POSSESSEDTHEFANZINEFORSLACKERSANDHATERSINSIDETHISISSUE:GOSSIPSURVEILLANCEHOMETOWNTRIBUTESTAND-UPCOMEDYCAVEPAINTINGSPUNISHMENT&MORE!!!ISSUE122.50USD
Finland - The cave paintings in Finland look like when a little kid starts drawing and he’s gripping the pencil the same way a monkey grips a banana. I guess at that point in time, our first ancestors were looking a lot more like Bubbles the Chimp and a lot less like whatever ugly mug you see in the mirror these days. Still when you compare it to other art in other portions of the world, the Finns had a long way to go before finding their Carl Larsson, who wasn’t even Finnish, he was Swedish, so it looks like they still have some work to do to find their Carl Larsson. While other countries were capturing essences of the flora and fauna around them in vibrant colors that leapt off the rock walls, early FInnish homo sapiens were drawing stick figures of moose that look more like schematics than they do potential game. Absolutely no finesse or technique. Pathetic Finland.
CAVE PAINTING CRITIQUE
France/Spain - I have to lump these two countries in together because their border actually has a cluster of caves that house similar art styles. Also back then there was definitely not a border between these two countries for all we know, unless archaeologists discover presence of 50,000 year old berets and striped long-sleeve shirts on one side of it and 45,000 year old evidence of community mid-day napping zones on the other. I have to give props to these caveman bullfrogs, these animal portraits are really well done. They not only paint a picture of what these animals look like in a honed-in simplicity, but they somehow also radiate the aura of what these animals instilled in these cro-mags. Some favorites include the perfectly hued and anatomically accurate bison at Altamira and the silhouette of a gigantic deer with dodeca-pronged antlers next to a scared dude with a bird.
Indonesia - What could be the oldest piece of art in the world, a painting of a hog, was recently discovered in Indonesia, but what the caves across these millions of islands are most known for are stencils of hands. These are pretty sick for a few reasons. First of all, most of the hands depicted are left hands, which means that these cavemen knew what was up because right handers are perverts and deviants. Another reason is that these hand stencils give off a vibe of real community, which is definitely probably at it’s strongest when you’re a literal caveman that has to depend on others to help you gather non-poisonous mushrooms and hunt animals the size of Gundams. Finally, it’s always tripped me out that these hand stencils were made by munching on berries and other local rainbow herbs and straight up spitting them all over your hand. If you did that back then in your cave house with your homies, you would unknowingly be considered an artistic pioneer in a million years. Do that in your local eatery these days and in a million years nobody will give a shit because food will be consumed through usb drives inserted via anus.
Cavemen were artists too, so why shouldn’t they face the brunt of harsh criticism that removes them from context?
Shows seem to have been back for a while now but it was only on the 23rd of July that I made my return to a live musical event. The local acts were Toner, Kretin, and Trigger Discipline, the latter two being pretty raw and rudimentary (good thing) hardcore bands and the former being more of an indie variety. The headliner of the night was HOTLINE TNT,
Fugazi for the most part kinda blows but they have one really great and poignant song: “Great Cop.” “I look for wires when I’m talking to you” can really be what it feels like when you’re just trying to unwind at a show or a cafe or whatever the fuck else. It’s one of those things that permeates our interactions whether we like it or not. Someone’s gotta chime in with a little bit too much sauce: “Well they don’t hang out with this person because they said that they don’t like the color purple which that person took as a slight because their friends mom name is Purple so when Ron showed up and asked them what their problem was they slept with their best friend’s ex-boyfriend’s cousin…” and so on and so on. Even if we were on the longest and most boring car ride, or in line for the bathroom at the most punishing show, there’s no way on this earth I will ever bring myself to even pretend to care about your fucking irrelevant dry snitching. I’m sure that half the time, the people spilling these large and stinky cans of beans don’t even realize what they’re doing is “gossip.” On the flip side, some even see it as a hot tub to hop into and revel in. These people are doing free surveillance work for others who did not ask. It’s not just that I don’t want to know the personal lives of people I most likely do not even know or have ever heard of, I actively try and avoid these conversations. If you’re walking up to me, mentally rubbing your hands in a mischievous fashion, metaphorically loading and cocking your whispers and rumors, just keep in mind that I’m getting ready to launch a big, fat, and especially creamy hypothetical pie right into your fucking stupid ugly mug. Yeah, I like to talk some shit on people that bug me, it’s fun. But trust me, one thing I’m not giving a single flying fuck about is some informant-ass motherfucker running up to me like Randall from Disney’s Recess to tittle-tattle on whatever poor sucker might have accidentally wronged them. Getting told classified intel seriously makes me feel like I’m in on some gangstalking conspiracy network. Save this kind of childish behavior for FBI agents.
PUNK ROCK IS A SNITCH’S PARADISE!
GOSSIP SURVEILLANCE: YOUR TOWN, YOUR SCENE, YOUR FRIENDS!
familiar with by now. This fanzine you are holding has been obsessed with this band since the beginning, and seeing it live once more only makes me rediscover why. What stood out to me this time around was that there were riffs that straight up made the front row boogie like they were at Lollapalooza 1998 or some shit. People were definitely jutting their chests out to the rhythm like they were seeing a nu-metal band, which makes sense because TNT has indeed covered Deftones (bad thing) before. It’s cool when bands take influences like nu-metal or whatever and transform it to fit whatever style they’re playing without being obvious. Besides the music, being back at a show sucked. Long lines for bathrooms, running into punishers, the room stank like shit, there was no room to move, and posers abound. Stay home.
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A few years ago in Kobe, friend of the zine RAIZO (the dude with the AR in the back of PX) took my girlfriend and I to a tiny clothing boutique to show us a lil something. The company FLAGSTUFF had printed an all white hoodie with exact reproductions of each of Henry Rollins’ tattoos in their exact locations. In Japan, the backstreets and alleys can make a dumb foreigner like me feel like he’s stuck in an MC Escher painting. The roads twist and wind, and even if you have an address written down and a somewhat strong sense of direction, things become confusing pretty quick. Luckily Raizo is a local who knows these areas like the back of his bucket hat. Without him, our Japan trip would have been a series of givingupstances after multiple failed attempts at finding shops we thought were cool while missing in plain sight the shops that Raizo would have known are cool. So after about an hour or so of walking around Kobe, Raizo led us up to this boutique (that I don’t know the name of), tucked away in an office complex, which is somewhat normal out there. I finally had the hoodie in my hands. I knew I had to own this incredible artifact, but this was only the first day of our trip. Paying $200 for a hoodie might seem normal to some of you fashionistas out there but to me, someone who considers beer a wise investment, it was a hard gamble to pull the trigger of rolling the dice on, especially since my girlfriend was adamant that I would probably spill Buffalo sauce on it the moment we stepped back into the US. I tend to forget and not care about my missed chances on purchases but this one has continued to haunt me. This obsession of mine also forces me to reconcile the fact that I fucking hate Henry Rollins and everything he has to say about anything he wants to talk about with the concurrent fact that I would like to become him physically. Lifting weights consistently enough to look like hardcore’s Schwarzenegger is a daunting task but spending a few weeks worth of tips on a hoodie to slip into seems a bit more in line with my slacker lifestyle. Maybe some day I will get off my ass and continue my expedition to find this hoodie but for now I’ll stick to lifting my dumbbells as I sink into my couch watching Love Island.
POSSESSED RADIO 5PM 1ST THURSDAY EVERY MONTH LISTEN ON LOWER GRAND RADIO DANCE AND RANTS, SHIT TALK AND PUNK ROCK IT’S POSSESSED ON THE RADIO… NO JOKE!
• People are generally chill. A lot of people you meet in SD, especially as you get older, seem to come from out of town. This always tripped me the fuck out, because as much as I like San Diego, I have no idea why someone young would wanna move to somewhere so fucking lazy. Still, I would stack up probably about half of the people moving into town as generally relaxed people and about three quarters of the locals as the same. That works for me. Did you read the tagline of the zine? Slacker is like half the damn thing!
• When people write about San Diego, even if they are born and raised there, they always resort to this horrible cliche of the city “living in the shadow of Los Angeles.” Look, I love LA, a lot more than a lot of people in SD will admit, but for the love of fucking God, the two cities have fuck all in common. They are close to each other. That is literally it. I can guarantee everyone in San Diego that nobody in LA gives a fuck about any inferiority complexes that fake artists down south may have about living in a city that is not supportive of creative endeavors. People don’t talk about Philadelphia being in New York’s shadow, or Milwaukee being in Chicago’s shadow (as far as I know, let me know fi I am wrong), so let it go and enjoy the city you’ve got for what it is.
• On a related note, San Diego is a super conservative place. Not like Virginia or Arizona conservative, but for an area prime for coastal liberal elites, you see a lot more swastika bumper stickers than you would first expect. It’s a huge problem and the average normo doesn’t seem to give much of a shit.
What you see after suggesting that killing innocent people is wrong in San Diego.
• The food is really fucking good pretty much everywhere. It’s also cheap. I never really noticed it as I was living there but the more you leave the area the more you the reason nobody can ever decide on what to get for lunch back home is that there is so many good options. More about that on the next page.
LAME SHIT ABOUT SAN DIEGO:
• Speaking of shitty people to be around, around 1/3 of the population in this city is somehow connected to the military. Yes, a third. Isn’t that fucking crazy? You could be at an anarcho-sewer punk show and still have to watch your back if you talk shit too loud on people who voluntarily signed up to kill people in the middle east. What’s even worse is that the people in San Diego would gladly suck the precious toes of every troop they ever come across. Go to a baseball game and you’re expected to bow on your hands and knees for the military every moment there’s a time out. It’s lunacy.
THE TOPOSSESSEDUNAUTHORIZEDTRIBUTEITSHOMETOWN:COOLSHITABOUTSANDIEGO:
• The beach is nice but most of the people there are fucking unbearable. The beach I went to high school by, Ocean Beach, is a really cool looking place but the kids growing up there are weirdo BMX rasta nazis. The people in Pacific Beach are jock creepazoids. The beaches by La Jolla are known for being surrounded by rich racist assholes. The only cool beach around is Imperial Beach because it shares a border with Tijuana, which by the way is the coolest area close to San Diego.
It’s pretty beautiful almost everywhere. When I was a teenager I used to go to local antique stores and look through the vintage postcard section. I was a snotty teen that hated his hometown but when I looked at the views on the cards I thought, “damn why can’t San Diego look like this anymore?” I then realized, it still does.
• That’s about it.
• I guess it’s sort of obvious to say it, but being next to the beach at basically all times is pretty cool. The Pacific Ocean can freeze your balls up to your brain if you catch it on an off day, but you get used to it once you dunk your hair under the next gnarly wave crashing your way. Even if you’re not going in the water, maybe you can’t swim or something (learn now), it’s cool to just chill on the sand and read with your babe or get drunk with your friends. Tourists keep in mind, the signs say no alcohol, but the lifeguards don’t seem to give a shit and are probably drunk themselves. That’s probably why I haven’t heard from little Timmy since he went for a dip during high tide that one Monday morning.
MORE SD INSIDE INTEL:
• Iconic venue Che Cafe has an equally iconic microphone stand: a welded upright chain that weighs nearly a ton and is straight up an unbreakable hunk of metal. It’s demonic-looking, and totally rock star. Maybe because Rob Halford himself, who used to own a gay bar in Hillcrest, gifted it to the venue 25 years ago.
Sleep Walk “Thick Skull” - The best San Diego band ever.
Run For Your Fucking Life Everything - Lucky you, this band’s stuff is getting re-released soon. Absolutely dark, brutal, crushing, yet avoiding of all cliche.
Honorable mentions: Me, Blink 182, the guys who wrote “In-A-Gaddada-Vida,” Mario Lopez, Rey Mysterio, Nick Cannon, Adam Brody, scholar Mike Davis, Tom Waits, Jack in the Box fast food, Kris Jenner, Bob Burnquist (who I’ve met).
• Back in the 80s or 90s (same shit), The Vandals played famously violent city San Diego, made fun of the legion of skinheads in the crowd, and quickly regretted that decision. The skinheads marched up on stage, grabbed all the Vandals’ gear, and dipped out quick. San Diego’s violent reputation is before my time and has thankfully settled, but you can ask the guy from Neurosis or Henry Rollins about it.
• Regarding the Che: Zach de la Rocha recently penned a letter of support during a near shutdown, and Leftover Crack got banned from playing there because Stza smoked crack in the bathroom.
Baby Bash and Frankie J “Suga Suga” - Baby Bash isn’t from SD but Frankie J is, he’s even wearing an LT Chargers video in the video! This is a middle school dance classic, and that guitar lead sounds hard as fuck to play.
Raymond Chandler - My favorite author, who wrote classic LA detective novels starring Philip Marlowe such as The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, moved to La Jolla towards the end of his career. He even sent his dear private eye Marlowe to an analogue of the area, which he christened Esperanza, in his last novel Playback. You can even still check out his house, which would be completely pointless because it’s been totally renovated. Ship of Theseus much?
A SHORT RUNDOWN OF SOME INTERESTING RESIDENTS:
• The crackdown on sneaking into Comic Con has been getting tougher and tougher with the rise of the police state, but that doesn’t mean it’s not doable. Once you get in the convention center though, the only things you can count on are buying expensive toys and unknown comics, looking at Marvel mannequins, and meeting lowrate celebrities. I’ve met Andrew WK and Matt Groening, and even flipped off Gene Simmons.
A 619ER PLAYLIST OF HITS:
The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower “For Marcus” - Definitely a guilty pleasure. This is for the “post-hardcore amongst you.”
Shawn Nelson - Back in the 90’s, he became notorious for stealing a tank pretty easily, also in Linda Vista, and causing crazy damage to multiple aspects of the city public and private The cops had ran up on the slow moving vehicle on the 163 freeway, opened the hatch, and shot him dead. He remains a local legend.
…SEE YOU SOON, SAN DIEGO!
Lil Rob “Summer Nights” - If you’re at the right BBQ, you’re guaranteed to hear this soft rap classic.
70’s folk rock artist, but what makes him interesting was that he was obsessed with aliens, UFOs, the whole shebang, so much so that he wrote a whole album about it. To take the intrigue a step further, he disappeared without a trace in the desert of New Mexico, leaving behind a Volkswagen bug full of belongings. His body was never found. He was from Linda Vista, a top three San Diego neighborhood.
Heaven’s Gate - God’s Away Team gained notoriety in the mid-90s for committing a mass cult suicide in style, effectively driving the second market for the Nike Decade sneaker to unobtainable prices ever since. They did it in their ritzy rented home in the high class area of Rancho Santa Fe, a town that celebrities such as Rihanna would also eventually move to.
Jim Sullivan - I only recently discovered this somewhat obscure
(To the left, Shawn Nelson on his tour of destruction rolling past the Wienerschnitzel I used to go to, even to purchase items I reviewed for issues 1, 2, 3, and even 4 of Possessed!)
Crime Desire “Nadir” - This band has been around forever but this earlier hit of theirs makes me giddy with moshing butterflies. OK? “Earthseed/Duress” - Anarcho-punk that would fit perfectly into the line-up of Crass Records bands. Well, the good ones anyway! Highly highly recommended to check this out.
Switchfoot “Meant to Live” - Kids of evangelical Bush voters were probably thanking God for giving them a song with riffs like that to be accepted by their parents!
In the last issue of Possessed we talked about the weird shit that kids do. Well what do you think makes them so weird? Probably the bizarre and cruel and unusual punishments we all put them through. Here are only a few ways we make children miserable in return for acting like children.
Head down in the dark - Sometimes there’s those days where the entire class is acting up. Everyone in there has got the funkies and going crazy, ignoring the teachers futile attempts at behavioral domination by hitting everyone with the classic: “I’ll wait.” If prof is waiting too long you can bet your ass those lights are coming off and your head is going down on the desk. This shit sucked because it forced you to sit in silence and really reflect on your shameful actions, which lord knows I had a lot of those.
Pick up five pieces of trash - Instilling in children the idea that picking up trash is something that naughty people do is probably one of the many reasons that climate change is such a dire international crisis. I’m not sure how widespread this was outside of my elementary school, but if we weren’t on our particularly best behavior our teachers wouldn’t let us out to recess unless we pick up 5 or whatever other arbitrary number pieces of trash from the floor. Problem is, there’s like 20 kids in the class, so does missus teacher honestly believe there’s 100 articles of litter scattering the carpet right now? That’s when you pull out all the stops, like picking up a loose blade of grass or ripping out paper from your own note book and tossing it on the floor. Anything to get out of that room and go join your friends in Mrs Flores’ class in a sweaty-ass game of four square.
MHUPNISENT
Silent treatment - This one is weird because it’s how kids punish each other. The moment one crosses another in an egregious way, you better believe little Timmy will refuse to go along with your shenanigans by shutting you out completely. Like, to the point of actually making you think you have become a ghost. Might as well put it to the test and give him a nice ol’ wet willy just to make sure, eh?
Dunce cap - Did this shit actually exist? Long pointy cone cap that indicates to your peers that you’re a fucking moron. Might as well dress the damn 8 year old up in some clown make-up and comically large shoes while you tar and feather him in the town square. By the time I entered kindergarten (1999) this kind of shit was out of vogue, so I was lucky enough to never don such headwear, but if I was ever subjected to such humiliation at such a young age, I’m sure I would be sniveling and crying in an uncontrollable guilt. Kind of reminds me of when my mom told me that when she was a girl in a Brazilian Catholic school they used to punish her by putting her in a trash can. I laughed because I was a dumb kid and trash is funny, but after she told me “that’s not actually funny, it’s a really horrible thing they did,” I couldn’t help but think “damn she’s right.” That’s why now, I salute every stupid old person I meet, because there is a huge chance they suffered through sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on so I could have a hat-free but still embarrassing childhood.
If the first half of a restaurants name is “Mr.” and the second half is a type of food, I’m already on board. If the place is called a food name followed by “King” then consider me a court jester.
Once you graduate 8th grade I think your right to brag about only ever wearing black should be revoked. You’re a grown man, it’s 85 degrees outside, you’re sweating your ass off. Nobody outside of your bubble of fake goth weirdos is impressed with the idea that you don’t know how to match basic colors with each Somethingother.that
A great QAnon related conspiracy theory I’ve seen online is the idea that Joe Biden’s TV appearances have been mostly CGI. I can’t lie, some of the evidence is pretty damning. My thing is though, if they’re making him CGI, why would they still make the fucking president of the United States a half dead rotting muppet bimbo when they could be making him do cartwheel sequences into backflips on the White House lawn. I’m waiting for deepfakes of Biden doing handstand push-ups in preparation for his Judo exhibitions and they give us the same blathering ape that he’s been for the last 30 years. Just another reason the US is inferior to Russia as a superpower, Putin actually does all that shit they put in the pinup calendars of him.
I remember in 4th grade learning about settlers in the “olden times” coming to California and having a high infant mortality rate because they would have their babies sleep on the floor and then the baby would be so cold that it would die. You would think that by, I don’t know, maybe the second dead baby on the floor, they would think of building a crib?
STICK THESE IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE EM!
kinda bugs me (that I also do) is when I’m with someone and we both witness something that makes us go “what the fuck,” and when the confusion is cleared up the other person goes “oh man I was like what the fuck!” Yea I know you were dude, I was standing right there with you! My memory might be bad but I can take a mental note of your pathetic state of disarray from just one minute ago.
Speaking of superpowers, if you genuinely think Xi Jinping is getting fuming beet-red mad at you for posting photos of him looking like Winnie the Pooh on your Twitter account, please take a gaze up at the stars to remind yourself how insignificant you are. He’s the president of China. Literally China. The biggest country in the world by like millions of people. He doesn’t give a fuck about your bizarre American obsession with making him look like a Disney character. He’s got papers to sign and shit.
I’m currently reading a book called City of Quartz by Mike Davis. It’s about Los Angeles from a bunch of different angles and it’s pretty good so far but I’m not gonna go into too much detail. I do want to touch on the fact that he points out that European intellectuals like Adorno came to LA in the first half of the 20th Century and they all hated it there. It was because there was no sophisticated class of smart people who would sit at cafes and pontificate about the metatextual ontology of historiographic anomie or fucking whatever. That is fucking awesome. This is an amazing case for Los Angeles in the contest for coolest city in the world. Everyone there is fucking dumb and they love it and don’t give a shit because they’re all sexy and dress like crazed PCP dealers who are skinny because they only ever eat sushi. These aforementioned philosophers and intellectuals all lived in places like Berlin, Paris, and Vienna, where certain cafes were known to attract those intimate with public speculative discussion on social issues and the arts. The closest thing we have to that back home in Southern California is boba shops.
IRON LUNG RECORDS has two newish ones I’ve also been rocking with lately. SPIRITO DI LUPO’s “4 Songs” is simple, blown-out, trudging, stomp shit. It sounds super European but shockingly, I mean that in a good way! A lot of military marching band drum rolls, and vocals that are super chill and lazy. Really digging the “vibes” on this one. The other release is a self-titled cassette from DIRECT THREAT. It’s another Denver band, same scene that produced THE CONSEQUENCE and COMBAT FORCE, both of whom I really liked, even though COMBAT FORCE has probably the dumbest fucking lyrics ever. DIRECT THREAT is more of similar style shit. Pseudo-skinhead, trebly guitars, distorted everything, probably recorded at the back end of a garbage pail, all shit I tend to be a sucker for.
Turnstile is rolling out what I assume to be a new album (it’s probably out by the time you’re reading this) and it has people slobbering like the Tasmanian devil. This band being the hottest in hardcore for nearly TEN YEARS NOW has always kind of confused me, but I think I have some respect for the guys. I get the sense that they truly do want to make music and hardcore on their own terms, and utilize aesthetics that they perceive to be somewhat rare in the scene that they dominating. It’s weird right, because they kinda are pretty unique but then a bunch of bands take their shit to Kinkos and carbon copy the living two-step out of it, and it quickly becomes corny (Turnstile always was and still is, that can be okay though). One of their new videos, which spans three/four upcoming song, strikes me as these dudes really indulging in their desire to construct a cohesive visual and cinematic companion to their music, which okay cool, but for fucks sake man, did it have to look like an Urban Outfitters Super Bowl commercial? Some parts are cool but others look like some Petra Collins-style, memories-of-Easter color palette, Depop director’s cut. The last part of the video even glorifies stage potatoes! It’s literally the band playing on a set, and there’s a bunch of kids being stage potatoes. Now that’s where I draw the line.
Yes, I am fully aware that ever since I swore I would never talk about hardcore in POSSESSED ever again, I have literally talked about hardcore in every single thing I’ve written since then. But take a guess what playboy? POSSESSED is a team of one and that one is me, and that me makes the rules. If I were to take a literal and unironic guess, I would wager that hardcore takes up a good 20-23% of my brain space. That’s an embarrassing amount, especially so since I tend to hate people who seem to only care about hardcore and nothing else. You quickly realize though, it’s not that these people care about hardcore, they care about its shell. Yea, that might seem like I’m gatekeeping and pretentious but I like sick shit and I like it in a sick way so if these posers can’t keep up then that isn’t my fault, double that since I’m a thousand percent positive these people don’t give a dirty fuck about my stupid opinion. Speaking of which…
Proof of stage potato glorification. C’mon man.
That first little wave of post-COVID shows was kind of a trip huh? Like, a million kids showing up to some warehouse parking lot to circle pit to beatdown bands. For a minute there, the footage of show after show struck me as domino game of one-ups-manship. On the other hand though, kids went a year and a half without moshing so I get it. Not sure how to really expand on that, but you can judge by the footage yourself, and if you disagree feel free to send me a DM threatening to literally kill me at the next show I go to.
On a more positive note, the HEADCHEESE LP from a few months back truly makes me feel like a stupid person. That is the key to good hardcore. Music so dumb I had to re-learn object permanence after first listen. This here is a rare instance of a band jumping from demo cassette straight to LP and not losing an ounce of bite or slobber. Demo favorite “Talk to the Therapist” is the only song that graduated to album-status, but again, that original poison is fully intact. If you missed out on the raves about this band in earlier issue, you’re fucking dumb and should have been reading POSSESSED earlier and listening to everything I’m suggesting you. It’s fun but still angry, it rocks without sounding like cocktail bar bullshit, it’s just Headcheese. Nothing else like it.
The Cardigans “Over the Water” - These are some fucking buttery smooth vocals. The instrumental is barebones but still sweet, and you can really feel the space between them in the room. It’s short and it’s catchy, and if a song has those two characteristics than I’ll for sure be sucking it dry of all it’s juice until I can’t take the sweetness any longer. Also, this band covers not one, not one and a half, but two whole Black Sabbath songs!
MORE SOUNDWAVES FROM POSSESSED HQ
Waka Flocka Flame “T.T.G.” - I am completely convinced that Lex Luger was sampling the Flockaveli beats from early Warcraft games. This whole song in is Flocka sending me on a quest to destroy the Orc barracks with the help of my legion of Paladins. More on Flocka: “No Hands” played a total of five times at my high school prom.
A92, A9KSav, A9Dbo Fundz “Spin Dat” - did this first dude literally eat a Sulphur Hexafluoride? This is probably the deepest voice I’ve heard on record. This dude must be live at the top of a magic beanstalk or some shit, he sounds that big. Otherwise this song is super-cool drill from Fucking Ireland that includes people saying terms I don’t understand. It sounds scary as fuck yet is from Ireland’s eleventh largest town. Explain that to me.
Parannoul “Analog Sentimentalism” - If there is one genre term in this world that I hate more than “power violence” it definitely has to be “shoegaze.” Especially when it comes to newer bands: any time something is suggested to me that is qualified as being “shoegaze” it sounds like Nothing or Whirr and those are two of the most boring bands that come to memory in recent years. Seriously it is some pathetic excuses for songwriting in this world of woozy guitars. Parannoul is a band so sad and depressed that I can overlook a label as egregious as shoegaze, because at least this sad sack cares at least somewhat about writing melodies. These melodies stick too, so I guess I’ll stick with this shit until it proves me boring.
Atlas Oficial “Driblando Igual Ronaldo” - I somehow recently found out that UK’s pengest export, grime, has a giant scene of its own in Brazil. This single cover is nuts first of all, but what I typically look for in grime (absolute balls to the wall hype-as-all-fuck energy up the bum) isn’t really here. This is kind of a laid back one but this one has a lot of angles to it I love. There’s some wobbly bass, mentions of Nike shoes, and a vague focus on a soccer player, which is something I’ve looked out for since hearing Niska’s “Matuiduit Charo PSG Freestyle” which is also an insane listen. Also I love a song that sounds like it’s the last thing I hear before getting thrown out of a 250th story window in São Paulo.
ABBA “SOS” - I grew up to my mom playing the ABBA Gold CD on the house stereo pretty regularly, and I’ve definitely revisited certain hits here and there as I’ve grown up. Somehow this song has only recently flicked my bulb. That chorus is so heavy that it would fit right into a mid-90’s Hum or Helmet album. The lyrics cry out in desperation and the vocals are tender enough to match. I feel like dumber than an IKEA instruction booklet trying to dissect one of the most popular and influential pop acts of all time in a punk zine but here we are. Regarding ABBA I also want to point out that the verse in “Lay Your Love on Me” was cribbed for the Vengaboys song “Boom Boom Boom Boom.”
Before the thing starts im at the bar trying to get a bit loosey goosey and this guy next to me starts telling me he’s going up that night and we start talking about comedy stuff. I thought “ok cool im starting to make some friends in this world.” This dude goes up onstage and goes something like “Everyone has that coworker that is weird you know? Like I have this one coworker, total weird guy, and every time he talks im like uh okay??” What the fuck man? You think you’re the funniest dude in the city and that’s what you come up with? If someone said that to you, would you find that funny at all? You wouldn’t, so why the fuck would you say it on stage!! Eventually I go on, I do pretty well for my first time, but I run out of material halfway through, and I just start riffing, which actually did kinda well. All I remember joking about is how when people protest sea world they only care about whales and dolphins because they are smart but not seals because they are stupid. I somehow made it to the next round of the competition.
I’m probably a pretty a funny dude. I must be if you suckers keep coming back and paying a whopping 2.50 to read my bullshit every so often. So a few years back, in 2017 when I was 23, I thought I would try my hand at a stand up, which is probably the most embarrassing thing I will ever admit in this zine. My girlfriend and I thought it would be fun to go to a few open mic nights at a comedy club tucked away in a mall in downtown San Diego. As you could predict, they were wretched. At most there would be about 10 people in the club at the time, most of them aspiring comedians or employees of the club. There were a few laughs here and there but for the most part, we were getting bombarded with every hack piece of bullshit you could imagine. Jokes about the Human Centipede movie franchise, fake awkward personas, and people going “come on, that was funny!” after bombing. It’s only a matter of time before a punk starts thinking “what the fuck, I could do this!”
So I’m like ok, I’m pretty good at this, but I have to practice before the next round so I might as well sign up for an open mic, on October 2nd. I also remember that the stuff that got the hardest laughs the first time around was when I was just riffing shit off the top of my head. So I do some shitty math and think, I might as well put myself under the pressure of improv-ing on stage and hone that skill right away since I did pretty alright at it last time. What a dumb fucking idea that was. During the open mic, there is barely anyone there, but they’re a great crowd. They laugh at everything everyone else is doing. I’m nervous as fuck, I hop on stage, and continue to make myself sound like an alien from fucking Planet X piecing together random words he saw on human TV. Unfortunately, compared to the first time I did stand-up, I can remember basically everything I said. First I went “Is anyone here from San Diego?” and nobody answers. I go “Really? Nobody? Okay never mind. Anyway, I think there should be more Italian presidents.” Then a guy goes “Yeah!” and then I just don’t finish the thought. I ramble some more over an awkward silence. Then I’m thinking “alright I gotta say some outrageous shit or something because I sound like a fucking idiot right now.” So I go, “So did you guys hear about that Las Vegas shooting? People always say the same old thing ‘I would never expect him to do something like this!’ Really? The guy with a cache of like 250 assault rifles would never shoot up a crowd full of people?” That was October 2nd. The shooting in question happened October 1st. As you would imagine, any sound in the room quickly disappeared. It was the quietest moment in my life I have ever experienced. I was onstage probably around 90 seconds before I went, “Okay that was it, thank you” and walked off the stage. I got home, emailed the club to drop out of the Funniest Person competition, cried, and haven’t been on a stage ever since.
So i did. Instead of signing up for an open mic, I tried to kick my own tush into gear by signing up for San Diego’s Funniest Person Contest. It’s a five minute spot for every contestant, across multiple nights, ten contestants a night, three make it through to the next round every night, and most people competing are veterans of the local comedy circuit. One guy competing that was an actor who was one of the security guys in the mental hospital in Terminator 2.
MY FORAY INTO STAND-UP COMEDY
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You read the ad didn’t you? POSSESSED RADIO IS ONLINE AT LOWER GRAND RADIO EVERY FIRST THURSDAY OF THE MONTH FROM 5PM TO 6:30PM. IT’S NOT A PODCAST, IT’S ACTUAL FREAKING RADIO! So tune in, maybe even call in, and here my co-host and I talk some shit about what’s in the latest issue, our other unrelated issues, and the music we have been digging lately. Hopefully from now on it coincides with the release of the zine and all of its companions (ie POSSESSED LITE and POSSESSED JUMBO). It should be a fun time, and if it’s not, I’ll quit in a rage-fueled tantrum and blame it on the audience! It’ll work out for everyone.
Otherwise, life in the bay has been okay. I’ve already lived up here before so at least I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I got my old job back and I don’t even have to deal with customers now, I’m literally sitting at a desk entering numbers all day. It gets kind of boring but it beats having to explain to people that the pizza in the bottom corner of the case is a pepperoni, meatball, sausage slice fifty times a day. I also finally found a gym that doesn’t cost $200 to sign up for so it’s only a matter of time before I quit the zine-making “business” and commit full0time to my bodybuilding ventures.
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As I’ve stated before, Possessed has moved operations to Oakland, CA. The journey was not a smooth one. About a month before the move I bought a car for $1700 from the smog check guy about a block away from our old apartment, a 1998 Toyota Camry. Fast forward to the day of the move and I’m in my girlfriend’s car and Kevin is driving my car. He’s following us for a good while until we hit southern Los Angeles and he puts the hazards on, slows down a bunch and pulls off an exit. We go find him and the car is dripping tons of liquid and it won’t start. We push it into the parking lot of an Outback Steakhouse with the help of some drunk dude and end up waiting two hours for the AAA tow truck to arrive. We take it to the mechanic and after a little bit of waiting the guy checking on my car says that the timing belt skipped, so it’s either cough up 900 bucks and wait a couple days to get on our way or I can sell it to the mechanic for $100 and get the fuck out off dodge. I chose the latter, and no I don’t need any emails or letters telling me how stupid it was. Luckily my girlfriend’s brother was taking his truck up with us and he has a trailer hitch so we managed to pick up a Uhaul and get up to the Bay Area the same day, only leaving behind my month-old 1998 Toyota Camry.
AUGUST 2021
