Category “Do the Math” column by Dave Reeves

Entries 38 Total
Jun 15, ’09 10:00 PM

WFMU: BEST THING SINCE PUSSY

I know the last post about the greatest thing in the world, WFMU, was a little skimpy because I got greedy for those big bloggin’ buck$ (A man like me has NEEDS.) There are so many deeply personal things a radio station called WFMU does for me that I can’t tell you about.

For example, if I admit that Irene’s Trudell’s mellifluous voice has cured me of performing messy rituals to The Unnamable One—

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—then my enemies might think I have gone soft in my old age. (Dear Enemies: I have gone soft. Come by my place for your hug while I’m getting my thirty eleventh wind by freaking out to the late night random geniuses BEASTIN THE AIRWAVES or THE FROW SHOW. Don’t bother knocking, it’s open.)

I can’t tell you about how Bob Brainen‘s comforting little ditty at the beginning of his show reminds me to put tin foil over the windows before the sun shows its horrible teeth. With the free-form webcast, Mr. Brainen is allowed to spin psychedelic smutty blues with some maniac jabbering over it, which I’ve found to be comforting when taken with sixty milligrams of Adderal. It’s a good thing the scheduler at the station alternates the Yankee accent of Bob Brainen’s against the down home accent of Laura Cantrell from week to week, or else I wouldn’t know that time was passing at all.

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Jun 11, ’09 6:56 PM

WFMU IS THE WORLD’S GREATEST RADIO STATION BAR NONE FOREVER SHUT UP

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In an era when everyone pretends that the mobius strip of endless ipod jams are satisfying I choose to stay freshly amused with a battery of living deejays who never leave the station in East Orange, and even if they did leave they’ve archived every show since forever and there’s no commercials.

I was first taken in by WFMU in the 95th year of last century when some deejay played the entire radio conversation between a train driver who had lost his brakes as he was heading into a big curve and certain doom. I think someone had put something in my drink because by the time the guy jumped from the burning train (and survived! he gets on the radio and tells everyone he’s buying them beers tonite!) I was crying and checking my radio dial to try and figure out who had just saved my life.

I’m serious when I say that I lived in New York until this radio station went live on the interweb. Out of all the New York things I could not part with, WFMU was the most important one.

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When people ask me what I’m listening to I tell them, “WFMU, never ask me again!” because WFMU is all I listen to, ever. There is nothing that WFMU can’t do. I used to be worse. If I went out of town i would be overcome with ennui, wondering what Brian Turner might play this week. The sense of loss was overwhelming, depressing even.

People always want to know how come I write so good. What I tell them is: I listen to Brian Turner on Tuesday, followed by the brilliant and bizarre Dave Emory (Daves of The World Unite!), who would have to be my greatest inspiration in my amazing career as a whatsit.

My favorite five hours all week to get the drivel wrote is Tuesday because I know that Brian Turner is deejaying just for me. Yeah. We work together, me and Brian. Of course Brian doesn’t know about me yet, but he will, and one day we’ll be together.

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After Brian Turner’s show, Dave Emory delivers a well-footnoted dissertation confirming what I suspected about how Nazis are still the running the game, whilst I get all the cooking and cleaning done. Then I get drunk, abuse myself and cry to Al Jolson songs during the Antique Phonograph Music Program. It’s a cheap date night and everybody is happy afterward.

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I then float off on the night time deejays who often do the greatest stuff because they are allowed to get weird. Solid Gold Hell with Sue P. never fails to gird me up for the extra hour of an all-night typing binge.

I love the ever discombobulated Terri T and her little Attitude (“I said don’t call when I’m on the mike!”), and I can’t tell if I like Dave the Spazz or Fools Paradise with Rex more. Rex has the politically incorrect 78s in the fur-lined fallout shelter with the bubbles. Dave the Spazz has a monkey. Both of them use soundbites that seem to work with my life (“Dave? Dave? this is highly irregular. I think you should take a stress pill and think things over”.)

The station is also a great way to scare indie rock idiots or Vice types out of your house at four in the morning if you know how to blast the awesome, unparalleled gospel show called “The Sinners Crossroads which is worth the link just to hear Kevin Nutt’s North Carolina accent. It makes their haircuts hurt!

If there is something on WFMU that doesn’t suit you, like that guy who screams in ersatz german (stop it for the love of god!), you can always go to the recent archives page.
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Jun 10, ’09 4:39 PM

HEY CHAMBO! NEVER GET BUSTED AGAIN WITH BARRY COOPER

Dear Chambo,

Do you remember on our last sojourn through the great state of Texas when that huge baby in a cop uniform pulled us over for going sixty eight miles an hour in a sixty five mile per hour zone to check us for knives and Xanax (thank god we’d left that bullshit behind like I told you to).

THEY WERE LOOKING FOR DRUGS DAN

THEY WERE LOOKING FOR DRUGS DAN

I remember the way the flashing lights let me look into the deep cerulean blue eyes of the curious cop’s soul to see a man who just wanted to know what we were doing out in West Texas this time of night.

Well, Dan it turns out that I was wrong, those curious eyes wanted to take us to jail because of a thing that all cops use called “profiling.” I didn’t believe it until I saw the movie done by an ex-Texas drug force trooper who is cool now that he smoked a joint after he was jailed for not returning Jeepers Creepers 1 and 2 to the video store. And guess what? Turns out that jail in Texas sucks.

And then Barry Cooper realized that he had been putting people in a terrible place “and terrible position to get raped or even shanked which is stabbing.” Barry has to smoke pot now because he put so many people in jail for smoking flowers, man. It tripped him out so bad that he made a movie for the likes of freaky people he used to beat up on back in high school called Never Get Busted Again with Chambo—whoops, I mean it’s called Never Get Busted Again with Barry Cooper.

Then as if that wasn’t enough he went to Canada and did a three-foot bong hit on YouTube before launching into a dissertation about how much nicer the potheads where when he busted them compared to winos.

Then he even rented a house in Texas and pretended to grow pot but it was all just a set up to get the cops to do an illegal raid (drugs do weird things to your brain Dan). And they did it. It’s called Kopbusters and it has a Beastie Boys soundtrack, who I know are your favorite band.

Then he gets all crazy and tells you how to set up a grow house without getting busted. Must be the weed has got to his brain and he has done gone reefer mad!

HOW TO HIDE LIKE THOSE HUMANS IN TERMINATOR

I’m not kidding Dan, if you are going to continue to drive around armed and profiling yourself with whatever drugs you are on that makes you get hair cuts you have to watch this movie now, and look up Barry Cooper while you are down in that awesome state.

Barry Cooper says if you see that baby cop again don’t touch your head because it lets him know that you are lying about that knife collection that you keep under the dashboard. Luckily we took enough Xanax to forget about it, so we weren’t even lying. That’s why we got away.

Remember Dan, policemen are your friends, if they have gone to jail and smoke weed on youtube.

Viva Terlingua. Tell the Doodlin Hogwallops “wassup” for me. (Can we get a picture of this band godammit?)

love dave

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May 21, ’09 3:24 PM

Barbecue, beer and beards in Silver Lake…

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From L.A. RECORD:

“Territory BBQ and Records is the new restaurant-slash-record-store from Tony Presedo and Curtis Brown—formerly of Tee Pee Records and the band Bad Wizard, respectively. They will stock heavy music and serve heavy food prepared in part by heavy chef [and longtime Arthur "Do the Math" columnist] Dave Reeves.”

Read the whole article here…

Comments (1)
Mar 12, ’09 12:02 PM

ARRIVE EARLY

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Dave Reeves in New Orleans last week, photographed by Daniel Chamberlin. More soon…

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Feb 22, ’09 7:48 PM

okay already with the mardi grass, cash, ash

I’ve just toured one of the asphalt strips which girdle our great country and would like to say that nobody is illegal, unless nobody is Mexican or has a couple of pounds vacuum wrapped in the back of the truck under a bunch of hammers.

Along the way I was reminded that Indian reservations are awesome places to get the essential weapons and fireworks one needs for Mardi Gras by providentially breaking down at Bush Brothers Truck stop in Jamestown, New Mexico (exit 39 off I-40) that has all your personal items like tear gas, switchblades and this EYEGOUGE KITTY.

A weapon whose sheer cuteness means you might get it through the metal detectors.
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MAKE EM SAY “ME OOWW!”

Remember, ladies, the eyes are the other balls.

We broke down again in Weatherford, Arklahoma, where we were punished with 3.2 beer. Impossible to get drunk on. I will not describe this horrid church town or the stinking vindaloo of the hotel room.

Nor will I mention the tow truck driver who upon seeing our California plates kept trying to get us to “break out the joint” even there were obvious Christians mulling about.

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The first night in New Orleans, I apparently went to go see a band called “Tirefire” in Metarie.
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TIREFIRE GETS DOWN

TIREFIRE GETS DOWN

Tirefire were opening for one of the “eyehategod” guys’ side projects (I’ll find out what it as called later. Evil army? I dunno, my notes are too bloody) where I stabbed myself in the hand with my newest of a dozen milano switchblades I have owned over the years to assuage my condition.
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These knives have a malfunctioning safety mechanism which encourages a “pocket pop” when the owner is doing something like getting jostled in a room full of sweaty freaks. In the short useful lifetime of the spring this design flaw allows these evil little spikes to poke more holes in people than a jail full of three-peckered soccer hooligans. (It’s in Wales, I think).

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Feb 11, ’09 11:24 AM

When the elephant falls…

Q: When the elephant falls, do all the fleas die?

A: The fleas get fat for a while because the elephant is busy being dead. Then the fleas fall too, and the fleas on them rejoice, until they know better.

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Jan 26, ’09 7:27 PM

If I am blogging about an Errol Morris blog what does that make me?

Errol Morris hammers nails in the coffin with the help of the New York Times. Wish they had done it sooner…

( I know you don’t want to see any pictures of George Bush any more but what about if it is pictures of him crying? It still makes me happy.)

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Comments (3)
Jan 26, ’09 2:14 PM

mad magazine made me the man i am today

Mad magazine formed my entire political philosophy and I’m insane and I love drugs. This screensaver is my new lava lamp. “What? me worry?”

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Mad magazine

Is anything subversive enough to not be quashed by republican clusterfuck of money mismanagament? Not even the bastions of subversion can survive the last republican administration. There is no god, not even the one that we kill people for.
MAD magazine is going quarterly because Editor John Ficarra
said, “The feedback we’ve gotten from readers is that only every third issue of MAD is funny, so we’ve decided to just publish those.”

They tried, using the same formula that we are using here Arthur, except Arthur is more in the documentary style:

from the New York Times article march 28, 2001

“…The magazine has begun to include sexually explicit content and runs ”Monroe,” a strip about a dysfunctional family in which the father is a drunk, the mother a floozy and the son a dejected and alienated boy. Monroe has drunk bong water. He was forced into the car of a pedophile by his father, who wanted him to sell more school chocolates. His mother, who has a pornography site on the Internet, has slept with numerous characters, from her Tae-Bo teacher to Steve the lawn boy. His grandfather is a shellshocked World War II veteran who parades around the house in Nazi uniforms he stripped from German bodies.

The magazine’s parodies, which used to expose popular culture or give it a new slant, now often seem to echo society’s divisiveness.

‘It was a gentler magazine,” said Mr. Sacco, the cartoonist. ”It divested young boys of innocence, but in an easy way. The magazine I see now slams you over the head with much more prurient material. It is harder core. It is for worldly, deeply cynical kids, but maybe those are the only kids out there.”

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Jan 23, ’09 3:18 PM

THE SMARTEST BOMB

Alright, soldier, who wants to be the first one to try out this battlefield nuke with a handy, blow away baton?

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Don’t forget to duck and cover!

These are my favorite pretty, pretty pictures of the Star Wars Defense Initiative Missiles going off over your favorite south Pacific secret military base island called Kwajalien. Who cares if these missiles work or not?
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It’s what God does when he gets the money.

Comments (2)
Jan 23, ’09 2:48 PM

Because when all the animals die what will we name our band after

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Yes, it is sad to think about Polar Bears drowning but what about Grizzly bears getting run over?

The helpful folks at Pattagucci have hooked us up with something to do about the climate change rather than stew in the juices of ennui.

Patagonia is a great company that gives one percent to the environment (which doesn’t seem like a lot until you see how expensive their clothes are).

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Jan 23, ’09 1:27 PM

VOTE DELLA ENDS TO BE THE WHITE HOUSE ORGANIC FARMER OR ELSE I WILL LICK YOUR BLOOD FROM THE BLADE OF MY SWORD

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Vote for Della Ends as the organic farmer to the president because she fed me organical like until i was big enough to get weaned onto Chambo’s Nut Shakes.( mmm chambo’s nut shakes).

So Stop the Hegemoney of the running dog farmers who might win the prize and therefore change the course of history with less than superior organic foods for our last and greatest “Hope”.

Seriously, Della Ends of Scotch Hill Farm really does grow the best food for the president so vote for her or else you will have to eat inferior GMO food until you turn stupid! Vote now and vote often before the January 31st deadline!

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