Let’s be honest here, people: Isn’t this whole Internet Food thing just about fucked out by now, hmm?

Oh, we’re as guilty as anyone, this obsession with chow.

The vivid descriptions of fatty snacks in the middle of the night, the tales of bizarre meats served en-stick, doled out by shady characters in the back alleys of cities we pass through:
What blog entry would be complete without ’em?

When did it become okay, I would ask ya, to make everyone at the table freeze, fork in hand, as their plate of rapidly cooling food has its goddamned picture taken?
God forbid one fingerling potato disappears from the canvas before we capture the dish at 5 megapixels, jot down notes on the composition of protein to carb, and then snap the photo again—just to be sure!

We stalk the latest food truck to come rolling on the scene, searching Twitter for its next appearance as if scanning the clouds above for the proof of a God.

And that’s why you find yourself standing in an industrial parking lot, 11pm on a Tuesday night in Vernon.
A line 20 deep, just to be the next one baptized by the latest kooky concoction!

And then what? Do we just go home, hands over contented bellies, and revel within inner dialogue of the meal we’ve just enjoyed?

Hell no. We take to Yelp, bragging that we’ve gone and done it—we’ve experienced the fusion pickled herring and head cheese tamale before our slacker pals had a chance.
(It was a bit too cloying and obvious for Jen, but I thought the combination really worked!)

And we make chefs- god help us! -celebrities.
What have we done?

Facebook posts reflect these obsessions now, and if we had to endure photos of the weekend in Taos and posted videos of juggling cats, well, wasn’t that at least more of an insight to our friends’ mindsets than their hankering for Icelandic yak meat or last night’s shocking appearance of a pebble in the ceviche?

…it’s the irony, is that it? Is that what you kids crave so much these days?

Oh, the delicious irony of having tough punkers and mundane office workers, suddenly become digitally published gourmands.
Ho, the funny, funny disjointed image: those tattooed forearms kneading a ball of dough!

Hey–here’s irony for ya: why don’t you knuckleheads pay your child support or put some decent exhaust systems on your rat bikes, huh? Really mindfuck the stereotype!

I know.
We can all relate to food, this much is true.

But ingestion and digestion– do these remain truly the only things we share communicably within the human experience?–really?

Heh–I can think of another function we all share, but yer not going to see us start recording and expounding on every bowel movement we experience on the road…oh, wait- already did!

Oh you laugh, but can’t ya just see it?
The next craze, reviewing the toilet facilities of the very restaurants that we’ve already put through the wringer:

The Men’s room in the back of Lazy Ox Canteen is dreadful, serviceable at best. Lack of paper in stall # 2, burnt lightbulb over the far left sink. Will not be going back!

Oh I don’t know. It’s harmless, I guess.
If our National Discourse has been reduced to debates on the merits of Five Guys over In n Out, so be it.

Just don’t go dragging us down with your silly chatter about food.
We have better things to think about, people!

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But really, Five Guys?
Gimmee a fuckin break!

Well sir, let’s look at the ‘ol calendar, shall we?

Uh huh…..It’s well into our first week of January:

*It’s currently 85 degrees outside.
*The Clippers are off to a good start.
*Rick Santorum only missed winning the Iowa Caucus by a cunt hair.

Wheeee! Hold me, Mother, because I’m in bizarro world again!!

Yeah, yeah, I know about 2012…it’s the year we’re all gonna ride this big fiery ball into oblivion, is that it?
Because some pinche Mayan calendar maker, all hopped up on coca leaves and fermented beet juice passes out mid job, the world is supposed to end?

Listen, I got news for you, it already did end!
Yeah, that funny little Rapture that was predicted for Oct 21 by the religious nutjob?

It actually happened!

Problem was, Jesus couldn’t find a single person worth taking back up yonder with him.
No, I’m pretty sure the world has already ended, and we’ve just been too busy posting funny cat videos on Facebook and ripping off movies from the Internet to notice.

How else do you explain the wild popularity of Katy Perry and the continued existence of Fashion Island?

Anywhoo, it must be that time of year for the CH3 recap, so let’s get started people!

Looking at the chthree.com show roster, we see here that the mighty Chingón Tres played an ungodly 26 shows in 2011.

Unfortunately, most of the shows looked like this:

That was a quick pic of the year kick-off, a weekender up to the mid coast region.

Heh…. that was before they opened the doors.

Packed.
Swear to God.

And yes, we still maintain an actual, honest to God html website damn you!
Oh, I know that you young hipsters do all of your communications and networking through your precious Fbook these days, and can’t be bothered actually seeking out when your fifth favorite local punk band of all time is going to play next!

Oh, but just wait until Facebook is bought by Rupert Murdoch and they start charging 3.99 per month!
Then who’s gonna come crawling back, huh? huh?

Speaking of interwebby thingies, this blog you hold in your trembling paws at the moment— let’s look at those stats while we’re at it, hmmm?

We had over 18,000 visitors to the blog this year, and again–not one of you cheap bastards could be bothered with clicking through and buying a T shirt!

Oh, that’s alright, we’ve been steadily recording your IP addresses and feeding them to the Russian syndicate for some time now, using your bandwidth to spread virus and beastiality porn at will–so go ahead, keep reading, tightwad!!

There were a few series that garnered a lot of hits this year, like the in depth look at Rodney Bingenheimer, our beloved LA radio Icon.

But for the most part, most of you were only interested in embarassing photos of drunken hilarity that spilled out of posts such as the racy expose’ on the Pouzza Fest…..

C’est la vie!

A few travel snapshots for the kids back home:

And god help us if we forget the food porn!
Yeh yeh, there were a few snacks in 2011:

Ah, but a year winds down, as it always does, and thoughts turn to messy office parties and tacky decorations.
The holidays came and went, but not without a few final thoughts for the year……

If I never have to see that goddamned Santa Suit again, it will be too soon brother!

Sheesh, give a guy a red suit and suddenly we create a egomaniacal monster!

But thankfully the suit was torn to shreds at the final gig of the year, the Ball Ball at the Airliner in LA.

And now, things back to normal, lights taken down and the tree shredded to pulp, we can only look ahead.

With a weary sigh, we untangle the guitar cords and start to fill in the calendar for yet another year in the trenches.
Will the knees take another 365 out there?
Will the hairline cooperate and hang in there just one more time?

But-truly-ya know what?
We got nothing better to do.

Happy New Year!

T-Bone rolls into the shop, 25 minutes late, early for him.
“By God man,” I say. “What the fuck happened to ya?”

T rolls the eyes, shoots the grin, and the Rorschach test splayed across his wifebeater tells the story:
The Sriracha splotch, a meandering dribble of Jager.
The desperate smudges of lipstick, a shade unavailable in the Continental U.S. the past decade.

“Rough one,” he says. “Anything to drink?”

I throw him the package from Party City, all itchy asbestos-laden floss and clearly flammable crimson polyester.
“Suit up, Santa. The fellas are waiting”

We do the shoot quick, maybe 6 takes in all.
It’s early for everyone, and we mumble into coffee cups: varying degrees of hungover.

I Irish up the Folger’s, Brad rallies us to please put a little twinkle in them steps.

Santa is getting into character, and all the good booze is quickly drained.
“Really man? The Crown Black? I told ya to hit the goddamn Kessler first, didn’t I?”

Green Screen stuff is done. We head downtown for some bar action.

Tbone rides with me in the truck, and we listen to NPR doing a segment on the Higgs Boson.
European nuclear research scientists say they are close to discovering the elusive God Particle.

T is fascinated: The meaning and origin of life, explained finally by subatomic particle?
T points out that it really doesn’t have any bearing on his precious String Theory, and I can only agree with a shrug.

I’m riding goddamned Anaheim Boulevard with Santa in the front seat, a can of malt Liquor between his legs.
And you still want the meaning of life?

We get out in front of Steiner’s, and the cars start honking.
“Santa! Yo Santa! What up bitch?”

T flips them off and dances in the street.
An Ecuadoran family packed into a ’89 Tercel slows and stops in front of Santa.
They hold out a toddler to pull on Santa’s beard.

The suit, it has him now.
He’s seeing adoration he hasn’t seen, well…….. it’s been a while: We’ll put it that way.

He’s still and always will be our lil Eric.
But the beer gut, The tattoos crawling up his neck?
The Devil Clown lurking just beneath his boxers?

Whoa.

But now, enveloped in something warm and familiar, he’s brightening up the day.
Coloring the book.

A young woman comes up to him on the sidewalk: Clearly, she’s been crying.

“Sahnta Klowse. Oh Sahnta,” she says.
“Oh Ho,” says TBone. “And what , um, what do you want for Christmas little girl?”

She smiles then, shakes her head.
“Can I have a hug, Sahnta? Would that be ok?”

It’s fuckin’ magic.
Now it’s time to get into that dark bar and escape the fuckin’ magic.

It’s no use.
People see him, see that suit, and they can’t stop smiling.

Tbone does a few shuffling dance steps, pinches the bartender’s ass.

He drinks freely from the regulars’ glasses, and they can’t get enough of it.

Things start to get sloppy.
They always do.

Santa’s beard is smudged now, the white fur on his suit tells the story of multiple trips to the pavement.
I worry that the welcome is exhausted, the crew will see past the Suit and look into a darker, far more familiar fairytale.

But no.
As long as he has on some sort of combination of beard, hat and jacket, he can do no wrong.
People are filling the joint.
The word’s out on Facebook:
You gotta get down here! This Santa…he is a riot!!

And we pack up the gear and leave.
We leave Santa there, he doesn’t belong to us, not any more.

An ocean away, men huddle in the control room of a super collider, and they smash atoms against eachother.
They fall upon the leftover matter like crows on roadkill.

To see what it’s all about, see what makes man tick, is that it?

Yeah, well. They should’ve just asked us.

Come with us now, a short jaunt up the 94 from Chicago, to a wonderland of all things Dairy and Curdled!

Yes, yes, I’m talking of the Museum of Lactose-Tolerance, it’s the
Mars Cheese Castle!

Listen, what the fuck you think we’re gonna do when we see this palace off the side of the road, hmmm?
We pull the swanky Lincoln MKX rental off in Kenosha and approach the forboding complex.

Oh, sure, I’ve been to Versailles, and wandered those stodgy grounds imagining the Rennaissance body odors and itch of heavy brocade….. but c’mon man! this is the Cheese Castle we’re talkin’!

Cheese!

After taking a few clandestine licks at the stately block walls and confirming– sadly— that the Castle wasn’t actually made of cheese, we sit down to lunch at the Mars Tavern.

We are delighted to find a community vat of creamy sharp cheddar stationed on the bar and wonder aloud why we can’t have one of these, say, at Alex’s Bar, hmmm?
I’ll tell ya why—Probably because you goddamn hipsters would dose it with X or defile it with American Spirit butts, that’s why!!

We can’t have anything nice back home!!

We waddle back to the car, dizzy from fromage overload, and prepare for the rest of the ride up to Green Bay.

We do these little target weekenders, and it’s one anchor night that starts the ball rolling.
And then we unfold the road map and draw a 300 mile radius arc, try to find another town that’ll have us for a second show—

Milwaukee, Madison, Detroit, Indianapolis….what lucky town will get us this time around?

What fearless promoter, he of faith and vision, will book us with wild dreams of a packed house and after hours handjobs, only to have to tearfully pay us the guarantee despite the shameful turnout?

Some guidance from the Destroy Everything boys lead us to contact Mr. James up yonder, and he assures us this is a town we should play.
He tells us of sincere fans, some of them actually preferring the Enigma releases to the hardcore stuff!
This we gotta see.

We’ve never been, and the fact that the Packers are playing the Vikings on this date seals the deal.

So we put the game on the radio and watch the Cheese Castle growing smaller in the rearview mirror, like a block of Velveeta suffering in the bowels of a microwave.
We aim for Lambeau, the plan to meet up with James by halftime.

Driving North, with the Fall colors bursting from the trees, and the inevitable raindrops starting to baptize the windshield, we listen to an uneven first half.
The Vikings score again in the 2nd, and our boys can only respond with a FG.
We fear going into a town that has just seen its beloved team drop its first game of the season.
They will be in no mood for our shenanigans, surely!

The Packers are down a TD going into the half, but a late 45 yd field goal pulls them within 4 by halftime.
We pile into Lambeau with high hopes, and though the game is being played in Minnesota, the stadium is still alive with adrenaline…..

It is a stunning complex, and we are amazed to find free parking and an open atrium that—get this—actually welcomes its fans!

Say, what do ya think would happen if you tried this at Dodger Stadium or the Coliseum, eh?
Go ahead, stroll around those joints on a game day without a ticket and you’re gonna wake at the USC Medical Center with the ‘ol LAPD resisting arrest knot throbbing on forehead!

We check the Mall sized Packers Store, and the usual hijinks ensue:

And now we’re talking! They have their own Sportsbar right there in Lambeau, and we skip in merrily as the second half starts.

We meet with our gracious hosts James and Chris, and we are promptly sat down before buckets of fried cheese and icy pints of Pale Ales……we would rather be no place else.

The Packers catch fire, and score 20 unanswered points in the 3rd.
James regales us with stories of the bands that have passed through town, the shows he’s put on and what it’s like to live in Green Bay.
These guys are proper gentlemen, and it’s been worth the drive just to meet them.

Of course, the Packers get the win, and we celebrate by crashing the Kiddie’s game arcade and acting like the happy fools we are!

But what was that? Oh right, we’re here in town to do a show!
So we make our way across town to Phatheadz and reunite with our beloved knuckleheads in Destroy Everything to start the night rollin!

We meet a dozen great people right away, and James wasn’t kidding:
These guys know good music when they hear it, goofy haircuts or not!

It feels like a magical night, and we hear stories, flattering stories of how much they enjoyed the records and how they wished certain friends could be here with them.

But it is our pleasure-truly-to be allowed into their town, and as the Destroy boys roar into their set, we toast the night and this town all over again.

The cheese, the beer, the football—It’s been a grand weekend!
And it’s the perfect capper, to be able to climb onstage and play a few songs for these people.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back home, back to the realities of sitting in motherfuckin’ LA traffic or sighing through a stack of meaningless papers next to a searing computer monitor.

But for now, tonight, we’re a continent away and playing to a decent crowd of new friends on a rainy cold night in Green Bay.

You wish you could freeze certain times of your life, don’t ya?
You wish that you could keep them in your pocket for a time when you need a reminder of how good it can really be.

Ah, Chicago, you drunken slut of a town—-God How we missed ya!

The hair is dyed, the pajamas are packed, and we’ve stashed enough Immodium and Zantac to see us through the upcoming weekend.

A plan to meet up with ol pals in Destroy Everything, a gig Saturday at Reggie’s, and then a quick jaunt up to Green Bay for a Sunday nighter: Downbeat right after the Packers demolish the Vikings…….!

Fond memories come flooding back:

Taking in a late season Cubs game, years before they installed lighting at Wrigley.
We were thrilled to see people stream out of the office buildings at 11 am on a Wednesday, already tearing neckties from collar and downing beers as they walked
to the ballpark.

No matter that the team was a good 21 games out of first, these people were gonna go see their goddamn team through til the end, not like the dismal late season attendance of Southern California ballparks…hell no!
It made us ashamed of our own city.

Where was our goddamned commitment to blowing off work, drinking during the day and cheering on a team with no chance to play the post season—huh?!

Afterward, sitting in the Cubby Bear, with the August sun still high in the sky and pitchers of Old Style sweating on the table, Drummer Noal has the charisma and steadiness of hand to pierce a curious waitress’ supple pink bosom with a match-blackened safety pin.
The charmed lass looks at her newly accesorized nipple in wonder, then scampers off to the kitchen to show the rest of the gals

Our work here is done!

We’d stay the week at our dear old pals the Suckows, and Mr Mike would graciously allow us to grill Brats in the backyard while he was at work, only to come home and find we’d drank all the Extra Old Style in the house…..

Then he’d shoo us off to spend our days at the lake, Barbecueing chicken thighs at the Articles of Faith picnic spot and swimming in the strangely salt free waters of Lake Michigan!

Late nights exploring the exotic drinking locales, ordering another round in disbelief at 4 fuckin a.m.!
Have we gone to heaven?!, we’d ask each other over generous buckets of Jack and tinkiling ice cubes.

One night Doug and I jumped out of the Blue and White, had the fellas go around the block while we ran inside 1,000 Liquors to grab a 12 pack.
Once inside the store, we discovered a doorway that lead right into a proper dive bar connected to the store!
We were thrilled as teens finding a black garbage bag full of Hustlers in the riverbed underpass.

One by one, the rest of the fellas would jump out of the van to find out where the hell we were, only to order up a highball themselves and pull up a stool.

Poor Jackie, behind the wheel, cursed to inevitably circle the block solo, finally double parked our van full of gear and succumbed to the siren call of bourbon and lager as well….good times!

And yeah—Mr. Smartass!—–we’ve actually played some more recent gigs as well.

Memories Bar, 2007:

Riotfest, 2005

What is it about this town that makes us act unabashedly like the kook tourists we really are?

Waiting 2 hours in line to get to the top of Sears tower?
Eating overpriced veal chops at Harry Caray’s?

—count us in!

And so we’re heading back once more, to visit a nuttly little town that we love.

And like that one funny Uncle, the one who only sees you maybe every third Christmas, his schedule determined by parole board or shady out of state employment, we’ll come back bearing gifts.

He smells faintly of Old Spice and Old Grandad, and hugs you overlong before holding you at arms length and looking you over with sparkling eyes.
And then he says it, just like the last time and the time before that: he wonders at how much you’ve changed, but how ya never looked better!

Extra Pix courtesy of MXV @ Punk Vault