I learned to play guitar solos because I thought people, specifically girls, would like me if I got good at them. This is a lie born in Hell’s anus. Sure, being in a band is good for meeting girls, but being able to rip a burning solo only impresses one group of people: other dudes.

I believe that the Devil, in conjunction with bands like Van Halen, Guns n Roses, and others, concocted this lie in order to lure unsuspecting young men into hour upon hour of carefully studying cryptic musical notation — known as “tablature” — in hopes that their efforts might someday be paid back in the form of face-pressed titties.

The Devil does this because, quite simply, he’s an asshole. He wants people to suffer. And maybe he gets a kickback from Fender and Gibson probably too.

Have you ever seen tablature? Here’s the tablature, or “tab,” for the intro to Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N Roses:

How the hell are you gonna turn this gibberish into titties? You aren't. That's how.

Do you know how long I stared at those dashes and numbers to learn how to play that intro? I don’t either! At a certain point my brain just gave up recording memories, chucking incoming information from by eyeballs straight into the trash.

What I do remember is playing that intro in Ms. Bellinger’s Homeroom in 7th grade. Hell yeah, I brought my acoustic guitar to school, son. Do you think 7th grade hotties are gonna come to my parents’ house to hear me jam? Hell no! Gotta go where the action is.

I stood up, the other kids fumbling around doing whatever you do in Homeroom. Ms Bellinger marking papers at her desk. I grabbed my axe, put my foot on my desk chair — because I didn’t have a strap for the guitar — and ripped into the opening notes of the most popular song in the land.

Shit yeah, bitches! Get a load of this skill!

Now, at the end of Slash’s intro W. Axl Rose begins to whine and gyrate like a weirdo, but I just sort of trailed off at that point. With a high-powered song like that one, the intro should be plenty. Besides, I couldn’t sing worth a damn, and I’m a bass in any case.

Nothing happened. I looked around. None of the girls were even looking at me. A few were making friendship bracelets and chatting to one another. What the hell?

So I played it again. And again. Finally I got some attention! Yes! One of the hottest girls in my class turned to look at me. She opened her pretty mouth, probably to invite me to a party at her rich parents’ house.

“Play a whole song!” she said.

Looking back now, I know that a fat awkward kid with no friends who can rip a rad solo is like a diseased, mangy housecat who can crap in the people toilet. Great trick and thanks for the effort, but you still ain’t getting petted.

The Ms. Bellinger’s Homeroom me did not understand this, though. What about Van Halen’s “Jump?” It had a badass guitar solo which led into a badass keyboard solo played by the same dude. Why would they do that if it didn’t result in women? Most of their songs were about girls, surely they knew what they were doing.

And what about AC/DC’s “Back in Black?” It has two — two! — guitar solos, and neither one is what you’d call short.

In high school I had a guitar teacher who was a certified badass. He wore snakeskin boots, smoked Marlboro Light 100′s, and had a crotch bulge that made it seem af if he was smuggling cantaloupes down his pants in quarter-round segments.

“The guitar,” quoth he, “is an extension of your dick.”

And that’s exactly why girls don’t care about guitar solos. You might as well be vigorously pleasuring yourself.

Take heed, young hopeful guitarists! Actually I don’t think they’re in much danger as the guitar solo doesn’t seem to figure prominently in today’s popular music, but still.

The Devil will lie to you if he can.

The worst thing has occurred: I have frittered and farted my way along in my life until I am old enough to not enjoy music that the kids are listening to. I honestly didn’t think it would ever happen to me, but here we are.

Shit.

I know the exact moment it happened, too. It was the band Justice that did it. Now, you might be saying “Justice isn’t a dubstep band,” and if you are, shut up. Dubstep is just a genre that embodies what is wrong with this style of music, and Justice uses some of the same techniques. For the purposes of this discussion, they’re guilty as hell. But anyway, the moment.

Now, Justice released a tour documentary called “A Cross The Universe,” and if you like music or bands at all you should watch it. In fact, it’s a great piece of art, in my opinion, independent of the band. If there is a better tour documentary in the world, I haven’t seen it.

That said, the music is unlistenable to me. I can tell that it’s good. It’s certainly culturally relevant, but it is unlistenable to me. That’s how I know I’m old.

You see, young people? Do you see how frightening this is? I can see age happening to me!

Okay, here’s a sample of what I’m talking about. Listen to the intro of this song — amazing! — and then take special note around 40 seconds in. There’s a short burst of static on what sounds to me like the “uh” of 4, or the last 16th note of the measure. One, Two, Three, Four — PSSHT, One.

What’s that burst of white noise doing in there? Well, it adds pretty interesting spice to the music, I think we can agree.

It’s especially interesting since kids these days have never had to listen to white noise like we did. You know that Radiohead lyric from Karma Police?

He buzzes like a fridge,
He’s like a detuned radio

They don’t know what that sounds like because they grew up with televisions that all had cable. They they listened to iPods, not the radio. They never had to ride the tuning knob in the back seat of the family car as rock radio stations faded in and out. They never fell asleep watching Letterman and woke up at 3am with the TV showing snow and blasting white noise because, in their world, a TV left on jabbers all night uninterrupted.

So, white noise is an untapped delicacy to kids. To me it’s just noise. Mind you, if there’s a more cranky old-ass sentence to type than “It’s just noise,” I don’t know what it is.

Okay, so Justice spices up their music with these sounds that are annoying to me. Fine. But what if there were a whole genre that used it not as a spice, but as the single ingredient? What if they didn’t just dabble, but wallowed in it, reveled in it?

That music is dubstep, and it has made me old.

Here’s a definition from the Wikipedia entry:

Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London, United Kingdom. Its overall sound has been described as “tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals”.

And here’s a concise, learned breakdown of how and what dubstep is by a DJ named Bassnectar, who clearly knows his shit:

All right, that makes sense. Glad someone laid out the electronic music “family tree” like that because it’s really interesting. So what’s wrong with dubstep?

You’ll hear what’s wrong with it about 40 seconds into this song, “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” by Skrillex:

Every sound is calculated via computer to use the maximum of the audio spectrum it possibly can, and I deeply resent it. Just listen to those bass notes! It sounds “like Optimus Prime taking a shit,” to borrow a quote from the Internet.

It reminds me of High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. At right is an example.

This is an image that represents a normal photograph enhanced to jam every possible inch of the visible spectrum into an image. It is an interesting technical marvel that I want to look at precisely once.

Listen. This is how I know I am old: I enjoyed that the music of my youth, that being 80s music, had much clearer, much more crisp high end than music my parents liked. Now the kids of today are doing the same exact thing to me! Fuckers!

Here’s what I’m talking about. Here’s “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas, one of my Dad’s favorite songs whose lyrics were oft quoted to — and ignored by — me.

Now listen to one of my favorite 80′s tunes, “Sussudio” by Phil Collins.

Notice that “Sussudio” has a badass bass line and other keyboard sounds — by a guy named David Frank — mixed with natural instruments that differentiate it from “Dust In The Wind’s” all-natural instrumentation.

Hear the difference? DITW sounds smooth and sedate, whereas Sussudio sounds like a kickin’ 80′s party where chicks with natural boobs and high-cut bikinis might frolic. A party precisely like this one:

Dubstep, on the other hand, sounds like a filthy drug party in an abandoned house where people do revolting things of which I want no part whatsoever. That is a party that I not only don’t want to attend, but would move out of a neighborhood to get away from.

You can have your dubstep with your gratuitous aural palette, you filthy youngsters. I hope your ears fall off.

An open letter to the editor(s) of Pendulous Breasts Quarterly.

Dear Madams,

Oh yes, make no mistake; I do say “Madams,” for you are unfit for the term of “Sirs,” you low-heeled sons of nipples. How droll you must think yourselves, in your New York ivory towers. How vague and wondrous.

I loathe you!

And no, I will not “throw” my “face” in the “garbage,” as you suggest. Obviously I, as a gentleman of some repute, mostly tolerable hygiene, and very fine boudoir-related comportment have underlings to handle the garbage, not to mention my face.

Cock-spurs! You jack-legged uvula-peened clavicle hammers! Shit a monkey off your uncle’s garage and elect it Viceroy! I will read your book in the Devil’s own lap and tap his fiery yambag for emphasis.

Yours (not really),
James C. Hodgson, Jr

Poste Scripte: I seek an officer’s commission on your Frog Team.

Louis CK is a hilarious Talking Man, but he’s more than that; better than that. He’s a Talking Man who isn’t lying. He makes no bones about the fact that he wants to get paid for making up bullshit. That’s refreshing to me. God knows how many bullshitters we’re paying every day who claim to provide some other tangible service. Those men and women are frauds. Louis CK is not.

No, Louis CK is not a fraud, and he has a new thing. You should buy it.

Better than that, Louis CK is trying a new means of communication against the best advice of people in his life. He’s trying to sell content directly to us, the consumers. This is great news.

It’s great news for anyone who:

• Thinks ads are annoying, pushy, and cacophonous, on top of occasionally being disingenuous when they’re not outright lies.
• Thinks censorship is wrong.
• Thinks artists should have complete creative control over their work.
• Is tired of Hollywood’s bullshit, TV’s bullshit, etc.

By cutting out the content distributors and middlemen, Louis CK is delivering hilarious entertainment directly to us. This is how it should be done. This is the way forward.

Buy his new thing.

I’ve always been a fan of informational signs that include people getting harmed. You know, like the one at your apartment complex that shows the dude getting squished by the gate? Or the one on the arm of the thing that stops you from driving your car out of the parking deck at work showing a dude being beaned in the head by the very same arm? My favorite is the one where the giant angry shock cloud is totally zapping the shit out of some hapless dude.

I was reminded of those when I spotted The included image in the Thornton Road Chick Fil A yesterday.

Here’s what those numbered points say:

1. If the victim is choking, call 911. Let the victim know you are going to help them.

Hey, I’m going to help you, but first I’m going to make a quick phone call. Don’t worry, you’ll pass out long before the ambulance can get here.

2. Give 5 back blows.

Seems to me like this is something that should happen at the end as a means of thanking the person who just saved your life, but I am not a doctor or anything.

3. Make a fist with your hand and place your (blurry words here about fisting)

I’m realizing here that no mention has been made of Dr. Henry Heimlich. What ever happened to him and his maneuver?

4. Grip your fist with your other hand and press into the victim [sic] abdomen with 5 quick inward and upward thrusts

If you should happen to graze victim jiggling breasts in the process, do not make a big deal out of it. Just file it away for later.

5. Repeat until object is dislodged

Or until you reach completion, whoever comes last.

I saw one of my teachers choking once in high school. A classmate of mine performed the Heimlich, a piece of potato came rocketing out, and pretty much everyone was embarrassed.

Not sure if there were any back blows, but I don’t really want to know anyway.