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Here I am telling jokes at the Wild Rover Comedy Night hosted by me every Sunday except this upcoming Sunday and also only till football season. Come out to a show before there are no more, or don’t. Who am I to tell you what to do with your Sunday evenings?
Random Thought
I just wrote about Ozzy Osbourne two weeks ago and now he’s gone. Two weeks ago, he gave an impressive final performance that would bookend his career. It was already the stuff of legends, but Ozzy dying shortly after makes it seem even more impressive. What a way to go out. That is sure to go down as one of rock’s most important and meaningful performances ever.
He had said in an interview before that concert that he knew he was gonna die soon. And sometimes I’ll notice older people hold onto life a little longer for something important and once that thing passes, they seem ready to pass on. This is all very sad and heavy, of course. No one lives forever but if you polled the entire human race to choose one person they’d want to live forever, I bet Ozzy would be a popular pick.
But knowing he was gonna die just makes the whole thing so much more badass. He was a true rock outlaw till the end and wouldn’t let the specter of imminent death get in the way. He also raised a shit-ton of money for children’s hospitals proving that beneath the Prince of Darkness exterior was a heart of gold.
There’ll never be another Ozzy. I don’t know what I can write about him that someone else probably hasn’t written already. But I’ll try. He’s fucking Ozzy. He’s in that rare single-word name club. You say Ozzy and everyone knows who you’re talking about. He was super famous, but I think what might amaze me most about his fame is how to me it felt like he got even more famous with age over my lifetime.
I was a teenager in the early 90s. Ozzy was important to us. He was Black Sabbath. He was the cool solo stuff from the 80s. He was one of the few relics that would survive hair metal and still get love and respect from the grunge youth. And he didn’t even have to compromise. He was just himself the entire time.
In some ways I feel like my generation were the ones to stamp Ozzy a legend. I’m sure he was legendary to young people ahead of us, but we were the first ones who weren’t alive when Black Sabbath was a thing but still understood how cool he was, and we were still into his current stuff. My youth is peppered with Ozzy cameos everywhere, TV, movies, radio, other people’s songs, magazines, etc. We couldn’t get enough of Ozzy.
Ozzy was meme culture before social media. Ozzy bit the head off a bat and somehow everyone knew about it. Ozzy pissed on the Alamo and somehow everyone knew about it. Ozzy snorted ants and somehow everyone knew about it. Even later on, when there was an internet, but social media was very young, the stuff he’d do on the Osbournes reality show would go viral by word of mouth (my pick for greatest TV moment in history is the “bubbles” scene).
And speaking of the Osbournes, I feel like that show was a real transcendent moment for Ozzy. Who knew that Ozzy was such a teddy bear in real life? America fell hard for him. That was it, he no longer only belonged to metalheads and Ozzfest attendees. The secret was out. Ozzy was the best and even your grandma suddenly knew who he was (and loved him).
Ozzy spans generations. His music has influenced every generation that’s come after him. His spot in rock history is an important spot and rock would look a whole lot different and probably not as loud or cool without him. Also, can we talk about the voice? There’s just nothing like Ozzy singing. It’s one-of-a-kind but also feels so meant to be. I couldn’t picture Ozzy doing anything else.
He was also a beacon and a flag bearer for the freaks, the weirdos, and for people who don’t feel like they fit in. But beyond that, he was also an olive branch outside of that world. I remember being a dorky alternative rock teenager and some of the cool hip-hop kids would hear Ozzy/Sabbath and tell me it’s cool. Ozzy felt like one of us, but he also transcended that limitation which in some odd way gave/continues to give hope. Ozzy was weird and Ozzy was beloved. Ozzy was a freak and Ozzy was popular. These things aren’t mutually exclusive. Ozzy showed us that the world is ours and it’s okay to explore outside these preconceived boundaries of subcultures while still belonging to said subcultures.
I’ve never known a life without Ozzy. I don’t even remember how I learned about Ozzy. He was just always there. As far as I’m concerned, in the beginning, there was Ozzy, and that’s that.
This is a heavy loss for sure but it’s also a moment to reflect and think how cool it is that we got to live this existence and share our timeline here with Ozzy. He belongs to us. He’s of our time. There’s a lot of bad, ugly stuff in the world, but holy shit man, we got to rock out with Ozzy Osbourne. How lucky are we?
Movie I Watched Recently
Leave the World Behind
(Netflix)
This was a pretty cool movie about a family that is trying to make a last-minute beach getaway but when they get there, everything starts going crazy. Is it the end of the world? Or is there some outside force or person(s) fucking with them? I don’t wanna blow the whole plot, but they do a good job of feeding you a little information here and there along the way so that you have to paint the picture in your head as you go along.
This movie also dispels the myth that Kevin Bacon and Ethan Hawke are the same person. They’re both in this and they even share a scene together. It’s fairly star studded. In addition to those two, Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali are also in this movie.
This film is well acted, well written, and well shot. It’s got these sorta Black Mirror vibes where it plays off our current reality and adds its own twist to make it a bit of a head fuck but not too much of one either.
I totally recommend.
Damn, Kevin Bacon’s name doesn’t even make the cut for this promo pic (possibly adding to the conspiracy that him and Ethan Hawke ARE the same person), but this moose does. The moose is only gonna make sense if you watch the movie.
TV show I’m currently watching
South Park
South Park made us wait forever for a new episode and it was…. worth the wait. Not only was it worth the wait, I feel like they found the right moment in history to throw it together and really say something about what’s going on. They go in hard on Trump. They make references to shows being cancelled, companies being sued, religion in school, and even a quick Epstein list reference.
South Park flexed their social commentary muscles big time on this one and I loved all of it. It may not fix anything but along with other shows and people in comedy, it’s just nice to know that I’m not alone in thinking that this whole fucking thing has gone crazy. Even if it never gets better, it just feels semi-comforting to know that someone with a big platform agrees and is screaming it from the mountain top (or from the mount since this episode features Jesus giving a sermon on the mount).
One of my personal favorite things about this episode was that there was no attempt whatsoever at trying to do a Trump impression. I may just be saying this because I’m bad at impressions, but it was nice to see Trump get masterfully roasted without having to do the voice.
Jeopardy!
Just wanted to quickly mention that this guy Scott is killing it on Jeopardy. He just hit 16 wins in a row. Most of those wins were in a dominant fashion. Plus, just look at him, he looks mean.
Or maybe not. He’s super polite and genial and maybe he gives off semi-American Psycho vibes but I’m sure he’s never cleaved a body to pieces with a knife before.
It’s been a while since Jeopardy’s had someone hit a hot streak and I always find the show a little more interesting when someone is there defending multiple wins in a row (dominant ones at that).
Will Scott make it back into the Josh Wells Weekly next week? We’ll find out…
Album of the Week
Adventure Club / Laura Jane Grace
So, it’s my favorite living singer/songwriter’s newest release and I was very excited for it but some awkward things happened around its release. Laura’s marriage to Paris Campbell began to self-destruct live on social media and the whole thing was awkward. It’s soured the excitement for the release, but I suppose that’s small potatoes and mostly I just hope both parties come out of this whole thing okay.
Paris is also part of the band. She does vocals on most of the songs on this album. So, in a way, it feels like this could end up being a collection of songs no one will ever hear live going forward. This album could possibly end up lost in time. It’s very strange to think about. I don’t wanna say it’s dead on arrival but even if I enjoyed this album (and I did), what is there to look forward to from here?
That being said, it’s a really good collection of songs. Laura gets pretty confessional in some of them. Some of the songs are catchy as fuck. And par for the course for LJG, there’s some rowdy punk rock stuff in there as well. Laura’s discography post-Against Me! is starting to become pretty vast. This phase of her career all felt so new at some point but here we are and it’s like, wow, she’s dropped a fair amount of albums in a short amount of time.
I’m not sure which is my favorite. I’m gonna try not to compare them to each other. I will say this, Laura has a way of making every album sound unique, like they’re chapters in times of her life and so I commend her ability to not just do the same thing over and over (the most glaring example is probably ‘Stay Alive’ which feels like a real pandemic album that couldn’t be recreated in any other time).
I do feel like with each album, she gets closer to something, I don’t know what exactly. The music is less timid overall which feels like a crazy thing to write about someone like Laura Jane Grace with all her punk rock bona fides. But also, she acknowledges in this album that she’s far from perfect and still has more space to grow which felt a little eerie as I kept seeing more drama online about her failing marriage which feels like none of my business, but it found its way in front of my eyes and I can’t unsee it either.
Either way, I hope both Laura and Paris find peace. I hope Laura continues on and we keep getting more music well into the future.
It’s like a nightmare-scape Where’s Waldo without a Waldo.
Book I’m Currently Reading
Homesick For Another World / Ottessa Moshfegh
So far this seems to be a collection of very short stories about mostly depraved characters that are hard to like. Also, most of the endings are kinda vague. It feels more like a collection of character studies of people you don’t wanna root for. It’s train wreck fiction I suppose. I don’t wanna like most of these characters (I did really enjoy the character in the first story though but looking back, I’m not sure I was supposed to or maybe that was some ploy to sucker me in and let my guard down for what was to come) but I also can’t look away. I still wanna know what’s next. Maybe there’s something depraved in all of us, and these stories connect to that part of us that we try to keep hidden way, way down somewhere.
I’m only about halfway through so far though so who knows if things change or the tone alters. More to come…
Hey there, doggie. I’m not sure if this dog has anything to do with one of the stories. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
Random sports thought of the week
Recently, our idiot president suggested that Washington DC’s NFL team, the Commanders, should change its name back to its old name, the… well, I don’t even wanna type it out. This whole thing feels like some kind of a distraction so people will stop talking about the Epstein stuff. Is it working? Is my acknowledging it falling for the bait? I feel like I’m not losing sight of the issue, but just in case…
RELEASE ALL OF THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW!!!
Beyond that, Trump did his typical bully routine and threatened to ruin some deal that the team is working on for a new stadium and what worries me is that Trump is really good at being a bully. I’d have laughed this off two months ago but now I worry that America is a playground, and Trump is that playground’s biggest bully. I continually hope for his comeuppance, but until then, I worry just how much other people will cower to his nonsense.
To me, sports can sometimes act as a barometer for everything else that’s going on in the world. We’ve seen politics play out in sports before. If for some reason the Commanders did succumb to the pressure and backtrack the name into that other unfortunate one, I think that would be a big blow for progress in America.
The reason I won’t type that word:
The team was introduced to me as a kid with that name. I was a kid, a young white kid. I didn’t know any better. I never thought about it. Blame it on my privilege. But as I got older, I’d think about it and think, yikes, what a gross word. I mean, imagine if you’d never heard that word before, and someone introduced that word to you for the first time. Even if you’re anti-woke or whatever, you’d have to acknowledge on some level that word just doesn’t feel good to say, hear, write, or read.
Or maybe people are okay with it and that would bum me out even more. I already gave into this idea that the idiots have taken over in this country. But going backwards on this word feels like it would be an acknowledgement that it’s okay to be pro-racist.
I just don’t think we can go back. But it worries me because when Trump wants something, he cries and yells until he gets it. I hope this is not one of those times. I hope the Commanders, the NFL, and even the fans can stand up to this and give him a big old “FUCK YOU, MAN, NOT HAPPENING.”
I can acknowledge that the current Commanders look/logo is not exciting and would not be anti-change entirely. Just don’t go back to something that feels obviously racist.
Random pro wrestling thought of the week
Well, Hulk Hogan died. Here’s a thing I wrote on my social media accounts about it:
When I wrote this, I failed to include anything about how he was anti-union, covered for Vince and his atrocities, and was a compulsive liar.
Hogan’s influence and role in pro wrestling’s popularity is undeniable. He did a bunch of enjoyable work in pro wrestling, a lot of it I was a fan of as it was happening. But none of that speaks louder to me than who he revealed himself to be in later years.
Pro wrestling has so many better heroes.
Whenever Hulk Hogan comes up in wrestling discourse, I tell people that I’m Booker T in this picture. I stand by that.
My 5 Favorite Ozzy Eras
- Black Sabbath Ozzy
- Resurgent Randy Rhoades Era Ozzy
- Ozzfest Era/this dude is a living legend Ozzy
- Osbournes TV show Ozzy
- The Final Years. Still living boldly even if stricken with Parkinson’s and the overall effects of a life lived hard.
I decided not to number this week’s Top 5. I enjoyed Ozzy always and each era ruled in its own cool way.
Weekly Quote
“I have a genuine love affair with my audience. When I'm on stage they're not privileged to see me. It's a privilege for me to see them.”
-Ozzy Osbourne
I assure you; the pleasure was all ours.
Thanks for reading!
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRg2MM2mOOvh1JKnDatFiBQ
Upcoming Shows
*No Rover show this week. We’ll be back next Sunday, Aug 3rd.
TONIGHT!
Hasbrouck Heights, NJ
Tu, 7/29, 7:30pm
Five Dimes Brewery
Westwood, NJ
Fri, 8/01
Piermont, NY
Fri, 8/08
Ridgefield Park, NJ
Fri, 8/15
NEXT HELL YEA! ALERT!
more details to come…