mute's New Writeups

Smoking pot behind the theater (idea)

2001-09-19T18:28:36Z

Before work, sometimes, at Shattuck Cinemas but usually after, or while on break, any combination of Eljen, Brian, Nancy (the cute blonde who waitressed at the fifties style diner next door), some random person that someone else knew, and I would head out the back exit past crushed boxes, rows of the little brooms and dustpans with long handles that ushers use to clean the individual theaters, and down the stairs, to stand with the back door open, half in on the carpet filthy with the careless spittle from years of cigarettes and weed, and half out, on the back avenue, trees and streetlight orbs, one street off of Shattuck Ave., main drag, downtown Berkeley, California.

The first hit of good West Coast green always stills me. The streetlight flooding through the leaves of a tree turning two-dimensional in that well-known optical illusion of stoners. The image becomes archetypal; a memory to weep at as an old man decades from now. Brian's talent continually burst…

Nerd rap (thing)

2001-09-17T18:06:34Z

Not really a genre, or even a sub-genre of hip-hop, or rap; so much as a term used to designate the dense, heavily artistic, neurotic, verbose, and above all intelligent works of artists like MC Paul Barman, Buck65, Del tha Funky Homosapian or, hell, even Kool Keith to some extent.

The subject matter of nerd rap tends towards what's usually on the minds of nerds themselves: sex (from the point of view of someone who is NOT themselves getting any), avant garde cinema, baseball, etc.

Anticon (thing)

2001-09-17T14:31:07Z

A West coast hip-hop collective based in Berkeley, CA. Anticon counts among its members Buck65, Sole, DoseOne, DJ Mayonnaise, Jel, Alias, and others. Members of Anticon come from such far-flung locales as Nova Scotia, Vancouver, and Northern Minnesota.

The style of Anticon's music is typically characterised by kind of warped, relatively lo-fi production values and totally unconventional lyrics and delivery. Buck65, especially, is the master of low-key nerd rap. Don't let MTV foist off that watered-down N.E.R.D on you.

Phone Losers of America (thing)

2001-09-14T18:04:19Z

The most hilarious phone phreaking-and-scams 'zine ever. It actually very rarely had anything to do with phreaking, usually focusing on making the lives of various people (telephone operators, police, telephone linemen, a jerk named Chris Tomkinson, and a big stupid redneck named Dino Allsman) miserable in a high-tech way and having a great time in the process.

While they claim that "PLA has never been any kind of organization or group!", the zine was largely written by a group of people who did seem to know each other quite well, going to h/p cons like HoHoCon, Defcon, etc. while the rest of us just read about their exploits and sat around like idiots wishing that we knew Nekkid Amy.

Most of the action in the phone losers centered around RedBoxChiliPepper, or RBCP, and his girlfriend (wife?) Colleen Card. They moved around a lot and seemed to devote their lives to goofing off and getting things for free, like some kind of modern-day Yippies.…

system failure (thing)

2001-09-14T17:31:58Z

A wonderful and now defunct 'zine that sprung from the ashes of the Phone Losers of America. The focus became less about phreaking and general mischief and more about serious phreaking and a little hacking. If I remember correctly a girl named Pinguino was one of the editors-cum-contributors.

Shattuck Cinemas (place)

2001-09-13T22:28:07Z

A movie theater located on Shattuck Ave. in downtown Berkeley, CA. It is the largest Berkeley theater in the Landmark Cinemas chain, with 10, or maybe 11 screens. The Shattuck theater tends to show movies that are on the fringes of the mainstream.
It is far superior to the mind-numbing United Artists (or "UA") theater one block down the street that shows strictly mainstream fare, but, because of it's proximity to that theater, is frequently confused with it by semi-retarded theater-goers who wish to watch whatever drivel is currently number one at the box office. This confusion has prompted the creation at the Shattuck of little black buttons that read "The UA theater is down the street".
The people who work at the Shattuck, and, indeed, at all the Landmark Theaters in Berkeley tend to be wonderful, gifted, and unique. Especially Aurelea, who is beautiful as well.