dead old blog

Yeah, I'm totally a know it all. But you know what? I'm fine with that... Usually.

Today Mike and I scoured the Mission for yard sales. On the apex of our adventure we came across a yard sale on 18th and Valencia with a cool collection of books, cds, and tapes.

Right away I noticed one tape in the pile marked Q-Bert. I hovered around the box waiting for the schmuck that was digging in the pile to finish, but it became quickly apparent that he was just some socially awkward dude just trying to find an excuse to get somebody to talk to him.

Working retail for as long as I have, I've come across many people like this that just enjoy talking to salespeople.

So this guy is going through the pile and asking questions about everything "this says Portishead mix, is that an album?"

"No, it's just a mix of Portishead songs." she replied.

"Oh cool... What's Portishead?"

*sigh* "They're just a band. A trip hop band."

"Cool. Hey this looks cool, what's De La Soul."

And on and on and on again.

I hate being a prick and digging through a crate when someone else is ruffling through it, so I'm just standing right behind the dude hoping that eventually he'll realize he's annoying the lady who's selling the tapes.

Obviously the dude finally pulls out the Q-Bert mixtape and asks what it is. The lady has finally given up on answering all of his inane questions and simple says "I don't know."

I had a feeling that the guy wouldn't really be interested in picking up the cassette, I mean it's packaging looked like a child drew it. In fact, it looked like it had even been hand colored with crayons. The tape had been mass produced and had the Dirtstyle logo on it, but to any lay person it would appear to be utterly worthless. I knew that this guy probably wouldn't buy it and that he was just looking for conversation, but for some reason when he said "God, this is just so weird looking. I can't figure out who DJ Q-Bert is though." I had to answer him.

"That's an early recording of DJ Q-Bert. It looks like Shortkut and DJ Disk are also on it. Q-Bert is a Daly City DJ that started a turntable group called The Invisibl Skratch Piklz with DJ Apollo and MixMasterMike." I said. I could hear the words coming out of my mouth, but I couldn't believe I was saying them. I meant to just shut up and wait it out, but for some reason I started talking and talking and talking.

"So, it's a rap tape?" He asked. Did I mention he was in FUBU jeans and a Phat Farm shirt?

"Um, not really. It's actually probably going to be more of a dj scratch record. Q-Bert is one of the most influential DJ's in hip hop. He pioneered a shit load of scratch techniques, but he did it with this "I don't give a fuck" attitude. So most of his DJ records are pretty sloppy and tongue in cheek. This will probably be a record with a lot of simplistic beats and people scratching the word "word!" over and over again. Q-Bert still lives in DC and he's scratched on shitloads of important albums like Dr. Octagon's debut album. MixMasterMike is the Beastie Boys DJ now." Again, I just couldn't stop talking. I guess at a certain point I had realized that I had sold him on buying the tape. So it changed from me trying to keep my mouth shut to me trying to make sure that if this asshole was gonna buy the tape he would at least know why it was significant.

"Cool, I'll get this and the Cranberries tape."

Here are a few video clips hellavant (hella relevant) to the musical tour I just did with MC Router and Beefy.

Labels: beefy mc router doctor popular doc pop drown radio the mediocre tour

On the phone with my dad yesterday, I learned that a good friend of mine had recently passed away.

Marc Golczynski, a Sergeant in the Marines, was shot and killed on Tuesday March 27th while on his second tour of duty in Iraq. Stories here and here.

Marc was literally my oldest friend. We were born weeks apart from each other in the same hospital in Colquitt County, Georgia. Our parents were good friends, and both moved up to Lewisburg, TN at the same time to start working at Faber-Castell. We were close friends all throughout our younger years, but as we got older we started losing common interests. At some point Marc's mother and my mother had an argument and I that was really when we stopped hanging out that much. It wasn't really until our Junior or Senior year in high school that we started hanging out again. Marc was a really popular "all american" kind of boy, and I was a nerdy ass grunge rocker that started getting asked to hang out and help make crafts and crap for pep rallies and parties. Usually these where at Marc's house.

Obviously Marc and I didn't keep in touch after high school. Our only connection being the updates my mother would dispatch between us. "Marc's married now to a girl he met at Ruby Tuesday." "Brian's dropped out of college to pursue professional yo-yoing." "Marc has a baby on the way and he's joined the Reserves." "Brian's business in ST. Louis was an utter failure, he's going to close shop and move to Minneapolis to manage a store in the Mall of America." etc.

After hearing about Marc's death I started searching for more information about what happened. Several google searches led me to stories like this one, in which he visited Forrest Middle School to thank them for choosing him for their "Adopt A Serviceman" project. Marc's mother, Elaine Huffines, has been a teacher at Forrest School for the last 25 years or so.

I also found this podcast from a middle Tennessee radio station that featured Marc as a guest on several of their shows. On it, Marc explains that he feels it's part of his duty to go back to Iraq, and that he doesn't regret volunteering for his second tour.

It struck me that the only things I could find about Marc were all related to his service in the Marines. I guess I first took that as saying that he didn't really have much going on to his life, but I soon started to realize that the Marines was his life. He felt that service was his calling in life.

Last night and into this morning I tried catching news of the attack on the big news networks. Hoping to hear how it happened and how many other servicemen had been injured, but instead I saw were large doses of the Anna Nicole Smith trial.

Between online searches, I would check some of the message boards that I regularly post on. A friend announced that he might be going back into service in Iraq if he passed his physical and he couldn't be happier. I wished him luck, and noticed a few posts later that another friend of mine had said that the only way to deal with people who disagree with the US is through violence. They went on with all that bullshit talk about how US Marines were dying in Iraq so that hippies in America could be free to complain about the war on online forums.

As I've said, Marc and I did not stay in touch throughout the years, but from listening to his podcast interviews I get the sense that he was a smart man. His speech was eloquent and thoughtful. He didn't give much of his own personal beliefs on the war in Iraq, but he seemed to understand that there was much depth to the situation. I don't believe he oversimplified the Iraqi people and the situation at hand. I was struck more with the feeling that he was not volunteering to finish a job, but more to protect the younger batch of Marines heading into hostile situations.

Marc had just recently turned 30, and was two weeks away from returning home from duty. He was the 3,243 casualty in this current Iraq war.

Labels: sergeant Marc Golczynski lewisburg iraq

I recently came across a rapper named Greydon Square.

I don't think he considers himself nerdcore, but he songs are filled iwth nerdy references. Mainly he raps atheist theory mixed in with some physics and some common sense.

He has some neat http://www.thecomptoneffect.com/videos.php]videos on his site, actually his live rapping seems a little better than his nice recordings.



I think that he's got talent and wit, and he manages to fit in plenty of good points, but the music doesn't scream out to be replayed over and over again. I guess, and this is gonna sound weird, butI think his music lacks some soul. It times it comes across as a little forced.

I did like Xtian and some others quite a bit, but I hope to hear some more variety from Greydon Square.

I take pride in being a good consumer.

In part that means researching places and sharing input via sites like Yelp.

But what I'm really trying to say is that I look fantastic while I'm shopping.

This last Sunday my pic ran in an article about record collectors and local record shops in the San Francisco Chronicle.



The picture was taken at Rooky's Records in the Lower Haight.

A few weeks ago, I was in Self Edge in the Mission while the New York Times was interviewing my buddy Kiya about his store and denim trends. While I was flipping through the rack, the photographer snapped off a bunch of shots of me shopping. I have a good feeling my grubby hands may end up in one of the photos they use for the article.

Now I'm thinking about pursuing this as a profession. "Getting free press? Spend the money you save on having a ridiculously great looking shopper in your store." From now on I will shift my focus to only appearing in newspapers as a consumer. It's not like my music career is running any risk of getting any press soon.

Labels: rooky's records model consumer sf chronicle

In my previous blog I mentioned that I spent an entire evening (on the edge of the tour) making merch to sell at the shows. I decided to make more wallets out blue jeans to sell because that seems to be what people digging right now.

So I made 8 wallets, each one slightly different, and lined them with old neck ties or upholstery fabric. I have to say they look cool, and people are buying them. One guy bought one at our first show in Seattle, then came up to me at our Portland show and pulled it out and paid for a comic book of mine... Selling shit is okay, but seeing people actually use (listen to, read, etc) something that you have made by hand is always a great feeling.

So we finally found out who we are playing with in Chico. The show will be with this local smooth talking rapper named, and I shit you not, Doctor Proper!

Or Doc Prop for short apparently.

Since our SF show was cancelled, we have been told that lots of Bay Area folks will travel to Chico. I hope so, I'd love to see lots of familiar faces.

It's always nice to see lots of friend requests on myspace, especially non-spam ones. Well today I opened up my Drown Radio account and had 18 legit requests... 13 of them were from Portland! I guess that means that I'm not the only person that liked our show. I didn't mention this before, one thing I really liked was that I was starting from zero. Most of the folks at the show knew Beefy and Router, but I only knew one or two people before the show. The crowd is always friendlier if they've heard your stuff before, but by the end of the show I felt like they enjoyed my shit just as much as the rest of the eemcees.

We got our band pictures from Ryan in Seattle today and they look fantastic.

Labels: beefy mc router doctor popular doc pop drown radio the mediocre tour, crafts

Today is the third day of the Mediocre Tour, but the story of the Mediocre Tour goes back two months ago. Beefy and I were playing a game of chess at a coffee shop in Portland... Yeah, I live in San Francisco and Beefy lives Pasco, WA, but we were playing a chess in Portland... Fuck you, what of it? So, I was humiliatingly Beefy with my superior moves when the idea of calling up our friend MC Router and doing a tour in Mid-March.

Shortly after that conversation I slipped into a bit of a depression (unrelated to beating Beefy at chess, or the tour). It got real hard for me to do much of anything for a while, especially making music or promoting the tour as well as I could. As a result most of our lofty goals of producing Mediocre Tour EPs, shirts, buttons, and "beefyness-dot-condoms" fell through. I did send out press kits and spam some internets though. Actually, we didn't end up make any merch for the tour, but the night before I left I hovered over Shannon's sewing machine and made 8 denim wallets to sell at shows along with my comics and yo-yos.

When I arrived at the airport on Thursday morning I realized I left my laptop's power chord at home... Yeah I forgot my power chord for the computer that I would need for the tour, fuck you, what of it?

But then things got good. Being 3 hours early, and internetless, I pulled out my pencil and paper and went to work. I created 3 new pages for my next comic, they are about the infamous flatjack incident from the last time I was in Seattle. These 3 pages are fucking beautiful, they are funny and have some crazy perspective. For the first time in months I was really excited to work on something again.

So I arrive in Portland happy as hell, and meet up with Jones and Beefy and Router. Router had an ear infection... Fuck you what of it? So the first stop of The Mediocre West Coast Tour 2007? The Vancouver County Emergency Room. Turns out she had a real nasty ear infection and shit, they gave her vicodin and some other stuff. It all turned out okay, but delayed us 3 hours. For some reason, this whole part of the tour reminded me of Little Miss Sunshine. Beefy's car doesn't have to be push started or anything, however there is a button under the passenger side floorboard that kills the car. I'm not exaggerating, for some reason there is a button near the left foot that if accidentally bumped will turn off all the power and lock the steering wheel.



When we made it to Seattle things didn't get much better. We apparently have trouble with directions. In particular, we couldn't find one key street, and we nearly had several accidents trying to find it. Beefy ran a red light, and did some other really crazy shit, while we tried to find the street. It was like Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray keeps living the same day over and over until he gets it right. Every time we drove down those dark streets we managed to avoid fewer and fewer potholes and hazards. We made it to the show, but missed the first few acts. Yeah it was the first show of our tour and showed up late like rock stars, fuck you, what of it?

The space was beautiful, but not very full. 30 paid attendees I think. After our first song we had an iPod failure that took about 3 minutes to fix. Other than that, our first show went really well. I hadn't ever seen MC Router perform before, so that was cool. She can work a crowd really well, moving around the stage and connecting with audience. Other than all of the problems we had getting there, the show itself was fucking sweet. So no worries.



The next morning we met up with a cameraman at Gasworks Park in Seattle and did a Mediocre Tour photo shot for the Nerdcore for Life documentary. I'm really excited to see these shots. Yeah, I wanna see pics of myself. Fuck you... What of it?

So you'd think that with all of our Seattle troubles, we would be extra cautious with our directions to the Portland show. Nope. Again we got to town later than expected, and got fucking lost trying to find Hawthorne Bridge. So again we arrived to the show late (like the rockstars that we totally are). This show was a house show, about 3 blocks from Hawthorne Fish House. The houses occupants do a podcast called The Mediocre Show (sound familiar?).



There were only two bands for the evening, us and Hott Pink. Our set went fucking sweet. In spite of some feedback issues on the first few songs, our set was fun. All of us feel it was the best hip hop show we'd ever done. In my opinion, it was one of my top 5 shows I'd ever done with any band. Someday I should tell you guys about the bands that I was in 10 years ago.



I can't really hear everyone else's songs, but all of Beefy and Router's tracks sounded very hot. Of my songs, Happy Valium Meal really got the crowd jumping the most. That was surprising, given the songs preachy-straight-edge-bullshit-message. After our set, we each got crazy applause. We didn't sell much merch at this show, but we got paid enough to feel Beefy's tank twice.



So, it looks like we will make it to Seattle with time to spare, however it's raining and I'm really edgy riding in these type of conditions. Fuck you, what of it? I don't wanna be a prick, but Beefy doesn't drive any different in the rain. Despite the fact that everybody else on the road seems to.

Labels: beefy mc router doctor popular doc pop drown radio the mediocre tour

On a recent trip to Calistoga Springs, I found a new beverage called BibbiCaffe. It's an Italian soft drink that mixes espresso and soda with vanilla and caramel. The result is this rich, sweet soda that is very refreshing. Some folks may want to compare it to Coca-Cola's Blak soda, but the really is no comparison.

Apparently the drink has been around for 50 years.

I bought one the first night we arrived, but after one sip I decided that I wanted to buy as many as I could for my birthday party. So we went back and bought the remaining five. It turns out that the grocery store that I bought them from had just received the Bibicaffes as a test the day that I arrived. They sold out in one day, so I'm assuming the test was a success.

I'd say the folks that came to my party enjoyed the beverages too. OMG, they have fantastic recipes on their site too! Now I just need to find a local source so I can make the coffee martini. These guys have a good deal when you purchase an entire case.


I've also recently gotten my grubby hands on a pint of Ben and Jerry's newest flavor; Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream. It's a fantastic vanilla ice cream with caramel swirls and chunks of chocolate dipped waffle.

Apparently, Stephen's proceeds from this flavor will go to the Stephen Colbert Americone Dream fund. After several search attempts, I still can't tell what exactly that means, but I did find this short interview with Ben Cohen and Colbert.

I'm pleased to say that this ice cream tastes much better than it's poorly photoshopped packaging indicates. Seriously, it looks like Colbert has a huge ball of ice cream resting on top of his clinched fist.

Labels: bibicaffe espresso drink colbert americone dream ice cream

The Alternative Press Expowill soon be upon us. This year I'll tabling with the Cartoonist Conspiracy once again. My goal is to have at least one new book of my own printed, and perhaps 3 new San Francisco Cartoonist Conspiracy books to sell.

I won't have a chance to work on my book at all until I get home from the tour, but while I was thinking about APE today I decided to dig up a copy of this flyer from last year's convention. A guy named I-Roney was giving them away to promote his table. Each one was hand colored. I love it, but I wish the dude posted his email address. Google searches turn up nothing, if anyone knows how to get in touch with let me know. The dude's a fucking genius.

Can you guess guess the genitalia?

This is me, age 18. With my first Fender Jaguar. I bought it in Memphis while my band was doing a small tour. The other guys in the band hated the guitar and blame it for our eventual break up. You can't see it, but I was wearing a gold leotard. I wore them a bunch back then, don't know why. I guess I've always had an affinity for super hero costumes, mostly I collected tee shirts with super hero emblems on them but I thought there was something really really funny about wearing a "costume" beneath my clothes.

Note: my hair was usually very very flat, but in school girls liked braiding it, I'd take the braids out when I got home and my hair would look wavy for an hour or so.


This sketch was done by my friend Merideth. I met her at the first National Yo-Yo contest I attended. At the time she lived in Chico. We've stayed in contact throughout the years and now she lives in San Francisco and is one of my oldest bestest friends.

The sketch is of Steve Brown and myself, circa 2000. It really happened.


Here is a pic from the very first World Yo-Yo Contest. To help me with stage anxiety, I often like to start off with something fun, if it goes well I can relax. So when I took the stage for my X Division freestyle I asked everybody to smile for a picture. Then, after looking into my viewfinder, I said "I need you guys to squish in a little bit". The X Division was peer judged, so all the guys in the front row were both judges and competitors. I'm not sure who all is missing, but I think Steve is off to the right of the stage getting ready for his freestyle.

My favorite thing about this picture was the look of the Japanese players. Either they were just confused or they were offended. Considering how seriously most of them took the contest, I think they were pissed that some jackass was on stage wasting their time taking a photo instead of starting his routine. Neff thought it was funny though.


This is a pic from the second Yomega World Yo-Yo contest. Every year Brett Outchcunnis made the event more entertainment based. He brought his electronic drum kit to the event and asked Rick and myself to rap during parts of the show. He was just learning to play the drums, but that's okay 'cause I was just learning to rap.

I don't know the kids name, but he was hitting the drums as I freestyled. That's way too cute isn't it? The kid was somewhat cute too.


This is another pic from that same year. Since the Yomega World Yo-Yo contest was only a week away from the other World Yo-Yo Contest, we had a very large international contingent.

These guys are on a team called Team Others. They liked to play the circle game with me. Left to right we see Shingo "Terry" Terada, Kohta Watanabe, Daisuke Shimada, and Shinji Saito. A year or two later I became the only US player on the team. I'm one proud cracker.


Here is a pic of my pa and me. It's taken in his garage in Lewisburg TN. We had just pulled the Model T into the place and paused for a picture before we began removing the motor.

The picture is dated May 2001.


Here is a picture of me in Shannon's apartment on March 10th 2007, the morning of my 30th birthday. Same old Nine Inch Nails tour shirt, but a new favorite drink (Bibcafe!).

Labels: doc pop brian roberts old photos lewisburg TN yomega world yo-yo contest team others chris neff

Josh from www.Schalicto.com recently wrote a blog about The Hesitator yo-yo.



The Hesitator was a very limited run of Spinatstics Eclipses that I hand painted and assembled. Less than 40 where made. Actually I made about 55, but trashed 15 pairs that I didn't feel looked up to standard.

The name of the yo-yo came from the constant number of kids that would come in to my store looking for hesitator yo-yos.

"You know, the kind that hesitate."

I would try to explain to them that all of our yo-yos slept, but they would only look for yo-yos that hesitate.

I don't have any Hesitator's left.

Josh has three.

Life can be cruel sometimes.

He has some fantastic pictures of them on his flickr page.

The pog art features my art as well. One side has a version of me tagging a giant yo-yo. The other pog is a pair of hands with a floating "H" above them.



Painting the Hesitators was a total nightmare. Nail polish, blue ink, 3 colors of spray paint, sharpies, black paint, glitter and the lids off of McDonald's McFlurries were all used to get the desired effect. Each half was numbered, signed, and had a cool flame effect. On one half of each yo-yo the flames would spell out HESITATOR. Since all the work was done on the inside of the yo-yo, all spelling had to be done backwards. I even had to learn how to sign my name backwards. Once, after completing 20 Hesitators, I wrote an entire sentence backwards on a post it note to a friend before I realized I was not writing normally. That could have also been a result of being subjected to many hours of breathing aerosol and nail polish fumes.

For the record, it is widely believed that John(bot) Russeth has the best Hesitator made.

Labels: the hesitator yo-yo doc pop doctor popular signature series spintastics eclipse

So in half an hour I turn hella thirty years old.

So this will be the last time you read the youthful writings of a wide-eyed/spry 29 year old. 23 minutes from now this will become the online hub of a more mature and wise Doctor Popular.

Astute readers may recall mention of a short film that I have been working on for 2 and a half years called "Want A Date?". The movie has has been "nearly complete" for most of that time, in fact I've actually even had it all done except for the credits and lost everything due to an iMovie crash. All the saved info and work was completely gone. That destroyed any plans of editing the film myself.

So last week I finally found the help I needed to finish the editing on the film. My friend Tanya has stepped up and worked her butt off to get the film edited in time to debut at my hella birthday party tomorrow night.

In five days I'll be flying up to Seattle to kick off the Mediocre Tour. I'll meet up with Router and Beefy and we'll hit most of the west coast with our "unique brand of nerdcore hip-hop".

I'm on the verge of completing a few other projects but I don't wanna talk about them yet.

Despite the few things that are happening, I have to admit I've been pretty low for the last few weeks. After having a huge productive period for about a year, I'm going to have to get a day job again sometime soon. To me this means the end of any spare time I would have to create with. So I haven't been feeling too well, in fact I've caught myself wallowing in self pity way too often while playing video games and drinking (Halo 2, Gunmetal, Ku Soju, Effin Vodka).

Yeah, so happy hella thirtieth birthday to me. I'm looking forward to the party. Shan is making some of my favorites, including wasabi-gaucamole and Hav'A Corn chips.