I Saw Scout Niblett and Someone Threw a Beer Can at Her Head

By: Kelly McClure

I can't stop thinking about this. I can't stop thinking about how I went to see Scout Niblett perform at Saint Vitus in Brooklyn on Friday and that during that show someone threw a beer can at her head. 

I was supposed to interview Scout for an online magazine for free but I decided, prior to the show, that I don't really want to write for any publication for free unless it's this one. Aside from that, I'm into this whole thing now where I spend money on the things that I like going to, and then spend my time at the thing enjoying myself, rather than standing there having volcano gas because I'm nervous about having to talk to someone about something. My main career now, aside from my actual career, is enjoying my life - which is nice.

Do you know what else is nice? This. In February Scout Niblett, who is my GF's favorite performer, agreed to write out a Valentine's Day message to her and take a picture of herself holding it, which would then be used as the main image in the album announcement I did for her. This is probably the nicest thing to ever happen to me, and to us, that someone else caused to happen. Most people in our lives are cooters and ding dongs. But not Scout Niblett.  We were going to maybe say something in person to her about this at the show, and had about 55 opportunities to do so, but we just sat at the bar making commentary about things instead, and then, when she started performing, stood front and center, right in front of her face, where we knew it was a rule that nobody was supposed to talk to anybody about anything.

Most people know this rule, about how it's not okay to talk during shows, but few people give a shit about it. I personally prefer to spend my time at a show standing very still while putting an expression on my face that tells the person I'm watching "I love you in a non-threatening way." Some people though, like a certain fat man at this night's show, like to spend their time yelling things like "you know how to play that thing don't you?" And then tossing a beer can at the performer's head while her eyes are closed and she's singing an emotional song.

One minute, I'm standing there watching Scout sing and thinking something along the lines of "I like that this is happening right now," and the next I see a empty PBR tall boy can fly through the air, buzz Scout's right ear, and clank to the middle of the stage. I made a open mouthed "oh no" face when this happened and then immediately locked eyes with Scout's guitar player who was making a "nice. Real nice" face. Scout's guitar player looked like a smaller version of Dermot Mulroney and I could tell that he thought every single person, apart from maybe me on account of us sharing that moment together, was stupid. 

I'm sorry that someone threw a beer can at your head, Scout Niblett. You're really nice and great.

@WolfieVibes 

The Three Don’ts Of Shopping For Curtains

By: Ben Johnson

The birthplace of nightmares.

I like watching football, okay, you guys? I do. I really do. I’d love to sit and watch football all the ding dang day. Every Sunday, man oh man it would be great if I could just sit there and watch all twelve hours of it, and oh yes, also the same thing on Thursday nights and Monday nights. I know people who do this. They seem like they’re pretty happy most of the time. I’d like that to be me.

But I’m also a human being. So I don’t get to do that. Ever. I don’t get to look at my loving girlfriend and say to her, with a straight face, “I can’t look at window treatments with you because I have to sit and watch football today because it’s Sunday and football’s on.” Because she will, rightfully, yell at me. Our windows require treatment more urgently than my eyeballs require football. This logic is difficult to argue with. Watching football is not an actual need. Curtains, though also not an actual need, are an actual thing. And proper use of curtains can lead to increases in ambient nudity, which comes close to fulfilling an actual need.

I feel like some of the people I know for whom Sunday means football only might be quick to point out that shopping for window treatments is a fine thing for a girlfriend to do while the boyfriend sits and eats an entire pizza while watching some other dudes orchestrate a complex series of injurious thuds against each other. This viewpoint is hopelessly naïve.

Everybody who’s ever done it the right way knows that shopping for window treatments is a two person job. You need one person to lead the expedition and one person to validate that person. There are rules here. There are three main things you can do wrong when shopping for window treatments.

1.      Have no opinion. This is the same thing as thinking you can avoid participation by saying “whatever you like will be fine with me.” You can’t do that. You can’t prefer to avoid. When actually confronted with a curtain or curtain rod, you can’t look at something that you don’t care about and say “I don’t care about that.” If you do, this is the same thing as telling your girlfriend that you don’t care about her. It is horrible and cruel.

These are not curtains you are looking at. You are going with your girlfriend to look at metaphors for your entire relationship. You just happen to be in the curtain section of Bed Bath and Beyond. You can’t not have an opinion, even if you don’t have an opinion, because not having an opinion is the same as not caring, and not caring is not loving, and not loving is fatal to the relationship.

2.     Have the wrong opinion. Okay, so you’re going to make up an opinion about a curtain now. As long as it sounds somewhat plausible, you probably have it made in the shade, huh? Nope. Not even close. You just got through the first gate from Neverending Story with the big-titted sphinxes. Now comes the really hard part. You have to have the “right” opinion.

At first glance this means you have to guess the same opinion as your girlfriend. That’s a major element of the right opinion, but it’s not all. Get this: even she doesn’t know what her opinion is yet. You’re telling her your opinion, and that’s helping her form her opinion, and then you are going to make a better curtain choice. It’s a process. THAT’S WHY YOU’RE HERE.

The “right” opinion is less about finding the correct stance and more about participation and providing information. It’s not enough to like or dislike a curtain. You have to CARE about the curtain’s features, and demonstrate an understanding of the curtain’s many nuances, and in this way you are demonstrating a sensitivity to your girlfriend’s features and nuances, and thus demonstrating your desirability as a mate.

A good rule of thumb is one opinion about color, one opinion about fabric, and one opinion about logistics (length, how thickness will impact amount of shade, etc.), followed by a qualifier of some kind “it might look good in the LIVING ROOM too,” and ALWAYS end with, “What do you think?”

Remember, you can’t say nothing, because you can’t feel nothing. And if you feel the wrong, or more importantly the unhelpful, thing, it’s like you’re deliberately sabotaging this curtain-shopping occasion for some reason, and therefore you are sabotaging the relationship for some reason, and therefore you secretly hate her and you are one day going to snap and murder her and she’ll be one of those girls on 48 Hours where you watch and go, “You should have KNOWN back at the curtain store, you idiot!!!!”

3.   Display insufficient enthusiasm. Fact: you don’t want to be here. You want to be back at home watching football. She knows that. She has to know that. So you can kind of joke around and be sarcastic and roll your eyes every once in a while and she’ll cut you slack for it because you’re a good enough guy and you’re here and you’re inventing opinions and really participating in Fucking Curtain Quest 2013, right? WRONG.

You are there because you love it. You would love nothing more than to go buy curtains with her every weekend for the rest of your life. Remember yesterday when you didn’t buy any curtains and there was football, college football, which as far as you’re concerned doesn’t count but she does not know that, and she let you watch a little of it? That was football and she doesn’t understand why it wasn’t enough football, but she simultaneously hated it and was nice about it, which really since it was only college football you would've preferred to shop for curtains then. But what are you going to do, SUGGEST curtain shopping? The idea of curtains doesn't typically enter your consciousness unless or until you are presently wrapped in an on fire curtain. So of course you didn’t even realize the lack of curtains was causing her to almost DIE of embarrassment ALL DAY LONG yesterday while you were eating pretzels and being bored by LSU, and now you want to watch football on SUNDAY TOO? ALL DAY LONG? NO FUCKING WAY, buddy. No fucking way.

You are going to shop for curtains, and, crucially, you are going to LIKE it. That means no checking your phone incessantly for fantasy football updates. No desperately slumping on a bench where she can’t find you and recomposing yourself for five minutes. No stupid little hunched-shoulders sighing or cutting asides to bored checkout clerks. Shopping for curtains is a FULL SERVICE DUTY. That means you're on the clock and the boss is WATCHING.

You are here, you are present, you are concentrating on the task at hand, and you have a positive attitude about shopping for curtains because you love your girlfriend so much you’d walk over hot coals just to hold her spot in line at the DMV, or else you’re option two, an untrustworthy sleazebag who’s biding your time until you can sell her into white slavery.

This seems like an extreme dialectic until you realize that A. men rape, and B. our thought processes are as alien to women as theirs are to us. That’s why women seem crazy to us. They’re constantly trying to read the tea leaves because they don’t know the difference between “great guy who is nonetheless currently yelling obscenities because he dropped a hammer on his thumb while trying to put up the motherfucking makeup cabinet” and “barely contained compulsive killer potentially pushed over the edge at any given moment, such as for instance this one, and if you are not constantly vigilant he’s eventually going to stab you 40 times, roll you in a tarp, and drop you in the river.”

Women are obviously a little concerned about this distinction. They might have a vague sense that every man they’ve ever met has probably at some point wanted to stab somebody and dump their body. They do not know the internal distinctions which render this urge less vicious and pointed and threatening and urgent and permanent than a typical case of momentary road rage. Women don't have a great radar for the frequency, duration, or exigency of regular old average murderous impulses. Just telling them "oh yeah, we all have these random daydreams sometimes about ending a person's life, ha ha ha," is kind of hard to pull off without scaring the shit out of them. Case in point, the phrase "regular old average murderous impulses." Probably kind of a turnoff, am I right, ladies?

Women also, I'd imagine, tend not to view the fact that nobody has yet stabbed and dumped them as a constant life-affirming human triumph of restraint. Go figure. If I was a woman, thinking about my lot in life would suck so much it probably wouldn't be too far of a leap in logic for me to get "about to be attacked by a sabretooth tiger" level upset about whether or not my boyfriend is smiling at Target. I mean, I don’t know. I’m just guessing here.

So anyway, those are three major categories of things to keep in mind when you’re out shopping for curtains instead of watching football. They might not be the most fun things you’ve ever done in your life, but if you really commit to them, you’ll grow as a person. Which is, you know, it’s whatever. I mean, who cares, right? We’re all going to die and you might as well shop for curtains first.

@itisbenjo

I Had to Swim a River of Shit to Get to Booty Village

By: Kelly McClure

Old people, wise mothers, gay best friends, and African American nannies in films will tell you, "when it's love, you'll know it." What is not often expressed is that in a human person's lifetime, it's possible to feel like you "know it," about 99,000 times until one day you wake up and realize that you haven't had a screaming, crying, crumb throwing fight with the person you're with in the year that you've been together, and that loving them is apparently this effortless thing that makes everything you do, and everything you have 100% better and then you understand, oh man, I've been holding up all these wet turds to the sun, but now I have a diamond in my heart. 

I have said the words "I love you," to way more people than I ever should have. In one instance, I thought that the person I was with at that time was going to be the person I spent the rest of my life with, regardless of the fact that we rarely went a day without fighting, had stopped having sex well before our one-year anniversary, and had a discussion about "taking a break" while a loaded moving van that had just moved all our shit from one state to another was parked outside. But I wanted to believe. I wanted so badly to be in love, and to have a family, that I spent countless years, with countless different faces, trying to Febreeze the stink out of a turd rather than just being like "yeah, this certainly is a turd," and flushing it. 

After many failed attempts at making love come from proximity, blind lust, or pure fantasy in my own mind, I concluded that I was a monster. I had been told by several women that I was one, because I didn't engage in their desire to make me their emotional slave, or because I attempted to try and resolve problems rather than sitting around and crying about them, or because I had success in my career where they didn't, or because I didn't like when they farted on me during Ryan Gosling movies, or because I sometimes wanted to do a thing, any 'ol thing, alone, or because I wanted to be the only vagina they touched, and more so, the only vagina they WANTED to touch. Certainly monstrous. I spent a lot of time absorbing the pain of the past, and making sure that I only dated attractive train wrecks who I knew I would never really, could never possibly, end up with - that every relationship I found myself in became worse than the one to proceed it. I never wanted to live with anyone ever again, and I never trusted that the people I went to bed with at night gave half a handful of a shit about me. This all took up, and wasted a lot of time. But what I know now is that during all of this I was learning what I really wanted, and learning how to be the sort of person who'd deserve to have it. 

As I'm typing this, I realize that I've said and thought all of this before. But as they say, "the proof is in the pudding." The difference between now and then is that the reality of my life reflects the hearts and flowers and boob emojis in my brain. Somehow, someway, it's happening. It's happening, and it's real, and it's fucking easy. I don't have to sit and think about how to not cause a fight by not doing a thing that I don't know what it is so that I don't upset a person by doing it. I wake up, and my chest is filled with love. I work from my desk, and my home is filled with love. My girlfriend comes home, and our nights are filled with love. And it's like that every day. Sometimes I'll sing that line from that Beyonce song in my head that goes "Gonna keep it how it is, so that you'll never say 'how it used to be," and that keeps me on the right track while also re-confirming that this shit is solid because there has previously never been a "how it is" to even attempt to maintain.

"A diamond starts out as a rock. A mineral. A crusty clump of carbon. It could just stay like that. In the darkness, attracting dust and not much else. Invisible, and cold, and of little to no use. With desire, effort, and a knowing eye, these clumps of carbon are sought out and discovered by people who want them, hopefully for good reason, but most often not. When squeezed with just the right pressure, and tended to in the proper way, they are stunning, precious, valuable, and last forever. " - Oprah Winfrey (Not really, I wrote this).

Over ten years ago, I was in the middle of a shitty relationship that ate up my entire college years and one afternoon I found myself standing in the kitchen with a friend and listening to her talk about her boyfriend. She was telling me how she used to be literally unable to be a good girlfriend in her relationship, would throw lamps and cuss and spit for no reason, all the time, and that one day she realized that she had to stop being a bitch because she was gonna lose her boyfriend, who she loved, and that she wanted to keep him, because she wanted him, and she deserved him. She deserved to have love, and to be in something nice that felt good. So she stopped, and things got better. I remember listening to this and feeling so lost and sad because I didn't feel like I'd ever learn how to make a relationship work. But now I realize that it helps to actually be in love, and in a thing that doesn't just work, but was MADE to work. All the parts have to fit, and it doesn't happen till it happens. Not being a bitch helps though. And I'll probably have to work on that part every day for the rest of my life, but now it's for a really good reason. The best reason. A booty reason. 

@WolfieVibes

Balls Occasionally Vol. Three: How to Occupy Space Like a Warrior

By: Kelly McClure

It's a fact of life that people learn how to treat you by observing how you treat yourself. If you walk around acting like you have mental and physical Down's Syndrome, people will treat you like you do, which is fine if you're an actual retard, but not so good if you're a distinguished business man who owns no less than 25 dress shirts and three pairs of nice slacks. Enjoying a little self deprecation every now and then is hilarious, and a comfortable routine to sink in to, but avoid forming the habit of introducing yourself to new friends and colleagues by saying "Hi, my name is [whatever] and I'm a fucking piece of shit." 

The phrase "fake it till you make it" isn't on t-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers for no reason, it's actually a great motto to live by. Inside of your body you may know yourself to be worth no more than a saturated, day old panty liner, but if you stand tall, suck in that gut, sprawl out those meaty legs, and live large, then that's what you'll be seen as. A large, lumbering thing. An obstacle. Taking up space that you deserve to take up because you're taking it up and no one else is. 

Regardless of what your mother or girlfriend may have taught you, etiquette is for pussies. Remind yourself of this the next time you're on the subway and briefly consider bringing in your legs and elbows so that the people to either side of you can sit comfortably without having to feel your skin on their skin for no reason. Anywhere you are, at any given time is YOUR space. Your large body can serve as an invisible fence of sorts to ward off "attackers." Smashing your two bulbous thighs together to make room for someone else is ridiculous, and also dangerous. You have precious cargo between those legs that needs to be pampered, protected, and monitored with your hands as often as possible. 

If you should happen to be smaller in stature, and unable to block off your needed space using meat alone, then go the way of the wild bird and use loud and frightening sounds to keep people at bay. When cornered, threatened, made to feel inconvenienced, or simply enjoying some idle meditative thought, use your body's ability to fart wetly, bring up phlegm and then clear it away loudly and with vigor, and sniff back snots with rapid succession. 

These are modern times, in that they're the actual current times that we're in, but they don't need to be "modern" in practice. Fart on a stone, club a bitch in the head and drag her back to your Ikea cave, scratch your balls in front of someone's Mom. It's every caveman for himself in this world, and that hasn't, and will never change. 

Next week's Balls Occasionally will explore this topic a bit further by taking a look at beards, and what they may say about you as a lover. Email ballsoccasionally@gmail.com with any feedback, questions, or suggestions.

@WolfieVibes

Ty Segall “Sleeper” (2013, Drag City)

By: Ben Johnson

It’s hard not to get Ty Segall conflated with Marc Bolan. Segall himself has released a couple of sought-after Record Store Day T.Rex covers EPs, which doesn’t help matters, and Sleeper renders the aesthetic similarities even more overwhelming. Both displayed a tendency to hit a beat hard and thus do the "doo doo doo bop bop bop YEAH" thing better than any of their contemporaries. Both had prolific release schedules which lent an air of deceptively dashed-off simplicity to the songs. Both artists have been tricky with project names. Both have been eager collaborators. But most importantly, both have always only sounded like themselves, regardless of what they try. 

All of this earns a big WHO CARES from the actual functioning human part of my brain, the part which routinely gives wedgies to the unctuous little critic in there who uses phrases like “aesthetic similarities.”

Who cares indeed. Marc Bolan died in a car accident over thirty five years ago. We can have somebody else making music like that again. It’s allowed. Also: what? Where are you going with this? You're not going to corner me and talk to me about T.Rex nonstop for 20 minutes, are you?

This is Ty Segall’s most acoustic album yet. Expressed in Marc Bolan terms, it’s half My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair... But Now They're Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows and half Change (The Alternate Zinc Alloy).

God. Shut up, nerd. Who talks like that? You’re going to go ahead and put the whole first “Tyrannosaurus Rex” album title out there and then reference the all-demo version of one of his later albums as if anybody is supposed to be impressed with you? Fucking Lady Gaga likes Marc Bolan. Nobody cares. Shut up.

On Sleeper, Segall displays his signature straightforward precision strumming, his bent, extraneously-syllabled “-ayuh” croak of a vocal delivery, and more than a stick-shaking amount of sonic adventurousness (esp. “Queen Lullabye”), but does so in a more punk-the-punks milieu than previously. There’s strings on this thing. There’s whistling. I can’t tell if that one drone might have been an accordion. What is this, Neutral Milk Hotel? Some mandolin-driven original-score-of-a-Wes-Anderson-film ripoff in the background of a mobile-network-that-connects-us-all-in-amazing-new-ways commercial? Are rock heads making the somebody just farted face about this, or are we all past that? Are we all past even the idea of even bothering talking about Ty Segall’s latest album like it’s a thing which must be done?

Yes. Yes of course, idiot. You’re starting to sound like one of those sad old dudes who launches unbidden into an unchecked monologue about “the new Bob Mould album” at the poor hungover record store clerk. You are more than the natural amount of excited to talk about this, and it is a bummer. It’s reminding the young kids of their inevitable decay. You’re a dude doing Ty Segall analysis simply because you’re so excited not to be vacuuming Cheerios out of a minivan you’re prematurely ejaculating over an opportunity to have a conversation about “rock music.” It blows.

I don’t think the feel of this album is any kind of a problem. It is not strongly enough at odds with the rest of the Ty Segall discography to actually “freak out” any “squares.” Nor does it feel like a “serious artist” statement. This seems more like Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer breaking out the flute just because A. playing the flute is fun, and B. it’s unfair to expect somebody to “save” rock music. To the extent that Sleeper’s more low-key points, such as “She Don’t Care,” “Come Outside,” or “The West,” come across as a mature songwriter’s bid for respect as a craftsman, which is some, Segall, author of the unfuckwithable diamond that is “Imaginary Person,” has certainly earned that right. He’s getting older too. We can’t require that Ty Segall be a one-man-band explosion doing “Pretty Baby (You’re So Ugly)” in art lofts and punk house basements for his entire life.

You sound like fucking Jim DeRogatis right now. Face it. You're getting older a lot faster than Ty Segall ever will, pal. The way you talk and the way you think, and how in love you are with both, are poisoning the way you listen to music. Just say "Ty Segall: good tunes, the end" and be done with it.

Like Bolan before him, Ty Segall is a guy of prodigious talents but perhaps limited range (not even a criticism; hey, we all have limited range), who constantly sounds like he’s feeling hemmed in within a perfect little unique sonic world he’s created. And then people invent the word “glam” and it’s like, well, fuck you, looks like I’m “glam” forever no matter what just because I like to swing (that’s what I’m good at) while also rocking. Like Bolan, it’s great that there’s such a thing as a Ty Segall. These guys are not evolutionary inevitabilities. They are singular voices, little sidebars where the normal flow of culture stops and swirls and eddies. Maybe, with enough time+force, they alter the topography. Maybe not.

Well, fuck, that “evolutionary inevitability” part wasn’t so bad. I mean, we all get pretty pretentious in our brains. That’s something I could maybe think about. I fucks with this album. It’s good. I mean it’s no Black Sabbath Paranoid, but I’ll give it a listen.

@itisbenjo