My first introduction to Slayer was in 1994 when Divine Intervention was released. They were on Loveline back when Rikki Rachtman hosted it, and to be honest I don’t remember much of anything about the show with one notable exception.
To promote the album, they played the song “Serenity in Murder” which they jokingly introduced as their love song.
I bought the album, and so things went.
Jeff was the one in the band who was fixated on Nazi history which shows up on songs like “Angel of Death”.
When you hear a musician dying from liver failure, you automatically think of booze and drugs and all of the other fun shit that is available in that line of work. But when you realize he had been suffering with necrotizing fasciitis after being bitten by a spider last year, you just shake your head.
Slayer was Slayer. Talk to any metal fan about any band. Oh Metallica are sellouts. Pantera are pussies. Everyone has a complaint about every metal band with one notable exception: Slayer.
I know they were in the middle of writing a new album with Jeff, so I don’t know if they will continue on.
One of the best shows I’ve ever been to was Slayer at the Palace (now the Avalon) in 1998. In fact I still have the bootleg t-shirt I bought outside the venue for $10. As to how a big homo ended up being a huge Slayer fan, I don’t know. I just like what I likes.
Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother Emma Hernandez, 71, were most certainly not the 30-year old, 6-foot, 270 pound black man Christopher Dorner. Their blue Toyota pickup truck, not the black/gray Nissan Titan that authorities were on the lookout for, was shot up with close to 150 rounds because they were delivering newspapers close to a home of someone affiliated with Dorner the police were protecting.
Good for them. The settlement will still need to be approved by the city council, but considering what a black eye this episode made on the city I’m sure they’ll approve it.
The Dorner manhunt was embarrassing for the LAPD. Not only could they not find Dorner, but they were shooting up people indiscriminately in an effort to get him. I’ll say this much for the Boston PD and the FBI for their recent manhunt, at least they had an idea of who they needed to target.
The ladies were supposed to get a replacement for their truck. It took a while, and when they finally got one it was a different model and they were told they would have to pay taxes on it. The issue was finally resolved when the City gave them $40,000 to buy a new vehicle.
I said it when the manhunt was going on, and I’ll say it again. Never before have I been scared that my octogenarian Korean grandmother would be in danger of being shot down by the police. With the police response looking like a shoot-first-ask-questions-later, what would stop them from doing the same with my grandmother?
When the Dorner manhunt was concluded with the burning of the cabin up in the mountains, people in Los Angeles were not out in the streets cheering on the police, the ATF agents, the San Bernardino Sheriffs, the FBI. Besides most of the people in Southern California didn’t feel threatened by Dorner: he was only targeting the police and their relatives. Even white people showed their disdain of the police.
Boston couldn’t have been more different. Obviously the people in Boston were under terror having been targeted in the bombing on Patriots Day. Also the authorities did a great job of not prematurely coming to conclusions like certain online and media outlets did *coughCNNandRedditcough*
No one was cheering for these two brothers to escape capture and leave the country like they did with Dorner. Innocent Bostonians weren’t getting shot up by the authorities. It was night and day.
There’s nothing deep or insightful about this. It was just that watching everything go down in Boston last week, the memory of the Dorner manhunt just kept popping up in my head.
Pictured here is an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins that Madd got me last night. I had a nice dinner at her place before skipping of to STAPLES Center to cover the Kings-Ducks game.
I’m looking forward to watching the livestream of Coachella tonight with James Blake, Simian Mobile Disco, Nick Cave & the Black Seeds, the Faint, Dinosaur Jr. and Dead Can Dance. I will not watch Red Hot Chili Peppers though. I’m a little fatigued from hearing the same song over and over again with different titles. It’s almost like bad reggae.
There’s a golf tournament going on right now that I’m trying my best to ignore. I’m failing that for the most part.
I admit it didn’t start off on the right foot. I was supposed to wake up at 7:15 this morning to make it to Dodger Stadium at 8:30 since they were going to open the clubhouse early at 8:50. But my alarm didn’t go off. My fault. I should have tested it last night since it was my first time using the alarm on my new phone.
Instead, I woke up at 7:55 and rushed to get out ASAP. Thanks to the 110 Freeway Toll Lanes, I zipped to the Stadium. Also thanks to emailing the Dodgers that I was going to be there I got to park in the normal spot and a seat in the press box proper instead of being relegated to the media dining room.
Just to tell you how late I was running, I had to resort to my emergency stash of instant coffee when I left my apartment.
But it was uphill from there. Talked to Justin Sellers for a little bit. Sandy Koufax made an appearance. Saw a transcendent performance by Kershaw, a 4-hit shutout of the Giants AND a solo homer in the bottom of the eighth inning to give the Dodgers the 1-0 lead.
A lot of times I bitch about how long the baseball season is, how much of a drag it can get. And it does. Some of these games in July and August are damn near unbearable.
But Opening Day is not one of those games. It’s a clean start. It’s the joy of the game. It’s the start of a journey unknown. It really is exhilarating. I need to remember this in July.
Last night’s Dodgers-Angels exhibition game was a bit rough. First of all I was running late, so I missed the tour of all of the $100 million improvements in the park. Also having been watching tons of hockey, having to sit through a three hour, 25 minute 9-8 game was a bit painful. I kept waiting for the players to fight or something.
But it wasn’t all bad. They provided us new chairs in the press box. Jim Hill really approved of them bouncing up and down on them.
This morning I woke up late and with a headache as if I just got ran over. Like I tweeted, if this is how I’m going to feel the morning after Dodger games it’s going to be a very long season.
But I’m not going to worry about that now. Tonight I’m bilking some friends for a free birthday dinner at a Brazilian churrascaria. Then there will be some punchy goodness.
Should I shave my beard or no? And there is no “leave a mustache” or “leave a goatee” option. It’s one or another. By the way that booger in my left nostril has since left the premises.
In the haze of my ego trip, these are the people who also celebrated a birthday yesterday:
Mariah Carey
Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas
SF Giants catcher Buster Posey
Quentin Tarantino
Sarah Vaughn
Gloria Swanson
Maria Rasputin, daughter of the famous Rasputin
This explains a whole lot about me.
BTW, the spot in between my legs is not a cum stain you pervy fucks. It’s a cigarette burn. I can’t believe it’s been damn near two years since I quit smoking.
Everyone is excited across the country. Today the Supreme Court is hearing arguments for and against California’s Proposition 8 that defined marriage as being only between a man and a woman. People up and down Facebook are showing their support with the Human Rights Commission’s yellow equal sign logo sitting on a red background instead of its usual blue.
It’s a civil rights issue say those against Prop 8. It’s a sanctity of marriage issue say those for Prop 8. Or it’s a state’s rights issue say pro Prop 8-ers. Or it’s biological.
I think everyone’s missing the point. The thing that should be on trial is marriage itself.
I have made it perfectly clear I am 100% against marriage. If you want to be married in a church for religious reasons, fine. But the state should get out of the marriage business.
So what should couples do for all the sharing of benefits, hospital visitation and other legal issues involved in mortal cohabitation? They should do what gay people do already: sign up for a civil union.
Think about it. Divorces are messy enough as it is, so if you make entering a union a legal process in and of itself wouldn’t that make divorces a tad bit cleaner? Sure it takes the romance out of marriage, but if you marry out of love then you’re fucking stupid.
For years heterosexuals have fucked up and made a mockery of this so-called sacred institution of marriage. Why the hell do I want it?
But, you see, this is not a viewpoint heteronormative groups like the HRC or GLAAD want people to hear. They just want to sell the civil liberties aspect of this (half price with a product of equal or lesser value!) The fact that some gay people like myself have no desire to look like straight people, be happy like straight people, have sex like straight people, be monogamous like straight people is just too taboo. It makes gay people look too dangerous.
I am not and don’t want to be a heterosexual. I like having sex. I like not having a significant other. I like having the option of having multiple partners at one time, at being pissed on, at pissing on other guys, of being a sweaty mess in a room of guys while our climatic emissions crusts over on our bodies, down our throats.
Today sportswriter Buzz Bissinger wrote a personal on essay on GQdocumenting his shopping addiction. In page five of the piece Bissinger adds about his sudden sexual identity crisis.
I feel sorry for him, even though he was one of those guys who denounced sports bloggers like me at any opportunity. He’s 58 years old, and he probably never had a chance to explore the fluidity of his sexuality when he was younger. Despite it being the sexy 1970s, sexual repression was still more pervasive than it is now.
My formative years was in the chaos that was the 1990s which was great for being a bit open about things. You like being fisted? Great! You like having weights tied to your scrotum while you have your nipples clamped? Congratulations.
Okay. Some of these things might still be taboo in the heterosexual community, but thank heavens I’m not in that community. The problem is with all of these uptight HRC-esque assimilationist pricks running around the gay community, these things are slowly becoming more and more taboo in the gay community also.
There is one thing I do agree about all of this nonsense: I believe gay people should have the same rights as straight people. When I’m at the supermarket, I want to be seen as just another American.
But I refuse to mainstream myself to assimilate into what white men want Americans to look like. And that is why I’m not jumping up and down in a tittle today.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks with the Kings playing 500 games over the span. But they’re on the road to give me a little reprieve as I get ready to celebrate my 34th birthday. But just as that happens, well it’s TIME FOR DODGER BASEBALL. Friday they play a preseason game at the Ravine against the Angels, play one at Angel Stadium, take Sunday off and the season opens on Monday against the reigning World Series champs San Francisco Giants.
And I’ll totally admit it. I have no idea what’s going on with either the Dodgers or the Angels. Good thing I have a week to do a crash course before it all begins.
So anyhow, the above picture is that of the Staples Center crew putting in the Clippers court and seats after the Kings finished playing. They can finish the transition and clean all of the seats in the arena in about two hours.
So in Orange County, it looks like the police are allowed to shoot non white people in the back. In one of two shootings in Anaheim last summer that sparked protests and outrage from the community, the officer who shot the 25-year old Manuel Diaz in the back as he was fleeing will not have charges filed against him. The OC District Attorney said Nick Bennallack was justified in shooting Diaz in the back.
Bennallack said that he saw Diaz reaching for a gun. No gun was ever found.
It makes me wonder, during a protest a month before the second invasion of Iraq in 2003 I did turn my back and walk away from the police. I was leaving the rally at Sunset/La Brea and making the one-mile trek back to my car. I inadvertently walked into a side-protest by an anarchist collective. I wanted no part of it since it was 4 p.m. and I hadn’t eaten at all, so I just walked away.
It was at that point I heard an officer yell, “Hey you in the red shirt! Get back here.” I was really hungry, mind you, so I kept walking away. No one came after me, I haven’t been detained or anything. But now I wonder if I were in OC if that cop would have shot me in the back. Okay, it’s a stretch.
But anyhow. Fuck Orange County and fuck the police.
