{"id":12852,"date":"2018-03-25T17:26:18","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T00:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/?p=12852"},"modified":"2018-03-26T13:25:38","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T20:25:38","slug":"happy-birthday-to-max","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/happy-birthday-to-max\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday To Max"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/maxx-rocker.jpg?ssl=1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12860\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/maxx-rocker.jpg?resize=500%2C577&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"577\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/maxx-rocker.jpg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/maxx-rocker.jpg?resize=260%2C300&amp;ssl=1 260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Max loved butter. It started with toast, which turned into Toast Parties, meaning a a large quantity of buttered toast eaten in one sitting.<\/p>\n<p>Bread was merely a vehicle for butter, he told us. Then what&#8217;s the butter knife? his little brother wanted to know. The knife was the concierge.<\/p>\n<p>Max loved pesto, chocolate, burgers, pasta, ice cream, ribs, and cheese. He loved\u00a0 condiments. He loved dogs and babies. He loved cashmere and velvet. He was very tactile. He loved reading and his writing impressed all his professors.<\/p>\n<p>He loved Henry Miller, Derrick Jensen, Don DeLillo, Shakespeare, Matt Taibbi, Martin Amis and Poe. He loved philosophy. He was an atheist who read books about religion. He loved art. He loved nature. He loved honeysuckle and often stuck a little flower behind his ear when he was out taking a walk.<\/p>\n<p>Most of all, he loved music. Loved isn&#8217;t a strong enough word. He loved the Stones, Pixies, Velvet Underground, Beatles, Surf guitar, Gogol Bordello, Dresden Dolls, Hank Williams, The Ronettes, Beach Boys, David Bowie, Dengue Fever, <span class=\"st\">Os Mutantes, The Kinks, a million ancient blues singers and the Ramones. He loved his first guitar, a Strat, and he finally acquired his holy grail, a Hummingbird.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>He taught his friends how to play guitar. Some of them wrote to me with memories of this. They wanted me to know he&#8217;d been an important figure in their lives.<\/p>\n<p>Max loved prank calls and was an inventive practitioner of the art. He loved pranks in general, the more subversive or absurd the better. He liked to annoy people but he couldn&#8217;t hold a grudge. He liked to sing in funny voices, unable to believe he could actually sing. He loved <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h8iPUK0AGRo\"><em>Mac the Knife<\/em><\/a> when he was a kid, and patiently transcribed the lyrics, stopping the record over and over to do it. He wrote down every <em>Huh! Huh!<\/em> I&#8217;m pretty sure I have it somewhere.<\/p>\n<p>We liked to compare top ten lists of books, movies, and desert island records. We shared a hatred of cheesy rock bands. In a perverse response to a thing I wrote about stuff I love, he made an exhaustive <a href=\"https:\/\/godammit.com\/band-lists\/\">list<\/a> of every band he hated:<\/p>\n<p><em>Getting back to hatred for a minute, i coincidentally just compiled my own list of classic rock bands I hate. Before making this list, I thought of myself as a classic rock lover (Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Love, Doors, Velvets, Beach Boys, David Bowie, Neil Young, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, etc.) But now I am not so sure. I wouldn\u2019t mind if the work of these \u201cartists\u201d was erased from existence:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>grateful dead<br \/>\nthe who<br \/>\nthe eagles \/ don henley<br \/>\nsteeley dan<br \/>\nsantana<br \/>\njethro tull<br \/>\nking crimson<br \/>\nbilly joel<br \/>\nsting<br \/>\nU2<br \/>\nRush<br \/>\nChicago<br \/>\nAmerica<br \/>\nKansas<br \/>\nJourney<br \/>\nAerosmith<br \/>\nbob segar<br \/>\nsteve miller<br \/>\ntom petty<br \/>\nalice cooper<br \/>\nfrank zappa<br \/>\nsupertramp<br \/>\nstyx<br \/>\neric clapton<br \/>\nELO<br \/>\nearth wind and fire<br \/>\nblood sweat and tears<br \/>\nbad company<br \/>\niron butterfly<br \/>\nrobert palmer<br \/>\ndeep purple<br \/>\ndoobie brothers<br \/>\ncrosby stills &amp; nash<br \/>\ngrand funk railroad<br \/>\nthe guess who<br \/>\nmountain<br \/>\nthin lizzy (except \u201cwhiskey in the jar\u201d)<br \/>\nallman brothers<br \/>\nlynard skynard<br \/>\npeter frampton<br \/>\nthe cult<br \/>\nsteppenwolf<br \/>\nheart<br \/>\nEmerson Lake &amp; Palmer<br \/>\nzz top<br \/>\nted nugent<br \/>\nbon jovi<br \/>\nhumble pie<br \/>\nhot tuna<br \/>\nten years after<br \/>\nj geils band<br \/>\nlittle feat<br \/>\nrobin trower<br \/>\nbadfinger<br \/>\ngenesis \/ phil collins \/ peter gabriel<br \/>\nyes<br \/>\ntower of power<br \/>\nnrbq<br \/>\nthree dog night<br \/>\njohn cougar mellencamp<br \/>\nspirit<br \/>\nbrian adams<br \/>\nacdc<br \/>\nsweet<br \/>\ncarole king<br \/>\nleon russell<br \/>\ncarly simon<br \/>\nsugarloaf<br \/>\nmeatloaf<br \/>\njimmy buffett<br \/>\nwings<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I love how thorough he was! And I love the Maxness of &#8220;getting back to hatred for a minute.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Max was funny. It took a lot to make him laugh aloud, but he was hysterically funny.<\/p>\n<p>I forgot to say that he loved Andy Kaufman.<\/p>\n<p>After eight years, it terrifies me to think what I may have forgotten. The part that doesn&#8217;t change is the love and the grief. Every fucking night, it&#8217;s goodnight sweet prince. Tomorrow I will light another candle and speak to the little flame until it goes out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Max loved butter. It started with toast, which turned into Toast Parties, meaning a a large quantity of buttered toast eaten in one sitting. Bread was merely a vehicle for butter, he told us. Then what&#8217;s the butter knife? his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/godammit.com\/happy-birthday-to-max\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[376,321,6],"tags":[708],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/maxx-rocker.jpg?fit=500%2C577&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7t44M-3li","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}