Category Archives: Stuff & Things

We’ve got more rhymes than the Bible’s got psalms.

Volume 456-BR8: Issue 02: Justinuary 2006

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cover25
Axes & Alleys: Our Last Best Hope for Peace!

snow

Last issue we bid a fond adieu to several writers who have passed out of our lives or passed on with their own. While we know the vast majority of our readers care not a whit about the people who make the magazine, we are quite aware of the importance of our articles, columns and features to them. Many of you have noted certain of these disappearing from our pages. Instead of introducing you to the exciting and, dare we say, new entrants upon these pages, we will show you a little of how the publishing of a magazine works by listing a few rejected candidates for inclusion in these pages.

The Snowman Report
Bob King, agriculture specialist of the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Monroe County, would write a monthly report on snowman infestations across America, control and extermination, as well as hobbyist breeding tips. As this feature would be largely seasonal, we rejected it out of hand.

Butane 12 Step Program
A resource for those addicted to the storage of butane, collection of butane products, and physical abuse against butane. While the concept did have widespread appeal, we were searching for new columns with staying power and this one would necessarily last only one year.

Yo-Yo Instructional Video Transcripts
Transcripts of various instructional yo-yo videos provided in partnership with www.yo-yo.org. Initially we felt this was a great concept and did attempt to insert such a feature in the last issue. Unfortunately it was unwieldy, took up over twelve pages, and featured not a single scantily-clad woman.

We hope you appreciate this peek into the backroom dealings and thought processes of Axes & Alleys. Also, we hope you appreciate the fact that we did not subject you to the above, quality-lowering concepts and their brethren in future issues of the magazine.

Justinuary Issue Premier

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Download this month’s Axes & Alleys today and feel free to ogle all of our previous issues in the archive.

As you’ll read in this month’s letters section, Paul David Hewson wrote in to ask us why we always hire celebrities to appear as our cover models. As he so rightly points out, some of the most attractive people happen to not be celebrities. Thanks for the suggestion Paul David Hewson. You are no doubt pleased to know that we’ve taken your advice.

This month we present our latest cover model, Irene Baras. Ms. Baras is a casual acquaintance of the Axes & Alleys editorial board. We’ve gotten to know her over the past four years, usually over beer, ground beef, pasta, flour tortillas and sundry other products common to the grocerial arts. You’ll no doubt agree she’s an attractive dame.

Now we would like everyone to offer a moment of silence in memory of the Scythians, who disappeared from this earth so many years ago. They are sorely missed and will live on in us through each passing generation (due to mitochondrial DNA).

Scythian Gold

The Springtober Issue is Here!

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Back when Axes & Alleys first premiered in 1903 the Internet was made of wood and powered by kerosene. Downloading an issue involved a team of mules and a mimeograph machine.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, you now only need a single mule. So, hitch her up and check out the latest issue of of the world’s greatest tractor related publication.

To download a PDF of the newest issue, just click here.

An Interview with Rivers Cuomo

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with Substitute Interviewer Tim Wright,
Sitting in for Regular Interviewer Timothy Wright (No Relation)

Rivers Cuomo

Weezer front-man Rivers Cuomo bears an eerily uncanny resemblance to Peter Parker, who is also known as Catwoman.

Just recently, I purchased the latest Assortment of Lackluster But Ubiquitous Music (ALBUM) by prominent rock & roll quartet Weezer, entitled Make Believe. I was highly disappointed by this CD’s general lack of musical quality, and it got me to thinking…what happened to the Weezer of yesteryear? The Weezer that delighted us with quirky acoustic ballads and whimsical rock concoctions? The Weezer that lit up the stage with soaring harmonies and awkward, geeky soliloquies? The Weezer that made us smile by taking home the gold for the US in the 2006 Winter Olympics Four-Man Bobsleigh and Short Track Speed Skating relay competitions? I missed the kind of music that I was used to hearing from Weezer’s first two albums, so I decided to track down lead singer and principal songwriter Rivers Cuomo and have a nice fireside chat with him to find out his perspective on the band’s musical development over the years.

I invited Rivers to what he thought was an interview for popular regional teen magazine Montsylvania Rox U!, a normally peppy and upbeat periodical that had just been the subject of severe government criticism due to the questionable employment practices of its X-treme Financial Services and Retirement! subdivision. Despite its recent troubles, however, I knew that Rivers still respected the magazine for its in-depth coverage of the Chef Boyardee spaghetti rebellion (and the ensuing processed noodle famine of 1998, which claimed over 170,000 lives in New Jersey alone), so I was sure that he would accept the invitation to sit down with me for a while.

However, when he arrived at our studio it became clear to him that he was going to be dealing with the uncompromising and nononsense reporting of this fine publication instead (one of the top three tractor repair and maintenance digests in the upper-Midwest tricounty area). He became slightly nervous, so I pulled up a chair for the both of us and offered him something to drink. Thus our interview began.

Me: Hi Rivers, would you like some coffee?

Rivers: Um, sure. Who are you?

Me: My name is Tim, but it’s only important that you know me as a somewhat disenchanted Weezer fan.

Rivers: Why do you say that?

Me: Well, I really liked Weezer’s early music, but these last few albums have just been…how can I say it…lamentable. What’s the deal, Rivers?

Rivers: I know, I know. Look, everybody loved our first two albums so much, and we were so busy touring, and…okay. This isn’t easy for me to say, but…

Me: You can feel safe here, Rivers. Have some more coffee!

Rivers: Okay. I haven’t told anyone this before, but something’s been happening to me these past few years when I try to write songs. I sit down, I pick up my pencil… and then Carlo starts screaming.

Me: Who?

Rivers: Carlo… My Sherpa manservant. He…he’s writing all of our songs now.

Me: What!? Your manservant? What are you talking about?

Rivers: I met him on the Pinkerton tour. We’re soul mates, you know. We do everything together. I can’t imagine my life without him.

Me: Let me get this straight. Your Sherpa manservant Carlo…is writing Weezer songs?

Rivers: Yeah, since The Green Album. He won’t let me write what I want to anymore. Every time I’m in the middle of coming up with an idea, he just starts yelling until I let him do everything his way. I still love him, though.

Me: You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Rivers: No, it’s true. Hey…this coffee tastes a little weir…

Me: …alright, now I really don’t regret what I just did to you.

Rivers: …what…what do you mean?

Me: That’s it? That’s your excuse for Weezer’s fall from grace? I can’t believe it. I don’t know what to say. I just don’t know what to say, Rivers. Other than this…

Rivers: …okay man, I wanna get out of he…

Me: I put three sugar in your coffee, you son of a bitch!

Rivers: … …

Thus our interview ended. I never found if Rivers was really telling the truth about Weezer’s musical decline or not, but he did drop his glasses as he ran out and I’m keeping them.