Ryan Dunn, RIP

It's been some time since his death but it still weighs heavy on my mind: RIP Ryan Dunn. Ryan Dunn died in a car crash - apparently driving drunk, definitely driving way too fast - on June 20, 2011.

It hurts. It was shocking. I love Jackass as much as anything.

Recently, by coincidence, a good friend asked me, "What's the last celebrity death that really shocked you?" Immediately I said, Ryan Dunn. He was surprised. "You were surprised one of THOSE guys died?"

I was. The morning I found out he died, it blew my mind. The Jackass guys have been doing it for so long that it's hard to believe that one of them bit the bullet - especially in their every day lives and not on the set pulling some outrageous stunt, but dying the way any one of us could go: foolishly and suddenly.

I love Jackass. Watching any episode of Jackass, any of the movies, anything involved with them I love unconditionally. I love those guys. I love what they did and the friendship between them. They provided me and so many others with such joy - a joy they shared with one another - that the loss of Ryan Dunn is akin to the loss of a friend. I did not know him, but the fact is that Ryan Dunn contributed to something that has made me laugh over and over and over again. That's enough for me. I see that as friendship. I see that as brotherhood.

RIP Ryan Dunn. We'll miss you.

PS - I am definitely more hungover than Dunn is in those two pictures at the top.

Kids Today

I'm no old man, I'm 24. I'm a kid, too, to many older than me. That said, I had my first real I'm older than some of you other idiots moment last night.

Randomly me and my buddy, along with a group of newly acquainted friends met through another friend, found ourselves at an NYU party, an apartment filled with 25 NYU students having a blast.

"Hey man," said the kid with a Jew fro and straight brimmed cap, "how old are you?"

It was all cool. I had a good time. The kids were nice people - young, but nice. But the thing that I gotta say was really strange and more than a little fucked up was that the entire night the kids played beer pong with water, and just drank beer from a bottle or can when shots were hit.

Un-American. Stupid. Contrary. Dumb. When I asked why they were playing with water every one of them NYU kids said, "We don't want to make a mess."

Huh? Dudes, we're playing on a hard wood floor. There's not going to be a mess. You ever heard of a paper towel? Yeah? You have? Well you can use those to clean it up!

It's what it's come to. Beer pong is no longer what it's meant to be, at least at this party.

I read an article this weekend in the WSJ weekend edition, an interview with David McCullough. The dude is a real inspiration to anyone who thinks or reads, having written the most diesel collection of histories and biographies this side of Bowsell. Aside from the appraisal of McCullough's life and work, it also presented his feelings on the state of young people's grasp of history. The verdict? Not good. No one knows what the fuck has gone on in this country. I believe that; I thought I knew history and then I realized, Not really. I couldn't remember what the war of 1812 was about, and what a Hooverville truly meant.

Young people don't know their history, straight down to how to play beer pong. Yeah, they had a reason - cleanliness - but you have to have a respect for the past, for how it's supposed to be done. Go big or go home. Play it right or don't play at all.

I for one am going to make a point of revisiting our country's past and learn, re-learn, and internalize as much as I can in my spare time. I owe it to those who fought and strived for a better United States. It's a little high flatulent of me to make a claim like this, but the claim is almost the most important thing: recognition of a lack of knowledge about that which should be of the utmost importance.

If you don't know your past you don't know your future, as far as that can go without stretching what we know and can know as humans walking the earth. Play beer with beer pong, because that's the way the game was meant to be played. Yeah, these kids probably knew that, but did they really know? Did they know enough, how much it meant, to play with beer in the cups and drink it down? Shot made, ball in cup, drink it down? They couldn't've known how much it meant to people like me to play like that, to so many of my friends for whom beer pong was a definition of their way of life for four, five, six years.

The connection between Mr. McCullough's concern and my alarm that kids aren't playing beer pong the right way isn't air tight. Hell, it's looser than Andy Dufresne's asshole in Shawshank. But knowing what is right and what is wrong based on what has come before you --- you have to know your history, or else you don't know who you are! You've gotta know what's what and what and when and where you came from. If those kids knew, so be it. Make your own history. But with God as my witness, if they didn't...Well, it don't matter, since I lost to girls that night anways.

One love,

Grgas

"Big Fucking Shit"

The Minuteman never fail to astonish me. Astonish is a strong word, yet I feel no other would suffice.

A band needs to work hard to become great. Two that come to mind, other than the Minutemen, are The Beatles and The Clash. (My computer reads Beatles as a misspelling still?) They worked very hard to get where they are, and they were committed to the music above all else.

The Minutemen jammed ECONO. Who else jammed econo? The Beatles and The Clash.

It doesn't take a lot of money to make great music. This seems like an, Uh, DUH! type of remark, but I think that these days people forget this; or assume it untrue; or just don't understand what real MUSIC is made of. When the most popular music in the nation generates from and is a result of a contest that rewards people with a monetary prize before said artist sells any music or generates any real praise for their work is proof that people don't realize that music made on the cheap is usually better and more truthful than music that is a result of the nature of consumer culture.

I think that truly great artists and musicians feel that they shouldn't be spending money on recording something because it don't matter. The music will speak for itself - and usually recordings benefit from cheap production. I think they sound cooler.

Great production for money: Obviously there are exceptions; TUSK (Fleetwood Mac) comes to mind, which cost a million plus to make. Money begets money, in the fact that money usually leads to more money, whether it be spent, lost or made. The quality of the music doesn't factor in the equation. Money can sometimes make a bad band more interesting - what a shitty word, interesting. But it can.

As I pause to turn over the first side of Double Nickels On The Dime, I must wonder, When jamming on the econo, how could the Minutemen produce four sides of fabulously creative and expertly played music ? The answer is, It wasn't money. It was the drive to make music that they cared about. Money may sometimes effect how music turns out, but it is never what makes the music good. That's hard work, inspiration, drive, and the desire to see something changed, even it is only how one person listens.

"let's say I got a number's 50,000 that's 10% of 500,000"

Thanks DBoon. You will forever be missed, right along Joe Strummer, John Lennon, and George Harrison. Work hard in heaven, bros!