Mr. Rot-Gut On Rain-days, on Sundays on your sexy Fridays... Your lion is there, waiting, waiting Waiting for you Mr. Rot-Gut to find out that there are no more friends like Ryan. Waiting for you to find out that Chino is just a place where the wolf-man is lonely, and you'll never sail to Tahiti. Waiting for you to find out that Summer left and Anna stayed. Waiting for you to find out what Walking the Dog really means. Waiting for you to turn into slim and run the ceiling and run across the walls.
Mr. Rot-Gut, Summer is gone.
I love the summer, and have built a career out of it. Songs of summer, and of beaches, and of not having a beach.
What does that mean? I say. Keep your money folded and in the right fashion. Music is not colors! Music is not played that way mister Rot-Gut. Mr. Rot-Gut. Mr. Got-Rut. Don't you know it's hard to be the wolf-man tonight? Don't you know that? Do you even know what that means? Lil dog? Marissas dead, Mr. Rot-Gut When you danced around in glitter paint, sparkling and all beautiful, and crazy, and you said no one put the M in Manchester. You said that Marissa died in Mexico, and the rest is lies! F.L.P.T. Mr. Rot-Gut. Your lions out there and Marissas Dead.
I began listening to Lady Gaga’s record “The Fame” as soon as I began typing this sentence.The record is revolving on my turntable right this instant, however it is not playing at its normal 33 and 1/3 pace. It is playing at least a quarter too slow because I am fascinated by slowing down music on my turntable. It is the best thing you can do to music in my opinion. Playing a record slower than it is meant to be, brings out all of the best and worse parts of it. Wanting to write a review of this record, I decided listen to “The Fame,” and review it song by song how it sounds slowed down.
Just Dance:
When listening to the track slowed down, it opens to much more bubbling sounds that you just cannot find when played at full speed. The opening synth sound turns into a cosmic saw burning through the supposed dance floor that Gaga is apparently getting down on. You have heard this song on the radio over and over for the last year probably, because it was all over the charts when it first came out. I have to admit that I was sick of it to. Until I slowed it down. Gaga’s lyrics on the song become less abrasive and more like what I would imagine the serpent sounded like offering the apple. The track and its beat just melt together like butter into a sexy cornbread when it is unhurried. Really though, the best part of the song has to be that synth, God it sounds good.
Love Game:
“Let’s have some fun, this beat is…” sicker than when played at a normal speed. The synth again is a grinding beast, but the thing that shines is Gaga’s vocals. Slowing the record down has dramatically changed her tone and the overall effect of what she is saying. When she says that she is “educated in sex” you believe her. Her voice becomes like a leviathan of hotness. Think Scarlet Johansson meets Bridget Bardot trapped in the love game. Sultry is her voice and combined with the beat it is hard not to saunter around your room doing a slow dance. “Got my ass squeezed by sexy cupid,” and she means it. “Lets play a love game.” Sure Gaga sounds good.
Paparazzi:
This was my favorite song of Gaga’s when it first came out, and now at the slower speed, it has become one of my most favorite songs of the last ten years. Easily. Instead of harsh surrounding piano-synth sounds, the main instrument here is choppy and really adds to the atmosphere by combining somewhat karate chops of sound flavor. The synth notes come in and out of the beat with slow attacks. Gaga’s voice is incredible in this song as well. It almost sounds like the voice of a siren…only though if it was a siren floating down a lazy river.
Poker Face:
“Ma ma ma Mahh.”Slowing this song down helps to turn it into the soundtrack of some sort of bi-friendly carnival ride. This may be one of Gaga’s most popular songs, which is surprising because of its concept. She is telling her man that he can’t read that she is fancying a woman while copulating with him. “Russian Roulette is more fun with a gun,” says Gaga, but this song is more fun because of the slowing down. Her vocals become much lower, sounding at times like Morrissey and at other times like a disco version of Joni Mitchell. When she sings the hook at the end over and over again, it turns into less of a catchy group of words to more of a battle cry. It is very strange. “I wanna roll with him a hard pair we will be.” I believe that any group she is involved with would be hard, because slowed down she sounds like a force to be reckoned with.
Side B
Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say):
This song is a departure from the rest of the album. It had no radio play, probably because of its T.L.C. qualities. But the song is great because it boasts disco qualities with its Caribbean beat and the echo-y vocals really shine through. The song starts off with the lyrics “Cherry cherry, boom boom, Gaga,” foreshadowing the poppy nature of the song. Eh, nothing else I can say.
Beautiful, Dirty, Rich:
“We’ve got a redlight pornographic dance fight, systematic honey, but we got no money.” Ok, I believe it. This song is covered with lecherous slime, and I think that is its appeal. It seems like it was written in one of those stalls in a pornographic video cassette rental store on the south side of Wichita Kansas. Slowed down, Gaga sounds like she is singing the lines “Uh bang bang bang / bang bang bag/ beautiful dirty rich” from a dumpster behind a sleaze shop. And maybe she is.
The Fame:
The guitar is the star of this track, sounding like a Foreigner B side riff. Or, it may be more of a seventies glam-rock lead which matches the lyrics, “Give me something I wanna wanna be, retro glamour, Hollywood yes we live for the fame / doing it for the fame.” Slowing the song down is the only way the guitar has this effect. Normally it is not as triumphant. The bridge is written better than any song the Bee gee’s have written, and has a sort of slowed down Kylie Minogue echo-y effect.Gaga says in the song that fame is her teenage dream, and she’s doing to “make it tonight” and I think that this song is the proof of that; the title track to the album that made her famous, both called The Fame.
Side C
Money Honey:
The pre-chorus of this song descends like a snow leopard on a slick mountain. Gaga says “It’s good to live expensive you know it but / My knees get weak, intensive / When you give me kisses. That’s money honey.” And it is money. Her voice and beat, when slowed, moves down the scale with great care, and you can tell it was crafted to be the perfect pop song. Well, at least the most perfect pop song about being a mistress. The song fits well with the rest of the album, being about taking money from an older man in exchange for explicit things. But the best thing that is brought out by the slowing down of the record is the harmonies in the last thirty seconds of the track. They blend together in an outstanding fashion.
Starstruck:
This is the closest thing on the album to a Britney Spears song, or a T-Pain type jam because of the auto-tune that is altering Gaga’s voice. Her vocals sound extra-terrestrial, but the rapper has a smooth shine on his tone due to the descending tempo of the modified record speed. It may sound like a Britney song, but it still is much better than anything she has produced in a long time. At the end of the song, Gaga sounds like what I would imagine the soundtrack to a dinner party with the Talking Heads at Lil Wayne’s house.
Boys Boys Boys:
This is the most likely of her songs to be sung in a high school drama class. This is due to the Grease-like quality of the chorus. The best line in the song is “Love it when you call me legs,” because Gaga’s voice sounds like a ghoul when she sings it close to slow motion.
Paper Gangsta:
Apparently Gaga don’t want no paper gangsta, or so she says over and over in this song. What is a paper gangsta? According to the lyrics you need something shiny, a range rover heart, money for dinner, and diamonds. But, if you give them to Gaga they will be “melted into ice” along with your diamond thoughts. The piano in this song is great, and sounds like an old player piano that would be heard in an old western movie. This is a strange instrument to place in a dance song, but it works great. This song is like an old-west-disco minus the threat of tuberculosis.
Side D
Brown Eyes:
What do you get when you mix Michael Jackson, Elton John and a twenty-two year old Gaga? This song. It sounds like a choice cut from either Jackson or John, but there are some elements of Freddie Mercury sass as well. It is a ballad which is different than the other tracks on the album, but it does have a major guitar solo right in the middle of it. This is the only song where Gaga lets you see into her thoughts on things other than just fame and the things connected with it. This song is about loss and love, whereas the rest of the album is about gaining money and sex. Lots of sex. Even though the song is different it still fits, but listening to it slowed down, it could be right at home on an eighties power ballad greatest hits album.
I Like it Rough:
Apparently she likes it rough.
Summerboy:
This song is the ultimate jam, when slowed down. It starts with the line, “nowhere yah we’re goin’ nowhere fast,” but that’s not true. The song is going everywhere, even when it’s not so fast. The song’s chorus is magnificent. It touches on the same feeling of dirty disco pop that Rilo Kiley flirted with, only this is done much better by Gaga. It has everything for a summer jam; interesting lyrical flow, driving beat, synths, and wicked grooves. If you close your eyes while listening to the bridge, it takes you to a beach date where the only thing you may have to fear is crabs…”I’m a busy girl / Don’t have too much time / Hurry up before I change my mind,” hurry up, because you definitely don’t want to miss out. This Blondie inspired hit is the best way Gaga could have ended the album.
“A year from now, I could go away, and people might say, ‘Gosh, whatever happened to that girl who never wore pants?’ But how wonderfully memorable 30 years from now, when they say, ‘Do you remember Gaga and her bubbles?’ Because, for a minute, everybody in that room will forget every sad, painful thing in their lives, and they’ll just live in my bubble world.” Gaga said this to a New York Magazine columnist a few days ago, and I think that it sums up the album and her life, so far, pretty well. In this album and in her life she is trying to just make an experience for people. The fact that the record turned out to be good only helped her in making this experience more widespread. Will you remember anything about Lady Gaga in thirty years? Probably so, but not that much. But, if you listen to her record “The Fame” slowed down you will enjoy it so much that you may remember it for longer than if you just listened to it at its normal speed.
I have decided to put together a fishing trip for the spring, but this is not going to be a boring fishing trip like usual. I am not planning on fishing for the normal Catfish or Bass or Sun Perch. Oh no. I am after the monster fish swimming in Lake Clinton called the Alligator Gar.
The Alligator Gar normally grows to one hundred pounds and is about six feet long. That is just the normal size. Some have been taken out of the water weighing three hundred pounds and measure up at about ten feet in length. These are monstrous fish.In addition to being extremely large, the Alligator Gar also has a head that looks just like an Alligator. Sharp rows of teeth line their strong mouths, and these teeth look like sharpened pencils. Getting them on your line is not the most difficult part of catching them.Since they eat everything they can get close to; this is not hard. The difficult thing to do is getting them off your hook and line. When you pull them out of the water and up on land or into a boat the Alligator Gar swings its head and tries to bite your arms off. Or they try to bite your face off, or really anything off.Once they are in your possession, they are so violent that you have to either shoot it in its prehistoric head of hit it with a hammer to kill it because the fish will live for about two hours above the water if it needs to.They are terrible.This is what I am up against, and I cannot wait.
I have always loved fishing; I used to go for hours every day during the summer with my friends when I was in high school. We would have contests to see who could catch the most fish, and drink whiskey and smoke cigars while we waited for a bite.I had a friend that lived in a very rich neighborhood on the east side of Wichita which stocked their ponds with only the biggest Bass and Catfish. The great part about these ponds was that all of the rich kids, except for my friend, were too afraid to fish. I guess they would rather watch television or something else that they would not get dirty while doing, or they just did not realize that these fish were ripe for the picking. I don’t know. But we did have the ponds all to ourselves, and each day I would pull out about five giant Catfish and numerous smaller species, normally wining the competition.Many times I would stay up all night long on the weekends in order to get there in the early morning when the fishing was just right.This would usually end with me falling asleep on the sidewalk and awaking when the fancy wives of the neighborhood walked their tiny dogs over my tired body.Then I would get back to my fishing.
I had this casting net that I fished with sometimes, which is illegal I know, but is too much fun not to use. It is just too easy.The casting net is just a big mesh net in the form of a circle, with little weights lining the outer ring. You throw it with one hand connected to a string, which is connected to the net, and as it falls into the water it traps every living thing underneath it. Then you pull the string on your hand up and the net scoops the fish out of the water. One time I pulled the net up and it had twenty Bass, a good sized Catfish, and a Snapping Turtle all nestled together. It was almost a miracle, or a Christmas present to myself from the water, which is why I call this going “Jesus Style.” I think that is also because Jesus’ fishing friends in the Bible used this method.The casting net, however, will not work very well for my Alligator Gar fishing trip.
I have been thinking about using a rod and reel I have that my uncle gave to me to bring in the beasts, but I am not sure if it will hold up to the pressure of having a fish of this magnitude attached to it. He is my favorite uncle, and is a damned good fisherman, but it might not be strong enough if I catch a three hundred pounder. This is not likely, but could happen. I have been thinking that I might use a bow and arrow, because I have seen people use them on the internet and the results are more than favorable. The fisherman stands with his weapon loaded, and when the Alligator Gar comes to the surface for air, which they do because they have prehistoric lungs or something scary, he shoots them. This does not kill the dinosaur fish, the fisherman still has to do that with the methods discussed earlier, but it does piss the Alligator Gar off a great deal. I do own a bow, and a couple of arrows, but I think that I would rather handle my first fight with a confused and slightly mad fish rather than a really pissed off fish. Plus, I would have to tie strings to my arrows and my bow skills are really not what they used to be.
One time I went fishing with my grandpa at Grand Lake, and we did not catch a thing. That was all right because sometimes no fish want to eat, and so none are caught.So it goes. He did tell me a story about fishing trips he took when he was a boy. He grew up during the great depression in the thirties and his family did not have that much food hanging around, so fishing was a good way for him to help feed everyone or get a snack. He did not use a rod and a reel because his family could not afford one, he told me, so instead he used a potato sack; a large burlap potato sack.He said that he would wait for when the pond by his house flooded over and into the fields, and then the fish would get stuck in the ditches around the highways. Not small fish but giant Carp, which are kind of like Goldfish only they are bigger and they eat rotten bodies at the bottom of the water instead of flakes from jars. Being a young man, he needed a few people to help jump onto the back of these monsters and pick them up with the potato sacks. The only way to catch them was if my grandpa had a few friends with him, and these friends had to really want the fish as well.
This is why I need a crew also, and my crew has to be totally on point to catch the Alligator Gar.The way I see it, I will need someone to videotape the fishing trip for documentation purposes. This is essential because I would like to have evidence of the catch; fishing stories always get out of hand.I will have to have a cook lined up, because after I catch one I want to make a sandwich out of it. I heard in New Orleans that they can be fried and then put on a bun like Catfish, and I think that sounds delicious.Both of these positions have not been filled as of yet, but there is still time before spring.The one person I do have confirmed for the adventure is my friend Austin. He is going to be the killing squad; the Alligator Gar hangman. He is responsible for taking out the fish after it is caught, so it does not try to kill us for the two hours that it is alive on land. This was not decided because he likes to kill animals or anything weird like that, I think, but because he has a pistol. And if the pistol does not work well, then he also has a pair of samurai swords, but these are just for an extreme emergency.
The method of killing the Alligator Gar is strange to me; one can either shoot it, or hit it on the head with a hammer. It seems to me that this is just what happened the first time that someone caught one of these beasts and did not know what to do with the terrifying monstrosity of nature they had just encountered.I can’t imagine not knowing what an Alligator Gar is, and then all of a sudden having one on my line. I think that I would be so terrified that I would just shoot it or bash in its head. I am glad that I have seen a picture of one so I can realize what I am dealing with when I have one in front of me.It reminds me of what I read about the Aborigines and what they did when the English first came to Australia. They did not see the English when they were out in the water in huge boats because they had never seen anything like that before. They just looked out and over the boats; like they were not even out there floating.It took the English actually coming over and talking to them for the Aborigines to notice that they were real. I wonder if that is what happened when the first Alligator Gar was found. Because the first Alligator Gar caught had never been seen before, and it scared the fisherman so much, he shot it or hit it with a rock. If you have never seen an Alligator before, and then all of a sudden this fish is biting at you with huge jaws, then I think that you would attack it also. The Aborigines eventually did attack the English after they finally realized what they were, with bows and arrows and spears, but they did not succeed. This is no option for me.
The Alligator Gar sandwich is going to be tricky to put together; at least to make it edible, and taste well. There are many bones in their bodies that are tiny, but sharp like their teeth. Once the fish has died, the first thing that has to happen is to rid it of its entrails by cutting its scaly belly open and pulling them out with your fingers. This sounds bad, but not as much as the next step which is cutting off the fish’s giant reptilian head. This is another reason why I may need to bring the samurai sword instead of a gun.That would take at least one swoop to decapitate it, instead of many bullets.Once cleaned out, then the next step is to flatten the body with a rolling pin, or beer bottle, which I will have many empty ones.This will dislodge the bones connected to the spine. This is important because I do not want to bite down on one of those little pieces of shrapnel.
I remember once when I was little, eating Catfish with my cousin and like any little kid, I was eating it very fast when I bit down on the sharpest little bone in the fish. It went right through the gum-like part of the top of my mouth and just barely came out my nose. That was terrible, and I think that I blocked it out of my mind because I still cannot remember if it hurt or not. I am guessing that it did. The bones on the Alligator Gar would hurt worse though I am sure, because they are normally one hundred pounds and have a large bone structure.
When I think back to all of the fishing trips in my life, they are remembered with a sort of peaceful way about them; hanging around the lakes or ponds, telling stories about fish and girls, most not completely true, and drinking while bringing in the catch.Every one of them was enjoyable, as will my next trip be in the spring. Bringing down my Alligator Gar is not going to be as tranquil as the other fish in my past, but I think that it will be the most memorable.In fact, I know it will be the most memorable.
I am after the monster fish swimming in Lake Clinton called the Alligator Gar, and I will catch him, and then I will eat him.
