"Everyone's Entitled To One Good Scare"

In high school, when I lived in Southern California, our house was fairly close to a funeral home. The funeral home was also close to a 7-11. Coincidence? I think not. The funeral home was always something that your eyes just sort of drifted over as you went past it; you knew it was there, but you didn't need to register the fact.

Our apartment here in Seattle is also fairly close a funeral home. I was walking past it once when some employees were leaving. I overheard one of them mention that he had quit smoking. The quitter's coworker said, "Congratulations. Then again, that's not necessarily good for our line of business." I had this strange double reaction to that statement. I thought it was really funny, but I was also a little offended by it, which disturbed me more than the statement. Forever in denial of death...

But, let’s go back to the funeral home in California. I remember riding my bike around the building with my brother once. We were looking in the windows as we rode by, and in one of them towards the back, there was a dress hanging. We thought it was someone standing in the window and it gave us both a start. We continued to circle the place and continued looking at the window with the dress hanging in it. I don't know, it's one of those kid things where you dare yourself not to be scared, but sort of revel in the being scared at the same time; it's walking past a haunted house, walking through a graveyard at night. On about the fourth loop around the funeral home, on looking through the same window, there was an actual person now standing in the window. My brother and I both shrieked and rode off home.

On a Halloween night, so many years ago, a friend and I were walking past this funeral home on the way to my house. As it was Halloween, our eyes naturally drifted to the place. And then, just as we were right before it, the front doors flew open and a guy came charging down the stairs. My friend and I gave a yelp and ran off down Alicia Parkway as quickly as possible.

I think that one of the guys working there got a kick out of scaring the shit out of kids, and I appreciate that.

It was one of those good scares, surprising and ultimately non-threatening. Not like when a guy with a burlap sack on his head ties you up and leaves you in his earthen floored basement where there’s this makeshift shrine to Satan.


Rocktober song of the day: For the last, the final, the Halloween edition, I present to you Doug Martsch dressed up in full Neil Young drag. I present to you the mighty 20 minutes of Cortez The Killer (Live) by Built To Spill.

Not At All What I Intended To Write

My mind is sort of working on overdrive today - a lot of concepts swirling around all willy nilly; a lot of monkey mind chatter.

I thought about math as language, trying to give concrete value to abstract ideas. Music does that as well. Language does it, all these silly words trying to nail down specifics from the ether. And how any concept invented by us will be fraught with the same fallibilities no matter how much our brains want us to believe in the perfection.

Our brains seek out the order in the chaos. Everywhere you look in nature, you can find this calm and pristine order, but I think we're missing half the picture by not allowing ourselves to see the mad chaos in it all as well. As of this morning, I think this may be the great lesson I've pulled out of dabbling in hallucinogens, getting a peek at that chaos.

I thought about a line from Rest Your Head by The Wrens: I hate the change, but I love the effect it's bringing on.

Then I thought about William Burroughs and how I had been strongly attracted, not to William Burroughs' writing, but to the idea of William Burroughs' writing. There was that rebellious affection for an outlaw soul, a fighting of normalcy by proxy. I would like to go back and re-read Naked Lunch, re-read The Ticket That Exploded and try to see them simply as books and not as underground culture talking points. I however do not think that these are picks to be reading to Bif's stomach...

I feel like some sort of windstorm picked up inside my head and started knocking loose thoughts that were clinging desperately, some of them moving too fast still to grab onto. I need a quiet place away from this frustration factory of work to still my mind a little. Or I need a bottle and a partner in crime with a desire for some mutual, intellectual masturbation.


Rocktober song of the day: Queen Bitch by David Bowie.

It's Like Thunder, Lightening...

When things start to get to be a little much at work, when customers frustrate me, when actions of those around me frustrate me, I can always look to the man above.

There's some sort of air duct juncture right over my cubical, and on this is a sticker. The sticker is one of those universal pictogram type things for those who cannot read the English or French warnings that go along with the picture. This is good for visiting dignitaries from Java who come by my cubicle all the time.

The picture shows the black silhouette of a man touching a wire, and there's a bolt of white lightening, bigger than his head, coursing through his body. I cannot say why, but this makes me smile something fierce. That, and the exclamation: VOLTAGE HASARDEUX!


Which also reminds me of a story Erik said that he heard on NPR - it's apparently verifiable, but I cannot remember the host whose website you can find this on. A woman was at work, brushing her teeth in the restroom. She bent down to take in water from the tap in order to rinse her mouth out. At that exact moment, lightening struck the building went through the plumbing and into her. The woman had on shoes that kept the lightening from leaving that route, so it found the only other way out it could. Ready? The woman shot lightening out of her ass!

No shit, this is a super power that I want; to shoot lightening out of my ass. Voltage Hasardeux indeed.

The woman lived, paramedics helped her and explained to her what had happened, but I have to imagine the next few bathroom breaks had to be a bit of a chore.


Rocktober song of the day: It's another 2fer ladies and gentleman! White Girl by X, followed by 20th Century Boy by T. Rex.

Not All Who Meander Are Lost

Come here, follow me for a second. Here, grab my hand…

Bif and I were walking out of the apartment the other night and both happened to be looking up the street at the same time. Two fall brown leaves had chosen that moment let loose the tree and float to the street within the cone of the streetlight. As she was raising her hand to point it out to me, I began laughing at the giddy rush that comes with miraculously catching those little moments in life. She asked what I was laughing at and I told her it was the same thing she was going to show me.

Synchronicity, which was the answer a Jeopardy player gave to a question regarding an album by the Police. The correct answer was actually Ghost in the Machine. What the hell happened to Sting? The guy turned into the worst kind of cheeseball, adult contemporary schmaltz-fest. The man came up with some of the effing kickingest bass lines of the 80's, the guy played with the Police.

On the walk in this morning, there was police activity a couple blocks north of the building. From a distance, it looked like serious business - lots of flashing lights and cruisers in the middle of the street. My mind ran rampant with theories; sniper, high tech heist of the Krispy Kreme, beginning of the zombie apocalypse. It appeared that some time before there had been a spill on the road of some sort - fuel, I'm guessing. The cops were leaving and a sole hazmat guy was spreading a brown, powdery substance on the road. I'm not sure the substance did what it was intended to because as I walked by the cold fall wind picked the stuff up and blew it around in swirling sand eddies. It looked like outtakes from Lawrence of Arabia.

Desert islands? Are there such things? Every time I see islands, there seems to be at least some trees and not just stretches of dunes. I think they may be the thing of childhood myths; like vampires, moon men and fair and equal treatment under the law. I guess I can see how someone from the grasslands of Middle America could see the large amounts of beach as desert.

I've been trying to avoid watching Lost, trying to avoid TV in general. I sat down for a second while Bif watched last night and got suckered in, yet again. God damn you Lost! At least I could rationalize it by playing guitar while I watched, like I was multitasking.

I'm trying to teach myself to play slide guitar. I'm trying to find the inner motivation to be at home and write, to work on the larger ideas that are floating around in my head. I'm trying to ignore the burning rage I feel when I'm bombarded with constant stories of celebrities adopting children. Apparently buying children is to A-list celebrities what obvious plastic surgery is to the lesser ones. It's fucking awesome...


Rocktober song of the day: Going back to Zeptember for a moment, and ignoring the ubiquitous Cadillac commercials it is featured in, today's pick is the still powerful Rock & Roll by Led Zeppelin.

Ain't It Strange That I Can Dream

If I had the power to travel back in time (and I'm working on it good people, I'm fairly sure the key is microwaves) and talk to my 13 year old self, my 13 year old self would be shocked and dismayed to hear me say what I want to tell him. He would shake his head furiously, throw out his hands as if warding off some profane beast and say, "it's not true" over and over - probably throwing in a "dude" from time to time.

I have officially seen too many vaginas on video. And the last few had babies coming out of them.

Yeah, I knew going into it that I was gonna see 'the video' in our birthing class, and I've seen similar footage before, but it was fairly amazing that 35 years of media and societal manipulation was wiped out so quickly; things went from sexy to scientific in about 35 seconds.

Relax, I'm exaggerating. It's still sexy, it was just a tad unnerving to see a part of the body that is typically deemed as not proper for the masses to be so proudly on display - and as noted, with babies coming out of them.

It had already been decided that when the time comes, I was going to stay above the DMZ when the baby is introduced into the world, so I wasn't worried about that aspect. And even if I was down there with goggles and a catcher's mitt, I probably wouldn't be worried about it. What I'm concerned about now though, after the class, is watching the woman I love go through what could be a lot of hours of serious pain and me not being able to do anything about it.

We were practicing labor positions in the class, things to do that might make Bif more comfortable and things I can do to assist. I was making inappropriate jokes, as I will do, and making her laugh. She informed me that when labor actually strikes, she is not going to be in the mood for my stupidity, so now I have to be concerned about that as well.

But what I got most out of the class, other than a very uncomfortable feeling watching the teacher shove a doll over and over again through the pelvis bone of some poor sap who donated their body to science, was the flood of emotion that comes when that baby enters the world. As I mentioned yesterday, I was tearing up watching these people go through this sort of elation I don't completely understand yet. When the time comes for me, I'm gonna be a fucking wreck.


Rocktober song of the day: Fat Bottom Girls by Queen.

"Heaven Never Dreamt Of Anything As Sweet As That..."

And so it ends, feeling monumental somehow, feeling like so many factors lined up just right to make it happen. We closed “Soul Of A Whore” on Saturday night, partied it out, said a long goodbye.

Author-man Denis Johnson came up to see us closing night, which made a lot of people really nervous, myself included. But when it came right down to it, it was realizing that it would be the last time I would be walking that stage as Will Blaine and speaking Will Blaine's lines with his faux Southern gentleman swagger that blocked out the fact that Mr. Johnson was watching.

There was a particular scene, my particular favorite, that was just me and the super talented Terri that I just plain hated to see come to an end. It's a disturbing scene, one where I had to fully acknowledge my creepy side. Every night, on finishing the scene, the two of us would walk off stage, stand right behind the wall for a second and hug it out - just a sort of reassurance to each other that we were cool. Saturday night we hugged, went back to the green room and both started crying a little bit knowing we weren't going to get to do the scene again.

I don't know, it's weird and I probably can't explain it very well, but we all put a lot of work into this show and invested a lot of emotional intensity to make it work, so now that it's over there's an emptiness that sort of hurts. The next morning, sitting in a birthing class (which I'll bring up tomorrow) and watching videos of women going through labor and delivery, I was still so emotionally raw that I couldn't stop crying at the simplest expressions of emotion.

The closing party started out as a relatively sedate affair. I was sitting down on a table, talking to Erik's fiancée Irene about having seen the show 3 times during the run when Denis Johnson approached. I had met him once before and he struck me as very quiet, particularly shy. He still seemed this way, but also had this sort of happiness floating around him, which I assume probably occurs when you see something that you yourself have slaved and sweat over come to life. He thanked me for the job I did, mentioned a couple of parts he was fond of and told me about how the script had changed over various incarnations. He has this sort of plain, Midwestern handsomeness and a dry smile that just puts you at ease, and I remembered wondering why I had ever felt nervous about performing in front of this man.

The night wore on, more beers, more hugs, a fake striptease by yours truly that turned into a real one when Jodi ripped every goddamn button off my shirt (well, all but one, but Robert made sure to finish the job). I made my usual prolonged goodbyes and wandered into the cold around 3. I felt a big crying jag trying to bust itself out of me while I walked the dark roads home, pulling my button less shirt closer around me. I pushed it down trying not to think about the fact that it was done, but about feeling like I'd done some pretty good work and had gotten the chance to work with some truly amazing people. I thought about the extra time I'll have now, and of getting to see people I haven't hung out with in awhile.

But no joke, I'm gonna miss it.


Rocktober song of the day: Don't Bring Me Down by E.L.O.

Where It's At

My mind that is...

I cannot shake the internet headline I read the other day: Scary Spice Pregnant With Eddie Murphy's Baby? So many aspects of that assault my delicate sensibilities, it's like I’m trying to look at a four dimensional object spinning on one of those heat lamp hot dog things.

I cannot stop thinking about how I really want to throw away my happy-go-lucky customer service script and throw in a well placed “are you fucking kidding me?” to a large majority of the people I have to deal with for a living.

I cannot get Grandaddy’s Campershell Dreams out of my head.

I cannot shake the sort of melancholy feeling that is riding the knowledge that we end the show tonight. I’m gonna miss these people, I’m gonna miss this world.

I also have a hankering for a scotch and soda, and a Rueben.


Rocktober song of the day: Closer by Nine Inch Nails.

Secrets On Bayshore Boulevard

The Sparrow stood in the fog, his trench coat swaying in the stiff breeze. He could smell the salt coming on that breeze, off of the bay. He put his hands in the pockets of the black coat, attempting to avoid the cold. He pulled the coat tighter around him, felt for his pack of smokes and pulled one out. He was lighting it as a man began to materialize out of the thick fog.

The man stood before The Sparrow, his own trench coat cinched tight with a stylish belt. The man lit a cigarette of his own and squinted at The Sparrow through the darkness.

"It always rains on a parade," the man cryptically said.

The sparrow took a deep drag off his cigarette, dropped it to the ground and let loose a jet stream of smoke.

"But on the bright side, Denny's has a great deal on the Grand Slam Breakfast right now."

The man nodded. "Sparrow? They call me Ribbon Maker."

"Do you have it?" The Sparrow asked. He spoke calmly, but he could barely contain his excitement.

The Ribbon Maker pulled an envelope from the pocket of his trench coat.

"The recipe for Andy's 'Secret Sauce'," he began to hand over the envelope, but as The Sparrow reached for it, he quickly pulled it back. "You have something for me I believe."

The Sparrow reached into the blue backpack that sat at his feet and pulled out a small figurine. The Ribbon Maker's eyes widened.

"Is that? Really?" The Ribbon Maker stuttered.

"Yes, it's the Secret Squirrel. The very Secret Squirrel that the Sons of Marvin protected with their very lives. The very Secret Squirrel that was the actual cause of the skirmish in the Falkland Islands. And now it goes to you and your people."

The two men traded their goods. The Ribbon Maker stared down at the Secret Squirrel with eyes full of wonder. The Sparrow put the envelope in his pocket and shouldered his bag.

"Now I have to find my way back across the line and into the city," The Sparrow said with a weary sigh.

"Do they have the border blocked? I mean that would be weird to cut off San Francisco from South San Francisco."

"No, it's just my car broke down."

"Oh, well there's a Samtrans stop just like a block up from here. You can jump on and it should take you to like Market Street."

"Cool. Punch it in."

The two men tapped fists before separating and disappearing into the foggy night.


Rocktober song of the day: Queer by Garbage.

Walking Blues

Let's talk transit for a second. I know, tres exciting, but let's also talk about naming a child Trey. I know that some people are nicknamed Trey (or even Trip, which frankly is just dumb) because they are Suchandsuch McSuchandsuch the third. I gotta say, it sort of seems ballsy to walk around with a name like Trey. Hats off to all y'all Treys out there.

Okay, let's get back to transit.

I've mentioned before that I miss the San Francisco MUNI. I miss being able to fairly quickly and fairly easily get around a city. I've always wondered why a city like Seattle, which considers itself ecologically minded, doesn't have a better mass transit system. Your options of getting around the rather expansive city itself are fairly grim, but let's say you're coming over from the East Side, from Bellevue. Nothing. There's the Sound Transit, which is mildly helpful if you're heading North or South of Seattle a couple of times a day.

We were discussing this at work today, and it's a subject that frustrates me to no end. Take Europe for a second. Seriously, just hold it for a second. C'mon, I need to examine my zipper, pretty darn quick.

If I were in Amsterdam right now... Mmmmmm, if only I were in Amsterdam right now... Sorry, if I were in Amsterdam, and went to the central train station, and wanted to go to... Let's see... Brussels, Belgium, I would have 5 trains to choose from that would get me there in 3 hours. If I wanted to go to Paris? Again, 5 trains to pick from to get me there in 4 hours. Berlin? 5 trains, 6 hours.

Now, let's say I'm in Seattle and I want to get on a train somewhere today. Well, I can get to Spokane today in 7 hours. Never you mind that I can drive to Spokane, even in the slightly bad weather, in 4, maybe 4 1/2 hours. Let's say I wanted to get to San Francisco. Well, I can catch a train... Tomorrow! Twenty-two hours it would take by the way - to get to Emeryville. Hey, if I want to get to Phoenix, fuck me, the schedule cannot pull anything up.

I'm sure that the governments are heavily subsidizing the European rail systems, but why shouldn't we expect the same? Instead, we subsidize oil companies with billions of dollars and wars, even when they're making record profits, so that spoiled Americans can drive their ginormous Escalades, continuing to poison the air and radically change the climate, and not have to share space with a stranger.

Man, it's easy for me to hate my own country sometimes.


Rocktober song of the day: Rid Of Me by PJ Harvey.

One Rainy Wish

I walked to work in the rain this morning, the first time in awhile. I don't mind the rain. Yet... I do enjoy watching other people having to do their mandatory couple of blocks with faces that makes it look like they've swallowed steroid soaked goat poop, doing everything humanly, and hysterically, possible to avoid getting wet.

Don't any of them remember how bad they wanted to run around in the rain and splash in the puddles when they were younger?

And okay, yeah, if I had the power to wake up in the morning and say, "today, the weather on my walk will be...", I probably would not choose rain. But I don't have that power. I barely have the power to speak complete sentences and make it into the bathroom without bumping painfully into something when I wake up in the morning.

"Is it wet outside?" I get asked when I approach my desk, pretty well soaked. Yes, very clever, clever coworker, it is wet outside. Now go back to your row and eat more witty pills.

Nikki 2 K's threw down a little Muddy Waters on my desk, first thing, and I say thank you Nikki 2 K's. It was absolutely a great way to start a gray, rainy, work day. But I'm now filled with the desire to go back home, put some blues records on the record player and lay on the floor and listen, letting all of those dark gray, muted, rain day shadows float around the apartment. I want the cats to come cuddle up. I want some soup and grilled cheese.


Rocktober song of the day: Bone Machine by Pixies.

Peek-A-Boo, Part Two

We got our first batch of fall weather up here, cold and rainy. I was enjoying puttering around the apartment on Sunday, drinking coffee, nibbling on biscuits I had made for breakfast, and occasionally catching a glimpse of the rain spattered and gray streets out the windows. That night Bif and I went for a walk outside and you could smell all kinds of fall on that cold and rain fresh air; smoke from fireplaces and wet leaves.

I'm concerned about not ever being able to find a house, about being priced out of it just like California. I've been thinking about having to get out of the apartment at some point to have more room for the kid. But wandering around last night, looking at the walls we've painted the way we wanted, at the pictures and paintings produced by friends that we've hung up, feeling the cold from the windows pressing into the warmth of the room and thinking about how the place was soon going to be full of the mad chaos of a baby, I stopped worrying for a moment.

Yesterday we went and looked at another sonogram of the baby. It was quicker and less detailed than last time. They were essentially just looking for an issue with the placenta that would cause a C-section, but the problem appears to be no more. We were able to see fuzzy images of the face though; big baby cheeks and a nose - it's good to have a nose. But the little foot that we got a snap shot of killed me. I could see myself cupping those little feet to keep them warm while I held onto the critter, and for some reason I always imagine it trying to grab onto the beard I will grow back when I'm done with the show.

The medical office where we get the sonograms done at is on the 11th floor and provides an amazing view of Capitol Hill and parts of downtown. I was showing my mother-in-law the view, looking down at the red and yellow trees and all of that wet brick, and she asked if I thought we'd ever move back to California.

I've given up on thinking I have any idea on what life is going to throw at me, but I have a feeling that my California days are done. I'm pretty happy right where I'm at.


Rocktober song of the day: There's No Home For You Here by The White Stripes

A Day In The Life

I went to bed sort of angry, woke up relatively the same way and I don't know, there's something about dragging my ass down here early on a Saturday morning to deal with nimrods who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions and have a hugely inflated sense of entitlement that’s just bound to sort of keep me hovering in that place.

So after listening to a staunch Republican author on the radio on the way in state that he felt the party was heading down a dangerous path and recommending that Republicans who felt similarly should vote outside the party if necessary, and after witnessing screenshots of American flag Speedos and tattoos of a crucified Jesus wrapped in the American flag as some people's idea of patriotism, my mind couldn't help but start to focus on Patricia Birch, the director of Grease 2.

Patricia is a Tony nominated choreographer and helped to bring to life the exciting ladder dance in the above mentioned movie when Michelle Pfeiffer sang "Cool Rider". And hey, did you know that Grease 2 is also known as Son of Grease?

Okay, I probably took that bad joke too far. I started to obsess over statistics of the current Iraq war. Over 600,000 civilians have been killed since our invasion of Iraq. CIVILIANS! Just to try to put that into perspective a little bit. Taking every posting I have done on this blog since April of 2005 into account, the total number of words don't add up to 600,000; the number of letters used in those posts do not add up to 600,000.

Over 600,000 civilians dead…

I wonder, seriously, if anyone has shared this number with W. I mean I'm sure he gets briefings of some sort, briefings that I assume are read to him while he giggles over his Junior Jumble, but somehow I feel that his minders are keeping the bloody reality from him. Not that it would make a difference to this dangerously inept and stupid man if he knew or not.

Okay, that's kind of a downer. I also thought about squirrels today. They're cute.


Rocktober song of the day: Purr by Sonic Youth.

Friday the 13th, Part 16: Billy Rambles

Happy Friday the 13th everyone. I had some reservations about doing a show on a Friday the 13th, particularly with a 13 person cast, but the theater world is already filled with enough superstition. And not the good Stevie Wonder Superstition, but the annoying "don't call MacBeth 'MacBeth'" superstition.

And now, veering off that topic... As a teenager, I loved the Friday the 13th movies. And honestly, being a little older, a little wiser, a little more discerning towards what is a well made horror film and what is a hack slasher movie, I have to say I still have a fondness in my heart for the series. I love that the producers, looking to cash in on the sort of success that Halloween had a few years prior, found themselves another day that had sort of bad connotations associated with it and devised a "screenplay" that strung together the gory killings of horny teens.

Now I could go on about how these types of movies are an outlet. I could go on about the feminist angle of these films, how typical slasher/horror films were the start of, and are typically the few types of films still where the hero is a woman - defeating the evil without the help of a knight in shining armor. But I won't, I will just say - 90 minutes of bloody misuse of gardening implements. I'm down, I'm into it.

If I wasn't doing the show tonight, I would probably be at home with a bottle and some bad food and watching me parts 1-4 of the series.*

*Side note: I'm not a big fan of the entries that came in after Part 4 ("The Final Chapter"). Things became a little too much of a wink to the audience, like "hey, we know it's just a stupid slasher movie". Plus, once Jason became an unstoppable zombie killer it lost something to me. I think the deformed psycho cruising the woods is far more scary.

Yeah, like anyone cares...


Rocktober song of the day: You want 2 of 'em for good luck today? Yeah, you do! Cowboy Dan by Modest Mouse and then El Scorcho by Weezer.

Being Ridden

I apologize, I haven't had a break to post anything today. Work is kicking my ass. Work can lick me in a dirty place. Like 16th and Mission in San Francisco, near the BART station.

Lick me all over.

Here is a picture of Phyllis and Aristotle:

Story goes, Phyllis was taking up too much of Alexander the Great's time, and so Aristotle conviced Mr. the Great to drop her. In retaliation, Phyllis stood naked outside Aristotle's window and tempted him out. She told him that before he could take her, she wanted to put a bridle on him and travel around on his back. This was, of course, a trick; a tease of pleasure later

Sometimes I feel like Aristotle to my job's Phyllis; I get ridden like a horse and never get to fuck the temptress.


Anyway, Rocktober song of the day: Mountain Song by Jane's Addiction.

Hate, Haight, I've Got New Complaint

So, still running on the thoughts of street fairs, a quick one about the Haight Street Fair a couple of years ago…

As I stated before, I’m not a huge fan of the street fair. I guess that I've always known it, but I'm finally embracing the fact that I do not like crowds. Milling crowds buying nonsense and waiting for bad fried food in your neighborhood seems to be that much more annoying. Yet I continued to walk the 5 or 6 block stretch of the Haight Street Fair a number of times. I'm also embracing the fact that my stubbornness is akin to stupidity.

And as I stated yesterday, the thing that would make the fair palatable for me was plastic cup after plastic cup of Magnolia beer. One year in particular, I dropped into the pub on my home to find my favorite girls working, all of them just as drunk on the Juiblee Ale as I was, lots of hugs and kisses... That was nice.

And there have been some great surprise experiences at the fair that I would like to hold onto. Like the day that I ran into Jeben at the corner of Ashbury. I hadn't seen him in some time, he had moved to Los Banos with his wife and little girl and was apparently back in the city. He had that slow and stony, but charismatic smile. He had a way of making a lot of people angry, but through some fluke in the connection process, I loved the guy. He made me feel warm being around him.

Then further on up the road, not far from the one and only Murio's Trophy Room (a great place to have a ten in the morning shot of whisky after perusing the used section at Amoeba), I was grabbed by someone from the throng towards the side of the road. Hussan's drunken grin emerged from the crowd and he pulled me into a rough embrace. He was happy to be back in the country from the Middle East, and he laughed with his entire being. That goofy, drunken grin still makes me smile years later.

So there's good in all of that annoying bullshit, in that pulsing mob of jerkoffs taking full advantage of being able to drink beer in the streets for a couple of hours. It's an important lesson to remember, important moments to remember...

Confidential to kc!: Thanks for the assist last night.


Rocktober song of the day: Just by Radiohead.

Salmon Days Are Here Again

Allow me to introduce you to the new definition of fun, the embodiment of good times in the physical, it's a little something I like to call: The Issaquah Salmon Days Festival!

Nothing against the fine town of Issaquah and it's inhabitants, Issaquah seems like a nice place to live and commute into work from, but your Salmon Days Festival blows monkey ass! It sucks a dead camel's balls.

Okay, okay Billy, settle down now, it's not that bad. It's not like watching The Cutting Edge, an affront to all that's holy, but it does seem to take the idea of "festival" to a drab place that it wasn't meant to go to.

The Issaquah Salmon Days Festival included arts and crafts booths lining a closed down street, booths that peddled sort of fancier county fair foods, (onion blossoms and Philly Cheese Steaks, but no deep fried Twinkies), and a Field of Fun.

By the by, Field of Fun was pretty much a misnomer; a field yes, not a lot of fun. There was the stuff for kids like face painting, radar checked fast ball throwing (the high school pitcher looked particularly bad assed and proud of himself, throwing his all, in between a set of six year olds - way to go tiger) and a rock climbing wall (which admittedly is pretty cool for kids). But as I am not yet a father, there was not a lot of fun for me.

By the by, Salmon Days, also pretty much a fucking misnomer. I was expecting to see salmon! Salmon steaks, and smoked salmon, salmon gum, salmon top hats and salmon silverware, even salmon colored clothing. The stages where bad local bands played their Beatles covers were named after salmon, and there was a hatchery somewhere that we didn't find, and I saw two people carry a fake salmon over them like one of those Chinese New Year's dragons, all the while banging on a cowbell (to Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers), but not nearly the salmon-rama I was expecting.

All right tough guy, what would have made it better I bet you're asking. Well, let me tell you. Rides would have made it better. Cheesy carny rides like The Octopus and the Tilt-A-Whirl would have made it better. Anything else? Oh yeah, some fucking booze! What sort of demented freak puts on a street festival without one beer tent? Who does that?

And I should have stated this in the beginning probably, but I tend to really hate these street fair/festivals. The only thing that allowed me to make it through the Haight Street Fair every year was to get good and drunk on Magnolia's Jubilee Ale, made especially for the occasion.

I don't mean to disparage the salmon in any way, welcome back mighty salmon, spawn like porn stars, but unless you are into corn dogs and watching children throw an irrational fit when their Dora the Explorer balloons fights loose the tethers of gravity, then there is not a lot to the Salmon Days Festival I can recommend.


2 for Tuesday Rocktober songs of the day: See No Evil by Television, followed closely on the heels by Alex Chilton by The Replacements.

Taxicab Confessions (Brown Version)

We were talking about puking last night, backstage, before the show. Thursday night's show was performed admirably by a cast member who felt like he was going to vomit. Last night, same thing, but it was the lead. Thursday, I spent a lot of stage time very tense and listening for constrictions in the fellow’s voice and hoping he would be fast enough to find reasoning to stick his head beneath the desk on stage and quietly rail. Last night, during a scene with me and noted lead, I heard him start coughing and immediately thought, "Oh sweet glory, here it comes."

Nobody barfed, everything was cool, but it reminded me of a story that I shared with the cast. And a little advanced warning, this story involves vomiting (duh), so if you're one of those faint-hearted softies who can't even read about ralphing without choking up yourself, you may wish to skip this. Also, this isn't a story of one of MY varied journeys into the land of regurgitation, there's enough of those floating around out there already.

So somehow somebody got free tickets to a screening of the final Absolutely Fabulous episode that was being held at the Warfield in San Francisco. There was a big gala party involved, including an open bar. Now a word on open bars: They’re great in theory, dangerous in practice. The prevailing attitude with a hosted bar seems to be get while the gettin's good, myself included. This can lead to an unprepared level of drunkenness that is best left to professionals - people like Bukowski, people like John Bonham, people like the crazed Jamaican who accosted me for twenty bucks the other night during a break in the show, and upon telling him that I was in a costume and had no money on me, proceeded to up his request to 30 and then 50 dollars.

Hell yes, I got good and drunk, no joke. Not to a level of dangerousness that I have been known to dance towards, but toasted nonetheless. Beth's old neighbor from the Chico days on the other hand stepped stumbling to the other side. After she had her time to aggressively hit on each of the other four other members of our little group, she passed into the realm of incoherent.

We led her out to Market Street and hailed a cab. Five of us piled into the car; one in front, three in back, and Drunky McDrunkfuck laid out across the three of us in back. Lucky me, I had her passed out and snoring head on my lap.

The ride up to the Haight was fairly uneventful, but when we were mere blocks away from home, I began to feel small, yet tell-tale tremors coming from the pass out queen. "I think you're gonna want to stop the cab," I told the driver. He either chose to ignore me, or thought I was talking to the other driver in the car.

We were a block away from home now, one frigging block. "Seriously," I started, but then I felt a wetness on my lap that had a certain, shall we say, viscosity to it.

"Stop the cab!" The guy took me seriously, and with a choreography that seemed almost beautifully rehearsed, two ladies got the girl out and I slipped out the other side managing to not spill one drop of slightly soured cosmo from my lap. Corado paid the driver.

I finished the journey home in my underwear, sans pants, and the girl finished out the evening spilling what remained inside of her into our bathtub.

*Side note: Bathtub? Really? Seriously? I'm telling y'all now, if you come over and spill your liquor drenched guts into my bathtub, you will clean it out. I don't give a flying squirrel's ass how hung over you are.

Well, that was the last time we saw, or even heard from, Biffy's old neighbor. Apparently, some people get all awkward and bashful when they're told that they have puked on someone in the back of a cab.


Rocktober song of the day: I'm Waiting For The Man by The Velvet Underground.

Fun With A Lava Lamp

When a lava lamp begins to get boring, and unfortunately with this big, old fashioned, 60's model with clear liquid and red "lava" that Nikki 2 K's was gracious enough to let chill on my desk, it does get boring, there are things you can do to shake things up.

And here's a slight disclaimer: I love me some lava lamp, but there's something about this particular model that just ends up frustrating you. It essentially goes through the same set of actions each time until you wind up with a big blob of thick, red fluid forming a ball on the bottom.

In order to spark some new interest in the thing, I have gone to taking the lamp off the base and allowing the lava to slowly cool. It then becomes a lot of fun to spin the glass and watch the fluid swirl and roil around as if it were in slow motion. It reminds me of the slow motion drop of blood in the movie Pink Floyd: The Wall (which I only remember so well because I obsessively watched the movie continuously for a couple of years). As the fluid continues to cool and return back to its hardened and waxy beginnings, you can spin the thing and form a whirlpool sort of tunnel thing in the middle.

So now, when you put the lamp back onto the light, the thinner part of the "lava" glows a mean red while the rest remains dark. Streams of bubbles begin to rise out of this glowing core, reminding me poetically of 99 red balloons (or luftballons if you're German-minded), gaining the top of the lamp only to fall again into the glowing, molten cave.

It's like a rift into hell, a crack in Mount Doom.

Yes, I just geeked out and referenced Lord of the Rings. I also just wrote a post about the lava lamp on my desk, roll with it.

I'm still waiting for a lamp that contains actual lava. How could you get bored with that?


Rocktober song of the day: Add It Up by The Violent Femmes.

Some Things I Do Like:

I like lists, they're fun to me. I also like the film maker Peter Greenaway, who himself seems to be a fan of lists as they appear in most of his films. This is apropos of nothing, unless I was making a list of favorite film makers, but I'm not. I also like derailing myself with randomness. God bless you randomness.

I was getting a tasty beverage in the kitchen when I smelled someone cooking their Pop Tarts in the toaster and I thought, "Man, I love the smell of Pop Tarts in a toaster." I was then flooded with a variety of other smells that I loved before I could really even stop to ask myself what smells I loved.

For your perusal, Top Ten Favorite Smells (in no particular order):

1) Pop Tarts Cooking in a Toaster
- Particularly the Cinnamon-Brown Sugar variety.
2) Puget Sound
- I always assumed it was the salt water smell of the ocean that I was enamored of, and it is, but I have found in particular it is the Puget Sound that really speaks to me. There's something particular to it, something with the tar of the pilings, or the cold, or the salt, or all of those wooded islands, I don't know.
3) Fresh Brewed Coffee
- If contentment could have a smell, I'm fairly sure it would smell like coffee. It just makes me think of happy mornings even if I'm about to enter into a shitty one.
4) Fresh Baked Anything
- Walking through the streets of North Beach in San Francisco on an early Saturday and smelling the bakeries do their thing made me happy to be alive that very moment in time.
5) Biffy's Pillow When She's Not There
- Not a decent replacement for her by any means, but it's a nice memento to hold onto until her return.
6) Sex
- Something about the sweaty, funky, heavy smell of screwing just makes me want to fuck all over again.
7) Back Stage
- I remember smelling it in high school and thinking to myself that I would remember this smell, and be fond of it, forever; a mad mixture of wood and paint and actor sweat and dust that makes me feel like I'm at home.
8) Garlic
- It reaches in and latches on to a desire and hunger that I didn't know was even there. It reminds me of thousands of amazing meals I've yet to have.
9) Old Books
- Somewhere between musty and spicy. Just makes me want to smile a cryptic smile, wrap up in a long coat and wander around a gray day.
10) Wineries
- It's the combination of the vibrant and wild smells of the wine and the solid smell of the wooden barrels it's kept in. It smells like tradition well worth holding onto.


Rocktober song of the day: Saints (single version) by The Breeders

Some Things I Don't Like:

I'm just going to come out and say it, I don't like maple. No, the wood's great, big fan, love maple trees, but the flavor maple I do not like. I cannot say why, but the smell of maple syrup on pancakes reminds me of pee; tree pee. I don't know if it's some associative switch I threw as a child, maybe on a breakfast trip to a convalescent home, but I would just rather not deal with maple syrup. I'll take my pancakes and waffles dry if there is no other syrup flavor available, such as boysenberry.

I'm in a major minority here, I realize this. People have made comments that, frankly, border on rude when I disclose this information. "How can you not like maple syrup?" they scream, chasing me with bottles that are shaped like a woman. "Real maple syrup is only made in America and Canada!" they say. "What're you, un-American?" They then threaten me with bodily harm and tell me to "go back to the USSR you pinko!"

I have found that this is not a good time to point out to the maple syrup fans that there is no longer a USSR. But all of this is nothing compared to the reaction I get when I tell people I don't like ketchup.

"You're the only white boy I know that doesn't like ketchup," said my Latin, former housemate Rafael. I don't know why he had to make it a racial thing, but he did have issues with dating underage girls 15 years his junior.

I don't know why I had to make it a pedophile thing though, so I guess we're even.

The ketchup thing is a vestige from my childhood. I don't know what it is I didn't like about it then, but I didn't. It may have been that unexpected sweetness to a hamburger that seems it shouldn't have been sweet. I probably would like ketchup if I had it now, but I sort of figure I've gotten this far in life without it, why incur another habit.

As I like things to come in threes, I will also throw out that in the world of condiments I'm not a fan of relish. Relish can go straight to hell.

As I would like to end this on a positive note, things that I'm a big fan of in the condiment world are: mustard, barbecue sauce and hot sauce (in particular Cholula).


Kelly Bean has specifically requested a Rocktober song of the day for this month. And as I am, and enjoy being, a dancing monkey, so it shall be. Rocktober songs for yesterday and today will be the following 2 song, quick punch of: Beat On The Brat by The Ramones, quickly followed by Janie Jones by The Clash.

Welcome Rocktober

I welcomed in Rocktober like a rock star. It was sort of unintentional-slash-stupid choices, but...

They are currently doing a late night show after ours which is like a theater version of American Idol. People come in and do an "audition" in front of 3 auditors and an audience. This audition includes a monologue, part of a song, and a movement piece. The audience votes for their favorite male and female participants who go on to Round 2 for more audition torture and then a winner is picked. The fellow running this had asked a group of actors from our show to come and do it, but honestly, auditions are my own personal hell - I do them 'cause I have to, but I want to rip off my own legs and flail them around the room while blood pumps uselessly from the torn sockets when I go do them, The thought of doing an audition, an audition with singing and dancing no less, in front of an audience is a little too much like being locked in a room and being forced to listen to Journey. Not nice for me, and not nice for the poor person I will kill to get the hell out of there.

But, as members of our cast were going to do this thing, I figured I would go in and watch, I would "represent", as the kids are saying. Erik and I were going to hang out and get drunk, but before I knew it Erik had gone. I nonetheless filled up my travel mug with Maker's Mark ('cause I'm classy) and sipped it in the audience.

Sipped a whole lotta lovin' whisky on an empty stomach. This is an issue that has come up before with me, and I have apparently not learned. Rock stars are not bright sometimes...

The show ended at about 1:15 and we made our way out of the theater and immediately charged to the bar so we could hit it before last call. I was in full rock star mode at this point; drunk, but not trashed, and rallying the troops for more booze while the getting was good. We hit the bar, and as last call was going to be quickly upon us, I ordered two drinks. Doubles...

Whatever, everything was fine. I drank my drinks, I talked, I realized I was fairly drunk and as the bar closed I walked with a cast member half the way back to my place.

We stopped where we were supposed to be parting ways. He was telling me a story that I could not focus or comment on, because it had suddenly dawned on me that I was probably going to throw up and pretty quick here. I was trying to force my eyes to reconcile his image into one, and was pretty much only nodding responses so as to keep my mouth closed and not tempt the regurgitation fates. He finished up, I stumbled away and began taking in those full, gasping breaths the rest of the way home.

Yes, I did throw up - not a lot, remember, empty stomach. Yes, I did fall asleep at the toilet, wrapped in a towel. Yes, I did eventually stumble to the couch when I woke up and attempted to watch a movie only to pass out again.

But, what made me feel like a rock star, what made me feel like I had welcomed in Rocktober with true aplomb, was that I later got my hung-over ass motivated to walk down to the store for milk for my coffee, I left the couch and the apartment well before noon. Yes, I had survived another one of the drunken escapades that are quickly fading into extinction. I was out, walking around on the first day of this new Rocktober, dutiful church goers backing away from my weary smile.