Afghan Whigs

Janeane Garofalo once stated that she got a reduction because she didn’t want to be the girl behind the mic with big boobs. I think my horrific fantasy from panel 3 validates her decision beautifully.

For whatever reason, I am generally alone in my desire to bang Janeane Garofalo. Maybe she seems gloomy and standoffish to other guys. I have many predilections, one of which is the Wednesday Addams type; cute (legal age) girls with hair as black as their hearts, and doom on the brain. It has undone me more times than I care to relate here.

I can assure you however, dear readers, that the majority of men share my opinion on white fingernails. Which is, fie on white fingernails. They’re as attractive to guys as a row of oozing cold sores. No straight man fantasizes about being touched by long, sharp, white fingernails. On sight, we all fear the same thing; those deathly talons clawing at the tender flesh of the scrotum. Perhaps even a blinding poke in the eye. I shave semi-regularly because to women, five o’clock shadow feels like embedded shrapnel. How can you ladies out there expect me to get comfortable when you’ve got white Freddy Krueger blades on your fingertips?

French manicures are even worse; instead of resembling the chalky fingernails of a corpse, they simply draw attention to their falseness. I can’t tell you how many creepshots of female joggers I’ve pored over, where my arousal at the splendor of a natural woman in the wild was dampened by the inevitable appearance of PVC glued to her nail beds. Sometimes the ends are even square, for maximum ugliness. Sometimes I think women have absolutely no fucking idea what their hands are supposed to look like.

Well, let me tell you something; I am a great admirer of women’s hands. I can look at a girl’s hands and get a picture of who she is as a person. If you think that femininity in hands begins and ends with long nails, we’re already in trouble. I wouldn’t say that girls with longer nail beds are smarter, but it certainly seems to skew that way. Time after time I notice women with short nail beds, and they’re always the ones with the awful Press-On Nails.

Here’s why I think that is. As we all grow up, we come to use our hands for disparate purposes, and we all start out with stubby nails. Manual labor will give you the tough mitts and shallow nail beds of a workin’ man. Precision work like writing, drawing, typing or playing piano requires attention to the fingertips for extended periods, and thus the nail beds become longer. (You can even abuse a cuticle pusher, like I did, and possibly gouge lifelong gulleys into your thumbnails.) And there’s always a contingent of hot girls who do nothing, resulting in waxy, weak grandma hands. Why do you think they drop their phones all the time?

Well, girls who don’t like to touch things or use their hands very much are not attractive to me. Meanwhile, I can get aroused watching Kaki King play guitar, in her inimitable way.

If she has long fingernails, you can see why above. It isn’t for performing her cashier job at a diminished efficiency, so she can proudly display the tinted windshields stuck to her digits.

Anyway, I can’t be the only guy who finds Ms. King increasingly attractive over the course of that video. It is legitimately exhilarating to be awed by the non-sexual talents of a member of the opposite gender. As DEVO once remarked, that’s Pep.

Back to the Afghan Whigs. The song that was so sad that Greg Dulli could not sing it is “My Curse”, from their album Gentlemen.

Oh, I know. You played that video, and after about the first thirty seconds you were calling me a pussy. Listen to the whole thing. Let those Marcy Mays vocals slash into your heart. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! FROM HELL’S HEART, I LAUGH AT THEE!!!

What’s that? You think you know what a “sad song” is, now? When I wrote the Day Pekar Died strip, I mentioned that on that day, “Faded” was stuck in my head for hours. Try THIS noose on for size, smart guy!

Were you even aware such a level of sadness existed? Can you imagine a group of people coming together to record these songs, and not snuffing themselves afterward? Upon hearing Afghan Whigs, I instinctively feel the need to comfort the females I am certain are saddened by it. This stuff is like a lethal dose of PMS and chocolate, for the ladyfolk.

So when Janeane Garofalo admitted an affection for the Whigs, I knew we had common ground. My mind wrote in all the details of the white-hot breakups and hotter makeups we never had. Complex emotional head-games, tumultuous bedroom antics… all products of spinning Afghan Whigs discs during my Unfortunate Emo Period.

I became a much better boyfriend when I quit listening to them. (The Whigs, not women, who are on a “case-by-case” basis.)

Here’s the Ass Ponys cover they did that I still like:

The song “What Jail Is Like” compares a relationship to incarceration, but “Mr. Superlove” is the gem of the EP. It will seem brutal if you’ve never been on the receiving end of flying objects hurled by a hysterical girlfriend. If you haven’t witnessed firsthand how hot some women get when they’re enraged, some might call you lucky.

Not me though.