john trubee
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ugly janitors of america
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discography

concerts

• 1988/02/24 concert 'the music machine', west l.a., ca, usa
  • john trubee: guitar, vocals * mark langton: vocals * toby holmes: trombone * jonathan mako sharkey: keyboards * bruce duff: bass * michael rosen: drums
  • the strongest man alive * gonne be a hard rain * introduction * why does love got to be so sad? * babylone * introduction * minstrel and queen * introduction * guru swami voodoo ind control * introduction * can you hear me * introduction * lesbian love affair * summer sun * the strongest man alive (reprise)
    
    
• 1988/12/06 concert 'stage west', granada hills, ca, usa
  • john trubee: guitar, vocals * mark langton: vocals * jim rohrig: sax & bassoon * mat gurman: guitar * jonathan mako sharkey: keyboards * robin lorenz: violin * danny buchanan: bass * art jarvinen: drums
  • the strongest man alive * why does love got to be so bad? * introduction * damn their souls * now i step over your world * holy man in an unholy land * cast me off in the shadow * introduction * human mating call * introduction * can you hear me? * they call me mister ugly
     
• 2004/06/04 concert 'kimo's', san francisco, ca, usa
  • john trubee: electric guitar * laurie amat: vox extraordinaire * mike mckevitt: electric bass * andy rosa: drums
  • triumph of the damned * the dream * vaulting over her walls * song of the tiger * the deserts of eternity * christina's lullaby * world of misery * little man torture sequence * intro interlude * time burns itself upon you now * orange baby puke on the bus
     
• 2004/12/04 concert 'mr.t's', highland park, ca, usa
  

bibliography

random notes

* * * * *
received june 2002:
* * * * *
    THIS IS DAMN SPAM. YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT IF YOU DON'T WANT IT.

    Otherwise, in case you are interested...
   
    Please feel free to forward to all, post on newgroups, spread, infect, infest, stir up, annoy, promulgate, spam, replicate, reproduce, breed, copy, print, broadcast, xerox, publish, duplicate, pass out, shill, pester, sell, market, cram, mimeograph with purple ink & otherwise promiscuously fling out to help in my quest for utter global domination throughout the entire universe forever.
--FRANCIS E. DEC

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

   ORPHAN OUTSIDE THE BANQUET CDRS

   A new release of CDRs are NOW, FINALLY available for the discriminating listener. These AMAZING recordings are unavailable via retail outlets because distributors and retailers are too stupid and ignorant to recognize sublime beauty when it bites them on their asses.

   BLIND MAN'S PENIS, PRANK PHONE CALLS, & INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL MUSIC
   John Trubee & The Ugly Janitors of America

   Self-descriptive title including BLIND MAN'S PENIS, which is out of print & unavailable everywhere except here. Also includes the original 1987 Ugly Janitors of America recording of WHEN MY SHIP ROLLS IN, weirdo prank calls going back to 1973 (!) including ZSA ZSA GABOR EARWIG, NAZI ARMY MEN, ELECTRIC BEMIS, DRUG HOTLINE IN TRENTON NJ 1980 and many more. Also includes great remixed outtakes from the WORLD OF LYING PIGS album sessions and bizarre electronic works.

   SONG DEMO FOR A HELEN KELLER WORLD
   John Trubee & The Ugly Janitors of America
 
    This collection of beautifully sarcastic songs was featured in Larry Wessel's critically acclaimed video documentary of the same name. Recorded at North Hollywood's Clear Lake Audio over New Year's 1999, this CDR features LITTLE BOY MELVIN RIDES AGAIN, THE RAIN KEEPS FALLING, TAKE A SHIT ON ME, TWILIGHT SONG, & more. These songs have never been performed live anywhere. This world is not worthy of them. 

    PORNO VALLEY SONG DEMO
    John Trubee & The Ugly Janitors of America

    This wonderful assortment of songs was recorded in one day on March 12th, 2000 in the San Fernando Valley--notorious for its flourishing adult entertainment industry. We briefly rehearsed each tune, then recorded it. They have not been performed or recorded since. They are too rare and beautiful for this corrupt world. Titles include BEAUTIFUL NAKED LADY, SPANISH CALIFORNIA, HAG MARCELLA, THE WORLD'S ON FIRE, and more. Nude women, cocks, pussies, pulsating orgasms, tits, asses, DPs, orgies, & blow jobs surrounded us as we recorded this.

    OBSCURE GOLD FROM THE INVISIBLE NIGGER
    John Trubee & The Ugly Janitors of America

    A really weird album with an insane phoned-in bizarre rant from crazy person Delmar Conley plus great tunes such as DILDO FACTORY, THEY CALL ME MISTER UGLY, electronic space music THE SOUND OF GOD SMILING, a live cover of Curtis Mayfield's MINSTREL & QUEEN, SHOP TIL YOU SHIT, and more.

    GREATEST PRANK CALLS OF ALL TIME--John Trubee

    The title says it all. The best calls dating from the 1970's to the 1990s--surreal blatherings elicit stunned & angry reactions from normal people who don't appreciate an insane person assaulting their deluded sense of reality.

     JENNIE'S POLYPS: GROOVY PRANK PHONE CALLS
     John Trubee

     Jennie was a bitch supervisor who fired Trubee's ass due to her congenital lack of humor. We dedicate this fine prank call album to her pissy whorishness. Groovy titles include NUDE MODELING, SQUEEGIE BLISTEX, DEMON FROM HELL 1 & 2, THE PLEXIGLASS WE DID TOGETHER, I'LL VOMIT ONYA, GREEK CULTURE, PRIVATE CLUB FOR SEXUALLY OPEN-MINDED PEOPLE, and many more.
The liner notes feature a provocative essay about the prank call ethos by Trubee.

     PRANK CALLS TO IDIOTS--Volume 6
     John Trubee

     Torturing bland normals in the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, and beyond shortly after the exciting Los Angeles riots of 1992. Brutal humor helps to heal the brokenhearted. Can't we all just get along?

     ALL CDRS ARE $11.95 EACH POSTPAID.

     MAKE ALL CHECKS & MONEY ORDERS PAYABLE TO  JOHN TRUBEE.
     PLEASE SEND ORDERS TO:

SPACE & TIME WORLD ENTERPRISES
John Trubee--President
PO Box 4921
Santa Rosa, CA 95402 USA

"UGLY JANITORS OF AMERICA FOREVER!"

* * * * *

received from John Trubee - july 2002: "quote of the day"

    "Fuck the past!
     Fuck tradition!
     Fuck ancestor worship!
     The past must be discarded
     when it tortures the present
     and cripples the future."
 
                 --John Trubee

* * * *

* * * *

received from John Trubee - september 2002: "an antipoem"

    At 3:43 a.m. I awoke from a nightmare in which I was furtively attempting to hide the body of someone a friend and I murdered.
    Then I took a shit from all those prunes I ate last night (they lyingly call them 'dried plums' nowadays--changing the name of something does not alter its essential 'itness'. Example: health used to be a perfectly suitable word-- now deviously supplanted by that New Age faggot contrivance 'wellness'. Who are these liars, these word murderers, and what are their motives?)
    Then I wrote this, my newest antipoem, my latest contribution to our civilization's understanding of diseased mental states...
     I gladly acknowledge its extravagance & ridiculousness and melodramatic, invented, playful self-loathing surrounding a quark of truth.

                THE DEVIL'S HATE POEM
                Copyright c 2002 John Trubee

              
                 In the midst of the night I awake
                 Quietly mouthing "I hate you
                 O how I hate you"
                 To those who deceived me
                 Shunted me aside
                 Fired me
                 Cast me asunder
                 Cast me under

                 To the smiley-faced normals of polite society
                 There needs to exist
                 An equal and opposite ballast
                 To counterbalance
                 Their hypocritical, sunshiney world.   

                  I am that ballast
                  The dark man
                  The ugly one
                  He who must be punished for no reason
                  Except to expiate the sins of the hypocrites.
                  I am that proverbial fall guy,
                  The forgotten man,
                  Creep, asshole, and worse...

                  My father habitually screamed at me
                  And sent me away from the family dinner table
                  For no reason other than his rages.
                  I'm not complaining,
                  Merely explaining
                  Why I chose the devil as my defense attorney.

                  The devil is my symbol--
                  Not the devil of sorrow and distress,
                  But the devil as the image of the solitary individual
                  Persecuted by unjust authority;
                  Dr. Richard Kimble and Charlie Manson and
                  Satan and Jesus are brothers.

                  Light requires shadow
                  Day needs night
                  Happiness depends on sorrow
                  Wealth is bound to poverty
                  The wholeness of the universe 
                  Requires the metaphysical linkage between polar opposites--
                  Look at Goya's paintings:
                  His chiaroscuro informs how shadow defines light
                  And vice versa.

                  This is a cliche and you know it.

                  You persecuted me
                  For no reason
                  Now I indict you and your world
                  I hate you
                 O how I hate you    

                 BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!                  

* * * *

received from John Trubee - october 2002: "Quote For The Day"

"Politics: a ceaseless tug of war between two teams who, despite the surface veneer of their ideological differences, are composed of identical mobs of pompous brats.
I soon lose interest in observing the tiresome antics of these diseased personalities whose foolishness flourished before I was born and will continue unabated after I die."

                                                                    --John Trubee

* * * *

received from John Trubee - november 2002

Subject: Fw: Fw: Blind Man's Redux

I hope you can open this. This film, to be aired on PBS in February, contains the hoary BMP story. Jamie came up here and filmed for it--and even flew to Nashville to 'ambush' Ramsey Kearney, the country music geezer who sang it. I'll remind yuh when it get closer to airing...
--John Trubee

>>> If you, John Trubee, forever reigning king and virtual inventor of the "Alt Song Poem" genre, were not interviewed for this documentary (see below), there is no justice in the world. As they say in the computer industry: "Bow before me, for I am root!" Incriminating evidence attached.
Keep shredding!
-- Doc
********************************

********************************
(JT and disciples, L.A. Surrealist Alliance archives, circa 1985, Lhasa Club)

OFF THE CHARTS: THE SONG-POEM STORY, will air nationally on the new PBS series
INDEPENDENT LENS on February 11th (2003) at 10PM.

Day of the Locust meets American Idol in Jamie Meltzer's debut film, OFF THE CHARTS: THE SONG POEM STORY, a fascinating, at times unsettling, documentary that exposes the strange underworld of the song-poem industry. In this
little known subculture, "ordinary people" respond to come-on ads on the back pages of magazines ("Send in Your Lyrics and Make $50,000 in royalties!"), mailing in their heartfelt but often bizarre poems to "music industry" companies that, for a fee, turn those poems into real recordings.
Through interviews with several song-poem writers, the jaded producers and musicians who set their words to music, and a few of the growing number of zealous song-poem connoisseurs, OFF THE CHARTS explores a truly unique, never-before-seen slice of Gothic Americana.

* * *

received from John Trubee - november 2002

  "Someone observing a tradition for the sake of tradition
   is not unlike a 30 year old clinging onto a teddy bear
   for a feeling of comfort and security.
 
   Fuck tradition.
   Fuck convention.
   Fuck social propriety.
   Fuck the rules
   and those who torture you with them."

                  --John Trubee

* * *

received from John Trubee - november 2002

       The James Coburn Poem
    Copyright c 2002 John Trubee

-- John Trubee

OFF THE CHARTS: THE SONG-POEM STORY by San Francisco filmmaker Jamie Meltzer
will premiere february 11, 2003, in san francisco

Jamie Meltzer's debut film, OFF THE CHARTS: THE SONG POEM STORY is a fascinating, at times unsettling, documentary that exposes the strange underworld of the song-poem industry.  In this little known subculture, "ordinary people" respond to come-on ads on the back pages of magazines ("Send in Your Lyrics and Make $50,000 in royalties!"),
> mailing in their heartfelt but often bizarre poems to "music industry" companies that, for a fee, turn those poems into real recordings. 
Through interviews with several song-poem writers, the jaded producers and musicians who set their words to music, and a few of the growing number of zealous song-poem connoisseurs, OFF THE CHARTS explores a truly unique, never-before-seen slice of Gothic Americana.  OFF THE CHARTS will air nationally on PBS on February 11 (check local listings.)

Like a warped fun-house mirror, the song-poem industry has run parallel to the mainstream music business for close to a century; it's estimated that over 200,000 song-poems have been recorded since 1900. The genre's durability can be traced to three of our deepest American desires - to be in show business, to get rich quick, and to share and express our deepest feelings.   We meet several of the "songwriters" - from an elderly woman to a young African-American man to a small-town Iowan with big-time dreams - each of whom has been in the "business" for awhile, churning out odd compositions that cover the waterfront of American obsessions, from Jesus to genitalia, from politics to Elvis. We also meet the producers (often known as song-sharks) who hold out the tantalizing promise of fame to their eager customers, and the has-been musicians who sit in studios, day after day and year after year, interpreting some of the weirdest lyrics ever written.  Through fellow musicians and his son, Ellery Eskelin, one of the most eloquent fans of song-poem records, we learn about the life and tragic death of the man aficionados consider the greatest song-poem interpreter of all time, Rodney Keith Eskelin.  Using a variety of stage names, this would-be classical composer brought an eerie beauty to many of the song-poems he recorded before ending his career and life by jumping onto a Hollywood freeway.

As filmmaker Meltzer says, "The beauty of Song-Poems is that they are a result of the intersection, or collision, of ordinary people's expressions and the desires of musicians/businesses to make a quick buck, making the music as fast as they can, usually in one take.  When those two forces combine, they create strangely compelling songs that are unlike anything you've ever heard."  Shocking, funny, and heart-wrenching all at once, OFF THE CHARTS is a fascinating look at one of the strangest subcultures in our American landscape.

The following article first appeared in SPIN in October, 1985...

You Too Can Be A Recording Star!

by John Trubee

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind. This ludicrous line was invented out of sheer boredom and homicidal frustration as I labored as a cashier in a convenience store in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1975. I'd scribble some poems and weird phrases on a legal pad to vent my seething anguish. Writing on the job was a kind of self-invented therapy to prevent the onset of mental illness due to occupational stress and severe teenage alienation.
In late spring of 1976, I bought one of those horrible sleazy tabloids you find in supermarkets by the check-out stand. I had to keep up on my UFO sightings and mass hatchet murders.

In the back pages of the Midnight Globe (not the National Enquirer, as erroneously reported elsewhere -- was it Time?), I scanned the geeky little ads and saw: "Cowrite on a 50-50 basis, earn $20,000 royalties, send your song poems to ..." some outfit in Nashville, Tennessee. I thought to myself: wouldn't it be fun to send these people the most ridiculous, stupid, vile, obscene, retarded Iyrics to see their response?

In five minutes of stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness), I hammered out the following:

Peace & Love

I got high last night on LSD
My mind was beautiful, and I was free
Warts loved my nipples because they are pink
Vomit on me, baby
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind
It's erect because he's blind, it's erect because he's blind
Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind
It's erect because he is blind

Let's make love under the stars and watch for UFOs
And if little baby Martians come out of the UFOs
You can fuck them
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

The zebra spilled its plastinia on bemis
And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles
Ramona's titties died in hell
And the Nazis want to kill everyone.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind ... etc.

I wanted to get an emotional letter from the jerks in Nashville. I wanted them to tell me I was crazy. I wanted them to curse me out in writing so I could show all my friends.

Several weeks later I received a letter from Nashville Co-Writers which began:

Dear John,

We have just received your lyrics and think they are very worthy of being recorded with the full Nashville Sound Production. ... I am enclosing a contract of acceptance. Please sign and return along with $79.95 to cover the cost for each song to be completed ...

 They wanted my money. If I sent them the money, they would send me a tape and a record of my lyrics set to music. Although $79.95 was a lot to a minimum wage teenager, I signed the "contract of acceptance" and returned it with a check. Several weeks later I received a 7-inch, 45 RPM record that had a label and grooves only on one side.
Typed on the white label was "Peace & Love" (John Trubee-Will Gentry). I immediately rushed upstairs and put this little gem on the turntable for a listen. Over the lamest, most minimal country track was some country hack singing the lyrics I wrote. I was stunned.

They did change one line, though -- they excised all mention of Stevie Wonder and had the singer croon repeatedly "A blind man" instead.

Also enclosed with the disc (actually an acetate) was a photograph of Ramsey Kearney, the guy who sang the damned thing. Wearing a butterfly-print polyester shirt, Ramsey looked like the perfect man to sing these demented lyrics.

Several weeks later, Nashville sent a teeny 3-inch reel tape of the song in extreme stereo -- one channel had only the prerecorded rhythm track while the other channel featured Ramsey singing those idiot lyrics with a little slap-back echo thrown in.

For years I had recorded hours of tapes of my teenage band, prank phone calls, studio demo tapes, synthesizer blurbles, and various recordings of an unusual nature. I wanted all this hard work to be heard, and I loved distributing my tapes simply to annoy people and sometimes even to enlighten or entertain them. I am a music fanatic, a recording fanatic, and I needed to get this material out. It was my response to a world that seems always to have told me that I am small and worthless. Putting out music for the hell of it was my way of giving the finger to a universe indifferent to my existence.

In December 1982, I received a call at work from Ron Stringer, guitarist for the Fibonaccis, an L.A. art band. Earlier that year at a gig at Al's Bar, I had given him a John Trubee sampler cassette, which contained my Nashville prank song, "Peace & Love." Ron evidently played the tape for record producer Craig Leon, who was helping the Fibonaccis release their song "Tumors" on vinyl. Craig liked "Peace & Love" so much that he wanted to release it as a 45.

Craig managed to have the record pressed by Enigma, a new indie label based in a warehouse in Torrance, CA.  I got 50 free promo copies of the record. We didn't discuss any specific deal. Any sort of greed, bitchery, money hassles, or small-minded haggling might have discouraged Enigma from marketing my record. I felt that they were doing me a favor by bothering to press it and give me some free copies. In retrospect, this attitude was one of profound naivete borne of youthful inexperience.

When I drove to Torrance one night after work to pick up the 50 copies of my beautiful record, some guy from Greenworld (Enigma's distribution company) approached me and, referring to the 250 copies they had pressed, said, "We already invested $20 in this record, and we don't want to have anything more to do with it."

The records were in plain white sleeves and had blank white labels. For $16 I had four rubber stamps made at a stationery store so I could stamp each record with the pertinent information. I also bought several hundred plastic record sleeves from a local Licorice Pizza and designed and photocopied my own little cover to insert along with the record.

With my original 50 copies, I did a promotional mailing to Dr. Demento and various radio stations, not expecting any response whatsoever.

I sent a copy to Los Angeles TV vampiress Elvira aka Cassandra Peterson who at the time hosted a show at progressive radio station KROQ-FM in Pasadena. She sent a postcard explaining that she'd attempt to play the record on her show, but she wasn't sure she would be able to due to the offensive lyric content. I shrugged it off, put her postcard in my files, and forgot about it.

That Sunday, Zoogz Rift, in whose band I played bass, called and told me to quickly turn on KROQ. I did so and was astounded to hear them play my wicked little ditty. The enlightened and godlike DJs at KROQ thereafter regularly played it and it spread across the country to innumerable college stations.

Enigma re-pressed the record, adding it to their catalogue and christening it with the new moniker "A Blind Man's Penis," even designing a groovy little label for it. Matt Groening (in his incarnation as a music critic years before he created 'The Simpsons') devoted his entire Sound Mix column in the Reader, a weekly Los Angeles tabloid, to the convoluted story of how 'Blind Man's Penis' came into existence. Matt's article was brought to the UK by music journalist Barney Hoskyns who arranged to have it reprinted in NME, further spreading the infamy of my serendipitous teenage prank.

I'm currently working on my second Enigma LP with my band, the Ugly Janitors of America. You, too, Mister Composer/Musician, can put out records if you bother to go to the trouble of sending obscene lyrics and suicide notes through the U.S. Postal Service as I did. The obsolete and idiotic machinery of the music industry requires the irreverent pranks of ugly outsiders if it is to survive its keening descent into hermetically-sealed grayness, smug mediocrity, and tortured self-destruction by endlessly redigesting its own putrid bodily wastes.

Fresh oxygen is required to revitalize a stagnant pond.

-- John Trubee

----- Original Message -----
From: "John V Trubee" <crawlingwageslave@juno.com>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003
Subject: What Proper Socialization Has Taught Us

   "You should always allow fear to circumscribe
   the parameters of your life and you always ought
   to heed public opinion and the approval of others---
   for everyone else is always right and you are always
   shit wrong."

    (Excerpted from 'Diary of A Craven Weakling')

Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003
Subject: In Light Of Today's Events

    "All the tyrants of the world
     Always kill us every day
     We gotta rise on up
     And blast them down
     And feed their bloody corpses
     To our starving dogs."

      chorus from 'Take A Shit On Me'
      Copyright c 1999 John Trubee

      I wrote this song specifically for events such as those which have transpired today.

-- John Trubee

----- Original Message -----

From: "John V Trubee"
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003
Subject: Quotes For The Day

    "Is the individual forever to be crushed
     beneath the wheels of commerce?"
                                  --John Trubee

     (reflecting on the current legal action against
      Unocal Corporation for its collusion with the
      junta in Myanmar which raped, killed, and
      tortured people)
   

    "Every word is a lie." --John Trubee

     (reflecting on the idea espoused by philosophers
      that words and language parses out our
      experience of reality into discrete bits so that we
      are unable to perceive the universe as one whole
      thing as does a god or a newborn infant.)
   

 John Trubee
 PO Box 4921
 Santa Rosa Ca 95402 USA
 "A junkyard dog staked to a short chain
  chasing himself in tight circles of sorrow and madness."

John Trubee said:
“Old pal Bob Dubrow is interviewing me for LA-based SCRAM Magazine. He's feeding me the questions in chunks. You may not be interested in all this crap so please forgive the intrusion.
Forgive the rambling. Forgive the profanity. Or maybe not. Maybe you like those things..."

Trubee: His name was MIKE Trainor. And what about him? He was a fucked up little shitwad, that's what.
I was the camp bugler--I blew reveille at dawn and taps at twilight and meal calls throughout the day. I wasn't a really great horn player but I was all they had. I had taken trumpet lessons in school at my mother's insistence.
Mike Trainor one day was visiting the camp--he wasn't a regular camper at the time although he had been in earlier years. He showed up off of the Greyhound bus onto which his stepdad had shoved him just to be rid of him--at least for a while. Trainor stole the bugle I was using to sound calls (the bugle was camp property) and he pissed all over it--in it and on it. I had done nothing to goad him into this--this was a clever little stunt he dreamed up himself. I remember taking the
bugle down to the lake and swimming with it for a long time, repeatedly rinsing it with soap and flushing it with water--and it still stank of piss!
Evidently the powerful nitrogen compounds, ammonia, and uric acid in Trainor's piss had permanently bonded with the bugle's tarnished brass oxide, rendering it a new, hybrid musical instrument redolent of the potent urine stink of little brat Mikey.
Trainor was shortly thereafter put on an outbound Greyhound bus by head counselor Jim Duggan to ensure no more wanton damage to camp property by Little Asshole Mikey.

Q: When you say "Stay the fuck away unless you can be civil & decent," isn't that just another way of saying "I don't want you around unless you can accept me as a human being worthy of respect?"  This is what I mean by acceptance.  You know, John, you talk a very hard game in this interview and in your poems and song lyrics but I know you to be a gentle and giving person.  How do you reconcile that person with the angry posturing persona you present to the world in your art?

Trubee: There are 6 billion human beings on earth. We all have different temperaments and proclivities. We are all 6 billion unique individuals, different as snowflakes. We like to say of human beings that we are social creatures and require social interaction to be fully integrated, healthy, and human---but not all of us need the same QUANTITY of human interaction. I prefer as little human interaction as possible, as the tenor of my life experiences informs me that other human beings in general cause me greater sorrow and distress than happiness.
My greatest joy in life is creating music for which I need absolute solitude. I cannot dream or reflect or think for my projects with another person around distracting my thoughts. There's not a lot of people with whom I enjoy hanging out and the ones that I do hang with on occasion must be brilliant or talented or insightful or be an alienated freak.
For instance, not too long ago I spent a day in San Francisco hanging out in succession with 3 friends---Dennis Kitsz, an amazing composer & renaissance man; Brently Pusser, a longtime musician friend from Texas; and Kaos Kitty aka Kaosmik McKitty, an extraordinary performance artist and singer with a brilliant sense of humor and an astounding intelligence.
I also enjoy hanging out with Carl Franzoni and Catherine Huberty-- both of whom are talented poets and artists and photographers. 
I also chat regularly by phone with Zoogz Rift who verbally gores me and mocks virtually everything I say and I brutalize back at him-- yet we are still great friends.
I'm choosy about people with whom I hang out. They must be amazing. 

 The above sounds brutally snobbish and elitist and aristocratic-- so be it. I am a rarified aristocrat of my own world. I have learned to be discriminating and selective. It's my coping mechanism. 
He who is rejected learns to reject--and to discriminate.

That part of me which is warm and vulnerable I'd like to kill. It works against me when I'm negotiating for things I want-- especially with women. My heart is a happy dog which escapes his kennel at inopportune moments. My brain, the brutal Nazi, then goes to reign him in and stuff him back into his kennel where his drooling love can't thwart my need for toughness and clear thinking.
By then it's too late and the woman gives me the "let's just be friends" cliched bullshit routine and then goes on to fuck the heartless shitheels and moronic mediocrities of the earth.
This is why the world is full of shitheels and mediocrities.

Q: What were you reading during those early-mid teen years?  And who were your guitar heroes and why?

Huxley's 'Doors of Perception' and 'Brave New World', 'The Book' by Alan Watts, 'Listen, Little Man!' by Wilhelm Reich (a heartfelt tirade against the unnecessary cruelties of the world), '1984' by George Orwell, and other groovy subversive stuff.
I have no guitar heroes now. Heroes are for kids. We ought to emulate those qualities we most admire rather than vicariously admiring them in others. We all ought to live heroically every single day. Kids need to admire heroes because they require external models upon which to model their future behavior.
The term 'hero' in conjunction with a guy who plays guitar amazingly well is a misnomer. A hero risks himself for the welfare of others or to accomplish some formidable task. He shows courage by overcoming a potent fear of something dangerous. We all have fears; the hero overcomes his fears to accomplish something difficult and dangerous which often benefits others.
A great guitar player overcomes stage fright, maybe, and works his ass off to play ethereally---but this is not heroism in the true sense of the word.

Nonetheless, since you asked, I GREATLY ENJOY the guitar emissions of Eric Clapton from his Cream/Blind Faith/Derek & The Dominos glory days. When he became a junkie it sucked all the fire out of his playing. His guitar playing ever since his heroin rehab 3 decades ago is that of a tired and jaded and spoiled rock star. Sorry, Eric.

I love Hendrix's playing. Too bad he choked on his vomit. Drug abuse does that sometimes. I visited his grave in Renton, Washington like a ghoulish groupie.

Zappa, of course. I love his guitar playing and his prolific and amazingly varied musical output. For that I'll forgive his idiotic foray into politics (leave politics to the assholes who thrive on it), that he was an insufferable control freak, and that he occasionally said stupid things such as stating his belief that smoking has no connection to cancer.

Steve Vai, too, is an amazing guitarist. I met him a few times. The Ugly Janitors of America played on the same bill as his band at a Hollywood club eons ago.

Q: What was the genesis of the wild cartoon drawings you were doing at the time?  Man, that stuff was just hilarious and shocking, in much the same way your prank phone calls were at the time.  What was it that spurred you on to draw in this way and pick up the phone to "express yourself" to strangers on the other end?

I remember drawing pictures of 19th century sailing vessels when I was 7, 8, 9. I don't know what fascinated me about them. Maybe something romantic--that they represented a voyage and as a kid I was on the cusp of a great voyage--the journey of life.
Perhaps I started drawing the idiotic cartoon characters saying and doing idiotic things to be offensive and stupid to those around me.
I hated the adult world--their obsession with money and possessions, their grave lack of humor, their need to stifle any spark of life and spontaneity in their children, their incessant joylessness and Nazification of all life's grand purposes into some sort of control game in which we must always submit to others, heed the rules, keep up appearances, worry about what the asshole neighbors think, and become the soulless drones, the pod people, of 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.
The adult world was forever commanding me to sit down and shuttup.
It said I had no value except as a passive pawn in their scheme of things. I absolutely hated all their bullshit.

If this was what "society" was all about, I wanted no part of it. I felt a great chasm, a huge disparity between the values foisted upon me by my elders and what I felt was really vital and important in life. I needed to spew out my rage and disgust with their world and how I perceived it. People traditionally ignore and disparage children---yet children have thoughts and feelings which need to heard. There was a vast gulf between what I was told by my elders and how I experienced the world.

My obnoxious drawings were the only safe way I could say 'fuck you' to the world of mediocre normalcy and not get killed or locked in an institution. If I lacked creative outlets I would have killed somebody a long time ago.

The prank calls grew out of my fascination with tape recorders in the early 70's. I was getting interested in music and recording--- trying to discover how music was assembled, how things got recorded. I experimented recording my band "Gloop Nox & The Stik People'---sometimes micing amps, sometimes direct lining them, getting all sorts of awful noises from impedance mismatches, using crappy, cheap mixers from Radio Shack---4 pots and 4 inputs and 2 outs and nothing else! I obsessed about someday getting into a real recording studio. I still, to this day, have regular night dreams about recording my music and making records--I can't get it out of my system. They have supplanted what few yearning sex dreams I occasionally have. The dream women always leave me waking with a sense of sad longing. Now I long to get this music out of me or else I'll die.

Before I started recording my teen band I'd tape prank calls and send the cassette to you---then you and your brother John and the dipshit Axelrod brothers would erase over the cassette, record your own prank calls, then send 'em back to me. We lost hours of great early prank calls this way---but I have a number of the cassettes still in my archives--dating back to 1972! 31 fucking years! Jesus!
I recorded the prank calls out of a fascination with tape recorders and from the impish impulses typical of adolescent boys being awash in their first huge waves of testosterone. I wanted to start shit, I wanted to topple the established order, I was a moneyless slave in my Father's house crushed by rules and authoritarian imperatives.
I wanted to pull it all crashing down--not unlike a young ape chafing to subvert and attack and destroy the alpha male of his ape clan.
I discovered I could prank call a stranger, fuck around with him, record the whole madness for future amusement, to distribute by making and disseminating copies (essentially publishing), and this was as exciting and liberating to me as it would be for an inmate on death row to discover a secret escape tunnel from his cell the evening before his execution.
What prank calls taught me is that the rules are not ironclad--they only have the power over you that YOU ALLOW the assholes with their rules to have over you. Reality is malleable. Human interaction is subject to some of MY RULES and MY precepts for interaction-- that I could be the instigator, the creator of reality in the minds of others, that human social interaction is a game into which I could inject some of my play and madness and rage rather always being a passive slave at the mercy of THE RULES of others.
That I was able to record my prank calls and not be caught and suffer horrible shit consequences and die in Hell forever as implied by my elders let me start not allowing myself to not be so intimidated by them, as they were obviously full of shit.

This was the beginning of my love affair with freedom, my highest value.

Here's part two:

At this stage of our email interview John decided he wanted to get the thing over with quickly
 (I wanna get stuff completed, vociferously obtain goals, and get on to other groovy stuff in life pleading for my attention--John Trubee)
...and then suggested 10 questions of his own that I should ask him about his life now and his present-day opinion on world events.
I reminded him that the original idea behind this feature was to explore the life of Trubee the adolescent misfit.  His response:

JOHN:  Rules, rules, rules.  Do you want to hear about an unexeptional childhood decades ago I can barely remember or do you want a fascinating and provocative read to present to SCRAM's readers?

BOB:  I always thought you were radically unusual back then, which in my mind is something exceptional (So what?--It never helped me get laid--JT).  I lived for those stuffed packages you'd regularly send me full of your cartoons and prank call cassettes and crap you'd pick off the street...although I could've done without the dried used condoms (THAT I PICKED UP OFF THE STREET!--JT) included in there.  What's so fascinating and provocative about how you are living now compared to 30 years ago?  I know you are freer, thanks to being long removed from the authoritarian thumb of your family situation.  But I know you've been living in an extremely cramped hovel for many years,
(I'm so very sorry that the real estate prices costs in Sonoma County are obscene; median house prices here are $445k--and when I am ever able to buy a house it must be on my own single income and without family help. ON PRINCIPLE I cannot allow myself to be like one of the myriad weaklings who surround me who cravenly depend on other people for the necessities of life. I MUST NEVER BE WEAK IN A WORLD WHICH FOREVER SEEKS TO KILL ME.--John Trubee)
 working shit jobs,
 (I greatly apologize that they didn't hire me for that CEO position at Enron and all those other spiffy, plush jobs people traditionally glom onto through padding their resumes and kissing the asses of influential friends of their parents and their college buddies in high places.
  I deeply apologize for not being a liar.
  I deeply apologize for not being a parasitic asskisser.
  I deeply apologize for blasting bloodily naked and alone
  through this world to carve out a modest piece for myself.
  Please forgive me, Bob.--JT)
and barely scraping up enough money to be able to get into a studio to create the music that's so important to you.

 (I apologize that the record labels refuse to sodomize me in exchange for recording budgets. I'm sorry I am too strong and proud to ever beg anyone for anything.--JT)

BOB:  Let's be a little conservative and say you have about 30 more years left to live, close to the same amount of time it's been since teenagedom. What will have to happen for you to be able to look back and say the life you lived was indeed exceptional?

JOHN: I don't look back; I don't bask, I don't gloat, I don't feel smug, I don't give a damn about things I've done in the past other than trying to garner royalties and license fees from my past works to help fund future projects. Please download my music and prank call albums at Emusic.com, dear readers!
Look at my past life and gloat in print over it? I'd sooner take a shit in public! So I'll gloat anyway:

I am very happy, though, I did get record contracts after lusting after them for years. Getting that deal for my first album was more significent than losing my virginity--and I thought about it more and worked harder on getting that record contract than I ever did to get laid.
EVERYONE EVENTUALLY gets laid but nobody ever made an album as obnoxious and fucked up as 'The Communists Are Coming To Kill Us!'
Not even idiot Kim Fowley has ever made such a fucked-up record!

I'm glad I put out my music my way without ever compromising with music biz cretins. I never had a manager or mentor or money people to whom I was answerable--so I never had to answer to anyone else's shit. To me that is success.

I live and have lived where I chose to live.

I am beholden to no one in onerous deals either in business or in my personal life. No one blackmails me, no one is clever enough to lure me into a shitty situation, and I am too aware and too Spartan and too ferocious in my temperament to be lured by the the empty toys and lucre and manipulative cutie pies who commonly con lesser men.

If you gave me a choice between a life devoid of music and a life devoid of sex I'd happily give up sex.
Music is the greatest high; women often disappoint me.

My dealings with women leave me so profoundly sad sometimes-- other times in grotesque internal agony when my emotions become unfortunately engaged to she whose indifference renders her unworthy of my meaningless suffering.

If you contrast all the shit and timewaste you crawl through to get laid (MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, IF SHE HAPPENS TO BE IN THE MOOD)---with the pure joy of making music on whatever level, without having to suffer the caprices of another human being to create the music---there is no comparison.

I'd happily become a monk for music any day.

Music is my only friend.

I'm trying to ween myself off of newspapers. I have required a daily print fix for years--even now when much of what I read concerns petty partisan political bickering, fanatics in the Middle East killing each other since I was a kid, polls exposing the depressing ignorance and stupidity of the American public,  celebrity gossip detailing which famous mediocrity is comingling their genitals with another like mediocrity, meaningless data on where the market went today, pro athletes mouthing barely articulate inanities about how their stupid team is gonna do this season, and orgasmic reviews about new movies that make me cringe with disgust whenever I ever weaken enough to see one.

I often walk out of movies or shut off my VCR when I feel the movie is wasting time out of my life. I have big problems going into a video store to rent a video because I don't see the movies as something desirable. I see MOST movies as LIABILITIES. I look at all the videos on the shelves and think to myself "What here is worth wasting 2 hours out of my life for?" I hang onto to my 2 hours of life rather than the meaningless lifetime squandering on vapid "entertainment".

It's as if we are a culture of stunted babies needing to be entertained---pathetic, obese, retarded infants drooling before flashing screens of images which mean nothing. This is not how life ought to be lived. The timewaste of entertainment watching steals from us great potentialities we ought to develop within ourselves.

In a related vein I once told my niece Jillian that smart people read books and dumb people watch TV. My brother and his wife thereafter noticed that Jillian was constantly reading and eschewed TV watching. When they asked her why she said "Because of what Uncle Johnny said." Thank God I don't have children--I'm certain they'd be scarier than I am.

There is so much SHIT to to filter out in order to focus on my music.

It's bad enough the day job sucks so much time out of my life.

I must ALSO filter out the meaningless diversions normal guys crave--card games, socializing, TV, fixing the car, hanging out, movies, sports bullshit, family life, women--to have time to do the music projects which fascinate the hell out of me.

If I fuck around on guitar for an afternoon on my day off and FINALLY get a few melodic fragments and some rough harmonizations for a viable song that SOMEDAY MIGHT be recorded--then this is the price I'm glad to pay for that which I love.

This is why we pay songwriters, kids, and why the RIAA is going after those who do illegal Internet music downloads: because songwriters sacrifice TIME out of their lives in speculative, sacrificial days devoid of the comforts of normal life and pussy to create organized sounds which you might someday pay to hear if they can ever afford to get their works properly recorded and published. If they're lucky. Maybe.

If someone gets enjoyment out of the the music--damn right the songwriter wants to get paid for it! We gotta eat and pay rent, too, damnit!

It's difficult for normal people to understand this.

It's impossible to make them understand.

Either you're born with a passion for this madness or you aren't.

BOB:  I would ask that you leave us with a new Trubee poem-rant.

JOHN: Haven't I ranted enough?

Ok--here's a rough work in progress based on a dream I dreamt last year:

       In The Dreamscapes of My Slumber
       Copyright c 2003 John Trubee

       I be lost from this world
       You cannot torture me now
       I've descended into the realm of science fiction dreams

       Of incandescent skycraft swooshing overhead
       Over impoverished refugees frighteneded on the boats
       Escaping on the waters
       Escaping on the waters

        I have dreamt of teeny dancing creatures
        In tiny plastic bottles
        Shrieking for their freedom
        To a world that doesn't hear
        To a world that never hears

        I have dreamt of luscious naked women
        At country club orgies
        Who evaded me forever
        The most repulsive man
        In the entire universe

        And I have dreamt of cripples
        Severely wounded, crippled, retarded
        Only parts of human being propped up in wheelchairs
        Scarcely sustained in dark wards of hidden hospitals
        In the dreamscapes of my sleep...

    From John Trubee – May 31, 2004

The UGLY JANITORS OF AMERICA will play live at Kimo's, 1351 Polk at Pine in San Francisco, CA, on Friday evening, June 4th, 2004 at 10:00 PM (the first set). Cover charge? Don't know--bring money $$$.

The UGLY JANITORS OF AMERICA is John Trubee's band, the purpose of which is to perform and record his original compositions. Founded in 1983 in North Hollywood, CA to flesh out the contractual obligations Mr. Trubee entered into with Enigma Records, the band still roars along, cranking out groovy sounds for the now generation. Never dependent upon managers, lawyers, music biz shysters, and control freak money people, THE UGLY JANITORS OF AMERICA have made a number of their cosmically beautiful recordings available for Internet download at Emusic.com. Also available at that site are those idiotic and obnoxious prank call recordings by John Trubee.

At Kimo's, Trubee will bring various CDs for sale for $5 a pop.

Current Ugly Janitors of America:

• JOHN TRUBEE--Electric Guitar & Groovy Vibrations for the NOW GENERATION

• LAURIE AMAT--Vox Extraordinaire & Tambourine

• MIKE McKEVITT--Electric Bass

• ANDY ROSA—Drums

• CHRIS CORTESE—Keyboards

• ERIK GERGIS--Keyboards (if we can locate him!)

Tunes we will play:

• THE SOUND OF DISTANT MUSIC

• THE DREAM

• SONG OF THE TIGER

• CHRISTINA'S LULLABY

• VAULTING OVER HER WALLS

• WORLD OF MISERY

• TIME BURNS ITSELF UPON YOU, NOW

• NUDE LOVE IN NAKED SPLENDOR

• & more!

For more info e-mail John Trubee at <crawlingwageslave@juno.com>

    From John Trubee, September 8, 2004

I cannot see or recognize that oft-cited grand hallucination
known as "society". I only perceive and interrelate with
individual human beings.

When I see a human being unhappy because he or she
feels compelled to conform to the conventions of "society"
I tell him or her "Make yourself happy first. Why ought you
torture yourself over the implied rules of an imaginary entity?"

What kind of world would we live in if it was filled with unhappy
human beings? Probably the kind of world in which we
currently reside.

I prefer to live in a world of happy individuals. I first start by
making myself happy; then, if I see someone making himself
miserable over the conventions of "society" I attempt to make
him or her aware that  they are torturing themselves over a
collective hallucination.

If "society" does exist and if its welfare is so important to us,
and if "society" is composed of individual human beings, then
wouldn't the happiness of those individual human beings lead to
and ensure a happy "society"?

Also--why do so many people value the welfare of the grand,
collective hallucination "society" over the happiness of specific,
individual human beings with whom they daily interrelate?

The cause of "society" is often merely a facade behind which
the bully hides.

                                               --John Trubee

PRESS RELEASE - november 2004
   
John Trubee, leader of the rock band THE UGLY JANITORS OF AMERICA, will give a live musical performance with longtime UGLY JANITOR OF AMERICA vocalist Mark Langton, as well as give an antipoetry rant and proffer bizarre philosophical musings at MR. T's in Highland Park, California on Saturday evening, December 4th, 2004. Mr. Trubee will also relate the amazingly weird story of how he landed his first record contract with Enigma Records for his LP 'The Communists Are Coming To Kill Us!"

The performance is sponsored in conjunction with the recent publication of 'Lost In The Grooves' by Kim Cooper and... published by...in which the story of 'The Communists Are Coming To Kill Us!' is featured, and is the live LA event in a series of international celebrations for 'Lost in the Grooves'.

Other performers at Mr. T's are the Fleagles (writer Edwin Letcher's band, playing songs by the Wylde Mammoths, about whom he wrote), the Supreme Dicks (written about in LITG), writer Brooke Alberts w/ Dave Soyars (playing songs by her essay subjects Mr Fox and Roy Harper) and writer Jackson Del Rey (aka Phil Drucker, ex-Savage Republic, doing a tribute to Monitor, who a different writer covered for the book).

In addition to this performance, John Trubee is currently producing a recording project entitled 'SORROW' with his band, and he produced and promoted the world premiere of his opera 'HAWAIIAN TAN RATFACE' in San Francisco earlier this year.

Mr. Trubee is featured in the recent independent film documentary 'Off The Charts: The Song Poem Story' about the murky song shark industry which was nationally broadcast last year on PBS and shown in film festivals in the United States and abroad. Mr. Trubee is also featured in the film 'Jandek On Corwood' which is currently playing the film festival circuit
here and overseas. Both films have been commercially released on DVD.

      Lost In The Grooves publication event
      Saturday evening, December 4th, 2004
      Mr. T's, 5621 1/2 Figueroa, Highland Park, CA, usa
      (near 57th Ave., park in the rear)

January 2, 2005. So that's about a day too late...

UGLY JANITORS OF AMERICA musicians Art Jarvinen and MB Gordy play tonight in Pasadena if you have the time or interest:

A rare sighting of The Invisible Guys

• Arthur Jarvinen - all compositions, bass, baritone guitar, vocals
• Sean Heim - guitar
• Robert Jacobson - guitar and 12 string guitar
• Hunter Ochs - keyboards
• M.B. Gordy - drums

Performing music from "a real soundtrack for an imaginary spy film"

Come enjoy some nouveau-retro surf music at the closing party of TEN! featuring new works by ten cool artists.

January 2, 2005
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
The Armory Center for the Arts
145 N. Raymond in Old Pasadena
Newtown (626) 398-9278
The Armory (626) 792-5101

    From: John Trubee
    February 2005

Obnoxious Quotes For The Now Generation?

"Overconfidence and unreflective optimism are borne of inexperience, incuriosity, and a dearth of knowledge. Beware of the strutting men of action."

--John Trubee

"I'd rather speak my mind than win the popularity contest. That popular people are popular implies that they think of nothing provocative to express or that they, like craven weakling ninnies, muffle it in deference to favorable public opinion."

--John Trubee

"It is preferable to have nothing to lose. It encourages you to do colorful and outrageous and provocative things. This is preferable to existing merely as a bland, conformist, mediocre normal terrified of the opinions of others."

--John Trubee

"We are essentially naked against eternity, and time eventually blows us and everything we own to the winds not unlike a passing, indifferent foot crushing an ant colony. Our tortured and incessant clawing after money is laughably meaningless in the face of eternity."

--John Trubee

"The reward for working hard and playing by the rules: they give you permission to exist for another day so that they can continue to steal more time from your life."

--John Trubee

"Nobody likes whiners and complainers; thus I have taught myself to automatically parrot 'Great! Great! That's great!' in insincere social blandishments in order to avoid being murdered before my time."

--John Trubee

"The difference between normal people and me is I possess the ability to remove my blinders to face grim, despairing reality with utter joy and unperturbed confidence. Normal people kill themselves when circumstances and new information force them to countenance reality devoid of socially-induced delusions."

--John Trubee

JOHN TRUBEE: WAKING UP ANGRY

I've noticed that many mornings I awaken angry. Not a full-throttle rage nor a specific upset; rather, the nebulous snit of a resting body that wishes to remain resting, a body that realizes it's tromping a treadmill of meaningless activity just for the money.
If you pause to consider that so much of our waking life is monopolized by JUST GETTING MONEY to support our existence, while so many of our wants and needs and goals and dreams are interminably postponed for this endless circle of meaningless activity just to get the money, just to live another day, just to trudge through the meaningless circle yet again innumerable times--if you dwelled upon it too much it'd drive you mad! Our invaluable lifetimes are forever squandered in empty cycles of absurdity.

Get the money to eat to live another day to get the money to eat to live another day to get the money to eat to live another day to...

In the realm of dreams the body/mind continuum considers what it needs and wants; the alarm clock informs us only of what we HAVE to do. It resists, the body resents the clock and the imperative of external expectations, the body dances this eternal circle as if in a zombie's dream.

JOHN TRUBEE: MONEY IS ALL THAT MATTERS

You mean the endless hours we waste doing things we find meaningless is worth it all for those green pieces of paper? Only because other zombified, conformist idiots around us say so?

You mean the eternal cycle that finally ends in death has meaning because you put a few numbers in your bank account for a little while? You mean that makes it all worthwhile? That makes your life meaningful?

My loyalty to employers that dumped me with no notice was well-placed because, hey, I got a few bucks out of it so it was all worth my time, thought, energy, and effort?
Cleaning the toilets at Roscoe Hardware was great for me because I got $9 an hour (MONEY IS ALL THAT MATTERS!) and I exemplified the work ethic as Readers Digest says I ought to to be a good citizen? Collective, social imperatives and values trump individual, subjective ones? I'm so glad that cleaning Roscoe's toilets is so much higher than my music.
Glenn laid me off the day before Thanksgiving, 1991 with no warning. But by God, I made $9 an hour! What a good boy was I! MONEY IS ALL THAT MATTERS! This made it all so wonderful and meaningful. I had multiple orgasms whenever I saw my paycheck on Friday!

I am not indicting the need to make money in order to live in physical bodies. I am pointing out the meaninglessness of the activities we perform for fickle, indifferent employers for green pieces of paper that ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, all blow away in the wind.

It's utterly pathetic meaninglessness. Some people look to God for meaning. I don't. I look to beauty and art and music for meaningful aesthetic experiences.

Many folks posit money as their meaning.This is empty and pointless.

My point is this: is this ALL that life is all about?
Is this pathetic trudgery for money the joyless end-all and be-all of everything in life?

I humbly submit that you have not thought this all through yet. I HAVE chewed on this shit for YEARS.

I get really happy when writing and playing my music. My bank statements look like meaningless shit next to it.

Money is merely the means, not an end.
Those to whom it is an end have empty souls.
Look at Kenny Boy Lay and Andrew Fastow and all those other Enron assholes.
Look at Healthsouth & Tyco & WorldCom and Arthur Anderson.

What a buck of fucking creeps.
Their God was money.
THEY are examples of that to which we all ought to aspire?

Money is merely a tool for storing value to do certain things. Woe be to the myriad desiccated souls whose orgasm and obsession is money. Pathetic jerks.

--John Trubee

"Money is freedom--but the activities we do to get money are slavery. The most joyous and worthwhile things I accomplish in my life are motivated by love, not money. If you have to be paid to engage in an activity to which you would not otherwise devote your time, then that right there indicates its dysfunctional, questionable, corrupt quality."

--John Trubee

John Trubee's Insane Quote For The Day:

"The body is to the mind as space is to time."

--John Trubee

"Winning artificially contrived games (such as at gambling casinos and in professional sports) is how the winners, who produce nothing of measurable, empirical value, gain false self-esteem and likewise fool others of their worth."

--John Trubee

"When you have lost your credibility you must produce something of tangible, empirical value rather than lies--empty words—to regain your value to others in the eyes of the world. This is an extraordinarily difficult task when no one no longer believes you."

--John Trubee

HELIOTROPIC MICE
Copyright c 2005 John Trubee

I dreamt of heliotropic mice
Aching for the sun,
Of a tabloid story of a beautiful blonde
German lesbian actress seducing 2 other actresses,
Of a guy in my band playing harmonica with his vagina (?)

I dreamt of dark mystery hills at night
Sparkling with myriad lights
Of luxury homes redolent with the implied promise
Of sex & booze,
I dreamt of misty morning Santa Barbara shores
Devoid of people,
Stunning locales where I strode, the sole inhabitant,
Brilliant lonesome summer meadows
The antithesis of the fulsome shitholes of humanity,
Dream places only my mind manufactures
When this world I actually inhabit
Is not good enough for me.

March 25th, 2005
I invented this antipoem in my head yesterday while
riding my bicycle to work. I copied it down on a piece
of scrap paper when I go to work before I forgot it.
Here it is for your amusement:

UGLY, CHILDISH ANTIPOEM # 69
Copyright c 2005 John Trubee

As a hairless African mole rat
Your internal organs pulsate in metallic shades
Of pink and gray
Through your paper-thin translucent skin.

You eat your own excrement
You devour your children
You violently copulate with female mole rats
Til they hemorrhage to death from their sex organs.

This is how all you politicians appear to me.
Go to hell!

"Watching TV is not unlike sitting in the presence of a psychotic clown who constantly flings excrement into your face."

-- John Trubee
 

Trubee says:
I recently read THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM and saw the documentary film based on the book about the Enron debacle. Here's my thoughts on it, if you give a crap.   --JT

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

   The Enron scandal didn't result from just a few bad apples at the top.

   The Enron meltdown resulted in part from the tacit complicity of the Wall Street bankers who were only too eager to lend more $$$ to an illusory cash cow. Merrill Lynch even assisted Enron hide assets to boost Enron's balance sheet to boost its stock price to qualify for even more and bigger bank loans. Chase, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and their analysts and Enron's lawyers and Arthur Anderson and Enron's board of directors all danced the dance and deceived themselves and others because their cash flow from the house of cards was too sexy and corrupting.

   When Enron's house of cards collapsed all parties involved pointed their fingers at the all others. No one would accept any responsibility. An enormous moral vacuum was one catalyst for the meltdown. These guys swaggered like such bigshots but they were only foolish, empty suits with nothing in their cores.

   If you read about how Enron's trader's gamed the California energy market while gleefully gloating about how much money they were making while causing Californians to sweat out summer heat with no A/C and get stuck in elevators it'll make steam whistle out of your ears. 

   It would be comforting if this were an isolated case but recent corporate scandals involving WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, Healthsouth, and even the monkeyshines involving the establishment of SEC Richard Grasso's golden parachute while the little people get wiped out or reamed implores for some collective introspection. The perp walks of these scoundrels will be for naught if preventative mechanisms and checks and balances are not erected to discourage if not prevent such massively destructive skullduggery.

   It's as if CERTAIN SEGMENTS of capitalism have become bulls in a china shop. The china shop owner can't just sit there and do nothing. He calls animal control.  

   It's as though since the death of Communism capitalism has gone mad with outrageously destructive excesses. A  countervailing, opposing force will eventually arise to address the misery that an impure, crony capitalism generates. I hate cliches, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

-- John Trubee
 

Trubee says:

When I draw my horrendous, ugly old man drawings with sardonic slogans, write my obnoxious antipoetry, or write my songs I am not attempting to win a popularity contest or entertain or amuse anyone else. I am entertaining myself and manifesting a testosterone-driven aggression.

I do not want to entertain people.
I want to blow their minds; barring that, I wanna make them vomit.

It is regrettable, this loss of civility in modern life.
We ought to be more tender towards each other and watch out for each other. There is way too much unnecessary pain and suffering and sadness in the world. 

That being said, it is preferable, even therapeutic, to express latent hostility with written words in a pseudo-creative mode rather than endanger oneself and others in road rage incidents, postal rampages, high school massacres, inexplicable child killings, and other such atrocities in the daily headlines which assault our sensibilities.

My latent aggressive tendencies, if not sublimated through sporadic and questionable creative output, would, in other people, manifest themselves as part religious mania and part psychotic aggression. I imagine a maniacal vagrant caterwauling and careening down a busy crowded street, randomly throttling people down to the cement and bashing their heads on the ground while shrieking something such as the following:

MADMAN PUMMEL RANT
(Jesus Christ On Angel Dust)
Copyright c 2005 John Trubee

Stop lying!

Stop being such a hypocrite!

Stop torturing your children!

Stop whoring after money!

Stop posturing and primping and preening!

Stop strutting and swaggering!

Stop trying to manipulate me!

Stop playing one guy off of the other!

Stop cheating!

Stop copulating with total idiots!
It only encourages them!
Save your sex for me!

Stop trying to fool everybody with your bullshit!

Stop bullying everyone with this 'family values' nonsense!

Stop legislating laws to prosecute those you dislike for no reason!

Stop grabbing everything!

Stop hogging everything!

Stop butting ahead of everyone else in line!

Stop blabbering on that stupid cell phone!
Especially while driving! You're a menace!

Stop sneaking and scheming!

Stop playing office politics!

Stop throwing crap out of your car window! Slob!

Stop tailgating!

Stop evading personal responsibility!

Stop spitting on those below you!

Stop stomping on the powerless!

Stop kicking those who are down! 

Stop stomping on the fingers of he who is crawling!

Stop shitting on those who can't fight back!

Stop corrupting the innocents!

Stop tormenting the young because you envy their youth!

Stop breaking hearts!

Stop sucking up to the pigs in power!

Stop voting for idiots!

Stop worshipping celebrities!

Stop wasting your life watching TV!

Stop enslaving yourself to possessions!

   (to be continued when I can think of other reprehensible human behaviors that enrage me)

-- John Trubee

"People who are unable to control themselves often,
to overcompensate for this character defect, seek to
control others through an unseemly mania with rules
and by irrational bullying. Always call them on their
bullshit and immediately fling them off of your back."
                                                      --John Trubee

A TRIP TO THE ART MUSEUM
      Copyright c 2005 John Trubee

A while back I visited the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art with a friend to check out some art.
I remember seeing an elongated painting by Edward Ruscha, about 1 1/2 feet high by 10 feet long. It simply depicted a dark horizon behind which glowed an apparent dawn. The work was entitled 'America's Future' and its title was stenciled directly into the lower central part of the painting.

Many of Ruscha's works incorporate text directly onto the artwork; many of his paintings are solely comprised of a word or words painted onto a flat surface.

I was intrigued by the work. My favorite times of day are the dawn and the dusk because they look eerie and strange and beautiful. They almost let us observe time itself move as the sun traverses the horizon. The image of the artwork and its title remained in my mind for weeks afterward as I contemplated it.

I then realized that the painting could just as surely be a depiction of twilight as it could be of a dawn, and the connection to which part of the day it depicted in relation to its title further revealed its significance.

In this country we like to appear optimistic, we nurture the notion that better days populate our future, we maintain some archaic 19th century notion of "progress" taking us up on higher to better things. To live without this quaint hope, however delusional, would make life unbearable to most people. Politicians like to say "America's best days are ahead of us". To publicly declaim otherwise would be career death for a politician. We like to call ourselves a nation of optimists.

This mindset is probably why I automatically assumed Ruscha's glowing horizon depicted the dawn.

But what if the painting 'America's Future' depicts the final glowing of a glorious day descending into a darkness reigned over by hideous demons? What if all the best years of this country are behind us as we degenerate into evening shadows of corruption, decadence, hypocrisy, loss of treasure and wealth, loss of vaunted myths with no new ones to supercede them, loss of youth, loss of spirit, loss of will, loss of hope, loss of life?

In light of the recent contentious national election, the controversy over the bloody debacle in Iraq, the numerous publicized corporate scandals mocking the virtues of capitalism and the work ethic as taught to us by our elders and right-thinking people everywhere; in light of the of the sorry absence of civility and intelligence in public debate; in light of the humongous national debt and obscene trade deficit and grotesquely widening gulf between the haves and the have-nots; in light of public education's failure to graduate crops of thoughtful citizens capable of making intelligent contributions to their culture and world and civic life; in light of the commodification of everything into a business transaction in which we are merely passive, sheeplike consumers of what we've been told and sold and nothing more—and its resultant effect visually evident in the obesity epidemic; in light of the depressing lack of sense of humor and the worship of rules which everyone so desperately lusts to cram down everybody else's throat; in light of sex as once something joyful and desirable now transmogrified into something that Michael Jackson does to little boys--or is a threat to the workplace and consequently YOUR JOB and livelihood--or which will kill us with an incurable contagion--or is the source of Dr. Laura's shrill, odious dictates; in light of the mindless worship of celebrities and the constant need for insipid diversions and entertainments while profound issues continually elude serious and intelligent public discussion; in light of the politicized fearmongering of the Homeland Security apparatus condescending to us as if we are all weak and helpless infants vulnerable to dark forces and submissive to the will of an inept and mendacious government; in light of the universal vulgarity and stupidity  and lack of civility enveloping us everywhere in daily life...

--I could safely state that Ruscha's painting 'America's Future' could just as clearly be depicting its twilight as well as its dawn. I have not decided for myself and I am still contemplating it and it's doubtful I'll ever arrive at a definitive answer. My lifetime and perceptions are necessarily stunted and limited in observing the lifeline and overarching history of the republic.

This is why I love art. The artist creates an object, an image, a song, a work, a collection of words strung together in a poem or a novel and posits it before the world. What we get out of it is a reflection of what we bring into it. The idiosyncratic matrix of our experiences and memories and temperament and world view color what meaning or significance we discover in an art object.
Its significance results from how our minds perceive the art object in the dynamic interplay between our minds and the image-form so deftly spun into existence by the artist.

I remember my mother once took me on a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when I was a child. She realized my interest in art even then.

I do not know Ruscha's intent nor do I care. I saw a beautiful work in a museum and its meaning for me resulted from viewing it through the prism of my experiences and perceptions. It set me to thinking about things I would not have otherwise considered.

Art is the religion of the future.

Trubee says:

I have recently been distressed by various newspaper reports unfairly maligning the entire breed of pit bull dogs. Whatever unfortunate events that are alleged to have occurred regarding incidents with this noble canine breed have been greatly exaggerated if not entirely fabricated.

As a lover of humanity and warm defender of our canine friends, I have evolved a new program to promote greater understanding between the canine and human species.

It has come to my attention that Sonoma County Animal Control authorities have quarantined 10 pit bulls rescued from meth labs run by several motorcycle gangs in Northern California and that these dogs were trained to act as guard dogs by their owners.
Although highly aggressive and territorial in nature, the dogs, I have been repeatedly assured by their former owners (now in county jail on various narcotics and assault-related charges) are "as sweet as little children and good-natured pets that love kids".

To help reverse the unfair maligning of the noble pit bull breed, I have arranged to have these pit bulls visit several area day care centers to be petted and fed by the little toddlers. The little
toddlers will feed raw ground beef with their hands directly to the pit bulls in order to foster care, trust, and understanding between dog and human. The little toddlers will then be instructed on how to bathe and dry and pamper the pit bulls--we will have several wash tubs and drying stations set up for such a purpose---to teach the toddlers how similar their animal friends are to us humans. The little toddlers will then dry and brush down the pit bulls to further the bonding and healing process.

Please--won't you help? Simply send cash donations care of:

THE HUMAN & PIT BULL COMPASSION
AND UNDERSTANDING PROJECT

Thank you for your time and support.

John Trubee
PO Box 4921
Santa Rosa, CA 95402
USA

Trubee's Bumper Sticker

MONEY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HUMAN BEINGS:
SELL YOUR ASS FOR PROFIT ALWAYS. 

(July 2005) - Trubee says:

I have recently been distressed by various newspaper reports unfairly maligning the entire breed of pit bull dogs. Whatever unfortunate events that are alleged to have occurred regarding incidents with this noble canine breed have been greatly exaggerated if not entirely fabricated.

As a lover of humanity and warm defender of our canine friends, I have evolved a new program to promote greater understanding between the canine and human species.

It has come to my attention that Sonoma County Animal Control authorities have quarantined 10 pit bulls rescued from meth labs run by several motorcycle gangs in Northern California and that these dogs were trained to act as guard dogs by their owners.
Although highly aggressive and territorial in nature, the dogs, I have been repeatedly assured by their former owners (now in county jail on various narcotics and assault-related charges) are "as sweet as little children and good-natured pets that love kids".

To help reverse the unfair maligning of the noble pit bull breed, I have arranged to have these pit bulls visit several area day care centers to be petted and fed by the little toddlers. The little
toddlers will feed raw ground beef with their hands directly to the pit bulls in order to foster care, trust, and understanding between dog and human. The little toddlers will then be instructed on how to bathe and dry and pamper the pit bulls--we will have several wash tubs and drying stations set up for such a purpose---to teach the toddlers how similar their animal friends are to us humans. The little toddlers will then dry and brush down the pit bulls to further the bonding and healing process.

Please--won't you help? Simply send cash donations care of:

THE HUMAN & PIT BULL COMPASSION
AND UNDERSTANDING PROJECT

Thank you for your time and support.

John Trubee
PO Box 4921
Santa Rosa, CA 95402
USA

(June 2005) - Trubee says:

        "Those who rely overmuch on the opinions of others to circumscribe their behavior lack an interior, integrated moral compass to inform their decisions."
                                                                     
--John Trubee

      "It is essential to not allow yourself to be dominated by those whose hierarchy of values is contrary to or alien to your own--otherwise you'll discover that you've allowed a great deal of your life time and energy to be wasted for nothing."

--John Trubee

   "Nature does not give a damn about your fear of death, your hypocritical squeamishness regarding sex, and your stupidly contrived morality."

--John Trubee

December 2005

It's impossible to think during the noise
of the day.

I dream surreal dreams and think of these things
in the quiet moments in the darkness before
my alarm clock buzzes.

I only regret I don't possess even more time
to escape from the noise and distractions of the days
to reside by rich pools of reflection.




They Behave As Proud And Arrogant Children
Copyright c 2005 John Trubee


They behave as proud and arrogant children
All relations: shoutfests of competition
nourished on upbringings
of TV football and videogames

Devoid of integrity
all systems fail:
Black unfortunates drown
while Ivy League cronies
fuss over dinner reservations.

Kansan peasants protect their children
from science

The sentimental deification of golfers
posited as some supreme value to emulate

All is money and buying,
scheming and getting
All is position and territory
and image and reputation
based on nothing
of value or meaning.

They behave as proud and arrogant children:
All is a battle to prove a misplaced sense of manhood
(while men themselves are despised)
All circumstances a battle to trounce
the eternal other
They establish paradigms of black and white
which require no reflection
of which they are incapable

Vince Lombardi's aphorism replaces thinking

Battles lacking any overarching goal
or reason or meaning
Battles for the sake of battle
Inherent belligerence contrives rationalizations
for itself

Devoid of integrity all systems fail
Devoid of integrity all systems fail
Devoid of integrity all systems fail

They behave as proud and arrogant children.



-- John Trubee

December 2005

SHOW BIZ
Copyright c 2005 John Trubee


Insular mediocrities handing each other awards

Mariah Carey struts with yet another award from
some ceremony or another (they don't matter)
Invented by the inner circle of friends and bed partners
for their inner circle of friends and bed partners

What does it have to do with us?
Why ought I invest the invaluable time
of my life to observe this excrement?

I rag on the asshole celebrities only because
I continue to be dismayed by the great number
of otherwise intelligent people
revering these boring pigs.

I remain forever dismayed by the mindlessness
suffocating this world.

I always think it can't get more stupid
But it always does.

Photogenic vacuities with nothing of value to express
mass mailing press releases relating with whom
they commingle their genitals today--
this is supposed to interest and excite us?