You're Still Wrong, Mykel's Oct 2020 Blog #1 or Old Is The New Black

 

MYKEL'S OCT. 2020 BLOG

VOLUME 1

OR

OLD IS THE NEW BLACK

You’re STILL Wrong

or
Mykel's

1st October 2020 Blog/Column

Eyebags

by Mykel Board

“Your face is marked with lines of life, put there by love and laughter, suffering and tears. It's beautiful.” --Lynsay Sands

“I don’t ever remember being afraid of “oldness” – Neil Gaiman

“I like the woman you became better than the girl you were. I like the story you’ve written on your face” -- Joanna Bourne

It’s the summer before the plague locks us in isolation. I walk down 32^nd Street, in back of the Empire State Building. Akitaki, my Japanese pal, tells me it’s easy to distinguish young Korean women from young Japanese women.

“They show more leg,” he says.

And it sure is legs galore here in K-town. If those skirts were any shorter, I’d be able to get a glipse of the whole camel! Hooeeey! I want to see those gals sit down. You know how normal females tuck their skirts down between their legs when seated? Well, these girls have nothing to tuck!

This one coming right toward me… her nose about an inch and a half from her cellphone. She’s directly in my path. That’s when I notice it… looking up… I see she has dyed her hair. So what? Korean girls do that. Japanese too, though not as much.

The punchline is, she has died her hair GRAY! At the last second, she sees me in front of her, my jaw slightly agape. She sidesteps me like a bullfighter and passes to my left. I turn to stare. Then I see it. There are a ton of ‘em. It’ a fashion! Gray hair on young ladies.

Have we done it? Have the boomers’ huge numbers, and vast political power made the trappings of old age DESIRABLE?

Holy Whistler’s Mother! I can see it now.

The fashionistas… white, yellow, black, brown, green, all the possible shades of girl. They’re talking about it.

“Oh Sadie,” says a tall slim woman who flips her wrist like a caricature of a gay guy. “I’ve just been bingein’ out in Sephora. They got it all.”

“Really, do they have that new wrinkle cream?” asks a shorter, but equally slim woman. “The one that crunches up your forehead to give that webby look?”

The tall woman nods.

“You bet they do… but there’s something even better,” she says. “I found this wrinkling creme… wow! Not only does it give you forehead creases. It deepens those crows feet next to your eyes, and get this...”

She moves close to her friend, as if they’re going to kiss. They don’t. The taller woman places her index finger under her left eye and pulls slightly downward.

“It gives you eyebags!”

Sadie is slack jawed.

“Yeah look!” answers the tall one. “I only used it once and you can see it already. The skin droops like I was 50 years older… it’s incredible!”

“What’s it called?” asks the tall one.

“Well, first I gotta tell you, if you wanna look 50 years older, it’s gonna cost you a dollar a year… but it’s worth it!”

“So what’s it called? Tell me!” Sadie is getting impatient.

“It’s Eau De Crone,” says the other girl.

Women’s cosmetics have taken off like no time since the sixties… and their job is to make women look like they were born in the sixties… or before. Tits a bit too perky? There’s Saggit Breast Cream. Arm muscles too smooth? Just rub on a little Waddles Skin Loosening Cream.

And it’s not only women! Today’s MEN also succumb to the aging game. Stores can’t even keep stocked with NoGain… the men’s natural-looking hairloss shampoo.

And prosthetics… a just-introduced prosthetic double chin… implanted over the the neck, which –along with a chin-reduction procedure– will make any man into a Mitch McConnell.

30-somethings with fake oxygen tubes up the nose. Teens with walkers. Ah the world could be such a different place. And leave it to the youth of Korea to start the whole thing off.

Well, I’m ready! And I don’t need to spend the fortune on cosmetics. I’ve got the receding… er… receded hairline, the wrinkles, the long nosehair. I’ve got the droopy oldman breasts, the creaky knees.

I’m going out to pick up some twenty-something sexpot who looks just like me! Now, where’d I put that walker?

- end -

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com

→ Smarter Sex Laws dept: There are plenty of groups advocating for prison reform, especially in the age of COVID-AS-PUNISHMENT. But there are few groups advocating for the abolition of punishment AFTER prison.
Take the registries… please... especially the SEX CRIME REGISTRY, where, even after you’re released, you cannot start with a clean slate. Your crime follows you wherever you go. You are always guilty. Always unable to find a place to live or a job because YOU’RE A REGISTERED OFFENDER.

Knife attackers, muggers, and most violent criminals don’t have to register. It’s only SEX… because this is America… and SEX is bad in America.

There is at least one group that is fighting against lifetime punishment after prison. That is NARSOL. You can read their story here.

→ 2020, the Hell Continues Dept: I wanted to make mention of the death of longtime friend (since the 80s) and radio broadcaster, journalist, music geek, and all around great guy. Jan Sneum died in September NOT from the COVID-19 plague, but from a brain aneurism. He helped make Denmark my favorite country in the world… and was an all around friend to music and those who love it.

 → 5781, the Hell Continues Dept: On Rosh Hashana eve, the main voice of reason and compassion on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, died. My friend and blog editor, Marlene W., sent me information on how, in the Jewish tradition, it’s a mitzvah to die on the eve of the new year. Okay, I’ll accept that. But it’s still a sad and scary day for the rest of us.

→ I gotta do it dept: I wanted to leave politics out of this blog for once, but I couldn’t pass up this story from Reuters.
With incense smoke, flowers and photos of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Peruvian shamans performed a tribal ritual for the U.S. elections.
    Chanting and blowing a traditional Andean shell instrument, the shamans invoked the “Pachamama”, or mother earth, for the U.S. vote to take place in peace, without attacks or any witchcraft between rivals.
    The shaman teacher said, during the ritual held in a room of an old building in downtown Lima, that she was in favor of Biden.
    “That is why we are cleansing him. We have seen that they are attacking him with witchcraft, with a black doll, with a voodoo doll they are shadowing to remove him,” said she.
    “See you in hell!” said me.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish and presidential candidate contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.

Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.

Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

You're Still Wrong, Mykels Aug. 2020 Blog Vol 2: WHAT OLD PEOPLE DO!

 

YOU'RE STILL WRONG.. 

MYKEL'S AUGUST 2020 BLOG

VOLUME 2

OR

WHAT OLD PEOPLE DO

by Mykel Board

In America, the land of the perpetually young, growing old is an embarrassment and dying is seen as a failure. – Harold S. Kushner

Suffering and understanding are deeply connected; death and self-awareness are in league. – Denis de Rougemont

Olivia de Havilland died? What a shame! She was 104 years old… had her whole life behind her. It’s just awful. Such a tragedy.

I know. It’s so sad. And what about that Regis Philbin? 84 years old and poof! Just gone! It’s terrifying. Quick! Close everything NOW!!!! Old people are dying!

And Granny! It was so horrible. She had diabetes, chronic lung infection, pneumonia… and she just died. Can you imagine a woman like that just up and dying?

Flash to small talk: At a wedding party… you meet a young man, full head of hair tight chin under his scruffy beard.

“And what do you do?” you ask…

He answers.

“Oh, still in grad school,” you say, “What are your plans for the next decade or so?”

“Well, after I graduate,” comes the answer, “I think I’ll take a trip around the world. Then, look for a job in an emerging tech company. You never know when Google will be on a buying spree.”

Flash to small talk TWO, same party: an older man. The fringe of hair left is deeply gray... eyebags like a shopping trip to Safeway… wisps of gray beard missed in shaving.

“Ah, grandfather of the bride?” you ask.

He shakes his head. “Of the groom.”

“And what are your plans for the next decade or so?” you don’t ask.

“I plan to die,” he doesn’t say. “That’s what old people do. We die.”

Get it?

We have a panic. The government is asking… sometimes demanding… that everyone change their lives to protect the old and the sick. Society upends. There is more sudden poverty than at any time since the great depression. Why? So that old and sick people don’t die.

I’m pushing 80 years old. I’m a high risker. And I’m going to die! You know? That’s what old people do. That’s what EVERYBODY does. You don’t save lives… the best you can do is postpone death. Does this come as a shock to you?

Why should…

Hey Mykel!

Fuck! I’d know that font anywhere. It’s The Literary Device. Okay, I’ll bite. What the hell do you want?

Where are you going with this? As if I didn’t know. You think, since old people and sick people are going to die anyway, that asking everybody to sacrifice to save them is a worthless sacrifice.

“Worse than worthless,” I answer. “Destructive! We’re harming the many to save those who won’t be saved anyway.”

Think, Mykel... since everyone is going to die anyway, why have lifeguards at beaches… or EMT? You’re not saving anyone, you’re just postponing death.

“First,” I say, “what gives you the right to butt in here anyway. You’re just a literary device… you’re not even human. Second...”

BINGO! That’s exactly what gives me the right. I’m one who WON’T die. Literary devices live forever. That gives me some perspective.

“Shut up!” I yell back. “Second, you have a good point. I should have said that given the way this epidemic goes: You don’t save lives. the best you can do is postpone death… a little. Is it worth it?”

Who are you to judge?

“I’m Mykel fuckin’ Board. That’s who. I have the same right to give my opinion as anyone else. And I hate to see lives wrecked... people afraid to leave their houses... last chance meetings missed... plans destroyed... kids taught that other humans are dangerous and being too close to them will kill those kids… the idea of social followed immediately by the idea of distancing… We’re destroying ourselves to save people who would die soon anyway.”

Young people get the virus… even kids. It’s not just a the sick and the old disease.

“Neither is the flu, the common cold, or e-coli,” I answer, “But most people get over them. Corona is unpleasant for a while, sometimes needs heroic measures, but more than 90% of the people who get it, get over it. In the meantime, people’s lives are ruined –forever– by the fear of it. They won’t get over it. Future generations are ruined by lack of real schooling, lack of human contact, lack of a social life… except for DISTANCING. A $600 –or Trumpian $400– check is not going to fix that.”

So what do you propose? Overwhelm the US healthcare system? It’s the worst in the so-called developed world. You want to make it impossible to treat any other disease than the pile of COVIDS?

“Ah,” I reply, “you’ve hit the problem. We’re fucked from the start by living in such a primitive country. Worst medical system… except for the rich. And that’s a problem… for once in my life... I don’t have an answer to.”

Bingo!

- end -

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com

Had enough yet? dept: There’s a great story (with an awful headline, cut from the picture below) that just reports and doesn’t take sides. It’s so rare to see any balance from anyone these days.

To mask or not to mask… no conclusions. That’s the way it should be.

→ Bird Flew dept: Meaww.com reports that a British man pleaded guilty to having sex with chickens and having his wife film the act. Rehan Baigalong with his wife, Heema Baig, appeared for a hearing before a judge and pleaded guilty to 11 charges including three of performing an act of penetration on chickens.

Funny, fucking a chicken is a criminal offense, but killing one is not. Values anyone?

→ Swine get it right dept: Meanwhile, the Ripley’s site shows us a flu animal that gets it. There are, evidently, dozens of cases where pigs, farmed for their flesh, EAT the farmers. They do a pretty good job. One family reports a farmer’s remains as “his dentures and a few small body parts-- that’s all.” The article does not say if there are records of pigs fucking humans (though it seems to me I’ve seen the 8mm films). I have no idea if it would be legal or not. But if people aren’t allowed to do it to chickens, you’d expect that pigs wouldn’t be allowed to do it to people. You never know, though. If you do it... send me a picture, will ya?

--See you in hell!

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com

Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency

And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.

And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.

Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.

Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.

Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.

George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.

And my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas Master Blog.

Here are a couple video links.

This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low

And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

THE COLUMN THAT GOT ME FIRED: MRR column for 362 June 2013

THIS IS THE COLUMN THAT GOT ME FIRED...

First a little background.

I was already in trouble Two columns censored and a lot of bad blood. The handwriting was on the inside of the stall. Two months ago, I'd written a column where I quoted someone else saying that using the word "colored" was like using the word "nigger." When that column was printed, MRR used asterisks to write "ni**er." The following column complained about that (among other things). I was fired for that complaint! Here it is:

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

 

THE COLUMN THAT WAS NEVER PRINTED... AND GOT HIM FIRED!

Q. Are you happy there are more black musicians and fans in American punk?

A. No! I hate it. At shows it used to be ONLY ME. I was THE BLACK GUY. Everyone wanted to be my friend and hang out with me. I was special. Now I'm just another dork.

--Black Punkrock fan interviewed in the movie Afro-Punk 2003

Baby got a hand; got a finger on the trigger. Baby, baby, baby is a rock-and-roll ni**er. Outside of society, that's where I want to be. Outside of society, they're waitin' for me. --Patti Smith

“Shit in my mouth!” I yell, “Shit in my mouth!”

I wonder if Shaniqua can hear me, sitting up there on my face... her ample buttocks one on each of my cheeks. Cheek-to-cheek.

“I can't, Mykel,” comes the voice above me. “I can't do it. I'm too...”

I push up my tongue and press it against her sphincter.

She tightens more, as grabbing my probing tongue and pull it inside her. I'm stuck!

“Puth! Hahth!” I say.

The sphincter opens slightly. I pull my tongue back into my mouth.

Then that tasty brown hole opens a little more. A tiny fart escapes. I suck it into my lungs. Another one... then there's a pop... well more like a FRRRRRRR_CLICK!

I sense rather than feel something more than a fart escape from that elegant round muscle.

I raise my tongue again. Lick around the same hole. There it is, something tiny... hard... flat... like a piece of eggshell, or digested plastic.

First salivating, then using my tongue, I force the object away from its sphictorious home and into my mouth. I try to judge the shape and texture. I... OUCH!! The tiny whatever-it-is slides into my tongue, cutting me. I feel the blood flow down my tongue tip... drip... drip... drip... into the back of my throat.

I push the ass on my face upwards, coughing from the blood. Running for the bathroom I spit red into the toilet. Shaniqua follows.

“Jesus!” I say, “What did you eat that came out and cut my tongue.”

“Hey Mykel,” she says. “It's punk rock.”

FLASH: We break into our oral-anal story with a news flash. Terrorists have attacked the Boston Marathon. Three people are dead, more than a hundred injured. Boston is in lockdown while the police go on a manhunt.

“We'll get them! We'll get them!”

More terrorists. Just what we need. A reason to expand SECURITY!

You are now entering Boston... please have your passports ready.

Oh look, there's gonna be be a TV chase, some bomb throwing... some arrests... brothers from Chechnya??? I mean didn't the US support Chechnya in the fight against those big bad Russians? Don't those terrorists watch TV?

Three people??? Three people??? Yeah I feel sorry for their families. I feel sorry for the 89 people a day killed in US traffic accidents. But THREE PEOPLE????

U.S. Government forces have killed A MILLION Iraqis since the turn of the century. It's the holocaust of the millennium. A MILLION!!! That's like the entire city of Dallas. Will you see it in the holocaust museum in Washington? I don't think so. Any manhunts? TV action shots? Naw, none of those either. No blood pictures. No death pictures. But compare THREE to A MILLION! I want YOU to tell ME who the terrorists are.

In the meantime, vengeful Americans, who have the least regard for human life of any of the 57 countries I've been in (and probably most I haven't) will assault and probably kill several Muslims or people they THINK are Muslims in a PAYBACK FOR BOSTON.

Yo buckaroos! BOSTON was a payback!

END OF NEWSFLASH:

I hear a click behind me. Shaniqua's i-Phone snaps a picture of a naked Mykel Board puking blood into the toilet.

“Just wait til THAT gets on Facebook, Mykel.”

Time's passed since then. When I check Facebook,I look to see if that picture has made its way there. So far, it hasn't. What has made it though, are a bunch of friends who have changed their Facebook photos to some stupid pink on red EQUAL sign. It takes me 2.78 seconds to realize this is a show of support for MARRIAGE EQUALITY. Oy vey!

I've written a fuck of a lot about why I'm opposed to MARRIAGE in general... especially as a government licensed and regulated institution. Of course I don't support gay marriage. I don't support ANY marriage. But this month, I want to take a punkrock view.

If (the MRR version of) punk is anything, it's about INDEPENDENCE. It's about NOT MAINSTREAM. The letters section alone is a litany of offal about how A,B,C, is SELLING OUT... going major label... mainstream. What's more mainstream than marriage? Working for a bank? Owning an SUV? I donno.

Homos used to be the outsiders... the exotic. The Andy Warhol mystique was so alluring because it was so homosexual. UNDERGROUND was homosexuality. Homos were free. They could talk about sex, have a ton of sex partners, did not have to live under the constraints of boring hetero humanity.

Flash to 1973. You're in the back room of The Stud... on West 10 Street in New York. It's pitch black. You enter from the bar... beer finished... you need both hands. You can smell the sex. Men crowded together. Seeing nothing, your hands guide you through the blackness. A brush against the back of your hand. A penis. Then another. And another. You grab one and stroke. Before long, a pair of hands at your crotch releases your own stiffness. There's a wet softness. A head between your legs. You reach and press it toward you as he sucks it in.

In those days there was homosex everywhere. School bathrooms, hiking trails, tall bushes in the park. Sex like heteros WISH they could have. Immediate, releasing, no consequences sex. Queer sex.

QUEER was strange, different, outside the mainstream. Queer was the freedom of anonymous sex. Queer was the place to be. The slow mainstream response to AIDS was because hets thought PAYBACK TIME. Homos were living the life hets WISHED they could live. AIDS gets even!

Now? Gay marriage! The worst of heterosexuality. The most mainstream, boring, piece of shit lifestyle... and they call it a RIGHT! JEZUS fuckin' KY-ed anus! Work for a bank if you wanna get married!

I wonder how long before the first GAY president kills his first hundred thousand people. See? Gays are just like everybody else.

Flash to 1977. CBGBs. Stiv Bators is on stage with bologna safety pinned to his clothes: neck to pants cuffs. He hangs on the microphone and tells those of us sitting at the tables, drinking our cheap Buds:

I don't need anyone. Don't need no mom and dad. Don't need no pretty face. Don't need no human race...

Yeah. That's us. We don't need anyone. We're the blank generation and we only have THIS. This little club. This little group of people with this little kind of music called punk rock. It's ours. THEY wish they had places like this. THEY pay $20 to go to discos and listen to records. WE have music like never made before. We are not like THEM.

1992: a movie comes out called 1991: The Year Punk Broke. It's about Sonic Youth and Nirvana. The punkrock joke at the time is “Yeah, Punk broke. Now someone's gotta fix it.”

What happened was it went mainstream. Punks hated the movie... not because it was bad, but because it put punk in the mainstream.

1994: Warner Borthers releases DOOKIE and sells millions. There's a huge backlash. Not because of the music, but because Green Day became mainstream.

Get it? Tough. There's more.

As long as black people have been in America, they've been outsiders. Slavery was a great dividing line between the inside people and the outside people. But outsider status did not end with slavery.

During the 1930s, 40s and 50s Negro was cool. Drugs, sex, homosex, poetry, jazz, these were the forbidden fruits of the outsider... the black outsider. Negroes lived like whites wished THEY could live.

When whites wanted to claim outside status, they hung out at black clubs... listened to jazz-- ni**er music. This was the stuff your grandparents were afraid of. Yeah!

Flash to 1960. My mother's talking to me about her weekend in THE CITY.

“Mickey,” she says, “we went to this place called Greenwich Village. It was scary. We went to a music club and there were all these colored people playing saxophone and drums. And in the audience mixed couples were making out.”

In 1960, I didn't know what making out was. I didn't really get mixed couples either. But it sounded so strange and exciting that I decided then, I wanted to be one... a mixed couple making out.

In the 1970s, black street talk incorporated the word NI**ER (without the asterisks) like homos incorporated QUEER. It was in everyday street talk. A celebration of the disturbing, the unacceptable, the outside

When Patti Smith, possibly America's first punkrocker, compared her outsider status to black folks did she say she was a ROCK'N'ROLL N***R? When that first NY black-fronted punkband blasted into CBGB in the 70s. Did they call themselves THE NEW YORK N***RS? Those asterisks (now required by the MRR manual of style) are mainstream. Civilized people don't use that word. Patti and the New York band were outside of society. They were not civilized.

(My pal Sid reminds me that 10 years before Patti, John Lennon/Yoko Ono's song Woman Is The N***r of The World, was performed once on TV. Then it was banned. No asterisks in that one either.)

The New York Times can write “N**R” (with asterisks). CNN can flash N**R (with asterisks) on the screen as a caption for something or other. It annoys the shit out of me that even MRR has taken what was liberating... outside... and filled it with asterisks. I gotta use 'em, though. It's a company rule!

But it's more than that. Being black itself has become respectable. Al Sharpton, once my hero, now says hip hoppers shouldn't use the word Ni**er because it's disparaging. Translation: It's showing its outsider status.

Today, we have a black president who, while not slaughtering quite as many as his predecessor, still scores in the hundreds of thousands. He maintains his office of religious affairs and bails out banks, rather than Social Security recipients. He's a president, like any other president (except my hero, Jimmy Carter). Mainstream as white bread, get it?

If punk is anything, it is being OUTSIDE the mainstream. It is the fly in the ointment... the hole in the condom... the anal eggshell that cuts the tongue. It's what everyone else DOESN'T like... or what they're afraid of. Mainstream? Popular? Everyday? That's just not p**k.

 

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->What the world needs now dept: YES! YES! And it's about time. Peru, whose LOS SAICOS are arguably the world's first punk band has finally created an ALL-GIRL DEATH METAL BAND! Muerte Ancestral! Contact Clara Herrara Novoa, Jr. Galeano 896, Santiago de Surco, Lima 33, Peru! Tell her Mykel sent ya!

-->Uncredited dept: Paul Abuse (aka Hohman) wrote to me about a old letter he sent me ten years ago. Then, he said that he wanted to change the name of MRR to Maximum Porn and have Ron Jeremy among the columnists. I completely forgot about that, but it's likely a subconscious memory that inspired my April Fools MRR column. I want to give him credit.

-->Irony on irony dept: So the Christian right wants prayer in school, creationism in science class, government support of "faith-based" organizations, state support of religious schools through voucher schemes... and they're at it again. This time the right-wing ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM (yeah right) is protesting a California public school for instituting a yoga program. Why are they protesting? They say the program violates the separation of Church and State.

-->Little Victories Dept: The private prison mega-corporation GEO will not get naming rights at the Florida Atlantic University stadium, home of the FAU Owls. The private prison group will soon make millions on the coming jailing of Americans without papers. It's called the DREAM ACT, though for many it'll be a nightmare.

FAU students formed an anti-GEO group called STOP OWLCATRAZ. They said that the school was “putting the families of their Hispanic students at risk of being detained in facilities that bear the same name as the stadium of their Alma Mater.” The bad publicity caused the corporation to withdraw its bid to name the stadium. 10 punk points guys!

-END-

Your comments are welcome. And your comments to Maximum Rock'n'Roll (mrr@maximumrockn'roll.com) are even more welcome.

MRR Column for No. 360 (The Old Perv)

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

Mykel's column for MRR 260, in which he explains how he'll never act

"A man does not learn very well. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down. A log is capable of learning more than a man.” -Edward P. Jones

She's in her late 20s... maybe Dominican... maybe from Brazil... with the kind of Latina ass that white girls tsk tsk about objectification but you know they really envy. She's in the middle of the gym, working with a trainer. I'm on the mats, stretching my 75 year old muscles, trying to keep the creaks from popping too loudly, depressed that my body will NEVER be objectified. I watch the girl as I spread my legs and pretend to stretch this gracilis, then that one. This satorious, then that one. This rectus femoris, then that one.

I watch her bend down and grab a barbell. Then, using her own rectus, she stands and holds it several feet from the mats. On the barbell are huge weights. The biggest in the gym... at least two hundred pounds on that barbell... She sets it down and lifts it again. My corpora cavernosa fill with blood and stiffen.

I shower at home, not wanting to deal with the engorgement problem among the sweaty jocks in the lockerroom. Leaving my bathroom shower, I dry myself, dress, and open the day's mail. There it is: in no wrapper at all, the newest MRR.

I flip to the letters section... scanning for my name. There it is: two letters. One's from my pal Marc Rentzer... upbeat and cool. The other, strategically run right before Marc's letter, is from someone complimenting MRR, and PS-ing that “Mykel Board is an old perv.”

Yes! Another dissatisfied customer.

The comment stokes the engine of a thought train. Are there young pervs? When young people do perv stuff, it's experimentation or curiosity. A teenager who jerks off to Victoria Secret catalogs is a victim of raging hormones.

But an OLD PERV? Isn't that redundant? The problem isn't the action but the age. Old people are not supposed to do that. They're supposed to sit in the park and feed pigeons.

It gets me thinking. What do people my age actually do?

In the summer, I see a few in Central Park, feeding pigeons or sitting on a bench slumped over a newspaper. But that doesn't account for most.

A Google images search for “old people” brings up mostly faces. But when the people are doing anything, they're flipping the bird, getting a tattoo, muscle building, fitting into a thong... anything but ACTING THEIR AGE. At least anything but acting the cliché of their age.

Maybe that's WHY the images are there. They're unique, because these older folks DON'T act their age.

Back when I was 30, I wrote a song called When You're My Age You'll Be Selling Insurance. Now, when they're my age, those letter-writing punk rockers will be cashing in their 401Ks.

I doubt if I'll be invited to the Bar Mitzvah of the guy who wrote the old-perv letter. But, if I live long enough, I might go to his graduation from business school.

Me? I'LL NEVER ACT MY AGE.

Scene change to the school I teach in... teacher's lounge between classes.

I ask what April, my favorite colored girl, has been doing lately. She hasn't been at work. I hear she had made it to off-Broadway.

“Mykel,” says a liberal teacher, born and bred within the shadow of the Whitehouse, “you can't say colored. It's like saying Nigger!”

“It is not!” I protest. “Nigger is a pejorative... an insult. Colored People is used by colored people themselves! There is an organization called The NAACP. That's The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. You heard of them? Civil rights for colored people exist because of them. You ever heard of The National Association for the Advancement of Niggers? It's not the same thing at all!”

“That was an organization STARTED by African Americans,” she answers. “THEY can call themselves whatever they want. You're white. You can't do that.”

Her comment is like ACT YOUR RACE.

It gets me thinking. What do people of my race do?

In the summer, I see white people at the beach, trying to darken up. At night, they walk the streets in large chested packs of fratboys and soror-sisters? Boys ugh ugh ughing as they guzzle Bud Light while watching colored guys smash each other up in pro-football. White girls chew gum and worry about how their ass grows to the side and not the back like their more aesthetically pleasing colored counterparts.

Among the people I recognize from a Google search of white people, are Michael Moore, Bill Gates, John McCain. A screen capture from FOX News shows a little white girl crying with the FOX caption “Stolen Pony.” The headline, added after by the picture clipper is: WHITE GIRL PROBLEM?

Many of the pictures make fun of white people. A few defend them. There are almost no photos of people actually DOING anything... except one of a white girl on her knees... taunting a bull.

I spend most of my life with non-white people. During the day, I'm teaching Japanese folks how to talk good. When I travel, I mostly avoid places where white people live. I used to deny being white at all.

“I'm not white. I'm a Jew,” I used to say. Unfortunately, it is now fashionable to LIKE Jews, to bring us into the fold. We're anti-Muslim, ya know? That makes us white.

Well, buckaroos, my trip to Africa brought me a ton of Muslim friends... even to drink with. Just like some Jews (like me) eat pork. Some Muslims drink alcohol. The appeal to me? Most Muslims aren't white.

Me? I'LL NEVER ACT MY RACE.

FLASHBACK: Highschool gym class; Hicksville High School 1960s. Along with study period, it's the class I hate most. Out the back yard... over a fence... to Al's Pizza on Newbridge Road. I'm convinced that my regular consumption of pizza while cutting gym class was responsible for my serious teenage acne. But at least on the days I made it to Al's, I didn't have to suffer through being the last to be picked for the baseball team, football team or any team.

In baseball, when I can't cut out of class, I hide in the outfield... hope that no one hits a ball to me... run away when they do... use my glove to protect my head instead of catching the ball.

“You play like a girl,” one of the jocks tells me. “Why don't you pick flowers or something?”

Flowers? What about flowers? I love flowers. In America, guys never get flower. One of my life's highpoints was visiting a friend in Holland and meeting him at the airport. In his hand was a bouquet of tulips. Girl enough for you?

I ask directions, for G-d's sake. Several times. Is that non-manly enough? It's one of my favorite ways to meet people... and to judge the character of a country.

ASIDE: The worst place to ask directions is Venezuela. Even if you ask in Spanish, the people look right through you... as if you're not there.

Better is Japan, where instead of explaining, people will walk with you a bit, and make sure you're going the right way.

Best is Trinidad, where, when you ask directions the answer will be. “Yeah man, what's your hurry? Let's be havin' a drink first, a little limin'. I'll get you where you want to go. But what's the hurry?” END OF ASIDE

What does asking directions, hating to play sports, and liking flowers say about Men from Mars and Women from Venus?

Way before that book, Samuel Johnson said: Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant.

Weakest? Most Ignorant? I don't think so. I certainly don't want to hang out with... much less fuck... any girl who can't beat me up. But that's not how guys are supposed to think.

Me? I'LL NEVER ACT MY GENDER.

I may be an old pervert. Chronologically I'm old, even if I refuse to act it. A pervert? Well, if we go back to the Latin root it comes from pervertere "overthrow, overturn, corrupt, subvert, abuse..." sounds pretty punkrock to me. So my answer to the guy who called me that? Guilty as charged... and I'm just getting started.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Drug your kids for money dept: Does your child have bad moods? Poor school performance? Difficulty focusing? Even if s/he doesn't, could you use some extra cash? "Compensation for time and travel."

Let us drug your kid and we'll pay you!!!

So says a company called Acurian Health that encourages parents to submit their kids to drug testing... and will pay them cash to do so. Get those welfare kids into something productive... like drugs! Go to www.KidsDepressionStudy.com for details.

-->Speaking of act your gender dept.: I'm in love. I went to Brooklyn to see my friends WORLD WAR IX and BLACKOUT SHOPPERS play at the Trash Bar. Opening for them was this band called inCircles. The girl vocalist/guitar player is amazing. She moves on stage like Sam McPheeters or that dancing guitar player in Meryl (sp?). Wow! Best new band I've seen in ages. And that girl, hah! Guitar hero showdown time! No boy is gonna match that!

-->Record stores are not dead dept: Used to be that Bushwick was the SCARY part of NY. Now it's got an organic bakery... scary in a different way. But, it also has a great record store: Heaven Street Records. No CDs, but they have an extremely tolerant buying policy. They're honest, and owner Sean sings barefoot with Cult of Youth. Find 'em on Facebook and ask 'em to carry your records! They probably will.

-->Faith in humanity... even the Swiss dept: The Nation reports that the residents of Wolfenschiessen, Switzerland polled slightly in favor of a nuclear waste facility near their town. An industry group figured that they could get more support by giving money to each citizen who endorsed the facility. Instead, local support for the plan went down. The bribe cut the rate of acceptance in half. Even when locals were offered more than $8,000 each, they turned against the program.

Yow! PUNK ROCK, I'd say.

-->Was the harasser acting her gender? dept: The Associated Press reports that the widow of a New York City police officer says her husband committed suicide because his female supervisor demanded sex from him in exchange for a favorable work schedule and job assignments. The widow is now suing.

According to the suit, the cop's career depended on his "submission to the sexual advances" of his married supervisor.

"Officer Schindler was made to understand that he would suffer tangible detriment in his job, job assignments, working conditions and future prospects if he did not submit to the sexual advances," the suit says.

The pressure was too much and the cop shot himself.

You haven't heard this story, but if the dead cop were a woman, I bet you would have.

-->Google Acts Its Race dept: A new study has found racial bias in ad results from Google. Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney studied names typically associated with African Americans. She found they were 25% more likely to produce Google ads offering background checks or suggesting the person had a criminal record. Sweeney conducted the study after a search for her own name turned up an ad reading, Latanya Sweeney, Arrested? with a link offering background checks. Sweeney concluded: "There is discrimination in the delivery of these ads."

-->Oh yeah dept: I expect you figured it out. My last column, about taking over the dictatorship of MRR, was an April Fool's column. The endnotes, however, were all true.