THE WYMAN WEEKLY

Underemployed. Unattached. Unimpressed.

Issue 20 August 21,1996

 

 

 

In the mail the other day we got a free magazine called Publishing & Production Executive. So my publisher had all these ideas to turn the weekly into some sort of glossy magazine complete with advertising and those pesky little subscription cards that fall out. “Can we get pictures of Liz Hurley and some kickbacks from GHS strings?” I asked and all I got was a dirty look. Because I eventually end up doing everything around here including the math, I pulled out my Sharp EL-533 and showed him that we would never cover our overhead so the format will continue as is.

 

TOMMY SAID SO...

 

Those of you hankering for a dose of ’Mats type where’s-the-party bashing and popping are advised to check out Perfect’s When Squirrels Play Chicken EP. Led by former ‘Mat Tommy Stinson, Perfect cruises through six songs on this disc like they showed up at the studio with their case of Grain Belt (they live in LA, but I’m pretending Tommy was home for Christmas and brought back souvenirs) half-finished and their songs done but maybe not fully rehearsed. The EP ends with a live ultrafast cover of an Elton John song - I won’t say which one - where Tommy yells out during the guitar solo “I’ll overdub it later!”

 

ECON 101

 

Three tickets for Paul Westerberg at the State Theatre Friday, September 6, 1996: Tickets are $20.00 each, there is a $4.00 event fee per ticket, a $2.00 convenience fee per ticket, and a $3.00 handling fee per order.

            - Ticket Master phone order clerk

 

Under conditions of competition ... goods and services would be produced as efficiently as possible—that is, at the lowest possible price and cost—and consumers would get the maximum amount of the goods and services they desire.

            - Wallace C. Peterson, Microsoft Encarta 1994 Edition

 

Scalper? Did you call me a scalper? Listen gentlemen - I perform a service here and the service costs money. Now do ya want the tickets or don’t ya?

            - Mike Damone, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”

 

For those of you keeping score at home, Ticket Bastard marked up my tickets 35%. Just wish I lived in one of those capitalist economies where I could go shop at the competition. But at least someone’s taking a stand...

 

PEARL JAM

 

Pearl Jam are major heroes of mine because 1) they fucking rule musically, 2) they’re the biggest rock band in the world but instead of resting on their laurels they keep putting out excellent albums every year-and-a-half, and 3) they’re taking on Ticket Bastard while all other rockers sit on the sidelines and pay empty lip service to the cause. Driving up north a couple of weeks ago I heard three, count ‘em three, new Pearl Jam songs on the radio. One sounds like they’re the New Yardbirds, which makes them Led Zeppelin, which is an approximation of what Pearl Jam is for the nineties. The second song was (like “Leaving Here” earlier this year) a mid-sixties garage band piece and a welcome move because the third was another Pearl Jam moody (albeit good) piece. I can’t wait for the new album, which I hope is a huge seller mostly so I can feel justified about being pissed off at Newsweek, who recently had an article about “positive and happy” (or something like that) art being the in thing nowadays and they had as an exhibit Hootie and the Blowfish side-by-side with PJ and said “Pearl Jam is still whining, but who’s listening?” And all I could think of was that they should just go ahead and also slam Batman to make Minnie Mouse look good. It may seem strange, but it was a good thing that Pearl Jam was huge from the start and hence avoided a dreadful “cult following” that comes when you start small. Such followings are dreadful because it kinda sucks when you do something one way for awhile and then when you try to do something different you have this little group of people who think they know you so well and are on you for not being the same because somehow you now belong to them and not to yourself. Yeah whatever, says Pearl Jam, we gotta do what we gotta do.

 

WRITING CLASS

 

Almost forgot to tell you about the writing class I took earlier this summer. I took it at The Loft, which was a pretty cool place from what I could tell. (Except for the men’s room where I almost unintentionally relieved myself in the sink, but that’s another story.) The class was made up of about a dozen females and yours truly. With a lesbian teacher. So basically my mere presence put the kibosh on any potential male-bashing. I tried not to let it go to my head. We would all take turns reading our work aloud in class and everyone else’s stuff was like “somebody died look at the sparrow” or “we had sex and I felt as one with the universe” or “the butterfly spread its wings and covered my heart.” Don’t get me wrong - these gals could truly write, it was just that I felt like a goofball because when it would come to my turn it was always “I remember when I was five years old and my neighbors had a keg” or “Rock Rock ‘Til You Drop!” or “Kirby Puckett retired and I will try to go on with my life.” One lady told me that maybe I was afraid to “be intimate” with myself. (Yeah, because I could go blind!) During the final class, I ‘fessed up that I have a weekly newsletter that comes out every once in a while. “What’s it about?” they asked. I felt like George Costanza when I said “well last week my car broke down - that was an issue right there.” Ultimately what I learned from this class is that I don’t have any real thoughts or feelings, I just have a bunch of stuff that I like.

 

SHOPPING TIPS

 

After many trips to Cheapo Records Uptown I’ve come to the conclusion that if you should decide to wander in don’t expect much. The place is huge so you go in there thinking that you’ll be lost for hours amongst all the potential buys you can make and you’ll be doing all those complicated math calculations in your head (you know - what’s more important: these used Van Morrison CD’s or groceries? and okay I’ll buy this David Johansen live album AND the Social Distortion reissues AND the Jerry Lee Lewis box set and just pay MasterCard off when I’m one hundred and eighty) and you’ll be able to go home and blow off your friends and family for a couple of weeks while you hole up and listen to your discoveries. But no such luck because Cheapo sucks. Get this: their Rolling Stones selection consisted of one new 12x5 and three used Steel Wheels. No Buddy Holly. All they had for Metallica was one new copy of Load. No copies of Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy. And even though they were playing Great Divide in the store there was no Semisonic. And so on and so on. In the words of the Beatles: “Let It Be.”

 

A MOMENT OF SILENCE

 

Wyman condolences go out to the family of the late Tom Mees. Tom was a play-by-play announcer on ESPN and I heard him do a ton of NCAA semifinal and final hockey games over the years. Dave Remund got me to be a Tom Mees fan and it said a lot about Tom’s abilities that Remund didn’t feel the need to exaggerate them.