VULTURE: [Carrie] caused deep worry that was somehow hidden by the movie crews’ obsession with John’s addiction rather than her own. Carrie—younger than the others—was intensely fragile. She was generous, brilliant, witty, charismatic, caring—and deeply vulnerable: friends could see that. When they all got to the Belushis’ Vineyard house, “my brother was most concerned about her. He had to carry her limp body from room to room. I guess she was conscious enough that he didn’t call an ambulance, but he had a strong sense that she was really out of it.”

It was during that spate of days on the Vineyard, that John, in a moment alone with Carrie, stared at her and said, “You’re like me. We’re not like them.” Meaning he and Carrie had an addiction propensity—a disease, though it unfortunately wasn’t acknowledged that way at the time—deeper than their friends’ ability to enjoy “recreational” drugs without paying a price. He wanted her to know that he knew this and she should know it, too. In 2009, she remembered John’s words as if they’d been uttered yesterday, she told Vanity Fair’s Ned Zeman. On the night of March 4, 1982, Carrie was back in New York with Paul. Michael O’Donoghue and his girlfriend, Carol Caldwell, were living in L.A. now, while Michael worked on the script of Easy Rider Two (which was never produced) with Bert Schneider. Carol, a writer for the edgy monthly New Times, as well as for Rolling Stone and Esquire, was writing screenplays. Carol was friends with Judy Belushi. Judy, who was now back on Martha’s Vineyard, was worried about her husband, who was staying at the Chateau Marmont, working on a script with Don Novello, best known as the SNL character Father Guido Sarducci.

Judy Belushi knew that Carol and Michael were “very close” to John, and she put Carol in charge of checking in with John every day. Penelope Spheeris, a documentary filmmaker close to Carol who knew Judy had put Carol in charge of John, called Carol at 6:00 a.m. “Did you talk to John last night?” she asked. When Carol said no, Penelope said, “I think you’d better call over to the Chateau and see if you can speak to him.” There was a short list of people whom the hotel operator was authorized to put through to his room, and Carol’s name was on it. When she was turned down, “I called Judy,” Carol recalls. It was 9:00 a.m. East Coast time, “and said, ‘I can’t get through to him.’” The Belushis’ assistant called Carol and said, “‘Carol, you’ve got to go over there. They’ve found him, with a needle in his arm.’ We knew John was terrified of needles.”

“And then the nightmare began,” Carol says. Belushi, who’d been partying the night before with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, had overdosed by way of a “speedball”—a cocaine-heroin injection, provided by a dealer named Cathy Evelyn Smith. It was nearing noon in New York when the phone rang in Paul Simon’s apartment. Another SNL staffer was there with Paul and Carrie. They were about to hop in the sauna. The friend on the phone said, “Turn on TV—now!” There was the news: John Belushi was dead. At thirty-three. MORE

Or maybe he’s the William Carlos Williams of SEPTA. Or the Carl Sandburg of SEPTA. Either way, his name is Mark Fuller and he gives mass transit rhyme and reason. From Scrapple TV, our partners in new media crime.

We duly deputized the gang from Panic Hour as our Geek Space Correspondents and sent them to Wizard World to ask the really hard questions nobody has the guts to ask anymore. No geeks were hurt in the making of this video. Special thanks to Scrapple TV/Woodshop Films, our partners in new media crime.

Photo by LAUREN M. WAKSMAN

Folks, we got trouble right here in Philadelphia. Trouble with a capital “T.” And that rhymes with “C” and that stands for CORRUPTION. All the major institutions in this city are wretched hives of patronage hires, hacks and shady backroom deals. There is zero accountability for the police, the unions, the politicians and don’t even get us started on the PPA. There is just one candidate running for City Council that aims to do something about it. His name is N. A. Poe and he is running on a platform of pulling back the curtains of secrecy and letting the disinfecting sunlight shine on our institutions, of holding police, prosecutors and the PPA accountable and the restoring the long-trammeled civil rights of the citizenry of our fair city. Though his opponents and the media may paint him as a joke candidate, a Wavy Gravy-style jester promising unicorns and free doobies for all, N.A. Poe is in fact a very intelligent, sincere and well-spoken young man and his cause is just and righteous. It is for these reasons that Phawker has formally endorsed his candidacy. Perhaps we are tilting at windmills, but we’d rather go down fighting for what we believe in than surrender to the hopelessness of the corrupt and contented. You may say that we are dreamers, but we are not the only ones. More will come after us, and more after them. Every day the old ways die a little more. Real change is as inevitable as the status quo is unsustainable. We urge you to think long and hard about who you are voting for on Tuesday and what they represent. Is it just more of the same? How’s that workin’ out for ya? The messenger of change is knocking on your door, Philadelphia. The question is, are you going to let him in?

PHAWKER: Handicap your chances of getting elected to City Council. What is the likelihood of an N.A. Poe siiting in the at-large seat in City Council this time next year?

N.A. POE: If I was a betting man, I’d say the odds are about as likely as the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series this year or about as likely that 19 guys with box cutters hijacked four planes on 9-11. But seriously, it’s up to the people of Philadelphia. I’ve given them an unique opportunity to actually create real change and shock this corrupt system to it’s core. I’m on the ballot, so now it’s in the hands of the voters to decide if they are fed up enough to elect a wildcard like myself. I would be shocked if I won, but stranger things have happened. Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger were elected as governors for chrissakes.

PHAWKER: You are running as the pro-civil liberties/anti-corruption platform. Can you break that down and tell us what you are fighting for and what you are fighting against.

N.A. POE: The best way I can help protect the rights of Philadelphians is by exposing the backroom deals between union bosses, corporate interests, and politicians which make rule of law such a joke here. The first thing is to immediately reconvene the Ethics Committee which has not met since 1993, and it must be both given real teeth by President Clarke as well as total independence from his influence over normal Council rules. The meetings will be filmed, entirely public, and held weekly, even if I have them alone in my office, as long as I am in Council.

I’m running for common sense public safety policies, like marijuana decriminalization and putting cameras on cops to reduce complaints and excessive use of force. I want funding immediately stopped to the fusion center surveillance complex in South Philly. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is a parasite and needs to go, along with all the Vichy Republicans who control and play ball with the union’s boys, who also have to go. A new or reformed agency, with over 300 million bucks in gross assets and enormous revenue rededicated, could serve as a large part of the solution to the funding crisis for Philly schools.

PHAWKER: In 2013 you were arrested during a pro-pot legalization rally on Independence Mall — the very cradle of personal liberty — for igniting the wrong kind of leaf and then inhaling the ensuing smoke. For this you were tackled by three park rangers, hogtied and thrown into jail for five days. Why were you held for so long after your arrest? Please summarize the disposition of your case from arrest to now.

N.A. POE: I was held for five days after my arrest because the U.S. Attorney and the park rangers framed me up on charges of assaulting a federal officer, which was complete horseshit and did not happen. I eventually took a plea deal and copped to disorderly conduct, interfering with agency function and possession of marijuana. I then waited seven excruciating months to be sentenced on the charges and am currently five months into a one year probation term. They’ve tried multiple times to silence me throughout probation and continue to stalk my social media pages, doing their best to stifle my right to free speech, which is appalling. They have went as far as dragging me back into court to demand that I no longer associate with The Panic Hour, which I created. They’ve tried to force me to not live with my girlfriend because she’s an activist as well. The Feds have made it their mission to break the law and stomp on my rights to prevent me from organizing people in acts of protest against unjust laws. I’ve had my ups and downs with probation and will not shut up and they hate it. Fuck ’em.

PHAWKER:  Last month you were scheduled to make a statement of support at the Darrin Manning hearing outside Family Court, but at the last minute you were called in to see your probation officer at the exact time you were scheduled to speak. Coincidence? Harassment? Do you think it infuriates prosecutors that you are running for office to overturn the law that ensnared you in the criminal justice system in the first place?

N.A. POE: It’s most likely a coincidence, but that doesn’t mean the probation office doesn’t bust my balls constantly. I’m pretty sure that my probation officer gets his marching orders directly from Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Goldberg. He’s a good little lapdog. They deny my right to travel, to speak and work. I have weekly pee tests, house visits, they even go as far as to monitor my free speech on the internet. The lengths these fascists will go to silence my activism and dissent is disgusting. It’s my job as an activist and a comedian to push their buttons. I’m sure it makes them sick that I am running for City Council and that they have to see my face plastered all over the media. They can try their best but they will never break my spirit or stop me from using my humor as a weapon. I sent my prosecutor an autographed copy of my Metro cover story the other day and thanked him for the inspiration to work within the system to change the law. I hope the cocksucker couldn’t digest his lunch because of it.

PHAWKER: It is clear there is zero accountability of the the Philadelphia Police department. The ‘Tainted Justice’ cops walked, Lt. Josey got his job back after sucker punching a woman on video that went viral, there are hundreds of complaints lodged against almost every police precinct in the city for brutality or harassment. And on it goes. If elected, what would you do to reign in the cops?

N.A. POE: It’s obvious to anyone that is paying attention that there are police everywhere and justice nowhere. The whole country is turning into a fucking police state. A day doesn’t go by where you don’t hear a story about crooked cops or police corruption. There is no accountability and they operate with impunity. As a Councilman, I will propose that all police in Philly be required to wear cameras on their uniforms. The police in Rialto, California, are required to do this. In the first year, complaints against the police dropped 88 % and the use of force dropped by 60%. I also think we should stop hiring cops with neck tattoos. I really feel like the requirements to be a police officer have gone downhill and it shows in the quality of officer we are putting on the streets. I know it’s not an easy job and for the most part, I respect the police. Let’s bring some dignity and class back to wearing a badge. What ever happened to protecting and serving the people?

PHAWKER: You are running on the promise to end stop-and-frisk. What do you say to supporters of the policy that say it takes illegal guns off the streets and is responsible for significantly lowering the once-skyrocketing murder rate in the city?

N.A. POE: I would say that the numbers in around this issue flatly contradict both claims. While Philly has understandably touted its reduced murder rate over the past few years, in places like the 22nd District and other “high crime zones,” where people of color are being shaken down without cause, violent crime has in fact gone up. So unless the argument is that harassing black kids in poor neighborhoods has somehow scared them away from killing people in Old City, which would be hard to defend logically and morally, holding on to this policy of terror has no upside.

PHAWKER: You are also running against the so-called ‘fusion centers’ that Homeland Security is setting up across the country. Most people probably don’t even know what I am talking about. Please explain what Fusion Centers are and why you are so opposed.

N.A. POE: Fusion centers can come in lots of forms, from one office in a high-rise to command complexes like Philly’s Delaware Valley Intelligence Center which is located on 600,000 sq ft plot on Oregon Avenue. Fusion centers are supposed to be the solution to the problem that the 9/11 Commission found led to the attack on the WTC not being diverted, which was that intelligence agencies were not sharing information or are sharing it inefficiently. The problem with the DVIC and other fusion centers is that there is very little evidence that they do anything to prevent crime, and they often violate civil rights while not protecting us. The city spent tens of millions to build the center with funding that was suspended for a time for suspected malfeasance, and we need to immediately stop the one million dollar a year commitment to the operation until we at the very least get a lot of answers from Nutter.

PHAWKER: You are a stand-up comedian but I read that you alienated yourself from the local comedy scene for being too social justice-oriented. Please explain.

N.A. POE: Stand-up comedy is where I got my start, so I’ll always be grateful that I learned how to speak in front of crowds, make people laugh and engage an audience because of it . All of those skills have been vital in my development as a performance artist, satirist and now a politician. But to be honest, it bores me to death as an art form. The repetition, the cliques, the dick, fart and rape jokes — it’s just not my scene. Nobody wants to hear my jokes about drone planes and FEMA camps in this town and you know what, I don’t blame em. People want to be entertained and most of the time the lowest common denominator is what they’re looking for to escape the doldrums of their daily lives. I’ve always been inspired by dudes like Lenny Bruce, Abbie Hoffman and Hunter S. Thompson, guys that lived their act. That’s what I’m trying to do in my own way. I would eventually like to transcend the idea of what a comedian does, blur some of the lines.

PHAWKER: One of your campaign promises is to dismantle the PPA. Is that not controlled by the state? Assuming that’s feasible, how would you replace the school funding that PPA tickets and fees provide?

N.A. POE: The line “Abolish the PPA” is really for effect, in that I cannot personally vote for that as a councilman. However, with the potential of Democrat, and possibly a local Democrat in Harrisburg, practical steps might soon be taken to make more of our money not just in tickets but in taxes altogether stay here in Philly.

We need an income generator to fund schools, the PPA is an income generator to fund the PPA salaries and pay for vehicles, buildings, and equipment, is sent off to the Commonwealth for pet projects of the Governor’s friends, and trickles back to the general fund with scraps going to schools after the machine has its fill. Council just raised parking rates a dollar, yet this year they will give $ 4 million dollars less than last year to the schools. So no matter what, I will speak out, lobby, fundraise, and campaign to end the predatory relationship between Philly’s parking enforcers and Philadelphians. We definitely need the Parking Authority’s money for schools, I would also accept them immediately agreeing to provide it.

PHAWKER: Like the police, unions are out of control in this town — and I say this as a firm supporter of the concept of unions as bulwarks against the greed and abusive labor practices of the owners of capital. Because I think that the behavior of certain Philadelphia unions feeds into the Koch Brothers narrative that unions are greedy, corrupt and thuggish, and that only serves to turn more and more of the work force away from unions, which is a major reason that unions are in decline and so too is the middle class. What can/should be done?

N.A. POE: Unions are supposed to be a foil to the power of money, in Philly it has become the pigs in the farmhouse, oinking and swilling and no different to the eye than the exiled farmer. Johnny Doc and his lieutenants brag about their power and Emma Goldman would be rolling in her grave. The first thing you do is elect me to City Council, and then elect others who do not owe their jobs to the Dougherty cartel. If Ed Neilson is elected that’s three seats Johnny Doc might as well hold himself. This is simple and seems impossible in Philly, but I’m running so that people see that there is an alternative to the machine.

PHAWKER: If you don’t win, what comes next for N.A. Poe?

N.A. POE: Regardless of what happens, the experience of running this campaign and being able to do it with such an intelligent group of dedicated people has been priceless. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ll do next and I’ll probably take a little breather when this wraps up. I have a great partnership with Scrapple TV, they have been essential in helping us create campaign propaganda and I will continue to create content with those wackos. I will be starting a weekly podcast with them over the summer. I will most likely run for public office again in the near future, maybe for mayor and will use this experience and what I’ve learned from it to come back bigger and stronger. I will continue to host shows, protests and events and remain active in my criticism of politics in Philly. I really wanna do some traveling once probation wraps and take my work to a national level. To me, building a career means never letting one project define your work. It’s been a crazy year for me and I look forward to whatever happens next.

THE FLAMING LIPS  new digital release, FLAMING SIDE OF THE MOON is live now in digital form. Designed as an immersive companion piece to the original 1973 album, DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, listeners are encouraged to listen to the new LIPS album while listening to DARK SIDE at the same time. FLAMING SIDE OF THE MOON was also carefully crafted to sync up perfectly with the 1939 film, THE WIZARD OF OZ. For ideal listening conditions, fans are encouraged to seek out the original Alan Parsons’ engineered quadraphonic LP mix of DARK SIDE, but it will work with the album on any format. Available now through all participating digital outlets. As previously announced, a strictly limited edition 100 vinyl copies will be distributed to friends and family of THE FLAMING LIPS.

PREVIOUSLY: Last night the Flaming Lips unveiled the more-awesome-than-you-could-possibly-imagine reboot of their stage show, which replaces the happy-happy-joy-joy bliss rallies they’ve been staging for the past decade. Gone are the balloons and blood and bubble-walking and the dancing Santa Clauses and the big hands that shoot lasers. In its place — well, fact is it defies words, you really had to be there — but calling it H.R. Giger meets Hanna-Barbera on the dark side of the moonhenge isn’t that far from accurate. Frizzy-brained frontman Wayne Coyne conducted the proceedings from high atop a lumpy mound-like perch festooned with bifurcated mirror balls and long, winding tentacles of LED lights pulsating this way and that in time to the music. Behind him was a bedazzling beaded curtain of luminous diodes that pulsated and projected things both Freudian and phantasmagoric. The music, too, has changed mightily. Most of last night’s set was drawn from the vast, cold, Krautrock-ian wastes of the new album, The Terror, a desolate, forbidding totem of paranoia, fear and loathing — in short, it’s the feel good bummer of the year. Which you’d think would be tough, if not impossible, to sell to a beery festival audience on a gorgeous Indian Summer night on the Delaware. But if any band can do it, it’s the motherfucking Flaming Lips, 21st century ambassadors of peace and magic from Oklahoma by way of Neptune. And they did it with humor, charm and an unconditional love that renders them more powerful than you can possibly imagine, not to mention uncommonly lyrical and sophisticated musicianship. Even Coyne’s off-key step-on-a-dog’s-paw yelp has morphed into a remarkably expressive and tuneful instrument. This was readily apparent during the float-y, elegiac readings of “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” and “Do You Realize,” that somehow resisted the urge to launch into interstellar overdrive, as per usual. Whenever the music would bog down into long, inconsolably sad passages, Coyne would exhort the crowd to cheer — the sadder the music, the louder the audience must cheer, he said. As if to say, ‘C’mon people, we can get through this if we stick together.’ And so we did. At one point between songs, Coyne nervously eyed the Ben Franklin Bridge looming majestic in the near-distance and worried aloud that some driver would be distracted by the Lips strobe-flashed psychotropic spectacle, lose control and plunge into the inky depths of the Delaware. “If a car drives off that bridge,” he said, “I’m going to stop and we’re gonna go rescue them.” Everyone cheered in agreement. He said it as a joke, but he wasn’t really kidding. And neither were we. –JONATHAN VALANIA

PREVIOUSLY: We’d been traversing the spine of Tornado Alley for the last two hours when the stewardess announced that we would be landing in Oklahoma City in a few minutes, and that we should fasten our seatbelts and return our minds to the upright position, when the drugs took hold. We are, as the saying goes, off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Odd—or, if you prefer, the Wizard of OK, a.k.a. Wayne Coyne, frizzy-brained mainman of the Flaming Lips, the P.T. Barnum Of The Stoned, a.k.a. The Man Who Had A Headache And Accidentally Saved The World. Why? Because, because, because of the wonderful things he does, of course. The balloons. The confetti. The blood. The boobies. The strobes and the smoke and the bunny costumes and the dancing Santas. The blood. The crowd-surfing bubble-walking. The giant hands that shoot laser beams. The blood. The limited-edition marijuana-flavored brains inside a gummy skull. The rocket ship he built in his backyard. The way he’s made a 30-year career—spanning 15 albums, 18 EPs, 22 soundtrack appearances and exactly one hit song—feel like one million billionth of a second on a Sunday morning that you’ll never get back, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. MORE

In conjunction Scrapple TV, our partner in New Media crime, Phawker sat down with Flaming Lips mainman Wayne Coyne on his tour bus a few hours before their performance at the Festival Pier last month and rolled film. DISCUSSED: Sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, why the new Lips album is so goddamned dark, why he has Nick Cave’s blood, the story behind the Wayne Coyne Hand Grenade Incident, how he got Erykah Badu naked and covered in cum and glitter, and if he wasn’t the lead singer of the Flaming Lips what would have he done with his life. The answer may surprise you.

Psyched to see our former colleague and Scrapple News anchorman AP Ticker, aka Frank Baker, on the cover of PW this week. AP Ticker is, among other things, The Second Most Interesting Man In The World (after the Dos Equis guy).

PW: Sounds like Ticker is quite the unsung pioneer of television news. “He actually coined the phrase, ‘We’ll be right back,’” continues Baker. “Until then, it had been very awkward for anchormen. Because they would say, ‘We’re going to be here, but we’re going to a commercial now, but we’re not actually going to leave.’ It was very long. And I just came on one day and said, ‘We’ll be right back,’ and boy, it caught on.” Frank Baker, you see, is AP Ticker. And as he sits chatting here in the Woodshop Films studio on Green Street with its owner, Marc Brodzik, and writer Brendan Skwire, it quickly becomes hard to separate fantasy from reality. Here’s what’s certain: These guys all help run the online network Scrapple TV, which is based in this studio. On the network, there’s a show called Scrapple News, anchored by a 70-year-old character named AP Ticker who takes great pleasure in shredding the news into a million pieces about once a week. MORE

In conjunction Scrapple TV, our partner in New Media crime, Phawker sat down with Flaming Lips mainman Wayne Coyne on his tour bus a few hours before their performance at the Festival Pier last month and rolled film. DISCUSSED: Sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, why the new Lips album is so goddamned dark, why he has Nick Cave’s blood, the story behind the Wayne Coyne Hand Grenade Incident, how he got Erykah Badu naked and covered in cum and glitter, and if he wasn’t the lead singer of the Flaming Lips what would have he done with his life. The answer may surprise you.

PREVIOUSLY: Last night the Flaming Lips unveiled the more-awesome-than-you-could-possibly-imagine reboot of their stage show, which replaces the happy-happy-joy-joy bliss rallies they’ve been staging for the past decade. Gone are the balloons and blood and bubble-walking and the dancing Santa Clauses and the big hands that shoot lasers. In its place — well, fact is it defies words, you really had to be there — but calling it H.R. Giger meets Hanna-Barbera on the dark side of the moonhenge isn’t that far from accurate. Frizzy-brained frontman Wayne Coyne conducted the proceedings from high atop a lumpy mound-like perch festooned with bifurcated mirror balls and long, winding tentacles of LED lights pulsating this way and that in time to the music. Behind him was a bedazzling beaded curtain of luminous diodes that pulsated and projected things both Freudian and phantasmagoric. The music, too, has changed mightily. Most of last night’s set was drawn from the vast, cold, Krautrock-ian wastes of the new album, The Terror, a desolate, forbidding totem of paranoia, fear and loathing — in short, it’s the feel good bummer of the year. Which you’d think would be tough, if not impossible, to sell to a beery festival audience on a gorgeous Indian Summer night on the Delaware. But if any band can do it, it’s the motherfucking Flaming Lips, 21st century ambassadors of peace and magic from Oklahoma by way of Neptune. And they did it with humor, charm and an unconditional love that renders them more powerful than you can possibly imagine, not to mention uncommonly lyrical and sophisticated musicianship. Even Coyne’s off-key step-on-a-dog’s-paw yelp has morphed into a remarkably expressive and tuneful instrument. This was readily apparent during the float-y, elegiac readings of “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” and “Do You Realize,” that somehow resisted the urge to launch into interstellar overdrive, as per usual. Whenever the music would bog down into long, inconsolably sad passages, Coyne would exhort the crowd to cheer — the sadder the music, the louder the audience must cheer, he said. As if to say, ‘C’mon people, we can get through this if we stick together.’ And so we did. At one point between songs, Coyne nervously eyed the Ben Franklin Bridge looming majestic in the near-distance and worried aloud that some driver would be distracted by the Lips strobe-flashed psychotropic spectacle, lose control and plunge into the inky depths of the Delaware. “If a car drives off that bridge,” he said, “I’m going to stop and we’re gonna go rescue them.” Everyone cheered in agreement. He said it as a joke, but he wasn’t really kidding. And neither were we. – JONATHAN VALANIA

PREVIOUSLY: We’d been traversing the spine of Tornado Alley for the last two hours when the stewardess announced that we would be landing in Oklahoma City in a few minutes, and that we should fasten our seatbelts and return our minds to the upright position, when the drugs took hold. We are, as the saying goes, off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Odd—or, if you prefer, the Wizard of OK, a.k.a. Wayne Coyne, frizzy-brained mainman of the Flaming Lips, the P.T. Barnum Of The Stoned, a.k.a. The Man Who Had A Headache And Accidentally Saved The World. Why? Because, because, because of the wonderful things he does, of course. The balloons. The confetti. The blood. The boobies. The strobes and the smoke and the bunny costumes and the dancing Santas. The blood. The crowd-surfing bubble-walking. The giant hands that shoot laser beams. The blood. The limited-edition marijuana-flavored brains inside a gummy skull. The rocket ship he built in his backyard. The way he’s made a 30-year career—spanning 15 albums, 18 EPs, 22 soundtrack appearances and exactly one hit song—feel like one million billionth of a second on a Sunday morning that you’ll never get back, and you wouldn’t have it any other way. MORE

Fossil Collective » The Flaming Lips “Do You Realize??” from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Illustration by COREY ADAMS

BY AMY Z. QUINN Well, poopies, it seems like only yesterday that your Citizen Mom was here begging Britney and Lindsay to please put away their vaginas, thanks. But that was way back in 2006, LaLohan is sober for the upteenth time and Britney is a single mom working the 9-to-5 shift at the dream factory. They grow up so fast. Well, they age, anyway, usually far beyond their years. And so will Miley, which is why I tend to believe her wide-eyed protestations to the Today Show that her naked-licking antics are just her being herself. Because herself is a 20-year-old with a lot of money and a smokin’ hot bod who just wants to get her freak on.

Is that so wrong?

Of course it’s not, any more than it was wrong when Sinead shaved her head and engaged in antics — clothed antics, but antics to be sure — in her twenties. The difference being that when Sinead tore up that picture of Pope John Paul II, it still seemed vaguely punk rock even if it was happening on “Saturday Night Live” and kind of made you roll your eyes. (History has more than vindicated her on that. —  The Ed.)

In Cyrus’ most recent SNL turn, the cold open skit involved Old Miley trying to warn her younger self about a VMA’s performance that would ruin America. It was funny enough, and it’s clear Miley is in on the jokes.

But it doesn’t feel punk rock so much as a career path we’ve seen the young, beautiful and talented travel too many times already. It’s so familiar you can practically pull it up on Google Maps.

“It all went exactly as we planned,” she told the Today show this morning.

Miley had already tipped her hand in the opening monologue, wearing that goofy cropped-top houndstooth Barbie suit: Hannah Montana’s been murdered by Miley Cyrus. Give Miley credit enough for understanding that we all have to slay our adolescent selves in some way before we can grow up.

If we’re lucky, and we haven’t killed too much of it with sex and drugs and all of the other foolish things young women do, the best parts of ourselves live on. If we’re not lucky? Ask Tara Reid.

Now, about that letter: What can I say … Sinead gonna Sinead. That open letter wasn’t bullying or shaming or girl-on-girl crime, it was an earnest and well intentioned act performed in the most cringeworthy and uncomfortable way possible. Again, vaguely punk rock. I believe that “spirit of motherliness and love” part. Maybe that’s what happens when punk rock gets old. It has some great points, and would have made for a terrific come-to-Jesus conversation, woman to women, maybe over a nice joint or a couple of Xanax and an Entenmann’s cake. Instead, it happened on Facebook.

You also said in Rolling Stone that your look is based on mine. The look I chose, I chose on purpose at a time when my record company were encouraging me to do what you have done. I felt I would rather be judged on my talent and not my looks. I am happy that I made that choice, not least because I do not find myself on the proverbial rag heap now that I am almost 47 yrs of age..

That’s some self-aware, slightly cynical, Connie-Britton-on-Nashville-level stuff! And:

Your records are good enough for you not to need any shedding of Hannah Montana. She’s waaaaaaay gone by now.. Not because you got naked but because you make great records.

None of us can know if Miley’s wildness will inevitably end in ruin and mental illness, as Sinead suggested. That was as cruel as it was when Miley, in turn, mocked the Irish singer’s battle with bipolar disorder and compared her to Amanda Bynes. Miley is talented enough — her singing is legit and those years of Hannah Montana sitcomming have left her with good comic timing, the same Disney Channel training that makes Justin Timberlake’s many SNL turns so good. That Boehner-Bachmann parody of her “We Can’t Stop” video was as “Lazy Sunday” funny and twice as timely.

Actually, I like this guy’s approach:

Never mind Sinead and Annie, I think the biggest question about this Miley Cyrus stuff is why hasn’t her godmother Dolly Parton stepped in?

— Ryan Nelson (@RyanJohnNelson) October 7, 2013

After all, Dolly Parton is God.

Artwork via CARGO COLLECTIVE

PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: Reader commenting on Philly.com has also been around since the late ’90s, but it wasn’t until 2008, following years of internal deliberations and successive regime changes, that the site went all-in and began allowing readers to talk back at the bottom of every article. “Journalism had been a one-way conversation for too long,” says one Philly.com staffer. “It was a good idea to open the door and allow the public to start commenting on our work.”

Well, on paper, maybe. In practice? Not so much. There was some recognition from the get-go that there was going to have to be policing of the comments, to keep salty language out. The front door of Philly.com is guarded by a word filter—like a bouncer at a fancy nightclub—that bars entry to commentary containing the obvious objectionables: curse words, racial slurs, crude pornographic euphemisms, “hundreds and hundreds of words and phrases, some of which I’d never even heard before,” in the words of one former Philly.com staffer. But Philadelphians have ample talent for being shockingly offensive without the help of the F-bomb and the N-word.

“Every now and then,” says another former Philly.com staffer, “we would get a call from the big bosses asking us to delete this or that offensive comment. One time we got a call from [former owner Brian] Tierney wanting to know why there was a comment up on the site that mentioned his wife by name and a reference to ‘ATM.’ We were like, ‘Okay, who’s going to tell Brian Tierney what ATM stands for?’”

The only way to guarantee that no offensive reader comments go up is to have human moderators monitor each and every one. Philly.com averages one new comment a minute.

One option is to do what the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, the Boston Globe and the Gannett chain have done: outsource comment moderation to companies like eModeration and ICUC, which can charge upwards of $40 an hour ($350,000 a year) for 24/7 moderation—a necessity, given that the worst comments invariably arrive in the dead of night.

Thus far, that’s a road Philly.com hasn’t elected to take. Instead, it continues to rely largely on readers to flag objectionable stuff. The downside is that heinous comments can remain on the site, in full public view, for hours, days, even weeks, before disappearing. Moderating the comments on a news portal fed by two city newspapers is a bit like trying to lifeguard a hundred shark-infested pools at the same time. And as the old Pink Floyd song goes, every day the paperboy brings more. MORE

BY JONATHAN VALANIA Garage-punk savant, drone-rock wizard, acid-dazed psychonaut, human ouija board, holy fool of the Internet — Brother JT is a man of many hats. He’s been a puppet, a poet, a pirate, a pawn and king. He’s been up and down and over and out — and he still really likes the LSD thing. (SEE Trippin’ Balls With Brother JT, his lysergic talk show on Scrapple TV) He’s come to tell us all that the emperor has no clothes, the sky is falling, God is great, we’re already dead, and yet despite all that life is beautiful. He’s also leading the protest movement against the war going on in this country about looking good. He plays Johnny Brenda’s Saturday in support of the just-released and most def The Svelteness Of Boogietude (Thrill Jockey) with The Photon Band  featuring prodigal son Art DiFuria and JJL, Jay Laughlin of Lenola fame’s new project. Expect the sorta cerebellum-tickling, zap-your-head psychedelic sturm und drang the good Brother has been cranking out in one form or another for going for going on 25 years. Some nudity implied. To mark the occasion we are re-posting this 2011 interview with the good brother: Discussed: Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK assassination, mental illness, hallucinogens, God, the narrative arc of garage-rock in the Lehigh Valley, his failed cooking show In The Kitchen With Brother JT and the rise and fall of his old band The Original Sins, whose 1987 debut Big Soul was declared one of the best albums of the 1980s by none other than the New York Times.  Dig it!

PHAWKER: Please identify yourself…

BROTHER JT: I am John Terlesky otherwise known as Brother JT. I’m from Easton, Pennsylvania, the year is 2013, the president is Barack Obama.

PHAWKER: Very good, you got them all right! So I thought we would start with some true or false questions. The first one is, true or false: John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald.

BROTHER JT: I’m gonna say false, Pat [Sajak].

PHAWKER: (laughs) Can you elaborate?

BROTHER JT: At this point, it’s just rather unlikely that it was just Lee Harvey; the evidence is pretty staggering if you look at it, but you know, I guess with people these days, it’s about what’s in and what’s in right now is revisionism and contrarianism and it’s been hip to say it’s a conspiracy for 30 years so now we’re gonna say it’s not a conspiracy. That’s how I feel.

PHAWKER: And do you think that assassination is in any way connected to the assassination of Martin Luther King or his brother Robert Kennedy?

BROTHER JT: I don’t know about Martin Luther King but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the assassination of Robert Kennedy was somehow connected to his brother’s assassination. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy seem a little different, and I don’t think it is [connected]. Nobody’s saying James Earle Ray didn’t do it himself, but maybe he was a pawn in somebody else’s game. That’s all I have to say.

PHAWKER: Fair enough. True or false: You’re not really a crazy person; you just play one on stage, and/or You Tube.

BROTHER JT: I think I’m quite sane. Whereas the world at large has got severe mental problems. I would say false, Pat.

PHAWKER: Fair enough. That’s it for the true or false for the moment. I thought we would jump into another big topic that’s near and dear to your heart. I would like to ask you what role psychedelics play in your creative and/or spiritual pursuits.

BROTHER JT: Well, when I discovered psychedelic drugs I was just sort of like a passive, negative kind of guy, a died in the wool nihilist. I just didn’t see much point in anything. Almost instantaneously upon encountering these things and it seems to open up a whole other spectrum with which to view the world and positivity was instant feature of that new world view and that rounds you out a little as an artist or whatever. To be negative all the time and not even recognize the other side of things, it gets boring. As far as spirituality goes it’s kind of the same thing. Before psychedelics I just dismissed anything supernatural. But my involvement with these substances has changed my perspective dramatically, and I’m a believer of something I just don’t quite know what it is. I know that it’s not of this world, another world maybe, another dimension maybe. It’s made me a pretty staunch believer and I am therefore maybe a little less likely to just be callous about this world. You know, because you feel like there’s somewhere else to go to; this world isn’t necessarily such a drag.

PHAWKER: Good to know. Let’s start at the beginning here and sort of get the narrative arc of your biography down, you know, so that future historians will know. So why don’t we start at the beginning: You’re born and raised in the Lehigh Valley, is that correct? Easton?

BROTHER JT: That’s right.

PHAWKER: Can you try and explain, for the reader that has never been there, the Lehigh Valley.

BROTHER JT: Well, it’s about an hour north of Philly and about an hour and a half west of New York. Nestled in very eastern Pennsylvania near the border of New Jersey. Over 100,000+ people in the area. Known as kind of a hub back in the day when the railroads mattered between New York and Philly. It used to be an industrial area for the most part but now the industries have mostly died off and a certain amount of rot has set in. It’s really not a terrible place to live. I like it because its proximity to nature. You can go to a city like Allentown and within 10 minutes you’re can be in the woods, so that’s a nice feature. Not sure what else to say. It kind of went downhill after Route 78 was built, but that’s another story.

PHAWKER: You’re referring to the super highway that was built connecting New York to…

BROTHER JT: Yeah. I think it just became a lot easier for certain elements or people to run down and just more people could come here, basically. The more the merrier they say, but I don’t necessarily agree with that sentiment. I kind of miss when it wasn’t so crowded, but that’s progress.

PHAWKER: Tell me about your upbringing. What did your dad do for a living?

BROTHER JT: My dad was a purchasing agent for the Lehigh Foundry, which made the metal couplings that fit pipes together. He worked there most of his adult life. He served in World War II. He was your average man.

PHAWKER: And what about mom, was she a stay-at-home mom or did she do other work?

BROTHER JT: No, she stayed home. I had two older brothers and one older sister.

PHAWKER: And are any of them involved in the rock and roll arts?

BROTHER JT: Not really, but my brother showed me how to play guitar because he had been in a group in the early 70s. He taught me barre chords and that’s pretty much all you need to know in rock n’ roll. In that respect yeah, he still kind of dabbles a little bit.

PHAWKER: So growing up there you caught the tail end of that post-war “Leave it to Beaver,” American as apple pie existence?

BROTHER JT: Yeah. I remember when you would walk down the street and say “hi” to your neighbors, and they would say “hi” back. You know, suburban life, and that’s what it seemed to be, like what you saw on TV was not that far off. But that was a long time ago.

PHAWKER: And, let’s talk about the beginnings of you making music. You already mentioned your older brother teaching you barre chords; where did it go from there? Where was the next significant event on the timeline?

BROTHER JT: There was always music in the house even though not all my siblings were playing music per se. The Beatles, especially — my brothers would get the records as they came out, and I’d hear them, so they totally had a huge influence on me it seemed to be like Beatles were like the template for everything. It was really alluring. After graduating high school I decided I was going to learn to be a recording engineer and I enrolled in a local school for recording engineers. And one of the projects required you to record a band, so I just kind of had the idea, “Well, maybe I’ll write a song and I’ll play it and then I’ll have the other students play along. That was, I guess, the first song I ever wrote, and it was recorded in 1980.

PHAWKER: What was that called?

BROTHER JT: The song’s called “Lacerations.” It was sort of like a mix between rock and roll-y and David Bowie or something.

PHAWKER: And what grade did you get on it?

BROTHER JT: I don’t know if they even gave out a grade it was just part of a project. It was a good experience, actually. It was nice to have this foundation of knowledge about mixing and tape recorders and microphones.

PHAWKER: (laughs) Okay. And what was the next big notable moment on the timeline?

BROTHER JT: I would probably say that was the Lehigh University Radio Station WLVR. I was a DJ and that’s where I met a lot of like-minded people. That’s where I met Joe Hanna, who owned Play It Again,. He had a band called Senseless Hate with George Smith and Dave Herzog. I played bass, mostly because I had one. We played three gigs, maybe four, and it was sort of a punk rock, well, not really punk because no one was really a punk in that group. It was a parody of punk. We would hang around his record store which had a bulletin board for MUSICIAN WANTED ads and one of the was for a band called The Creatures, saying “we’re looking for someone who can play guitar who knows these groups…” And it was all these groups from the Nuggets compilation. And I knew all those groups. So I applied for that, a guitarist, and it seemed to be working out ok.

PHAWKER: It’s worth pointing out that at this point 60s garage rock was having its first revival of sorts.

BROTHER JT: This was around ‘85. The Lyres were coming up, and Chesterfield Kings and the Cramps. There really was kind of a big thing happening up in New York. There was a “scene,” so to speak, and the Creatures was sort of the Lehigh Valley’s answer to that, I guess.

PHAWKER: Did you play with a band called The Guns?

BROTHER JT: Yeah that was sort of Senseless Hate without Joe. That was George Smith’s thing. Again, we only played three or four shows and then George went on to be in something called Dick Destiny & The Highway Kings. That’s when I joined The Creatures.

PHAWKER: And then came the Original Sins. They were sort of born out of that experience, right, or concurrent with that?

BROTHER JT: I had started writing more and more songs, I wrote a bunch for The Creatures that were in that Nuggets style but I was writing other songs that didn’t really fit the Creatures. So I thought, why not get together another band to play these songs. So I started playing those songs with The Creatures rhythm section, which was Dave Ferrari and Ken Bussiere. The Creatures had a recording session and there was some tape left over and we asked if we could record these other songs and that wound up being the first Original Sins recording session. That would have been about 1986 and out of that came a song called “Just 14” The brother of a friend of mine was just starting up Bar None Records in Hoboken, and he seemed to like it, wanted to put out a single so we needed to put together a group. That’s when we got Dan McKinney on keyboards.

PHAWKER: We should point out here, listeners might not be aware the song “Just 14,” the full lyric was “She’s just 14 and I don’t care,” which still retains its power to shock and offend. And the B-side was “Sugar Sugar” is that correct?

BROTHER JT: That’s right. A trippy, lo-fi version of “Sugar Sugar” that I recorded on my four-track.

PHAWKER: So then the Sins thing sort of starts taking off, and presumably this created some tension in The Creatures and eventually there was a line drawn in the sand.

BROTHER JT: Yeah I guess, I mean what happened was there was a band practice, this is after it was known that “Just 14” was going to be put out by Bar None. I think there was a practice and the other two guys from The Creatures didn’t show up, and we took this as a sign that maybe, well, maybe that’s their way of saying “that’s it,” and that was fine with us. There was never like a scene where it was like “hey, you’re fired” or “we quit.”

PHAWKER: Okay. So now you are “Just 14” comes out, garners a lot of praise and consternation.

BROTHER JT: Yeah, I think that it was coming out like 1987. There was a lot of great underground music coming out. I think what it was that, for me, what I was trying to do was create a Jesus & Mary Chain sound, but instead of a bunch of feedback over pop songs it was a lot of feedback over a Motown R&B thing. It got a lot of rave reviews and sold well enough that Bar None asked us to make an album, which wound up being Big Soul.

PHAWKER: Which the New York Times would later designate as one of the ten best records of the ’80s, correct?

BROTHER JT: I don’t know exactly what the criterion was for that whether it was best unknown records or I don’t know what but…

PHAWKER: I think it was flat out one of the best records.

BROTHER JT: Well, it was very nice of them to say that (laughs).

PHAWKER: But you guys were never really one of these bands that got in a van and just toured constantly, correct?

BROTHER JT: Not at all. I got into this late, by 1987 I was 25. I never went to college or anything so whatever job I could get I would cling to for dear life. It always seemed like everybody in the band was sort of that way. It was hard to just take out off a month from your job if you have a regular job and say “look we’re gonna go on tour,” whereas if you’re 18 or 19 you could do that.

PHAWKER: And at the time you were driving a delivery truck for was it The Morning Call in Easton?

BROTHER JT: It was The Bethlehem Globe Times. But yeah, playing seemed to be the wise thing to do. We had offers occasionally but it was hard for me to tell the other guys, “hey, basically quit your jobs; let’s start doing this for real.” Because I never really felt there was going to be another tour right after that it just wasn’t something you could really count on. Also if you’re a punk band or a ska band or Christian rock band or something, where you have a built in market. I think it’s a lot easier to pull that kind of thing off, because there’s already a crowd that’s going to be there wanting to see and hear what you’re doing. We were always in between and unclassifiable. People called us garage rock and I guess that fits but we did all sorts of things. Didn’t sound particularly like any really tight format of music. That was what I liked about what we did, but it also held us back.

PHAWKER: Looking back now do you regret that choice? Do you wish that you guys had just gone for it and maybe just saw what would’ve happened and then just picked up the pieces in the worst case?

BROTHER JT: Probably do but the thing about regret is that I don’t feel like it’s an honest thing. If I went back in time now, with what I know now, I probably would, but, it’s like, that’s not who we were. I mean, I had an audition to play guitar with Yo La Tengo around that time. I did a practice with them and at the end I told them I really kind of want to follow what I’m doing. If I had some foresight maybe I would have shut-up and joined Yo La Tengo.

PHAWKER: So the Sins soldiered on for several more years, and I guess one more notable touchstone in the bands career was Peter Buck, the guitarist from REM, took an interest in you guys and eventually brought you down to Athens, Georgia to record an album with him producing.

BROTHER JT: They had seen us when we played down in Athens the previous year when we took a little jaunt through the South. I have to give props to Dave Stein who was our manager for five years. He really was the architect behind that and behind the tour that we did that led to meeting Pete Buck and getting him to produce the album. Dave really kept the group together, eventually us a tour of Europe and got our video [for “Just Want To Watch You Dance”] on MTV. He really tried. But after we parted ways that was pretty much the end of the Original Sins. I certainly stopped trying [to make it big in the music biz].

PHAWKER: Okay. So it was about this time that the Brother JT persona was developed is that correct?

BROTHER JT: I did some experimental psychedelic stuff with multi-tracked guitars and droney vocals.

PHAWKER: Meshes Of The Afternoon, that was one of those?

BROTHER JT: Yeah, it was around 1990, when there wasn’t a lot of that going on so it probably stood out. Eventually it got put out on Twisted Village Records thanks to the efforts of Byron Coley, the famous rock writer. He kind of gave me the moniker Brother JT. They wanted to do another record so I did another record and it just kind of went on from there.

PHAWKER: Okay; and how do you contrast what Brother JT was doing, or does, with what The Sins were? It’s much less straight up rock, although there were records that still were straight up rock.

BROTHER JT: Yeah well, I look at it as sort of coming from the same pool of influences but applying a different formula. The Sins were very tight and polished and about trying to get people in small clubs to dance. Brother JT was a lot more instinctual and minimalist and a lot of improv — we didn’t practice Brother JT.

PHAWKER: And how about the persona? Your on-stage persona at this time was evolving into sort of a Southern preacher thing crossed with a Manson family member.

BROTHER JT: Back then live performance seemed to be either about demonstrating how great your musical chops were or how unhappy you were with the world but the bottom line it was always about the guys on stage. And I was trying to make it about the audience, I was trying to say ‘this could be a way for us to connect’, which was not a very cool thing at the time. Which to my mind meant the time was right for that kind of thing.

PHAWKER: Hang on a second I’m trying to find something here. There’s this great line in the Jesus Guitar book, where you’re talking about standing at the Fun House on a Thursday night waiting to get paid, a looking out at the end of a dark smoky bar and thinking to yourself that you’d probably end up dying there and that would have been just okay with you. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the Fun House and what role that played in all of this?

BROTHER JT: Okay, well the Fun House is a small bar in Bethlehem that sort of looked like a haunted house. It was pretty much the only place in town that would hire original rock bands. I played there with The Creatures first in ’85 and then with the Sins through to probably about 1998, so about 13 years or so. We probably played there at least once a month for 13 years. A lot of things went down there, I saw some crazy things.

PHAWKER: Can we jump back to the psychedelic thing for a second here? Would you talk about your earliest psychedelic experiences? Are you fine talking about this or would you rather not?

BROTHER JT: Yeah, sure, it’s no problem. As with everything else I stared late. I would probably say something like 1982 or 1983. It was when I was maybe about 20. I’m not sure exactly what it was; I’m told it was mescaline. It was just through a friend, who said “Why don’t you try this?” I was kind of eager to because so much of the music I loved seemed to have been inspired by psychedelic drugs.

PHAWKER: And by your estimate how many times have you tripped since?

BROTHER JT: Well, I would say I’ve taken a great deal, in small doses. Certainly I’ve taken my share of larger doses but comparatively… probably… I really couldn’t even venture a guess. When it’s around, probably once a week. But then it wasn’t around for years in the late 90s. And then suddenly it was back around again. My feeling is that I use it almost like Prozac, a small, small amount. Helps me get over the hump of living, and being interested in things and all that. As far as just like real trips, probably a hundred times. And a lot of times when performing. Once again usually not debilitatingly so, just enough to get me interested.

PHAWKER: Okay, and let’s jump forward here to some of your other non-musical projects. You’ve also done sort of a series of self-published books.

BROTHER JT: Yeah, if you want to call them that. They were just something that I did myself that was stapled together and xeroxed. This is pre-Internet. I did one called Coca Cola and that was just sort of a freewheeling compendium of my thoughts about America’s favorite soft drink and it’s connection to the more sinister elements of American society and tried to tie it all together with lots of Masonic lore. You know, like when they arrested Oswald he was drinking a Coke — it was sort of a spoof of all the conspiracy theory stuff. I did one called Golf My Way and a little comic called Tab that I did in one night.. and that probably came out around 1990, around that period. That was probably about.

PHAWKER: And then you were also doing a series of paintings that were like commemorative stamps, I remember you did one of Oswald posing with the newspaper and Mannlicher-Carcano.

BROTHER JT: Right, right. There was a zombie Elvis and the zombie Apollo astronauts. Yeah, I had my paddle in many streams.

PHAWKER: (Laughs). Now tell me, to what extent was this stuff just tongue-in-cheek and to what extent was this sincere piecing together of a world view, of an alternative narrative of America that you thought actually was truer than the one presented in history books.

BROTHER JT: I was just shooting up in the air and seeing what comes down.

PHAWKER: Do you think it’s fair to say that you’ve gradually evolved into a a notable outsider artist status, to someone like a Jandek?

BROTHER JT: I feel like I have a pretty good body of work. I think the problem is that it’s not outsider enough. [laughs] I just feel like I don’t know what my standing is. I know some people like it, but I don’t even try to think about it that much because I just want to concentrate on what I’m doing. I’m just assuming no one hears or sees anything I do, because if I really thought about the amount of people that hear or see what I do it would probably bum me out. So it’s better to just assume nobody is going to see or hear it. But I still want to do it, because I take pleasure in creating it. You get a nice feeling of accomplishment when make something. So I’ll just keep doing it on the outside of things and hope that some of it sticks.

PHAWKER: You also branched out into sort of, for lack of a better word, a TV persona. You had a short-run show called Someone’s In The Kitchen With JT, which was hilarious.

BROTHER JT: Yeah, I heard there was a contest on the Food Network where they were asking people to send in their idea of a cooking show. So I thought “Gee, I could do that.” So I thought I’ll just have at it. Problem is I sent it in about two years after the deadline (laughs). But it kind of made me do it so that was kind of like my first foray into the wonders of digital video — you load stuff into your computer and edit it. You know, it was really amazing technology. Lately, I’ve been hard at work doing various things like that.

PHAWKER: Hold up we’ll get to this in a second, but just to finish up quickly, JT, your recipe was for a grilled cheese, correct?

BROTHER JT: That’s right, yes it was a grilled cheese. It wasn’t really the cheese it was processed cheese product. Food product; it was processed cheese food product, because, you know, cheese isn’t really that good for you.

PHAWKER: Is that episode up on YouTube somewhere?

BROTHER JT: I think only elements of it because believe it or not it was over 25 minutes long and on YouTube you get a ten minute limit unless you’re a “producer,” as they call you, so I could only put out five minute segments but I think there are a couple of the highlights out there but not the whole thing.

PHAWKER: Moving ahead, you did Trippin’ Balls, with Mark Brodzik with Woodshop Films. Is it still ongoing? It’s been a while…

BROTHER JT: Oh yeah. We do them in the fall and shoot a bunch at once. It’s basically me just sitting with a guest talking to them about hallucinogenic drugs, and I kind of played the role of Brother JT. We usually have a few drinks, and hopefully people will feel free enough to talk about that stuff. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. [laughs] It’s a touchy subject.

PHAWKER: Your latest video project is the series Rockology 101, which are, by the way, hilarious. Tell me about that. That seems, actually, very similar, and are you doing that by yourself?

BROTHER JT: Yeah, that’s actually just me. It only really took one night to shoot. It’s just me and a chair, and a remote so I can do zoom in and out and shut off the camera. It’s not improvised, it’s all scripted. What took more time was what you would call the “post-production” stuff. I had to make up these songs for these fictitious “Pioneers of Rock n’ Roll,” and make up slideshow that explains why the soul needs rock n’ roll to revitalize itself, all these kind of educational aids that are included. Basically I stepped in where MTV let us down and made the case for the importance of rock n’ roll in our lives. It’s one of the last things left that can get us going and if you do it right, who knows what could happen.

PHAWKER: So you are not of the opinion that rock is dead or irrelevant? You still see it as a vital cultural force with the capacity to be art or mind expanding or educational.

BROTHER JT: I think if we can get people to just kind of come out of their trance for a little bit and be real, that’s great. Plus, real knowledge of where this stuff comes from skips a generation and I was actually going to do a serious educational thing about the origins of rock n’ roll but then I decided it would probably be better if it was just funny.

PHAWKER: And then your latest project is the sort of a book/companion CD or vice versa. Orange Journal is the title of the book and Any Stort In A Porm is the title of the CD, and I’ll let you explain both of these for the uninitiated.

BROTHER JT: So I started this about back in February of ’09. I was thinking about ways to write more interesting lyrics and I read about this exercise where you are just supposed write the first thing that comes into your head and most of it will be bad but you will probably find a few things that you can use. So I decided I would keep doing it until I filled up a spiral bound notebook, it took about a year. After some inspiration, some paper inspiration. [chuckles] it really kind of took off, and I swear at some point the pen just started moving in my hand, like automatic writing. I did this drawing of a lion next to some trees, and it was more like I was watching my hand draw it. I was just like ‘why did I draw that?’ And then after that the words started coming out more forcefully, and I felt like I had tapped into my subconscious. There were moments when I felt like somebody else was writing this. My previous writings which were very self-conscious, I can’t really bare to read them five years later. But this stuff I still really enjoy, because it’s not me. It was more like I was hearing voices or channeling other voices. I sort of feel that I was doing a service to those voices, that I was giving them a chance to speak. And that became The Orange Journal Book. Then it occurred to me that this would be a good way to package a CD, especially since some of the chapters ended with a song.

PHAWKER: Tell us about your latest combo book/cd release Black Journal/Non Compos Mantis…

BROTHER JT: BLACK JOURNAL was done pretty much the same as ORANGE JOURNAL — hand-written, spontaneous scrawlings under the influence of various ‘medicines’ that gave voice to various disembodied spirits, or whatever. The main difference is that BJ is in a smaller scale to save on printing costs and primarily in typeface — to be more accessible to the reader’s eye). The companion CD, NON COMPOS MANTIS, again incorporates text from the book into about half of the songs as lyrics, but this time features live drums by Jamie Knerr — last year’s ANY STORT IN A PORM was all drum machines — and gives more of a passing nod to the 60’s garage-hybrid sensibility of my first band, the Original Sins, on a number of the tracks.

PHAWKER: We’re coming to the end I think, but can we talk a little bit about the evolution of music, the delivery of music, the music business in your time, going back to… I guess the first question I would ask is: Do you still listen to vinyl? What are your thoughts on vinyl?

BROTHER JT: I have nothing against vinyl. I don’t really listen to it a lot because most of what I listen to is in my car or in a car of some kind. There’s not a lot of times I go home and put on an album. I was actually happy when CDs came along because you could play them for ten years and they still sound about the same as when you got it whereas records, no matter what you do with them, they wear out.

PHAWKER: And what’s your feeling about mp3s?

BROTHER JT: How do you mean?

PHAWKER: Are you one of these people who turn their nose up at it?

BROTHER JT: No, not at all. I think it’s wonderful that I can just get one song (laughs), you know, from certain albums. See, for me, I don’t even really care that much about sound quality. I know that the quality isn’t as good, but I’m just trying to get a feel for something, I don’t need hermetically sealed perfection, you know? I just want to get the feel of the song and take what I can from it, be inspired or not. These are great times, technologically speaking, everything is so much easier. On the other hand, that also leads to a glut of stuff out there and it’s harder to cut through the clutter. Everyone has access now, and everyone wants to have a band now, too. [laughs] Democracy in action, I guess. Kind of overwhelming to me.

PHAWKER: I think that’s a good place to stop, unless there’s anything you want to add, or anything else you’d like to talk about?

BROTHER JT: Well, I appreciate the and I hope that I explained things well enough.

BROTHER JT + PHOTON BAND + PLAY JOHNNY BRENDAS SATURDAY JULY 6TH

Like the like the tragic life and premature death of Amy Winehouse, this is without a doubt the most persuasive anti-drug public service announcement we have ever seen.

AP TICKER: I’m getting lots of letters about why I haven’t shown my face at any of the Occupy Philly protests. I wholeheartedly, endorse and support their endeavors and while I talk a good game about revolution and overthrow of this plutocracy, the sad truth of the matter is……..I’m a very very lazy man. As I have said many times before, my favorite hobbies are as follows, lying on my couch and being very very quiet. I and my couch bound brethren, represent a subset of The Greatest Generation that I have coined “The Lazy Generation” This true silent majority generally agrees with the Occupiers on practically every principle, but, we are kind of in the middle of watching “Breaking Bad” on Netflix instant and the parking down there looks like a bitch. So that’s why I need you all to work a little harder, to pick up the slack for jaggoffs like me who are stuck behind a mortgage and burdened with fear and debts no honest man can pay. Brothers and Sisters, I need you to march a little further and shake your fists a little harder so you can wake up the slumbering, apathetic and terrified masses. Its nice that a few thousand people are now actively protesting, it’s time to turn the heat up a bit so the rest of us, ALL OF US, will rise up with you.

On a side note, I often receive a mass email that asks the evil question.. Should welfare recipients have to take drug tests to receive their benefits?
Yes I say, Yes, They should! They should also have to take physicals and dental exams, and we treat and we heal them, compassionately. We the people are too big to fail, We are with you in your anger and You are just a few news cycles away from making actual change. So nudge me awake when that happens. Til next time folks, I’m AP Ticker and remember…those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Scrapple TV is written by:
Jonathan Valania
Brenden Skwire
Scott Colan

From our partners in media crime over at Scrapple TV.