85. Got Stucco On Your Face, Gent
6/22/25
Heya!
Last Monday we took the kayaks out of storage and launched them in Estacada Lake which is really just a wide portion of the upper Clackamas River created by a dam.
I didn’t think this poem was worthy of it’s own “poem” section of the newsletter but it sums up the trip.
Estacada Lake By Kayak
Saw eagles today, and baby ducks -
Swimming behind their mom, as if pulled on a string,
So perfectly aligned and paced.
Never see dads, what’re they doing?
Some boys jumped off rocks, a couple of girls shivered in the June
Shadows, other boys came dressed for a metal show.
Boat fucks left big wakes surely to fuck with woke paddlers.
One kid thought he had a fish but had a snag. It’s always a snag.
There are those who wade in after lost lures, and those who shrug.
I shrug.
This week’s newsletter arrives from Seattle. We will be selling Theresa Arrison ceramics at the Renegade Art Fest. If you are reading this on Sunday morning and are in the area come on down!
Amputating The Isthmus
Here’s a commercial for the 11th KalloHumina release, “Amputating The Isthmus.”
The album was originally called “Split Panda” before the cover art was finalized.
When the artwork arrived with a drawing of a cat the name was changed to a much less confusing title.
Thanks to Theresa Arrison for her participation.
DJ Larstonovich talked a little about each track in a Skullcrushing Hummingbird cross-promotional exclusive.
He was not amenable to participating in a formal interview for this lp’s media cycle.
Amputating The Isthmus - I just started planning a trip to Istanbul. It is a city on an isthmus that separates what we call Europe and Asia. I’m mentally amputating the whole journey so I can wrap my brain around making it happen.
1. Rain Jer Drick
I could hear a massive rainstorm. It sounded beautiful hitting the shrubbery outside the kitchen window so I recorded it and made a song. I wish I could remember what I sampled for the beat. All the kids read Ranger Rick in the 80’s
2. Bygone Era
I wrote some rhymes. I was learning to wrangle the sequencer portion of my MiniBrute 2 synth and that provided the main groove.
At some point João Igreja may add beats in a remix.
It was mentioned that Sonny Bono’s name drop is a call back to “Sonny Bono’s Favorites” by The People’s Tongue. This was unintentional but not unwarranted.
3. Lzr-Flyd
There seems to be a trend where vowels are cancelled.
This title comments on that and some of the synths sound like lasers and as a kid there were always advertisements for “Laser Floyd” at the Hayden Planetarium in NYC. I never went. Apparently they cranked Pink Floyd songs and lasers made crude images dance on the ceiling. The audience was primarily male and stoned or tripping balls if they were brave enough.
DrumBrute and 3 tracks of MiniBrute 2 synth.
4. I Dreamed I Cat Fished A Robot
Self explanatory A.I. exploration.
Not sure where that voice came from, besides the effects on the Roland SP404 MKII. Something deeper is happening though.
5. A Hymn For Brian
I got a DrumBrute analog drum machine for my birthday. This is one of the earliest beats I made with it. I really dug it. Then I added a couple of synths and recorded the vocals. This became “King of Wands.”
The night of Brian Wilson’s death I listened to Pet Sounds. When I woke up the next day I decided to ditch the “King of Wands” vocals and just kind of try and do some wordless chorus stuff. This is the result. I am not a singer.
8. Remarkable Pitch
I have no pitch, can’t sing and I have a bad ear for figuring out how to play other people’s songs without being shown the chords. This is also about shows like American Idol and how just because you can sing doesn’t mean I want to hear you sing.
7. Office Suppliers
This one goes out to everyone who was/is excited by a good pen and a Trapper Keeper
8. Untidy Breathwork
Experiments with midi “strings” and a sampler.
(Bonus Track) 9. King of Wands
See “A Hymn For Brian”
Rhymes
Bygone Era sipping coffee from sumatra caught ya looking for a way out here you have no clout but i’ve got gout insane amounts of meds got that pharma cred big medical on my jock system shock lasers in my breakfast teasing you erect as a tower named eiffel i don’t trifle with suckers duck under trestles trains over head feel it in my blood vessels like a vassal in a castle a viscount with a discount smoked marlboro reds wearing keds on your bmx in distress as as a princess in a fez lesbian bonnet on your head dry-walling the basement got stucco on your face, gent hallelujah its saturday miles to go before i can lay down with the kitties in cosmopolitan city sitting on an isthmus betwixt asia and europe don’t mix this up into your fantasy gang green there’s a chance you’ll see to get amputated up to the knee it’s with glee you send emojis counterfeit trojan ponies last pez in the dispenser g heartfelt apologies whack mcs notice me cleaning clocks and their jealousy ostensibly green it ain’t their scene the gangster lean is a bygone era with Cher and sonny bono and cuomo in nyc no place to be seen anymore its all about the mojave and honey bees pollinating brain cells your schtick smells dropping mics sipping muscatels reading dwell in my nest way out west can you pass the test? Bygone Era is a song on the new KalloHumina LP "Amputating The Isthmus" and is dedicated to Yves Abouchar of The People's Tongue.
Hypernormalization
I’m feeling this every time I read about people seeking aid getting gunned down and our politicians remain silent. When they tell us with a straight face they are giving our money to billionaires. When they cancel trans youth suicide hotlines. Drag kids out of schools and throw them in jail.
When my co-worker came in with his parents who were visiting from Ukraine. Just showing them the sites of our little shopping district. Their other son was killed a few months ago a few days after the US stopped sharing military intelligence.
Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia
As a kid reading 1984 one of the concepts that stuck was the idea of perpetual war. Oceania was always at war with Eastasia or Eurasia.
Sometimes people couldn’t remember who it was but they’d be reminded during the daily “2 minutes hate” when they’d gather to watch propaganda films. Even though the enemies and alliances alternated whoever the current enemy was had always been the enemy. 2+2=5
I thought it was an elaborate metaphor, surely in reality we’d always remember who was our ally and who was our enemy.
You know Russia was our ally in WWII and … oh shit…
Iran was obviously our enemy. They took American hostages!
Iran was at war with Iraq so Iraq must be our ally.
We sold them weapons to fight Iran.
The Palestinians were always our enemy! They were called terrorists on the news. When 9/11 happened, as the news admitted they had no idea who was responsible, they still chose to cut to clips of what looked like a huge mob cheering the burning of the American Flag! Oh, right, it turned out that it was old repurposed footage of about a dozen people shot many months before. Whoops!
Oh wait, Saddam Hussein is our enemy! He threatens the American way of life. How? I have no idea. Iraq is our enemy!
But… I thought we liked Iraq and hated Iran?
Oh, you’re not gonna mention that on the news? It’s as if Iraq was always our enemy. But armed with our weapons.
Like the Taliban who we armed against Russia…
Hmmmmm. This is starting to smell a lot like Eurasia and Eastasia.
Well now Iran is back in the saddle.
These “wars” (i.e. aggressions by Israel and the US) seem a lot less abstract now that I have friends with families in Israel and Iran. A coworker just came into work with his parents who are visiting from Ukraine. His brother recently died in the war.
The propaganda is a lot more transparent.
Cat Dad
hosted a Substack post for Cat Dads on Father’s Day. 
We miss you Hagen!
Visual Noise
“A Hymn For Brian” from the new KalloHumina LP “Amputating the Isthmus.”
These weird vocal moans were actually an attempt to sing praise to the recently departed Brian Wilson. Though it sounds creepy it was recorded with tons of heart and soul.
Plugstack
(a new feature where I try and steer you towards others Substack newsletters I enjoy)
The latest VCT newsletter tackles “Talking and not talking about basketball, Zen center life, barber shops, and reggae.”
Here’s a teaser:
It’s good for a laugh to respond to the Gen X Guy prompt “I’ve been revisiting The Replacements discography, what have you been listening to lately” by talking about Texas metal band Pyramids and their new album’s surprisingly successful blend of black metal, shoegaze, and reggaeton. “Ha ha ha” but soon they’re heading back to the buffet for more spinach dip and I’m looking for the bathroom and feeling weird about all of the unmonetizable, conversationally useless knowledge I’ve acquired over the last 50 years. As a fellow middle-aged music weirdo friend from online once posted, “Whenever people ask me to DJ at a normal party I reflect on how much time and money I’ve spent collecting some of the most unlistenable music ever recorded.” Sadly, it seems unlikely I’ll be finding a publisher anytime soon for Scorched Vibes, my 656-page inter-dimensional history of DJ Screw’s influence on contemporary vaporwave.
Thanks
.This post also inspired me to climb back on the NBA wagon this next fall, and all also maybe write about my on and off relationship with Basketball in a forthcoming ‘stack.
Thanks, as always, for reading. See ya next Sunday!
Outstanding commentary about 1984's relationship with our changing alliances.
More non-traditional NBA commentary from unexpected sources please!
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