New Facebook member George W. Bush posted his first video to his page yesterday. The audio on this rip makes it sound like he’s got a bad case of cottonmouth, but he has definitely jacked up his Texas accent in the year and a half since he’s been gone. I can’t quite put my finger on who, but he looks like someone famous, right? I’m thinking country singer or older actor who does “character” roles. It’s puzzling. Anyway, reviews thus far are mixed, ranging from “Ohh how I miss you in the White house…. GOD HELP THE USA!!!!” to “You are a pathetic sick old man and soon you will sicken and die. This is the only consolation you can offer but indulge yourself if you will. Everyones entitled to make a video. You and your kind are the most loathesome ,the ugliest and the most degrading human beings in the history of human consciousness and there is nothing for you to be proud of. I am glad to have the oppertunity to personally express my most profound contempt to you ,your family , and your former colleagues.” That second one is kind of harsh, but it’s still better than the critical reaction to the new A-Team movie.

Q: There must be a psychological aspect to what you are going through. How are you handling all this?

A: I believe in what I once read: “Life is a club where they won’t stand for squawks, where they deal you only one hand, and you must sit in. So even if the cards are cold and marked by the hand of fate, play up, play up like a gentleman and a sport.”

Q: Who wrote that?

A: Nathanael West.

Q: Who’s he?

A: He’s a blogger from Paramus, N.J.

Last night, attractive 32-year-old TV starlet ____ ____ allegedly ran her Range Rover into three parked cars and fled the scene on foot, only to soon return, while police were investigating. The event occurred in the city of Los ____. The starlet, who never has celebrity gossip tabloid run-ins, and who was said to be (oddly) not intoxicated at the time of the “event,” is performing the first wave of advance press for season four of her television show, ____ ____, which returns July 25.

You’re a spiffy kiddo in the big city! You’ve gotten a job (okay, an internship) at Conde Nast! This is awesome. And of course you work there because you’re fashion-forward, and smarter than those jerks back in high school in [funny-sounding name of semi-rural American city goes here]. But now here you are, in the glamorous cafeteria, grabbing some quick edamame or something. And, guess what? The bigger girls are taking stealth pictures of you and making fun of your outfit on Facebook. I’m sorry, it’s true! You need to know this.

It’s okay. I still think you’re great.

by Carl Hegelman

Soccer players are stealing our profits!

This is the woeful cry of soccer-or, as they have it, “football”-club managers in the UK and Europe, according to the recent Financial Times story citing a just-released annual report from Deloitte’s, one of the Big 4 (or is it 3 now? I don’t remember. It used to be 8.) global bean-counting firms, on the financial side of football in Europe.

The good news for owners and shareholders of UK football clubs is that continued strong attendance and TV advertising revenues brought in $2.9bn for the UK Premier League in the 2008–9 season. Add in about $1.8 billion from each of the German, Italian and Spanish leagues and we’re talking some serious money here-somewhere in the ballpark, so to speak, of $8 billion.

The bad news is that these money-grubbing soccer players who actually draw in the crowds and the TV audience targeted by the advertisers stole an exorbitant portion of this valuable intake: 67% in the UK Premier League, 63% in Spain’s La Liga, 51% in the relatively parsimonious German Bundesliga and-wouldn’t you know?-a staggeringly greedy 73% in Italy’s Serie A. If you tot all that up, you find that these swarthy, over-muscled, long-haired/shaven-headed, tattooed soccer players have siphoned off $5.3 billion of the 2009 takings, leaving only about $3 billion to cover overhead and profits for the owners and shareholders.

In a related story, Forbes has revealed that the world’s 10 richest owners of soccer teams enjoyed an increase in net worth of $36 billion in 2009. But given this kind of outrageous wage inflation among their soccer employees, who knows how long that will last? Pretty soon you might well see Russian ex-oligarchs and Indian steel magnates holding their hats out in front of the entrance gates at the major European soccer venues. Not to mention Silvio Berlusconi at his club, A.C. Milan, which, given the esurience of the Italian players, must surely be one of the more egregious offenders.

Deloitte, according to the FT report, is warning that much of the increase in revenues is being “swallowed up by players and their agents” in a “dysfunctional business model” where clubs are “continually driven to maximise wages rather than profitability”.

A Mr. Dan Jones of Deloitte’s commented that “there needs to be a healthy dose of restraint on the business side. Clubs can take a hundred years to develop but can be put in jeopardy in the space of a few weeks of poor transfer dealings”. Yeah! All those hundreds of years we’ve spent building up these clubs, gone, just like that! Mr. Jones says that the impending World Cup is only going to make things worse by “fueling the demands of top club players”.

UEFA, football’s governing body in Europe, has been studying this and other issues and has reached an agreement in principle to control wages.

And that really gets to the bottom of the problem:

SOCIALISM!

This is Europe we’re talking about. Isn’t it obvious? The people get everything, the entrepreneurs get nothing. Won’t they ever learn that this is a business-killing strategy?

The question is what to do about it? One member of UEFA who wishes to remain anonymous has proposed a solution. Instead of having everybody come to watch these ragtag ruffians playing soccer, they should put a big conference table in the middle of the football pitch and gather the clubs’ Boards of Directors there. TV cameras and everything, just like before. Only instead of watching a soccer game, they can watch the Directors making Strategic Decisions. You could even sell copies of the Minutes afterwards, for extra revenue.

Of course, here in America, we don’t go in for hare-brained schemes like the Socialist Europeans. We’ve long ago found the answer to Socialism: it’s called Capitalist Free Enterprise. Check out our corporate profits as a percentage of GDP and you just can’t avoid the logic of this. We have always been smarter than Europeans, and we know how to handle these business situations. (Hint: In our country, the lion’s share doesn’t go to the ones who do the dirty work, it goes to the guys on the Executive Floor.)

The answer is perfectly obvious: Outsourcing. Fire all the players and bring in the Chinese. They’ll work for almost nothing and like it. Can you imagine what that will do for margins?

Bend over like Beckham, boys!

Carl Hegelman (a pen name) is a corporate bond analyst and a connoisseur of leisure.

Atlanta rapper Pill, who had the Awl offices “Goin’ Ham” last summer, has a new video out. It offers the same raw realness he’s known for, and this time, a sample of Suzanne Vega’s “Left of Center,” which producer Needlz surely remembers from its inclusion in a movie with one of the greatest soundtracks of all-time, John Hughes’ Pretty In Pink.

Aww. Sounds like MGM, which is now the property of its creditors (so long, James Bond movies?), might not even be able to release Red Dawn. But we were having so much fun!

Real America: The Gear Daddies are Back, Maybe

by Abe Sauer

They’re getting the band back together. They’re getting the band back together! They’re getting the band back together?

The last few months have seen a random spate of Gear Daddies shows (Chicago, St. Cloud, Fargo, Des Moines and, of course, Lutsen). But the schedule has been spotty at best. After the mid-April show in Waconia, it disintegrated altogether. Will there be more shows? Are the Gear Daddies really playing together again?

Who are the Gear Daddies, you ask? Only the best band to come out of Austin… Minnesota.

The Gear Daddies peak (says conventional wisdom) was playing Late Night with David Letterman in the early ’90s when both they, and Dave, were relevant.

Between 1988 and 1992, the Gear Daddies released three albums, “Let’s Go Scare Al,” “Billy’s Live Bait” and “Can’t Have Nothin’ Nice.”

Then, POOF.

Who knows why they broke up or how popular they really were. Hell, somebody should write a book.

It shouldn’t be me, though. I am not well-studied in Gear Daddies history. I’m not even entirely sure where they came from. I note Austin, MN because that’s what the Internet told me. I’m certainly completely ignorant of what the individual members have been up to since the brand’s mid-1990s break-up. Wikipedia says “Randy Broughten is currently a teacher at Dakota Hills Middle School in Eagan, Minnesota.” One assumes in music, but who knows. Martin Zellar upset many Gear Daddies fans in 2004 by briefly chairing the Mower County Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

But then, most Gear Daddies fans aren’t deeply steeped in the band’s history nor do they care. And that is ok. They know all the lyrics and choruses. And they sing them… loud… without being asked… even at weddings.

Had the band blossomed in the age if the Internet, might things be different? It is not a stretch to envision Martin Zellar warbling onstage at The Music Hall of Williamsburg. A drunken slurry of fake-New Yorker Midwestern kids nostalgically bawling their eyes out about home and saying they’ve had it with this shitty not-what-was-promised rat-race.

How to introduce the Gear Daddies to the unfamiliar? It’s a significant challenge, as cultural soundtracks rarely have huge cross-over appeal and suffer from “you had to be there” characterization. Then again, if you get drunk a lot and consequently fuck up your life, think all your best years are behind you and enjoy self pity, the Gear Daddies just might be your new favorite band.

The band’s sound is kind of rockabilly, kind of country, kind of jam band, and kind of garage rock folk. Their lyrics are all country. Minnesota country.

Those who do know a single Gear Daddies song probably know “I wanna’ Drive the Zamboni,” a drunken revel about the dream of driving the iconic ice-rink tank. The song is regularly played at hockey games and is a staple in hockey-themed movies such as The Mighty Ducks and Mystery, Alaska. As songs go, it’s dumb fun and perfectly captures the dream of all young hockey-town kids.

But for Gear Daddies fans, “Zamboni” is a rare listen. More popular are the tunes specific to a certain Midwest geo-economic demographic. For example, “Dream Vacation”:

Been saving now for over a year
Let’s pack the kids get outta’ here
We’ll leave behind our troubles for a week
We’ll borrow the pop-up from Phyllis and Steve
Just tell the boss I gotta’ leave
Be the best week of our lives as I can tell
We’ll take our dream vacation in the Dells

The Dells is Wisconsin Dells, which, before becoming a well-developed tourist mecca with draws like the monolithic Kalahari Resort and Casino and a robust meth community, was a simple regional wonderland of water slides, duck rides and after-hours teenage shenanigans. The perfect vacation spot for the humble Midwestern family that didn’t dream too big for its britches. It continues:

And at night when the kids is all asleep
Then off to the lounge for a nightcap we can sneak
I know our lives they ain’t the stuff of dreams
But for one full week we can live like kings and queens
So let’s board the dogs lock the door
We’ll roll down Interstate 94
Be the best week of our lives I can tell
We’ll take our dream vacation
in the Dells

This idea of being content with a life that didn’t quite go the wonderful way of youthful expectation is a common theme. “She’s Happy” is a perfect companion piece to “Dream Vacation.”

Like any band truly in tune with the region, the Gear Daddies are straight forward. When the band covered fellow Minnesotan Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” the song almost feels like it’s no longer about a women but an actual red sports car.

The most resonant Gear Daddies songs have alcohol solidly at their cores. Specifically, the Daddies’ focus on boozing is on the over-consumption, loss of control, destruction, broken promises and ultimate self-pity of the addiction spiral. And yet, listen to “Drank so Much (I Just Feel Stupid)” and it’s hard not to desperately want a drink:

I didn’t go out planning to get this drunk
I guess my plans to get up and look for work are sunk
I know tomorrow
I’ll regret all these things I did
I drank so much tonight
I just feel stupid

God only knows why I do these things
God, won’t you tell me why it always ends the same?
Still…

The band’s song “Cut Me Off” is even more frank:

You can knock me down
You can pick me up
You can leave me out
But you know when the lights come on / And the beer is gone
It’s still got a hold on me

And nothing matches the redemption pleadings of the weak in “Gonna’ Change…”

I’ve been laying off the booze
So babe, what do you got to lose
Cause I’m… Gonna’ Change…
Just not today.

…and the bleak resolve of “Strength,” in which the singer wants to change “this fucked up life of mine.”

Less angst-ridden than their late-80s peers from neighboring Wisconsin, The Violent Femmes, the Gear Daddies were nonetheless well tuned in to how love can be shit. In songs like “Stupid Boy” and the somber “Boys will be Boys,” the band points the finger squarely at whose fault this usually is:

Well boys will be boys and they’ll always be jerks,
and from what she’s seen this is how things work.
They come in sweet and they go out cold,
and you know this seen must be growing old.

She’s fucked again and she don’t know why.
She’s loves him still she’s just keeps on trying.

When speaking from an asshole boy’s point of view, the band is no more sympathetic. From “Color of Her Eyes:”

Well, I woke up this morning
With my face to the wall
And I said a real quick prayer
Oh, please dear God when I turn around
Let her not be lying there
But I felt her bare skin touching mine
And the blood run from my head

And I tried to think what I’d say to her
And I wished that I was dead
Cause I can’t remember her name….

This idea of better times, memory, apologies, inability to change, self pity and the cycle of regret and nostalgia crops up again and again. A desire to be a better man but an honest admittance of an inability to become him.

The ultimate question for Gear Daddies fans is: why listen to music makes you feel like crap? Are they part of loving the band? Maybe. Just another damn thing to be melancholy and a little disappointed about.

Maybe if you’ve done just enough hurtful, regretful things in your life, and maybe if you’re just the right level of shitfaced, and just the perfect amount of alone (possibly because of the first thing), and you’ve come to realize it’s never ever going to be as good as it has already been, you might just shed a tear at the melancholy lyrical heart of “Don’t Forget Me:”

This used to be my town
Now I feel I’m losing ground
They used to know my name
At least I had a taste of local fame

Hey, don’t forget me
Please don’t forget me when I’m gone

The band does have a Facebook page, where a few of the latest shows have been posted. It’s an orgy of appreciation and the kind of nostalgia one would expect from the band’s fans:

“It’s been a very, very long time. You guys were the first bar band I ever saw, snuck into Steb’s with a fake ID, partied with you afterwards and have been hooked ever since!”

Will there be more shows? Who knows. Random years you can catch them in Minneapolis at the Sate Fair and the band always plays at least one show during Christmas at the Fine Line. The only clear event one can find is a Minnesota Zoo fundraiser on June 19, where the band will play alongside a time-machine-inspired posse including Blues Traveler and Los Lobos. If you’re a fan or full of alcohol-abusing regret, tickets are still available.

Also, you can catch Gear Daddy leader Martin Zellar, who during solo shows often plays a selection of the band’s hits, at the free Minneapolis Riverfront Park project grand opening on June 26.

Numerous attempts to contact the Gear Daddies and frontman Martin Zellar for this piece went unanswered, maybe because Zellar now lives in Mexico off “Zamboni” royalties.

Abe Sauer just wanted you to know.

Holy Jesus! Did you see this? An airplane pilot named Matt Hall bounced his plane off the Detroit River Saturday and survived. This happened while he was slaloming through an obstacle course, in front of a crowd (including his poor wife!) as a part of a Red Bull Air Race. This terrible, terrible idea for a sport was hatched at the highly-caffeinated beverage company’s “think tank” in 2001. Earlier this year, Brazilian pilot Adisson Kindlemann crashed into the the Swan River in Perth, Australia. Luckily, he survived, too. It’s very slightly reassuring to know that “any form of dangerous flying,” including “crossing the crowd line” leads to disqualification during the races. But when this death-courting sporting event comes to New York City next weekend, you will not find me anywhere near the Hudson River.

“We are looking for fashion leaders, not fashion laggers.”
One explanation of American Apparel’s “Early-90s-Ralph Lauren” styling hiring policy, for white women (and black women with unprocessed hair).