I've Been Doing It Wrong My Whole Life - A Gheorghemas Resolution

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!

Car Filler, alternatively titled "Steve McQueen and Jerry Seinfeld Walk Into a Porsche Dealership"

As I have written here before, Jerry Seinfeld is widely known as one of the world's most prominent Porsche collectors and owns one of the world's largest collections of Porsches.  The crown jewel of his collection is a 1970 Porsche 917K.  Only 25 of these were made--the car was created solely to race at LeMans, and the rules at the time allowed you to use a bigger engine only if you made 25 copies of the car, ostensibly making it a production vehicle as opposed to a prototype.  You can learn more about it in this (long) video.

Seinfeld's 917 is extra special because Steve McQueen owned it and used it in the movie LeMans.  You know Steve McQueen, the coolest goddamn motherfucker on the silver screen.

 

And it can be soon be yours, assuming you have an extra $20 million or so.

Surprise Filler

I realize you're eagerly awaiting Day 12, whether you should be or not.  You could be basking in the glow of your team's national championship, or wallowing in the depths of despair after your school . . . bungled a 4th quarter drive to miss out on the FCS playoffs entirely. (Or lost last night after being utterly stymied on offense.)

You could be watching film and television, but these days the current trend is to take every lead character you've been excitedly following for years, if not decades, and either murder them off or ruin their lives beyond recognition. (Happened again this week.) What gives?

Eh. I guess that's life as well.

Anywho, one pleasant surprise was that neither my favorite weekly TV host nor his show was cancelled, and he even awoke from his annual January slumber to record an 8-minute piece in front of a life audience that could only be classified as pure dipshittery. So let's have a look.

For the record, I never read this book. I didn't see the movies. But I still found this silly and amusing.

Enjoy, and see you on Day 12.

Gheorghemas Mashup Interlude

I heard this on the radio and thought it would make a good interlude.

More Interludes, Gheorghemas Style

I wrote about my subversive Christmas playlist here before.  For your Gheorghemas entertainment, I transferred it from iTunes to Spotify and embedded it below.  You should play it on shuffle because I'm too lazy to mix it up myself.  Enjoy.

Another Gheorghemas Interlude

Our pocket emperor demanded another Gheorghemas interlude while he works on Day 11, so a Gheorghemas interlude he shall have.  Few musicians are as Gheorghe as Action Bronson so here's a new-ish Bronsoline joint to tide you over while waiting for a different fat man to slide down your chimney.

Gheorghemas Filler Before rob's Gheorghemas Interlude

Over the course of our lives, we have been bombarded with holiday-themed television specials and movies. Some we love, some we hate, some cannot be stopped (that goddamn Grinch franchise). But the one that randomly stays with me despite being below the hard deck is the cartoon mouse vehicle 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, a 1974 tale of holiday hope from animation powerhouse Rankin/Bass (once we get that GTB intern a longer post needs to happen on RB). I believe I've written about 'Twas in this space before, but wanted to check in once more on this Christmas Eve to say, folks, this tune is a holiday banger:

Gheorghemas Interlude with a Side of Bacon

The second half of 2018 was difficult for me. Ours is sometimes referred to as the "sandwich generation" because many of us have to take care of our kids and our parents, so we're sandwiched between them. Since the end of May I've been in a sandwich only mine's a club--I take care of my kids, my mother, and my grandmother. Through all of it G:TB has served as the bacon in my club sandwich. Thank you for giving me a venue to be an idiot and to read other people's idiocy. The past few months would've been much harder without your humor and dipshittery. Mark also gave me tremendously helpful advice on navigating the eldercare delivery system, TR helped me move some furniture, and many others sent me well-wishes and good vibes. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate all of this. Thank you.

via GIPHY

Interim Gheorghemas Filler

As much as I enjoy looking at Teedge on a Rascal scooter, we need some new filler purely on an interim basis. Keep an eye out for a W&M alumnus in the video below (blink and you'll miss him).



Elmo got his and he did Phife justice. Merry Gheorghemas!