School Days
Soon, kids all around the world will have to make the mental shift from not knowing what day of the week it is to being forced to pay attention to what’s a school day and what is a weekend day. Personally, I believe I’m much too cool for school. But with back-to-school coming up, and the threat of the fast-approaching, much-dreaded first day of school, here are some songs I’m definitely not too cool for.
Gorilla Biscuits — “Start Today”
My room’s a mess and I can’t get dressed / gotta be out by eight o’clock
Gwar — “School’s Out”
I kind of had to put some version of this song on the list. Gwar does it best.
Pink Floyd — “Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2”
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
Built To Spill — “Twin Falls”
Falling in love with a place you wanted to get away …
A Patriotic Ode to Old Black
Neil Young’s guitar is a piece of ad-hoc American genius
‘He was always welcoming to stumbles and shakiness, to the problem of staying in tune.’
His secrets include a DeArmond adjustable-pole pickup, a Bigsby whammy bar, a loop bypass that makes his reverb unit go straight into the amplifier, a Whizzer, a foot switch in a red box, 5 Strobo tuners, an AC-powered MXR analog delay, an ancient Mu-Tron octave divider, tube reverb, a very old BOSS flanger in a blue metal box, the Echoplex, gold Herco Flex 50 picks, and more.
The invitation came from Jan via text, and without even looking at my calendar or inquiring how much the tickets would cost, I responded with an immediate hard yes. We would meet on Thursday at the Oyster Bar in the catacombs of Grand Central Station around six. We’d take the escalator down into the underbelly of our metropolis to the LIRR and catch the commuter train out to Forest Hills.
I know what you’re thinking: Tennis! On grass! And you’re not entirely wrong. The wealthy Tudor suburb of Forest Hills was once the elegant home of the US Open, in the days of Stan Smith (see my all-white sneakers — my Stans — which came back into fashion one day in 1995 when I strutted my pristine pair down Bedford Avenue).
A few steps into the crowded bar and I was met with the warmest reception from Jan, who handed me an icy Tito’s (one of the two he was double-fisting). I began to chill as the vodka took …
Secrets of the Greenbrier
The future home of Zombie Congress is a massive bunker carved out beneath a luxury hotel in West Virginia decorated by Dorothy Draper and emblazoned with swastikas
Hotel tech support are ex-CIA dudes working undercover who stand ready to drive the normies off the property with their covert arsenal
When the big one hits, they’ll run right over you. And I can prove it.
Hide the secret in plain sight. This was Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn’s philosophy in the late 1950s when they built their 112,544-square-foot Congressional doomsday bunker 720 feet underground in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, concealed beneath a posh Gilded Age resort called The Greenbrier. The bunker’s construction and operation was covered by a series of code names: Project X, Project Casper, and Project Greek Island. But even before the bunker, The Greenbrier was a swanky haven for powerful high-society types. It was the place where General George Catlett Marshall had his 60th birthday party; where President Dwight David Eisenhower liked to golf; where the chairman of General Motors could chat with a du Pont, a Rockefeller, and a Mellon all at the same time.
The Greenbrier is an icon with a long history; it counts 28 Presidents as among its guests. There’s a famous photo in the grand old …
