Allow me to be the last person to wish you a happy new year. Now that the revelry of the holiday season is behind us, it is time to resign ourselves to the realities of the year ahead. Though cynics may discount the importance of the start of a new year, I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t look to make their new year better than their last. I think, for many in the U.S., 2008 was a tough year to categorize. Economic hardship affected many people here and abroad; however, the election of a popular, energetic new president in Barack Obama seemed to give Americans—and many citizens across the globe—something to look forward to (though no one seems really sure what that something is). Whether there are blue skies ahead remains to be seen, but unfortunately, 2009 is off to an inauspicious start.

Hope and change are both big buzz words heading into this year. And while we may be heading toward a brave new world, it’s good to know that there are some things we can always count on, such as Israel and Palestine launching rockets at one another. While many of us in the U.S. were returning the poorly fitting pants and ugly sweaters we received for the holidays, the Israeli government launched an offensive on the Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip. As of this writing, the campaign is just about 13 days old, and it seems to be getting worse by the minute. On Tuesday, Jan. 6, 42 men, women and children were killed when a United Nations-run school was in the unfortunate path of Israeli fire. The incident did make way for a brief pause in the fighting to allow humanitarian aid to enter embattled Gaza.

However, that aid was probably soon blown to bits as rockets were launched immediately after the truce ended. According to an article on the BBC, Israel launched “60 air strikes on the Gaza Strip in a single night after the first daily truce to allow in humanitarian aid expired.” That number has no doubt risen by press time. Fighting escalated further on Thursday, Jan. 8, as, according to Reuters, at least four rockets launched from the direction of Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon impacted northern Israel. The rocket fire raised fears that Lebanon and Israel would pick up where they left off after their 2006 war. Luckily—if that’s even the right term—it turned out that the rockets were probably fired by a small Palestinian militant group. If you’re a numbers person, as of this writing, close to 700 Palestinians have died in the bombings and over 3,000 have been injured; 11 Israeli soldiers have also lost their lives in the conflict.

It’s grim news indeed. A difficult story to digest if, like me, you’re looking to keep upbeat about the coming year. It seems, however, that humans are doomed to keep making the same mistakes, no matter what year it is. Recently, I’d heard a discussion on NPR where the parties involved mentioned the rise in sales of trucks and SUVs now that gas prices have plummeted. I suppose those people miss the camaraderie we all shared in complaining about forking over $4.50-plus per gallon.

As a species, I guess we’ll never learn. But I’m not ready to mark off 2009 as a total loss just yet. Worst case scenario: Obama fails miserably; the global economy plunges into deep depression, sparking numerous small conflicts throughout the world as hungry people become desperate, leading to larger wars that pit neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother; society as we know it jumps the shark. Then, those of us who survive will be able to huddle together in our bomb shelters and reminisce about those innocent, carefree days of 2008.

Timeless & Timely

North America in the late ’60s and early ’70s was a dangerous and magical place. War, as well as social and economic upheaval, spun the U.S. and much of the world in a dizzying—albeit groovy—downward spiral. The fabric of human existence was rolled up like good dope and smoked all the way down to the roach. Still, no matter how bad things got, people could still get by as long as they didn’t forget to laugh (and take plenty of drugs); and luckily for them, they had Cheech & Chong.

One part Mexican-American, one part half-Asian and Canadian, the members of the legendary comedy/musical duo met as a result of the tumultuous times. Cheech Marin ventured north from Los Angeles to Vancouver, B.C. in order to escape the draft. There, he met Tommy Chong”¦ And you probably know the rest.

“It was really magical,” Chong says of Vancouver in the late ’60s, “because we were all on acid at the time.”

Whether it was the work of hallucinogens or not, the two comedians overcame their humble beginnings and struck a chord with an entire generation. Through touring, film and albums, Cheech & Chong sang and joked about drugs and the counterculture well into the ’80s; however, they were unable to overcome their own differences. A reunion seemed unlikely, but now the legendary twosome is once again on the road after more than 25 years apart.

Submerge recently had the opportunity to speak with both Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong about their past, present and future—if only they could think that far ahead.

How is the tour going so far?
Cheech Marin: It’s just going great. We’re having so much fun, and we’re playing to great audiences who love us and shower us with baggies of dope.

How about you, Tommy? Are you enjoying yourself also?
Tommy Chong: Well, I’m a little paranoid. Every time someone gives me something, I think it’s the feds trying to bust me again.
CM: I have to take it for him.

Has your time in prison changed your lifestyle?
TC: Absolutely. I can have anal sex with my wife now.
CM: [Laughs]
TC: And it’s a bitch trying to find a strap on that’s big enough.
CM: Yeah, without it she tends to fall in, you know?
TC: We’re getting better. I’m getting a tattoo on my back so she can have reading material.

You’re thinking about getting a tramp stamp?
CM: [Laughs]
TC: Is that what they call them? This one girl had a tattoo of a seashell on her inner thigh. She said that if you put your ear to it, you could smell the ocean.

A lot of people have compared this time in American history to the Vietnam War era. Since you were active in the counterculture of that time, do you think those comparisons are valid?
CM: The political and economic landscapes are the same. We had a very unpopular president—Nixon—a very unpopular war—Vietnam. The economy was in shambles like it is now. The only difference was the draft. There’s no draft now. That’s what really mobilized the youth in one camp against the war.
TC: You had no choice back then. Now you got a choice. What they do now is dangle those citizenship papers, “You want to get a green card, go get your ass shot at in Afghanistan.” That would make a great recruiting poster.
CM: In today’s economy, it’s a viable job option, you know? A lot of people are going for it.

I’d read an article in Rolling Stone recently that said comedy is like music or anything else; it goes in and out of fashion. But your comedy seems to have a timeless quality. Do you think there are some things that are always funny?
CM: Yeah, I do. I think it’s obvious from the reaction we get to our stage show now. They’re classic bits, and they’re timely at the same time. It’s amazing how they go with each other.
TC: They’re timeless and timely at the same time.

What was it like for you guys to start writing again after being separated for so long?
CM: We don’t so much as sit down and formally write as just the show evolves night after night. We both throw something new in. “Oh, let’s try this or let’s try that.” He’ll say something and I’ll react to it on stage, and vice versa. People who have seen our show when we first started the tour would say, “Oh, they’ve got a bunch of new jokes,” but we hardly notice them, because the show evolves under our feet the whole time.
TC: We use a technique called “Shoot the Rehearsal.” We don’t waste anything. If we’re going to expend energy being funny, then we want to either record, or have someone there to see it; that way, we don’t waste it.
CM: Comedy is a terrible thing to waste. We recycle comedy. That’s what we’re doing. Our act is going evergreen.

Well, that is very timely.
TC: We are very green comics, aren’t we?
CM: We don’t waste them, we don’t use the jokes we can’t use”¦
TC: And we smoke all the green that gets thrown up on stage. We recycle the pot.
CM: Through our lungs”¦

And then back out into the audience”¦
TC: It comes out in the form of jokes.

Just recently, you two played your first show together in more than 25 years, but when I was doing research for this interview, I saw that you were working on a script around the time Tommy was arrested, is that correct?
TC: Yeah”¦I think the universe stepped in and said, “That movie’s not going to work. Let’s get Tommy arrested.” It was for New Line pictures, and thank God we didn’t end up with them. But what it did”¦well, we weren’t ready. It was a money thing and neither one of us were committed to doing it. It was one of those, “Well, if the money’s there, then OK.” But in the end, it had to come from us. We had to make the decisions.

So there were a lot of stops and starts with you guys trying to get back together again”¦
CM: Yeah, there was a lot of that. Something interfered, and it was just not cosmically right, I guess.
TC: The cops call it “hesitation marks.” When you’re going to slit your wrists, there are two or three hesitation marks, and then the big slash. So with us, it was hesitation marks before we finally made the big jump. And now here we are.

Do you guys think this is going to be a regular thing, or do you think this tour is a one-shot deal?
CM: I don’t know. It’s getting to feel like it’s pretty regular [laughs].
TC: It’s like a series on television, you know? You can usually begin to tell a year before it ends that, “Uh-oh, we’re getting to the end.” Because everyone starts losing interest: the audience loses interest, you lose interest, but right now we’re at the beginning of it. The tour and everything else feels really exciting. It’s like people are dying to see us. It’s like Cher or Barbara Streisand’s first comeback tour.
CM: We’re going to do seven or eight comeback tours.

You guys could alternate breakup and comeback tours every other year or so.
CM: Yeah, there you go. It’s all how you market the brand.

Considering your rocky relationship and all your history together, do you think you guys will ever be rid of one another?
CM: Apparently not. It’s like when you have a tattoo, and you go to get it lasered off, you have a scar that’s in the shape of the tattoo. It’s not going to go away.
TC: I did a Shakespeare play with Tom Hanks for a charity thing, and when I got off stage after doing Shakespeare, I had a guy come up to me and had me sign Cheech and Chong albums.
CM: It’s an indelible mark.

Recently, I’ve discovered a new love and appreciation for Led Zeppelin. I know. I’m about 30 years late to the game on this one, but I’m hoping there’s some room left on the bandwagon.

I can’t say for sure why or when I finally figured out that they were pretty good. It wasn’t like I hadn’t heard them before. I’ve been aware of them for as long as I’ve been aware. But one day, just over this past summer in fact, their music finally made sense. I think I was driving around Sacramento, to be exact, when it happened. I was driving alone on the 5 with my stereo playing, listening to the radio because I’ve had the same Helloween CD stuck in the player for months, and I can’t get it to eject. (And as much as I love their 14-minute epic “Keeper of the Seven Keys,” it bothers me that I can almost recite all of the lyrics with a straight face.) “Over the Hills and Far Away” came on—a song I’ve heard countless times before—and though I never thought it was a bad song, I don’t think I’d ever really heard it before. A few minutes later, the volume was blasting, and I was singing along, even though I didn’t really know the words (one of my favorite pastimes).

Ever since, I’ve been hooked. I don’t own any of their albums, but the good news is, I don’t have to. I do the majority of my music listening in the car—as I’m sure most people do—and lucky for me, there is no shortage of stations that will play Led Zeppelin songs. It’s a satisfying experience for me, being someone who has often fallen for more obscure bands since getting hooked on Nirvana in the ’90s. With lesser-known bands, you really have to work (or used to anyway) to get your hands on their music. You couldn’t just flip a switch and hear them—no fancy equipment necessary.

Now I can understand why they’ve had such longevity. Jimmy Page’s guitar work is a metaphysical brew of bluesy riffs, proto-metal crunch and psych-rock atmospheres. Robert Plant sounds like I would imagine Gandalf the Gray would if he were a rock ‘n’ roll frontman. And that rhythm section gallops like a horde of Visigoths. In short, they’re the musical equivalent of a Boris Vallejo painting. Given my well-documented love of metal (read blog tittled Death Metal), I can’t believe I’ve never liked Led Zeppelin before. It was like when I finally discovered a taste for eggplant; as an Italian-American who’d never liked the vegetable before, it was as if I’d at last become whole.

Recently, it was announced that my new favorite band (well, one member at least) will collaborate with my all-time favorite band. Sonic Youth will perform, with Led Zep bassist John Paul Jones, a piece of music composed by Takehisa Kosugi. The gig will be to commemorate the 90th birthday of choreographer Merce Cunningham, composer John Cage’s life partner and long-time collaborator. The Merce Cunningham at 90 event is scheduled for April 16-19 of next year and will take place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

As exciting as I find this news that some of my favorite musicians will be performing together on stage, I have to say I’m not a big fan of avant-garde composers. But who knows—30 years from now, I might start feeling it.

For me, Halloween is sort of a mixed blessing. I love the holiday—the decorations, the costumes, its history and of course the parties—but it falls the day before my birthday and my friends are usually too hung over to party after their All Hallows Eve debauchery. Luckily, I’m not opposed to drinking alone. But the best thing about Halloween is the horror movies. Cable networks go deep into the vault to pull out some old favorites, new classics and all that screams and splatters in between. It’s also a good time to go out and catch a scary movie in the theater. At least, it used to be.

For the past five years, the horror genre has been a totalitarian state. In 2004, Leigh Whannell and James Wan created something of a horror revolution when they released the first Saw movie on Oct. 29 of that year. It had a creepy doll, the dude from The Princess Bride and a mysterious villain who seemed to have every angle covered—no matter how ridiculous. There were enough plot twists to make M. Night Shyamalan envious and enough bizarre gadget-kills to trick audiences into thinking they’d seen something cool or edgy. A Saw movie has been released every year since, with the fifth installment of the series released on Friday, Oct. 24—just in time for another Halloween. But the fact that they’re not very good doesn’t bother me. There are plenty of shitty movies and shitty franchises out there. What pisses me off about Saw is that it’s so fucking popular, so popular that no studio dare release a horror movie on Halloween to challenge it. And for this, I blame all of you.

I hate the Saw series. I’ll admit to seeing the first and the fourth in the theaters, but they won’t get my money again—swear! However, my negative opinion of the torture-porn franchise is certainly in the minority, at least you’d imagine so by the box office numbers this drivel pulls in. According to the New York Times, Saw V pulled in a staggering $30.5 million in its opening weekend. Considering that even oil companies are crying poverty these days, I’d say that’s a pretty impressive figure. How does that stack up to the prized horror series of my youth? Well, according to the article, the Saw franchise has already pulled in more money than all nine Halloween movies combined, and it should surpass the total amassed by all 11 Friday the 13th movies by the time Saw V leaves theaters. The article goes on to say that these numbers do not take inflation into account. I guess that counts for something.

It’s not that Friday the 13th or Halloween were great movies or anything. Both series went downhill after the second sequels, but at least they were fun. The kills were creative, there were plenty of young kids all hopped up on drugs and having pre-marital sex. They were bloody and exploitative, but they had a sense of humor. They were also humane—homicidally of course. Neither Jason Vorhees nor Michael Myers toyed with their kills. They never forced someone to hack off his own arm or chew out her own spleen (or whatever) to save themselves. If they got a hold of you, you were dead—period. Maybe you’d get gutted by a weed machete or chopped up by a band saw, but your demise would be quick—painful as fuck, but quick.

Maybe that was just a kinder gentler time. A time when simply watching people get murdered by unfeeling metaphysical psychopaths were enough. Why isn’t that good enough for you anymore? You’re a bunch of sick puppies. It’s because of people like you that there is waterboarding in the world.

Congratulations, North Korea! On Saturday, Oct. 11, the Bush administration announced that Asia’s most mysterious communist nation is no longer on the list of states that sponsor terrorism. I, for one, am glad.

I don’t know much about Korea, or Korean culture, other than Jin and Sun from Lost are pretty sweet. I’ve also eaten at a Korean barbecue joint once and was really impressed. The table was just full of raw meats and spicy pickled things; and in the center of the table was a grill and fire pit so you could grill your meat to your liking. I got drunk on soju and didn’t even have a hangover the next day. Overall, I was pleased. However, I’m sure North Korea isn’t as bad as they’ve been made out to be—just a bit misunderstood.

Relations between the U.S. and North Korea have never been all that good. There was that war in the ’50s that never really got resolved. Back in 1994, things seemed to be lightening up in the two countries’ tumultuous relationship, as President Clinton signed a similar agreement with the North Koreans. That all went to hell in 2002, though, when the Bush administration pegged the mysterious communist Asian nation as part of the “Axis of Evil,” an announcement that ruffled the well-coiffed feathers of North Korea’s enigmatic and creepy leader Kim Jong-Il. The situation really got interesting in 2006 when North Korea detonated a nuclear device, changing the Bush administration’s “Fuck you!” attitude toward Pyongyang to “Hey, guy. How’s it going?”

An uneasy accord was met. In 2007, “six-party” talks (including Russia, Japan and South Korea) were held. Thanks to those meetings, North Korea kind of sort of agreed to halt their nuclear activities”¦probably. But in 2008, those shaky ties looked about ready to break. According to an article in the New York Times, just days before the Oct. 11 announcement, North Korea had barred international inspectors from a plutonium plant in Yongbyon. In a last ditch attempt to make it look like they have done something positive in its eight years in office, the historically stubborn Bush administration made a compromise. Imagine that.

The deal doesn’t really change the situation all that much. U.S. inspectors will now have access to the Yongbyon plant; however, whether or not inspectors will have access to sites international experts suspect may be used to make weapons grade nuclear material remains to be seen. Inspectors will now be able to gain access to such sites “based on mutual consent”—good luck with that. For its part, North Korea gains a modicum of international acceptance. They’re no longer that disturbed little child picking the wings off flies at the kiddie table; now they’re breaking bread with the big boys”¦just as long as they mind their manners and don’t ask for seconds.

The Oct. 11 announcement raised the ire of Republicans. Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain complained “that North Korea had yet to demonstrate that it was serious about adhering to its commitment to denuclearize.” Meanwhile, Democratic nominee Barack Obama was like, “Whatever, I’m going to be president soon anyway.” (I’m paraphrasing.)

Maybe we’re just making a big deal over nothing. For all his eccentricities, maybe Kim Jong-Il isn’t as insane as people think. Maybe the only way to get noticed as a player in international politics is to wave a loaded gun around. If it’s truly going to be a global community, doesn’t that mean everyone should have a voice? Perhaps it’s the only way he could ensure the safety of his government and his people—to create a sort of stalemate. Maybe if everyone had The Bomb, everyone would go forth in peace. I’d like to give the world a nuke? I suppose it has a ring to it.

Bunny Business

Lawrence Argent is a professor at the School of Art and Art History at the University of Denver. Though he has only paid one two-day visit to Sacramento, in 2011, he—and his long-eared accomplice—will leave an indelible mark on this city. And though Argent’s sculpture hasn’t even been built yet, it is already causing quite a stir with locals, and the reaction isn’t all that positive.

Argent is one of three selected from a group of over 100 artists to create public art works for the new Sacramento International Airport Terminal B. The airport renovation will cost $1.27 billion; $8 million has been set aside for art. Argent’s installation will serve as the centerpiece of the new terminal—a 56-foot red-orange rabbit leaping into a suitcase with a swirling vortex on top. His piece alone will cost $800,000—a figure that doesn’t sit too well with Sacramentans.

“$800,000 for a fiberglass red rabbit? Come on Sacramento we can do better than that!” wrote one perturbed citizen in response to an article about the sculpture on Sacbee.com. The commenter added, in reference to how a big red rabbit is supposed to represent Sacramento, “Ever see a red rabbit—[anywhere]?”

Others, however, have been more accepting. “Believe it or not [$800,000] for a giant, CUSTOM, red rabbit is pretty reasonable!” retorted another commenter to the same article.

The artist welcomes such debate, however. In fact, it’s the sort of thing he strives for. More than just decorating architecture, Argent wants his public art to inspire conversation and make an impression on those who look upon it.

“I understand the sense of negativity,” says Argent from his studio in Denver. “I think that’s part of the discussion about art; art doesn’t necessarily please everybody. I’m not here to please everybody. I’m just hopefully engaging people in a dialogue that can stimulate them in a different way than what they perhaps may have originally thought.”

Though the rabbit may seem like a lighthearted subject—and it is on some levels—the artist ensures that it is by no means a haphazard decision. The journey Argent took to his choice of subject in this particular piece is similar to his life’s journey. Born in England, Argent received a B.A. in sculpture from the Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. He later came stateside to receive an M.F.A. from Rinehart School of Sculpture, in Baltimore, Md. before finally settling in Denver.

“I came here to go to graduate school, and I wasn’t really planning on finishing,” Argent says. His plan was to attend graduate school for a year so that he could come to America “to have people I’d read about in books talk to me about my artwork,” and do so a lot more cheaply than it would have been to move here outright and “actually try to find those people.”

He adds, “Through many routes of possibilities, the journey made me end up here in Denver, Colo., which is actually a very nice city.”
Though he hasn’t spent much time in Sacramento (he’ll be making many more trips as his project progresses), he was instantly impressed with the California capitol.

“I think the energy was very positive there,” Argent says. “I see a change, perhaps, in what’s going on in the dialogue of downtown and the urban environment.”

Argent hopes his piece will contribute to and spur on more dialogue. In fact it already has. Though the big red rabbit element steals the headlines, Argent says the piece actually began with a more mundane idea—the suitcase. Suitcase imagery has appeared once before in Argent’s work. His sculpture Travel Companion—an “old suitcase with a rubber mold of a teddy bear, embedded in concrete and covered in polyester resin”—plays with the idea of travel and its effect on the self.

“I’m interested in our voyage, whether that be physical area that we move through in our life, or the spiritual domain that we walk through,” Argent explains “In that particular piece, it was a sense of possession that we have, that we have comfort in the suitcase, this archived version of something that didn’t quite make it, and that’s what that piece is about.”

Starting with the suitcase for the Sacramento Airport installation put Argent in a precarious position. He needed to connect it to something. He began by considering what goes through a traveler’s mind when he or she exits the plane and heads toward baggage claim.

“When we arrive at baggage claim, what we’ve come through to where we’ve been, that journey that we’ve been on is full of angst, it’s full of anxiety, it’s full of joy. We have all these elements that add up to an amazing component of [when] we start to feel whole again when if perhaps our luggage gets there, which is not always the case,” he says with a laugh. “But when it gets there, there’s this sense of reconciliation of joining yourself with yourself—joining with your stuff.”

In the end, it was the environment that surrounded the Sacramento Airport that helped lead Argent to his final design. He says that the “green space” outside the facility is unique in that “you can walk outside and you’re in a landscaped environment, and you have the possibility of breathing fresh air—or jet fuel, however you want to look at it,” he jokes. The airports surroundings coupled with the traveler’s anxiety and his/hers desire to deplane and reconnect with his/hers luggage as rapidly as possible pointed toward the image of the rabbit.

“It’s such an animal that I’ve had so much fascination with,” Argent says. “It’s held charge of a powerful symbolism through out civilization—that connection to fables and stories, past and contemporary mythology as well. In it, I sort of sensed a vehicle for an element of paradox that I was interested in.”

To those who are still critical of the piece, Argent hopes that they might change their minds once the installation is actually completed.

“How much can we judge something, by just an image, that’s not even in place yet?” he muses. “When you’ve got this thing leaping at you ” when you’re on your way to baggage claim, you may get a different feeling”¦ That’s a very different experience than what you’re seeing in a rendering.”

Argent is no stranger to public art projects. He gained notoriety for creating a three-story blue bear that peers into the Denver Convention Center. He is currently also working to create a Holocaust memorial for the University of Denver’s Center for Judaic Studies.

Vagabond Heart

In a manner of speaking, Tom Gabel has come full circle. Long before his Gainseville, Fla.-based punk band Against Me! gained wider notoriety with its latest album (and first major label release) New Wave, Gabel played solo under the same moniker. Now, the singer/songwriter stands ready to release his first true solo effort under his own name. Heart Burns, a seven-song EP, is slated for an Oct. 30 release on Sire Records. In the meantime, however, Gabel is on the road with Against Me! through the month of October, with solo dates to follow in November. Gabel recently shared with Submerge his thoughts on the upcoming election, his solo album and his search for a place to call home.

Where are you right now?
We’re in Atlanta, Ga.

So you’re not too far from home.
Not too far. We go to South Carolina tomorrow, and then down into Florida to play a couple of Florida shows, including a Gainesville show. So we’ll be floating around there; although, right now I don’t even have a home. I just have a storage unit in Gainesville.

On your blog you wrote that you were thinking of moving to Los Angeles.
I am thinking about that. It’s just so fucking expensive. Me and my wife have been looking for places in St. Petersburg, Fla. as well, and the amount of space you can get compared to the amount of space you’d get in L.A., it’s tough to justify that sacrifice. But then at the same time, there’s so much going on in L.A. Really for me, I’m just trying to figure out what my schedule is and what living situation will allow me to spend the most time at home.

Well, look at it this way, you’ll be out on the road, so that will give you a chance to see a lot of different places.
But that will just makes it more complicated. It’s easier when you only have a couple of options, but when you’re like, “I can live anywhere in the world,” then it’s like, “Fuck! Where am I going to live?”

You’d also written on your blog that during the recording of your solo album in L.A., you felt more like yourself. Could you explain that a little bit?
I don’t know. I guess it has a lot to do with the nature of the city. I feel like that when you’re out there, a lot of the times, the people you meet aren’t that impressed with what you’re doing. They have their own little projects going on. It’s like, “Oh, that’s cool. You’re doing a solo thing? I’m doing this. Check this out.” It has an energy of people sharing ideas and checking out what other people are doing and being inspired by it and doing their own thing. I’ve lived in Gainesville a long time, and it has its positive aspects and its negative aspects, but for me, it just seems to be smaller and smaller of a city. I feel more uncomfortable. I have a certain lack of anonymity there that I would like to have in my life.

Now that the band has gained more notoriety, do you feel that also makes Gainesville seem a little smaller?
Yeah, but it doesn’t take much notoriety at all to feel that in Gainesville. It’s just weird. I feel like a lot of the times, you walk into a room, and you can tell that people have this perception of you that’s incorrect. Maybe it isn’t a fair one, but they have an opinion about you nonetheless. You feel like you’re not in control of what that opinion may be of you, and it makes for an uncomfortable situation. It’s just kind of weird as far as trying to make friends and trying to have a life when you’re at home.

From what I’ve read, it seemed like you were debating as to whether you’d release the songs on your solo album under your name or under Against Me!. Why did you decide to put them out under Tom Gabel?
Really, the deciding factor for me was”¦ In November, I’m doing a bunch of touring after I finish up this tour [with Against Me!]. That’s why I started writing these songs, because I knew I was going to do these dates, and I also had all these thoughts in my head that I wanted to get out and put to music—about the current political scene and the election and all that. I felt it was important to record them and record them quickly, and just get them out there. I went into the studio originally thinking it would be Against Me!, but the tipping point was that it wouldn’t be weird to release a record that was just me under the name Against Me!. I don’t think people would be confused by that, because the band started out that way. I think that people would understand that. They’d buy the record, and it wouldn’t be a disappointing thing, but I couldn’t play a show under the name Against Me! and have it just be myself. If it couldn’t go both ways, it wouldn’t seem right to me.

You said that you wanted to get your solo songs out before the election. On your blog you wrote that you thought John McCain has never stopped fighting the Vietnam War. Are you fearful of McCain winning the election, and what do you think that would mean for the country?
I’m totally fearful of him winning the election, and I really hope that he doesn’t. I hope that a year from now that he’s just a fading memory. In a lot of ways, saying that it would be four more years of Bush would be incorrect. It would definitely be his own agenda, and I think that he has his own vision of the world, but from reading his books and stuff like that, he comes from a really strong military background. His father fought in wars, his father’s father fought in wars, his father’s father’s father fought in wars, and so on and so on. I think that he really sees that as a way to solve problems. In particular, with the Vietnam War, I feel like that not only does he feel an embitterment for what happened to him—which is understandable being a POW—but I really think it goes deeper than that. It goes to the way America started to view the war and the backlash that came with the protest movement of the ’60s. The war was lost on both those fronts. It was lost on the real frontlines and here at home, and I feel like he’s never gotten over that. I think he really feels like there needs to be this return to some kind of glory of America that’s long gone. I feel like we won’t be leaving Iraq anytime soon [under McCain] and that we’d be invading more countries.

Would you consider yourself an Obama supporter, or do you see him as the lesser of two evils?
Well, I don’t know. I’m definitely not a Democrat. In my opinion, it’s an imperfect system when you only have two choices, and I wish there were more options. I do agree with a lot of what he [Obama] says—not everything he says—but I do think he’s the best choice for this country at the moment.

What’s coming up next for Against Me!?
Well we have this tour through the end of October, and then I go out and do some solo dates for November on the Revival Tour and a couple after by myself. Then we go to France in December for like a week and a half or so, and then we come home and I’m sure everyone’s going to do their own thing for the holidays—for Christmas and New Year’s. We’re not going to be practicing on those days. We’ve just rented a new practice space in Gainsville, and we’re going to start writing. We haven’t had a break in a long time. We haven’t had time to focus. I think we need a second to write the next record.

Would you say you need a vacation?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I feel really energized and creative, and I’m excited about music, but at the same time, I don’t have a fucking home [laughs]. I’ve been without a home or a solid foundation for a good two years now, and it’s really unsettling. I need to just put some attention into my personal life for a second and sort that all out before I can continue to do what I’m doing now, because everything else is in total disarray. We’re at that point where we want to play new songs. You have to take a second sometimes and just collect yourself and reflect and then move on to the next thing.

Now that summer moves closer to fall, students are scurrying back to school. If you’re one of those people and picking up this magazine for the first time, I’d like to say hello. It’s nice to meet you.

If you’re not one of those people, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re getting old, bro. Drink a glass of warm milk and try to get to bed early. I’m sure you have a busy day of work or with the kids or whatever. Maybe you read “college” and you chuckle through your evening single malt scotch. Maybe you think of all those wild parties and promiscuous encounters. I bet you look back on your college years and think, “Gosh, those were the days.” I mean, I don’t, but whatever.

I attended college for a long time. I went to two different schools—the College of Staten Island, a part of the City University of New York, and Wagner College, a small private school also on Staten Island—and plodded through six years before I got my bachelor’s degree”¦in English.

The winter before my final semester at Wagner (Go Seahawks!), I went to my grade advisor to make my schedule for the spring session. She looked over the transcripts and gleefully exclaimed, “You only need six more credits for graduation!” Her enthusiasm was matched only by my anxiety over the chilling revelation that I was completely unprepared for life outside academia. I managed to bark out an empty, “That’s great!” as I fought back the urge to vomit. I mean, really, the nerve of them. Here I was throwing almost $20k a year in federal loan money at them, and they were just going to kick me out?

I was shaken up, but as G-day approached, I became more and more optimistic. My whole life was ahead of me, after all, and I was going to have a degree”¦in English. Afterward, I took a year off and traveled America. I took a car, bus and train across the country, and it was an amazing experience. In Flagstaff, some dude I’d traveled on the bus with explained to me the particulars of crystal meth; on the train, somewhere around Chicago, I partied all night in the club car with drunken teenagers from Pueblo, Colo.; a guy who just got out of prison; a one-legged woman with pretty blue eyes and the bartender who wanted to fuck her. I returned to Staten Island worldly, driven, and things were fine until the student loan officers started lurking in the bushes.

In an attempt to stave them off, I went back to school. It turned out to be a big mistake. I realized after the first semester that I really never liked school all that much, and since I never wanted to be a teacher, having a master’s degree just felt like putting on airs. It did get me to move out to California though, which, luckily for you, is why you’re reading this right now.

If you’re looking for words of wisdom, I’m afraid I don’t have any. I’m not going to tell you that these are “the best years of your life,” because if they are, sucks to be you. Seriously, with modern medicine, life expectancies are ridiculously long and will probably only get longer. You don’t want to blow your wad in your early 20s. My best hope for all of you is that you peak sometime in your 50s. At least then you’ll have something to look forward to. The one thing I will suggest is stay in college as long as your parents will support you. This isn’t because college is so great. It’s not. It’s expensive, ultimately not that important and one day, you’re going to have to pay all that free money back. No, you should stay in as long as possible, because college, at the very least, has a definitive goal. You’re working for that diploma. The real world isn’t as black and white. I’m 31 and all I’ve got to look forward to is retirement, and that’s like 40 years away. Maybe more. After that, only the grim hand of Death remains. But I wanted this to be positive. Good luck.

I’ve been waiting weeks for this one, often fighting cravings in fear of burning out on America’s crown jewel of ground beef and its accompanying deep fried golden strands of starch. Yes, friends, I’m talking about the cheeseburger and freedom fries. Say what you will, but few meals beat the comfort and subsequent comatose of a fat greasy burger and crispy fries. And now that I’ve planted a seed in your subconscious cravings, let me now give you the only successful plan of attack: four great burger spots in the greater Downtown area.

Mind you it wouldn’t be fair to try just one, so instead I enlisted a team of Submerge staffers to help make the call and most importantly finish the food. Hunger overcame creativity, and thus was born the glorious challenge dubbed “Burger-Off.”

We tried to make the playing field as even as possible, so we decided to try each restaurant at the most basic level with the cheeseburger/fries combination. With that established, we created a complex rating system that involved tasting and thinking.

First off, the contenders: Located on 816 12th St., and with over 74 years of experience, our first spot is Jim Denny’s, a classic All-American burger joint.

For our second contender, located at 1948 Sutterville Rd. we chose Ford’s Real Hamburger, with an emphasis on the real.

The third contender, nestled at 7918 Fruitridge Rd., is the Squeeze Inn, which boasts over three decades of hamburger excellence.

And last but not least, located at 1630 J St., we have a local downtown favorite: Hamburger Patties.
Four heavyweights, three hungry judges. Let’s get it on.

Jim Denny’s
James Barone: Loved the thin, fast food-style fries—not as plastic-y tasting as the shit you’ll get at McDonald’s. Grilled onions on the burger were a plus, flavorful patty, but the bun was pretty weak.
James Pitner: Strong mustard flavor, quality meat, good cheese and grilled onions. The grilled onions made this burger.
Corey Bloom: The patty and fries were a little thin for my liking, but the flavors are good. A good burger, not a great one.

Ford’s Real Hamburger
James Barone: Biggest patty by far, but not as well seasoned as the other entrants. Tasty onions and fresh-tasting fixings, but the fries were also pretty boring.
James Pitner: This one comes with a cool layer of shredded lettuce and fresh fixings. I think they could have been a little more liberal with the seasoning.
Corey Bloom: I like a homemade patty, and this is definitely one of those. Very big and juicy, great bun and a good secret sauce. I remember them having different fries, which I liked better; but again, not bad.

Squeeze Inn
James Barone: Delicious hamburger patty and toppings plus a sesame seed bun all made for a great sandwich, but the copious melted cheese and cheese flap were a bit much—too salty
and distracting.
James Pitner: This burger is not for the weak hearted. The bun is delicious, the fixings handle their biz and the place is greasy as hell!
Corey Bloom: Great fresh, hand-cut, unfrozen fries. The cheese skirt that draped the burger was a little much for me, but once you get past that the rest is great.

Hamburger Patties
Corey Bloom: A good burger, and the most straightforward of the bunch. The fries were okay as well.
James Barone: Tastiest hamburger patty for sure, though the fries were pretty bland.
James Pitner: The charbroiled taste of this burger set it apart from its competition.

In the end, it was the Squeeze Inn who took it all, winning unanimously in the fries category and tied Hamburger Patties in the meat department. Propelled by great fries, their overall victory was an upset and a surprise to some (mainly me). However, as much as we tried to make it a competition, everyone agreed that all of the burgers were good in their own right and we would undoubtedly eat at each spot again.

I’d lie and say writing this column is difficult. I probably should, because it’s always late. I should say that it takes me days to figure out what to write about, but really, it just takes me days to actually sit down and do it. I’m a procrastinator. And a damn good one at that.

When I do finally force myself to sit down and do what I’m supposed to, it’s actually kind of easy. I just point my browser toward news.google.com, find whatever sparks my interest, and prattle on about it for about 650 words and hope some of you find my take on it interesting. This week was a little more difficult than most, though. After being awe-struck at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, I’ve been obsessed—watching whatever coverage I could. But as I was marveling at the ability people have to put their differences aside and come together in the form of healthy competition, a far more similar contest was taking place just a thousand or so miles from Beijing. Russia, not content with the U.S. being the only country to flop their gigantic military cocks on the tables of smaller countries, thought it would be a good idea to say a hearty “Fuck you!” to the hope and unity the Olympic games inspire and send tanks, troops and missiles into Georgia.

Of course, there are two sides to every story. The Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are breakaway republics, and Russia claimed that their Aug. 7 invasion was enacted to protect the people of those regions from the Georgian government. Large militarized nation moves in on smaller country to protect its people from their own government: We’ve heard that type of rhetoric before. Oh, and Georgia is vital in the oil trade, too. Bet you couldn’t have guessed that. Its Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline transports 1 million barrels of oil per day from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean Sea—roughly 1 percent of the world’s oil needs.
What looms more ominous about the situation is the reaction of the west. Strong words have ping-ponged back and forth between Washington D.C. and Moscow. Remember those days? When Rocky fought Drago and pop songs like “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” and “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” tried to put a happy face on the impending nuclear holocaust? They’re back! Unlike Iraq, Iran or North Korea, Russia actually does have “the bomb” and the capability of using it. I don’t think that’ll happen, mind you. There’s no money in wiping out the human race. Who’ll need to gas up their cars or go to Wal-Mart if we’re all gone?
Still, any time I hear two countries with nukes getting uppity at one another, I think back to that dream sequence from Terminator 2—when Linda Hamilton turns to bones—and I get spooked. When I hit up Google News today to find out if there were any new developments in the Georgia conflict (there was a cease fire), recent developments in the ongoing Bigfoot saga were a lot more abundant.

While camping in the U.S. state of Georgia (talk about synchronicity), Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer allegedly discovered the corpse of a humanoid creature that they claim is the elusive Sasquatch. Delighted by their discovery, they tossed the body in a cooler (with a few living Bigfoots watching on) and kept it in a freezer for two months before alerting the world of their discovery on Aug. 15 at a Palo Alto press conference. Both men were wearing tan hats advertising their Bigfoot-themed Web site, and as you’d expect, the evidence is weak. DNA tests on the body have yielded inconclusive, human and possum results; and photos of the corpse and the creatures surrounding the site are blurry or overexposed. They didn’t produce the body as of this writing, but Whitton and Dyer said that a reporter from Fox News would be the first to see it. Apparently, they don’t have anything better to report on.