t ever buy, because they’re gigantic oval-triangle wastes of food. It’s as if they’ve discovered a Duwamish River mutant-gigantic potato patch, cut the potatoes in half, sprinkled them lightly with Lowry’s seasoning salt and deep fried them for four to seven seconds. STEER CLEAR, FOR REAL. But that fried chicken was absolutely sent from heaven. It was as if Christian Louboutin had barged into the Georgetown Corson Shell Station and declared, “DOWN WITH SHOES, UP WITH POULTRY!” and took over the fryers himself. As we drove back to South Park on the shoulder of some willy-nilly Boeing Airport Avenue Road, I threw the mostly cleaned remains of that 24k chicken breast out of the window and wondered aloud, “Is this considered littering?” Ruben, Lacey and I decided that none of us knew.

Do you mind if I tell you what’s been driving me crazy? Fucking Jimmy Wales’ face on nearly every page of Wikipedia. Yes, I am very glad that he invented what seems now to be all of the information in the world and I hope that he’s able to get whatever he’s trying to get by having his face on every page of Wikipedia, but for some reason it’s making me bats. So I drew a picture of him with a Steve Martin-type arrow through his head. Look, that arrow doesn’t even match up!

Have you ever watched the video Semiotics Of The Kitchen? God, that video is so good. Here, watch it:

Aside from listening to Martha Rosler say “measuring implements” (3:42) over and over again, I’ve been listening to Joseph-Maurice Ravel's Boléro over and over and over and over again. After much research and debate, it’s been decided (erm, by me) that the best version of Boléro is the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo on December 1st 1999. Everything about Boléro is wonderful, even summoning the wonderful criticism from a 1931 Daily Telegraph interview with ninny Joaquín Nin, “It constitutes an experiment in a very special and limited direction, and should not be suspected of aiming at achieving anything different from, or anything more than, it actually does achieve. Before its first performance, I issued a warning to the effect that what I had written was a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of "orchestral tissue without music" — of one very long, gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and practically no invention except the plan and the manner of execution.” All I can ever possibly say to that is: YES. YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES, YES.

Oh, Thanksgiving happened! Good gravy, what a great one it was. My roommates are the best of hosts, and people who didn’t HAVE to visit actual families (read: the lucky ones) came and brought all of the food and we cooked and ate and laughed. Later the neighbor from across the street came over and told everybody that he was going to kill himself and then we all wandered to a South Punk steampunk bonfire where I bewildered a guy with dreadlocks by telling him that Black Friday was, indeed, a racist term.

• "I don't care if you were in a war." - Shannen Hansen 2010

I only have one tattoo on my body. It’s on my forearm and it’s of the Black Flag bars. I got this tattoo on the exact day that I turned 30, much like I signed up for Selective Service on the exact day that I turned 18. It seemed to me that turning 30 really meant something and I had to put my childhood behind me to mark a grand shift in my life and the best way to do this would be to choose a brand or significant mark that meant something to me during the first half of my life. It wasn’t just Black Flag that meant so much to me, it was punk rock in general that helped me through the awful years of having to change school systems every grade or having a single parent who may have been too partial to chemicals. When the times got tough I’d slam the door to my bedroom and declare, “ALL I WANTED WAS A PEPSI, JUST ONE PEPSI, AND SHE WOULDN’T GIVE IT TO ME!” Now that my generation is getting to the point where they write books about their childhood, it’s a delight to read in great detail about things that I grew up depending upon. I mentioned last week that Andrew Earles wrote a book about Husker Du called Husker Du: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock. I’m 68 pages into it and it’s a wonderful read, whether you’re a rabid fan or if you just like to read pages with words on them. Though I can’t help but point out three glaring errors that’s I’ve come across so far. Page 57 states that SST stands for Solid State Tuners, which is wrong. Page 58 notes that the first non-Black Flag release on the SST label was the Minutemen’s Joy EP, which is wrong. Lastly, page 29 declares that the Bill Bruce demos have “never surfaced as bootlegs or among tape traders,” which is wrong. You can pretty much Google search “WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE” and be deluged with Husker Du’s Bill Bruce demos. My ex-friend Bob is writing a book about the Replacements, which is due to come out sometime in 2012. It was with him that I had the best text-versation of the day:

Me: This Husker Du book is rife with errors, did you read it?
Bob: I only skimmed it so far.
Me: Sorry, I thought you were concerned about music journalism. Tell Greil Marcus I said hello.
Bob Greil Marcus says that you aren't funny.
Me: Did he tell you that while you were both in bed listening to the Gin Blossoms?

I’d like to inform my ex-friend Bob at this moment that the Replacements ended with the extrication of Bob Stinson. So if there are chapters of his book that continue after that era, his book will be the Waterworld of literature.

The Last Dutchess & The Duke show was last week. This is a rather sad thing, as they were a wonderful band, an absolute treasure. I decided to be too depressed in a basement to go a farewell show, but I heard it was a triumph for the first five rows, as they played without any amplification. I got a hold of a grumpled (I invented that word) message from an anon fan in the back of the venue that read:

"To whom it may concern; I was at the farewell show tonight at the Tractor Tavern; it was a joke.

I'm sure that those within five rows of the band will rave about the intimacy of the acoustic performance. The fact is that the other 90% of us had to strain to hear anything. Given that it was a sold-out show, the band should have respected all of the fans that came out bid them farewell. I've seen this band live before a couple times (decent shows), but the hubris that they showed tonight was absurd. From the little that I was able to hear, they botched lyrics and were off-key. In the future, I hope that farewell shows are a true farewell to their supporters (in a manner fans can actually hear) and not egotistical exercises.

I hope that Jesse Lortz and Kimberly Morrison will hear this criticism and improve their consideration of fans in their future endeavors. Otherwise, I am done with them.

- Anonymous"

HEY, DON'T HOLD BACK OR ANYTHING.

At least we'll always have this, because when this band was ON, they were NEARLY EVERY LIGHT IN THE ENTIRE WORLD:

Oh my God, I can’t believe that I get paid to write about these things in this manner every week. Before you get livid, rest assured I’m paid in t-shirts and drink tickets at the Cha Cha. I’ve never set foot in the Cha Cha once, and I can promise you that I most likely never will. On December 6th, the Than Bros on Broadway will be an entirely different story though. It’s not going to be SEATTLE MEGAFEST, but it is going to be my birthday party at 8pm. You’re encouraged to bring gifts, and if you’re planning to, here’s a list of things that I’d like:

• These things, get them for me.

EXTRA: Remember that West Seattle house where all of those horrible things happened? It's for rent for $1350. If you're interested in renting it, call 206.859.8886.

• RIP BRO

• Man, sometimes I miss that Buckeye State.

• Ruben MZ + Derek Erdman = Friend Chickens

• Important Magazine Illustration - Used With Permission

• During a dinner in Gothenburg, Emanuel Swedenborg excitedly told the party at six o' clock that there was a fire in Stockholm (405 km away), that it consumed his neighbour's home and was threatening his own. Two hours later, he exclaimed with relief that the fire stopped three doors from his home. Two days later, reports confirmed every statement to the precise hour that Swedenborg first expressed the information.