We now pronounce you......METAL!!!

Hi. I'm Karen and I'm an alco... Oh sorry, I thought it was Tuesday. Lemme try that again...

Hi. I'm Karen and I'm a friend of Randy's. Oh yeah?! You know him, too?! Well boy, do I feel bad for us!

Annnnyyyway, he is being a lazy boy this week and demanded I write his blog for him. That's right! DEMANDED! Can you believe that? He was all, "Karen! Write my blog!" and I was all, "Pssssshhh!" and he was all, "Woman! Don't make me go over there!" and I was all "Sistah, please!" and he was all, "If you don't, I will not make you anymore banana bread."

And that's what it took, folks. The witholding of banana bread.

Well, it's true and if he tells you any differently you won't believe him since you said you know him.

So in some circles I do this thing. It's called photography. Maybe you've heard of it? No? Okay, I basically steal people's souls for cheap money. My friends all tell me I should charge more, but I like the nightlife. I like to boogie.

But annnnyyyyway. If it pleases the court, may I present Tony & Julie's wedded bliss moment? Because your photog/ghostwriter had the forethought and quite frankly the lucidity, it also comes topped with Grapefruit. Yeah, you can thank me later.

So, there they are. The happy, new couple. Holding Grapefruits of Metal. You may now headbang the bride.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: I want to thank Karen for taking on the monumental task of writing this blog entry for me. I hope she learned a lesson on just how much work it is and she appreciates me a bit more now. I also hope she doesn't expect to get paid for this.)

Invisible Grapefruits

This is Dave again. He was the fat guy in the yellow t-shirt from a few blogs back that was at the Debbie Gibson show with me. If that sounds strange to you, don't worry, it never sits right with me either when I think about it.

And if you recall, I mentioned that he's lost over 170lbs since that old photo was taken. But I also made sure to note that fat people are MUCH funnier than skinny people. I'm not sure why it happens, but this is living proof. Dave is hysterically funny looking in the other picture. But he loses the equivalent of my entire body weight (shut your smelly mouth, it's close enough) and suddenly he looks just plain goofy and a bit ridiculous. He sent three photos to me, and honestly this was the BEST one. Yikes.

Is he taking an Invisible Dump here? Is he holding a giant invisible turd? And what is with the smile? There is NO SMILING with the Grapefruits of metal!! The little booger-eating goblin in the last blog entry gets it. Fannie Spankings gets it. Why can't Dave?? I guess we'll never know...because he fell off that plateau and died minutes later.

Just kidding. But I can dream can't I?

Before I put this blog entry out of it's misery, I will give Dave a little credit. I completely forgot that we called the Grapefruits of Metal pose "Invisible Grapefruits" for YEARS before I made this blog and called it GoM. I don't remember when it morphed into the new title, but it was a nice stroll down memory lane hearing that again. Until Memory Ln. crosses Blue Hill Ave....then things got a bit dicey. NOT a good neighborhood to be in after dark if you are a handsome internet star. I just hustled out of there as fast as I could and didn't make any eye contact with the thugs on the front stoop.

Anyway, I'll delve more into the history of GOM in a future blog and explain it's origins. People do ask me that a lot. Ok, it was really just one guy, and he accused me of stealing the idea from him. But he learned his lesson. And no smart mouth judge or his fancy restraining order will stop me next time either.

Look Ma, I'm doing that fruit thing!!!

Is this little goblin scary or WHAT??

I was honestly terrified when I opened the message and this was enclosed. I thought it was one of those joke e-mails with a video that you watch for a minute, waiting for something innocent to happen...then "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!", some horrible ghost thing pops up and screams. Was I the only one that fell for that? Crap.

Except this little booger-machine scares me much more. If I lived with this kid I'd make sure there were NO sharp objects around EVER. She'd be using left-handed safety scissors until she was at least 20. Or until she ran away from home to be an actress in Hollywood, anyway. And if by "actress" I mean stripper, and if by "Hollywood" I mean New Jersey....

I also noticed that she seems to be in a hospital room. And there is another kid's foot on a table. Does this make anyone else nervous? Did little Jimmy have another "accident" again while the devil-child was keeping an eye on him? Uh-oh, Jimmy, watch out for that doorknob! What? You hit yourself in the face with the Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn CD Player again?? Such a klutz!

Can you get restraining orders against kids? I'm thinking of getting one, just in case she learns to read some day. They teach stuff like that in juvie, right? Of course they do, right after "Making Shanks from your Barney Toothbrush" class and recess.

Grapefruit Spankings!

These pics are fresh in my inbox (oooo....naughty!) from The Purple Gurl in Denver, CO!! They feature a few pics from Lannie's Clocktower Cabaret in trippy downtown Denver. The show is LITERALLY under a giant clocktower, in an underground club right out of the 20's.

I went to Denver last year to visit Purple Gurl and her sexxxy lover, Timmay, and got dragged to this "burlesque show" under protest because it seemed completely goofy and we know that with all my hobnobbing with the rich and famous, this was a bit beneath what I'm used to.

But I have to admit, I had an absolute BLAST, and everyone I met was phenomenal. The crowd was great, the host was hysterical and the performers were so incredibly nice, never mind ridiculously talented.

The night we went is was Naughty Pierre’s Burlesque & Comedy Extravaganza. And my absolute FAVORITE gal that night was The Vivacious Fannie Spankings, pictured in the first photo above with The Charming Illusionist Professor Phelyx. I'd post my photos with Fannie from my visit, but I already got in enough trouble with those....




In this photo we have the lovely Miss Orchid Mei. She is displaying the most elegant Grapefruits of Metal to date. She wears one of those crazy, waist tightening corsets that makes it look like her midsection is about 20" around. I'm not going to lie, it's pretty freaky.



Here we have the Sultry Russian Tatianna TaTa, in between performances, throwing out a vicious double GoM with a nice extension. I give her a solid 8.5 for this. We had the pleasure of hanging out with her after the show when I was there last and she was very a hoot.

Yes, I said hoot. Shut your face.

I'll be seeing them all again very soon, so I'm quite sure there will be a blog with many more of these lovelies showing the love for the Grapefruits of Metal!!!

A Tale of Two Meatheads

A WARNING: This is a VERY long blog, and I realize most people have the attention span of reading the directions on a ketchup packet, but there is NO way to tell this story in a few brief paragraphs. So suck it up and read it.

Let's start this newest blog by identifying the actors involved in the story to follow, shall we?

The esteemed gentleman on the right, sporting the lovely Swarm of Eyes t-shirt, is my best friend of 22 years, Dana.

The drunk meathead on the left, in the "Affliction" t-shirt and the Jarhead haircut, is the guy Dana tried to kill thirty minutes prior to this picture being taken.

Let me go back to where the beginning of this tale started. My friends and I are enjoying some soothing Death metal bands, and after the second act, we head outside for some fresh air. As I walked out of the building I heard, from the smoking area just to the right, the following in a slurred, tough guy voice: "Yeah, but how many fights have you been in? I've been in WAY more fights than you bro."

All I could do was roll my eyes and hope to steer clear of Chuck Liddell Jr that night. Oh, but that wasn't to be the case, was it?

Cue the third band hitting the stage and the crowd milling back into the club just as the strains of chugging guitars bled through the walls to those of us outside. My friends and I weren't familiar with the band playing, but we like to show support for everyone playing and up there working hard. I think it's disrespectful to not give every band your attention at a club. But that's just me.

So the band has a good amount of people up front crowding the stage, bobbing their heads along to the catchy hardcore/metal riffs. At least they were until Captain Fights-a-lot and his two douchenozzle friends decide that they are going to turn the floor into their own private Drunk Karate Mosh Pit. Elbows are flying at heads, feet are kicking with the coordination of a wounded rhino, and people are scattering for the back of the club.



And listen, I don't want you to think I'm an old fuddy-duddy. In my younger days I mixed it up in quite a few mosh pits myself. When I was 19. I think it's great the kids can cut loose at a show and release some pent up aggression and have a fun time. But these steakheads were at least mid-30's. And drunk when they got to the club. That can only mean they were there to start trouble.

The rest of us? We are too old for that crappola. Most of us in the crowd stood around with a drink in hand and fiddling with our cellphones wearing a pair of earplugs asking each other, "Are they really loud, or is that just me?"

The biggest mistake I made this night was not grabbing Dana and going to the back of the club. It's almost like I refused to accept that these assclowns could make me have to move away. So we stood our ground, trying to look cool and like it was no big deal. But every time a windmilling set of arms came whizzing by, I knew that standing up for my principles was a bad idea in this instance. And I could see Dana's blood pressure soaring; his face tightening as his level of annoyance rose and turned into anger. RIGHT THEN I should have grabbed him and headed back to the bar area. But nooooooooooooo, I'm waiting it out so I don't look like a complete puss for backing away.

Just then, the guys seem to calm down. The dancing stops. Maybe they were tired, or the song was over. I don't know, but they are just ambling around now and one of them heads to the bar. He walks between Dana and I and slightly bumps into him. I can see Dana's anger growing, like one of those cartoon characters that their head turns into a giant thermometer and you see the mercury rising until it pops. And when Captain Mixed Martial Arts walked by him next and bumped him...that thermometer POPPED.

Wow, this is getting long. Did I lose you yet? Hello?

The term "all hell broke loose" doesn't even begin to describe the next three minutes or so. Dana is screaming at the guy; Meathead is asking him if he wants to go outside to fight; I'm holding Dana back as best as I can while he screams he's going to effing kill the guy. Another dude is grabbing Dana by the wrists trying to calm him down...when Dana breaks free of me and a few other people and grabs this guy trying to help him around the throat with both hands and slams him against the wall. Like out of a movie, I'm not even kidding, he was like a killer cyborg in a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

EVERYONE is jumping on everyone else now and we get Dana free of this guy, and he starts punching the wall. Meanwhile, Meathead is still standing there, asking ME if my friend wants to go outside and fight him. He's not angry or upset. He doesn't even know what the problem is. He's just up for a fight. I swear I'm dealing with complete clowns. I really must have had better things to do than babysit.

For the sake of the length of this column, I'll try and wrap it up quick. I get Dana outside and calm him down, which is no small feat. He was thirsty, from all the screaming and threatening I guess, so I gave him the only thing I had in the car...an energy drink. Brilliant! Settle the guy down with stimulants! I'm a genius!



Once I get him in a better place and his blood pressure is down, we headed back to the club. I see the Meatheads out front smoking and I go right up to them and start shaking their hands. Dana follows suit and everyone seems cool...until the guy says, "What was your fucking problem anyway?"

Oh lord.

Dana starts saying you shoved me, the guy says no you did...blah blah...so we leave on tense terms again, me continuously apologizing for everything, even though I didn't DO anything. I hurry him back into the club and we are watching the fourth band play. About halfway through I notice Dana has disappeared. I look around for him. No where. I ask a few friends if they've seen him. They say he headed outside when I wasn't looking. Oh Christ on a cracker...

I RUN out of the club and the second I get outside I see Dana and Captain Shitfaced laughing their heads off, acting like old friends talking about their college days. (Ok, neither of these two probably made it out of 10th grade, but that's not the point) It was at that moment I knew I needed to capture them on film together with the Grapefruits of Metal pose, because I had to get SOMETHING out of this ridiculous night with these two rocket scientists.

Hmmm...that whole story really went downhill fast and didn't really have a payoff, did it? Meh.

Guess which one of us doesn't wash his black t-shirts in cold water?

Just kidding, we are metal-heads, we don't wash our t-shirts! We have our mothers do it while we play video games in our "apartment" in the basement of our parent's houses.

Ok, ok...that's not true. I didn't want to admit the truth because it's even more embarrassing than that. In reality, three of us are the House Bitch at home and we do the laundry...and cleaning...and cooking...etc.

Guess which one isn't married. I'll give you a hint: The gay looking one swishing around the highball glass like he's trying out for a part in Sex and the City 3.

This night was fraught with ossim and the crazy. I'll divulge more as I post follow up blogs about the evening of metal mayhem. I rarely get out these days, as I'm usually busy hiding from the paparazzi and counting my stacks of money. But a bunch of bands I'm friends with were playing a killer show and I had to get out and support them. I'll have some links and photos of them coming soon when I'm not as lazy.

This first picture consists of me, the devastatingly handsome one front left. Then George my guitarist and songwriter extraordinaire in Swarm of Eyes front right bringing the full on screaming Grapefruits of Metal pose. Back left is Jay, who lives in WI now and came to visit Boston for this show (one of the bands on the tour hailed from East bumfuck WI) and to see old friends. It's too bad he was so blistered drunk he needed these photos to remember ANY OF IT. Last but not least is my best friend of 22 years, Dana. More on him and the mayhem that ensued when he opened a carton of crazy that night in the next blog.

Oooooo....I really know how to make you want to come back for more, don't I?!?

Quasimodo and his pal Farmer Mike

I can't look at this picture and not absolutely crack up when I look at Mike (He's the handsome one on the right, by the way). He makes the best faces. I tried to play along and make a wacky face too...but I just look like I am coughing up a hairball. Once again the ever pulchritudinous Mike bests me in the Handsome Contest!! Curse him and his rugged good looks!

But what the HELL is with his hands?!? They are like that tiny little hands guy in the Burger King commercial who won't eat a Whopper because he can't hold it. And then his friend holds it for him while he bites into it. That's just creepy. Seriously, I don't have any friends that I'm close enough with to hold their burger for them while they eat it.

I know what some of you are thinking, "Ha, you don't even have any friends you stupid jerk!". But trust me, I'll get my revenge on you. But first I have to put on some eyeliner and cry in my room listening to The Cure.

On a totally separate note, I want to apologize to the six of you for the lack of updates lately. I've been very, VERY busy doing important stuff.

Like watching Pawn Stars and eating Cheetos. I know, I know, I really do live the dream.