I hate what I do for a living but I'm stuck doing it because I don't know how to do anything else and, more importantly, I'm a total coward. I cannot imagine not knowing when my next paycheck is coming, or not having health insurance, or being at all entrepreneurial. I can't think of anything else to do but work these shitty mind-numbing jobs making PDFs, moving commas around, and explaining the same thing over and over to people who will never understand it.
Oliver Ackermann is the opposite. He's the frontman for A Place to Bury Strangers and the founder of Death by Audio, a company that "handmakes effect pedals in an underground warehouse in Queens, NYC." Click on this link and check out all the different pedals they make, watch the videos for each one and marvel at how cool the physical pedals are, their shapes and graphics and retrograde Radio Shack meets Buck Rogers aesthetic, and the crazy ways they manipulate sound. Here's an example if you're too lazy to poke around their website.
So cool, right? You know why Ackermann created this company? Here's why, in his own words (and I added a few extra seconds before the origin story just so you can get a fuller gist of his essence).
He was squatting in a warehouse and wasn't making any money, which seems to be another way of saying he was homeless and unemployed, and he wanted to go backpacking in Europe with his girlfriend, so he started an audio equipment company focused entirely on guitar pedals for noise rock/shoegaze musicians and 20-plus years later it's an international business. How the hell does this happen? How did he even have a girlfriend to go backpacking with?
If you have the time you should watch the full Ackermann interview, the new A Place To Bury Strangers album can be converted into a synthesizer provided you have some foundational know-how and a soldering iron. And he has some amazing combover game.
This guy inspired me to say fuck it, to make a Gheorghemas resolution to quit working for the man, to stop shaving my head and grow a powerful combover, and to launch a niche business so preposterous that it cannot fail. 2025 y'all!
Just when I think I've got nothing for Twitter/X and it's got nothing for me, I see this.
I've been playing mediocre guitar for 26 years. I could quit my job and play all day every day for whatever time I've got left and never come close to this. This dude was 16 when this was recorded. This shit is bananas, and I know you know how to spell that.
Did you know that Eddie Van Halen is an inventor? He is named on three utility patents and two design patents. The design patents are pretty easy to understand. One claims the design of a guitar peghead, the other claims the design of a guitar pickup.
Two of the utility patents are a little more complicated. One claims an apparatus for adjusting the tension on the strings of a musical instrument. The other claims a humbugging pickup. Whatever that is.
The third is my favorite. It claims an apparatus that lets you play a stringed instrument tilted 90 degrees upward from how you normally hold it. I like it not because I want to jam out perpendicularly, but because it has the most rock n roll figure I've ever seen in a patent.
Rest in peace Eddie Van Halen, guitar superhero and patent rockstar.
I have determined that we have an impostor in our midst. The man we know to be Dave Dogfoot is really a famous actor with a different name of animal origin--he's Russell Crowe. This shouldn't come as a suprise given that he name-checked Crowe in song at least once before.
Here's a picture of Helen Hunt and Russell Crowe circa 1992, before Crowe hit it big. They were doing a summer stock revival of Grease in the metro Camden area. This photo was taken back stage. If you look closely through the eyeliner, you can see a striking resemblance to Dave.
Here's a much more recent photo of Dave juggling a ball at one of his myriad youth soccer events.
If you look closely through Dave's flab, you can see that he's the spitting image of Russell Crowe. This explains why he's playing soccer with a football--Australians take the whole "soccer is really football" conceit way too seriously. And who takes things a serious step too far more than Dave?
Not convinced? Fine. I have more facts, alternate facts if you will. Russell Crowe and his wife Danielle Spencer are divorcing. To make the division of assets easier, Crowe is auctioning off a bunch of stuff he "collected" over the years and will split the proceeds with his former wife. The auction is called "Russell Crowe: The Art of Divorce" and it's preposterous in so many ways that Dave has to be involved. In fact the whole thing is so insane that only Dave could gin up this fever dream of collectibles. Here's the cover photo for the catalog:
Sweet toupee Dave! Things get increasingly Dave as you dig through the catalog. For example, he's auctioning off a mosasaur skull that he received as a gift from Leonardo DiCaprio. Dave/Crowe notes that "The fossil relative of the monitor lizard family, which includes the Komodo Drago, the Mosasaur was a giant, serpentine marine reptile, which was prevalent during the Late Cretaceous Period, approximately 65 million years ago. Mosasaurs were formidable hunters, with a double-hinged jaw and a flexible skull enabling them to eat their prey whole. The Niobrara Formation is a geologic formation located in North America that was deposited between 87 and 82 million years ago." Dave totally wrote that--it's taxonomically perfect (mosasaurs were marine reptiles, not dinosaurs) and right on the line between interestingly informative and smarmily pedantic.
And who other than Dave would keep a dead lizard head in his home?
Also up for auction: nineteen (19!) guitars. I have no idea why anyone needs nine guitars, let alone nineteen guitars, but a collection of nineteen guitars sounds like something Dave would amass. Some are acoustic while others are electric. I won't link to them all, and they all look more or less the same to (except for the colors). The most expensive is a limited edition Gibson Elvis Presley "The King" J-200 black acoustic guitar. According to Dave/Crowe "In 2000 I took a road trip from Texas to New York, via West Virginia, for the filming of A Beautiful Mind (2001). I took a detour via Memphis to visit Graceland and I bought this guitar from the shop there. It is no. 90 of 250 produced for 1997." Seems like it would've been easier to fly from Texas to New York but despite all his professed love of and advocacy for all things green and eco-friendly, Dave loves to burn inordinate amounts of fossil fuels by driving SUVs back-and-forth across the country so this is a very Dave story.
Dave's interest in oddball Euro sports like soccer and darts is well documented. As is his interest in cricket. Dave/Crowe's auction contains a batshit crazy volume of cricket memorabilia, including five signed and framed cricket batting gloves, ten game-worn sweater-vests, seven cricket bats, seven signed and framed cricket shirts, two bronze sculptures of Donald Bradman playing cricket (one of which is life-sized), and three framed cricket caps (one of which was apparently worn by W.A.S. "Bert" Oldfield and will allegedly sell for $50,000 to $60,000). Here's the pricey cap:
According to Dave/Crowe's catalog entry, this cap is:
green wool, embroidered with the Australian coat-of-arms worked in gold and silver wire and coloured silk, the series date below '1932-33', with a 'Farmers Sydney' label inscribed in ink 'W.A.Oldfield', framed with a black and white photograph of Oldfield, together with a copy of The Larwood Story: A Cricketer's Biography, (the dust jacket framed separately), opened at the page describing the infamous encounter between Oldfield and the English fast bowler, Harold Larwood, on 17 January 1933, when Oldfield was struck in the head off Larwood's delivery, suffering a fractured skull. An area of separation to one of the seams in the cap where Oldfield was struck, is a further reminder of the incident.
Sounds like a really pleasant piece of cricketing history to display in one's home--the hat hat Oldfield was wearing when he broke his skull, ripped seams and all!
Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence proving that Dogfoot is Crowe is Lot No. 5, a two-piece double-breasted purple suit worn by Russell Crowe in the movie Virtuosity.
If you think this "slob with a football" ensemble is a one-off look you're mistaken. Historically, Dave looks like hell even when he's dressed up.
Pleated khakis, unzipped fly, rumpled shirt, oversized paisley print tie tied to a Trumpian length? Hell, this purple suit was probably the crown jewel of Dave/Crowe's wardrobe back in the 90's!
I think I can safely rest my case. Now that we know Dave is a wealthy movie star we should encourage him to pay for lunch at Tortuga's one day. All the more reason to attend OBFT XXV.
Last night I saw a fantastic musical performance, just a young man and a guitar. It lasted only one song, but that was enough.
George Dennehy played at my organization's annual meeting in Newport News, VA. The 19-year-old tells a compelling story.
George was born in Romania. A Romanian named George -- that there is Gheorghey in and of itself. Add to that that he was adopted by parents in Richmond, VA when he was just an infant because his parents couldn't properly care for him in his homeland. He grew up feeling (and being treated as) different than most kids but learned to play music, and somewhere along the way, his story caught the attention of local press, The Goo Goo Dolls (with whom he has played live), and now media outlets everywhere.
It's a cool success story for anyone. But here's the kicker that makes it unbelievable . . .
George Dennehy was born without arms.
He plays guitar (and cello, bass guitar, piano, and whatever else he can find) as he does most everything else for which people might assume you need arms and hands -- with his feet. He's incredibly skilled, and it's no exaggeration to say that I've been playing guitar in my spare time for 15 years, and he's far better with his toes than I'll ever be with my fingers. He's also an unassuming, grateful, and inspirational young fellow with great big doses of perspective to share with every story he relates about his life.
The nonprofit where I work supports people with disabilities of all kinds, and the beauty of this place is that on any given day you can see the kind of thing you wouldn't expect to see, no matter how long you've been here. Preconceived notions about the nature of disabilities are trashed here on a daily basis, and George Dennehy did just that once again yesterday as he played for a couple hundred mesmerized people with other types of disabilities (the ones officially diagnosed as well as the ones the rest of us have).
This video is well worth watching, and if you ever get a chance to see him play live, please do it.
I had an interesting discussion with my friend Pastor Rob at the pub the other night. "Ha!" you scoff. "How could an irreverent agnostic like Dave have a discussion with a Man of Faith?" And I will admit, dedicated reader, that this is not a bad snap judgement on your part, as perhaps you overheard some of my previous "debates" with Pastor Rob and wonder if I could hold a serious-- or even semi-serious-- discussion with a someone religious about a weighty matter. I am here to set the record straight.
I can.
Sort of.
For a few minutes, anyway, as long as I get to make some jokes.
So the good pastor and I were discussing how there is no codified passage to manhood for Americans. Other cultures have these rites of passage-- if you're Native American, you smoke some drugs, sweat in a lodge, fast, go wander around the woods, and hallucinate. You come back from your vision quest with a cool new name and you are considered a man. If you're an American, then this process of doing drugs and wandering around is called college. You eventually graduate, but you are by no means considered a man. You don't even have a job.
If you want to do a vision quest in modern America, you've got to invent your own. Perhaps you do an Outward Bound trip. Perhaps you wrestle the "Shute" and make out with Linda Fiorentino. If you're Amish and you want to sow your wild oats, you have the option of participating in Rumspringa, a sort of organized period of adolescent rebellion. If you want to learn more about this, watch the documentary Devil's Playground. You'll see Amish kids partying down and hooking up. Then, after this archetypal period of separation and transition, they often return to their culture . . . and they are considered adults.
We have rituals in America that are supposed to indicate manhood: Bar Mitvah, confirmation, getting your driver's license, fraternity hazing, killing a Crip, basic training, graduation, your first tattoo, and losing your virginity in a whorehouse to Shelley Long, but I don't think people really believe in these rituals, I don't think that people believe that the man who has undergone one of these events is now ready for the responsibilities as an adult.. The religious events happen too early, and the rest are too various, inconsistent, illegal, and idiotic. While I'm not suggesting that we need something as extreme as the Hunger Games, it would be nice if there were some clear way to know when you are a man. I'm not totally against the old tradition of bringing your son to the local brothel, but since prostitution isn't legal here, it poses a problem. Now in Switzerland, where the price of sexual services is in a free fall because of the influx of French prostitutes, this would be a wonderful option. But we are more Puritanical in America, and in the modern world, I'm not sure if losing your virginity is enough. These days, there are so many other things to master besides sex, and most of them are far more difficult. What about obtaining a mortgage? Changing your oil? Refinancing that mortgage you obtained? Talking jive?
Oddly, women don't seem to have a problem determining when that have "come of age." They just know. It probably has something to do with menstruation. That and something I like to call common sense. Most women have it. Most men don't. So we need something physical and tangible and public and recognized. It's hard for modern men. It's not like the old days. In the old days, things were simple. You put on a big helmet with horns, rowed to another country, went berserker, and then made some fuck with the foreign ladies. You were a man.
Sports help to channel this. I never feel more manly then when I'm snowboarding down a steep mountain, or sweating profusely during a game of soccer or hoops. And I feel like a man afterwards as well, as I limp around the house, weary and bruised. But my wife couldn't give a shit. Unless you're getting paid for it, no one besides you cares that you play.
And so you need a host of other skills to be considered a modern man. You must be able to change a diaper. Survive a nut shot with grace and aplomb. Pass gas politely and surreptitiously in the office. Talk about gay sex without giggling. Say the word "duty" without giggling. Say the word "panties" without giggling. Say the word "menstruation" without giggling. Basically, you've got to stop giggling.
It's an impossible task, to figure out how and when a modern American is a man. I don't have an answer to this, and I've lost my way in this post. I've written my way into a corner. I was thinking about some sort of obstacle course, to be completed when you turn thirty-one years of age, but I don't know what kind of obstacles to place on it. Some should be physical, others mental, and others tedious-- I imagine-- but I've run out of good ideas. Maybe this generation of men will just wallow in their juvenelia forever.
On that note, I'm going to get drunk with the rest of the G:TB staff (except for Mark, we'll miss you) and meet Gheorghe Muresan, and perhaps try to explain to him the meta nature of our relationship. This doesn't sound very manly at all, but it will be fun.
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