So, I deleted the stupid shit that he wrote but then thought I’d share some of it with you, for rock history’s sake. By the way, he really is pretty fucking stupid. You’d think a 66-year-old man who has flown around the world hundreds of times on 30 some-odd tours would know what a fucking seatbelt was, especially on his own plane. He held up his own plane for 9 hours, and then it turned out he thought he was in a car.

Anyway:

>“Jesus fuckin’ FUCK! What in the flying FUCK is going on here? What is this fuckin’ thing? I don’t have time for this fuckin’ shite! Are we fuckin’ flyin’ yet? An’ where are we bloody fuckin’ well going, anyshite? Eh? Fuckin’ VERMONT? AGAIN? For fuck’s fuckin’ sake, man. We’re in fuckin’ China or Japan or Egypt or some fuckin’ place and we gotta go fuckin’ THERE again? Fuckin’ hell, man. Fuckin’ HELL.”

> “Oh, and great. Now I’m lookin’ at this newfangled fuckin’ computer Facefuckin’ TV thing or whatever the fuck it is and fuckin’ SHITE on fuckin’ SHITE! Apparently there’s only going to be 47 people at this fuckin’ show! Montreal? Acadia? WORK ON FUCKIN’ SUNDAY? I can’t even fuckin’ FATHOM where or what the FUCK Ogunquit is. FUCKIN’ HELL! I’m flyin’ to this fuckin’ thing from fuckin’ Korea!
I’m wastin’ a LOT of money on JET FUCKIN’ FUEL! Yeh, fuckin’ expensive these days, mates, in fact ALWAYS fuckin’ expensive! I’m paying for my private fuckin’ jet to take me to play this fuckin’ gig. I’m even wastin’ fuckin’ money right fuckin’ now dictating this fuckin’ shite to my fuckin’ assistant!
Listen up, you fuckin’ Yanks: GO TO THIS FUCKIN’ SHOW. Every time we come here to the States you have proven yourselves to be of…whatever the fuck. You dig our music. Good on you. Come see it again. We’ll never let you down.
I had to go through this “Cooley” guy to get this shite to you. Met him at a gig a while back. He’s a decent enough bloke, but shite as a fuckin’ bartender. Ya call that a Black & Tan, mate? I call it Black & Fuckin’ MUDDY SHITE.” Fuckin’ wankfuckering wankfucker.
Anyways, again, YANKS: GO TO THIS FUCKIN’ SHOW, WHY DONT YA?. This sluggish economy is EVERYWHERE, mates. Don’t forget where you fuckin’ came from. Peace fuckin’ OUT!”

>“I just had to lay off me fuckin’ assistant (Roland). Shut your fuckin’ face about it. I hadda do it, man. The money for this gig isn’t gonna pay for those silk burn-proof oven mitts and/or the lawsuit settlement regarding what I did at Larry’s house last month…‘ey, can you put this in those comma things? Awright: (really, I’m fuckin’ SORRY, Larry. Canna we just move the FUCK on?). Stop the fuckin’ commas NOW. Anyway, all Roland did was type what I said. Big fuckin’ WHOOP. Me fuckin’ daughter’s doin’ it now. She’s three years old and she can type this shite FOR FREE. That’s a real fuckin’ fine way to start, if you ask me. I’m startin’ to dig this Facefucker thing. I might get me own fuckin’ account, mainly cuz this Cooley guy’s bein’ a real fuckin’ prick about me using his computer TV password thingymagingy. An’ he can’t make a drink worth a fuckin’ fuck. Fuckin’ YANKS. Enjoy that Nobel Prize, you fuckin’ bastards. I done more good for the fuckin’ world than you’ll ever fuckin’ know. Just wait ’til fuckin’ tomorrow. Then you’ll fuckin’ know. THEN you’ll fuckin’ know.”

>“Great. And now I have fuckin’ jet lag already. For this 47-audience-member gig (212 ‘not attending’…COME ON! ROCK WILL BE HAD, YOU YANKS!) GEAR and fuckin’ FAB? I think bloody fuckin’ not. Ah, and no beer until 11:00AM, fuckin’ AMERICAN TIME. This fuckin’ country and it’s STUPID fuckin’ time zones. I’m on Tibetan time, mind ya, so gimme a fuckin’ beer! Not only that, but do you realize you just sort of tried to blow up the FUCKIN’ MOON? For FUCKIN’ WATER? We already got plenny o’ water down here, mates. In fact, I think we should be AFRAID of fuckin’ water. We don’t need any fuckin’ more of it if you ask me. Christ, think of all of the people water has fuckin’ killed in the last few years. I don’t wanna get into the horrific details, but it’s a fuckin’ LOT. Water’s evil, man. That’s why we’re made of it. We’re fuckin’ evil, too, after all. If you bastards think you have the bloody fuckin’ right to blow up the fuckin’ MOON, I have the bloody fuckin’ right to drink a fuckin’ BEER.”

>“Anyway, if you’re one of those young fuckin’ kidsters or flipsters who tweezers or mytubes or whatever the flyin’ fuck you fuckin’ do out there, come see us rock in your shitty little town. You won’t regre-JESUS FUCK you guys have some shitty fuckin’ weather goin’ on down here. Bloody shit. Literal bloody shit in the skies.”

>“God, I hate fuckin’ airports. Same fuckin’ shit every fuckin’ time. This Burlington one is alright, but it still kinda fuckin’ sucks. I just wanna fuckin’ beer. I’m on Japanese time right now. There better be fuckin’ beer at this fuckin’ gig.”

>“And I spent my fuckin’ flight celebrating John Lennon’s birthday. This Faceshit shit is kinda alright, though. I know what Drum and Reg are up to now. Unless they’re fuckin’ lying. Can’t trust those fuckers with a fuckin’ thing. There better be some fuckin’ people at this fuckin’ gig. Some hippie bloke just tried to take my luggage.

Ugh. The cab driver’s playing the fuckin’ Eagles. I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man. Fuckin’ Don Henley? WANKER and a fuckin’ HALF, mate. Wanker and a fuckin’ half.

Fuckin’ shite.”

The Playboy. September 1971. I wasn’t alive yet, but Olsen was. Somehow when I was 23 this issue fell into my hands. The centerfold is Crystal Smith, who is stunning in both her beauty and her taste in American Flag bell bottom pants. Among her favorite films at the time are M*A*S*H and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. So, there’s that. Whenever my old band Bag Of Panties would play I would always put this centerfold up. There’s no bush, so it seems sort of innocent. And cool. If a gig was going bad or if I just needed some inspiration to play better than I was, I’d just look at Crystal. I know I’m way too young for her, but…Then there’s an interview with Jules Feiffer, a weird “surrealistic nudes” pictorial, movie reviews of Two Lane Blacktop and Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (which I’ve sampled many times), a negative review of McCartney’s “Ram” (lame, but fun to read) and the ads. My god, the ads. Apparently in the early 70s the kind of man that read Playboy was into leisure suits, Hush Puppies, and newfangled stereo equipment. TONS of ads offering new turntables, reel-to-reels, portable 8-track players, etc. There’s also a Datsun ad in there that I once used to design a ticket for a Wide Wail CD release party. Anyway, the centerfold is getting custom mounted and framed tomorrow.

The Rolling Stone issue which just happened to be there also changed my life. It’s the Best Albums Of The Last Twenty Years issue, August, 1987. When I was 14, the upstairs college student neighbor (C.K. Walls) gave me this issue. All I listened to at the time was metal and The Beatles. It’s an informative issue that explains very well why each album is great and why you should have it. It also has impressive reproductions of the album covers which is what drew me in initially. Through this issue I found The Sex Pistols, The Velvet Underground, Television, Otis Redding, New York Dolls, R.E.M., Todd Rundgren, The fucking STOOGES…they turned my feeble little mind on to great shit. I spent years finding these albums. Looking through it today I realized I don’t own 6 of them. Someday I will.

And then there’s this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A Bag Of Panties reissue of the first 1997 cassette release “Half In The Bag” (which Mrs. Olsen guests on, quite beautifully) is in the works…on VINYL.  Seriously.  I don’t know if it’ll be an Icebox release, but it’s in the process.

There is a little girl screaming into a microphone across the street about Star Wars characters.  I’ll take it.  Better than the fire trucks.

I’m going to spend the next 45 minutes trying to become man enough to deal with drunks until 2 AM.  Ya gotta act tough.  Wish me luck.

Okay, this girl is just yelling stuff about pumpkin pie.  I forgive her.

I work at the bar across the street these days.  It’s somewhat soul-crushing.  I watch a lot of grown men in their forties and fifties who I was raised to respect as my elders while growing up act like fucking children, and I am their babysitter.  They even throw fits when I have to discipline (“Sorry.  I can’t serve you anymore.”) them.  The money is good, but man, I am just getting worn out.

I’ve lost a lot of weight.  My girlfriend left me a while back and for some reason (well, I just told you the reason) it’s been hard to eat.  But at least I can wear those Levis Silvertab pants I bought ten years ago again.  In the divorce I got custody of her turtles.  The other day while feeding them, Oliver (the nice one) bit Eli’s (the aggressive one) tail and wouldn’t let go.  It was horrible.

I also took John Hodgman and Justin Long’s advice and went from PC to Mac.  So far, soooo good.

I’ve had this Jonestown Death Tape ambient project in my head for a year now, but I’ve been working too much and am frankly just too depressed lately to do it.  Also, I have this awesome new computer and I have to learn how to use it first.

I have a new roommate named Flynn.  She’s cool.  She makes me food and stuff and watches TV with me.  She also has a one-eyed pet rat named Wilma who bit me (and Kochalka) the other day.

Anyway, Eric is doing an amazing job revamping the site, and I’ve got nothing to do with it.  He’s the brains behind all this, I’m the guy who tags along.

Hey.

How long before the camel gets a sharp needle in his lifeless eye?

How high is too high?

How long before we actually tell you where we’ve been?

Oh yes, so many questions…from us, for us, about us, et cetera. We’ve got a bunch for you too. In the meantime, we’re porting all our old gold from one place to another, and since we got over 6 years of spieling to port, it’s evidently gonna take some time.

For now, kick it with this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

But, oh, Japan!!

Ah yes, wonderful to arrive into Newark yesterday afternoon to learn that we’ve won the war with Iraq. Whew! That must’ve been a close one. Glad we sqeaked by that one. Good to see the statues falling, don’t you think? Resonates with how safe I feel right now, probably as safe as we all feel, right?

Anyway, enough enoughing. To recap the last few days: we bused in from Panama to Golfito, then took the watertaxi to Puerto Jiménez, then a 2 hour ride in the back of a pick-up fixed with 2 benches in the back and a tarp overhead (reminds me of an Australian Outback kind-of thing, you know?) to what is commonly called the last frontier of Costa Rica, the southern Pacific coast of the Osa Peninsula. Nothing there, for the most part … no phone of electricity, just miles of black-sand beaches and jungle and an occasional leathery expat trying to set up a little cabina business in this jungle getaway … we stayed there for 2 days and just wandered the beach, as well as taking a formidable hike up the Rio Madrigal into the jungle … that is, until we heard the knee-rattling roar of a pack of Howler Monkeys, at which point we started back tracking.

Then back to Puerto Jiménez, where Maja and I planned on taking a small small plane to San Jose … and here our troubles began. The pilots were wishy-washy about flying due to the heavy storms over Golfito, which we needed to land in first because they had avoided doing so on the way over due to the same storms. After about an hours delay (mind you, we’re on a gravel runway in the middle of the jungle, for all intents and purposes), 12 of us (including pilots) board the little coffin with wings … landing in Golfito, ok, then more waiting … as its pouring on us, they rush us into the plane and we take off, onlt to fly through gray numbness that just kept getting darker and darker, rain pounding (literally pounding) the plane, they 2 small tico pilots can barely see over the dashboard, which we unfortunately had a clear view of … the GPS and other panel controls/lights kept going out, and we could see the concern and frantic gesticulations of the pilots trying to save their own lives … then the plane starts really rocking, quickly tipping left and right with such degree that your head actually snapps against your shoulder or the nearby window or fellow passenger … great drops in altitude … fishtailing, so much so that you look out the window and expect to see the tail of the plane out beside you … dead silence except for the repeated beeping of emergency status indicators from the cockpit … prayers and incantations all around, I’m sure … then, suddenly, though the edge of the clouds and into sunlight beauty and long-limbed vastness, and the nervous laughter and excited chatter begins … the captain looks back to check on us and you can see it on his face, the holy shit we actually made it expression you never want to see on the pilot of your aircraft …

More later on the comings and going of whatshisface …