"If you start listening to the Smiths or the Who, we're breaking up." - high school girlfriend, Jennifer Malone.

Last Tuesday I was driving poorly along Airport Way toward Uwajimaya to buy geoduck when "5.15" by the Who came on the radio. I'm sure I've heard this song well over 200 times and I remember seeing the 7" sleeve in record stores, but I've never really paid much attention to it. But that day I studied nearly every lyric and man, did I ever get mad. I'm aware that it's part of a rock opera and a piece of a larger picture, but some of the things that Roger Daltrey was singing were so totally insipid. I'm sure my disgust began when he sings "The ushers are sniffing Eau-de-cologning" but it was the part of the chorus where he sings "Out of my brain on a train" that just tossed me right over the edge. I mean, SHUT UP MAN! Then I remembered that Pete Townshend probably told him what to sing anyway. Then an image arrived in my head of Daltrey wildly swinging a microphone but he was a lion instead of a human and Faustine Hudson* was playing drums instead of Keith Moon. Later, while I was eating geoduck, I decided that aside from A Quick One and The Who Sell Out, the Who are rather awful. Ultimately, I was the one putting foul tasting expensive sea mush into my mouth—my opinion is hardly valid about a whole bunch of things.

Have you ever mulled over how many pictures of white guys playing a guitar you've seen in your life? The number has to be well over 25,000 and that's a conservative estimate unless you're 11 years old. Do you think there are more photos of white guys doing anything else that exist? I mean, besides talking or laughing or just standing there? Oh, I guess there are pictures of athletes. I've probably seen a lot of pictures of white guys holding bats or tennis rackets. Somebody sent me a link to their professional photography website recently and while the photos were quite nice, they were all of white dudes playing guitar. The photographer seemed rather successful, BUT WHOA, take a picture of a woman noodling at least once in your career.

Okay, I'm totally guilty of taking a picture of a white dude playing guitar. In the middle of tenth grade my mother moved us to a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio called Lakewood. While I was walking our dog Tramp (I had another dog named Lady, but she died, so I was just stuck with Tramp) in the park across the street I met a guy sitting on a wall smoking a cigarette. I was wearing a Butthole Surfers t-shirt and the guy said, "Hey man, you like Rembrandt Pussyhorse?" The guy turned out to be Brent Collings. He told me that Eric Carmen from the Raspberries used to live on our street. He also got me obsessed with the Electric Eels & X_X & Dave E and the Cool Marriage Counselors. One time his girlfriend gave him a $100 bill that her mother had given to her to buy school clothes. She wanted a gay porn magazine from an adult bookstore and she and I couldn't go in because we were 17, but Brent was 18. He was in the store for at least an hour and he came out with 15 magazines, an artificial V and absolutely none of the change. Eventually Brent used the artificial V a bunch of times and then just forgot about it in a clothing drawer in his bedroom. One of my favorite memories of being a teenager was walking home with Brent and being stopped in his driveway by his father who said, "Brent, your mother found your rubber sex organ and she's absolutely heartbroken about it." I couldn't offer advice, he'd had to handle that one all by himself.

Lacey dragged Ruben and I to Kurt Cobain's house on Friday night. I've lived in Seattle for 4.5 months and have been there three times, they've been here for 14 years and have never been. I wasn't ever really a Nirvana fan, I was already a punker and Nirvana just meant that the dudes who were beating me up were now wearing Primus t-shirts. Not to say that they weren't a good band, but when I got to college I was excited for everybody to be listening to Zen Arcade but now they liked Sebadoh instead. Kurt Cobain's house is really big and quiet and creepy and lonely and scary and sad. I mean, at least at night, which is the only time I've ever been. It's neat to see though, and if you have the chance, you should go. Don't forget that people live there, so don't be a jerk, but you can sit on the bench in the park next to it and sort grunge out in your brain if you want to. Sarah Moody and I are planning on having a quiet kegger in that park on February 20th and you're totally invited. But really, everybody's going to have to be really quiet. Later that night at the AMF Imperial Lanes bowling alley in Beacon Hill, Corey Brewer told us that he used to work at a Video Isle near Kurt Cobain's house. He said after being trained on all of the things to do at the job, he was also informed that in the summer months German backpackers would come into the store asking for directions to the address. Corey was encouraged to point them in any random direction. Sure enough, German backpackers did eventually come in for said information. At this very moment I happen to be chatting with a German man on Facebook regarding the sizes of Magnum P.I. paintings and I asked him how he felt about Nirvana. I told him it was about Germans and his grammar didn't matter, though he types English just fine. His name is Dirk Elsing and here is his response: "I think back then it was like an entrance to punk rock for me maybe, growing up in small town in the pre-Internet age. It was great to catch a Nirvana song on TV and Nirvana was easy to get even in our shitty record store. Plus "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was one of the few songs at the teenager disco that made me forget about acne." THANKS, DIRK ELSING!

Is there at all a God? Certainly not, for if so John Barry would be still alive and James Horner's body would be hardening as I type. Oh, that's mean. I don't really mean that.

HOTT QUOTEZ OF THE WEEK:

"In closing, I would like to reiterate that Butts is totally feminist. We know that women are powerful and important; even almost as important as men." - Shannon Perry 1/26/2011

"Can someone explain what these posts are and why they keep getting cross posted to Slog?" fsb 1/17/2011

"Her life is like a Sophia Coppola movie, let's not hang out with people like that." - Ruben Mendez 1/27/2011

"Caperin' is the best weekly column in the entire world. It is better than minority babies being born with multiple fingers." - Kari Ferrell 1/31/2011

*Faustine Hudson = swoon.