In the Midwest, scripted nights are scripted nights- more fun, but scripted. It seems that fun is scripted, generally, especially after 20. You know precisely how much beer and dope and cigarettes you’ll need for the night, when you’ll yak, and how to tune out so it’s possible to sleep on concrete. Recently, I’ve relocated to San Francisco, California. It’s actually pretty cool. If New York City is the center of the world, this is the center of the living world. Get a bunch of money together in your town, move here, get a place, get any job and work like Midwesterners do- it’s easy. If you like working. The thing is these California pussies hate that shit. Now I know why. Finding a job here is an arduous task. I’ll just do it as opposed to the meth lab. Or the computer shit. Yeah, there’re regular jobs here, but there are also a lot of people. I got a part time job hocking records, but that just isn’t going to cover it all.

I’ve wanted to move out of the Midwest since I was 8. Something kept me there. It was the gals and the dudes. Ladies and fellas, I’m having the time of my life riding buses, digging Clint Eastwood movie sites, and drinking 40’s of Colt 45, but it ain’t the same without you all. I wish I had the money to move every Sockeye fan into a sexy bungalow by the water. Beer and PCP time. Most of the cool people I know have left the Midwest anyway- I don’t know who I think that I’m kidding.

I told Frenchy that I was gonna’ start keeping up with my duties here at Blank- Gen, so #7 better watch its ass, because here comes #8 bringing up the rear. Be sure to look out for my Piranhas feature too. It’s a bit misleading since I just moved west, but most of it was put together over the summer when I was in Montana- not California. That’s the real west, the fucking Wild West, with alliterated capital W’s and stuff. Montana- the place where you can drink beer and take PCP and hang out in the middle of the road and you can bet no cop’ll drive by, but you might just get an elk horn up your ass, so watch it. Actually, a friend of mine got busted with unlabeled pills and weed driving through Montana and they left him in a holding cell with no food or drink for like two days. That had to be stinky. But anyway, the way the Piranhas feature got started was with an interview I did with Brian for my Rock Action zine. This was about a year ago. I was driving up to Detroit at the time "auditioning" to sing for a new band that they were putting together. We had no drummer, and I don’t think that Ian was fully with how things were coming together. These problems would’ve worked themselves out a lot better if I didn’t live 6 hours away, but those are the breaks. So around this time, Hit List wanted a "feature" on the band, and I was asked to put something together- this was shit brought to the band through Tom Perkins, and to me by Brian. I was going to weave in parts of Brian’s interview from Rock Action, and I did an interview with Ian too. It would’ve been really sweet and awesome. There was a problem though, I was fly fishing (I’m not making this up) in Montana, and taking breaks to write this thing in the mountains. Did I mention that my Dad, my 2 brothers, my brother Kevin’s friend AJ, and I were drunk as skunks for this entire 2 week period? Shit, I guess I left that part out. But to make a long story short, I dropped all of my shit into a stream and Ian’s part of the interview was runed- ruined. "Poop" I thought to myself, "Ian’s part of the interview is runed- ruined." The thing is, I had the introduction completed. So nothing really happened with it. I never re- interviewed Ian or anything, and the Tom Perkins publicity machine ground to a halt. It seemed as if this fucking thing was never going to see the light of day, and as we were staying in a cabin with no TV, I really had put some work into organizing that thing. Organization is the key with something like that; but I fucked up.

Recently though, after I got my shit set up out here in California, I was cleaning out my shit, and stumbled across the hand written intro to the Piranhas article- shit. It was actually pretty good stuff I thought to myself, so I transcribed it, and began tinkering around with it. I thought about putting it in MRR, but quickly decided not to. I have a couple gripes with them- not huge gripes, but I was thinking to myself again, "Joe Domino has been putting up with my shit for over a year, giving me space in Blank G, and not yelling at me when I don’t make the deadlines that I actually set in the first place." "Hey Joe, sending in the next column tomorrow," I’d say. One month later, he’d receive my negative, un- positive, low brow, doesn’t do nothin’ for no one but Kenny, Kenny column, and never told me to get lost. Not to mention that I signed on to this thing on the ground floor pretty much, and have acted like I’m the "cock of the walk" the whole time. Meanwhile, Joe has turned this fucking thing into the coolest fucking punk rock, rock and roll, throw up and lick it up web site I’ve ever seen. He’s just gotten new writers out of nowhere (Where all punk rockers should come from anyhow), and signed on two of my favorite writers (as well as dudes, generally), in Shaun Abnoxious and Mark Murrmann. Shit man, it’s all right here for you. My only complaint is that Blank Generation needs to delve more into the areas of hardcore and emo, and different stuff- not review everything, but search out those nuggets of goodness that exists in all areas of music. I’m sure there’s a sXe hardcore band active right now that I would think is awesome. We need to start looking a little harder into all of these areas, leaving no stone unturned in the search for depravity. That way, Blank Generation will not do itself to death, but will remain on top of things. Teengenerate in 95, Kill the Hippies, the Stitches, Smogtown in ’99, Piranhas in 2000, and into the fucking future. On this note, in Youngstown, Ohio where I’m from, there is a hardcore band that I never caught, who was called something like 10 Yard Fight or Quarterback Sack or something, and they had songs called "1^st and 10," "Safety Blitz," shit like that. I know that they wouldn’t have appreciated me as a fan, but I enjoyed knowing that they existed. All sports oriented bands, PLEASE GET IN TOUCH! But to back up a second, let’s hear it for Joe Domino, the rest of the grunts at Blank Generation, and most importantly- ME! Without me, I wouldn’t be here. That would be ill.

I’ve always said that beer, punk rock, basketball, skateboarding, and re- establishing a relationship with my Dad saved my life. So here I am, a little bit older, cranked up really high, and running on heat. This is the modern face of punk rock on these pages, at least what matters, and I’m gonna’ ride this fucking rocking rocket into the outer reaches of space and time, where mutated cannibals dance to the disgusting, people make dreams their realities, where people can be who and what they want to be, and toast all my comrades as we plummet back into the atmosphere and crash and burn and live and die in the name of what we believe in. There’s nothing that any of you mother- fuckers are going to do about it, neither.

Who’s That Boy with the Sandwich in His Hand? You Don’t Love Me, Even Though You Can. In the Streets of San Francisco.

"You just had to go and do it, didn’t you?" That’s what Shaun said to me. Really, that statement would be a very good, concise statement on why I moved to California. I just had to go and do it. I just had to take a Midwest break, experience some other places, and draw conclusions from there. If it’s a question of that big fish in a little pond thing, that was definitely a part of it. Not that I was a very big fish- the pond was very small. But shit man, I was making the water overflow out of that thing.

Being out here is strange. It’s different, and yet still the same. It’s made up of places and people and experiences that I’m sure I’ve seen before- just at different levels, and they’re put together in different ways. It’s a town made up of people and streets and dogshit. One thing is for sure though- it’s really nice. You get you’re garbage strewn about, a junky here and there, and people laying about the sidewalks (Hey, you didn’t think that job at Yahoo! would last forever, did ya?), but generally, it’s real, real nice. It freaks me out sometimes, having lived near or in industrial cities for all of my life. Besides New York, which is just different, and cities in Florida, which don’t even count in my book because I don’t think that Florida should even be a state, I didn’t know what a non- industrial city looked like, really. What do you mean that the outskirts of town aren’t littered with coal tipples and train yards? How the fuck do they bring in the raw ore? Where do they burn all their old tires? I’ll let you know when I figure out what people do here besides fulfill yin and yangs like, "I buy the cappuccino, you make the cappuccino." Stuff like that. I’m looking for a job right now and would like to avoid "making the cappuccino." Maybe I’ll become a merchant marine or a fireman. I’d really like to become a private dick, a gumshoe, like in Mickey Spillane novels. I’ll do a lot of drinking and foil plans of dames who hire me to find their rich husband’s killers, even though it was them who did it to get the insurance money and run off with their secret lover. I’ll start dressing like it’s the 1940’s and walk around flipping a coin with a toothpick in my mouth. So many dreams, though in each of them, I’ll probably always be the YANG .

Maybe I’ll finally finish one of my books. I’m going back to school to finish up my film degree. It would be cool if I could make money doing that. Until then I’ll just have to get a crummy job to pay for my apartment, and get a new line up for the Detox Police. Maybe something will happen with that and we’ll get rich, or at least go on tour for a while and I’ll make a movie about that. And beer- I see beer in my future. I’m supposed to talk to a guitar player later tonight. Maybe that’ll get the ball rolling. I’d also like to get a second keyboard player and create a seriously intense racket. A racquet for our racket. We’re the Racket Racquet- nice.

Dreams= Reality
Make, make your future Danny…I’m a vegetable.

We’ve got a lot of plans in the works here at Blank Generation. Hopefully within the next month, we will have a Blank Gen. radio show. It’s still on the ground floor, and remains nameless, but it is going to happen sooner than later. Shaun "Shark" Abnoxious is working on a show to be co- hosted by the infamous Matt Puke from Archie and the Pukes. If you don’t have the Pukes’ Centsless 7", get out of town- "I’ve got worms in my stomach/ I’ve got worms in my shit/ The more I think about it/ The more I like it!" I’m going to do a show too, and Mark Murrmann is going to do a show that goes along with his monthly column- that should really be killer for those of you into what he’s into, and want to try to keep up on the new rock and roll records that continue to come out. The other features are just going to have to wait until we get some more concrete plans down. Until then, I’ve put up some live stuff by Kill the Hippies, Radar Secret Service, Sweaty Weapons, and the Subtonix (SF) on the Rock Action site. They’re in Real format, and you can get a player through the site. Go through the "Destroy" links to the "contents" page, then go to the "Rock Action Radio" link under the motorcycle picture- it’s all in there. As a side note with the site, people have been asking me about Rock Action back issues. I’m not going to print any, and don’t even have them here in San Francisco right now, but my brother Keith is moving back to Ohio from Florida for the summer in a week, and he’s going to send them to me. I am then going to put them up on the sight lay out like the zines were themselves. I’ll probably scan the pages, organize them by issue and page in the "Zine Archive" section, and then thumbnail the pages. It takes a minute to load the pages this way, but I want to keep the integrity of the printed issues. As I’ve plans to keep putting a lot of time into Blank Generation, I don’t know what’s going on with Rock Action, but I have been pondering doing a 7^th issue. What I think I might do though, is make it free in San Francisco and Ohio as long as a set number of copies last, $1 mail- order, and then lay it out on the web site in it’s printed appearance after a month or something. Everyone wins this way, really. I did the last issue with ads and stuff, and really didn’t like it. I felt it compromised my position when it came to talking about music and shit, so this way’ll be much better. Ads suck, because usually when someone sends you an ad they also send you stuff to review. This creates a conflict in my opinion. If I can’t be honest when I’m reviewing a record, that’s really a disservice to everyone involved. I refuse to do that thing where you just explain what the record is all about, but skate past the issue of whether or not you like it, for example, saying things like "(this record) would appeal to many fans of ’77 style punk rock." That’s just silly (And an actual quote, by the way). Send stuff for airplay and review.

Web Site: www.angelfire.com/bc/rockactionrecords666

There’s also a plan of a tape/ CDR trading message board. This will help for you fucks to get those classic "Billboard Vandals" type records without paying $100 to some other fuck- just trade. It’s also for people who are having trouble getting those ever elusive import records. This will be linked from Blank Generation, but more than likely; it will be hosted privately- laws, laws, laws.

I’ve got some other secret plans that will be more pertinent to bands in the bay area, and bands who would be touring through here, but I’m not saying what they are yet, dig?

So, that’s it for me. Get in touch, especially regarding interest, advice, or problems with those live radio shows, or the trading board stuff. Also, please feel free to record a radio show yourself, and send it to me. Whatever Frenchy’s decision is regarding the radio show, I’d be very, very interested in hearing what people come up with.

As far as music goes, I’m almost back in completely, but assholes at shows will be getting instantly kicked in the balls from this point on. I don’t need it.

"The world is a shit-hole, filled with scummy little shit-bags, who are scared shit-less."
"Don’t you think he’s a little anal?"
"I think he’s right!"

Don’t Forget the Joker,
Kenny
Rock Action Site: www.angelfire.com/bc/rockactionrecords666
E-mail: detoxpolice@hotmail.com
922 Post #303
San Francisco, Ca. 94109

PS- Anyone interested in playing the drums or guitar in Detox Police, get in touch with me. We have extensive touring and music video plans- Toxic Wasteland!