A Very Special Noise du Jour: “Happy Birthday To Me” by The Vandals

John Abraham Brownlee’s journey began in a small hospital a few miles outside the port city of Algiers. His mother, a petite woman and the wife of a cobbler, was said to have been in labor for twelve days prior. It was also said that her screams were so loud that she had to be sequestered so as not to disturb the other patients. At 8:39 pm he finally deigned to emerge from the poor woman’s womb. He weighed 12 pounds 9 ounces, four of which consisted of penis.

Little is known about his childhood, as he was seen infrequently outside the house, though he was generally described as shy and withdrawn. Neighbors of the Brownlees have intimated that the unnatural weight of his genitalia made for a toddler that was decidedly immobile. Certainly it could be argued that merely the cost of keeping such a malformed child clothed may have required more than a talented cobbler’s salary.

Brownlee himself has corroborated this during interviews and yet close friends have expressed doubt as to this being the full reason that few saw the boy outside his home. Indeed, a former girlfriend — who wishes to remain nameless as to not damage her circus career — told us that many times she would be awoken by John in the throes of violent nightmares, mumbling about harnesses and “the hurting shoes”.

When he was sixteen he left home to seek his fortune with a suitcase full of clothes, a special crotch-sling, and the equivalent of one hundred and fifty dollars. He would not return. He spent the interim years traveling across Europe going from job to job these including stints as a ferrier, haberdasher, and seller of merkins and wigs. None of these trades suited him, however, and his letters to friends show his frustration in this pursuit. “Today, while staring at yet another hairless, gleaming pate I wondered if there was not more intended for me by the Divine than this and I despaired,” he wrote. “Is this to be my life’s work, a legacy of adorned pudendas and cheap rugs?”

Nothing was to present itself for four more years when, while working as a bar back in an upscale Albanian restaurant in Portugal he met a man whose name remains a mystery to this day, a mysterious personage who many suspect was the devil himself. This shadowy figure was to be the second usher of greatness into this world. “You ever hear of the Internet?” the shrouded scoundrel rasped. It was with a thrilling chill of excitement and fear that Brownlee worked up the nerve to boast in the affirmative, “I have indeed heard of these Internets my good man. In fact, I even held one once at a ‘World of Tomorrow’ booth at the World’s Fair!”

You see, his many failings aside, John Brownlee is a man with a knack for recognizing opportunity that borders on the supernatural, sensing fortuitous circumstance as a tingling in his massive groin. This was his chance at the greatness which he knew with a bone-deep certainty he had always been destined. When the curiously begoggled imp offered him an opportunity to “blog” (a term he still seems not to fully understand) he accepted without a moments hesitation, throwing down his sopping bar-rag and fleeing the confines of the Albanian all-male revue without even a cursory “So long, Stinktown!” to mark his departure.

From that point on John Brownlee was a golden god of web-based prose, ascending through the ranks of bloggerati with a swiftness that shocked and disgusted even the most hardened faux-fame hungry psuedo-journos. Throughout his meteoric rise to power — during which he gained the ability to communicate with and martial the tentacular forces of the inky deep, the full force of which he threatens to unleash on a daily basis — he never forgot his strange goblin benefactor and swore to heed the wisdom of his childhood idol, Kevin Spacey. Oh yes, he would pay it forward, he would pay it forward so hard that the ungrateful bastards he lavished with his gifts would at first assume they had engaged in forced fornication. Which unironically was often the case.

Enter the New Scum. Who could do nothing but tremble in the presence of John Brownlee’s awesome might. Being true to his word, he graciously scooped us from the mire of a mundane world asking only regular sexual favors and a constant supply of fetal pigs on which to snack. Trust us when we tell you that these are small prices to pay to bask in the oily, iridescent glow of a god among men. We are eternally grateful, except for Qais of course, who hasn’t yet copped to the fact that weeping only serves to invigorate Brownlee’s amorous ardor, silly bint.

Afterwards: All kidding aside John is a great guy to work with and we will always be grateful to both he and Eliza for giving us the opportunity to write for this site and the constant support they give our amateurish ramblings. So, Happy Birthday John, and here’s to many more!