I bumped into our favorite asshole, Steve Jobs, on the streets of Manhattan the other day, and to be honest with you, loyal readers, I kept my head down. No, I’m not one hundred percent proud of my cowardice, but I’m also known around the Retardo offices for not being anyone’s fool. I know Jobs, and I know he’ll go to any length necessary to protect the precious image of himself as “the guru to the creative promise in us all” that he has so carefully manufactured over the years—or so I assumed…

I thought I had slunk well past the Mussolini of Mac, and had raised my head to proceed quickly to my destination (never mind where, ever-meddlesome reader), when I felt a hand, icy cold, land suddenly upon my shoulder. Startled, I spun to face my assailant—all the while distinctly aware of the air growing close and still around me, of sound suddenly muffled from my ears, of the light in the sky abruptly becoming too bright, as if overexposed, washing out the city landscape—it was Steve. Jobs. He had spotted my face in the crowd despite my spineless attempt to dodge him, and now he was going to kill me in front of the whole world…and there was nothing I could do. And he would probably get away with it, too! The goddamned world had always let this fucking shit head get away with anything he ever wanted, and now he was going to tear my head from my shoulders and suck the…

But surprisingly, no.

I won’t lie to you, friends. We argued. So much that we decided to take it off the streets and back to my artfully decorated cubical at Jose Headquarters, so as to not draw any more attention to his neatly trimmed beard (it looks just as nice in person!). Turns out that his people keep close tabs on this site, and bring to him the truth we’ve told, and he is pretty fucking pissed about it.

We talked all through the long night, and though we agreed on nothing, we did reach an easy rapport with each other, as generals often do while their respective soldiers’ slug it out in the bloody valleys below. We drank wine, we listened to Manford Mann, and soon I had him relaxed enough—and myself confident enough—to ask the question I pose to every visitor of my office.

He beamed, and immediately said yes, then disrobed so I could draw his portrait. The results are above and to the left, people. Click on it to view the full version. I found him to be a surprisingly soft and vulnerable subject. Tell me what you think. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?

I will never forget the moment I saw it: I was wandering the top floor of the Museum of Modern Art somewhat aimlessly. I could sense the encroaching, restless feeling one gets after spending enough time in a museum to become bored—but not long enough for others to proclaim it an “enriching experience”—creeping in around the corners of my brain as I gazed at a life-size installation of a dishwasher interior stacked with brightly colored plastic dishes and plaster crumbs affixed; a penis replica constructed from broken egg shells and dyed with bald eagle sperm; a canvas depicting four large dots, all black, but with varying shades of gray for their backgrounds. I was finding it all rather underwhelming, but had not yet become outraged at any particular pretense…and then…there it was, lurking in prominence. Red Square, Slightly Rounded. I don’t remember the name of the (and I use this term VERY loosely) artist, nor can I locate it on the internet, but the painting has burned itself into an unflattering subdivision of my memory, and I have placed an approximation of the painting (which took me all of about four minutes to make, btw) to the left of this article. Look at its sad retardedness. How I hate it.

I was incensed to find such useless trickery in one of the world’s most established and respected museums. Just what the hell was MoMA playing at, anyway? Were they TRYING to make me feel stupid? Was it purposeful resentment of the normal man that made them hang in a position of high repute a painting that has no relative merit to the untrained eye? Of course, several friends who think themselves very erudite tried to repeatedly explain to me how, even though I might not see the genius, it is extraordinarily important that someone had painted this painting, even if its actual artistic merit is meager. In other words, to be clever enough to point out that this can be art is more important than it being “good” art. I guess then that we could say, by comparison, that although we might hate discovering the nutritionally-impaired Hot Pocket in our grocer’s freezer, it is nonetheless important to our society that somebody somewhere decided to manufacture it, and then market these pastry-covered floor sweepings into our mouths. Well, god bless you, Nestlé! Thank the heavens for you!

I think it’s all a scam, and the artist in this instance scoffed all the way to the bank as he cashed the check given to him by the MoMA man in the hounds tooth-jacket, with his hand on his chin, stroking his moustache, squinting his eyes, and saying over and over, “Hmmmm…” and “Ahhhh…” and “Oh, yes, yes, of course, of course”!

Such is the struggle that the average person has with Modern Art. Shame on you, average person! Don’t you realize how much of an asshole Jackson Pollock was? That means he was good! Artist + Asshole = Oh, yes, yes, of course, of course! Get it straight, you lousy world full of simpletons.

Jackson Pollock. Are you as confused about this cat as me? Look, I get what all of you knowledgeable bad asses are saying. I’m not completely daft. The guy did his dribbling shits thing all over the canvas with some vague shapes occasionally barfed out for the sporadic “wow!” factor, and it’s all about the textures, and it was oh so stream-of-consciousness, and sure, it might look great above your couch as long as the colors don’t clash abhorrently, but why are we giving such a small achievement any more than footnote status in the world of American art? And the critics will of course drag the Norman Rockwell’s down off the wall, snap them in two, pull down their critic drawers and basically crap all over them—and what do I know except that my Grandma freaking LOVED Norman’s work—but hey, at least he was DOING something, right? He could create something that we cannot perform ourselves—and a lot of it was cheesy, but much of it was not, and at least it varied, and had content, and could make me think—even if the thought was simply, “wow, boy scouts are fucking DUMB”.

But as far as I can tell, much of Jackson Pollock’s work is merely a lot of drunken repetition. There is more to the world than simply colors and shapes. There is also love, hate, pain, hope, and ideas—and Pollock seems to come up short in all that kind of crap. With this in mind, doesn’t his jazzy dribble seem overly cynical? This much I do know: the world has always loved a guy that drinks too much, smokes too much, and fucks too much.

Click here to see some much cooler shit than Pollock ever dreamed of.

PS and BTW—Saw this quote in the Times today, and it made me wants ta’ barf. It’s the whole reason behind today’s topic, as a matter of fact:

He flashed a slide of Ellsworth Kelly’s “Study for Colors for a Large Wall” on the screen, and the audience couldn’t help but perk to attention. The checkerboard painting of 64 black, white and colored squares was so whimsically subtle, so poised and propulsive. We drank it in greedily, we scanned every part of it, we loved it, we owned it…

Gross. Read the whole article by clicking here. It’s about something.

Everyone who frequents this site knows that all of us here in the corporate offices of Jose el Retardo are pundits for public transportation, and as we are based mainly in the New York City area, the subway is the transportation of choice for most of us. As for myself, I use the subway, on average, twice daily, and generally find the experience to be a pleasant (if not sometimes crowded), efficient, and speedy way to traverse the urban landscape. Of course, whenever one injects him/herself into the general public, there are bound to be questionably fascinating scenarios unfolding around him/her from time to time. Mostly it comes in the form of conflict, whether the divergence is caused out of anger or mental illness (you’ve just got to LOVE crazy people quarrels, what with the spit and the fingernails, and the tin foil hats), but sometimes it comes in the form of swollen, pussy scabs.

For instance: the other day, I was on my way to somewhere (stop being so damn nosey, faithful reader), head down, rocking to the sounds of the new Radiohead album (which is pretty goddamned good, if you haven’t heard—In Rainbows—check it out), when a leg passed in front of my field of vision. A horrible leg. A disgusting leg. Presumably, a human leg. The human (?) male attached to the aforementioned monstrosity was wearing blue track pants with the typical double-white stripe up the seam, but had the right pant leg rolled up past the knee. And oh my lord…below the knee…

His right calf was inflamed to at least twice the circumference of the left, with huge bumps covering the shin and calf like the hideous calcifications that so disfigured John Merrick. The skin was shiny and tightly pulled across the shinbone, multi-colored with patches of red fading to ashy yellow. But the thing that really caught my eye was the HUGE FREAKING OPEN WOUNDS that covered the lower quarter of this ghastly appendage. Tinged white around the edges and juicy red in the middle, the wounds seemed to fester and bubble before my very eyes. As I stared mouth agape at this putrid mess, the man (who I now noticed walked with a cane), stopped walking, leaned over, and reached to correct his pant leg. “Oh good,” I thought, “cover that shit, bubba. Back to my music. Dooo do do doooo, dah dah dah…” Instead, he rolled the cuff higher.

Gentle reader, he wanted us to see.

As he passed me, I had to watch his slow progress. He stopped to lean against a subway pole (and for those of you unfamiliar with a NYC subway car, please note the picture to the left), and I shuddered to think of the hands that would soon be grasping this pole in the hours to come, looking to steady the body they were attached to, and hoping they would all be washed before aiding in the consumption of various tasty finger foods. His mouth began to move, so I removed my headphones (Koss Plugs, a great, inexpensive headphone) to see what this human-like creature had to say. He spoke quietly, so I could not hear his words, but as he spoke, a young woman—with black lipstick, so you know she must have been very with-it and cool—reached into her bag and pulled out a dollar to give to the patient (I call him this because goddamnit he should have been in the hospital getting care and not on the fucking SUBWAY), and my heart cried out for her fingers. “Oh no! Don’t touch him!” I almost cried aloud, but I bit back my words.

So he was begging for money. I should have known. Otherwise, he would have at least taken a minute to wrap some gauze around that stanky shit on his leg and pull his pants down to cover it. I swear to god, the NYC hobo population would carry their livers in a bucket if they thought they would get a fucking quarter for it.

Anyway, public transportation really does rock, and I urge all of you to use it more liberally.

The world sucks. You know it and I know it, and there’s no use denying it with any namby-pamby “check out the flowers” and “just wait for the sunrise” horseshit. Plenty of baby deer have bitten the bullet (literally) while gazing at a beautiful prairie sunset. They were then field dressed and eaten by fat people. From the very beginning of a human being’s existence—when some grotesque cosmic fool tosses a grimy set of dice down the board in order to decide when, how, and where you’ll start your reality—to the wretched end (you spend a lifetime accumulating some kind of record for yourself, a pocket full of memories, only to have them all slip away in life’s final, frail moments) the constant, grinding challenges set before the individual can wear a soul down to its very nub.

For the love of Christ, isn’t there anything on this god-forsaken rock that can make it all worth while—or, at the very least, slightly tolerable? Yes, of course there is. And that is what this post is all about: the first of many suggestions from your mentor and closest advisor, Jose. Together, they can be used as a guide to the small gratuities that light the dark corners of life.

CHICKEN IN A BISKIT
From Nabisco

Me and Chicken in a Biskit go WAAAAAY back, brother. I remember, as a young boy developing his taste buds in the breadbasket of America, the first time this delectable little crisp of artificial flavor passed my lips. A gathering of sorts was taking place at my home, and a parental unit, in preparation, had placed a wide assortment of salty/sweet snacks upon the kitchen table…and to a child, the array was breathtaking. I paced to-and-fro, up and down the entire length of the table several times, trying to process the overload of bliss: mints, bowls of dip, candied almonds, endless variations of potato chips, cold cuts, cheeses, and…wait a minute…what are these? Something unknown, yet alluring. A tempting, dimple-edged cracker, light and crispy looking, with miniscule granules of flavor you could SEE coating the entire flatbread from end to end—and a scent…indefinable but palpable…mouth watering. The effect was powerful.

Did I dare try one even before the first guest had arrived? Hadn’t I been told REPEATEDLY not to touch the table until the party started? Surely I had never given a damn for the random commands barked at me by the powers that be in the past, so why start now? What could they do to me, right? Oh lord, that cracker looked GOOD.

Using the back of my hand, I wiped my mouth nervously and looked around, checking all angles and shadows for any sign of prying eyes, or, in the case of my sister, flapping jaws (this is, of course, complete conjecture on my part—I don’t actually remember wiping my mouth or looking around).

I snatched it from the bowl and popped it quickly into my mouth. Wow. It was truly a taste explosion. Salty yet somehow smooth, and so crispy it seemed nearly frozen. Several more followed the first, each one more savory than the last. Getting braver by the second, I grabbed a can of easy cheese (cheddar, and yes, I DO remember that) and sprayed the SHIT out of one of those fucking biskits. Chew, chew, chew, gulp. OH MY GOD. Dear Jesus, come and save me. The room began to swim and spin and I nearly fell backwards.

By the time it was over, I felt giddy and dirty all at once. But I knew I wasn’t done with Chicken in a Biskit. Not by a long shot.

And so the years passed, and so many things have happened to your guide Jose that there was barely any room in his life for Chicken in a Biskit. But recently we danced again, this snack cracker and I, and I was delighted to find we still make such a happy pair—which I suppose is fairly a common occurrence in the romances we share with our favorite snack foods…and still…and still…

Is there any real chicken in them? Well, you know, a little. Do they taste like chicken? Come on, does CHICKEN taste like chicken? Isn’t that the weird and wonderful thing about chicken? That it doesn’t seem to have a specific taste?

Anyway, that’s it. Chicken in a Biskit makes this shitty world a little better. Try them. For a different opinion, check out what this asshole has to say.

This delectable little gem, I assume to help announce the release of what looks like a must have for anybody’s DVD collection—Heavy Metal Parking Lot—was forwarded to me by stalwart reader, Danzig (more below).

The cats I rolled with took it to an even lower place; most times, we never even had a concert to attend. We just went to random parking lots for the fun of it. If you were not hanging out drunk in some parking lot back in 1986, then I suppose this is going to seem really, really cool to you. Well mister, let me tell you something: if we had been invited to anybody’s house, we would have gone there instead. That parking lot, in reality, was an intensely lonely place.

One of my fondest parking lot memories, circa 1986 (early summer), goes a little something like this:

Me and some guy I barely remember named Ross (shaggy ‘do and big teeth; if this sounds like you and your name is Ross AND you remember hanging with some pimple-faced dork with a blonde mullet, look me up!) lied to our sucker parents with some bullshit line about a sleepover and an amusement park with some friend, then piled into Mike T’s car with as much Mad Dog 20/20 as we could scam, and headed out into the fragrant Council Bluffs, IA night. I have NO CLUE what we might have been listening to that night; rest assured that both Motley Crue and Ozzy Osborne played a part as we cruised the heady streets, hoping beyond hope that each car we passed would be the one…filled with teased hair and garish rouge; loose t-shirts (I can see her bra through it! In the back! In the back!) knotted at the waist over a white denim skirt…don’t look away…please don’t look away…

But of course they look away.

And so what the fuck, ya can’t drive up and down the street all night (or can you?), so we pulled into the residential parking lot in front of what was at the time one of CB’s few apartment building complexes, and proceeded to blare the music while peeling donuts with reckless abandon. So, you know, it was fun for a little while, but after about ten minutes or so, we were back to trolling Broadway. What’s left except for the parking lot? That’s where all the action is anyway, so there’s little use in prolonging the inevitable. Off we flew, the cooling Iowa night at our backs, mocking our every move—was it any wonder we were as angry as we were?

The Hinky Dinky parking lot teemed with the same faceless losers from week to week, yet they all seemed new to me. Did I see myself reflected in their shaggy demeanors, and so was afraid to look too closely? Was my own empty future captured in their beery breath? The blurry stares and slurred speech of the leather vest-clad 20-somethings who had still yet to be invited to anybody’s house on a Friday night? Maybe. Or maybe it was the Mad Dog 20/20.

Mike T leaned against the hood of his old Mustang (more about that car some other time), and immediately struck up a conversation with one of the many slightly skanky young ladies of the time who never seemed to close their mouths all the way; a permanent look of disgust always right there in plain sight. He was the only one out of the three of us to whom girls ever showed any actual interest. I think they thought he was trouble. They were partly right, but not as much as they hoped. Neither Ross nor I were too worried about that, though; we were used to such shabby treatment from the ladies and had accepted it as the natural order of things some time before. We instead headed into the Hinky Dinky to grab a bag of those delicious Chili-Cheese Fritos, so seldom seen these days unless one is traversing the cracked Midwest (roll up your windows and make sure the tank is full, my friend). I don’t recall much of what happened inside the store (Ross was not the most engaging of people…sorry dude…maybe you shouldn’t call me), but I very much recall exiting the store and immediately spying the two police cruisers that had pulled up and boxed in Mike T’s Mustang, their red and blue lights casting an often told tale around the shadows of the grocery store’s ceremonial stomping grounds. Was there ever a better visual created to accompany the heavy metal of the times? Probably, but this was more common. One officer was holding the knife Mike T kept in the glove box (just under the five inch rule—so you see ladies, not bad enough), the other was glaring at Mike T, mid-hassle, brandishing the crow bar Mike T kept under the driver’s seat.

“What’s this for, buddy?” the cop was saying, “You looking to deal some trouble tonight?”

“It’s for a flat tire,” I could hear Mike say matter-of-factly. Of course, it wasn’t. It was for bashing skulls—just in case a skull needed bashing. I was too shy to bash in skulls. Mike most likely was too, but we’ll never know, because the chance—thank god—never arose.

“State law states that this bad boy is supposed to be stored in your trunk, son. You sure this ain’t for bashing skulls?” asked the officer again, looking bored and angry all at once.

“Yeah. I mean, no, it isn’t. It’s for changing tires.” Bashing skulls. Maybe. Someday.

I can’t tell you the look on Mike’s face through all of this, because Ross and I had already turned in another direction and kept walking, leaving Mike to his fate. Oh well. Fuck him. I never asked him to keep knives and crow bars in his goddamned car, and it’s a damned documented fact that this kind of shit always made me nervous. Ask anyone in town. Eventually we wandered near some other losers like ourselves and were eventually written our own tickets for minors in possession of alcohol. Only drunk teenagers stand near police cars with open bottles of liquor and think nothing will happen.

Since we had absolutely nowhere else to go, Ross and I eventually made our way to the county court house to visit Mike T while he spent the night in jail. I think we felt the need to give moral support and apologize for not getting arrested with him. As it happened, the reason the cops nailed him to begin with is because some understandably concerned nim-rod at the apartment complex had turned in the license plate number of some assholes spinning out in his parking lot. He seemed to take it all in stride, although it seemed as though something was on his mind. We asked him if he wanted us to call his parents. He did not.

Later that night, I eventually made my way home, told a lie, and somehow got out of paying my ticket.

Good times.