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COMETBUS #54 Green Day In China?!


GDM

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i've been reading the previous pages and thus wanting badly to know exactly what happened with tre and the octopus. i haven't read any spoiler about it so far. :(

did he eat it alive? someone please share the story. thanks.

Someone typed out the whole octopus part in a spoiler before, here it is if you want to read it:

Here we go, for those of you who will not be able to read this. The octopus part is conveniently in the same part of the story as the part about Prima Donna. Andres, if you feel even parts of this should not be shared here, feel free to delete the post.

When the lights came on, I was surprised to find the opening band standing nearby. I reassessed my low opinion of them. Any band that was also fans was alright by me.

Later it became clear that they hadn't been mingling without a purpose: the dressing room was filled with women with whom they'd presented with special backstage laminates. The shirtless singer pointed out the one he liked best, sending the roadie over to play fetch. The singer ws just a kid, and the woman didn't seem all that into him, but she accepted her cliched role half in jest. Soon they were making out.

I sat in a corner with Billie, Bill Schneider, and the Big Three, literally turning our backs on the whole thing. Then I felt something cold and slimy slip down my shirt. I turned and let out an involuntary scream: it was Tre, with a live octopus, one of whose tentacles was reaching into my pants!

It was truly a nightmare. Tre cackled evilly as he pulled the octopus off me. Then he opened his mouth wide and began to devour it alive. He had mentioned a desire to try some of the more unusual local delicacies, but I hadn't taken the part about live animals literally.

Tre had taken one bite before the octopus wrapped one of its tentacles round his neck and started to squeeze - first tentatively, then with more force. The octopus got another tentacle down his throat, and Tre started to choke, All the while, the limeys were in a frenzy of flashbulbs, egging him on.

Billie and I turned away, too revolted and unsettled to watch - only to see the opening band's singer sucking the girl's face and slipping his hand underneath her skirt. It was all too much!

The bodyguards did not step in to save Tre from the octopus, but once he'd freed himself from its grip, one went with Tre to the bathroom to help him puke. The other two hacked away at the still writhing animal with knives.

Get the singer for the opening band too!

Edit: Fuck this is my 15000th post

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Someone typed out the whole octopus part in a spoiler before, here it is if you want to read it:

Edit: Fuck this is my 15000th post

thanks. thanks a lot!!

bad tre, that was just wrong. he didn't really want to eat the octopus, but to make fun of it. :lol:

oh god, i love how the author writes. i wish i could read this book.

and congrats for the 15000th post. :happy:

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thanks. thanks a lot!!

bad tre, that was just wrong. he didn't really want to eat the octopus, but to make fun of it. :lol:

oh god, i love how the author writes. i wish i could read this book.

and congrats for the 15000th post. :happy:

Haha thanks :D, I alway plan to do something cool with my something-thousand posts but I always forget.

You can buy the book from GDA if you want, it's $4 plus $5.50 for international shipping. Here's where you order it: http://www.greendayauthority.com/merch/books/

There's a thread about it pinned at the top of Green Day Chat too.

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Now I've read it, his comments don't seem too bad in the context of the book. But I still think he's a tit though.

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He can be a bit of a douchebag, yeah, but based on what he wrote, he doesn't seem like a malicious guy. Just a bit judgmental.

Also, whoever was talking about the hypocrisy of Aaron being against Billie kissing all those fans, but loving it when he kissed him, I think that's way off the mark. The two situations aren't the same at all.

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Also, whoever was talking about the hypocrisy of Aaron being against Billie kissing all those fans, but loving it when he kissed him, I think that's way off the mark. The two situations aren't the same at all.

Please expand on why you feel this way. Thanks. :)

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Well, the way I read it, he was objecting to the kissing the fans thing because it didn't mean anything. Aaron sees it as Billie just using his sex appeal to get a crowd reaction and even if Billie doesn't mean it as an attention grabbing thing, it becomes the focus for that person, and for the audience. It almost seemed like Aaron felt Billie whores himself out for attention and sex appeal. Like he says "part of being a sex symbol is being unattainable." It seems like he had a beef with Billie giving himself away (in a manner of speaking) to the fans who got onstage, more so than he, in his "sex god" position, should be doing.

Now the kiss between the two of them, entirely different. That's a kiss between friends, a kiss of real love and affection, not done for the cameras or for the reaction of the person you're kissing, just pure love and friendship. I'm sure Aaron would've felt the same way about Billie kissing Mike or Tre at that party. It wasn't done for the sake of doing it, for the action itself; it was done out of the affection it was meant to convey.

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Well, the way I read it, he was objecting to the kissing the fans thing because it didn't mean anything. Aaron sees it as Billie just using his sex appeal to get a crowd reaction and even if Billie doesn't mean it as an attention grabbing thing, it becomes the focus for that person, and for the audience. It almost seemed like Aaron felt Billie whores himself out for attention and sex appeal. Like he says "part of being a sex symbol is being unattainable." It seems like he had a beef with Billie giving himself away (in a manner of speaking) to the fans who got onstage, more so than he, in his "sex god" position, should be doing.

Now the kiss between the two of them, entirely different. That's a kiss between friends, a kiss of real love and affection, not done for the cameras or for the reaction of the person you're kissing, just pure love and friendship. I'm sure Aaron would've felt the same way about Billie kissing Mike or Tre at that party. It wasn't done for the sake of doing it, for the action itself; it was done out of the affection it was meant to convey.

I agree that it wasn't hypocritical for him to kiss Billie at all, as the two things are indeed totally different. But I don't think that's what makes the fan kisses different and I think Aaron got the wrong end of the stick about it. The fan kisses are silly kisses done for the sake of being friendly and having a laugh. Totally different from a kiss between real friends with real love of course, but not different in the seedy way that Aaron tries to make out. It's true that Billie has sex appeal (duh) but I don't think the way he kisses fans on stage has much to do with it. Instead of wanting to be the unattainable sex symbol who distainfully rejects desperate horny girls that Aaron seems to think he should be, Billie says yeah gimme a kiss mate and gives them a friendly smacker on the lips, boys and girls included. Billie acts less sex symbol and more approachable and friendly. The reality is so much more innocent and lighthearted than he makes out, I'm not sure why he had such an issue with it.

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Oh no, I know. I'm not saying I agree with Mr. Cometbus, I'm just saying that's the way he seems to see the stage kisses. But he's a little weird, and I think most people know that it's just a silly, pseudo-sexy thing that Billie does with the fans.

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Oh no, I know. I'm not saying I agree with Mr. Cometbus, I'm just saying that's the way he seems to see the stage kisses. But he's a little weird, and I think most people know that it's just a silly, pseudo-sexy thing that Billie does with the fans.

Oh totally, I think you're spot on about how he sees it too. Just arguing against Mr Cometbus :D

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Are we still using spoilers?

I thought what Cometbus said about calling Green Day punk or not was interesting. Both for his definition of punk and the fact he's either incorrect or has very exacting standards. He claims that Billie is the only one who is really a punk for playing in a side band and doing his own thing (I forget the exact wording of it, just remember the general sentiment) but he wasn't so sure about Mike or Tré. He seems to ignore The Foxboro Hot Tubs completely. If his exacting standards claim them to be Green Day in different outfits, what about The Frustrators? And depending on how far you wanna go back, Tré was in The Lookouts too.

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I thought what Cometbus said about calling Green Day punk or not was interesting. Both for his definition of punk and the fact he's either incorrect or has very exacting standards. He claims that Billie is the only one who is really a punk for playing in a side band and doing his own thing (I forget the exact wording of it, just remember the general sentiment) but he wasn't so sure about Mike or Tré. He seems to ignore The Foxboro Hot Tubs completely. If his exacting standards claim them to be Green Day in different outfits, what about The Frustrators? And depending on how far you wanna go back, Tré was in The Lookouts too.

Wasn't it more about helping out other people's bands? Like, Billie putting bands out on Adeline? Honestly, I don't know anything about his 'rules' of punk, but the impression I got that was if you get to a position of some advantage, you use it to help other bands get a chance, like giving them a place to record and such.

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Wasn't it more about helping out other people's bands? Like, Billie putting bands out on Adeline? Honestly, I don't know anything about his 'rules' of punk, but the impression I got that was if you get to a position of some advantage, you use it to help other bands get a chance, like giving them a place to record and such.

Maybe, I'll look it up when I'm not half asleep. But I'd be very surprised if Mike hasn't used his fame to help other bands too. As for Tré, well as usual he's just a total grey area.

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I love the way Billie uses kisses etc. to break down the barrier between performers and audience. I think it's one of the many things that make Green Day's shows so personal and entertaining :)

Maybe, I'll look it up when I'm not half asleep. But I'd be very surprised if Mike hasn't used his fame to help other bands too. As for Tré, well as usual he's just a total grey area.

Haha oh Tre :rolleyes: It'd be interesting to see what he does with all his down time... besides golf that is

On another note, I ordered my copy 2 weeks ago, should I be wondering where it is?

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I loved the passage about the two different Green Days that he knows.

Soon I would be seeing Green Day on magazine covers instead of in the flesh. My perspective on them would change. In all likelihood, they would appear much worse from the outside than they did from within. On tour, Green Day were guys who I ate breakfast with every morning. In New York, they were a terrifying monster that stalked me in all-night donut shops, in supermarket checkout lines, and even on the subway. Their hype was impossible to escape. Seeing them up close made me forget the cultural behemoth that they had become. Seeing them from afar made it easy to forget that they were human.

Beautiful writing :happy:

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You can't. It's over 90 pages

Balls. guess i won't be reading this then. :(

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I loved the passage about the two different Green Days that he knows.

Soon I would be seeing Green Day on magazine covers instead of in the flesh. My perspective on them would change. In all likelihood, they would appear much worse from the outside than they did from within. On tour, Green Day were guys who I ate breakfast with every morning. In New York, they were a terrifying monster that stalked me in all-night donut shops, in supermarket checkout lines, and even on the subway. Their hype was impossible to escape. Seeing them up close made me forget the cultural behemoth that they had become. Seeing them from afar made it easy to forget that they were human.

Beautiful writing :happy:

I'd forgotten that passage - and it is great. :) I REALLY need to go back and read the issue again, yep. Slowly this time!

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Having just checked this out, I have to say that it was almost tiring to read, because this guy is constantly wrestling with stuff. 'Judgemental' is what's getting thrown around - and yeah, he can come across as judging not only other people, but every situation, and he sure as fuck spends a lot of time judging himself. To me, it feels like he's constantly trying to make sense of things, to make them fit into some kind of order, and then there's the back-and-forth thing of his context with Green Day. There are very few moments - at least, on the page - where he just lets stuff happen to him.

The Green Day stuff is somehow upclose and distant at the same time, which I guess is fair enough both in terms of being respectful and because it's not about Green Day as such, it's about his experience of being with Green Day on this part of the tour. It's also very male - you get the impression of all these various types of guys tumbled together for this experience, and behind it all, the momentum of the tour driving everything.

I think he did a great job of conveying the chaos and the camarederie, the little shiney personal moments, the cultural pictures, the food and the people and the hotels and the photographers, and yeah, the fans in a lot of their aspects. It feels like a man always on the brink of being overwhelmed by the mammoth scale of stuff, trying to hold on to who he is and to figure out what he believes in.

justcause, this is the most insightful piece of writing i have read about #54 and mostly about aaron cometbus. i think aaron should read it and save himself some hard earned $ on psycho-analysis because i think you nailed him and how he needs to put the world in his own personal semblance of order. i agree with you that ALL his writing is him squeezing the world through his own framework and perspective, and that 54 is VERY MALE, which to me reads as sexist. but it is HIS perspective, his very male-focused POV. beautifully written and thank you for your insight.

Well, the way I read it, he was objecting to the kissing the fans thing because it didn't mean anything. Aaron sees it as Billie just using his sex appeal to get a crowd reaction and even if Billie doesn't mean it as an attention grabbing thing, it becomes the focus for that person, and for the audience. It almost seemed like Aaron felt Billie whores himself out for attention and sex appeal. Like he says "part of being a sex symbol is being unattainable." It seems like he had a beef with Billie giving himself away (in a manner of speaking) to the fans who got onstage, more so than he, in his "sex god" position, should be doing.

Now the kiss between the two of them, entirely different. That's a kiss between friends, a kiss of real love and affection, not done for the cameras or for the reaction of the person you're kissing, just pure love and friendship. I'm sure Aaron would've felt the same way about Billie kissing Mike or Tre at that party. It wasn't done for the sake of doing it, for the action itself; it was done out of the affection it was meant to convey.

doesnt aaron compare it to the ramones and nobody daring to break that wall between audience and performer? but BJA is all about trying to break down that wall between Green Day and the audience. BJA has spoken about trying to create intimacy in large-scale shows forever and we know all the stage antics are nothing more than his attempt at breaking down that wall. those kisses BJA shares with fans are, of course, not intimacy, but i believe they are pure love, BJA's love of sharing his stage, fans pure love of the show experience.

i think aaron believes in that "wall", i think aaron NEEDS those walls and it goes back to what justcause wrote, aaron looks at the world through his own very unique perspective and probably as a bit of a loner.

liked your perspective capt perox!!

Aaron got the wrong end of the stick about it. The fan kisses are silly kisses done for the sake of being friendly and having a laugh. Totally different from a kiss between real friends with real love of course, but not different in the seedy way that Aaron tries to make out . It's true that Billie has sex appeal (duh) but I don't think the way he kisses fans on stage has much to do with it. Instead of wanting to be the unattainable sex symbol who distainfully rejects desperate horny girls that Aaron seems to think he should be, Billie says yeah gimme a kiss mate and gives them a friendly smacker on the lips, boys and girls included. Billie acts less sex symbol and more approachable and friendly. The reality is so much more innocent and lighthearted than he makes out, I'm not sure why he had such an issue with it.

yessssssssssssssssss. ^^ this ^^. i mean its not like BJA is pulling a kevin preston giving out laminates to horny girls so he can stick his hands down their pants.

maybe aaron no likey share billie with the world?

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justcause, this is the most insightful piece of writing i have read about #54 and mostly about aaron cometbus. i think aaron should read it and save himself some hard earned $ on psycho-analysis because i think you nailed him and how he needs to put the world in his own personal semblance of order. i agree with you that ALL his writing is him squeezing the world through his own framework and perspective, and that 54 is VERY MALE, which to me reads as sexist. but it is HIS perspective, his very male-focused POV. beautifully written and thank you for your insight.

I don't think I'd be telling him anything he doesn't already know - he doesn't spare himself in anything I read in #54. Particularly vivid is that part where he sees himself scavenging from the backstage banquet while the show is blasting joyously outside, and throughout, there's this sense of impoverishment, hunger. It's like he's cold to the bone and he can see the sunshine, but he won't let himself feel it, because he doesn't trust it. It's like he doesn't know if he's a saint or a fool - and truth is, when I'd read #54 and closed the cover and was just holding it in my hands, I felt moved by the object itself. The simplicity of it, the care with which the whole thing was put together, his name on the inside cover - I was just so conscious that here is something special, here's something that's made of a man's soul. This, in its own way, is a holy book.

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I found this picture. Is this from the fish thing people were talking about? :blink: The one that was similar to the octopus thing.

12GroupShots-TheNimrodEra-1997-1999-Dlires.jpg

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Just finished reading it - I enjoyed it alot! I found it very engaging and interesting, even though I didn't expect the zine to be a trip in Aaron's thoughts as much as a trip with Green Day. I loved his writing style and for some reason I thought it was very interesting to read all of his judgmental thoughts :lol:

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doesnt aaron compare it to the ramones and nobody daring to break that wall between audience and performer? but BJA is all about trying to break down that wall between Green Day and the audience. BJA has spoken about trying to create intimacy in large-scale shows forever and we know all the stage antics are nothing more than his attempt at breaking down that wall. those kisses BJA shares with fans are, of course, not intimacy, but i believe they are pure love, BJA's love of sharing his stage, fans pure love of the show experience.

i think aaron believes in that "wall", i think aaron NEEDS those walls and it goes back to what justcause wrote, aaron looks at the world through his own very unique perspective and probably as a bit of a loner.

liked your perspective capt perox!!

Yeah, he mentions a girl making some kind of physical contact with Joey Ramone at a show, and how uncomfortable Joey looked. But that didn't stop him from being a sex symbol. If anything, it made him more of one, because I think that's half the reason sex symbols like Billie are so attractive to people, because they're unattainable, because the only way they coexist with the onlooker is in a fantasy.

I definitely like how affectionate Billie is, but I think what Aaron's getting at is that it's a bit naive of Billie to think that that physical contact is just a silly, fun thing. I mean, for us who have more "experience" with the band, we know that's what it is, but for some random teenager who gets pulled up onstage, that's gonna be so much more than that. And I think Aaron's criticizing Billie for not taking that into account.

maybe aaron no likey share billie with the world?

I think he just feels that that kind of physical contact should be kept somewhat meaningful, rather than exploiting it on a stage in front of thousands of people. But that's just Aaron, we know that's not what Billie's up to.

I don't think I'd be telling him anything he doesn't already know - he doesn't spare himself in anything I read in #54. Particularly vivid is that part where he sees himself scavenging from the backstage banquet while the show is blasting joyously outside, and throughout, there's this sense of impoverishment, hunger. It's like he's cold to the bone and he can see the sunshine, but he won't let himself feel it, because he doesn't trust it. It's like he doesn't know if he's a saint or a fool - and truth is, when I'd read #54 and closed the cover and was just holding it in my hands, I felt moved by the object itself. The simplicity of it, the care with which the whole thing was put together, his name on the inside cover - I was just so conscious that here is something special, here's something that's made of a man's soul. This, in its own way, is a holy book.

Exactly this, beautifully said. He seems almost like he exists in a state of self-imposed exile from society in a way. He chooses to be alone, to travel and explore without a plan or a guide, to scavenge and blaze his own trail, even though he doesn't have to anymore. He used to, and I think Aaron is very reluctant to give up that life that he knew for so long.

I feel the same way about the issue itself, the physical object. I love the DIY-ness of it, and it kind of proves what's written inside it. Aaron seems to have a great deal of respect and love for the DIY punk aesthetic, and it's reflected in the writing he puts out. We as an audience can appreciate his championing of that lifestyle because #54 feels so much more personal and special than some issue of Kerrang or Rolling Stone that was run off an industrial printing press hundreds of thousands of times.

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I don't think I'd be telling him anything he doesn't already know - he doesn't spare himself in anything I read in #54. Particularly vivid is that part where he sees himself scavenging from the backstage banquet while the show is blasting joyously outside, and throughout, there's this sense of impoverishment, hunger. It's like he's cold to the bone and he can see the sunshine, but he won't let himself feel it, because he doesn't trust it. It's like he doesn't know if he's a saint or a fool - and truth is, when I'd read #54 and closed the cover and was just holding it in my hands, I felt moved by the object itself. The simplicity of it, the care with which the whole thing was put together, his name on the inside cover - I was just so conscious that here is something special, here's something that's made of a man's soul. This, in its own way, is a holy book.

oh my darlin...i know it...i sooooo know it. sending you a pm...

He seems almost like he exists in a state of self-imposed exile from society in a way. He chooses to be alone, to travel and explore without a plan or a guide, to scavenge and blaze his own trail, even though he doesn't have to anymore. He used to, and I think Aaron is very reluctant to give up that life that he knew for so long.

aaron IS d-i-y. while i dont know him, i do believe he lives by his own set of rules and beliefs and shuns mainstream...everything. if you havent already read his older stuff i think you would really really really like it. he is a brilliant fucking writer.

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I`m really enjoying this, hearing about how the guys were before they became so massive and how they have changed but still stayed the same...I`m on chapter 8...it`s great.

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