Huey Lewis says that heart of Rock and Roll is still beating. Hilary Gray Roberts says the Oboe may be bad in Cleveland. None of these things are true. At the end of the Dark Turn, Wacky had become a black hole. It had morphed, yes, but like a desperate Power Ranger who grabbed his belt and said “We need dinosaur power now!” and then a bird poops on his head. Bad morph. It had transformed, yes, but like a really cool Porsche that thinks it’s going to become a robot but instead transforms into molten lump of crappy gearbox.

In between lovely but ultimately temporary dating spells, Matt would turn to the other corner of the couch and say “Hey Chris, we should do a song about this…” Chris was still recovering from a failed attempt at cooking plantains clear across town, but [Matt’s Warcraft character / Fezzik depending on the era] thought it was a good idea.

He still played guitar as clumsily as ever, and now and then had some good idea. Now and then Thelma would pop by and they would discuss the mighty reunion tour.

Out of this era came little. Matt usually came up with chord progressions he liked but never got around to writing the words. He lamented his past songwriting lyrics that didn’t use clever metaphors. Plato’s Cave? Roman Cavalry? No. Just simple expressions. Like the Hulk writing poetry. “Me Like You. You Not Like Me. Me Sad.” He would record the chords and start singing along with them to record a flash of inspiration if it it. Which is usually didn’t.

One negative side effect of this is that the crap words get stuck and that’s what he thinks of now. Case and point our first entry “Awesome Sauce”. It’s just a snippet (yes, there’s a full recording including clowns with lemonade) that features the following “trying to get a flash of inspiration” lyrics.

Awesome Sauce snip

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/1:45

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From Awesome Sauce
(the song was going to be called Parade…)

Yeah. Solid. Which is not to say everything is a train wreck. Two good examples from early and late in this era are also included.

Time It Takes

TimeitTakes

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is about fingerpicking and being hopeful about being in love. Hooray, growth.

Unturned Stone

UnturnedStone

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is about strumming (shut up!) and telling a girl that it’s no use fighting it. That feeling anymore

Not the rock. Cuz you can’t stop that.

When you graduate college, you find people have better things to do than park their butt in the student union to listen to garbage bands, liberal whiners, and stoned college radio staff. And then there were just two in Northern Virginia. No more soulful Dave Braxton on trumpet, bongos and harmonies. No more Kelley to inspire, promote, or record. Nor Army of One fan base. So Chris and Matt became the Thelma and Louise of Wacky Wacky, taking that beautiful American classic and driving it over the edge of the Grand Canyon until they hit rock bottom.

As a clever aside, this period closed when our girls stopped playing at Rock Bottom Brewery. It didn’t happen often. Appearances included a famous guest vocal appearance by Matt’s sister and an attempt by Matt to impress a date who turned out to prefer women (you're welcome, ladies) with a maudlin cover of Blue Rodeo “Disappear” about shit that’s gone. We went to a movie after. Fin.

As a second clever aside, one notable entry from this period is a song Matt made up on the spot about a woman Chris was dating who was pretending not to be a lesbian. See the first segment of Medley One, below. I still heart that one.

So yes, we played at your local coffee house (I need to find that picture). We played the docks of Old Town. And then got busy. But not with the ladies. And it was over.

Notable entries from this period are scarce, like sasquatch sightings or our talent. This is regrettable because there were some classics, like Chris’ thumping groove written to a TV commercial woman called “Hot Sex Now, Milk Lady”

Really. Or Matt’s song about catching love like holding onto fireflies and then decades later a real song called fireflies comes out and his was so much better. Fuckin "Owl City". This period also featured other hits like a lame serious entries about Christian girls (“Cathedral”) and not serious rockers about Ninja Girls (“Two Kicks to the Heart”).

Most recorded versions are solo renditions Matt recorded while on a family vacation to West Virgina as noted below, including some terrible covers of early area Wacky. The intent was to record songs so we wouldn’t forget the words only to learn during recording that we’d forgotten the worlds. WaClassic!

Medley One

MedleyOne

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features abbreviated versions of “Anita” who was confusing the whole house, “The Show” which had a pretty hook but was never finished, and the old “Missy Christmas” which we performed at a SMC Christmas Concert. Deckman

Fall's Finest Hour

FallsFinestHour

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is about fingerpicking and lamenting loving someone. Because Matt just can’t write happy shit anymore.

Star of an Age

StarofanAge

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is about fingerpicking and lamenting loving someone but is actually a song Matt is proud of even though he didn’t get the harmonies or a instrumental section in this early recording.

Fun aside: on this same trip Matt discovers his portable multitracker has built in drum loops, so he’s off to the races to see how some songs would sound… not good

Matt starts to record a song he’s started writing (“Lovely”) which is “90% E chord with no words written” but realizes halfway through that there are no drums just the metronome effect so closes strong.

Lovely WildfireEnding

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Matt starts to record Joline but realizes after finishing the first chorus he can't remember anything else. Fail.

Joline

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Matt starts to record Julie Julie with a western groove about a lovely Artie’s waitress with a weakness for Polish men. The Polish rage swells so he stops and finishes in Will Smith form.

JulieJulie

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Matt stretches and tries Aching Wave with drums but it doesn’t work but he still takes it to the end and likes the last note.

AchingWave

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Matt messes up when trying a Chris classic Want You To Stay but with drums and accidentally set the drum tempo/time signature to double what he meant. He goes with it.

WantYoutoStay

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Yeah, it’s silly but a silly version of a good song (and yes there’s a history here). But honestly this song has the best vocal and instrumental bridge of anything we’ve done before or since. Really. Even with Matt playing crappy with a too-fast drum track that Matt fails to keep up with and having to sing the part Chris would play on guitar. It’s solid in a not goofy way. Check out between 1:25 and 2:30.
The Hurting

Wacky Wacky. In the Dawn of Wack, it was all fun and games as evinced by the \ first link below. It began because The Crimson Harpoon (and at some point we should explore how THAT name stuck) was always playing his guitar in the dorm room and one day Matt just started singing along with it and Mike held up a recorder (i.e., a big 1980’s boom box with a mic). We thought it was funny. We then wrote down three songs in about an hour and went to play college open mic night and then wouldn’t stop. Because you can’t stop the rock.

Some noteable entries from this period

Death Blossom

DeathBlossom

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how it all started. No words or music just three guys jumping around a dorm room.

Dead Like You

DeadLikeYou

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How we learned that even silly spontaneous songs will become crowd favorites and never die. Matt’s favorite part was the high-pitched teen croonings of Chris at the end. Check at mark 2:10 and let it ride. Only in the original. Never duplicated.

The Bullfighter

TheBullfighter

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how we knew we could never amount to anything. Sometime no words and no music turn into deliberately non-PC cannibal songs. Custom FX added by Mike Kelley during his Directors Cut edition released around the same time as his wedding.

Sylvan Silvia

SylvanSylvia

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How we learned that if you mention your friends (even when non-PC) in your songs you’ll get hugs.

E Miner

EMiner

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How we knew that Mike should have gotten more licks. Mike has a great voice as any who attended our dorm room musical recreations will tell you. This was his only on stage original based largely on the chords he had just learned. E Miner

Oyster Festival

OysterFestival

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How we learned that there is too much of a good thing. We played this every time we played out (even at the Oyster Festival). And Matt – like Bono but less successfully – let his mind wander in later performances with non-sensicle consequences. But it’s always the classic.

Is your lustrous black hair cascading down? A magical waterfall of gloom and destruction

Yeah, I lost mine, too.

On this page we have all the lyrics to all of the songs never really written by the best worst band of all time.

Like these guys…

…But closer to these guys

What? You can’t find them? Yeah. Neither can we.

In fairness, to really explore the non-event/dark matter that is Wacky Wacky, we would need to divide time into three sweet slices. Note: at the macro level, universal time can also be divided this way: BW (Before the Wack), WA (Wack Attack!), AD (After Death of Wack). But back to biznazz.

What you want - Nay, need - lies buried somewhere in the pages of Time. Please choose your tome below.

• Wacky Wacky (1990-1993)
• Wacky: A Dark Turn (1994-1997)
• Wacky Fade to Black (outta time)

I am building a list of Captain Blimeys that would qualify as self-improvement/solid career choices for others. However, because my end goal is not to be awesome but a big goof, these would only qualify as non-productive time slips. Blimeys. If at the end of all things I actually have a novel 3d RPG scored by serene guitar fingerpicking, no one will be more surprised than me.

1. Rebuild the Callus

What could be better than making good use of my time to actually get halfway good at one of my top 10 favorite things of all time? * after silver white winters that melt into spring Sure there is another page here dedicated to the best worst band, and still another non-public where I’m trying to MongoDB some shit about our greatest hits, but this Future Blimey is about honing the craft. It takes werk. 50 Points to Hufflepuff.

2. ZBrush

I didn’t do this. This is James Wong who I found through a random google. No relation. But if you like his stuff, then more here! Tell him the scarlet baconator sent you. He’ll have no clue but what a good waste of 2 hours for futile internet searching.

3D digital scultping has always intrigued me since the games I play started using them. I’m sure it’s more an extension of “knowing what I CAN’T do,” which is why I never bought the Wacom Cintiq to pretend I could draw well. See, I don’t know I can’t 3D Model well, so in my head it’s a lot of fun. Plus I sing Right Said Fred to myself the whole time.

3. Lay on the Hurt

I tried to add this without laughing. Oh, muscle tone. We will never get back together.

4. Back to the Shire

A return to the roots! Oh, for the days when my dad run “Music Printer Plus” on the IBM Clone PC in our basement. I wrote several things on there that I gave away in awkward attempts to woo the lady. A couple were actually good. And I’ll never have that recipe again.

My current PC has the beefy version of that childhood seductress. Sibelius. Fun. I even bough East West symphonic voices. To date, I’ve used four of them to write a string quartet for my wedding reception. It was a bit of a train wreck live because I (a) wanted to avoid cliché harmonics and (b) decided to merge themes from Flash Gorgon, Thorn Birds, Highlander, Ingrid Michelson, and Star Wars. Oh, and Superman.

It’s still great in my head. And the PC musicians nail it every time.

5. Because I Lied - After Effects

Because I still like to draw. And I like Photoshop, and Pro Create on the iPad. And that’s likely the only real Blimey on this list. BUT, in this brave new world where all things are possible and I engineer the time slip just so, I can stretch that into AfterEffects and do some clever animations. Besides, thanks to my sister-in-law’s mojo, I now know a guy….

6. Adventure Construction Extreme - Unreal Engine

This would be the Olympus of a Blimey. I will combine all of the above into an amazing 3D RPG that involves walking down a street with everything on fire and the fake symphonic strings swell meaningfully and in the distance you see another (expertly rendered) shape - the Princess! - but you can’t have her because it’s better that way and we fade out and the very brief credits are accompanied by mellow fingerpicking. The end.

The Captain Blimey is a unique and powerful expression of Lonely Fun.

There are rifts in the time-space continuum that are only evinced by time slips. Three people may be sitting in their college dorm when one of them thinks it might be a good idea to find more creative metaphors for gastro-intestinal issues*. This triggers a conversation between three boys - weighing the merits and scope of such an endeavor - and right after they conclude that 10 metaphors sufficiently covers the need, they look up, have become men and are being asked to leave because they graduated last week.

*before any suggest that this is just gross, consider that loved ones often direct awkward questions your way when you return from an extended trip to take care of yourself. “Are you okay?” If this has never happened to you, then no one loves you (don’t worry you are still in the right place here), but when it does, isn’t it more polite to confirm that you “had to climb Mount Kilamanjaro” than ignore the question or actually talk about the poops? Yes. And you’re welcome.

The power of Captain Blimey, like the Force, is all around us. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. A Captain Blimey might be found in:

1. a secret language invented when trying to fall asleep and successfully ensuring your virtue will remain… well, remain.
2. a self help book on dating written by people who are mostly explaining why they can’t get dates
3. the TV show “30 Something”
4. Daniel Snyder

I just noticed that the website Lifehack says Gaming and Movies are in the top 10 time wasting activities that will ruin your life. So if you want a counter argument to the life lessons I’m laying down, go take those classes over there and come back to tell me how happy you are.

I won’t be here. Like a little bee, I’m taking this Blimey wherever the Captain sails. Not sure where that will be*, but it won’t wait for you.

*see, you’re curious….

We built a new server with better Linux, more toys, and an updated D&D platform.  But that means the old site I had in Hugo and PHP is all gone because I'm going to cheat and install an open source CMS.  

Why do you care?  Odds are, you're me and that means I can see into your heart of hearts*.  

*if you're not me, I can also see into your heart of hearts and right now you're really wishing you'd gone to surf TikTok instead.

I'm going to move the few public pages I had over here and we'll see what happens with the rest of my time.  I need to shrink a 3 year D&D campaign to 8 sessions so that will probably be my big Blimey for the near future.

This CMS (Hi Ghost) says you can subscribe.  Why would you?  Odds are, you're me.  If you're not me, you've already left to watch TikTok.  I'd be insulted and feeling utterly alone, but baby hippos are kryptonite.