Low Hanging Fruit for Hunchback Chimpanzees

The cherry blossoms are blooming, and I find myself making bad decisions.

The song for this post is MC5's "Miss X," but, for my purposes, it's "Miss Ex." Why break up with someone you know you're in love with? So in love, in fact, we made heart-shaped wet spots:
Who wouldn't want to sleep in that?

The thrice weekly blow-outs made it clear that we were making each other crazy. Correction: we were already crazy but we were trying to make each other our own brand of crazy. We were square pegging a round hole. It was going to take some serious work, and, while Hermann Goering reaches for his revolver when he hears the word "culture," I reach for my pillow when I hear the word "work." I've been sleeping my dreams away for nearly four decades now. Winner winner chicken dinner! Why not throw it all away and "re-evaluate"?

Yes, the cherry blossoms are blooming, and I find myself making some very bad decisions:

In terms of good decisions, the decision to see my ol' homey Danny Buzzard, of former All You Can Eat and current Fast Asleep punk rock fame, is a wise one.

Danny Boy works at Santa Cruz bikes and hooked my pal Josh up with a new Nomad.
That's not it, and neither is this:
But they are the new carbon Nomads, which are indeed the shizz-de-la-nit, if you're into the crabon. Anyway, we headed to the old cannery in SC where the magic happens, and Mr. DB gave us the grand tour.

Here's an aisle full of brand new fancy goodness for completes:
Frames everywhere, resplendent in candy colored powder like something out of Willy Wonka:
Josh's bike is revealed hiding in the pisser. Look at that motherfucker. He's going to smile his face right off his skull:
Nothing like seeing a few cases of $100 seatposts and stems sitting around like they were potato chips. Each one of these boxes represents a month at work for me:
People get bored in Candyland like anywhere else, I suppose:
If you were to jump into these boxes you'd come up bleeding. It'd be the most expensive ass kicking you'd ever get:
Titties:
Junk in the trunk:
Just in case you forgot:
The new raw Nomad--clearcoat over aluminum:
Waiting on powder:
Oven to cure the powder:
People exposed to toxic fumes often have a predilection for the metal:
This is the decal dude. He puts on the water decals before clear coat. And, apparently, he eats a lot of acid:
So David Lee Roth and Dee Dee Ramone walk into a bar...
Who wouldn't want a beer when powdering frames all day?
SC fell for the rasta bike craze as well:
Syndicate bikes sitting around the paint shop:
More candy:
The NHS (Santa Cruz Skateboards) have a bunch of ramps for lunchtime sessions:
This was seriously a Wonkavator: a wheel-building machine. A goddamned robot! (Remember, that's pronounced "ro-butt.")
Wheel dude (clearly, I was not taking notes) had a Red Wine hat on. Take that, Toph!
The nipple-putter-onner machine:
That's the wheel in the middle with the ro-butt nipple tweakers busily tweaking 1/6 of a rotation at a time:
Danny even gained us access, via the super friendly ace mechanic Doug Hatfield, into the Syndicate Attic to check out the factory riders' bikes:
Greg Minaar's V-10:
They all had these fancy carbon rims:
And, when you're Greg Minaar, you get custom decals on your fancy rims:
Peaty's old ride:
Minaar again:
While Danny was giving us a tour one of his coworkers in another part of the factory yelled: "Get back in your hole!" In truth, though, it was a pretty nice hole, complete with King Diamond woodwork and silicon sealant sculpture:
Right before we got back to Danny's hole, we passed a shaven-headed guy talking on his cell phone near the trunk of a BMW. "Dude," Danny whispered. "That's Roskopp." It was kind of like walking by George Lucas while on a tour of Lucasfilm, or, perhaps, like walking by the real Elvis (the one that's still alive, not the one who faked a drug overdose while taking a shit) while buying bacon and barbiturates in Memphis.

Apparently the guy's on the skate side of things vibe on the bike guys because "Roskopp doesn't skate anymore."

Are you kidding me? Ha! Skaters, for such a "do your own thing" crew, can sometimes be more pinched and insular than surfers, who are mostly just dicks. We did run into one of the skate guys while we were looking for the bike part of the complex , and he was crazy nice while giving us directions, so the reports of the skate/bike feud may be somewhat exaggerated.

Once again, Danny, thank you. Josh and I (mostly Josh) owe you dinner and a case of beer, if not a handjob. Like I said--mostly Josh. You made a retarded boy's dream come true:
After Josh bought himself a combo Christmas/Birthday present, we met up with Stevil Bieber at Little Tampico for some Mexican fandango fabuloso. Steve tried to MacGyver the pen into a blowdart gun but failed miserably:
Steve also revealed the sacred hit count, which, without actually revealing it (this would be the equivalent of a junior sorcerer posting a master wizards favorite spell on the internet), is multiples of what this blog gets in a year. But in a month. But hey, I'm movin' on up.

Speaking which, let me apprise you as to how last post's keyword spamming mania fared:
Not very well. Maybe a few more hits, but not a ton of wacky search phrases. I do take comfort in the fact that as many people found my blog by looking for it by name as those who found it looking for "diaper masturbation," which was a kink I didn't even think to include:
Hoo-fuckin'-ray! Yippie! [Sorry, I just nutted in my Huggies.]
I've been stressed as a motherfucker lately. I've been trying to get a job wrenching in a bike shop. Seems easy enough, but it's yet to pan out. The recession is squeezing most shops, in addition to it being the off season. I had an interview a couple weeks ago at a place that ended up hiring a part time sales guy instead. Why take a chance on a mechanic when you can train a high school kid to wrench in your own image for much less? It always makes me cringe when I'm asked, "What's your shop experience?" Motherfucker, please! I wrench on bikes more than all of your employees combined do in a week, and I do that shit for love. I taught my fucking self, with advice from mechanic friends, of course, all of who should be running their own shops, or have. When I was 12 I'd disassemble and rebuild my GT Pro once a week. Yeah, I haven't worked in a shop since I was 18, but I know how to swing a wrench. Quite clearly:
I'm still on the hunt, but I'm also on the hustle, trying to build some bikes and sell them out of my house, like hip-hop tapes out of the trunk. I need to get my taxes straight so I can get a resale license and up the profit margin before getting an actual storefront. Eyes on the prize.

Yesterday, I had a Jules-like revelation. A moment of clarity, if you will:

I was sitting at my desk, writing, and had to take a break to pick up my daughter and our friends' daughter at school and take them to dance class. Had to dig through a fucking jar of Classico Roasted Garlic pasta sauce, carefully picking out the quarters, to have enough scratch to get the kids Clif Bars and water for a snack before dance.

In addition to my relationship derailing, this month my roommate moved out, which is fine, as I need the space--but now I've got to pay for all of it. My camera broke. I had to borrow over a thousand bucks from my boss to get the boot off of my truck. Anywhere else in the country except New York I'd live in a four bedroom house for the price I pay on my hovel--an it'd be a fucking mortgage, not rent. Portland has been looking good for awhile. My Portlandian friend Luke claims that it's "where people move when they can't hang in SF, LA, or New York." Maybe, and maybe that's why it's looking awfully good. Every time I get a clear enough head to see I'm a rat on a Habitrail wheel, it depresses the fuck out of me. Hand to fucking mouth, and even I don't know where these hands have been. It's the stress factor, got me down.

Like Andre Nickatina says in "Situation Critical": "No matter how you makin' paper/ Nigga that's a grind."

I'm grindin', but I'm not making the paper. That means I need to grind more, until I disappear into a bloody pulp, or run some Tony Montana type shit. An empire woven together with chain links and brake cables.

Hickey reminded us that "Everyone's a Whore," and this is true--but whores get paid and all I've got is rugburn on my knees.

SF, as much as I love her, is getting me down. People are so rude. They're concerned about shit like merging. While on my way to pick up the kids, Clif Bars in my pocket, this woman in a brand new BMW with a Stanford license plate frame sped up so I wouldn't merge in front of her. Pinched like a premature turd. It was my turn, but she wasn't having it, because she was doing some important shit.

Worse is realizing I drive like that all the time--10 minutes late out of the gate and tripping, needing to be there then instead of be here now.

I don't need junkies in wheelchairs telling me my dog is too close to them. I don't need crotchety bastards swearing at me when I ride my bike. I don't need cops sweating me for drinking a beer in the park. I don't need someone to always be behind me or in front of me on the sidewalk, and I'm getting sick of standing in line and waiting in traffic. I don't need someone living all over me.

A big part of my job is telling people not to take their beers out of the bar. Invariably, a large percentage of these people are Euros. On the one hand, it's annoying as fuck--you're not in Rome anymore, Caligula, so don't do as the Romans. On the other hand, when I take a step back, what kind of a fucking country is the Land of the Free and you can't even walk down the street drinking a beer for fear that you'll pervert the kiddies, whose parents are most likely raging closed door alcoholics who don't love each other anyhow. It's a goddamned Babyfood Nation.

Then again, maybe people do too much shit in public:

I hope this doesn't make me sound like a fucking kook, some kind of Ron Paul groupie or militia member. I'm not looking to get away so I can build a gun-infested fortress that'll protect me from Mexican immigrants until Jesus comes. I don't need a gun and I'm not worried about zombies or criminals. I just need some fucking space. I need some space to think. Some space to breathe.

Take three steps back and get off my dick.

It's like Keith Morris said: "I've got the world up my ass." And I'd like an extraction, please.

World Up My Ass

I've got the world up my ass
And I'm gonna move fast
Be the first
Won't be the last
I've got the world up my ass

Society is burning me up
Take a bite, spit it out
Take their rules
Rip 'em up, tear them down

Twisted mind, withered brain
You know I'm going insane
I just tell them to get back
When they tell me how to act
I've got the world up my ass

You know I've got the world up my ass

I need a space that's fucking mine. I know it's all pissing on fire hydrants, but I don't want to have to break my balls grinding every month to pay for someone else's livelihood. Fuck that.

Yeah, I know. I had every fucking opportunity. I know how I got here. I've got it upstairs, in the brain, but somehow I've always lacked the motivation. All head and no heart, too much of a full belly and not enough Knut Hamsun style starvation. Society isn't burning me up, so much as I am. In the words of the Fugazi song, "I burn myself I am the fuel." I've been writing about alternative social structures--the Mesa, Christiania, Kowloon Walled City, Carville by the Sea--because I need a change, because I'm not excelling and I need to. It's really on me, isn't it? It's never too late to Rise Above.

When the world conspires to shit down your throat, close your mouth.