big deejays don't cry

as if in a waking nightmare, i had been powerless to prevent myself from entering funky winkerbean's a little before 1am in nothing but my heart-patterned underpants and walking up to the karaoke machine to screech the words to Talk to Me, Dance With Me into the microphone. if this wasn't bad enough, steve bays, singer of hot hot heat, walked into the bar at this exact moment, catching me in the act. i wanted nothing more than to stop singing and act like it had been some sort of a misunderstanding, but the words kept scrolling forward on the monitor. there was no way out: i had to complete the song. he glared at me from the doorway for the duration of my performance and then dissapeared out the door when i had finished.
afterwards i ran out into the street to try and find him and aplogise and make him understand that i hadn't meant to butcher his song in front of him, but he was nowhere in sight. i ran down the street, taking corners randomly, looking around desperately for that tall red hair and ignoring everything else when i was tripped by something and went flying through the air, smashing my beautiful face against the filthy curb. i rolled over to see what i had hit and was horrified to discover a short, pudgy man with wild red eyes accompanied by the rank stench of hatred and street living standing over me with his fists clenched.

"you think you're so fucking great, blitzcraig, but i've got news for you: you aren't." he stopped to wipe his lips and continued, "you're just a stupid music selector, little better than itunes' party shuffle, not a real dj. you don't know the first thing about being a real dj. you're just a little bitch."
"that's just like...your opinion, man."
"hah! a bitch like you couldn't possibly understand my people's struggle. you think this shit is a game, boy? you think people go to the club to dance, get drunk, and talk to girls?? THEY DON'T! they fucking go to listen to my turntable virtuosity. what could a fake dj like you know about that? you don't know shit, boy." i wiped his spittle from my face and stared back at him in terror once he had finished his tirade, unsure of whether to defend myself again or try to knock him over and make my escape. i quickly recalled that because of his petite stature his centre of gravity would be much lower than a normal man's, so knocking him over was out of the question and i was forced to make a stuttering reply.
"well uh, maybe like...no one is like sober enough to uh notice...or something...i mean, no one has complained yet, sir."
"that doesn't mean shit! i've seen you play music and anybody watching you will know that you're a fucking joke, an insult to the holy brotherhood of real djs. you don't spend the whole time jerking off the various knobs and buttons, you just put a song on and dance behind the table. PEOPLE DON'T COME TO PARTIES FOR THE SONGS THEY GO TO WATCH THE DJ YOU IGNORANT PIECE OF SHIT!" he became so caught up in his anger that he turned his crazed eyes away from me for a moment to scream his rage to the stars that i was able to make good my escape.
when i finally arrived at my home, i remained parked in the middle of my long, tree lined driveway crying my eyes out. had that man been right? was i nothing but a pig party ruining phoney? would people stop having fun because i was unable to masturbate the knobs appropriately? did people really come to watch the awesome spectacle of a dj slaving away over a hot turntable all night to make you a decent beat and not, as i had believed, to dance and have fun?

all these questions and more will be answered this friday, the 18th of july in the 2008th year of our lord when craigzlizt (this very blog) turns 7 months old and the blitzcraig will show you all how much you mean to him with music. and if a dj who actually knows what he's doing is important to you, the beautiful and talented tyler fedchuk will be there to bail his ass out and hopefully prevent you all from demanding your $5 back.

there is obviously no facebook event, so have this information tattooed onto your heart:

the sweatshop (1947 e hastings)
july 18th (friday)
tyler fedchuk and the blitzcraig

facebook ruins everything (pt 1: parties)

dear mark zuckerberg, founder and ceo of facebook incorporated,

you do not know me, but i know enough about you to know that you are the man responsible for destroying the only ray of light in the otherwise grey and cloudy day that is my life. i am, of course, referring to having fun on the weekend which has become increasingly difficult as a direct result of the 'service' you provide. every time i go to a party and see a line up of strangers or enter an unbearably hot room and find the privacy of my person violated by the boney elbows and filthy hands of beginner club urchins, people whom i have never met yet who recognise me from my picture on the internet and presume to ask me where cocaine can be readily purchased i know it is your doing and i reaffirm my vow of someday exacting slow and lingering vengeance upon your body.i went to no tofu on friday for the andy warhol party and, what should have been an enjoyable night was turned into some sort of horrific where's waldoesque nightmare of heat and confusion (the heat might have been made worse because of the tin foil covering the walls which cooked us like turkeys, but that part was actually pretty awesome and i'm sure the place would have been too hot even without it). my friends all dissapeared into the hungry crowd of strangers or sat in the smoke room with the few people they were able to recover from the carnage. afterwards i had to axe myself "who were all those people? how did they find out? how were they able to ruin a pretty interesting theme, fun decorations and good music with just their presence, like so many ants at a picnic?" and then when i was at home, feeding my facebook cat, it hit me: facebook.


now, you might ask, "how do you know it is me doing this? maybe this would have happened without my website?" but i do not believe this for a second. before facebook maybe one or two idiots would show up because they happened to be in the neighbourhood or got sick of waiting in line at the blarney stone, but so long as they didn't drink all the jager at the bar, leaving me with nothing to chase down the horrible taste of redbull or get into too many fights then it was fine. it only became a problem when they were able to invite all of their stupid friends from facebook who probably aren't even their friends but just added them because they went to highschool together, creating a sort of shit-domino effect. none of this would have been possible without your involvement, mark zuckerberg.

and so, when the news reporters are asking why i did what i did, please have your estate direct them to this letter.

with all my heart,

The Craigler

back from the dead

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if i were australian i'd want to tour as much as possible as well

i am no friend of tourists. in fact, i hate them. this is mostly because they take up valuable sidewalk space, crowd stores, ruin the beaches, and support the moose-dressed-as-rcmp-officer industry singlehandedly. whenever i am in gastown i stand infront of the steam clock with a sad expression on my face like i'm having the worst time ever and someone is forcing me to have my picture taken, just to stick it to those foreign dickwads. everytime i bump into a tourist i wish they'd go back home to whatever lousy country they're from and leave me alone. apparently the city wants to attract more of these pests because they're good for the economy or something, which is such a load of shit. i don't own a restaurant, hotel, or tacky store, why should i have to suffer so those jerks can get rich?

the worst tourists of all are australians. they're loud, rude, and usually drunk. additionally, all the australians who come here tend to stay for weeks or even months at a time. i don't know why this is, maybe it's to escape the poverty and oppression of their awful homeland? if it were up to me, i would deport every person with an australian accent back to their prison colony island. i'm not being unreasonable here, i've met one or two australians who weren't all bad, and even they were embarassed by the drunken stupidity of their hostel dwelling, beer swilling, outdoor voice inside talking countrymen.

for example, the last time i spoke with an australian was at the cambie (before i started avoiding them), he sat down beside me and started telling me how great vancouver was with lots of swear words i didn't understand. i remember he leaned over to me, pointing at a very fat girl at the other side of the room and, in that drunken slur they call english, informed me that you were not a man if you hadn't had sex with a woman you couldn't lift. charming.so it was with this attitude that i went to richard's on richards to see midnight juggernauts. i even brought a bag of rotten kiwis to throw at them and spent the better part of the afternoon looking up australian swear words, just in case.

as it turned out, the band was actually pretty good so neither of those things were necessary (i left the kiwis in the men's room behind a toilet and forgot the slang). this was actually the first pleasant evening i have ever spent in the company of australians. even though they're apparently justice's favourite band they were pretty listenable. also, the guys in the band were quite skinny, so they were probably all men unless they secretly have really strong upper bodies.

they were loud and cheerful, but not in a drunken frat boy way, more like a klaxons with more bass and less neon way, which was really nice. anyways, these guys and cut copy are about the only australians i don't mind bumping into in the evening.

reckless abandon

the rising sun found me sitting alone in the master bedroom of my country manse holding my head in my hands, a dead prostitute sprawled on my bathroom floor. not knowing what to do, i stood and began to pace. obviously i needed some sort of alibi: there is no prison safe enough for a man as handsome as myself. my mind began to race, concoting and rejecting wild stories to tell the police when the inevitable questions began.

after what seemed like hours, my frenzied imagination finally seized upon one plausible enough to work: i would tell them i was at the teenagers show!

but i knew a good story would not be enough. i'd need details. i checked on the girl in the bathroom one more time, still dead. think craig, think.

they'd probably ask general questions about the show, like what time it started and how big the crowd was. i'd have to tell them something that sounded plausible.

the show was scheduled for 10, so i decided it would be safe to say they started at 11 because french people are rude and don't care about other people's time. that sounded pretty good, i knew if i were a cop i'd believe that. and if they asked me about how many people were there i'd have to tell them that the crowd was pretty big, but nowhere near capacity, which is probably for the best, because there is nothing worse than a room packed with people you don't know.

believing this to be a workable solution, i stopped worriedly pacing. the whole thing was just an accident, nothing more than a simple misunderstanding, really. a misunderstanding i would be able to clear up as soon as the cops arrived and i told them my story.


unfortunately, things didn't go exactly as planned. i met with them in my large rose garden, my face a picture of shock and innocence, but the cops who questioned me asked a lot of specific questions i hadn't prepared for. i told them that the new song (i even made up a name - streets of paris or something lame like that) was pretty boring but homecoming was still badass and i would have given them all high fives if it were a true story. they pressed me further and i told them that this time only two girls went on stage, but they both seemed to know most of the words which was better in some ways but far less awesome in others. gaining confidence, i told the officers that the teenagers' problem was that there weren't enough beautiful women on stage. they need more attractive session musicians and they also need to sing blink182 style pop punk ballads about making out with girls at parties or pretending not to be high when your parents come into your room because that is what i think of when i hear the name "the teenagers."

things seemed to be going well until i was asked about their clothes. the cops wanted to know if they were better dressed than last time. i began to sweat. was this a trick question? the band had only been touring north america for 3 months, do they still look like the drama team from my highschool? did that one guy with the tape holding his shoes together get new shoes? i had no idea. my story was ripped to pieces, and i slumped down to my knees and stained the floor of my gazebo with tears while confessing the entire thing.

i guess the cops took pity on me or i was able to explain my position very reasonably, because after i had recovered my composure, i was told i was free to go, but warned never to do it again. i can honestly say that this weekend i learned a very valuable lesson about honesty and french people. also, it turns out they were better dressed than last time.

birthdays are terrible

i've never really understood why people make such a big deal about birthdays. they were fun until i turned 14, but after that they've just become a lot of work and another reminder that i am getting old and will die soon.

birthdays are very similar to new year's in that they're supposed to be big milestones and people get desperate to have a good time, even if it makes them miserable. why should getting older and recieiving a dozen facebook comments from near-strangers saying "hppy bday!" be a milestone to celebrate? maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you only had to see your good friends, but birthdays become a terrible reminder of your wasted life when every drug addict loser you know from highschool wants to talk to you. the only times i've been able to have fun on recent birthdays have been when i've managed to forget that it was actually my birthday because they're fucking depressing.


i've always wanted to have a fun birthday, or atleast know what one is like, which is why i ask everybody i meet from california if their 16th birthday was on mtv. no success yet. all my friends must be poor. i bet having just one fun birthday party would change my entire outlook and maybe even be the one ray of sunshine in the otherwise grey and cloudy day that is my life which keeps me from killing myself. it wouldn't matter if my daddy bought me the lexus or not.

perhaps it is foolish of me to invest so much hope in what could still easily become a catastrophe for the ages to be recorded in a thousand largely-unread blogs, but i am very excited about this year's birthday party even after it was forcibly rescheduled at the last minute: my one chance of ever being happy was very nearly stolen from me by a Cormac McCarthyesque twist of fate. i've put a bit of work into this one so everyone should come if they want to still be my friend in the morning. or don't, see if i care... actually that isn't true, i base my self worth on how many people show up so if you don't come i will feel like a miserable failure for weeks and not even my mom will be able to cheer me up by telling me how smart and handsome i am.


finally, getting older has been a totally bogus experience for me. sure i can vote and drive and feature in pornographic films, but i have yet to attract one teenage girl who grew up without a strong father figure with my chest hair and partial beard. when i was younger i was always getting cockblocked by older guys who had tricked girls into thinking they were cool, why isn't it working for me?

fake shark really understands me

i have a hard time leaving my house. i don't know if this is because of crippling social anxiety problems, my busy life, fear of running into people i've offended on the internet, or some unholy combination of the three, but it is becoming a real problem. i'm late to everything - months ago i showed up at seylynn hall at 10 thinking i was really early but missed curtis santiago, this weekend i couldn't get out on friday or saturday until 1:40am.

usually this isn't that big a deal because i only go to bars and, i, like everybody else, only go out to have my picture taken by anyone with a camera, disguise my drug and alcohol dependencies as a purely social behaviour, and get laid, so i can do that all by appearing at the last minute, saying hi to the right people, and then swooping off with the drunkest girl i can find. but it makes going to shows nearly impossible because they usually finish before i can get my pants on.


the last time i can remember actually being on time for a show was patrick wolf last year and that was only because i hadn't planned on going, it was kind of an impulse decision. i'm not exactly sure how i managed to be dressed and downtown before the show started, i might have just stayed out the night before. anyways, this is kind of a problem for me because sometimes bands i actually like come to town and it always makes me sad when i miss them as a result of my inability to get out of my house in time. i cried when i missed afrika bambaataa the other week and i swear it will never happen again. missing afrika bambaataa, that is, i'll probably cry lots more before i go to bed tonight.


this is why i was so happy when i found out that fake shark real zombie would be playing their cd release party at midnight, a much more reasonable hour than 7 or 8. i somehow made it there by 11, and so did everyone else i know who has the same problem, which was basically a mini-miracle bigger than the mighty ducks beating iceland but smaller than jesus, so we all got to watch the fashion show and everything. i even got to hear the band tune up which was like beautiful tuneless music. i was a little dissapointed that nothing got broken, but i guess there wasn't really much to break so it isn't very fair to complain. anyways, the show was lots of fun and if anybody wanted to know what 1/2 alive sounds like in a small room not on friday the answer is pretty good.

some people were upset that the party was on easter sunday, they claimed to have families or jobs or something, which is total bullshit. the only thing people should be talking about is that i finally made it somewhere on time, and so did lots of other people.