Fucking Frustrating

I love my new room mate.

I've known her for years and I knew it would be fun to have her around, but I just absolutely LOVE being around with her.  We have so much fun and are so comfortable with each other, it's stupid.  It's like a great relationship except that we're not dating and there is no sex whatsoever.

But I love her.  

I had a good day today.  I have new underwear, so that's nice.

But I got to hang with my roomie tonight and I swear if it stays this good I think I could forgo sex for the comfort of coming home to someone who is just simpatico to me in so many ways.

The re-flex

Nobody reads this, so who cares.

The woman I'm dating hasn't ever taken it in the mouth fully...as a finishing thing. The other day, though, there was some fire in the room and she went for it and when the time came I announced and she stayed with it and I was all excited and just apparently had more muscular ability than I thought possible and shot WAY back in her throat...





which caused her to gag....






which caused her to run out of the room and into the bathroom and have to throw up.

nothing says "damn your sexy" like barf.

I opened this up because I wanted to talk and I've turned my other blogs into whatever and this is the last refuge for me just talking. Nobody knows (except lala) that this thing exists or who i am, so there ya go.

When I got divorced last year, I really wanted to go out and just put tattoos all over my arms. A definitive statement of solidarity.

I'm glad I waited, but I still want a few. Not one, and not necessarily small, but a few.

One is a simple image I put together years ago with an interlocking peace, yin yang, and anarchy. It stands for my mind set to this day. The other one is some redneck inside of me wants a wrap of barbed wire and a texas flag/texas shape. I may live many other places in my life, but I'm proud to be from there and it's a major part of who I am. I may live in manhatten for 20 years stright, but I'm still a Texas boy at heart.

There are two others I'd like. One is just a sun...sunshine makes my world positive. I want it small but visible enough to remind me. The last one is a small one with the symbols for "faith" "hope" and "love" in as different languages, whichever capture the essense of each word the best. These three, I want done old school...hammered in with a needle. It's just a passage.

Of course, all of this could change the moment I go for the sun and it hurts worse than anything I've ever known and suddenly I don't ever want another one again.

As far as the rest of my life...who knows. I am the sum of the parts. I have no idea what's next and am beyond making plans any more. If things go well here, I'm here. If not, and if things change elsewhere for someone, I'm back home. If all goes south and the other isn't there, I might just enjoy the desert.

That's the day. I think I'm going to leave this up for a week and then start using it for an entirely new purpose...to be determined.

New Music Old Music

I finally got a new group together. It's not a band I expect to do world tours or even much regionally. I specifically culled together folks with day gigs or steady working bands but who wanted to just play some straight ahead rock-n-roll. No pretention, no arty meanderings, just straight ahead stuff done right.

The first rehearsal we worked through songs I had written for previous bands and a brand new one I had written in the last week or so. It was so good to be working with high caliber musicians for the first time in a LONG time. We were working on arrangments, dynamics, and nuance in the FIRST REHEARSAL. Compared to some of the working class strummers I've been playing with for a while where our music rehearsals were relegated to "start at the same time, end at the same time, good". Such a nice difference.

The really nice part is that at the end of it all, it actually sounds kind of fresh. There are things we're doing that make it completely accessible, but we're doing stuff in the midst where there's a different vibe added. For instance, there's a song that has a kind of "red dirt Texas music" thing going on, but it's without any twang and the bridge has a Beatle-esque pop vibe going on. Another song has no chorus lyrically, but it's the one that sticks in your head the longest. So it's just pure fun.

If you want some prep, I'm going to start posting YouTube videos I find that have elements of what I'm talking about.

To start, here's Jellyfish live on the BBC show "Later with Jools Holland". They had good dynamic capabilities, great arrangements, and solid harmonies.



A couple of the guys went on to form Imperial Drag. I saw both bands at different times, but Imperial Drag was the only band I ever saw who stopped everyone in their tracks during sound check. They did an acapella version of the end of "Stare Into The Sun" to check their vocal monitors and levels and it was just this HUGE sound.

I wish the soundman had been better for this clip (you should mix all vocals at the same level...it's just fuller and necessary for this band) and that Eric Dover hadn't been a RAGING alcoholic (you can see him balance challenged a little in this clip and he's f**king up the words here and there)...but what do you expect when you just finished playing with Slash's Snake Pit?

Here's Imperial Drag



Roger Manning, of the last two bands, has also played with Air, Beck, and many others. He did an online "Jamming" session that's pretty funny.



Finally, to round out the Jellyfish shoot offs (there are MANY), Jason Faulkner, the original guitarist, shot out solo and with a supergroup of sorts called The Grays. Sony, in their infinite wisdom...like they're losing revenue, won't allow embedding, so you're going to have to visit the Grays video on your own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtkgE4h_EKw&feature=related

There's my bubblegum pop influences on a small level. Enjoy.

The rest I'll do later.

Word!

The moment of the spark

I think you have to be kind of ignorant in order be truly creatively gifted. I'm not saying you have to be stupid in order to have any sort of creative spark or artistic bent to you. You can be quite smart and be clever in your endeavors. But true creative genius needs a level of ignorance to come to light.

First of all, there's the blind desire to create something you have no idea if people will like. You either have to believe intrinsically that they will or just completely not care if they don't. Then you have to get past the voices in your head, both the ones from between and outside your ears. All the ones that say "stop" or "what are you doing" or "you shouldn't do this".

That last one comes in so many forms:
"You should just do..."
"They won't dance to it"
"I don't get it, why don't you...."
and on and on.

If you're in the position of trying to balance art and commerce, those voices get louder. This has been a challenge of mine through my whole life. I lacked that ignorance of other people's comments that would have allowed me to follow my muse where it wanted to lead me. I lacked that ignorance of my own fears about doing what I wanted to do. I lacked the ignorance to "act like a fool" when I really should have.

Dammit.

A large plate o' something

It's so easy to become apathetic to this world we live in. It's so easy to just ignore what's going on around you every day: this injustices, the greed, the crime, racism, sexism, religious persecution. Why? Because it's tough to get by paying your own bills and taking care of the small circle of people in your life AND do something about everything else.

Everything we do means we sacrifice something else. It's that simple. It comes down to what are you willing to sacrifice to gain something else. Are we, karmically, alloted only "x" amount of things that can be ours and then it's all a trade off?

Seriously. Think like, oh, Donald Trump. The king of capitalism has buildings, money, a t.v. show, kids, etc. Great life, eh? But he does it at the sacrifice of generosity, trust, and of being able to really work at (or have) love. Or my boy Howard Stern. He's got the love thing, kids, success, but he's miserable in public, can't go places he'd like to go, and is constantly uncomfortable around even some of his own people.

You get a girlfriend/boyfriend, you sacrifice time with your other friends. You work on your career, your family suffers a bit. You go to find your own space in the world and you lose time with your family back home.

Is it worth it? Again, it depends on what you want to give up.

Take musicians, for instance, since I am familiar with what they go through. To make it, and I mean to take the course that allows you to break through and reach the public eye, you have to give up a ton. First, you give up the day job. Next, you hit the road, so you give up time with the core group of folks who make up your non-musical life. You give up your dignity playing to empty shitholes for no money, and the lack of money from playing (or a day job) means you give up a comfort zone for constant anxiety.

Worth it if you make it and can bring all of that back in plus bonuses? Maybe. Except now you can't go out in public without making a scene (my buddy Raine from Our Lady Peace once had a girl in a 7-11 at 3:00 a.m. drop her Slurpee and start SCREAMING when she saw him), you might even have media surrounding your every move (especially if you start dating a model/actor), and you had better trust your old friends (if they take you back) because your "new friends" are all suspect for what they want from you. Plus, now you have a whole team of people counting on you to support their families and such with your music, so now the joy of writing a song has pressure on it too. Can you imagine the dilemma of "I really like this chorus to the song, it says EXACTLY how I feel and has a cool dark vibe, but this OTHER chorus will sell a million copies but suck artistically?" Your art takes second place to fiscal responsibility for a ton of people.

My job requires odd hours, travel, and a lot of passionate dedication. But I'm to the point that I really just want to earn a decent living and have time to be with friends/family and play music. My job pays pretty well, so if I change, I will probably go down in pay just a bit. See, it's all sacrifices.

But maybe knowing that is how you don't worry about all of it. You know you want love, so you sacrifice your security to open up to someone else hoping they see it too. You know you want a kid, so you sacrifice your free time. If it's important enough, you'll do it. If your friends/family are smart enough, they'll support you and make whatever sacrifices they have to make in order to fulfill a mutual desire to not give up some of your core needs.

One of my friends, the moment she finds a new guy, you don't hear from her any more. Another one disappears when she's depressed at all. For me, these are the times I want to be involved. I want to hear about relationships, I want to make my friend laugh when she's down. It's not something I'm willing to give up.

I'm also trying to be aware of when I have, even subconsciously, put something aside when I've taken on something new. I think if we did that more often, we'd find a better balance between what we want and what we need to do. I can't save the world alone, but maybe I can be just one more voice for change. How much time would it take to write a Congressional Rep or a Senator regarding an issue? How much time does it take to vote? How much money does it take to lend support to the people who have sacrificed something else in their lives to physically work at making a difference?

Look around and maybe you can find a balance. Then you need to go do it. If it means you eat dinner with your significant other an hour later than normal, so be it.

Work Sucks

The guy in "Office Space" was right. If I had the money, I think I wouldn't do much of anything. At least, not for a bit.

Good god is the work week getting ridiculous? How many people do you know with a job that only lasts 40 hours? How many people do you know that don't take their vacation time from work? How many people do you know who did all that and still got laid off?

ME! I know quite a few, but mostly I WAS one of those people. And it sucked when it happened.

I think a job should support your life, not be the reason you live.

There are folks working in factories who work what they call "712s"...that means 7 days 12 hours a day. Sure, you get overtime, but look at your time table. 1 hour to get ready in the morning (including a fast meal), 20 minutes to get to work, 25 to get home, 30 minutes to cook dinner, 30 to eat and clean...if you got up at 5 a.m. it is now already 8:00 in the evening. To get 8 hours of sleep, you have to be in bed in an hour. Spend a little time with your kids, brush your teeth (well, not out here), and get to sleep...NOW.

There were propaganda movies in the early days of animation that talked about how technological advances were going to "do away with the 40 hour work week". Nice wording, because it's true. Now, thanks to cellphones with Blackberry, e-mail, and whatnot, I can't escape my work EVER. My job has me on call from 8:00 a.m. my time until 4:00 a.m. every day. Someone could call me at anytime during that 20 hour period. I work a lot of weekends, evenings, etc...and most people tell me they would give their right arm for my job.

What the hell??!!

We're fast enough and efficient enough to realize that we could be productive enough and work less these days. We need to stop and listen for opportunity and showcase it and then GO HOME!! We're on a technological juggernaut that is unprecedented in human history...let's enjoy the fact that so much can be done for us so quickly and chill out for a bit.

Heath Bar Redux

I wrote a post the other day concerning Heath Ledger. At the time, I just blew it in as another Hollywood overdose. He had never caught my radar other than a couple of movies in which he didn't make me think twice about him, and, when Brokeback Mountain came out, that he had impregnated his female co-star. Some time later I heard they broke up.

That was it.

I got caught up in a rant and made it about him and I forgot what I really didn't want out of all this. I didn't want ANOTHER dead movie star/rock star to be made into this iconic thing. I didn't want to hear about it during every segment on the news. I don't read papers or watch the news and I can tell you about almost every step of this investigation.

Look, when the world has enough problems to over come and people in our government are making HUGE PROFITS off of regular people's lives...why the fuck should I care about every incoming detail of an actors death? Thanks for the distraction, now go investigate stuff that really matters. PLEASE!!

That's what I meant to say.

Looking back

Not surprisingly, like so many folks, I really didn't enjoy my childhood. I've always been a bit weird and definitely misunderstood. Problem is, it wasn't like I was trying to be that way, I just was.

I know a lot of people who work very hard at alienating society. Not me. My thing was just I perceived the world differently. I dressed properly but economically challenged; I watched popular movies and listened to popular music; I enjoyed many of the same events as most people. But I always ended up liking something about all of this that was different than the rest of the people did. Not intentional, again, just how I took it in.

There's no real reason why I do this, I just see things from a different angle than most folks. It makes it hard for me, though, to "play the game" that most people play with each other. For instance, I have no challenge just talking about almost anything; no filters whatsoever. It freaks people out some times that I can so casually talk about fine art and taking a good shit with the same fervor and insight. Over the years, I've learned to temper the verbal output, but my mind still goes to all the dark places it used to.

There have been benefits too. In challenges where normal preconceived notions are not facilitating a solution, I can find a new path because my brain isn't concerned with what people did before me as much as it is focused on the end result and the process of getting there. It was also beneficial in allowing me to get into the music industry early on in my life because I had this weird ability to spot talent. I bought the first Def Leppard album when it came out and had to drive to a billion stores to find a store that had even brought it in. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get any number of people to come see this cool little band I had found called Green Day on their first tour. I sat in the back of a room full of record label folks after listening to a quartet of young women (13/14 year olds) singing songs from their still-being-recorded first album and had the following conversation with their rep that went like this:
Her: So what do you think?
Me: They're good. What's the blonde haired girls name?
Her: Beyonce
Me: Whatever happens with Destiny's Child or not, THAT girl is a star.

So, it's been useful.

But so many times, it sucks.
I miss the "hidden messages" of what people are trying to tell me. I take things too literally. I really love music that makes people go "WTF, mate?". On and on, I find myself still, after 30-something years, like an outsider that is somehow just enough on the inside to kind of get away with doing my thing but being allowed to stick around.

It also meant that my straight and narrow step-dad and I always (have and will) butt heads. His shortsightedness and my oddball dreamer status clashed to the point that these days I will sometimes rebel against things "just because". I will even make detrimental choices just to disappoint him. It's stupid, but I can't help it. When I was younger, I didn't want to make him mad...making him mad just made my life, and my mom's life, a living hell. But as time went on, I also figured out that even when I did things right, he would search for what I did wrong inside of that right and rip me for that. After a while, I stopped stressing about pleasing him, which pissed him off 38 ways from Sunday. If you can't win, lose beautifully, right?

If pushed, I can recall things from when I was a kid, but that stuff doesn't come flowing back nostalgically. It usually is either excavated violently or has to be searched for in the back of my mind. I didn't keep much stuff (mementos, awards, anything) from that time and that continues to this day. I never made a practice of capturing a memento and story from a moment in time, so I don't have the trigger that makes me do it to this day.

Only recently have I developed a sentimentality for the past. I wish I had kept all my ticket stubs. I wish I had taken more pictures of events and people. I wish I had kept a journal.

Instead, it's all up in my head and the only way I can share is to occasionally tell a long winded story or two.

If you're young and reading this, here's my advice: hold on to things from now for later. Don't junk up, but take lots of digital pictures and carefully store away the little things that make you smile now. Someday you'll have kids and new friends and you'll want that ability to show them a part of who you are/who you were with great visual aid.

Or, if you're like me, you'll just hear these words and say "fuck that". ;)

3 Movies

I like movies that transport you away from this world while setting themselves in it. To that end:

August Rush- just makes you want to believe in the power of music and love and god.
I Am Legend- just makes you want to believe that Insurance and Medical companies are going to kill us all...including Will Smith
Cloverfield- just makes you...kidding. The story is old, the setting has been done, the demise is Shakespearian, and there's probably going to be a sequel. If motion makes you sick, don't watch. But, for sheer "thrill" and a modern visual perspective, about 90 minutes of movie magic. Oh, and the creature is just fucking scary looking.

After all 3 of these movies, it took me a while to kind of put my head back in the world. I like that.