Voyd of Course

"It's like the Onion, only skinnier!" --Milton Swift "Still worth the price of the paper it's not printed on." --Felicia DuBois "The unspeakable, spoken." --Malin Wuptke "More interesting than computer solitaire, though perhaps not so effective a distraction from the void." --Harlan J. Rippington "Satire today, history tomorrow." --Steven Wallace

About Me

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Location: Santa Fe, NM, United States

In 1966, I wrote a fake newspaper article under the headline "JACK CASS SETS WORLD SHOWERING RECORD." Mr. Yohans, my 9th grade English teacher, liked it so well that he read it aloud--to much not-quite-suppressed giggling, at the sound of which, Mr Yohans said, "What? What? Did I miss something here?" I spent the rest of the afternoon in Principal Leon Duff's outer office. When Mr. Duff, who was a busy man, decided he didn't have time to see me, his secretary sent me back to the classroom, where I was greeted like McMurphy returning from solitary. Emboldened by my de facto exoneration, my friends began work on their own fake news stories. I remember a spate of Russian names in the stories, including "Ivan Kutchikokoff" and "Ivan Jerkinov." Needless to say, our newly suspicious teacher sent both of my friends to Mr. Duff's office, where they were not as bureaucratically blessed as I had been. They sat detention for a week. This I took as a lesson in subtlety--and in how to start a commotion and slip from the room before the law comes down.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

This Just In: News That Stays News

LOCAL PUNK ROCKER HATES HIMSELF AFTER SUCCESS OF FIRST CD

Santa Fe—Josh Martin, known as “Dead Chomsky” in his role as lead singer and guitarist of local punk band The Nihilists, announced Wednesday at Warehouse 21’s weekly promoters’ meeting that he was “filled with self loathing” now that his band’s first CD, “Globallistic,” was receiving national airplay and favorable reviews in Spin and Rolling Stone.

“This is wrong, wrong, wrong,” Martin/Chomsky muttered as he paced around the room slapping over cymbal stands and tossing books and papers onto the floor. “Our goal was to make really great music that was so abrasive that everyone over twenty-two would hate it, but our manager booked us to open for Rancid and next thing you know we’re Green Day.”

Matt White, known as Matt Black in his role as The Nihilists’ drummer, was more sanguine. “I don’t know, Josh,” he offered, “I’m kind of okay with it. I mean, I could use a new double-bass pedal, and there’s this paintball gun I’ve had my eye on.”

Martin/Chomsky leaned his face close to White’s and, after a dramatic pause, barked the single word, “sellout,” to which White mouthed the word “So?”

“So? So!” shouted Martin/Chomsky. “Don’t you get it? If we’re successful, then we’ve failed.” He walked to the white board and wrote “SUCCESS EQUALS FAILURE!”

White, puzzled, asked why they’d made a CD or why they’d even formed a band in the first place.

“The CD, the band, everything,” replied Martin/Chomsky, “was supposed to be rejected, hated even, by everyone but a small group of loyal, disaffected teens and pre-teens. It was not supposed to be embraced by the corporate rock establishment. Next thing you know, we’ll be playing “Death to the World Bank” on the Grammys, with models dressed as punks dancing in cages. All of it underwritten by the very same World Bank we’re criticizing. I knew we should have called that song ‘Fuck the World Bank.’ I just knew it.”

“The Grammys? Models in cages?” the irrepressible White said, “cool!”

After the meeting, a still fuming Martin/Chomsky announced that he was disbanding The Nihilists and forming a new band called Shit.

posted by ¡Chuckissimo! | 9:55 AM

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