Karen Neal of Queen Bee

Driving on Holy Gasoline 

"You know the deal, you're second choice to my mean machine" - Hardcore Superstar

8.02.01 - 3:15 PM

I'm guessing that in any culture, not just the bizarre one I've constructed in the confines of this car, seeing a crow at the side of the road feasting on another squashed, rotting crow is a portent of bad magic to come. I'm spinning the wheels of a black Intrepid at a furious pace, on my way to drop this machine off in Hyannis, just a few miles from the fabled and degraded Kennedy compound. Without a tiger in my tank, I'm doomed to join the long line of suckers on the Boston Expressway during rush hour on the way back, and this will not stand. All the signs around here threaten double the fines if you get caught speeding, but as Monster Magnet once said, 'You won't get caught if you don't get queer.' The tinny looking bridge that connects Cape Cod with the mainland demands a paltry, crawling 35 miles an hour. I sail over it at 70, enthralled by my own stupidity, the Rock aiding and abetting my behavior, like a little red devil with hard on riding my shoulder. Zaius (www.zaiusrocks.com) drag the Sabbath-Seattle connection into a slug-fest of stoner-doom dragstrip rock with some of the snarliest, bad preacher mouthing off I've heard since Roachpowder. Soundgarden would've cut their hair a lot sooner had they caught the hot desert winds blowing off this disc. As Marky Mark would say, 'How the Hell did these monkeys get like this?' Storming out of Oslo, Norway like a herd of wooly mammoths, Zeenon (www.zeenon.com) play warrior princess metal, all Amazonian, leather lunged battle cries and that kind of battering ram guitar chunk that sounds like one of those saw-tooth monster-machines that tear open the asphalt. "Against the World", Zeenon's latest disc, is ethnic rock for blood-gorged Vikings. "Welcome to the Galaxy" by (ahem) Bralalalala (bralalalala@hotmail.com) follows the continuing adventures of a schizophrenic transvestite and his journeys into Pantera styled aggro-rock. This is the band that should have called itself 'Disturbed' Brainchild (www.brainchildrocks.com) play the kind of raw- assed street metal that almost always happens by accident. At least it did 15 years ago, when cats like Brainchild ruled the stages of rock dives everywhere. They all worshipped Roth-era Van Halen and Iron Maiden, performed bare chested save for a leather vest, and almost all of them had a song called 'Back Alley Woman'. Brainchild might not even be going for that vibe on 'It's free to rock', in fact I suspect they have aspirations of southern rock gone punk in the back of their fevered minds, but I'm hearing that post-AC/DC, pre Guns n' Roses call to rock the fuck out, and I can only bang my head and shake my fingerless gloved fist in approval. 500 Feet of Pipe (www.drugrock.com) play nearly psychotic acid metal, like Monster Magnet cracked in half and fed, like communion wafers, to panicky coke dealers. "Dope Deal" obsessively documents the bad fun of drug monsters and the chemicals that fuel their sinister plan, and with choruses that moan, "I'm going to a dope deal, gotta make a dope deal" over and over, it's the last thing you want to be blasting out of your car stereo when cruising the streets, so for God's sake, use 500 Feet of Pipe responsibly. By the way, this record sounds, fittingly enough, like it was recorded through several, if not 500, feet of pipe. I haven't heard anything this dusty since the last Sons of Otis record. Maybe the clouds of smoke fucked up the tape deck... When I finally get to the drop off and hand the vacationing pensioner the keys to his car, he looks at me with genuine worry, insisting that he take it for a test drive before I leave. As I sit in the Neon they gave me to drive back, he lopes around the gravel parking lot, pressing buttons and shouting to me that he thinks the brakes might be shot. I can't help him, since I don't really use brakes. He finally relents, and I race in the opposite direction. 

Rock Without the Cock:
Cruising With Queen Bee

A Sun Goddess twirls, all blonde curls and glitter, to a throbbing psyche-tronic beat. Click. A red devil with suicide curves shakes her leathery tail to some Satanic slink. Click. A busty Martian, wearing nothing but an antenna sprouting helmet and smooth blue flesh belts out a Rock City fuck anthem to thunderous applause. Click. A raven haired Supervixen in neon latex and go-go boots greets me at the airport with a jar of honey and a thousand dollar smile. "So, how sweet do you want it?" She asks, flashing her stinger for the briefest of glorious moments. This column is truly one of the best ideas I've ever had. 

Karen Neal is a stunning rock and roll chameleon, capable of changing her stripes at the slightest whim, but her easy beauty and impossibly complicated array of detailed costuming belies the sweat and blood of her trench crawling rock mission, to stroke the loins and blow the minds of scruffy true believers everywhere with her signature brand of high powered, penis-free cock rock, the kind of metal-fried, punk indulged savagery that usually only testosterone monsters like Guns n' Roses, Buck Cherry, or the Backyard Babies would touch with a ten inch pole. Queen Bee is the name of her band, and that's fitting, because it involves a revolving door of Detroit's glam-slammingest sleaze-punks for hire, all aiding and abetting the Queen's singular vision and lust for rock dominance. Any grumblings from the sidelines about how 'Chicks can't rock' are squashed like yellow jackets on the windshield when Queen Bee has a buzz on. She writes and performs her own songs, she produces her own albums, she creates all the Queen Bee costumes, she does make-up and photography; in other words, she's a girl powered rock and roll killing machine. And now she's sitting in my silver convertible, chewing gum and trying, in vain, to find something cool on the radio. As befitting royalty, Karen is not interested in the peasants of my fair city, fairly demanding that I take her someplace 'nice, like a strip joint where you don't have to bring your own booze'. Complying as a grateful worker drone does, I pull onto the highway as the tape on the car stereo clicks from static hiss to the opening cycle riffs of Priest. We do, in fact, have nothin' to lose at all.

"Jello tells me that he thinks the reason I have trouble securing a band is because I've already done everything there is to do in Detroit. It really is a small town, you know. " Karen has a knack for name dropping. Not because she's aiming to impress, but because just about everybody she knows is famous on some level. "Wattie from the Exploited shoved his fucking tongue down my throat", she remembers. "Yikes." Yikes, indeed. " Johnny 5 from Marilyn Manson - I turned him down like a date with Satan. I could just see myself in his hotel room now...my naked body sacrificed to some pagan god...a fish shoved up my ass...no thanks!" Well, nobody said running with rock stars, even aging chaos punk and phony goth ones, was going to be a glamorous gig. Jello Biafra, the big-mouth behind the Dead Kennedys, is her favorite semi-famous aqauintance, though. "His music changed my life", she confesses. "I wrote him these crazy fan letters. He answered them, and no one wanted to believe me. Then, we lost touch for months. I never thought that the DK's would come back that year, 1985." She smiles, wistful. "Anyway, after he was told I was out in the audience, he sent me a backstage pass and we've been close friends ever since." Obviously, Karen didn't show up to blow up just yesterday. Although she doesn't look a day over ageless, I was in high school in 1985 myself, so I can say for certain, there's a couple of battle hardened rock veterans in the car tonight. Karen's been playing with various bands for over a decade, most notably with the ex-God Bullies front-thug Mike Hard's noise punchers Thrall. She has not forgotten the experience. "In Thrall I'd drink and get stoned, and do ephedrine, just get blasted, because I didn't have any vocal responsibilities. It got to the point in that band where I learned to play the bass with my legs behind my neck." Impressive, but those were darker days. "I don't smoke or drink anything before a show now. If I didn't go up there sober, I don't think I'd have the stamina to dance, sing, and play the bass all at the same time." Don't let this new- found commitment to professionalism throw you off, though. Karen is, above all, about the Rock. " When I've toured, I've had everything from little mohawked punk-rock boys passed out at my feet, to little girls laying under my skirt", she brags. "I've been pulled into a crowd, my boots undone, and a finger up my ass. That was from London, UK to Debuque, Iowa." Karen's on a roll now, the perils of rock and roll decadence dripping off of her tongue like bedtime stories for crazy children. "I was once approached by a group of 3 guys that asked me if I'd do a three-on-one with them. I didn't feel that it would be fair to overpower them like that, so I turned them down like a bad radio commercial... Jim Beam...knives, skin-heads...falling face first into table playing chicken with a dude on my back...hanging upside down from the bar...We came...We saw...We rocked...We went!" It's obvious that Karen's proud of the havoc she's wreaked on the stages, and back stages, of the rock nation, but it's been a long way to the middle. "I've made more of a name for myself than I have money." She says. Karen formed Queen Bee five years ago, but has yet to find the perfect soldiers and hit the road. " I formed this band with the idea of having a larger than life image, to have costumes, the works." She explains. "The best way to describe it is..." Karen pauses, thinking it over. "Well, you can't call it cock rock, since I don't have a cock, although I have been accused of looking like a drag queen. I guess you could call it 'Sex Rock'." She's not particularly happy with that title either. " Ah, let's call it female-fronted cock rawk. R- A- W- K. That's what it is. Honestly, I didn't want the name Queen Bee, because I knew there had to be a million bands that already had that name, but the drummer I started working with wanted to name us Queen Bee, because that's what they always called me behind my back. It was kind of a touché, you know? And it just kind of stuck. But this original drummer, he had another job as a bag-piper." We pause so I can laugh my fool head off. She waits patiently until I calm down, and continues. " He refused to play out of town shows. So I've never had the opportunity to take my band out of town, and that really kills me, because I used to tour like a motherfucker." Currently, guitar duties in QB are being handled by Rachel from punk-metal chicas Broadzilla. Although happy with her formidable chops, Karen could do without the eye candy competition. "Now that I've got another female in the band, I've got to look as pretty and as slutty as possible, it sucks. She's a couple of years younger than me, and she's a doll, an absolute doll. It's driving me crazy", she laughs. With the front end packed wall to wall with licks and looks, Karen's still searching for the drummer of her dreams to complete the vision, placing classified ads and hoping for the best. "No guy wants to be bossed around by some chick", she complains. "Especially some married chick. It'd be different if I was younger and single. Guys see the ad, you know, a band with chicks, cool. Then they find out that I'm older, and married, and they get bummed out that I'm not some dumb little bitch that they can push around. They're my dumb little bitches." 

Yeah, you heard that right, Romeo, so you can stop practicing your really effective pick-up line; the Queen Bee has a King Bee back home, the cleverly named rock cat Dee Sparkles. "Dee used to play drums in a band called Cum Dumpster. His singer used to puke on himself and light his hair on fire. Dee use to play onstage naked. He was a wild child. " Karen speaks with obvious affection for her man. "I don't fuck around on my husband", she tells me. " I sure do flirt up a storm though." Not only is she spoken for, but she's also burdened with that unholiest of tasks, a day job. At a dental office, no less. No wonder she has such an expensive looking smile. " I wear scrubs, and every once in awhile, I get caught downtown, where all the scenesters are. They catch me in the scrubs and laugh", she tells me. " But I don't hide the fact that I'm married, or that I manage a dental office. Detroit's so small that everybody knows what I'm up to anyway. I'm all for creating a myth, but I need something to back it up, and I don't have anything yet. I've never been a good liar." The ever encroaching tendrils of the real world don't seem to diminish Karen's rock star shine too much, though. " People ask me for my autograph at the dental office. I get emails from people I went to high school with, congratulating me on my success. They have no idea that here I am working in a dental office, struggling to get a band together, soon to take on a second job to support my band. The thing is, I act like a rock star, so people believe it." Karen's not one to wait around for fame to wink. She's got all kinds of deep, dark action on the side. "I do make-up for Noir Leather fetish shows, I do fashion shows, I did Broadzilla's makeup for their album." She tells me. "I want to get a full time job as a make-up artist so I can tell that dentist to kiss my fucking ass."

You Gotta Lose Your Mind

There's nothing like talking Detroit with a hot chick while stroking the rpm's in American steel. As the miles burn behind us, Karen talks about the rock life in Motor City. "Sure, there's been a lot of great bands that have come out of Detroit, but the thing is, if you never get the chance to leave Detroit, than it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything to somebody else from Detroit." While that may be true, there's still a sense of reverence to the town that spawned Iggy Pop, Ted Nugent and the MC5. Not to mention their modern day counterparts, glam rock hold-outs the Trash Brats and sleaze metal warriors the Lanternjack. Ask Karen which one her peers she thinks rocks the hardest though, and she gets decidedly diplomatic. "Well, the Lanternjack are cool, and they're all cute and sexy. And the Trash Brats, well I have a lot of respect for those guys for sticking it out for so long." Ok. But who's better, Karen, the Lanternjack or the Trash Brats? Listen, I'm very biased towards the Trash Brats, I've been friends with those guys forever. Basically, there's no way I'm going on record saying who's better. You know I live in Detroit, right?" She laughs. "Did you know I went to high school with the singer of the Trash Brats?" I try to imagine The T Brats 'Divine-gone- anorexic' looking frontman Brian O'blivian as a detention baiting teenager. It's an amusing thought. "Oh yeah, he had bleach blonde hair, he had black painted nails, he had a leather jacket with the lapels painted pink, he had a white pair of baby shoes hanging off his jacket, he had eyeliner on." Sounds like Karen's kind of detention hall crush. "He'd probably tell you that we were high school sweethearts, but we were always just really good friends", she winks. Meanwhile, Karen's brushes with high weirdness Michigan style were already affecting the young debutante. "One time, this off-duty cop came to visit our church. At 15 years old, he sat next to me and showed me his gun during service", she remembers. "He let me hold his gun then put his hand on my leg!" I could have told her the pews were no place for a virtuous young woman. "Another time in church, I sat next to this hot boy. I got up to go to the restroom and when I came back he was gone. I opened my math book to find several naked polaroids of him!" It's no wonder than that a young Karen Neal took to the safer confines of punk rock. "I use to slug down a pint of Jim Beam & a 40 ouncer before going onstage and ripping through a set of Inside Out's fast fuckin' punk", she tells me with pride. "Sometimes we used to play as fast and as drunk as we could. We were banned from many venues for obvious reasons. There were times when I would shriek and play, and then everything would turn black before almost passing out. One time, I hit the floor face-first and Dee swears to this day that I kept on playing." The tales of punk rock glory come rushing back to her. "One time, at a certain hall that shall remain nameless for the sake of not getting banned again, I was so drunk, I dropped my amp off the stage. We were opening for the Trash Brats & Elvis Hitler. We were disgruntled at the way the sound - man treated us. Rolling my amp back to the dressing room, someone from the balcony spilled beer on my head. I took an empty beer bottle and whipped it up into the balcony. Backstage, I smashed an entire case of beer bottles over the piano. The Trash Brats had a toy guitar that I then grabbed and smashed over the piano as well. Just then, the owner walked in. So I handed Ricky Ratt his guitar back and said, "Here you go, Ricky!" What a fucking nut." She laughs, shaking her head at the bleary memory. Now, imagine Karen strapping you down for a teeth cleaning. "Open wide, this won't hurt me a bit."

The Swarm

"What? The band enters the stage, the audience applauds." I asked Karen what a typical Queen Bee show is like. She gave me the short answer. Whenever and wherever the Queen Bee is strutting her stuff, chaos is bound to follow. One thing you can surely expect is some of the most over the top swagger rock this side of Sweden. Another is a good dose of sex. "I think I disgraced myself among my family's church when I started getting press, especially doing a pinup. I posed with my legs behind my neck naked, but I promised not to show anything, and I didn't. I may be fast and mean, but I ain't cheap. It's so hard to be good when I'm so good at being bad." For further proof, she tells me about another night in the trenches. "One evening, Dee & I went to the ' Dally in the Alley', which is this outdoor Detroit music festival. We checked out 60 Second Crush and after they announced that I was in the audience, they started another song. Then the guitar player, Jake Smith, jumped off the stage, came over to me and shoved his guitar in and out between my legs while ripping a solo. I stared in fucking shock, then ran after him and kicked him in the ass as he jumped back onstage! He then made a public apology after their song. How dare he rip my fishnets like that?" Then, of course, there's the violence. "Another night at the Dally, Dee and I were tripping on acid and went to the Old Miami afterward to check out The Demolition DollRods. Some big scary dude takes off his baseball cap then puts the nasty thing on Margaret DollRod's head. She grabs it and whips it off. So then, he comes over to me and puts it on my head! I threw my hair back & shrugged it off and the next thing you know, someone broke a fucking bottle over my shoulder! I turned around. I was so high that everything, including my anger, was in slow-motion. I was still in disbelief when I reached up over 6.5 feet to grab his greasy hair, pulling his head down and screaming in his ugly face, "Don't ever fucking do that to me again!" He pushed me, I pushed him back, and then some nice man came between us and escorted his retarded, jock-ass out." But most of all, you can expect costumes. Crazy, sexy, outer space creations, somewhere between NASA and Vivid Video. "It's fun", she tells me. " I love making the costumes, it's like an art project. Like these jerseys we wore at the last show. That was the most I've ever worn on stage, by the way, and it was so hot, it was unbearable. We all wore a different colored jersey. I designed these iron-ons, then I be-jeweled them. Mine said 'Queen", and then my drummer, who's in the middle, his said 'Fucking', and Rachel's said 'Bee'." Ask Urge Overkill - that kind of stunt is a logistical nightmare. But it's positively tame compared to some of the outfits Karen's constructed for the stage. "There was this gig that I did at the Whitney Garden party, I made this green feathered costume, it had a tail, and a turban with a big crest, and I was totally unrecognizable. I looked like Carmen Miranda meets the Jolly Green Giant. I was so scary that they wouldn't even let me back into the hotel after they saw what I'd changed into, they thought I might upset people." She grins. "Sometimes it's fun to be scary. I've got some wild outfits that nobody's seen yet. I've got some insect-like helmets that I made, but I don't know if I can convince my band to wear them." Convince them? Queen Bees don't have to convince anybody. "I don't have a killer instinct", she confesses. " You need that to get by, you need to be able use people ruthlessly, and I don't have it in me. I'm not into that. I 'Do Unto Others', you know. That'll probably hold me back for the rest of my life, but at least I can sleep at night." It's doubtful that she'll be held back much longer. "I've gone two years without playing a show, and in those two years I got more press than I did when I was in a band", she tells me. "Without performing live, I don't feel alive, and it's taken a toll on me physically, it really has." Luckily, her current drones are obedient enough for Queen Bee to finally be hitting Detroit stages again, with the promise of going nationwide, eventually. "A soon as I feel secure with a line-up, we'll start going out of town. This is the first band I've been able to successfully make a name for myself with, that's why I keep this going." We finally reach our destination, a pulsing complex of purple neon and smoky sin. 8 dollar cocktails and coconut scented vagina await. As this is bound to be an entirely off the record night, I toss the tape recorder onto the back seat, but not before I ask Karen if she has any parting words. Not surprisingly, she does. "I'd like to grow a big dick just so I could fuck the world over." The night kicks into overdrive. Contact the Queen at www.queenbee.ismad.com

8.02.01 - 5:20 PM

I'm fucked. Maybe I didn't speed down 93 dangerously enough, perhaps I should have cut off another couple panicked SUV's along the way. Maybe the earth just isn't rotating the way it used to. Maybe that dope back in the Cape should have just taken the fucking beat up car without complaining. All I know is that there are long fingers of unmoving steel sprawled in front of me, all inching towards squeezing themselves into the downtown tunnel, tortured by the Boston skyline that stretches just out of reach. I'm about to box myself in to this miserable parade crawl. Thank God for cigarettes and free cds. As I hurl towards my horrible fate, I immerse myself in the sticky honeycomb of indie-pop. Which is cool, really, because otherwise I'm going to be trapped with a one-track jackass reputation, forever doomed as the expert in greasy stoner rock and druggy sleaze metal, the grizzled captain of a pirate ship full of degenerates and criminals. But there are other forms of rock and roll out there, ones not so obsessed with pussy, snakes, and muscle cars. Like Red To Violet, (www.redtoviolet.com) for example. They're mystical love rock gurus from Holland, a country where you can get away with something like that. 10,000 Maniacs glazed over in a high gloss cherry red paint job, Love and Rockets in white acoustic guitar mood, a jangle-pop Jackson 5, Red To Violet have a lot of different guises, all of them with perfect teeth and sunny dispositions. Amazingly toxic-free rock. Betty Already (www.seanbaby.com/bettyalready) have a new album called "Amerimaniacs" and a singer named Kitty. They're like X, were that band's chief lyricist some snotty hardcore kid growing up in Reagan America, full of righteous left wing bluster. Muffler punk with garage metal roots that constantly threatens to curve right into white trash sultriness, but opts for a snarl everytime. The Mice, (http:/listen.to/themice) have the same cover scheme as Electric Wizard on "White Belly", their new disc - a righteous tattooed girl-belly, complete with oversized 70's belt buckle and navel ring. But that's where the similarities to the UK doomsters end, and a ferocious take on the glory days of Minneapolis roots rock begins. Of course, I don't remember Dave Pirner or Paul Westerberg yelling about sluts stealing their cds in a hoarse, neo-street punk bark, but these are less innocent times. The Mice vacillate wildly from the Mats, to Rancid, to Cheap Trick, sometimes in the same song, and they rock about as much as you possibly can with short hair. If the kids weren't all fucking crazy, then 'Whitebelly' would be a frat house jukebox staple. So I guess I don't get to say that I hate them to pieces, after all. Given the band name, I expected the Heavy Woolies (www.heavywoolies.com) to play some kind of Hammond organ driven biker-rock, like those cats in the fur vests and iron crosses that showed up on Gilligan's Island that one time. Well, that's not what happened at all, and when they cited the Mamas and the Papas as an influence, I was ready to shoot it out the window at top speed, because that's about the grossest thing you can claim, at least to me. However they saved the day by having a cute chick singer, and featuring her prominently on the cover of 'Sweet and Crunchy!' Note to bands- this works every time. The Woolies play seriously sugary pop that verges on garage crunch, and they can't help but to bring to mind cartoons and miniskirts and other things that don't hurt at all. Although extremely far from heavy, the Woolies are a nice antidote to any of the anxiety and turmoil you haven't been able to drink away . Similarly bad vibe free is Ciccone - "Forget Your False Messiahs" (www.ciccone.co.uk) I think the Brits have some kind of magical pop star syrup. I don't know if they drink it, or smear it on their nipples, or what the fuck they do, but it instantly transforms them into Sigue Sigue Sputnik , neon flashing media sensations with super cool names and ultra catchy hit singles. Ciccone are no exception. Although this horribly named single brings to mind some nasty anarcho-crust band, the multi-gendered Ciccone actually play thrashy new wave slam-pop that bounces around like a surfboard on a concrete wake, so far away from the phony rage that permeates the airwaves these days, that I'd go so far as to say Ciccone are the Anti-Manson. Charlie or Marilyn, take your pick ... I remember that proto-speed metal band Executioner played the night of my prom, so I blew it off completely. I mean, I had a date, but she was a fucking mess, all tangled nest of hair, home made tattoos and tortured spandex, so it was probably safer for us to go someplace dark. So having not attended one, I can't tell you how well the Proms (www.imperfekt.com) "Second Base" would sound pumping out of the rented PA, surrounded by bubble machines, crepe streamers, and raging teenage hormones. Probably pretty swell. Citing Buddy Holly as an influence, the Proms play backpacker rock for lunchbox girls and the sweater wearing dorks that love them. Unlike the fake geeks in Weezer and the real geeks in American Hi-fi, they trade in the Motley Crue riffs for bouncy Moog, and I can't imagine xylophones are far behind for these cats. The Proms are rock and roll if Guns n' Roses never happened. Three Dollar Bill sport a psuedo Satanic cover on their self-titled debut, and true to form, lead growler Jane Danger dips into some corpse painted black metal tones here and there, but that's where the Luciferian antics end, as 3DB's angular post-rock is more like the mildly distorted herky-jerk of Wire and Television. Disaffected visionaries of cube rock, composing impossible architecture out of pipe cleaners and drug apathy. B-Line (www.b-linemusic.com) haven't forgotten the late 70's either, particularly the funk-wave of the Talking Heads and the proto-pop punk of early Japan. There's an inherent loose limbed dance-ability to their sound, if that's your scene. And if it's not, loosen the fuck up, say the boys in B-Line. Here in Boston, the B-Line is the vanity subway route for Boston University, a train so crammed with 18 year olds in belly shirts and tight Levis that they ought to charge an extra 50 cents just to watch. I'm going to assume that B-Line's name is in homage to that train, and for that , I salute them. My final aural journey into the world of pop as I hobble along in this snaggled traffic jam of cubicle creeps involves the cleverly named GodDrivesAGalaxy (www.goddrivesagalaxy.com), Texan boys who dig deep into shimmering waves of distorted groove with a lip chewing earnestness that sounds like they really are trying to man some post-glam slant 6 into outer space. The only difference between Jesus and the Mary Chain and T Rex, after all, was a feather boa and a few dodgy disco singles. GDAG incorporate both into a soaring wash of glitter crunch and hazy feedback on 'It's late, but I feel early'. Drive on God, drive on. Me, I'm not so lucky. As I watch radiator caps pop off in the heat, shooting geysers of angry steam, as puffy commuters shake their road raging fists at an unyielding line of grid-locked traffic, I pop in some Fu Manchu, close my eyes, and pretend I'm actually going somewhere. - Thundertrucking, Sleazegrinder.

Next month: Talking Painkillers with Cherish. Keep the rock rolling in. There are many miles to go.