Guess who died?

Chase informed me that kilt-wearing douche bag is now a Hillsdale College student.

How's the socio-political-cultural climate at the school this year? Better, worse?

Ideas executed:

John and I decided to "hedge our bets" and go to Walmart...

1. Condoms, 2 boxes of (hey! whoa!)
   
2. Incense, 4 packs of
3. KY warming gel + massager
   
4. Incense trays, 2

Condom types, by the way, speak volumes about yourself and your pseudo-Freudian neuroses. For instance, I bought standard sized, desensitizing-for-maximum-longevity condoms. John: Magnum XL. (The thought also occurred to us that, we, as two men who ostensibly know each other, buying such products together, might be construed as Sodomites.)

Ideas waiting to be executed, which will probably never happen:

1. Econ had the idea of setting up hidden cams all around the house. We would open up a web domain and stream live-reality TV for Kappas to pleasure themselves any time they pleased.
2. Dylan had the idea of setting up a kegerator (sp?) in the downstairs bathroom. I think he wanted to locate it behind the mirror. This idea originated when he bought a keg and kept it in the bathroom.
   
3. Jam-night, every other week, at the Beat. Open to any band that didn't suck too badly. Could possibly be for poetry (I guess) and comedy acts.

Well, that's what we're up to. Here's one of our cats.

If only this weren't true.

Available now at your neighborhood Wal-Mart: Eurofuck, Country Club, and 70s Groove remixes of "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk".

Oh yes, oh yes.

Back in Fort Wayne, two and a half hours from Hillsdale (/sweet man bag action).

To all the Beat Boys (and the girls) going back to the first day back in school,

I know when I was there I'd always refer to the place like it was prison, like ask people "what they were going to do when they got out," and I know that I still do that sometimes. And that's fair. College is a four year sentence where what you do is all planned for you and you put in your time and they give you a slip of paper and let you leave. But I was just thinking last night, that it might be good just to say, you know, there are worse place you could be.


Last nights coke raid.

I got a job.

I hate hippies.

I'll be in Hillsdale for Team Larry festivities (I call dibs on the big couch).

I think I'll delete my blog and start a new one, not associated with my real name so I can bitch more freely.

So it goes.

Victory!

Gary (and I'll have it be known I prefer the name "Rook") had his first victim today in the Beat basement. Apparently we have a bat or two.

The album is done.

for details:

My blog

My music

New address:
3340 Richlands Highway, Apt. #23
Jacksonville, N.C. 28540

New job:
The Daily News

New blog:
longknives.wordpress.com

According to the Human Events magazine, the Ten Most Harmful Books of the last 200 years include: Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche), The Feminine Mystique (Friedan) and The Kinsey Report. Among the honorable mentions: On Liberty (Mill), Madness and Civilization (Foucault) and The Origin of Species (Darwin).

Check out the list of judges, Hillsdale College history majors.

Much luv to the new class. To every one of you, and you each know that.

All I ask, really, is if you rock out "Holla" by Ghostface periodically throughout the year.

...And send me somethin wrapped up pretty in coffee beans to disguise the scent.
fmi: davefrank1@gmail.com

Beat Off '06-07

There was some speculation last semester that we might lose the house - that the Beat as we know it would cease to exist. Some people heard talk of track guys or IV guys replacing us.

Let me squash the rumors now. The Beat continues.

I guess it was pretty obvious that it would. We signed the lease in May. But! in case any casual readers were wondering, that's the status.

That said, Friday, Aug. 18th. I'm buying a shitton of PBR and smokes to welcome the new and returning members. Those members are:

Econ Schonert
Jonathan Dunn
Dylan Lindgren
August Stafford
Chase Purdy
Ryan Leng

w/ ostensibly our honorary drifter, Tony Gonzalez, who is really our manservant/sexual slave.

I hope things are going to be as good as in previous years. Last years guys will all be missed.

Hope to see some people on the 18th.

Gary and Len were born 3,000 years ago in ancient Hong Kong and knew all the names of the forgotten gods.

In his earliest years, Len's dinosaur phase taught him of the fleetingness of power. That settled, he never sought imperial office. Gary, however, was the first youngster to learn to ride his Big Wheel, and the taste of domination was there implanted.

A series of vacuums of power, coupled with Gary's ability to sneeze in threes, blew him onto the imperial throne. Len attended a prestigious music school and grew fond of the sitar.

During the emergence of the Han Dynasty, the brothers rendezvoused in modern-day Guam and returned to China with the gift of fireworks.

They piddled about.

In 1784 the pair washed up on the shores of Nevis. Taken for dead, a seafaring merchant nursed the brothers. Their vim and vigor restored, they took residence in Portugal. Now fluent in the languages of four continents, Gary matriculated to Oxford University, while Len buried the Portuguese rock sitar tablets in a manmade mountain beneath loose soil.

Gary is the mythological father of Gary, Indiana. Len could duke in the litter box and be out before it hit the sand.

Seen in this photograph, taken in 1951, Gary and Len are caught in a rare non-action shot, the last image of the now-missing brothers.



Boys, say hello to Gary and Len, found at “102,000 Old Books” in Allen, Michigan.

I guess it is time that I posted something...

Amber and I have moved to Wisconsin for new jobs. Our new address is up on facebook or you can e-mail me for it.

Packing sucks...as does unpacking.

I got to drive a 24' bed GMC 4 ton truck to move all our crap...

We'll be sending out invites for the wedding soon...

I'll be sending out stuff on tuxes before to long (hopefully)...

Life is kind of a drag...

There are 7 bars within 4 blocks of our apartment...

so it goes

DAVE FRANK
700 COLLEGE ST., APT. #3
CLINTON, N.C. 28328

We all know Drowning Bob is dead, has been for a while. Jon Gibbons once said: “We killed a cactus. We are less nurturing than the desert.”



Thanks to the Root System, a Jonesville-area roadside cactus and succulents shop, Prickly Pete—not to be confused with George Costanza's fake horse at his fake house in the Hamptons—is the euphorbia canariensis that now graces the Beat's upstairs hallway.

We are confident Prickly Pete will grow in girth and stature.

—Econ

Well done, Dylan. Well done.

So I fashioned this little thing to demonstrate the far reaches of (an intoxicated) Econ's authority:



Of course the poster will be worthless when it comes to actually...you know...being clean. But you have to admit it's nice to look at for about 5-7 seconds.

Amber and I are moving to Wisconsin in about three weeks...any of you bastards going to be in the area this summer/fall?

I went to Jacksonville last week and had dinner at the Marina Cafe and I can't say I was impressed by either. A Hillsdale on the bay.

No pants party gone awry in Roma. So I went for a little walk tonight at about midnight. I walked out to the place where the thieves market ends, as I turned the corner I looked down and thought to myself, "How odd, that looks like a man without any pants on." But I kept walking anyway, because that's just the kind of guy I am. Then I thought to myself "Fucking shit, THAT WAS A MAN WITH NO PANTS ON!!!" So I walked back, and sure enough it was this guy without any pants on, wearing a red button down shirt, khaki socks, and nothing else, lying in a pool of his own blood. I wasn't really sure what to do, but there where other people there who spoke Italian. I don't speak Italian. I just sort of stood there, noded when people looked in my direction, shruged every once in a while, and waited for the ambulence to show up. Actually, I didn't know that the guy was lying in a pool of his own blood until the medics got there, up to that point I just heard that he was breathing, and knew that there where about eight other people there. A medic felt for a pulse, and I think he said "He's drunk" but like I said, I don't speak Italian, though I'm pretty sure that he didn't say "He's dead" because that sounds something like "Morte" and the ambulence drove off with the lights on, and I think that's a good sign... Anyway, if you come to Rome, don't have a no pants party face down on the sidewalk in a puddle of your own blood.

-HARVY

The Demolition




So now I can always explain the fact that I attended Hillsdale by saying, Well it's changed.

Mell sez hi

A question to all Beatniks: What is the weirdest meal you ever ate/drank in this house?

To start things off, for dinner today I consumed...

one entire can of King Oscar sardines,




a cup of Nissin Chicken Vegetable Flavor Cup Noodles,



and three Entennman's Glazed Chocolate Popems.

Where are they now? Well, this is HARVY, and I'm in Rome, Italy. It is pretty damn sweet.

Thursday: The BEAT:

Toga-gypsy-viking-cap 'n' gown party.

9 p.m.

We're all watching the Ky. Derby this Saturday so we can root for the Nunn family's horse, Lawyer Ron.

Location and pres·ence of mint juleps to be determined.

Tattoo?

The founder of THE BEAT is Catholic priest who has no great amount of affection for Allen Ginsberg. He has an alter in the trunk of his Bug with candles and the whole works.
Here's to Quinn.

Happy 10 year anniversary, THE BEAT.

Beat Night

Friday, April 28

9 p.m.

All I have to say is FUCK the career planning office for making me fill out their fucking carrier information forms before they will send me my cap and gown. Fuckers didn't help me get my goddamn job. But I suppose the college needs to show that some grads can actually get jobs outside of the college.

Which was funnier?

Dr. Jordan's 3 or 4 year old daughter doing a back flip over the front pew while her mother watched in horror, or the 10 to 13 year old girl behind me whining right after communion, "but I did do it right. Why does it even matter?"


Happy Easter all.

Scene: Harvey and me breaking in the porch.

Harvey: Children bother me.

Me: What?

Harvey: Children bother me.

Me: Oh good.

Harvey: What did you think I said?

Me: I thought you said chicken lobotomy.

Who is going to be at the Beat for Graduation? Amber and I need a place to crash...and we'll bring a keg.

Scene: Living room. Harvey writing on his Mac. Me reading.

Harvey: Who directed 'Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels'?
Me: Guy Richie, Madonna's husband.

Harvey: Who wrote the book 'Fried Green Tomatoes'?
Me: Dunno.

Harvey: How do you spell 'conjugal'?
Me: c-o-n-j-u-g-a-l.

Me: What the hell are you writing?

The Beat residents, according to a cat

The Beat has been adopted by a cat, a tabby now named Mel or Mell or, when Jon says it before he's had his espresso, Moe. M. is a she and not just, as Dave hypothezied, ball-less. She was sleeping on our couch porch the other morning and then invited herself in and then Ryan, who is allergic to cats but writes love songs about them, went and bought her food. Harvey was gone for the weekend and so surprised when M. jumped into his bed in the middle of the night, and August, who according to the note he's put on the phone IS NOT HERE (ever), probably still doesn't know.

M. seems to like biting my elbows while purring.

Will (s)he come?

With one resident shy of a contract, the future of The Beat is in jeopordy.

Alarmist? Today, the landlord gave a tour of the house to some track guys.

Fuck Lance Armstrong.

Prepare yourself!



That's right. Snakes on a plane... bitch.

Insert evil villain laugh

Plan:
1. Write up (dubious) information in wikipedia.
2. Start arguments about that information.
3. Appeal to wikipedia.
4. Repeat until you can say anything and it won't be challenged or no one trusts wikipedia anymore.

America. Freedom. Zeiger.
Reagan's Children Blog: taking back a city on a hill

T. Watch

It turns out that we have here a number of people who are scared (phobic?) of tornados.

Not on that list: Me or August.

"Life is demanding without understanding,
I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes,
I saw the sign."

I need a beer

Danger on a too-cold Friday night


Tom Waits doing a Cole Porter cover.

Animated Table Top Joe

Nominations for the DBL?

Now you’re messin’ with a- (a son of a bitch!)
Now you’re messin’ with a son of a bitch.

Now you’re messin’ with a- (a son of a bitch!)
Now you’re messin’ with a son of a bitch.

I'm an asshole, I'm an asshole, I'm an asshole 'til I die...

Awkward? Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe.

What? Okay.

Tonight

The Beat

Balls to the Walls '06: A Crunk Party

If anybody doesn't know

1) There's a party here on Saturday.
2) All of August's new friend's are supposed to be here.
3) Dave's making the play list.
4) I think all of us seniors are gonna try to go to dinner at Broadlawn together (and maybe get Lee to go).

August got picked up by ATO today.
Congratulations and good luck to a man who will always have home at The Beat.

When I try to say how I miss Lee, I end up describing him as the rug in the Big Lebowski.

He just, I'll say, made the house hang together.






So I'm the only one here this weekend who doesn't want to join ATO.

Oh yeah? Check out this shit.

My submission for the coolest page on Wikipedia: Henryk Batuta.

I want a tee-shirt that says Free Henryk Batuta!

Pointlessly interesting question of the day:

If the only political choices were Communism, Fascism, or Anarchism (as in the Spanish Civil War, e.g.), which would you choose?

Photos by Tony G.

The Danger Cart
short version

So we took a cart, the thing Bob brought down and had been bumping around the basement, and Dave spray painted the sides with the word "DANGER." Except on one side he forgot the N. And Ryan made a mask, duct-taping the pointy end of a bleach bottle to two paper bowls. It kind of looks like a mouse. He cut out eye holes drew red flames and taped it to the front of the cart.

So then last night we took it and pushed each other to parties yelling "Danger Cart!" And then at the parties we made people come outside and see it and if they didn't seem impressed enough we said it's a danger cart.

Ancestor to the Danger Cart.

As much as I would like to, I don't know enough to retell last night's escapades through a Hellenic lens.

For Gibbons:
"He was injured, injured bad."

Who's your favorite Jesus?

• Bling Jesus
• Galaxy Jesus
• Germanic Breastplate Jesus
• All-American Jesus
• Philandering Jesus
• Rockin Hispanic Jesus
• DJ Jesus
• Bizarre Sketch Jesus
• Racing Pro-life Jesus
• Celebrity Jesus
• Active Jesus

Life at The Beat; or, The Day After I Met the Whole Sick Crew

Update:
to what extent we don't know all the words

The house is mostly back in order. The kitchen, bathroom and foyer/mail room all clean, and maybe as clean as they've ever been, and new light bulbs up and on. Thanks to those who helped and the rest of you owe us. Ryan's room is sweet and bigger than either Jared or Lee ever realized.

The place is mostly back to normal, w. classes started today and a chill party a few days ago complete with a banjo-led sing-a-long of Wagon Wheel and Who's Got the Crack (because none of us know all the words). It it feels a little empty, though, as we realize to what extent Lee really was larger than life.


A poem for the vegatarians amoung us:

Language comes from meat. Without meat,
There’s no language. It’s too obvious.

Meaty words shaped and rolled by a meaty tongue,
Such as tender, juicy or sliced, for example, would be
Meaningless without the muscles, tendons and fat
That wrap around bones. Words such as dead, lovely,
Haggard, touch, desire or satisfaction. Further,

Everyday language is overstuffed with meat.
Don’t you slander my meat. A piece of meat,
She turned down such prime meat.
          - Linh Dinh

A very merry fuck you to Gunner, Bob, etc. for graciously destroying our house after Silliman worked his ass off cleaning it up. Passive-aggressive? Yes and fuck you.

How often do you get to launch 250,000 bouncey balls on San Francisco?

Note: My sister and her friends, touring Europe last fall, bounced a dozen of these all over Paris, with one guy getting thrown out of Napoleon's tomb for talking about bouncing one off the marble.

Winter Gathering: here; this weekend.

The Beat Brothers Part Deux

Silliman: Lee's driving a Mercedes now. I'm pretty sure he's The Man. You know, not as in, "You're the man!" but-
August: Capital T, capital M The Man.
Silliman: Right.

Pause, then simultaneously

August: He bought in.
Silliman: He sold out.
August: Dude, he didn't sell out. He bought in. "Selling out" entails using a former way of life and/or friends for profit.
Silliman: He didn't buy in! He was born in! He sold his soul! That's what he sold out!

Pause.

August: I think we need to post this.
Silliman: I was thinking the same thing, and I would, but I just posted.
August: I'll do it.
Silliman: Represent me fairly.

August, typing, remembers back to the weekend Bob maced him in the face, and the words Bob spoke drunkenly to Lee Nunn during the Hunter S. Thompson weekend-o-rama ring in August's ears: "As your attorney I advise you to buy a fast car with no top."

August: I guess Lee Nunn took that advice to heart.

The Beat Brothers

Scene: The Beat, quasi-clean, after dinner.

Silliman: My transcripts have to be in Atlanta tomorrow.
August: Atlanta?
Silliman: We have two packs of cigarettes, a dozen beers, a quarter tank of gas, we're wearing sunglasses and it's dark.
August: I think we can make it.
Silliman: Hit it.

Down w/ the past

For the first time in a long time/forever, there is order and sense to the kitchen cabinets at the Beat.

Early Christmas Eve

"So I've been wearing a viking helmet and smoking cigarettes and shooting August with an airsoft gun. It practically is a party. Except all the beer bottles are empty." -- Silliman

August, after waking up from a 20-hour nap:

"I had this dream where you, me, Dan Greene, Jack Hittenger, a terrier and Tom Waits were trashing Saga. Jack was apparently feeling vindictive and kept shouting that we were doing "random acts of terrierism" and then Dan Greene hit him. Tom Waits kept talking in his weird-ass voice about how he had done this stuff for 20 years."

Indeed, what is dada?

Schnaugs

The thing about living with just August - with the rest of you off Happy Holidaying - is that one day he'll appear and be saying "what's for dinner" and give you a 20 minute discussion of Weber on Melville and then you won't see him again for days. It's weird, the sporaticness. And also his mom kinda freaked me out.


Is there any consensus on the prefered late-December holiday(s) well-wishing from the Beat? Merry X-kwananukkamas?

So not true

"Undergrad presentations are no place for experimentations in slant rhyme."
        - Dan Greene

Microsoft Office has given me an early dose of home.

Spellcheck is apparently set on appalachian mode--below is the sentence it suggested:

"With them fingers close my eyes."

Ryan, I order you to write a song.

P.S. I just spellchecked this message; spellcheck doesn't recognise itself.

Oh the void.

I had a dream...

that we started this club were we sat around and watched videos of suicide bombers all day and Dave kept saying, "well, at least we're not those guys!"

Not only is the Void staring back...it is also making funny faces.

Courtesy of Farnham: a slogan off.

Current idea at the Beat: write ourselves and/or the Beat into Wikipedia.

Gibs, after some sort of revelatory experience involving a buggy and train, is starting a counter movement. The Beat will soon be devided into two factions - The Voids and The Absurds.

The void

"Picture a number of men in chains, and all condemned to death; each day some are strangled in the sight of the rest; those who remain see their own condition in that of their fellows, looking at one another with sorrow and without hope, each awaiting his turn. This is the picture of the condition of man."
        - Pascal

Evan's Fingers Be Lightning, John's Drums Be a Cannon, and Kyle's Bass Blows Our Collective Asses Out

An acrid pall is hanging over our basement, thick with a loathesome doom. It smells of beer, melted tubes and fire. Like a war. Like a firefight. The whole house is hemorrhaging sound as Midnight Special rocks the revolution.

Two double-deuces of Steel Reserve is cheaper than a forty, FYI.

The summit of void is insurmountable.

Since posting Toothpaste for Dinner comics seems to be the flavor of the week, here's one for the beat.

Blackout '05
Beatniks in the dark.

Everyone at The Beat is losing their respective minds. Man to watch for the upcoming week: Jon.

House Neurosis Poll:
1.Jon
2.Me
3.Lee
4.August
5.Dan
6.HoneyBear
7.Harvey

Somewhere in Japan....

Testing testing...

Can you smoke caffine? Apparently, no one's tried and we don't know.

Why are cell phones great? So your roommate can call you from the bathroom and ask you to bring him TP.

Nominations on best costume of the night?

You should read John McNamara's blog.

Crunk Fix
I've been layin' down some tracks with a buddy.
AETz: The heaviest bombs in Japan since Nagasaki.

SATURDAY NIGHT

THE BEAT

COMMUNIST PARTY

spread the revolution, comrad!

Just to clear things up, the beatnick found passed out in random house, was found passed out in random frat house. On the pot (not the rag). And he also blew chunks. He blew chunks at the presidents house. On the presidents lawn.

So, August made a zing tonight. Not a burn, not a burn pshhhh, and certainly not a burn third degree pshhhh. We talked about it, and his comment "they are descent" in response to my comment that people have sex with the dead all the time.

Can we invite this guy to one of our parties?

"Ohhhhh, uterian Cock Block. 'The fruit of my loins shall not be corrupted by your seed, be gone!'" Lee's description of my date last saturday.

August: Are you hung over?
Lee: No.
August: Well you're drinking water...

Lee and Jon, in a contest to describe the Beat

sketch
sketchy
the sketch
el sketcherino
sketchalicious
sketched up
sketchtastic 7000
sketchilliac
sketcherific
sketchzilla
sketchville
sketchburg
sketchopolis
sketchogo
sketchvestites
sketchfuzz

Lee: We also make up funny words.