Good news: Coffee’s not bad for you! Bad news: Unless you smoke when you drink it. But, good news: if you’re an alcoholic you must drink coffee!

If you’re like me, that is broke and lazy with an addictive personality who smokes and drinks all the time, this is probably some pretty good news for you. I’ve been killing time for years smoking and drinking alcohol and coffee the whole time thinking I was killing myself. But apparently the combination of the three sort of works for you in that the cigarettes make the coffee bad and the coffee protects the liver from all the poison of getting smashed every night. So, instead of all three of those things wreaking havoc on your insides, it’s really just one. I feel much better about my life now. I’m gonna go buy a pack.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994): A friend of mine recently found himself in the bustling metropolis of San Pedro, California, the whimsically dumpy harbor area of Los Angeles, famous for not really a whole lot else as far as I know other than being where the Great American 20th Century Poet Charles Bukowski is buried, underneath a modest in-ground marker that reads “Don’t Try.” This was, of course, the advice Bukowski gave, while he was still alive, to poets, writers, and everyone else looking to become the type of person that makes a city famous for being buried in it. But in death, I think it was his advice to humanity in general, his final pearl of wisdom imparted to mankind. Don’t try, at anything. Just be. There’s a certain amount of disingenuousness inherent in this statement; after all, when Bukowski was still just a alcoholic mailman, sending hand-copied manuscripts to magazines and publishers, he was definitely trying. And you don’t write as many poems, novels, and screenplays as Bukowski did during his life without putting out some effort. But just like the more spiritual epitaphs usually found on the gravestones of the honest Christian men, Don’t Try is more of the goal, the life’s lesson learned. It’s the advice Bukowski would have given to himself, a fittingly narcissistic thought for a man who made a career out of relating his sexual exploits, drunken loutishness and otherwise self-serving behavior. He was like Thoreau with a taste for booze, choosing the slums of LA, instead of Walden Pond, as his personal purgatory, with women and barflys serving as his woodchucks, ants, and squirrels. And like Thoreau, he didn’t remain there forever; after the slums had served their purpose he moved on, eventually living, and eventually dying, in the comparatively upscale San Pedro, a white wine-sipping old timer. My friend went to the graveyard to pay his respects. The people there had no idea what he was talking about. They finally looked it up, gave him directions and sent him out there; no historical monument, no literature about the life and work of the late great Charles Bukowski. Just a plot number. He found the grave, there with all the other graves. There was nothing spectacular about it. It could have been the grave of anyone, and I guess it is, as far as most people are concerned. Except it says, right on there. Don’t Try.

Matt Hogan (1953-2008): As befitting the subject matter, my friend regaled me with the tale of his pilgrimage over Bloody Marys at Duffy’s, at a time when most people were still eating Cheerios. We had the bartender put a stick of Jerky in each drink, to make more of a meal out of it, and honest breakfast, so as to not feel entirely worthless, like the semi-employed, childless, aging pseduo-hipsters we were, and still are. But really, why does it matter? Why does it matter that you’re drinking, in the morning, on a week day? What is this puritan guilt we still foist upon ourselves, striving to “succeed,” to own more than the next guy, to leave the world with more than we came into it with. Why is it that, to spend the morning working towards some material end is somehow more honorable than spending the morning working towards a more “spiritual” end, and by spirits, I don’t mean ghosts. Why do we seem to seek, as a culture, this accumulation of wealth, of goods, of house and home? So we can stuff it all into our tomb like modern day King Tuts, and take it with us to the afterlife? For most, the motivation is to someday attain their idea of the “good life,” or more importantly, to leave their children with something better than what they themselves had, and this is indeed, a noble thought, but something of a mixed message. After all if the goal of hard work is to provide an easier, more comfortable life, why not just skip the hard part and go about living an easier, more comfortable life now? And if hard work, and earning your keep by the sweat of your physical, or intellectual brow, is the ultimate imperative for honorable living, why seek to deprive your children of this great honor by way of inheriting the fruits of your lifelong own labors? Our friend Thoreau had much to say on this subject, as in the opening pages of Walden: “I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.” As we sat, my eye wandered up past the painting of Jesus playing baseball, to the glass case housing Matt Hogan’s old Danelectro guitar, with the inscription, “The Incredible Diamond.” It doesn’t say Don’t Try, but it doesn’t have to.

Photo by Jason Zubia

Synthesis PDX correspondent Ryan J Prado Esq. & Associates LLC checks in with the following live report:

If ever there were a more befitting cathedral for the crust-pungent hierarchy of heavy metal, it might just be the dank confines of Northwest Portland’s Satyricon. It’s rife with all manner of finicky, pushy, mascara’d assholes sloshing cheap swill down their tattooed throats and setting world records for leering. It exudes an alcoholic musk, with the lingering overture of over-fried calamari playing “Chopsticks” on your olfactory; a place where bar flies sits to read Bukowski and never notice the irony. When I accidentally brushed shoulders (witnesses might have described is at “collided”) with a fellow show patron in the crowded slit between the bar and the tables, I was awarded a slow-burn turnaround, with a splash of facetious bitchery and a middle finger dividing the vertical plane of my face. Clearly, I was fucking with the wrong club. But that’s mainly on the “bar” side, a sticky saloon corridor with helpfully dim bartenders and the vintage ping of pinball symphonies double-helixing with the cries of Trailblazers color commentators. It’s a spectacle of depressing proportions, which is why it seems perfect for the throes of such an aggressive sub-culture.
The “club” side sprawls like a sock-hop nightmare, with checkered dance floor tiles chipping up at corners, seemingly arbitrary pillars jutting out just in front of the stage, expelling or just absorbing some kind of tar-thick ancient drip texturing that makes it appear as if the place had been ravaged by fire at some point, then just given a once over and a nice Fabreze-ing. The stage is mod-podged with ancient loogies. (more…)

If you live in the Los Angeles area, do yourself a solid. Kahlua, half and half, ice, and Lebowski Fest, dude.

Thursday, May 7th
Lebowski Fest LA – Movie Party
The Wiltern Theatre
3790 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
Doors at 7. Show at 8. All Ages.

Friday, May 8th
Lebowski Fest LA – Bowling Party
Cal Bowl
2500 E. Carson St.
Lakewood, CA
9PM, 21+

If you DO NOT live in the LA area, you can still make White Russians all day. And attend OTHER Lebowski Fests:

West Coast Tour Dates

**Tickets on sale now**
Thu/May 7 || The Wiltern Theater – Movie Party || Los Angeles, CA
Fri/May 8 || Cal Bowl – Bowling Party || Los Angeles, CA

Fri/July 10 || Executive Lawn (ft. The Daily Show’s Rob Riggle) – Movie Party || Louisville, KY
Sat/July 11 || Executive Strike and Spare – Garden Party, Bowling Party || Louisville, KY

**Tickets on sale this Friday, April 24th**
Mon/July 20 || Fremont Outdoor Movies – Movie Party || Seattle, WA
Tue/July 21 || Acme Lanes – Bowling Party || Seattle, WA
Wed/July 22 || Aladdin Theater – Movie Party || Portland, OR
Thu/July 23 || Hollywood Bowl – Bowling Party|| Portland, OR
Fri/July 24 || Classic Bowling Center – Bowling Party || San Francisco, CA
Sat/July 25 || Fox Theater – Movie Party || Oakland, CA
Sun/July 26 || House of Blues – Movie Party || San Diego, CA
Mon/July 27 || Kearny Mesa Bowl – Bowling Party|| San Diego, CA
Tue/July 28 || House of Blues – Movie Party || Las Vegas, NV
Wed/July 29 || Red Rocks Lanes – Bowling Party || Las Vegas, NV

Announcement with remaining North American dates and cities forthcoming.

Eric Carmen (not to be confused with Eric Cartman), best known for his hits “Hungry Eyes” and “All By Myself” done got himself 180 days in jail for drunk driving.

From E Online:

The 1980s hitmaker, best known for “All By Myself” and “Hungry Eyes,” was sentenced Wednesday to 180 days in the slammer stemming from a drunk driving arrest last fall in Ohio.

Bedford Municipal Court Judge Peter Junkin ordered the 59-year-old ex-Raspberries frontman to report to Solon Jail on April 25, but the judge suspended the majority of Carmen’s incarceration so the singer will only have to serve 30 days.

The Ohio native had a blood-alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit on Sept. 9, when he rammed his Range Rover into a fire hydrant. He pleaded guilty to counts of DUI and dangerous driving.

FUCKYEAHHARLAND!!