Joey Billings was the last American to take advantage of Cash for Clunkers before the $1 billion govt appropriation tapped out on July 30th. Mr. Billings traded in his 2007 fart guzzling Big Wheel for a fuel efficient, 2009 Big Wheel equipped with GPS (Girl-Proof System), satellite Speak-and-Spell and juice cup holder. In light of the program going bust, the Secretary of Transportation expressed his regret for making Cash for Clunkers available to people who eat boogers.

Illegal downloading. Unethical? I’m still torn. Part of me is the broke music fan who enjoys his eclectic mp3 collection made possible in-part by shady file sharing sites. Yes I download music illegally, but I rationalize my actions based on the idea that music will always be available for free on one site or another, so why pay? It’s practically an obsolete concept. It’s like why people smoke pot- we know it’s illegal, but the risk is low and the return is high (no pun intended) so why deny ourselves the pleasure? I would certainly pay if I had to. I’m a true fanatic. Not because of its availability, but because I can’t live without it. And if the music industry (not the artists) were smart enough, they’d come up with alternate ways to make us shell out money for their precious hard materials. Instead they go around busting kids for ripping Justin Timberlake tracks off Limewire. The music industry is wasting its energy. Put it towards something productive like offering us new services that we’re willing to pay for. Trying to shut down all illegal downloading sites is like trying to cure gay people.

The other side of me is an artist. One that has struggled for many years to get paid for his work. When I was younger, I would create art for myself. It was very personal. Writing was a way to express myself without denouncement from the outside world. As I grew older (and realized that waiting tables was no longer a sane approach to making money), I began to accept the fact that my art had a dollar value and that it was worth trying to sell to the public.

So how would I feel after years spent polishing my craft, arriving at a point where my art was my livelihood, and suddenly people decided they didn’t want to pay anymore (but still wanted to see the show). I think I’d feel used. Maybe I’d feel differently if I’d already had a bunch of money. Most bands don’t. Their art is how they pay for food. They must feel gypped. And obviously I’m aware that illegal downloading can be great exposure for young musicians who would otherwise not have it, that many of those doing the free downloading will eventually pay the price of admission, but I can’t help thinking that there are still artists who feel snubbed by our cavalier behavior. That their generous offerings of sound are being bandied about recklessly without compensation or regard for the source.

I guess my real question is, what would Radiohead do?

I get annoyed when friends call me from rock concerts and hold their cell phones up to the band so I can listen to what I’m missing.

Because I’ve always wanted to hear the Verizon Wireless version of ‘Sussudio’ – embellished with static and call-waiting beeps. And what song’s complete without you singing along drunk to the chorus? AAAAND who needs a song to fade out when your crappy phone will just drop the call.

Seriously though, next time you decide to rock me out through your mobile, save your minutes. You’re only torturing my eardrums and reminding me that I’m too broke to be there myself. And I’m trying to watch So You Think You Can Dance right now so tell Phil I’ll call him back.

We can be sure that all hipsters share two constants: they all wear dirty, ripped jeans two sizes too small and they all worship Lou Reed. I’d like to add a third: they’re made of rubber. It’s a theory.
Let me try to prove it. On Saturday, I was at a Television concert in Central Park (an epic hipster event), and saw a pasty young lad sitting shirtless atop the five-foot metal barrier separating the crowd from the stage. This particularly rebellious hipster was trying to figure out how to swing his feet over the fence, hop down to the restricted side and retrieve his hip sunglasses. After four or five seconds pondering his dilemma, he decided “what the fuck” and took a backwards swan dive off the thing landing neck first onto the barrier’s metal base. Ouch, right? Wrong. Young Iggy Pop bounced right off the metal and, like an Olympic dismount, landed squarely on his Chuck Taylors without emoting so much as a grunt. Anyone else would have easily been paralyzed for life. Hipster dude didn’t lose the cigarette dangling from his lips (a rolled Drum of course).
After witnessing this physical feat, I concluded that hipsters are made of rubber. It also explains their general apathy towards life. The reason hipsters’ emotional levels rarely exceed those of a garden hose is because they’re both made from the same material. Rubber. And what about all the tattoos and piercings? I probably wouldn’t be afraid of needles either if my skin was made of a tough elastic polymeric substance.
Anyway, it’s a theory. What theories have you come up with lately?

My friend Ted just became the drummer for the Meat Puppets. In case you don’t know who the Meat Puppets are, go to iTunes and download the songs “Backwater” and “Lake of Fire.” The Meat Puppets, in addition to being Kurt Cobain’s favorite band, were my friend Ted’s favorite band as a teenager. Now he’s their drummer. Heavy. I mean think of your favorite band growing up, then imagine yourself on that poster from your bedroom wall, posing shirtless, twirling a drumstick, spray-spitting Jack Daniels into the atmosphere. That’s Ted now.
And he didn’t audition. He was sound-engineering a documentary about the Meat Puppets in Austin, and one day the band’s delinquent drummer was a no-show for rehearsal (again) and Ted, a proficient drummer as well as being familiar with the Puppets’ full songbook, offered to sit in. They gave him the job.
Last time I hung out with Ted, he taught me a term that I fell in love with: MICROWAVING. In the dating world, microwaving is when you call up an ex-girlfriend (or boyfriend) for sex. Ya know, like you’re heating up an old dish. I couldn’t believe I’d never heard the expression, especially because the existence of my sex life had relied on it for the past year. I had always called it “ex-sex.” One weekend, an ex of mine and I had sex 22 times in one weekend to the song “I Need You Tonight.” It was ex-sex in excess to INXS.
Anyway, discovering “microwaving” made me think of Sniglets. A singlet is a “word that should be in the dictionary, but isn’t” (ex: Furnidents: The indentations left in carpet after moving heavy furniture. Blivet: to flip your pillow looking for a cool spot. ARG (Audio Retinal Gyration): The act of trying to read the label on a LP record while it’s playing on a turntable.) Sniglets were invented by Rich Hall, a comedian and cast member of SNL and Not Necessarily the News back in the early eighties. Sniglets cracked me up when I was a kid. I watched Not Necessarily the News every week just for Rich Hall’s Sniglet segment. They were brilliant observations delivered by this quirky guy with a funny lisp. Rich Hall paved the way for Jerry Seinfeld.
I’ve performed several times with Rich Hall over the past few years and have become pretty good friends with him. We try to book dates together at the Riviera Comedy Club in Vegas when our schedules allow.
So I was thinking, Rich Hall is my Meat Puppets. He was an icon of my childhood and he’s now part of my adult life. Funny how that happened. I guess what it says about life is that passion and doing what you love eventually puts you on a poster or marquis with your hero. I don’t know if that’s always the case. It’s just a theory I came up with via the word “microwaving.” Certainly your determination to have sex with someone other than an ex-girlfriend does not always put you in that position. I’ll have to come up with a new theory for that one.