Hey, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Wednesday. This is the fifth entry in the row, I think that might be a record. Okay, let's start off with a good story and a nice pic...
Oh man, just look at how happy little Eliza looks ringing this bell! The one-year-old celebrated the end of her cancer battle by ringing the famous cancer-free bell at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus. Usually, ringing the bell is a tradition among cancer patients who ring it on their last day of treatment. Her father, 28-year-old Chance Moore, has been showing the world her process through TikTok. He recently decided to share the heartwarming moment Eliza was given a round of applause as she rang the bell while in the arms of her mom, Kate Hudson. Eliza is seen gleefully holding the rope to ring it, and can’t resist to lean over and ring it a second time. Yes, you ring it as much as you want, Eliza! The Tiktok, captioned, “When you kick Cancer’s Butt so hard that you have to ring the bell more than once!!” has been viewed more than 5.77 million times and has 2.1 million likes so far. The road hasn’t been easy for the 1-year-old. She was diagnosed with cancer in June 2019 when she was just 10-months-old. According to the family’s GoFundMe page, she needed to have one of her kidneys removed the day after she was diagnosed due to complications that were caused by her tumor. In July, she was officially diagnosed with malignant rhabdoid tumor, which is a rare and aggressive tumor that occurs in infancy or childhood. Weeks later, doctors then found an additional tumor in her brain and was diagnosed with ATRT, atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor. ATRT is a rare and fast ground cancerous tumor of the spinal cord and brain. Eliza underwent brain surgery to have the tumor and affected brain tissue removed and started aggressive chemotherapy at the end of July. Both Kate and Chance have been documenting the girl’s journey on Instagram as well, which included her chemotherapy sessions and surgeries. Due to this, little Eliza had been capturing the hearts of millions over the past eight months, and thousand congratulated her on social media after her parents shared her success story. Be still, my heart! These types of stories are my favorite! Congratulations, Eliza! Wishing you a happy and healthy life!
When it comes to medicine you can’t just assume that you get the gist of it and start treating yourself. Especially not with your own hot sperm and a needle you bought on the Internet. One Irish man, however, had an idea that if he injected his semen into his arm his back pain would magically disappear. Because… stem cells? Just take some Advil. Anyway, that for sure didn’t work. The guy’s back was still messed up and he had to go to the hospital because of a subcutaneous abscess on his right arm. Basically, he had a big bubble of cum pooled under his skin. The doctors told him as much and started treating him to get rid of the semen demon living in his arm but he discharged himself from the hospital before the doctors could finish. According to the hospital, the man told doctors that he had been injecting himself with semen on a monthly basis for a year and a half. Dr. Lisa Dunne of Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Tallaght came to the obvious conclusion that this was the first case of “intravenous semen injection” ever found in medical literature. I would like to take this time to remind our male readers to never purchase hypodermic needles online and then spend eighteen months masturbating your semen into them and injecting said semen into any part of your body. This is not an actual medical treatment. It is, in fact, bad for you. You may have heard a lot about stem cells or other fancy medical procedures that involve reproductive and fetal tissue. While I am not a doctor I can confidently assure you that stabbing some jizz into your skin is not a feasible way for you to utilize or reap the benefits of stem cells.
Teenagers these days are so hard to understand that it sometimes hurts my brain. It’s like we can’t keep up with the things they are doing to get them that high they want, literally or figuratively. In this case, it’s literally, and it’s gross. Way too gross. You know how back in the day there was the Tide Pod Challenge, the Whatsapp Challenge, and the Boiling Water Challenge? Well now, there’s something called the Tampon Challenge. And yes, it involves feminine hygiene products, and I am questioning everybody’s sanity at this point. Apparently, teenagers in Indonesia are collecting menstrual tampons and pads and boiling them, allowing the mixture to cool and then imbibing the resulting liquid. How exactly does this get them high? Well, the chlorine used to sanitize menstrual products is what’s get them tipsy, giving them hallucinations and makes them feel like they are “flying.” And in case you were questioning this, police in Indonesia have actually arrested several teenagers who have confessed to using them, all between the ages of 13 and 16. A 14-year-old even admitted to the police that his friends drink the “menstrual moonshine," morning afternoon and evening. Authorities are trying to investigate which pads caused the intoxication effects but stated that consuming the chemicals within them is dangerous. Because, DUH. The sanitary napkins contain irritants called superabsorbent polymers. Jordana Kier, co-founder of LOLA, a reproductive health brand, stated that their organic cotton LOLA pads are made from chemically blending acrylic acid, and sodium hydroxide to form sodium polyacrylate. In other words: NOT MEANT TO BE CONSUMED, YOU DUMB DUMBS. And although the FDA classified SAP as nontoxic, it hasn’t been tested for effects of consuming it in high concentrations because they never thought they needed to in the first place, which is why it shouldn’t be used for anything other what it is intended for. Several packages do contain warnings including inhalation and ingestion which comes with a directive to “induce vomiting and seek medical attention.” Now, I don’t know what you think about this whole stupid situation, but I think this is just more than ridiculous. Even more idiotic than that damn Kiki Challenge. For all of you with teenagers lying around your home, if you are noticing a serious lack of tampons in the bathroom, you might want to make sure they aren’t being used to get high. Because we never know nowadays. The fact that I have to say this is stupid.
Have you heard of the tiny hand and feet manicure trend? It's terrifying. I am as confused as you are. Safe to say that beauty trends come and go every day trying to keep up with fashion, but this trend, this trend I do not understand one single bit. I get there are women who like to get crazy designs on their nails, but this is insane, right?
To step it up a notch, women are now putting tiny hands and feet on their nails. Yes, so basically they have five fingers on each fingernail, it’s confusing, but keep up with me. The trend reportedly dates back to 2018, but somehow it is still going around which is wild to even think about. Through a short tutorial, the technician crafts the nails into tiny feet where she adds red nail polish on the middle toenail. The Instagram account @Nail Sunny, is known for its quirky and talented designs, but this one got a lot of different responses from people. Because well, not only do you have to use nail polish for your nail but also on the fake hand which has fake nails. Yes, it’s like Inception in here. Basically, the fake nails are put on the hands, and then they are molded into the perfect shape they want, and the artist paints each creepy hand and foot in flesh powder. Then each foot gets a pedicure, and each finger gets a manicure, perfecting all the details. The Instagram account even has a hand flipping someone off with their fake nails. So if you think about it, it’s kind of like a double flip off. Which is hilarious in itself, but this is too much. I would like to have this nail artist’s patience, because I’m sure these take forever to finish. At least two hours hands down. Nail artists for the win?
An aspiring Chicago rapper who posted a video on YouTube of himself throwing thousands of dollars that he inherited from his mother to his “fans” has been sentenced to 99 years in prison for her 2012 murder-for-hire killing. Qaw’mane Wilson, 30, was sentenced on January 31st by a Cook County judge who also sentenced the convicted gunman, Eugene Spencer, to 100 years, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Both men were convicted last March of first-degree murder, attempted murder and home invasion in the killing of Yolanda Holmes, who was a hairstylist in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, the newspaper reported. Prosecutors said Holmes doted on her son, an only child, lavishing him with fancy clothes, jewelry and a Mustang, but that he wanted more. Wilson, then 23, sent Spencer to his mother’s apartment to kill her in September 2012 so that Wilson could raid her bank accounts, prosecutors said. “The word is ‘matricide,’ meaning murder of one’s own mother,” Cook County Judge Stanley Sacks said Friday, as he stared from the bench at Wilson and Spencer. “Whatever he wanted, his mother gave to him. A car. A job. One could say he was spoiled. She gave Qaw’mane life, and it was his choice to take it away from her.” Records showed that Wilson withdrew nearly $70,000 from his mother’s accounts in the months after her death and spent the money on flashy clothes and to customize the Mustang she had given him to have gull-wing doors added to the vehicle. Wilson also posted on YouTube a video of himself withdrawing thousands of dollars in cash from a bank and throwing those bills to a crowd of people that he said in the video were “fans” of his rap music. That video was played for the jury that convicted Wilson, who went by the name Young QC. During sentencing, he slouched in his chair and merely nodded when Sacks announced the sentence. When asked if he had anything to say before Sacks made his ruling, Wilson spoke briefly. “I just want to say, nobody loved my mother more than me,” he said. “She was all I had. That’s it.”
The NFL has changed the name and logo of yet another team...
If I had a TARDIS I would probably end up in Michigan in 1971 where high school principal R. Wiley Brownlee was tarred and feathered by the KKK after he left a board meeting where he proposed the school district honor MartinLuther King, Jr.
Poor dude. Do you know this logo?
When you turn it on the side look what it looks like...
That should've been a Mindphuck. Haha. I have no idea what OGC is by the way. Journalists sometimes get things wrong and sometimes we get a crazy editorial out of it. Like this one...
Haha. My son and I were talking about how we used to watch "Sesame Street" when he was a kid and how much that show has changed now that's it's on HBO.
Which one is it? Danzig or Signourney Weaver? Hahaha. Okay, so there's a local teacher who likes to come onto the Phile now and then. Something exciting happened last week and he wants to share it. So please welcome back to the Phile...
Me: Hello, Mr. Cylance, how are you?
Mr. Cylance: I'm good, Jason, I had a good three days off.
Me: That's great. So, what happened last week that you want to share?
Mr. Cylance: A group of girls had a masturbating challenge.
Me: Ummm... what?
Mr. Cylance: Yeah, the challenge being to masturbate in class and not be caught.
Me: How do you know this?
Mr. Cylance: Because they were caught. It apparently went on for weeks before they were caught.
Me: Ugh. That it?
Mr. Cylance: Yep. I have to go back to school now. See ya soon, Jason.
Me: Mr. Cylance, the happiest teacher around, kids.
If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. You know I live in Florida, right? Well, there's stuff that happens here that happens no where else in the universe.
A Florida special education teacher and two teacher aide’s were charged with abusing children with autism, after locking them in dark bathrooms and blowing a whistle into one’s ears. According to reports, Margaret Wolthers surrendered to the Okaloosa County after another aide was shocked by the repeated abuse at the Silver Sands School in Fort Walton Beach and reported it to a school police officer. Wolthers is now facing aggravated child abuse charges along with Aides Diana LaCroix and Carolyn Madison. The women allegedly abused the children between ages 8 and 10 from September to November of last year. All three autistic children were locked separately into a classroom bathroom with the lights off for up to 90 minutes. The children would cry and scream when placed inside the bathroom and let out once they were "calm." According to investigators, the teacher and aides “intentionally and maliciously” blew a whistle in the ear of a child with a low sensory auditory threshold, who wore earphones to protect himself from loud noises. La Croix and Madison would blow the whistle within seven inches of the child’s ear by holding her child’s arms down keeping him from protecting himself by covering his ears. The classroom aides said they were only “disciplining the children” and felt the practices acceptable. The Principal did confirm the incident, saying school policy does not allow for seclusion without supervision as a form of punishment and is in fact, prohibited. All women, who had worked at the school for more than five years, were placed on administrative leave during the investigation. After the charges were filed, they were put on pay suspension pending the outcome of the criminal case. The principal said the district is training their other teachers on how to handle children who are acting out. I mean, I sure hope so. My question here is… why go into teaching if you have no patience? Also, they were put on pay suspension? I’m sorry, but these women need to be fired immediately. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen, get it together Florida. Think of the children!
The priest in a small Irish village was very fond of the chickens he kept in the hen house out the back of the parish manse. He had a cock rooster and about ten hens. One Saturday night the cock rooster went missing and as that was the time he suspected cock fights occurred in the village he decided to do something about it at church the next morning. At Mass, he asked the congregation, "Has anybody got a cock?" All the men stood up. "No. No." he said, "That wasn't what I meant. Has anybody seen a cock?" All the women stood up. "No. No." he said, "That wasn't what I meant. Has anybody seen a cock that doesn't belong to them?" Half the women stood up. "No. No" he said, "That wasn't what I meant. Has anybody seen my cock?" All the nuns stood up.
The 115th book to be pheatured on the Phile's Book Club is...
My friend Jeff will be on the Phile in a few weeks.
Today's guest is an American singer, songwriter and musician, best known as the lead singer of rock band Matchbox Twenty. His latest solo album "Chip Tooth Smile" is available on iTunes, Amazon and Spotify. Please welcome to the Phile... Rob Thomas.
Me: Hey, Rob, welcome to the Phile. I'm a big fan. How are you?
Rob: It is nice to be here, thanks for having me.
Me: I love the song "One Less Day (Dying Young") from your new album. What is that song about?
Rob: It started out as a conversation, I was on the road with Adam Duritz from the Counting Crows and we had this conversation where we were at an age where we weren't old but we were too old to die young. I think it was Adam who said every day we're one less day from dying young. I thought that was a thought that struck me there's so much sentiment about youth. There's something about the idea tonight we're young and we're going to be young forever and never want to get old. I would hear people say it, "It sucks getting old." But the alternative is so bleak. There's only two choices we have... we get a day older or we don't. I thought it was good to write a song about the joy of getting older. The privilege is not afforded to everyone, we lost friends in our time before their time.
Me: I'm already old and I hate getting old. Haha. I like the line in the song that says something like "we've lost friends so young." I lost my dad in 2000, both of my parents actually, and you lost friends in the music business as well. Was that what you were thinking?
Rob: We've lost in the music business, but people know know one knows but us. We've lost some of our closest people. I think it is more of a product of being at a certain age, it just starts to happen more. Even in the news, when I start seeing people die but I see that number to the right of their name. It gets closer and closer to my number. I start to really take stock and then I have things as I get older I don't want to really lose.
Me: Hmmm. Like what, Rob?
Rob: I have a son now. I want to see how that turns out as long as I possibly can. I want to see how that goes.
Me: Has your songwriting changed as you're getting older?
Rob: I'm not sure. I think as I listen back to it. "One Less Day (Dying Young)" doesn't sound like "3 a.m." It doesn't sound like "Push." But in that way it has, but I don't think there's been a conscious effort to make that happen. I try and think of a Daoism idea of the whole thing, where I be a leaf in the wind and see where it takes me as opposed to sitting down having an idea I want to inhere to arbitrarily where I'm going to make this song this kind of thing?
Me: Does songwriting come easy for you?
Rob: Most of it is inspiration. It comes from this melody I hear above my head that isn't finished yet then I realize it isn't mine. Then it goes into craft, and I hope each year that I do it, each record that I make I hope I get a little better at the craft. I shape it a little more. I try not to think about what I'm doing. So when I listen to the distance between me twenty years ago to me now I hear that but the mechanics of how I do it hasn't changed. I sit down, I pick up a guitar, I sit at a piano and wait to a melody hits me. But in this case now because I'm running next to the ghost of myself that's always next to me, and hopefully a little but behind me...
Me: Is the "ghost of yourself" your past success?
Rob: Yeah, and I don't want to quite be there.
Me: That's interesting. So you're unsourced by your past success?
Rob: I want to beat that guy. I want that guy to look at this guy and be like "wow, you did good with that. That was good."
Me: It's been 20 plus years since Matchbox 20's "Yourself Or Someone Like You" came out, Rob. I saw you guys op[en for the Lemonheads that year. When or if you listen to that album do you feel like the same person?
Rob: It does. I can hear it. I love playing those songs live, it's a shared experience and it's new every night. I'm playing for people, I'm having a moment, they're having a moment, we're all having the same moment. But live is a different animal. But the recording exists in a time capsule. All I could hear is the limitations because without a doubt at that time in 1996 I wrote the best songs I possibly could write at that time and we made the best record we possibly could at that time. Then as I grow and evolve and look back I'm like I would've done this, I would've done that.
Me: I loved the music you made back then, and I remember seeing Tabitha's Secret, your first band, Rob. Did you have a good time back then?
Rob: It was a good time, we were doing what was kind of happening. It was the only time in our career, even though we continued to somehow stay above water, it was the only time on our career what we were doing was what was happening. I think at that perfect moment what was happening was happening. When we came out with "Unwell," when we heard "Unwell" on the radio it was a Top 5 hit with a banjo in it and everything else in the charts was like Nelly and Ludicrous. The Backstreet Boys was the closet thing to a band that was on there, and we're just like floating in there somewhere. But at that moment in 1996 we were like what people were listening to.
Me: Can you pinpoint the moment where you were a guy in a band trying to make hit records to when this thing kinda worked?
Rob: We had one single called "Long Day" and it failed miserably. Also we put it out first, the day our record comes out Lava Records we were signed to folds. Every band on it expect for us, Edwin McCain and Sugar Ray get dropped. They're about to drop us because "Long Day" we put out is just falling miserably. There's guy named Dave Rossi who was a radio programmer in Birmingham, Alabama, which was a big market, this was back when they could do this, he liked "Push" so he started playing it on his station just because he liked it. It became the number one song in Birmingham in like a week. Like you said, we were out opening for the Lemonheads at the time and we strolled up playing for like 200 people in the gigs. We showed up to the Birmingham Music Hall and there was a line outside the door. It was wrapped around with people trying to get in to see Matchbox 20 because of this song "Push."
Me: That song "pushed" your career. Hahaha.
Rob: Yeah, and everything from that moment on was like movie crazy.
Me: Okay, so, can we talk about "Smooth"?
Rob: Sure we can.
Me: That song was a pretty big one, right?
Rob: That was a big one, yeah.
Me: How did that come about?
Rob: Originally I wrote it but I wasn't supposed to sing it, I just wrote it as a writer, me and this guy Itaal Shur, I just got off the road, we have been on the road for years, I was living in Soho in New York City and just got a call that this guy just around the corner from me, literally blocks way was writing this song for the new Santana record "Supernatural." It was his big come back but at the time we didn't know that, I just thought I was going to do something with Carlos and I thought I was going to have to tell everybody about it because nobody was going to know.
Me: So, how did you become the singer on that song?
Rob: They couldn't figure out who they wanted to sing it and Carlos liked my voice on the demo and said, "I believe this guy, let's get him to do it. Does he sing?"
Me: He didn't know know you are a singer? You were very successful at that time.
Rob: Not to him I'm not.
Me: Ha! Guess he's never been to Birmingham. Hahaha. Was it cool to be on that album?
Rob: Exactly. We then went in to do it and even then it was funny because I was on the record and nearly all the record was already done. So I heard the Eric Clapton track and I heard the Dave Matthews track and the Wyclef track. At the time they started writing about it I never got mentioned. They go through this whole thing about the new record Carlos was doing and I was never in there. I called Paul who was the guitar player in Matchbox 20 and my best friend and I told this. I was kind of bummed and said no one knows I'm on this. He said, "Rob, everybody on there is pretty famous and you're not." I said that's fair, and I then felt pretty good about it and walked away seeing what would happen. Not knowing ever it was going to be the single until I'm standing on a street corner in West Broadway in Soho and literally this light turns red and this car pulls up, a convertible car fall of girls and they're blaring "Smooth." I called my wife and said, "I think 'Smooth' is the single off this record." And I called my manager and he said, "Yeah, they went with 'Smooth.' They just released it." Then I was in L.A. and Jason Newsted, when he was still in Metallica he came out of an elevator and said, "Hey, Rob." I never met him. "Hey, Rob, man, love that Carlos song." I was like alright, this has gone from New York hot girls to Metallica. There's something happening here, there's something bubbling here.
Me: That's fantastic! Did it feel like that "movie" thing again?
Rob: It did. What's funny is I thought I understood success, we had just sold three records, we had that big record, and I realized what we were we were a band that had a successful record. This was a legend having a moment that was cultural... worldwide. It went everywhere. That was his "Thriller" that year, right? "Supernatural" won nine Grammys, just boom boom Carlos was everywhere. And I got to be the "lead float" in that parade.
Me: What do you think of the song now?
Rob: I don't want to hear it again but I love to play it.
Me: Have you seen the memes about it? I have one here...
Rob: Of course. It has its own life. Pete Gamberg, who is head of A&R in Atlantic has a coffee mug which says "I'd rather be listening to..." this is awesome, by the way, it's the t-shirt but it's the whole thing, "I'd rather be listening to the Grammy Award winning 1999 hit by Santana featuring Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 off the multi-platinum album 'Supernatural.'" Like he said he'd rather be listening to "Smooth" it's not funny. But THAT... fucking funny.
Me: I saw that as well... here it is...
Me: I want one. Haha. What do you think of all this?
Rob: I went through the same journey with this song that everybody else did. It was a great summer jam, then I was sick of it, then I revisited it and I was like it's just a nice good song. It's not the best song I'd ever written, it's not the best song Carlos had ever done but again it was another moment where I was standing in the right spot at the exact right time to be apart of something that was bigger than me. There's me, there's my career and then there's "Smooth" over here to the right. It's just this whole other thing.
Me: Did it change your songwriting going forward?
Rob: It opened up my opportunities in a big way. I actually got to work with some of my heroes I never would have got those opportunities. I think the opportunities opened up for me in a big way.
Me: Writing for someone else is that different than writing for yourself, right?
Rob: I don't think so. If someone wants to work with me to a degree they want my point of view. They like something they heard me do so I don't change my point of view for them, I think I shouldn't change my point of view for them. I think subconsciously no matter what I'm going to think a little bit differently with a song with someone in mind. But with Willie Nelson I didn't do that. I spent two days with Willie, we just smoked a lot of weed and played each others songs.
Me: He smokes weed? I didn't know that. Hahaha. So, what was it like working with Willie? I interviewed his son Lukas on the Phile a while ago.
Rob: Oh, yeah, he dabbles. I took him to it, it was a gateway drug. Ha ha ha. We just sat for two days, got really high, played each others songs and then when it was all over he handed me a notepad. I thought that was it, it's over, this was great. He gave me a notepad with three songs written on it and said, "These three songs you just played, I like them. Has anybody done them yet?" I was like no, I just wrote them. And he was like, "I want to do those three." So it was even cooler writing with Willie Nelson, my favorite songwriter, an American icon, do three of my songs because he heard them and liked them. Then I thought that was it, whatever happens happens.
Me: You're a country guy, right? You listened to country music in Orlando?
Rob: That was it, but I grew up in South Carolina, I listened to Willie and Waylon and Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty. These old guys. "Hello darling, it's been a long time since I held you..." I loved those videos of him too, with the hair, staring right into the camera. You know he was drunk. These guys, they had hard lives. They fought, they fucked, they did drugs, drank and then they wrote these beautiful songs about them. I talked to Willie and I said, "Willie, you've been married five times, why would you get married?" He said, "Rob, I loved every one of them." I said, "What about the one that tied you to the bed and set it on fire?" He said, "I loved her the most."
Me: Hahahahaha. Shut down the blog, that's the last story I need to hear for the rest of my life. Hahaha. Rob, what keeps you from lying on a beach and drinking margaritas, metaphorically? You had a pretty successful career so what keeps you going?
Rob: Well, that's never over. I think I need to be understood is definitely in play there. I think I'm going to write anyway because there's an unburdening to it in some ways of getting something out in the way I can't explain but I can if I do it to a melody. But also having the success that I had, I'm rich and that's great but now that means I am free to make the decisions I want to make based on the music I want to make. I don't have to make any decisions that I don't feel comfortable with so that I can turn a dollar. I don't have to make anything I'm not comfortable with I can make sure my kid goes to college. Like now this is the gravy train in a way. It feels kind of amazing, it feels really good. I don't know how long it's been since I put out a record. This business four years could feel like an eternity, I could be forgotten completely. So having a new song coming out, and the day my new single came out I got a call that "3 a.m." was added to classic rock radio.
Me: Oh, man. How does that feel?
Rob: It was awesome. It's the whole win. Being on classic rock radio if I'm sitting on my couch and eating Cheetos and no ones listening to my music I don't know how I feel about that. But having a new single I just finished playing on the radio and I was playing on "Ellen" the next day and I got this song on classic rock radio then it all felt right. Everything is just kind of lining up where it's supposed to be.
Me: Your song and "Slow Ride" could be played back to back. Haha. Rob, thanks so much for being on the Phile. I loved this interview. Please come back again soon.
Rob: I will, thanks man.
That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to Rob Thomas for a great interview. The Phile will be back on Monday with musician Amanda Palmer. Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye.
I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon
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