Monday, July 31, 2006

Dissin' On the Groove (1989)

THIS IS LIFE.

Has someone ever dissed on your groove? Stepped on your buzz? Really pissed you off? Well no shit, Sherlock. Wake up and smell the ozone burning, if it's not hurricanes and earthquakes, it's American Gladiators and did you know they're gonna chop down those trees in your backyard and build a multi-level shopping facility? That's right. I give this planet another six million years tops. So don't take any shit. Great men like Johnny Depp won't be around forever and you'll be a strung out drug addict on a midnight crack attack by the time you're twenty-two years old.

For all these very heinous reasons "Dissin' on the Groove" is here: to be that righteously rad beacon of eternal hope in a world where even ALF is sportin' a tie-die. Even the hippies realized the shit started long before Timothy Leary was a gleam in his daddy's eye, so open your eyes your underwear's burnin' and there's not enough Bud Light and Bartles and James in the world to put out this fire 'cause it's not your underwear, it's your brain, the other retainer of undigested glop that looked a whole lot better in the commercial but goddamn if your Quilted White Cloud doesn't feel like a very fine grade of sandpaper. Remember this is not your father's Oldsmobile so you better learn how to drive a fuel injected, four door, turbo stick lest you be no less or more than a crushed beer can under a combat boot. You can't hide under the funky hypnotic love table forever.

REMEMBER: the Messiah has been resurrected in the form of disco and everything is relative, nothing's absolute, Pepsi sucks, and Dissin' on the Groove offers no promises to a future generation. This is a test and only a test in a nation whose only will to live lies on the fact that Elvis was spotted buying biscuit mix at White Hen Pantry.

WE MAY FLOP, but as great Zen Master Stinkin' Jason Sanders once put it, "If we flop we shall do so righteously." So read D.O.G. and obtain infinite wisdom. Read and obey D.O.G. and hit the fast forward button on your remote control past the tenth level of HELL and reach a total state of enlightenment. It is obtainable. Read Think React and if you want to take this sacred parchment and wipe your ass with it, DO SO NOW, butt if this is your intention, please remove the staple from the upper left-hand corner of this page, it might cause you pain and that's not what we're about. What we're about is PEACE, LOVE, and MOTHERSCRATCHER!

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That was from a underground newspaper called "Dissin' On the Groove" that I published with my roommate, Chris Till in Corcoran Hall at DePaul University in 1989. It was recently unearthed in my closet. It was written after about four cups of coffee and a couple shots of generic Nyquil. I drank the coffee so I could stay up and study, then realized, as I often did when confronted with such tasks, that I had no intention of studying but would rather go to sleep, thus the cough syrup. So anyway that's when I cranked out the above stream of conscience rant so popular with 19 year old would-be writers. "Dissin' On the Groove" survived for one whole issue. It pretty much died after I got the hell out of the dorm. It was photocopied on the sly and on DePaul's dime on a copymachine in the basement of McGaw Hall. It was tpyed up on a Sears electric typewriter which I eventually sold for $10 when I got my first computer four years later.

D.O.G. contained, among other things too amateur and embarrassing to mention, a schedule for the college radio station WRDP, a short piece written by one of the resident campus socialists called "Human Rights. Radical Concept?" ('Nuff said.),
a Calendar of Events compiled by my roommate Chris Till (Alien Sex Fiend at the Metro!), a fiction and poetry section which featured a poem that actually contained this line (not written by me I swear to God), "Cold, so cold is a life wasted reaching for eternity (the afterlife)." Yikes! AND a poem called "C'Est si Bon" that actually contained this stanza (not written by me either),

"How I wish I could fly and bid adieu to pain and loneliness
never again to land in its somber cave
so happiness could prosper with in my soul"

There was also funny essay, "How to Write Heavy, Deep, Symbolic Poetry" by Stinkin' Jason Sanders which washed away the bitter aftertaste of the above poetry. There was also a short story about a guy named Snake LaMatia by a girl I don't remember.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Creator of the Philly cheesesteak dies

PHILADELPHIA - Harry Olivieri, who with his brother Pat was credited with inventing the Philly cheesesteak in 1933, had died. He was 90.

Despite a heart condition, Olivieri had showed up at Pat's King of Steaks almost every day until about three years ago. He died of heart failure Thursday at Atlantic City Medical Center in Pomona, N.J., his daughter Maria said.

Harry and his older brother opened a corner hot dog stand near south Philadelphia's Italian Market in 1930.

Three years later, they made the first version of the sandwich that helped put the city on the street food map. Tired of hot dogs, Pat suggested that Harry go to a store and buy some beef. Harry brought it back, sliced it up and grilled it with some onions.

The brothers piled the meat on rolls and were about to dig in when a cab driver arrived for lunch, smelled the meat and onions and demanded one of the sandwiches.

Harry sold the cabbie his own sandwich in a transaction the brothers counted as the birth of Pat's King of Steaks.

Cheez Whiz was added to the steak and onions starting in the 1960s, and provolone, American cheese and pizza sauce later became options in the concoction along with various condiments and side dishes.

Pat Olivieri died in 1970. Harry's son, Frank, now runs the restaurant.