Matt Molarius and Jason Cardenas of Transfer perform “Reflections of Home” and “So Long Old Song”on Sordid Tales: the Podcast!
Sordid Tales the Podcast Excerpt
Transfer performs 2 songs
May 21st, 2013
Sordid Tales the Podcast Excerpt
Transfer performs “Reflections of Home”
May 17th, 2013
Listen to Matt Molarius and Jason Cardenas of Transfer perform “Reflections of Home” on Sordid Tales: the Podcast!
Transfer – “Reflections of Home”
Sordid Tales: The Podcast excerpt
Another Badvertisment
May 15th, 2013
Check out this commercial we made for Sordid Tales: The Podcast.
It’s called Stray – by Cat Lady Fragrances and it originally aired on Episode 6 of STP (05.07.13) with featured guest TRANSFER.
Starring Jesse Egan, Jeff Berkley, Lizzie Wann and Ed Decker as the (OWV) Omniscient Whisper Voice.
Written by Ed Decker and produced by Jeff Berkley.
The Birthday Roast of Ed Decker
(Multiple Clips)
June 15th, 2012
Here is the last batch of roasters, with the exception of the grand finale – my response – which will be posted shortly.
1. Jesse Egan – MC
2. Adam Gimbel
3. Manya Buske
More after the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »
The 50th Birthday Roast of Ed Decker
(Clip 1 – Jose Sinatra)
May 17th, 2012
Here is the first clip from the Ed Decker 50th Birthday Roast. This is the renowned and often avoided, Jose Sinatra doing his song, “Edfinger” – rehash of the old James Bond movie theme, “Goldfinger.”
The setup: “This is a roast? I thought it was a WAKE! How disappointing.”
Cue music…
Roast Response
May 17th, 2012
For those who don’t know, last Sunday, my wife produced the Ed Decker 50th Birthday Roast held at Winstons Beach Club. It was great, and, by “great,” I mean the way being shackled to the Judas Chair for a two-hour Spanish Inquisition is great. In all seriousness, a good time was had by all. My only regret was that the roast lasted so long that I didn’t have time to rebuke a lot of what was said about me.
Perhaps I’m breaking some sort of unwritten roast rule by responding ex post facto, but after the ass-reaming I received by my so-called friends, I don’t give a flying fart-factory about rules.
For instance, Jose Sinatra opened his set by saying, “I thought this was a wake!” and proceeded to sing a song about me being dead, which is funny coming from a man who appears to have been hit by a train and then reassembled by a hook-handed, alcoholic mortician.
Manya Buske told the crowd how—years before she met and married my pal, Duane—I got her drunk and tried to make out with her after she threw up.
Horseshit! I tried to make out with her before she threw up, when she was still passed out. What kind of monster do you take me for? Read the rest of this entry »
Acute Server Burnout Disorder
May 17th, 2012“I was suspended from ABC Bar and Grill because I told some douchebag customers to never come back,” wrote Dr. X, a bartender / server acquaintance, in a Facebook message.
Apparently, a party of 12 had run X ragged throughout their meal and afterward had asked to split the check six ways. As every server knows, splitting checks is a royal pain in the cranium, but Dr. X did as he was asked, and they each repaid him by drawing a big, fat skink egg on the line where the tip should have gone—hence his recommendation that they never return.
“Instead of the owner having my back,” X wrote, “I was thrown under the bus and suspended for one shift…. I now know the owners do NOT have my back in these kinds of situations.” Read the rest of this entry »
Safety Speak
May 17th, 2012Isn’t Ted Nugent just the most despicable assbooger in all the world? I’m honestly amazed by the amount of caca that spews out of his big, fat maw.
“If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again,” the Motor City Bragman told a mooing herd of NRA bovine, “I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”
I love watching him rant because, when he does, you can actually see the insides of his mouth, see past the tongue, past the uvula, all the way down his throat and into his warm wet guts, which I suspect to be the womb where Stupid was born.
“See, I’m a black Jew at a Nazi-Klan rally, and there are some power-abusing corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me,” he later said in an attempt to justify his NRA comments.
Oh, yes, I’m amused by Ted Nugent—The Noodge, as I like to call him—for having saltpeter in his pecker and gunpowder where his brain should be, but not nearly as amused as I am by the professional overreactionistas who vocalize outrage over comments that offend or frighten them. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time, nor the interest, nor the extra room in my rectum to store any bitterness toward anything a man with gunpowder brains and saltpeter jism has to say.
“The comment is disrespectful to blacks and Jews,” wrote James Johnson of Inquisitr.com.
Oh, for crying out Christ. It’s a frickin’ metaphor! If I say, “I’m a kitten at a coyote convention,” would that be disrespectful to felines? Yes, of course, his characterization of his perceived outsider status is excessive, but that’s how you have fun with analogies—by taking them to the absurd extreme, such as when I write, “If ignorance is a disease, Ted Nugent is HIV (Hateful, Idiotic and Vapid).” Read the rest of this entry »
America – Love it or Leave it
May 17th, 2012I was at the bar, arguing with an ultra-right-wing, flag-lapel-pin-wearing idiot automaton about the lack of separation between church and state when he blurted, “If you don’t like this country as it was created, then leave!”
Ah, yes, the classic “America, love it or leave it” retort. I actually hadn’t heard this one in a while, thinking it was finally discarded in favor of, you know, intelligent discourse. However, a quick Google search when I got home revealed that the Love-it-or-Leaviters are alive and well and still espousing Love It or Leave It theory (LILI) as if it were a golden gem of genius and not what it really is—an angry response for when you have no response to the brilliant point I just made.
I don’t know why I was surprised. “Love It or Leave It!” definitely belongs on the Greatest Hits album of the ultra-right, along with such other charttoppers as “Hit the Road Black (Ode to Obama),” “Global Warming’s a Joke,” “Fuck the Environmental Police” and the wildly popular anti-marijuana ballad, “Stairway to Heroin.”
“There’s a dealer who knows / pot smoking leads to harder drugs / and he’s plying a stairway to heroin”
The phrase “America, love it or leave it” is what’s known as a false dilemma because it supposes only two options when actually they are bottomless. For instance, it’s entirely reasonable to “Love it and leave it.” You can also be mildly fond of it and stay. You can hate it, die and be buried here—the toxicity of your America-hating corpse seeping into the soil and contaminating it for eternity. And let’s not forget, “America: I don’t love it; I don’t hate it; I honestly don’t care one way or the other, but I ain’t leaving because ignorant, unsophisticated flag-sycophants don’t tell me where I get to live.” Read the rest of this entry »
Code Red
May 17th, 2012….and faster than America can overreact to something Rush Limbaugh said, my life was changed by a 99-cent iPhone application. Holla-freaking-Looya!
The app is called Code Red, and what it is, what it does—well it has saved my sanity, and quite likely, my life.
Code Red is an ingenious little tool that warns you when your wife or girlfriend—or any cohabitating female for that matter—is about to have her period. How it works is simple. You open the calendar, enter the date of the beginning of your lady’s last menstrual cycle, and Code Red does the rest.
Code Red has four basic alerts: Smooth Sailing, Ovulation, PMS and, naturally, Code Red! At the start of each of her, um, tidal phases, a pop-up banner alerts you to the situation. The Smooth Sailing pop-up informs you in cool blue text that “the seas are calm and the coast is clear,” followed by a series of tips about how to capitalize on this phase such as, “Now is the time to tell her about the Vegas trip you are about to book with the boys.”
Sons of Lame-archy
May 17th, 2012
I was zip, zip, zipping through Ocean Beach on my little, black and silver, 150-cc Lance Milan putt-putt motor scooter when I pulled alongside a real biker, dressed in full-blown biker-gang-guy regalia, leaning on his obnoxiously loud Harley waiting for the light to turn green.
Simultaneously, we glanced at each other. I nodded hello, and he—get this—laughed in my face. He looked at me, looked downward at my bike—made a quick assessment about the level of my manhood (which he identified as a Level-7 Pussy)—looked back at me, and laughed, out loud, real nasty-like, right into my innocent face. Then he turned away in disgust, as if a glob of birds shit had landed on my head and was dripping down my cheek.
It wasn’t a big deal, really. I know the score. Harley riders deplore scooter riders the way stand-up comedians deplore mimes. And pretty much everyone else older than 12 thinks scooters are a joke, too. Well everyone older than 12 can suck on my skid marks! My ride is a beast. It goes zero to 60 in—well, actually, it doesn’t ever get to 60. But it can do 35, no problem. Only takes a few minutes to get there. Then it’s zip-zip, putt-putt all over the place!
Seriously, though, for me—a scooter makes crazy-good sense: For one reason, it’s a huge money saver. The gas, insurance, registration—even the cost of the vehicle itself— combined, is only a little more expensive than renting a couple of Pauly Shore impersonators for a party. Second, I work from home, which means no long freeway commutes. And, lastly, I live at the beach, where parking is scarce and the traffic is fierce, making a scooter an ideal vehicle because: a scooter parks anywhere; a scooter effortlessly darts in and out of alleys and backstreets; and a scooter splits the lane to get to the front of the line at traffic lights—which is exactly what I was doing when I came upon the biker.
Now, for the record, I didn’t nod to him as though I thought we were badass biker brethren of the road—as if we had something in common the way, say, a Corvette owner would nod at another Vette owner, or the way black men in Alpine nod on the oft chance they cross paths. No. I nodded to him because we were standing right next to each other, looking at each other. It was a human-to-human nod for crissake, not biker-to-biker. I would never consider my little 150-cc, Lance Milan, zip-zip, putt-putt motor scooter to be in his hog’s league. However, I’m also not going to feel inferior because my chosen mode of transportation doesn’t meet the approval of a man who cuts off the arms of a leather jacket with a hacksaw and thinks that’s punk rock. Read the rest of this entry »
Upcoming Spoken Word Event
April 4th, 2012
Poetry & Art Series 2012 :
On Weds., May 2, UCSD’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout and San Diego Citybeat’s Edwin Decker will read in the Museum of the Living Artist, 1439 El Prado, Balboa Park. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the show starts at 7:00 p.m. Members free, $5 at the door or bring a snack/wine to share.
Rae Armantrout’s book of poetry Versed, published by the Wesleyan University Press, earned the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. On March 11, 2010, Armantrout was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Versed. Her work has been honored by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. Her most recent collection, Money Shot, was published in February 2011.
Edwin Decker is a freelance journalist and columnist whose work has appeared in The San Diego Union Tribune, San Diego Reader, Modern Drunkard Magazine, Seattle Stranger, Tucson Weekly, Cleveland Scene and other magazines and newspapers across the country. His satiric and sometimes controversial column, “Sordid Tales,” runs every other week in San Diego CityBeat.
Decker’s book Barzilla and Other Psalms, published by Puna Press, was nominated for a 2007 San Diego Book Award and his performance piece, “Questioning Innocence is Questionable,” won the grand prize for the San Diego Visual Arts Performance Slam. Website: EdwinDecker.com.
Following the reading, there will be open mic for writers or painters who would like to share a few pieces of their work.
Please contact host, Michael Klam, with any questions: 619-957-3264 (cell) or 619-236-0011 (museum). Writers/artists would like to read on the open mic, can sign up ahead of time at mkklam@gmail.com or sign in on the night of the show.
More info about Rae Armantrout can be found here and for her Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Versed,” see versedreader.site.wesleyan.edu. Edwin Decker articles and poetry can be found at edwindecker.com and punapress.com.
All I Am Saying, is Give Cheese a Chance
March 8th, 2012
Sirens' Crush
~Originally published in San Diego CityBeat Magazine
When I moved to San Diego, I fell instantly in love. . . with the local original-music scene. See, back in small-town Monroe, N.Y., in the early ’80s, there was only one bar that hosted bands, and it was always cheesy cover music. In contrast, the ’80s were a great time for original talent in San Diego. Thanks to artists like The Beat Farmers, Mojo Nixon, Dread Zeppelin, The Rugburns, The Paladins, The Jacks and Donkey Punch, I quickly turned into a gluttonous devotee of originals and, at the same time, a despiser of cover bands. Read the rest of this entry »
San Diego, It’s Time to Forgive and Forget Eli Manning
February 23rd, 2012
Originally Published in San Diego CityBeat Magazine
It has been two weeks since my beloved New York Giants took Super Bowl XLVI, and still the pernicious missives from my Giants-Hating Chargers-fan friends keep rolling in.
“F__k the Giants and that cry baby Eli Manning,” writes A., via email.
“Eli is still the Devil,” says B., on my Facebook wall.
“Eli and the Giants are the only team that can make me root for the Patriots,” blurts C., from a neighboring stool at The Tilted Stick.
The anti-Manning vitriol really snowballed in the weeks leading to the Super Bowl, but I’ve pretty much been hearing this stuff from Chargers-Loving Anti-Manning Malcontents (CLAMMs) since 2004. For those who don’t remember, the Chargers were planning to select Manning in the first round of the 2004 draft. However, in a rare (though precedented) move, Manning refused to sign with the Chargers, instantly turning every Charger fan into a Manning-despising, Giants-hating activist and utterly complicated my life as a native New Yorker living in San Diego. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Songs about Newborn Babies Blow
January 27th, 2012
Well, Jay-Z and Beyoncé finally had their baby, which can only mean one thing: Here comes another baby song!
You know what I’m talking about, right? One of those intolerable, “Oh-my-precious-little-angel-it’s-a-miracle-that-you-were-born-unto-me” tunes that a songwriter is compelled to write every time he or she pops out another squirmer.
Whether you believe newborn babies are miraculous gifts from God or subterranean alien vampire-rats bent on draining your life force, can we at least agree that songs about babies tend to suck rusty buckets of contaminated amniotic fluid?
And this new tune by Jay-Z is especially abominable.
“You’re a child of destiny / You’re the child of my destiny / You’re my child with the child from Destiny’s Child / That’s a hell of recipe.”
OK. I want you to pause for a moment and marvel at the pure hideosity of that line: “You’re my child with the child from Destiny’s Child.” I want you to bask in the rays of its badness like a pale-skinned woman on an overpowered tanning bed; absorb the radiation of it on your face and neck—mind not the blisters and the hair loss— for a lyric as bad as this is a thing to behold.
Britney Spears’ “My Baby” is no less irradiated: “With no words at all / So tiny and small / In love I fall / My precious love / Sent from above / My baby boo / God I thank you.”
I want you to imagine that you’re Britney’s baby being spoon-fed in the kitchen, when suddenly mommy starts singing that song to you. Wouldn’t you eject the strained carrots onto her shirt and blurt, “Bitch, you better get your ass back in the rehearsal studio!”?
In Brit’s defense, “My Baby” sounds like a John Prine political ditty compared with Creed’s criminally negligent baby ballad, “With Arms Wide Open.” The worst part about that afterbirth is the video, which features singer Scott Stapp posing on a mountain top, his “arms wide open” toward the sky, his long, gorgeous Jesus-locks blowing in the wind and the fetor of a thousand soiled diapers blustering from his howl-hole.
Speaking of mucky diapers, Lauryn Hill’s baby song, “To Zion,” is a rash on the ass of all that is right and good. Lord knows Hill is full of herself, but how much of a messiah complex must you have in order to name your kid Zion?
And, look, I dig Stevie Wonder as much as the next guy, but “Isn’t She Lovely” isn’t. The melody is as mesmeric as a busted mobile, and all Stevie does is sing “Isn’t she lovely, isn’t she wonderful, isn’t she special” over and over again like a drill burrowing into the part of the brain that represses the urge to take sniper shots at random pedestrians.
I will concede that John Lennon’s song for Sean, “Beautiful Boy,” is lovely. But I often wonder how messed up it must be for Julian whenever he hears his dad gushing on the radio or jukebox, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful… darling, darling, darling Sean”—given that Lennon neglected Julian as a child, which makes Lennon something of a parental dickweed, nullifying any fatherhood songs written by him.
The list goes on. The Dixie Chicks’ baby anthem “Godspeed” is in dire need of a spanking. “Prayer for You” by Usher should have been terminated in the first trimester. “Just the Two of Us” by Will Smith needs a circumcision—at the base. And it’s utterly impossible to keep your formula down should you happen to hear “In my Daughter’s Eyes” by Martina McBride.
And, yes, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Oh, Ed, you hate baby songs because you don’t have any children and don’t understand the miracle of new life.
Wrong!
You needn’t be a parent to understand the miracle of new life. Nor do you need to understand the miracle of life to scrutinize a song about the miracle of life, just as I don’t need to live in South Central L.A. to know “Straight Outta Compton” is a badass song about living in South Central L.A.
No, these baby songs suck for two simple reasons:
1. Childbirth is such an enormous, sentimental event in most of our lives that our emotions can be easily manipulated. You could write the lamest piece of cliché-addled garbage and everyone will blubber over it, leaving songwriters no incentive to compose something truly original and profound.
2. Baby songs never tell the whole story about parenting—no tunes about sleepless nights and bedraggled days; no odes about giving up your dreams, your friends, your drugs and your porn collection; no power ballads about how you’ll age an average of five years for every day you cohabitate with a toddler. There are no verses that mention that the only movies you’ll be permitted to watch for the next dozen years will feature talking cartoon animals and worse, a moral to the story, nor are there any refrains about how your sacrifices will go unappreciated—because they think it’s invisible elves who stock the refrigerator and replace the toilet paper—and the day will come when not only will they not appreciate you; in fact, they will hate you. Sure as the babysitter will raid the liquor cabinet and blow her boyfriend on your couch, your children are going to hate your guts.
This is the thanks you’ll get for giving them life, because they are cold, cruel tyrants, and you are but a peasant who mollycoddles them. Hmm, I like that: “Cold Cruel Tyrant.” Now, see, that’s a baby song that needs to be written!
