John Roderick's Missing a Tooth, But Gaining Journalism Skills

In this week's installment of John Roderick's ramblings, we find out that the Long Winters frontman is going to be permanently blogging for the Seattle Weekly. Huzzah!

I was asked to undertake this column a month or so ago as a short-term "residency", which served the purpose of legitimizing my claim that I was a "journalist" and so therefore would be financially unable to make restitution to the plaintiffs in the unfortunate miscarriage of justice that was the judgment against me in Radcliffe v. Roderick's Miracle Enhancement Pants. That ruse accomplished I was prepared to draw the curtain on my writing career in order to concentrate exclusively on fleecing consumers by finding ways to get them to pay me to play guitar. But now the brain-trust in the executive office suites of the Seattle Weekly, who answer directly to the cabal that runs the Village Voice from a subterranean cavern a mile under the Zugspitze, who in turn must submit to weekly spankings by the undergraduate members of Skull and Bones, have proposed that I continue to columnize.

This puts me in a bit of a pickle. On the one hand, the notoriety that accompanies being a columnist for a weekly newspaper is a bit overwhelming for someone as naturally shy and retiring as myself. The back-slapping and ballyhoo that accompany every publishing day threaten to knock the fedora with the "press" ticket right off my head. My brother Whitey, who plays the role of the Red Rasputin at the Showbox Theater, even complained that people are mistaking him for me, which has always irritated him since we were little kids back in the fjords of Norway. On the other hand the perquisites of mainstream journalism are astonishing. My Seattle Weekly press pass has already proved invaluable in twice excusing me from fifth period gym class.