Maintain Radio Ebonics by Savage

Clint Eastwood is punching holes in the time-space continuum. All our realities are converging on one another; we are at the event horizon of reality. Happy Birthday balloons replace headstones, hooray, you're one year dead. And this is where I come in. Well, I would have come in. I was there for a microsecond before my city was folded upon itself and crushed, like a fat person's hope when they realize cake is higher up than them on the food chain.

It's harder than it looks, being radically unfashionable while maintaining a svelte figure. I was in the dark alleys, backroads no tourist would venture. I had a shadow, the key was to act calm. I picked up a cell phone, a shell coated number with a used hypodermic antenna. Another, encased in silver with an attached flail soaked in cobra venom - calls are dropped easily.

The Titanic is ready to sail again, maybe she'll make it this time.

The Iron Gym Debacle by Coop

Let me explain something about my family; my parents were the religious, conservative, church going kind of people, who took everything from Princess Di’s death to getting a flat tire as a sign from God. “God doesn’t want us to…” “I thing the Lord is trying to tell us…” “This is His will, son…” were common defenses for some of the most illogical and obtuse events of my childhood. In short, my family sorta epitomized the kind of people who could justify the crusades.

Anyway, the reason I brought this up was to paint you a picture that I can then proceed to lob handfuls of shit at. One of the “Signs” my parents saw was, apparently, that God hated television. After buying a string of Value Village TV’s (some of which WERE black and white), and having EACH explode, implode, overheat, melt or just flat out confusticate themselves in to electrical oblivion, they determined that God didn’t want them to have a Television. I just thought God didn’t want them to have a shitty Television and they should buck up and buy something that wasn’t previously owned by the unibomber, and that they should stop being so fucking cheap and calling it frugality. I’m pretty sure thirteen pre-world war two TV’s cost them the same as one modern, glitch free, explosion free, fire free, stress free color television.

My reason for bringing this up is that not only did I go through my teens and early twenties having absolutely no clue who the hell Nirvana was or what the deal was with Michael Jackson, but I was almost killed by my family’s unfortunate susceptibility to late night infomercials.

See, earlier this summer I was visiting my sisters Bella and Lydia at their place in Denver, and as we stood around the kitchen talking and laughing at their kids cause they couldn’t speak English, Lydia’s husband Roy came up from the basement with what looked like a burnished steel and spongy rubber Club, the ridiculous car safety steering wheel locking system from the nineties. “Check this out, JJ,” he said, hefting the hunk of pipes and rubber above his head and jimmying it in to the top of the doorframe. Once in place, he gave it a good yank and then started doing pull-ups, his exuberant face flushing red from the effort.

“It’s called an Iron Gym,” Lydia gushed, explaining how she had seen it at a Circuit City or one of those other stores where late night TV ads go to die, and wasn’t it the coolest, most innovative advancement in home gym technology cause you could do pull-ups AND pushups on it and she had lost five pounds in two weeks and could now do TWO pull-ups WATCH!

I stood in slackjawed disbelief as my sister did not one, not two, but THREE pull-ups on the very hunk of metal that I had once sleepily said could be my fitness salvation. Lydia, in a dead hang, was still a foot and a half off the ground as she continued extolling the virtues of the Iron Gym, and I briefly wondered if I’d get candy if I hit her with a stick.

“Try it,” she said, dropping down and grinning ruefully at me (note: don’t do anything my sisters tell you to, it’s dangerous. Different laws apply to people of their slight stature, and for us normal sized people it can be dangerous in their too-small shoes).

Like an idiot, I stepped up to the bar.

“Where do I hang on?”

“Oh, anywhere, really. Just get a grip that feels comfortable and pull yourself up!”

Wrong. The Iron Gym is innovative, yes, creative and usefull and easy to use, but the simple fact of the matter is that there are maybe two places you can hold on to it when you are doing a pullup; the handles that jut out from one side, and the bottom crossbar. Any other hand placement, any deviation from the prescribed grip and the results can be devastating and humiliating. Though mostly humiliating. Instead of the handles or the crossbar, I decided to try a more difficult grip, since I’m an asshole and I wanted to remind my sisters just how tiny and weak they were.

Karma is a bitch.

I grabbed the BACK of the handles, just above the crossbar and hefted myself in to the air with a Herculean grunt. A few things happened: my feet left the ground, the Iron Gym left the doorframe, the doorframe left the wall and the nails that had kept it in place AND the Iron Gym found my forehead, and my ass found the kitchen floor, where I lay, stunned, as little angels strumming Iron Gym shaped harps and playing Death Magnetic flew around my bruised cranium. After the sharp CRACK, the only sound was laughter. Maniacal, devious, little-person-rage driven laughter. When my vision eyes straightened out I freaked; I couldn’t see out of my left eye!

I raised my hand cautiously to my throbbing forehead and felt the strangest thing. The door frame that had clocked me on it’s way earthward had nailed itself to my forehead and was blocking my eyesight. I yanked the nail out of my scalp and dropped the chunk of wood, staggering to my feet. My sisters got quiet fast, the men in my family have notoriously short fuses, but I could feel my eyes watering up, so I looked around, nodded my head and left the kitchen, silently stepping over the broken doorframe and blood stained Iron Gym.

The moral is don’t be cheap. Buy a fucking NEW TV and let your kids watch, cause it might just save their lives.

This windup toy is a choking hazard by Savage

Oh, no. Lord, oh no. Damn. Oh shit. The blood was fucking everywhere.

I calmed myself, and tried to take everything in. It looked like every single one of my pores had menstruated simultaneously.

Oh, here it comes again.

I turned my head to vomit, not really looking where it would go. I heard the dog growl and run out the door before he spontaneously combusted. I wasn't too worried, this had become commonplace, if not annoying. He would return soon in all glory as a Phoenix, reaching my house at any moment. A sudden crash at the window startled me out of my reverie; I slowly crept over only to see the dumb bird laying dead in the snow, victim of a solid window I had forgot to open.

Wait, it all made sense. It was a set up. I was nothing but a straw man. Of course!

Getting back to base-ics; Chem 101 by Savage

This radio interview was broadcast from a personal antenna in someone's garage near the industrial center of Copenhagen. The identity of the persons involved remains a mystery, but it has been determined 3 people were in the room at the time of the broadcast. Positively identifying those involved is a top priority of INTERPOL, and a reward is being offered for any information which could further the investigation.

(Side note: The broadcast was made at a frequency which deviated between 88-91 MHz, but on average modulated @ 90.1 MHz. The energy the broadcast used was enormous. For simplicity, we have given code names to the speakers. Man #1 is codenamed Titanic, Man #2 is codenamed Mary, and Man #3 is codenamed Spaniard.)

*27 seconds of static*

Titanic: ...Hvorfor blir stoffet av Turin drapert over (indecernible) Flodhest?
Spaniard: Hvorfor er jeg som selv skriver dette. Denne posten er forferdelig, fortjener jeg til å dø.
Mary: *KLAPP*

(At this point the frequency modulates to over 90MHz, and for some reason the language changes from Norwaydish to English.)

Spaniard: And the lawyer looks at the deli owner and says, "You should have used business reply mail!"
Titanic and Mary: Ha ha ha!

Spaniard: But seriously. Mumbai was a success, now we can concentrate on the Western Lands. Our sources are scouting possible locations as we speak, their cover is Rastafarians on leave. Think Cool Runnings. We might start with a US territory such as Guam to hammer out any kinks before heading to the mainland.

Mary: Why are we broadcasting this?

*End transmission*

Nino and the Bike Kid by Coop

This last friday I went out to Frankie's with my room mates Asher and Nino. Asher, as you might remember, is the guy with warrants out for his arrest in Alaska, on top of a couple felony counts for destroying a public high school's baseball field in his 4x4 a few years back. Nino, or “Jeremy Motherfucking Ginino” as he calls himself, is another Alaskan born deviant with a look faintly reminiscent of a balding Robert Downey Jr. and a chortle that simply ooses bong resin. I met these guys when I moved in to The Asylum, and though we started hanging out because of our mutual love for playing guitar, I quickly found myself 'too busy' to hang out;they only play Metallica.

Only.

So the three of us had gone down to Frankie's and spent a good four hours tooling around the pool tables and hitting on the bartender when, in a five minute period, both Asher AND Nino got kicked out.

I shit you not, one second Asher is sweet talking the bartender, the next she's screaming at him to leave 'cause he apparently robbed her friend (never happened) after going home and messing around with her, drunk (probably happened) and then went to where her boyfriend worked and bought smokes while laughing at him (definitely happened). Nino was booted shortly after for yelling at the bartender and calling her a string of names I've actually never heard before.

I followed him out, ducking under a barrage of insults and alcohol-veiled threats.

Once outside we tried to think of another bar to go to, at which point I found out that getting kicked out is a nightly occurrence for these two, and the nearest bar that would take our unholy triumvirate was in fucking Gresham. We started home, hoping to pick up a twelve-pack at the Korean market, when the real highlight of the night happened. We were stumbling down the sidewalk, reeling from bush to telephone pole to bench when a scrawny hipster rolled up to the next light on his eco-friendly Schwinn, about a block away.

This kid was the quintessential portland biker; Too-tight, too-short black jeans, moldy chuck-t's, a ratty german army sweater with holes chewed in the elbows and a mop of black hair protruding frantically from his head and face. Clinging desperately to this ensemble was a pair of coke bottle glasses with a thick patch of black electric tape holding the right lens in place. His bare white knuckles shook in the frigid air as he waited for the light to change.

In a blink, Nino took off in a dead run. Towards the hipster.

"Oh fuck," the kid screamed, seeing what looked like Mr. Hyde on a bender tearing down the street towards him. I’m not sure of exactly what ran through his mind at that moment, but I can only assume that he looked at Nino, barreling silently towards him, and assumed that he was getting bike-jacked. On a busy street. At ten thirty. On friday. In south east portland. On the safe side of 82nd.

Apparently a lot of that shit happens in this part of portland.

To chicks.

Bike Kid literally STOOD on his pedals, and in the frigid evening air I was certain I saw smoke rising from the blur of his back tire, but Nino had a good half brewery coursing through his veins and was quickly approaching the sound barrier. Bike Kid screeched away down the street, looking in terror over his shoulder at the Italian juggernaught thundering after him, all the while yelling at the top of his lungs.

"NO MAN, NO! NO! Come on man, NO!"

Three blocks away, Nino was thirty feet behind and giggling like a drunk squirrel.

"NO DUDE, PLEASE, NO! NOOOO!"

Four blocks away, Nino was six feet from Bike Kid but laughing too hard to keep going. He stumbled to a drunken jog as Bike Kid tore off in to the night, and by the time Asher and I got up to him he was collapsed against a scooter shop's front steps, panting and laughing.

"I...I...I...I wasn't gonna," he panted, "I wasn't gonna...d...do anything to him! I just wanted to run, man!"

Two months later Bike Kid moved in to The Asylum. He still hasn't recognized Nino.