The Midst of Summer: by Dublin

Judge me if you need to but after many years I finally made the plunge and had Comcast come over and install cable at my apartment. Originally I just wanted internet hooked up but then I asked the lady on the phone: "If I got TV can you guarantee that I can watch every Giant's game that is shown?" “Yes” the lady replied and it was a done deal; the guy came over way too early the next morning and was drilling holes in my wall and making corny jokes, and I was drinking coffee dreaming of sitting in my cozy cave on a Saturday afternoon watching Panda knock a ball into McCovey Cove with all the windows open and a relatively large and perfectly cooled beer in my hand.

I know the pitfalls of TV. You take a break to sit down to watch Law and Order for a few minutes and next thing you know a season has passed and you haven't accomplished anything in your life. 'Not me' I said 'I'm just watching baseball and that's it.' Well Jesus, that's a lot of fucking TV when you add it up. I came home last night and flopped down to watch the game and the frigging thing went into the 14th inning. That's four and a half hours of watching TV for God's sake! It's not healthy. I went to sleep shortly after the game was over and didn't have a single dream. My brain was mush, making blank uninspired electrical pops as it just sat there in my skull, the TV having messaged it into a coma.

But hey, I deserve some coma time. I spent last weekend in New York City with the JM crew and it was all just rapping and drinking and running around and "we're running behind!" and missed flights and bad breath and everything else. It was a blast, don't get me wrong, but I'm a guy that doesn't necessarily want a 'blast' every waking moment. I want quiet moments sometimes, just some food and a nice book or possibly a Giants game on TV. Feel me? I can't function when I'm over stimulated all the time. That's the term I would use for New York by the way: over stimulating. I'm sure you get used to it but Christ, I would have to go all out for days at a time and then sleep for a week and then do a few days and then sleep another week and so on. My big question for New Yorkers is: how you decide where to eat? There are a billion restaurants in the naked city.

While in New York we got to share the stage with Roy Ayers which was an honor. He had so much class and skills and had written so many songs that hip-hop artists had sampled, it kind of blew my mind. He's seventy years old and he was getting down and having the best time with everything, not tripping at all on us young punks. One of my favorite moments was when he dropped some knowledge on the kids at Harlem School for the Arts and mentioned that as an artist you need to make sure you own the rights to your songs and that knowing the law is the most important things he could pass on to a young musician. This was coming from a man who is one of the most sampled in the business so it was time to listen up on that part.

Speaking of the kids at the Harlem School: they were the first New Yorkers I came across when I got to town. I was tired, uncaffinated, greasy, just pissed off pretty much. I get picked up at the airport and find out: nope, you're not going to the hotel, you're going to a school to teach kids. Teach kids what? About hip-hop. Oh God. Listen, the irony wasn't lost on this white guy from Graton CA when I walked in and started talking about hip-hop to thirty kids from Harlem New York. It was silly really. I stood there talking, trying to keep my brain awake and they looked out at me, bored, hungry, and not happy to be there. They were sweet kids and we had a fine time but please, let's just be blunt, I am not an educator, I'm not a teacher, it's just not me. I can talk to kids, I like kids, but teaching has to be a passion, you have to need to do it. I don't have any of that.

So after that Solati and I went out for a morning drink and then I got to crash for a few hours before playing what felt like ten shows in 24 hours (it was really just three, or four, can't remember which) all over New York and going full blast. Now I'm home, the windows are open with breeze a coming in, and the Giants are on the TV, and I think there's a beer in the fridge. I'm going to the fridge.

Life in a Van Part 2: The Further Adventures of The Shotgun Wedding Quintet on Tour with Grouch & Zion I

Life in a Van Part 2
(The Shotgun Wedding Quintet plays for the kids)

I hadn't played at the Phoenix Theatre for probably five or six years and there I found myself on a Monday on the third night of a nation wide tour. I went out front and there were kids puffing on cigarettes that looked like they had just been born: fetuses committing self made abortions with Marlboro menthol, woah(that's a bit much). It was an odd thing to see kids smoking that hadn't been alive when Ice Cube put out Death Certificate. We've been playing for the bar crowd for years, the mid twenties to forties and suddenly we're on stage playing classic hip-hop breaks for kids who think Eminem is old-school.

By Sacramento I was over it but don't mean I was like "f**k these new jacks, they don't know Pete Rock from Pete Seeger" I mean that I was over the stigma and was really enjoying playing for these young people. They are open. They love hip-hop. They don't necessarily understand what The Shotgun Quintet is all about or the context when we first come out but by the end of the first song they have their hands up in the air and they're down for what we're doing.

In Sacramento they had the room split in half with a plastic wall that went down the middle and cut right into the stage. The 21 crowd was on the left and the minors on the right of the plastic. It was really strange because you have to go from the left to the right, rapping to one side of the wall and then turning to the other side and rapping. It was like playing a show at the borders of Berlin circa nineteen eighty five.

When we started playing our first couple hits the drinking crowd hid out in the darkness while the kids came right up front while we began to bang away and sweat off the bandstand. At the end of the set the 21 crowd had crept up and filled the space on their side of the wall as well, following the example of their juniors. At the end of the set a girl that must have been in middle school came up and told me how much she liked my lyrics. It was very sweet of her and heart felt and it made the hunger and the fact I hadn't slept in 32 hours take a back seat and reminded me why we were there.

Time passes and you forget what it was like to be a kid from a small town and be completely obsessed with hip-hop. Then you go to a town like Missoula Montana and you meet these kids that drove three hours south to see Zion I and the Grouch and you see yourself in the enthusiasm that exudes from their faces when they talk about beats and raps and it feels like you're coming home. One kid told me how he was working on writing a lot but wasn't quite ready to perform on stage yet. He said he would be around the Bay Area in a few months and hoped to come and see us then. I asked what the reason was for his visit and he said his older brother was locked up for meth out there. He was a good a kid, trying to live and he loved hip-hop. This thing brings people together, all races, sexes, financial levels, and generations. It's a beautiful thing.
-Dublin 03-30-11

Life in a Van Part 1: The Adeventures of The Shotgun Wedding Quitnet

Life in a Van Part 1
(The Shotgun Wedding Quintet head out on tour with Zion I, Grouch, and Blu)

The road is vast and the country is beautiful. Oregon flies by in the windows as green leaves and gray branches with clear cut hills beyond the tree line. Washington is the same with clear rushing rivers that follow along with us and then criss cross around under us and back around again. Cows stand passively chewing their cud as we rush by. They don't know this is our first national tour and don't care. Many bands have driven by these pastures looking for dues paid and glory made and the cows didn't care then either.

It wasn't until we hit Eugene that I realized we were really on our way. After driving out of Arcata the night before we had gone farther than we had ever gone in Blue, the whole band together, the cooler stocked with food and beers, merch and CDs smashed together and cracked in the back with the instruments and the sleeping bags, and all of Blue smelling like hot man breath and ass.

For those confused: Blue is the van. Blue has driven The Shotgun Wedding Quintet all over California for the last few years. She is a Dodge Ram, assembled in 1996, and, obviously, painted Blue. This gets confusing because there's a rapper on tour with us named Blu, and sometimes one of the band will come out of the club and say: "Hey! Where's Blue?!" and someone trying to be helpful will point at the rapper Blu and say; "There he is!" and the Shotgun member will shake his head and the helpful person will be confused and it's all just a stupid misunderstanding.

So, like I said, the Blue I'm referring to is the van (unless I refer to the rapper Blu who is a great guy) and she has driven us around southern California, and up into the Sierras and she has served us well, but now we're pushing her harder then she has ever been pushed. On this tour so far she has driven us up through Oregon, across the border all the way up through Washington, down through Montana and Idaho, and is now transporting us across the frosty valleys of Utah. She has a long way to go but hasn't faltered yet. We love her and admire her and realize this tour wouldn't be possible without her.

The other obvious factor that has allowed us to take the open road: Zion I and The Grouch. It's a big chance they took on us having us play every show with them and then have the guys in the band back up their set. Every show has been sold out pretty much and that hasn't had much to do with us outside California. The Shotgun Wedding Quintet are a complete bunch of unknowns beyond the northern Golden State so that means all those kids and men and women are coming out to see Z&G and of course Blu. They don't need us which makes it a very generous oppertunity they've allowed us.

Beyond that: for all they know we could have been a bunch of drunken, vibe flashing, tar sniffing assholes that would have mucked up the whole trip, and although there is an element of that to our band, we haven't let any of it hang out while we've been on the road. We've been professional, showing up to the clubs on time and setting up and rocking the crowd as hard as we can. There's still three weeks to go so let me knock on a little wood right now.

It took us about four shows to figure out how the set should work. On the fourth night we had it cracking with the hands in the air and the folks at the merch table asking for a copy of the album from that first band. It wasn't really like that the first few nights but I'll get into that in another entry. Right now Zumbie and Grouch are checking their mics and the monitors are feeding back like crazy. More to come later.
-Dublin 03-29-11

Back again. Why not?

It's been at least three months since there was anything written on this blog and I would like to stand up right now and take full blame for it. People have been sending me stuff they wrote and asking me to post them and I haven't. Why? I could say that I'm busy, in fact I could say I've been the busiest I've ever been in my life, and while that's true in a lot of ways the reality is that really I'm just lazy. "Really f**king lazy" to quote contributor Bob Fong.
Now I'm not posting this to make excuses and then give a list of the things I'm involved with and projects that are being put together and what's been going on in my life that has led to the disentigration of Dublin's World. I'm just here to say out in public that I am now recommitting myself to this thing on behalf of the contributors and the readers (whoops, I mean reader. And when I say reader I mean you Sandy).
Alright, great, here we go, 2011, let's get it started.
-Dublin, 2-25-11

DJ Undacut’s Live Journal 11-01-10

By: DJ Undacut
Edited by: Dublin




10:26AM
-the lady downstairs woke me up again. God her voice is loud. It blows through the building like a siren or something. It’s a Monday. Why doesn’t she have a job?

10:41AM
-there’s only a few grains of coffee left but they’re a strong group of grains and they’ll do the trick. How do people wake up without coffee? I can’t talk without it. I can’t think. If I don’t have coffee then I smoke weed. If I don’t have weed then I go back to bed.

11:03AM
-that lady is still singing. She is awful. She gets close to the note but doesn’t quite make it and it strains all around and makes my head hurt. I have to get out of here. Somebody said the World Series is going on today and that the Giants are playing. Maybe I’ll go to a bar and watch it. I have to get away from this voice blowing through the building.

12:11PM
-I have to get out of here. She just won’t stop. When is her voice going to give out? I don’t usually go to bars and watch sports but today it’s going to be necessary. I don’t have much money. Instead of going and spending my twenty dollars on three drinks I’m going to buy a bottle and stash it in my back pack. That’s word.

2:30PM
-I’m at the bar but something weird happened at the store. I went to a Longs or CBS or whatever they call it now. I was waiting in a line with a bottle of Sauza ($17. That’s a bomb ass deal) and this woman starts walking around and calling out into the store. I didn’t notice at first but there was something about her tone that made me look over. She was saying: “Laney! Laney! Where are you?!”
This guy in line looked too and then we both looked away and waited for the retarded guy at the counter to ring us up.
“Laney! Laney!”
She’s still yelling it and now there’s a panic in her voice so me and the guy in line and the retarded guy at the counter are all looking around wishing Laney would come out because the woman’s voice is making us all nervous and jumpy.
“Laney! Laney! Please!”
The way she says please really got to me. She was desperate. I wanted to help but I’m kind of high and I think the weed was making me more panicked then I should have been. I wanted to get out of there. The guy in front of me pays and he gets out of there but I’m stuck waiting for the retarded guy to ring me up.
“Laney! Laney! Where are you! Please Laney! Where are you?!”
I finally get out of there and I’m walking in the direction of the bar and I see an old guy near the mechanical horse ride at the front of the store. He’s kind of homeless looking and I’m suspicious. Did he take Laney? Does he have her in a truck somewhere? Then I notice he’s looking at me. He’s looking at me real hard and I realize he’s maybe thinking the same thing as me: did that guy kidnap the little girl? I guess I sort of do look like a kidnapper. Maybe I’m just high.

5:07PM
-I had a few drinks in the bathroom and now I’m having a beer and now the game is starting. There’s a few old guys in here. The bartender’s name is Renee. She’s Chinese and she won’t stop talking about how much she likes dancing at clubs and how little she cares for baseball. I don’t really like baseball all that much either but I don’t bore the hell out of people talking about it when they’re trying to get their buzz on.

6:27PM
-the little long haired guy who pitches for the Giants is pretty good. He winds up all crazy and then throws it in for a strike. The Texas guys can’t help but swing at it. It’s crazy. The Texas pitcher (editor’s note: his name is Cliff Lee) throws pretty good too.

7:52PM
-I just saw George Bush sitting in the stands. Actually both Bushes are in the stands. It’s so weird. W caused so much destruction and hell in the world and there he is just sitting in the stands enjoying a baseball game. Part of me wishes some hitter would lose the grip on his bat and throw it on the stands and nail that guy. But that would mess the game up and damn, the game is going good. Edgar Rantiria just hit a three run homer and the Giants are probably going to win the World Series.

8:34PM
-The old guys are screaming. They are crying. They are hugging. Even Renee is excited. I’m glad I’m here. They say it’s historical. We’re living history. That’s pretty cool.

9:17PM
-I felt like offering all the excited people a drink so I took the bottle out of my back pack and tried to pour some shots but then Renee started yelling and a guy started getting all in my face so I took the bottle and bounced. I’m writing this as I walk home.

10:25PM
-I was about to pass out but then I remembered the lady who woke me up this morning so I put a record on and started bumping it really loud. I hope it wakes her up and annoys her like she annoyed me. But I have a feeling she’s still up. The Giants won the World Series.

The Soul of a Dentist

By Dublin


Who wants to put their hands all in a mouth and tear away at the teeth and cut away at the bone and scrape the gums and battle the tongue and all the other God awful practices that fill a dentist’s day? What mental or spiritual scar causes a man or woman to dedicate their lives to the mouth, the place where foods of all kinds, and substances, and liquids, and other people’s body parts are placed and washed around? They’re disgusting. Human mouths are disgusting. Dirtier than dog mouths they say.

It should be noted that while I write this my mouth is aching after a session with one of these sick bastards. One half of my mouth is aching and the other half is numb and the whole thing has the sour bitter taste of the stuff they use to numb you up before they stick the big needle in your gum and begin to tear away at you. All they did was give me a filling but Jesus, as I lay there with bright light blinding me and the rhythm of the drill rattling through my bones I couldn’t help but reflect back on all the interactions I’ve had through my life with these sadists.

I write sadists. Is it too harsh? I don’t believe so. Every time these people come into work they don’t perform acts of medicine: they are performing acts of medieval torture. My first memory of having someone’s gloved fingers in my mouth was in elementary school when I was sent off to a dentist in our town that had his wife serve as his assistant. They were Japanese and very nice and would always give me a toothbrush at the end which inspired me to think I might live up to the high standards of my older sister who never had a cavity until her twenties or something. But it was not to be. After only a few days I would lose interest in my new toothbrush and it sat neglected on the shelf above our sink and I would return to the office of the dentist and his wife and they would have to go about repairing the damage that my youthful neglect had inflicted on my poor mouth.

During one of these sessions the dentist explained to me that he and his wife were Seventh Day Adventists and that their church met on Saturdays and that I really should think about coming down sometime. Being eleven I thought going to church on a Saturday was about the stupidest thing I had ever heard but they wouldn’t let it go. “You really should. I think you would like the other kids there,” they said and I couldn’t agree or disagree because their hands and their instruments were crammed into my mouth and I couldn’t shake my head because my skull was crammed into the pocket of the dental chair so all I could do was nod slightly which only egged them on. “Oh good. Oh good. We sing a lot you know? And there are kids your age who have a great time. You must come. Your really must come.” I was so pissed at being solicited while at their mercy I could have screamed if I wasn’t being gagged and scraped and everything else.

That experience turned me off for the next ten years. I didn’t see another dentist until I was on my own in the East Bay and a piece of one of my teeth came off while I was eating Chinese food. I thought that was a fairly clear sign that it was time to see someone. I pulled up dentists in my area on the internet and just went with who ever was closest to where I worked. It turned out to be a lady doctor from Iran who had been taught dentistry in Tehran. This lady informed me that my corroding tooth was the result of not seeing anyone for ten years (really? What a surprise!) and that she would need to remove the tooth and put a bridge into my mouth. I said go ahead and next thing I knew she was shaving and burning that tooth away along with the two teeth next to it and making my life a living hell.

This woman had no trace of sensitivity or gentleness in her. She banged and ripped away at my mouth like she was sculpting some sort of ugly corporate art piece. Mechanics have a softer touch on a broken down jalopy. And it never ended. She made a mold of my mouth to get the bridge made and a week later I would show up for her to install it. She would force it into the gap, smashing it down onto my teeth, trying to make it fit until she gave up and said: “Oh shoot. This is not the right size. They must have got the measurements wrong.” Three times this happened, leading to the point where it was ridiculous and everyone just wanted it to be over including the doctor and her Iranian receptionist who’s smile got smaller and more tight lipped every time I showed up in the lobby.

By the last session we barely spoke or greeted each other. I just sat down and she began to wail away at me, coldly, angrily. We all knew I would never be back. She was the worst dentist Persia had ever spit out. I would have found someone new long before that but when you’re in the middle of that kind of procedure it really is hard to change horses mid stream. So I lay there in the chair and I took the abuse she dished out and I never raised my hand in pain even as tears stood ready at the edges of my eyes. As politically incorrect as it may be I couldn’t help but envision us in a cave somewhere and I was the captured infidel and she was the righteous holy warrior carrying out jihad on my mouth. All the current events and tensions between our cultures at that time (it was 2002) were being acted out on a tiny scale in that bright corner of her dental office.

Today I went to a new dentist and he turned out to be Croatian which was comforting because my Dad’s side of the family hails from there but it sadly made no difference. He still tore into me and treated my mouth like his playground where he played out his sick sadistic fantasies. The fact that we could be distant cousins didn’t change his attitude. He still had the sickness. He still had the soul of a dentist.

Kirk & Spock Drop Acid

D.W.F.R by Robert Fong







Let’s start this one off with a little clarification. The name is FONG, not f**king HONG.

There has been a lot of talk on the Internet about my last name changing in these posts and for the record it wasn’t Dublin’s fault although he should have caught it. It was my fault. I spelled my own f**king name wrong. F**k it.

Moving on: I hate Trekkie's and trekkers and all the other God d**n nerds that populate the early morning forums on Saturday mornings talking about how hot the green girl is and how new Spock is way better than old Spock and blah blah blah. They are a bunch of creepy asexual freaks. I’m not saying I’m a f**king Star Wars fan that’s hanging from George Lucas’s n*ts either. I mean “Phantom Menace”?? C’mon! Not one of the Star Trek movies have sucked that f**king bad, s**t. But today we’re going to talk about the one that came close: Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

We all know the seventies was a really f**ked up time. After the free love and all the drugs and the love of the sixties the next decade came down and rained angel dust, bad trips, and Jones Town. That’s how Star Trek: T.M.P. feels after the TV show. The TV show was off the chain: Uhura looking good, Scotty was getting drunk and fighting Klingons, McCoy was staring bug eyed at Nurse Chapel, Spock was getting high off spores and laughing with flowers in his hair, and Captain Kirk…..s**t Captain Kirk was the f**king man.

But now we find them in the seventies and nobody’s happy. It might be because they are wearing the ugliest f**king uniforms you have ever seen besides those f**king horrendous things they were wearing in the first couple seasons of the Next Generation (dude, nothing says 1989 like Captain Picard saying “engage” in his tight ass little uniform. Ugggghh.) Beyond the uniforms, everybody is so f**king serious. Even Kirk, who used to be down to have a laugh on the bridge after kicking some serious a** is acting all weird and discombobulated. Plus, Bill Shattner’s hair had become brown and curly and he has a look on his face like he knows he isn’t fooling a single f**king person (dude wore a piece since the first season in 1966 but at least it looked like his real hair. This s**t looks like a f**king trible on his dome).

McCoy, usually my favorite character, doesn’t have s**t to do but stand around and stare around with those bugged out eyes. And Spock is on some weird Vulcan spirit quest where he bonds with the one enemy the crew faces in the movie: a big a** f**king robot spaceship named Vrger. Can we all say lame together really loud? God d**n!! Whoever wrote the movie was hanging from 2001: A Space Odyssey’s n*ts way too hard. All the shots are slowwwwwwwwww. Kirk takes a shuttle to the Enterprise in the beginning and it takes literally twenty f**king minutes! They could have called the movie Star Trek: Kirk Takes a Shuttle Ride. I’m not kidding. It’s probably the most exciting part of the whole film.

Fans of the show must have been pissed. I mean I wasn’t alive at the time (my mom birthed me in 1988) but I can imagine they came to the theater super juiced to see the Star Trek crew on the big screen doing big things and instead they get this long a** shuttle ride. They must have freaked out! They must have gone f**king ape sh*t! The writers and the producers must have been herded back to their little nerd cave and told to get off the pot, start drinking snake wine, and come up with some real f**king gangsta sh*t.

Luckily for them they did. It’s called Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn and it’s one of the baddest motherf**king space adventures ever filmed. Bob Fong is out. That’s Bob FONG. Not HONG you f**king nerds.

Robert Fong is currently rooting for the Yankees in the play off's and is also working on a one man show entitled "Fong Shway: Confessions of Cinimaphile". No dates have been set for the shows premier at the this time.