Helmet
Learned about these guys in college. Oh. A college boy, aye!? Matt Stanzack was from Erie. He was great. He liked 'em. Made me a mixed tape, now residing with the ages somewhere far away. Supported Jerry Brown, yelled it from his window at me on primary day 1992. 'Bender! Jerry Brown!!!!'
I voted Soowee Pig that year, unfortunately for me, but I could tell which way the wind was blowing and figured, after 12 years of Reagan-Bush, let's not fuck this up. But we did fuck it up. Very, very badly. It would have been much, much better to leave H.W. Bush in power. Of that I am irreconcilably convinced. Better a New England aristocrat that a Motherfucking Southern Democrat. Jesus Christ it was That Obvious. But that's a story for another time.
Matt was one of three self-conciously leftist kids I can remember from North Halls, where the rest of the campus said all the faggots were. Art fags and the like. 'Oh, you a fag?' I'd liked to have smashed his fucking face in. But I didn't, of course. Stride on by. Water off a duck's back. Subhuman piece of shit jocko-rapist frat fuck. Wearing a cap that said 'Cocks', for South Carolina Gamecocks, don't cha know. Assholism. This country is awash in rampant Assholism. Always has been. Always will be.
I was smitten with Matt's girlfriend, Samantha, who was cute as a button and from Lebanon County (Cedar Crest High) to boot. Smart as a whip. Local girl, too, which I wasn't interested in, per se. And then this Northwestern Lakeside Interloper Foreigner gets her!?
Eh, we went to Longwood Gardens together, with another boy, Tim Miklus, a devout Orthodox Slovak-American Engineer roomate, as a minder, I guess. It was like having a priest scrutinizing me. Eh, I think she would have been too nice, anyway. A frequent refrain to failure. Samantha Karinch or some such, not Kranich (Crane in German), but we don't mention her with any more specificity.
Not like the normal asshole frat punks who were focused on beer, girls and the Joe Paterno-Jerry Sandusky child rape factory otherwise known as Happy Valley football Beaver Stadium Nittany Lion clusterfuck hysteria Every Saturday tailgating, yelling, drinking, alumni assholes reliving the happiest years of their meaningless middle manager lives, or townies who hit their wives if Old State doesn't win, or the other way around, if you remember those stats from way back when. Oh, but lets dump on the art fags. Yeah, sure. And I'm not even one of 'em. Seemed like nice enough kids to me.
There were other gangsters. Mr. Noonan, a dire misanthrope with a long mane of red hair with freckles and a trenchcoat. Harrisburg motherfucker. We'd ride the bus up to Penn State together and attack everything in sight. He liked Helmet too. Killin' hurts / Has to be done / Peace 'n Love / Who's Number One. He had this flunky that he'd abuse all the time. Like Ganesh attended by his rat. I guess they were friends. We all thought it was some deranged Abbott & Costello routine. I guess we know who the bottom was. Art fags, probably. Fuckin' A.
Ackshully they were charter members of Penn State Straight, which a certain sometimes reader of this tripe delights in casting up to me. Typical 3rd rate New Englander, rich punk from the Gold Coast, incapable even of reaching the depths of Massholedom. I'm coming out there in October. I'm going to get at that warehouse that I elicited from your neighbor. I'll show up to your neighbor's place. Uninvited or invited. Either way. ;)
You're welcome here anytime. You and your very fine wife. Just call me. At your leisure, of course.
There are more stories, I don't know what happened to any of the people I'll briefly mention. Probably they're working for the Great Incorporations and Living Happily Ever After, like this person below the ellipses did.
[My female frineds up here will stay out of it. Friendship can be worse even than love. Even friends will attach to you like a lamprey, if you're nice enough to them. At first. They'll do half the research on your thesis, unsolicited, stitch you a cuddly jackal, mentioned as a joke, buy you English Cigarettes, bad habit duh, ply you with signed books by Hitchens and Chomsky from her perch in DC, I mean if you get to meet them, fine. All this was chaste, until I had to give her the hook. Can't fuckin' listen. I don't and won't reciprocate this, so cut the shit, lady. She's been dumped now well over a quarter century. Listen. And learn, chickadee. I hate disproportionate generosity. I'm usually receiving, which is worse than giving.]
She's paranoid about alot of things and very, very rich by now probably. So she shall remain nameless. She was on FB with a (her?) dog avatar and a pseudonym. I think she was connected. No, she was. Blackwater, or some such contracter extracted her from Central Asia, mission not accomplished. Except for a husband who beat her up and she shit-canned him. They visited us, and the nationality remains classified.
She was an arch punker. The mosh pit for Helmet on HUB lawn. My girlfriend and I watched at the edge of the crowd. I know she didn't like it. The music, the whole scene, I suspected. The other one was Vegan, as was my girlfriend, no vegetarian (I ate meat all along) who ate Tastycakes and candy and cookies and was a little chubby.
My girlfriend was statuesque. Best one I ever had. Should have met her in my 30s? Wouldn't have changed anything, but. Wrote me an hilarious 20 page resentment letter at the end. Oh, honey, her Mom used to say, as she was telling her to put on more make up. She would weedle me for information about her utterly introverted daughter. I thought, you're crossing a boundary here, lady. Bless your heart, Mom. Later, in Colorado, she made some remark about our time together being basically innocent and really not that big a problem in retrospect. Agreed.
Some rando Dukie once exclaimed incredulously: ' That's Your Girlfriend!?' That's right Tufts shitbird, it is. Not for long. She was down in Munich and we were up in Magdeburg, getting soused with Fraulein Pommnitz and Eileen something Irish. Another one of these New England snobs. Out of control high school-style drinking. I was appalled, frankly. And didn't have an iron in the fire that evening, so I was shocked and appalled, to tell you quite frankly.
I don't think a certain Texan lass that I fancied was there. 'Uncle Barn' was how she thought her Uncle Byron's name was spelled. She spoke high English and had that Texas charm. I was too northeastern brain-nerd for her. She might have been the coolest of the crop.
No, for sure. She was the best, because she was the most normal and kind of didn't succumb to the ambiance. Surrounded by fuckin' Yankees. Jesus. 'Baby Baby You Sure Like to Fuck' was a song she and a certain Ohioan both liked. He liked to fuck. Wasn't selective enough about it for my taste.
I think she turned up later, which was an issue with Fraulein ______. So, she went off to Ireland with some guy, spurning me. Ok, fine. She shot first. So be it, London was fun enough. We had 'a talk', which was unrewarding. Wearying. It could never be easy. Always a struggle. Such a waste of time and energy? Not really, it was smoove sailing, by in large. We had laughs. And lots more besides.
The below song is for half of those Halfbright girls. The other one I failed to solicit properly in a Romanian night train. Dropped trow to keep away other backpackers. I think she found that offputting, even though she didn't want company either. She wanted peace and quiet.
When I suggested a good night kiss, she snorted incredulously: 'Are you for real'? Well, no. We're on vacation. I think she had a Moroccan boyfriend named Fuad at the time. He told her his name meant 'heart' in Arabic. She bought it. Read the signals rong. Qalb is the transliteration of heart in Arabic, so maybe that was his name.
Ended up in Silicon Valley. A Masshole sed: 'That girl is so far out to lunch, it's not even funny'. Well, he's a teacher now and she's probably a tech oligarch with her German husband. Was too fucked up to meet them at Union Square, alas. This ethnic German from Romania with a gangsta Oma in Kronstadt was pretty cool, but too driven, too much makeup, also.
But she could party in Berlin and didn't take shit off of anybody, yours truly included. Reminded me of my mom with her seemingly ditsy remarks. Just a literal German is all. Happiest days of my life, possibly. Today is a new day and you never know what will come down the pike next. For Eileen, she of high SES. Shout out B, he didn't succumb to the ambiance either. Neither of us did, as much, it seems to me.
All three of us ended up Halfbrighters. The other one did a Rhodes Scholarship, for all the good it did her. Never anything between us. I think I did try to solicit a 'goodnight kiss' down at the cottage in Maryland, but she pretended to be asleep. Good for her. It was later on anyway, if I recall, after the breakup. The cooler head prevailed there for sure.
Suburban Philly motherfucker with a rabbit for a pet, to be different, which had a seizure while my girlfriend and I were visiting (they went to school together in the midstate, of course, more psychodrama). She was cooler than my girlfriend, but my girlfriend was better. And prettier. Oh, the other one discovered the X-Files first. We all would watch 90210 together and just blast those Californian fucks. Tori Spelling came in for less abuse than 'Kelly' did. The other one called her 'that pretty-ugly Kelly girl'. Oh, honey. Bless your heart.
Her punk friends were too cool for school. Wearying. Condescend to me, shitbird Shellac Fan? Unrewarding. Ok, they're pretty cool, but you don't need to be a dick about it. Just look at the dork with a fuckin' pink mohawk. Wow, your curdled vanity really makes a Big Difference!
I later learned you have to give women time to convince themselves they want to be with you. You can't convince them of anything. Just read the cues. There either there or they aren't. And once you know what you're looking for, it's always obvious enough. Then you lightly spurn them, because it's just not worth it. Overrated, like the song says. And that's the most true thing in this run on sentence of a thing.
We laugh at that still today in this house. My Mom will chirp up with 'Amelia, what are you doing!?' The fuckin' 'Midstate'. Buncha goddam mongrel white freaks! I'm not even going to get into Mount 'Coonion'. Her second marriage was to a foreigner, glamour photos in a Rolls Royce. She came out the Tenderloin, I kept her out of The Cave. She had a Vietnamese minor with her, who seemed chipper. She also showed me her 'cat babies'. Make. It. Stop.
[My biggest regret this morning is that I cannot locate one of my favourite rants of all time. It was some crazy bitch from the Midwest, drunk off her ass, denouncing Gary Johnson voters when Obama whipped Romney's ass in 2012. All audio. You could hear the clinking of her ice cubes and the bull-like exhalation of her cigarettes. She was just out of her mind because Mitt Romney lost the election. It was so great and I think Wonkette featured it. I emailed it all over, but can't retrieve it now. Just titanic rage on behalf of a Mormon, which given her remarks like: 'Yeah, I'm a good Christian girl. And I drink. And I smoke. And I swear. And I don't give a fuck who knows it.' It warms my heart so much to recall her agony!]
So, onto the third album, which was a departure. About half of it is the best and the other half hit or miss. 'Betty'. Eh, we're over a thousand words now, so I think I'll post a couple videos more.
Two people on this post were from the Midstate. One introduced me to the other. The original I had to give a brush back pitch to recently. The other is my closest friend. We were at Dollywood together. And elsewhere.
Like many of these songs, this one is about a girl. 'Overrated'. Yep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f-dIoVSRr0
In California the only Helmet fan I can recall was a certain New Jerseyian by the initials E.H. He got it. Another bookstore gangster. East coast aggression. He had to become a Buddist surfer to fit in.
Some time ago I noticed that many of these songs are about horrible people. And it occurred to me, why doesn't the lyricist get better friends or girlfriends. Oh, yeah, that's a fool's errand. Page Hamilton knew that before he turned 30. I only discovered it this year. Oh, well. Lucky me, I guess.
It always feels good to be right / And if it helps you sleep at night / I'll tell you what you want to hear / And act like I care
Words of wisdom, Lloyd. Words of wisdom
This one is a little on the bro-ish side, but it rings true in this respect. Just competitive people trying to prove their smarts, when you don't care at all. Fine. You're credentialed. You're book-smart. Who gives a shit? Tens of millions of Americans have Masters Degrees, who cares? Most of them are lame-os.
They start to sound kind of the same, after a while. But I still enjoy them. They channel my rage in a positive direction. It's better than being a druggie. It's better than being a schmuck. It's better than most things I can think of, off hand. I kind of lost track of them after this record. I mean, it's useful when you need aggression burned off and they've got a way with key or time changes, whichever it is, I don't know the right terminology.
I guess I'll do Jesus Lizard next. They're kind of objectively a better band anyway.
