C. Bass brandishing a shard of glass. Photo by M. Tekel
One fine day, Tekel and I were out driving, looking for an opportunity for adventure. This opportunity was a closed down Lone Star Steakhouse off the I-17. There is no spooky or off-color reason this place was closed — Lone Star was dealt a blow by the recession, and they shut down 27 restaurants around the country, leaving them with 152 godless locations. I can only say good riddance; may the rest of the Lone Stars shut down within my lifetime. Not even Texas wants this lowbrow restaurant, as no locations exist within the “Lone Star” state itself.
Pulling into the dead empty parking lot, I parked the Rod under a tree. We tried the doors, to no avail, and we noticed that no windows had been broken that weren’t boarded up. In fact, aside from some graffiti and a junction box stripped of its copper wire, the place was pretty intact. That, however was only on the outside.
Sophomore year, my roommate Kyle and I penned a comic called Cliptomania. It was inspired by Married to the Sea and used stock images and clipart from these old ESL books I found in a dumpster. Read More
Squared and I were lost and strayed into random back alleys until we came upon a pile of discarded VHS tapes and old SNES games. We took as many as we could carry, found our way home and later in the year, would drink and watch whatever we popped in. One video, “Debbie Family History” was especially intriguing but only when the gears started turning did we realize what we discovered.
Last spring, I interviewed two people who have sold drugs in the past — psilocybin mushrooms and Adderall respectively — for my capstone project, which you can learn more about here. What follows is my attempt at imitating This American Life with some music that I hope I don’t get sued over. Enjoy.
So teaching kids things is important and all, so I went out on a limb and drew up a kiddie book called Everybody Poops… But Not Everybody Eats. It’s about world hunger.
It seems important to teach kids how to poop, how to recognize colors, how to count, etc. But they’re saturated with that, so I wanted to teach them about something no one really talks about – starving slowly to death. That’s important, too, right? I wouldn’t know. I don’t actually have kids.
One of the weirdest pitfalls of consumerism is collectivism. Nearly everyone I know who owns a house has a room for junk filling. In some cases, an extra room just for storage is a huge plus when shopping for a new home. Those that aren’t so lucky rent one of those dozens of Armored Storage cells, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded 24-7 by rent-a-cops and surveillance cameras. Read More
Originally published in Phoenix New Times’ Up On The Sun
It’s hard to tell your friends “I’m going to the Donkeys show” with a straight face. No, not some perverted freak-show in Mexico. I mean the psychedelic San Diegan blues rockers The Donkeys, who tore the Yucca Tap Room apart with their ’60s-inspired pop and ’70s-era jams, a blend that’s earned praise from indie contemporaries like The Mountain Goats and The Hold Steady. The Donkeys treated the bar and lounge like they were regulars, which is pretty close to the truth — this is hardly their first rodeo in Tempe. . . . → Read More: Last Night: The Donkeys at Yucca Tap Room 5/14/12
This isn’t some Oprah bullshit. We read kickass books and at the end of it, have a swag party with cocktails, cigars and coke. Most of all, we talk all posh about literature. It’s an incentive to read and discuss ideas rather than what’s on TV or who’s sleeping with who.
Tekel’s Book of the Month Club existed in some form as a weird Facebook group, but now it’s public. Anyone can (and should) join!
San Francisco-based photographer, Natacha Merritt, made waves in 2000 with her book Digital-Diaries, an erotic exploration of her excellent sex life as she toured the underground S&M and slut-sex scenes. The book moved over 300,000 copies, featured in everything from The Wall Street Journal to Playboy to Rolling Stone.
So what do you after your pornographic diary becomes a best-seller? Well, for Merritt, she went back to school to study biology. Perhaps that’s an odd choice, but between photographing Cirque du Soleil performers and amateur models, she was getting close and personal with arachnid genitalia. Her passion for sex . . . → Read More: The Filthfiller Interview: Jerking-off, spider dongs and BDSM photographer Natacha Merritt
(Author’s note: This article was the blood and sweat of over eight months, where it was post-poned and delayed repeatedly. I feel like I became really close with the band in that time and I’m finally glad to see it in print. Enjoy it uncensored after the break.)
By Troy Farah Mon., Mar. 19 2012 at 7:00 AM in Phoenix New Times
Released last year, Coming of Age is an appropriate title for Knesset’s first album, as the band is only now starting to step up locally. Pronounced KA-NESS-ET and named after the legislative branch of the Israeli government, these locals have played in the background of Phoenix since 2007.
