Three Seven

Something about that 7 that I just don’t like… I’m pretty okay with aging, I’m resigned to the fact that it’s the price we pay for getting to live. An unfair price? Probably, but it’s one that’s built into the lease.

Still, that 7 is a sharp and jagged number, it doesn’t feel lucky. I think that that 7 is an angular little signpost that points out the now short slide into 40. And seriously, how the fuck can I be that close to 40? I feel that I’m still walking around with an adolescent mind most of the time. I feel like I’m just getting started.

Some age related things that have, coincidentally enough, come up in conversation with friends that are considerably younger:

For the majority of my high school years, the music I listened to was on cassette – CD’s were brand new. The first CD I ever bought was Echo and The Bunnymen’s self titled.

I remember when John Lennon was shot. I also remember my babysitter hysterically crying when Elvis died.

I saw Return of the Jedi in the theater when it was originally released. Also The Empire Strikes Back. Also Star Wars (the second time I saw it was at a drive in, in the back of an El Camino).

The first computer that I used, in grade school, had a cassette tape drive.

My best friend’s older brother taught me how to Do The Hustle when I was 5 and disco was still quite the rage.

Anyways, another year down and a pledge for striving to hold onto at least a little childishness for the duration.

All That Glitters Is Gold

Christmas was pretty low key and nice. I slept in a bit, but did get up with that same sort of prickly excitement in my belly that I once got with opening presents as a child. We made some breakfast, put Kickers down for a nap after he beheaded a pop-up book chicken that besides being pop-up has the added benefit of a crowing sound effect, and then lay on the couch and watched The Simpsons Movie.

We also got a taste of a white Christmas when it snowed for about an hour, never accumulating, but somehow striking that perfect Christmas string.

We then went on over to Mandy and Jason’s for Christmas dinner and more than a few holiday shots. Good dinner, good drinks, good friends, no family to thoroughly mess things up; a pretty awesome day all said and done.

Coming back to work this morning was a bit of a thorn in my side, if said thorn got to my side by being first shoved down my throat by a greased up fist and then pushed through the system by a razor wire toilet plunger until wiped up by a paycheck and daintily placed in my side. I was telling someone earlier that I have been in the workforce for nearly 20 years at this point, but school has ingrained it into me that the week between Christmas and New Years should be an absolute shut down. One thing that did sweeten the morning was a forwarded You Tube clip.

I watched an 8 year old play the outgoing solo of Stairway with an accuracy that put any number of dorm room stoners to shame. But then for hours I’ve had “Stairway to Heaven” stuck in my head – and then the opening keyboard lines to “Misty Mountain Hop”. It reminded me of a story from when I was working at a gas station back in those early days of the above mentioned years in the workforce.

I would like to tie it up and say it’s a delightful example of a Christmas miracle, but I would be a liar.

At the gas station, there was an older Iranian man named Fazol who worked the full service pumps. He was a kind man who would occasionally let his passions get the better of him, but a sweet man. One day I was listening to the wonderfully originally titled “Get The Led Out” on one of LA’s rock format stations when Fazol came in with a customer credit card. I looked him in the eyes and said, “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”

Fazol looked at me with questioning eyes for a moment and then said, “is this Shakespeare?”

“As close as we get here Fazol,” I replied.

Fazol took it upon himself to learn this little gem, and would often enter the snack shack section of the station and do his recitation with a heavy Farsi accent and it always sounded something like, “starvay to hauven.” Oh, how that made me happy to see a sixty-something Iranian immigrant quote Led Zeppelin with such measured dedication.

Then It's Love

A gentleman with an impressive fro stopped me on the way in this morning. Well, technically he stood staring at me with a stony grin at the corner until I removed my headphones and looked at him.

“Jesus loves you,” he said. He then put out his hand and seemed ecstatic when I shook it. He put his other hand on mine and wished me a Merry Christmas.

I began to wonder if there was something about me that signaled this guy that Jesus loved me, perhaps something in my aura, or a look on my face, maybe the way I walked in time to The Cure’s “Speak My Language”. Then I wondered if maybe Jesus told this fella that he loved me. Something like, “Hey, that guy in the headphones and long coat? I love him. Go tell him I love him.”

It was a nice gesture, a bit presumptuous, but nice. And the guy spreading the news had a smile that made me a bit glad I could a recipient of the news he wanted to tell me.

Have a good Christmas y’all, if’n you’re into that sort of thing.

Lost Boys

The train of thought that took me to Alex and B: I was listening to “Drugs” off of Talking Heads’ Fear of Music and made me think of Jimson Weed. That’s odd in itself as there are so many other drugs to go to first, but in the sort of half sleepy state I was in, I was thinking that the song did a good job of conveying the sometimes startling come on of some drugs, and from what I hear, the mighty and dangerous Jimson Weed has a serious come on. I’ve never partaken and the only person I know about that has is Alex.

Alex and B were a pair of brothers who lived a couple of apartments down from me in Chico. They were from Bremerton, the town of my birth, and they looked nothing alike. Alex sort of looked like a young Kurt Cobain, lost eyes, longish blond hair. B (or Brian) had short hair, a much darker complexion and always wore a baseball cap. Their behaviors matched their appearances in a way that was almost comical, that in some of my stonier moments made me wonder if they weren’t picked out by sitcom casting.

B was into watching some sports, drinking some beer, smoking some weed. He was loose and comfortable with the ladies, loose and comfortable with everyone. He would have been a great example of a nice, basketball playing, frat guy had he been in a frat.

Alex seemed a little uncomfortable being Alex. Also sweet, but seemed to hide behind whatever crazy amounts of inebriation that he could find. Painfully shy in some ways, when he stood next to B’s comfortable social interactions it made that stand out even more; something I’m sure Alex could feel in an almost physical way.

All done up on something, Alex and a friend of his visiting from out of town had bought a beef tongue at the Safeway, drew a face on it and nailed into a patch of grass that divided two sides of the apartment’s parking lot. There was also a sign that said something like, “Beware of Doctor something or other!” But the “something or other” was a name. Anyway, the point of that story, much like the original act itself, is questionable.

During spring break that year, when nearly the whole of a college town evaporates, I was alone in the apartment. Alex was also still in town and came over one night to sit and smoke on the patio, drink ourselves silly. At some point Alex went over the Drunk County line and into All Kindsa Fucked Up Land. He looked at me with clouded eyes that begged understanding. “You know what I’m talking about,” he slurred. I told him that unfortunately I did not know what he was talking about. He then began a rant that had the same amount of coherency as I do medical training; none. I tried hard, head full of Henry Weinhard’s, to make out at least a couple of key words, but language for him had moved onto some sort of freeform jazz babble performance. He stood silent and swaying for a second, again giving me look that seemed to plead for me to get what he was saying, before he took a header into the wooden planter box that held Amy Lou’s precious Iris’. I picked him up, made sure his head wasn’t bleeding, and carried him back home where I put him in a chair. Realizing there was a chance of him John Bonhaming himself to death, I then moved him facedown on the couch and went back home.

There was also the drunken mountain bike trip he took with my neighbor Rob. Rob called me and asked if I could drive out to Bidwell Park and pick up Alex as he’d crashed his bike. I drove out to the more remote and unpaved portion of the park to find Alex leaning against a fence with a windbreaker draped over most of his shirtless torso. I checked to see if he was okay, he removed the windbreaker to show a number of road rash patches, a nice divot of flesh missing from his side, and what appeared to my non medical trained ass as a broken collarbone. We got him loaded into the car and I headed down from the park and over to the clinic when in a hysterical panic he made me promise not to take him to the clinic. “We’ll just go home and put hydrogen peroxide on everything,” he said all wide eyed and shaky voiced. Trying to remain patient and calm, I let him know that hydrogen peroxide wasn’t going to reset that bump on his shoulder that was most likely a piece of broken bone. The more I insisted on taking him for medical assistance, the more wild and panicked he became. I decided to calm him down and take him home where B and his friends could help me talk him into going to the clinic. He eventually did and came back to my place later, complete with reset collarbone and opiate glazed eyes, and apologized for bleeding in my Honda.

I left Chico after a year of formidable debauchery and lost track of both Alex and B. I’m sure B’s out there in the world doing it fine and easy as always. I hope Alex is out there doing okay. I hope he made it through rough patches to find that sweet and funny man that he was.

How I Met My Sister-In-Law

I once again ran out of time for a proper posting, so instead here's a picture of yours truly that was sent to me last night. It made me laugh after an audition that felt less than spectacular. It was much needed, thank you Terri.

Yeah, that's me in a sparkly blue dress and pigtails. Moving a bed... The first time my sister-in-law laid eyes on me it was while I was onstage in this get up.

Hope to be back tomorrow.

This Wheel Shall Explode

You can probably file this under too much information, a TMI if you're abbreviation minded. Be warned, and put down that bagel dog, there's about to be some potty humor.

So Saturday, Beth was going out, I was going to stay home with Kickers and I'm thinking, "What do I want for dinner on a home alone Saturday night?" Then I thought, "If they knew the Death Star was coming, why didn't they evacuate the Yavin Rebel base? I understand the logistics of moving an entire base, but at least get the people out of there." And then I thought, "I'm really into "This Wheel's On Fire" off the first album by The Band. I mean I like the bluesy, sort of dirge-like take Dylan does, but there's an energy to The Band's version that is palpable." Then I reigned it back in and thought about dinner.

A salad, thought I, a glorious salad with red bell pepper and cucumber and toasted pecans. Perhaps some parmesan, and some breaded white meat chicken. So I went to the store and picked up some breaded chicken for this glorious salad of mine, but unbeknownst to me at the time, I picked up the blazing hot, Buffalo wing style chicken tenders. "No problem," I continued to think to myself, sidelining myself long enough to think that there may be a need for medication with all of this inner monologue, "I'm not a baby. I can handle the heat." And handle it, I did.

And then came Sunday.

Sunday morning I awoke with a little condition I like to call "Hot Ass in the Morning", or HAIM, again for those of you who are abbreviation minded. Coincidence that the acronym is the same as the last name of one of the Corey's? I think not.

Now, I used to get a little Hot Ass in the Morning after drinking Henry Weinhard's in college, but you expect some collateral damage after drinking a case of cheap, "hand crafted" beer. But this... My god, Sunday it was like crapping broken glass; broken glass made of lava and sharks - small sharks to be sure, but bitey and all aflame. That'll learn ya to go for Buffalo spice chicken tenders as a midnight snack while you're home alone watching The Departed, I thought. Then I started singing "This Wheel's On Fire" just to distract myself from the pain.

This case of HAIM added a little unpredicted zest to my audition Sunday morning, which coincidentally enough was for a stage adaptation of the Corey Haim film Prayer For The Rollerboys. I decided to use it as a character trait.

All Shook Up

It was a nice domestic scene; Riley was in his chair, chowing down on Cheerios and little Satsuma orange slices. I was going all Brando on him, putting the Satsuma peels in my mouth and grunting like a gorilla. It took it as far as to get up from the chair and stumble into the tomato patch we keep in the kitchen, falling down dead. Riley then charged me with a pump spray can of DDT that I was unaware we even had, or that he could lift and operate.

While I lay there being coated in harmful pesticides, I overheard on the TV some Elvis facts. I was told that about the Christmas trees in Graceland and from what I could hear they were showing us pictures of them, including one where the star on top touched the ceiling. “Holy sweet freakin’ Jeebus,” I said to myself. “All the way to the ceiling?”

I was having a difficult time trying to figure out what Elvis product they were attempting to tie this into. Is there a newly packaged version of Elvis songs coming out conveniently at this Christmas season?

And then I learned that Elvis loved Christmas soooooooo much, that he would put up his decorations right after Thanksgiving and leave them up until his birthday in January. It’s funny how history gets rewritten when it comes to the much loved and famous. The folks at entertainment news may see a love for Christmas, I see lazy and whacked out on Percocet.

I mean they never talk about how Graceland used to be decked out as an all terrain hunting ground, a safari in the south, where Elvis would set legions of people to run free just to hunt them down with all manner of rifles and blow darts. They never talk about how he made clothing and furnishings out of his victims’ skin and bones. It’s never mentioned how he bred rats in his Graceland laboratory and tried to nail down a bigger, better Black Plague.

No, it’s always this hip swinging, Cadillac buying, velvet painting model version of Elvis that we’re told about.

Damn revisionists.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Paint A Vulgar Picture” by The Smiths.

Frustration Row

Work’s a bear right now. Literally, I am being paid to roll around on the floor with a great big, clawlicious grizzly bear. Trying? Sure. Time consuming? As if work were the lead singer of Quiet Riot and time was cocaine. And if I were to write SAT questions, man the world would be a different place. I try to make a game of this job: for every time I get away from Rusty the Bear without a chest full of snarling snout, I get a point. For every head of cabbage I toss into his mouth, another point.

Well, that was a complete fabrication. I do not get the pleasure of bear wrestling for a paycheck, I try to cushion the blow of incompetence above me to those below. But work is particularly busy right now, thank you well placed holiday shopping season.

I feel that I don’t hide my frustration well. Actually it’s difficult for me to hide many of my feelings, if I’m excited by something you will more than likely see me jumping up and down on someone or something – more than likely having dropped trow. But it seems sometimes folks can’t see the frustration.

Not that other people should necessarily care when I’m frustrated. Why the hell would they? But I think that large parts of my frustration are fed by not being able to properly express my frustration. Say at a staff meeting your ADD addled boss is tossing out ideas and plans and processes that are annoying, uncalled for and/or dumb, and your frustration level is getting to be as such that exaggerated sighs aren’t going to vent it enough before you rough up a coworker with the business end of a Pentel EnerGel pen.

I’m suggesting a device.

I’m suggesting one of those helmet’s with the flashing lights on top, like a one man (and granted, bad) rave. My thought is that once that frustration gets close to a breaking point, I flip a switch, everybody’s made aware that I have hit a limit and I get up and out before the yelling and flailing fists happen. The light helmet does its thing with what I imagine to be a red light, but green could be quite nice, and that’s the cue for others to think, “Hey, condition critical for Billy. I’m lucky it’s not the bad old days where he’d jump up on the table a knee someone in the face.”

I think this would be less distracting in meetings than my initial ideas of the bullhorn or giant steel gong.

And back to work…


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Polly’s Into Me” by Black Francis.

More Songs About Buildings And Food

We did a little house hunting yesterday afternoon, and I feel that I learned a few things about myself. One of these things being that I really like “Mess With Time” off of Built to Spill’s You In Reverse.

That was something I kind of knew already, so not a great example.

Perhaps a better example would be learning that I do, in fact, know the things I like; and one of these things is not townhouses. Also realizing about myself that I may say things that people take personally, I feel that I should say that I do not find the liking of townhouses a personality flaw – if you like them we’re gold, we just disagree.

The journey started with a fairly forgetful house, one story box with a roof, which is in the price range we can work with – which is to say small and in a semi-questionable neighborhood. It was small to be sure, it felt smaller than our apartment, and had pretty low charm factor. What it did have was a sizable backyard and a separate 2 car garage that was roughly the size of the house. I wasn’t thrilled, but I thought to myself, “If this were all there was in all of Seattle that we could afford and move into, I could definitely make it work.”

Not exactly resounding praise, but I feel positive.

Then we looked at townhouses. They were nicely appointed with pretty kitchens and hardwood floors, but no character whatsoever. It felt like taking any sort of charm out of the apartment we were living in, and then piling it into 3 layers. The view from the bedroom on one of them was actually the construction site of what will no doubt be more shitty condos, no less than ten feet away. No yard… The third townhouse, complete with beige carpet, a fireplace that would have been smoking hot to a swinging bachelor round abouts ’72, and a nailed in 2x4 keeping the door to the garage closed as the current owners meth-head son had been squatting in there, was giving the two of us bad flashbacks of Orange Country. The realtor gave a look of bemused curiosity when we made it clear that our memories of Orange County weren’t all blow jobs and donuts.

I was depressed, very. The prospects seemed to be getting as dim as the 4 o’clock winter sky. The realtor had mentioned showing us a place that had cropped up in the listings, but was too small. She was waving it off, but the consensus was that we were out already, let’s take a look.

A none too crowded street and small bungalow set off from it by a good sized front yard. Cute from the outside, but going in knowing it was small I wasn’t terribly excited. I got inside and just on entering the door got the feeling. You know the feeling? The feeling that this is in fact home?

It’s something that I can’t explain easily, but when I see it in my head, the perfect house, it’s pretty close to this. Built in the 30’s/40’s and everything about it I just fell in love with. And if it were just Bif and I living in it, it probably would be home. It was just too small to make it work with the baby – and it breaks my heart a little bit. Those walls of fantastic texture due to years of painting and repainting, those window frames, that tiny little eating area, the wooden deck down to the back, the unfinished basement… It’s not meant to be mine, but felt like it may have been in another life.

Over beer and tots at Six Arms, I did feel hope - mixed in with the bittersweet taste of losing a place that was never mine. It gave me hope that there will be house that works for us with the right size and yard and character, hope that again I would walk into a house and already be home. I realized about myself that I will sacrifice a fair amount of comfort for character.

Ask Me

Why I think Journey sucks so damn hard, go ahead and ask me. And I will present to you:

Exhibit I.

Which stands for the internal bleeding I feel like I'm suffering when I see this picture.

Moisture Is The Essence Of Wetness

It’s an odd feeling to see the national news talk about how bad the weather is where you are. We got some rain up in here yesterday. And some mudslides, some city streets opening up under cars, some major flooding, some 100 mile an hour winds on the coast. We remained pretty okay up on Capitol Hill, but it was, without a doubt, one of the wettest days I’ve ever witnessed.

*Insert “your mom” joke here.

I was reminded, as I watched the parking lot outside my work window turn into a white capped wading pool, of a temp job I had in San Francisco. It was during the winter of aught two and SF was getting a nice hit of wet winter itself. We were living in an apartment that had the fun little amenity of a bathroom sink that made like a geyser of cold, dirty water whenever it rained with some intensity. Combine this with a less than useful landlord who was upset that they couldn’t charge us $1500 for rent when they bought the place as we were already living there, and I had a lot of late nights, ankle deep in runoff, trying to mop up a bathroom.

But I digress. After being laid off, I scored a posh temp gig (and by posh I mean, well, not posh) at a self storage facility. Duties were to include: filing, answering phones, renting spaces and apparently calling renters whose units had been flooded when the biblical deluge hit 13th and Duboce.

Man, it was messy. This place started taking on water like it had hit an iceberg (and my heart did, in fact, go on). The owners, who I had never seen before this time, came rushing in to shout orders to poorly paid minions with wet/dry shop vacs. They decided it would be a good idea for someone to call the soon to be upset renters, with treasures so cherished they were locked away from home, and let them know that their belongings were probably now ruined. This would be a good job for the temp they decided.

This is probably a good place to mention that the day prior to this, I got the phone call informing me of a real job. This day, Wet Friday I like to call it, would be my last there at the self storage place.

So I started calling people. I got a lot of sad stories about record collections and files and grandma’s goose down quilt, I got to talk to some very upset people. And then one guy who was bat shit pissed. He screamed, he swore, he made vague and unpleasant accusations about my mother’s good standing in the community.

I have dreams, I do, about my final days at jobs I don’t like. Most of them involve telling off people that I’ve had to keep quiet to for too long. There was a customer I had to deal with at a company in Florida that was so awful that it made me want to throw up when I had to call her. I promised myself that on my last day at that job I would call her up and make liberal use of the C word until she either began crying or someone drug me away from the phone, cackling and shouting obscenities. But I never actually do or say the things that I dream of. But:

After listening to this guy rant at top pitch for a good five minutes, I quite calmly said to him, “Sir, I’m a temp here and it’s my last day. You are yelling at the wrong fucking guy.” I then hung up the phone, walked out to the swamp that was the bottom floor of the units and told the owners good luck and good bye.

It still feels good…

Talkin'

Let’s talk winter. We got the first snow of it on Saturday while the apartment was crowded with well wishers for a one year old. In that crowd were four little ones just hittin’ the low end of double digit months. It was like having a troop of chattering monkeys scampering about, cute monkeys to be sure, but I kept expecting them to bust out roller skates and cigars.

‘Cause that’s what monkeys do, which makes me wonder where they saw it. It doesn’t really and I’m already derailed two lines in.

Party was called on account of the birthday boy wearing himself out running laps around the apartment. The gates of the baby corral were thrown wide and he was taking full advantage. So much so that the tiredness came on all out of the blue and he began spontaneously falling and half crying and sort of lamely punching the floor – which is exactly what I do when I’m tired. So with the combo of an early nap time and snow that began to come down as if cloud giants in nighties were having a pillow fight, people filed out.

I took it upon myself to get out a couple of times for walks in the falling snow. I like being out in it, not driving in it mind you, but strolling. I like that almost painful cold. I like that those flakes seem to absorb sound. I like that the snow takes the leafless, dormant trees (which honestly can get a bit depressing) and turns them into something majestic. By morning the accumulation had been turned back to water, like a really lame magic trick, and the slightly entertaining snow has been replaced by not at all entertaining driving rain and the promise of 50 mph winds.

Now, let’s talk Chez Gaudy. Fuck Disneyland, CG is the happiest place on earth. It’s a heady combination of cozy, warm, good food, phenomenal cocktails and friendliness that makes me love it always and forever. You walk by it, and if you didn’t know you would not think it’s a restaurant. It’s almost as if someone turned a good sized apartment into an eatery and it works. The food: explosive goodness with every bite. The drinks: carefully concocted and designed to get you a little fast and loose with your clothing and sense of tact. The staff: all kinds of awesome. And if you’re lucky enough to be there when Greg is, you’re in for a good night. Here’s a guy who gets off on making sure you’re having a good time in his place. He’s like a mad, roaming stand up and it feels as though he’s been your friend for years. He’s 8 kinds of inappropriate, has sat at our table to have drinks with us, and was the other night telling a story of how he was playing a drinking game which involved smacking one of the patrons. I sort of have a man crush on him.

Now, let’s talk Spinach Artichoke Parmesan dip. Has nothing to do with the others above, but I love it and how. I have had numerous conversations about filling up swimming pools with substances not meant for swimming pools (corn chips, jelly beans, Jello brand pudding), but seriously the thought of filling a swimming pool with Spinach Artichoke Parmesan dip and diving into kind of gives me a stiffy.

I’m also all hot on balsamic reduction right now. It’s time to sign off.

366 Days

So, a year ago I walked out of a hospital room while nurses did some statistical type data gathering on a newborn boy and into the cold, snow smelling air. I walked a couple blocks away and stood atop a hill looking towards downtown. I stared at the Smith Tower, a building that I had been infatuated with since I was a wee lad, and focused on the green light on top.

“It all changes now,” I told myself.

I remember knowing that. I remember that bitter cold air stinging my face, my eyes. I remember that sort of rush that comes with heading face first into the unknown and would like to imagine that I looked down on ol’ Smith Tower with a cocky grin (but I imagine it was more a panic stricken look somewhere between realizing that it was now time to jump out of the plane and that of realizing you had just crapped your drawers).

Some things that I have learned in the last year:

You can function on a lot less sleep than you think you need.

There are some deep stores of patience I was unaware had been buried.

I am actually able to look outside of myself for awhile, realize that there are bigger things than me out there.

How fragile life can be, but paradoxically how damn strong it is.

The laughter of my child rivals even the most soul stirring song in terms of joy it brings me; that smile is better than money.

It hurts my heart sometimes how beautiful the world can be.

All the roads I’ve taken led me to this unexpected place, and now there’s a whole new journey I couldn’t have predicted.

I get a chance to show my father how much amazement there is in having a baby son, something he himself was possibly too afraid to know.

The fears that I had, that I wasn’t going to know how to do it, were unnecessary. I should’ve spent more time eating dinner out.

So, here’s to keeping the Kickers alive a year, to not fleeing to Costa Rica, to doing our damndest to keep a little style and vulgarity in our parental lives.


Thanks for a great year buddy, here’s to so many more.

Life Will Find A Way

Down here in the drab, gray, industrial part of the city; in the low slung buildings, train track choked area of town, I passed a torn apart car.

It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary on these streets and avenues, there are plenty of grime covered campers and station wagons made when Journey was top of the pops (complete with tarpaulin curtains for that extra homey touch) that stay permanently parked down here. This car looked as if it had taken a good hit to the backside, there was no bumper, no rear lights and no trunk lid. The trunk was still there, a gaping hole where there was once probably a spare tire, maybe an umbrella, bottled water if the auto owner was earthquake safety conscious; but no lid. Reaching from the carnage and up towards the dark and cloudy sky, with what felt like an anger at the violence played out here, were the spindly, metal arms that once kept said lid in place.

I walked past, looking in to the uncovered trunk, maybe they left a flashlight or a roll of fruit leather behind, and thought, “Wow, it looks like a T. Rex took a bite out of that car.”

That’s the dinosaur, not the band. Marc Bolan was a powerful man in his time, but I doubt he had the wherewithal to rip apart an older model Nissan with his teeth, even if he was all kinds of coked up.

Then that image began to run rampant as, from what I understand, T. Rex’s are wont to do. I imagined how difficult the commute into work would be had dinosaurs survived. I would definitely consider the bus option if I had to add velociraptors to the list of things to keep my eyes open for (topping the list of potential muggers and random puddles of bodily fluids).

I imagined pterodactyls swooping out of the cloud cover to snatch up slow and unarmed pedestrians, homeless folks. I imagined those spiky armadillo looking dinosaurs with the club tails chasing automobiles and smashing in store fronts with their… club tails. I imagined a triceratops asleep in a parking lot, I guess I just hate to think of a triceratops mauling business people and reeking havoc on our socio-economic foundations.

Then I started to think about how if dinosaurs survived, our work climate would be considerably different. We would probably be living in even more centralized cities, walled cities, perhaps with netting over the top to keep out the swooping of afore mentioned pterodactyls. There probably wouldn’t be a lot of customer call center gigs as people would have bigger problems to deal with then how some poor wage salve didn’t put up with their abuse and derision with the amount of grace one would like; problems like body parts being eaten by giant predatory lizards.

I imagined there would be a lot of people set to the task of defending our walled and caged cities, developing new technologies and weaponry. There would be legions of foodies coming up with recipes for allosaurus with blueberry compote. There would be plenty of people for the ethical treatment of dinosaurs. There would be a blockbuster movie about an amusement park gone awry when scientists clone prehistoric marmots that were selected out when the dinosaurs survived.

Girls Rock Your Boys

I remember this kid from my 7th grade gym class, Andy. We lined up by alphabetical order and his last name started with an A. Otherwise I would never have spoken to him as we ran in pretty different circles. I can still see him in his gym shorts and T-shirt. He had Hessian hair, wore a denim jacket and his eyes were permanently lidded with cannabis weights. He spoke like Spicoli and while doing warm up stretches would occasionally bust out in a high Gedde Lee voice some heavy metal lyric or other.

It was through Andy that I learned of the wonder of Quiet Riot.

Today, the Riot has been made even more quiet as lead wailer Kevin DuBrow has passed on, found dead in Vegas like any respecting heavy metal singer should be.

I remember my cousin Michelle being into the Riot, listening to Metal Health on her cassette Walkman – the kind that in order to rewind the tape you had to flip it and fast forward. I remember being skeptical, I mean heavy metal? Plus Michelle was in with that rough and tumble, smoking, roller rink crowd. I remember listening to her copy on her crappy Walkman. I remember being pretty instantly taken by “Bang Your Head” and by “Slick Black Cadillac”. I remember feeling a little dirty at their suggestive spelling of “Cum On Feel The Noize” – I liked the Z. I remember being both a bit bothered and excited by the album’s cover.

Shiny satin straight jackets do that to me.

And I mean, cum on, they’re right: metal health will drive you mad.

So, good journey to you Kevin. I can’t say that you have made a huge impact in my world, but I will say that your cover of someone else’s song made me happy for a couple of days.

T Day

Thanksgiving was spent with the family this year which pales significantly in comparison to the ones I’ve been lucky enough to spend with friends, or running around the empty streets of San Francisco trying to catch 3 movies before a luxurious feast of turkey burritos. I’d complain about the family, the walls, the lack of honest communication (from me as well), but why bother. I’ve got it pretty lucky in the family department, if all I can complain about is surface stuff then I end up sounding like a spoiled little douche.

However, I will say that having not seen my father in a number of months, and he having not seen his grandson in the same amount of time, his decision to spend 6+ hours locked in a reclining chair watching football was disappointing. My memories of my grandfather are filled with nothing but an old man sitting in a chair and ignoring everyone else. I’m hoping that my father wants more for his grandson.

Moving on. Some things I’m thankful for you ask? Well, I’m glad you did:

I’m thankful for irresponsibly sleeping in an extra half hour this morning. I was able to walk into work as the sun was cresting this part of the world and it was one of those glorious winter mornings where the sun is so pale and fragile you think that crystalline cold air is going to break it.

I’m thankful for a heater in the apartment that works.

I’m thankful for being surrounded by some pretty damn amazing friends.

I’m thankful for a happy and healthy son who makes me smile more than I have any right to.

I’m thankful for a wife who, after all this time and after the added stress of being first time parents, can still make me laugh and feel right and who I can call my best friend.

I’m thankful for Cuba Gooding Jr. but I am unclear as to why.

I’m thankful for whisky, and pizza, and for Arrested Development on DVD.

I’m thankful for the feeling that I can follow my own voice, and more often than not that it’s saying, “screw you if you can’t take a joke.”

I’m thankful for a pretty good year of getting to do my thing on stage and film.

I’m thankful for T. Rex.

It's Been Travelling Twenty-Two Years To Get Here

I love me some Coen Brothers. If pressed to make a list of my favorite 50 movies, most of their stuff would be high on that list, especially Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink and naturally The Big Lebowski. I do have to say though, that of late my opinion of Joel and Ethan’s talents has been a bit tarnished. Intolerable Cruelty is a pretty funny movie, but seems to lack that Coen Brothers’ sparkle. The Ladykillers was awful, it pained me to get through it. So, I went into their new one with more than a little trepidation.

I will say that No Country For Old Men is, in my opinion, one of the best films they have ever made.

Much like Blood Simple, it is for the most part an exercise in tension. It opens with an off screen, dry Texas drawl over wide pictures of dry Texas landscapes. You are calmly introduced into this world, but in a moment the story is off and running and you are at its mercy until its end. The basic line of story is a Texas hunter stumbles upon millions when he stumbles upon a drug bust gone bad. He is soon being tracked by a psychotic killer with his own form of morals and a can of compressed air. Soon there enters in an elder country sheriff who sets about in his stoic way to make sense of what has happened and what continues to happen. In the film worlds of Joel and Ethan Coen, all bets are off. There are no guarantees that the good guy will prevail, or that the bad guy will prevail for that matter. There’s no guarantee that the good guy is the good guy.

Tommy Lee Jones plays the sheriff precisely as It needs to be played, with a heartbreaking intensity just below the resigned, old Texan. And Javier Bardem, playing the obviously dressed man in black to Jones’ sheriff’s whites and looking like Emo Phillips gone way, way wrong, is so effectively creepy as to make you nervous just knowing he’s in the scene. He’s not a typically over the top psycho, he has a rationality that grounds him and makes him that much more frightening. He is a man with a strong work ethic, it’s just that his job is tracking people down and fucking them up.

Underneath the tightly constructed Western/Caper Gone Wrong film, beneath the chases and the shootouts and country logic, is a primary idea of how the roads you take lead you to where you are. Visually throughout the film there are roads, and the dialogue subtly points this out a number of times, all without banging you over the head with the idea.

Ultimately, I was enthralled with this film from beginning to end, even during the slower moments of simple character dialogue. I feel that the Coen’s have remembered something that many filmmakers forget; there is sublime drama in simply listening to, and watching, people talk. The film ends like a meaningful whisper in your ear. When the credits came up I felt this whirlwind of emotions and a realization that I was not breathing, I was on the brink of crying, of laughing, of giving a loud cheer for the realization that film is not dead.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough.

The Crowd Screamed "Sacrifice The Liver"

So this bar that I’ve mentioned before, a bar where things can turn evil in fairly quick clip, a bar that on first glance seems to be an odd mix of David Lynch and Bukowski coughed up to life in a cloud of generic cigarette smoke and bar brand gin fumes is officially one of my favorite places.

The Baranof is not necessarily a dive bar, it’s crusty to be sure, but dive implies to me a dark and dingy, “no way out” feeling that isn’t here. There’s a vitality and passion to the Baranof. It’s easy to dive on into that working class vibe and feel that by proxy you’re living the Bukowski life, but that’s not the right way to go into the Baranof. I think that the right way would be to man up, shut up, drink up – maybe do some karaoke if you’re not too drunk to stand.

As we sat down on Friday night, already obviously out of place with the rest, we witnessed what was about to become a bar fight. The bar stool kicked back, one man grabbed the other and warned him of leaving in a body bag, and the fifty-something barmaid came around the bar to put a cooling hand on the instigator saying in warning tone over and over again, “Joe, Joe, Joe.” These two guys were more than likely in their seventies.

Our waitress looked as though she had recently been on the losing end of a fist fight. She also appeared to be more than a little bit drunk and forgot that I had ordered a Philly Cheese Steak. A damned good Philly Cheese Steak and some pretty tasty fries when it finally did arrive.

There was this ancient Asian woman perched on a seat near the door that leads to the smoking patio, eating something out of a Styrofoam cup and apparently unable to form understandable words. This would be excellently highlighted when she went up to karaoke “Groovin’”, shaking her hips and smiling as if everything good in her life boiled down to this moment.

And I feel like I’m walking this weird line, like I’m presenting the clientele of the Baranof as a show that they most certainly do not want to be. I want to set the scene a bit, let you know what is surrounding me, and also let you know that it is this backdrop that made me feel more comfortable in this bar than I have ever felt in any other “classier” place.

Human drama and human life, unadorned and unafraid; I love it. I didn’t feel superior to it, I felt lucky to be witness to it and all the sadness and humor and love that goes along with the package. Like Cheryl, I know Cheryl, I have been Cheryl. Cheryl was watered up to the eyeballs on house chardonnay and was having no problem expressing her love to people in the group I was with. Cheryl, who nicely grabbed my ass in passing, taught us all the secret Cheryl handshake and told one Sarah she was tabloid beautiful and another Sarah that she was Mademoiselle beautiful – a difference only Cheryl understood. There was a struggle to get Cheryl out of the bar. One man was doing his damnedest to pull her away from a random dance partner while a woman followed in a tight circle relentlessly offering a carnation. Cheryl simply didn’t want the evening to end, and man have I been there, my own prolonged goodbyes a record to reckoned with.

I left after 4 Makers, a pint and a sans pants version of Fred Schneider’s parts of “Love Shack” on the karaoke stage. I finagled about 9 people to come outside and wait with me a long wait for a cab, and as I climbed into the backseat I remember thinking, “I wish I could live there.”

I'm Afraid Of Americans

I think it’s generally well known that most people in other countries hate Americans. I don’t really blame them; if said people are in say Iraq or Afghanistan, to quote Camper Van Beethoven, “shit blows up when we’re around.” There are Americans who get angry over the fact that people in other counties hate us, but this is more than likely because they are the type of people that make Americans look bad.

It seems that many Americans, those with enough money to do some traveling, have a habit of behaving like arrogant pricks who believe that whatever country they’re visiting should be Americanized enough to make them feel comfortable while they’re abroad.

What brings this up? Well, I had a 25 minute, fairly unpleasant conversation with an older and affluent woman from the Palm Springs area of California who had had her purse stolen in Barcelona. She went to this American restaurant because, “it reminded us of home, and Europeans don’t make good coffee.” Already I was fed up. I read this as it’s impossible to get a high fat, coffee flavored Slurpee anywhere in Europe, therefore their coffee is awful.

She was also extremely put out that the people assisting her, assisting her in Barcelona Spain mind you, did not speak English. She began to rant about some more vaguely racist things when I cut her off with, “so that I’m clear, you’re service expectations are that in a store in Spain, employees should be speaking English?” I was told that yes, as “all those people over there” take English in school, and as this is an area frequented by many American tourists and businessmen, they should be speaking English.

There were also the expectations that people would be rude in France, but she was surprised by how rude people were in Spain. There was the assumption her purse was taken by Romanians. There were the constant reminders that she was staying in a very exclusive part of the city, in a very exclusive hotel. It really nailed it in to me how “exclusive” is a form of “to exclude”.

While she was going through her litany of missing and expensive gadgets, she let slide that she had so much shit that she couldn’t lock it all in the hotel safe. And the reason she had to take it with her is that the maids will steal it if she leaves it in the room. She again pointed out the exclusive street the restaurant is on as it has neighbors the likes of Chanel and Gucci and Cartier and blah blah and pretentious talking and who fucking cares. It took every ounce of self control, and I don’t have a lot of it, to not blurt out, “why do you even travel?”

Seriously. If you are made uncomfortable by anything you cannot find in the strip malls that surround your home, why would you go to a foreign country? Isn’t the point of travel to explore a place you’ve never been? To see and hear and taste and live things you’ve never seen, heard, tasted or lived? Isn’t the point of traveling to learn something about other places and peoples, to learn something about yourself?

I remember traveling through sections of Europe a few years back and seeing a lot of Canadian flags on backpacks. It was an easy way to make it known that though they look like us, they’re not Americans – don’t hate us. Not a bad idea at all.

And speaking of Canadians: There are a lot more complaints’ coming from our neighbors to the north since the Canadian currency is now worth more than American. We’re hearing from all sorts of angry Canucks about how that US/Canada pricing is now unfair. One thing that I love about Canadians is that even if they’re livid pissed, they remain polite and fairly rational.

I saw a news report recently of a restaurateur letting the local news folks know that she could no longer accept American dollars in her Canadian establishment as she couldn’t afford it. It seemed a bit silly to me as I highly doubt she was accepting American currency to begin with, so I laughed at the funny little point she was trying to make to a Seattle news team. I laughed at how our oil based economy is sliding into dire straights (not the band), and in knowing that I had nothing to do with letting an ignorant and murderous man into the White House so he could slowly sell off our country to his rich acquaintances.

God bless us…

Body Functions

Do you ever sometimes get all wrapped up in doing something, and you know you have to pee, but you keep pushing it off? Like work, let’s say you’re in the middle of doing some menial work task and you have the sort of mental wherewithal to ignore the natural pangs your body is producing. So, when you finally go to the bathroom, probably a good hour or so after you should have to begin with, you pee hard and long. And here’s where the question part comes in. While having one of those long, feels good in an immense release of pressure kind of pees, do you ever wonder for a second if you’re not actually having one of those dreams where you have to pee so damn bad and you’re rushing around to find a toilet in your dream and when you finally find one that release of pee feels so good until something in your mind says, “hey dude, you’re dreaming – you may actually be pissing in your bed right now”?

I think I sneezed out a sesame seed the other day. It reminded me of those weird days in the early 90’s when I was snorting a lot of California rolls.

There are things about getting older I’m not a fan of. The larger number of vague aches and pains that occur as my body continues to slowly shut down is on the list, as is the much longer recovery time that now comes with a night of abuse that my twenty-something body could shrug off. One new thing that I find equally annoying and fascinating is the sprouting of what I call Jeff Goldblum Fly hairs from the sides of my ears. They sprout along the edge of my ear occasionally, not where hair should be anyway, and they seem to be made out of some plastic-nylon polymer that would be manufactured by a company that the Bush’s hold major portions of stock in. It’s fun to think that all of the processed food I ate as a child could be partially responsible for this.

When I got out of bed this morning – at 3:30am – I felt as though I was not only lacking water, but had unknowingly eaten a herd of tiny sponge animals which had gone to work pulling water out of me. It was as though the cat, ala that pretty awful Drew Barrymore movie, had gotten too lazy to shuffle out to the water bowl and mystically yanked my water supply. I attempted to remedy this by chugging two glasses of water, which only managed to make me feel a little “sloshy” when I walked.

This is coming off a little complainy, I’m sorry. I will say that it was an amazing sunrise this morning in this part of the world. And if you have to walk through a city at 4 in the morning, you could do worse than to listen to the Black Francis album; much worse.

Waiting For The Flood

Sometimes I’m disappointed with how the job keeps me from posting as regularly as I would like. I realize that I’m not being paid to write blog content. I also realize that I could do some at home, but honestly I’m reticent to jump on the computer after spending a lot of my work day doing the same.

Had me a good weekend where not a lot went on. Had some drinkies, had some nap time, baked a little bread… I watched my favorite weatherman, eyes shining with a methamphetamine intensity, tell me about the ensuing storm I would be facing come wake up time. While he did mention the chance for rain later in the day, he saved his satanic energies for the catastrophic winds that would be coming our way – winds that would rip the roofs off of buildings, send cars careening to their dooms, sail small farm animals so far and fast as to beak the space time continuum. I was excited, I like me a good blustery day. But there was rain Walter, there was rain.

It’s possible that I have been made wetter on my travels through the city, but I don’t remember it. It’s like that same sort of phenomenon where memories of high school are painted a sweet and nostalgic sepia tone, my mind remembering those happy days of innocence, when I logically know that I would rather hack off my right foot, by removing and sharpening the left one, and then eating it.

So yes, wet, fantastically wet, but I really didn’t mind it. I was remembering the days when Captian MIA and myself would head out to the beach when we knew a good storm was coming. We’d sit on the beach, smoking and talking nonsense, reeling in the excitement that came with those heavy black clouds rolling in over the Pacific. Hopefully, we could withstand the cold and wind long enough for the deluge that is Southern California rain to pelt our upturned faces and we would return to the car and our ramshackle apartment feeling as though we were witness to something still impressive.

I also remembered one evening as I child where my neighbor and I set up lawn chairs in the middle of the street during a fairly spectacular lightning storm. There’s something about sitting in the street in patio furniture that seems so excitingly rebellious, the same sort of thrill I’m sure that surrealists got out of their activities. Add to that this odd feeling of peace that comes to me with being absolutely enveloped in pounding rain; I would assign the tired metaphor of the rain baptizing me anew, but I don’t think that’s it – I think there’s a calm in submitting to nature. Add to that thunder and lightning that, had I experienced it at that time, I would have said rivaled Laser Floyd as show stopper.

A few minutes into this street audience, my mother came shrieking out of the house calling me all sorts of ignorant and telling me to come inside. I thought about what I would do if a few years down the road I saw my son doing the same; camped out on the Avenue, soaked to the bone and wide eyes to the sky. I would probably smile a knowing smile.

Then I’d run out and tell him get the hell in the house. I would tell him that not only is sitting in the middle of street, when cars can barely see as it is, less than bright, but lightning likes little better than aluminum patio furniture.

Fun With Four AM

We're doing this fun new thing at work where... I'm not going to go too heavily into it, it bores me and it's my life it effects. Suffice it to say, today I have to come in at 5AM. This means, what with walking into the office, I need to leave my house at 4AM.

And if you're keeping up, and I know you are, you're a smart bunch, that means I get out of bed round abouts 3:30ish. Yeah, I know, things could be worse; I could be the daughter of Courtney Love.

And just for an extra kick in the dick, it was raining.

I realized this morning that I have this internal programming that tells my body it's insane to be walking city streets at 4AM, unless I'm five types of drunk and stumbling around with a partner in crime; more than likely looking for a place to pee and craving some form of pizza.

I also realized, four lines ago, that fun is a pretty subjective term. Think about the Verizon Wireless "Can you hear me now" guy. Go ahead, think about him. I'm guessing that when he started that gig he thought, "Yeah, it'll be fun to do a commercial - get this acting thing rolling." Now forever this guy will be the Can You Hear Me Now Guy. I'm sure he's constantly being approached by oh so clever people who oh so cleverly manage to slip a "Can you hear me now" into their conversation. I'm sure his hearing impaired Great Aunt Gladys is a hoot squawking out the famous catch phrase at family reunions. Can you imagine this guy showing up on *pick a crappy sitcom* as anything other than a not so sly nod to his commercials?

This poor guy may never work again. Unless he goes without the glasses and changes his hair; maybe a chestnut brown with bold highlights.

I'm tired.

Creek Of Consciousness

Speaking of cheese – yesterday I did, c’mon good people – I’m always slightly disturbed by the fact that Velveeta can be stored, in its original state, on a shelf with no refrigeration. It keeps me up at nights. Not for long, I mean I’m a hard working man, but still… Disturbing. Also, I have this vague uncomfortable feeling about how colby, swiss and cheddar – blended all together – can be formed into a wobbly substance that looks like it could be used to caulk tile.

Is it just me, or is anyone who grew up watching the Bugs Bunny/Tom and Jerry variety of cartoons slightly scarred by the idea of Limburger cheese? In the cartoon universe it’s the stinkiest substance known to animal kind, powerful enough to stop a pursuer in their tracks and turn them all variety of colors. I like me some cheese, but I’m honestly a little frightened by Limburger.

“Fat Lady of Limbourg” off of Brian Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) is all kinds of awesome. Nice sinister tone to some bordering on ridiculous lyrics. I first heard it as a background song in Velvet Goldmine and had forgotten about it until recently.

I almost had a knock down, drag out fight with someone over how flippin’ awesome Velvet Goldmine is. This person had the audacity to try to argue that it was an awful film. I could have come back with how it perfectly encapsulated how disposable glam rock was intended to be, how glam was about the shiny, gaudy veneer - perfectly fucking illustrated by the tacky Citizen Kane references used to showcase a “mystery” loosely based around the larger than life images of Bowie, Iggy and Eno. I could have said that the soundtrack kicks ass, let’s not forget the T. Rex, God bless ya. But I instead fought that argument with a, “you’re wrong” as I walked away.

There’s also the nice memory of lazing around and watching Velvet Goldmine with kc! one weekend when Bif went out of town. Velvet Goldmine and The Matrix… These are the good times.

Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune

Persistent bad mood is… Well, persisting.

Winter blues kicking in? Possibly. No show for creative outlet? More than likely. Daylight savings? Piss off, and take any standard daylight savings complaints with you.

I was walking into downtown thinking about things to write today, and all of them were fairly complainy – which made me want to complain some more. I switched up the route this morning, feeling like I needed to switch something up. I walked past some subsidized housing, windows all dark at just past 6 AM, expect for one. I glanced in through sheer curtains to an older man sitting alone at a small table, eating breakfast to the light thrown from a naked bulb. Nothing life shattering or altering to be sure, but it changed my mind set a bit.

Until I got to work.

Just another aggravating day, again nothing life shattering or altering, but sort of a mouse trap carefully laid to start the domino chain rolling again. I’m not one of those persons who bemoans having to work for a living; I would rather do some menial task for the man than toil for sustenance for my family in a mud field. It’s aggravating, it’s soul crushing, but it’s also nobody’s fault but mine that I’m not doing something more fulfilling with my time. So it’s a bit boring to complain about the job (customers do not fall into that boredom category however). But sometimes you just have those days where you wanna poop on someone’s desk and walk out with pants down and head raised high.

Ironically, it took this day to remind me of something that had popped into my mind on the walk earlier. I’ve been blessed recently by visitations and contacts from people that I’ve been slacking on getting into contact with. You know the people who as you drift off to sleep you think, “crap, I need to call/email/stalk so and so tomorrow, I keep forgetting”? And then you continue to forget some more. I’ve had a number of these people in my mind of late.

Teri, one of the most amazing scene partners I’ve ever had, shows up from Alaska for 6 hours before catching a flight to Thailand. She’s as generous, passionate and loving as always. Erik calls and leaves a message, man I’ve been thinking about him for weeks. Also as I try to remember to catch up with Matty about his move to LA, he beats me to the email punch. It’s good to be reminded of the awesome people you have in your life, so sweet when they come to you as if they knew you needed it.

I was also thinking about how macaroni is the perfect deployment mechanism for cheese.


Song stuck in my head right now: “Call of the West” by Wall of Voodoo. Particularly the “conflict” bridge to the song and the lines: “found himself peering down the muzzle of a weapon held by a drunken liquor store owner, ‘There’s a conflict,’ he said. ‘There’s a conflict between land and people… The people have to go.’”

Pet Peeves

Something that drives me crazy? Something that makes me practically shake with rage as if I were prone to seizures, or blowing a load in my pants? Something I feel I must vent into the ether rather than carry around today like an anger tumor, growing larger as the hours go until I am finally forced to hit something with something else; preferably something with serrated edges (the hitter, not the hitee)?

People’s sense of self entitlement.

Case in point: I am listening to some recorded customer calls, scoring customer relations reps, on graduated scale, on the amount of fake empathy in their voices when I come across this woman. I’ve spoken to this woman before, thousands of times. I don’t mean literally of course, but she shares a voice and attitude with way too many Americans who feel it necessary to dial that 1 (800) number that most consumers would spend their lives ignoring. She sounds like she has been smoking Pall Mall’s since about the age of 3, she sounds like if she could fuck sarcasm she would, she sounds like someone whom you would reserve the C word for – and this time C is not for cookie, thank you very much Mr. Monster comma Cookie. So this woman, whose ilk I’ve been forced to listen to way too many times, is complaining about being told that she couldn’t bring her puppy into a store.

Bringing a dog into a video store, where they supply treats, sure I’ll go for it. But dogs do not belong in a restaurant. I don’t wanna hear about how clean your dog is, I do not care to discuss how much a part of your family this animal is, it’s against health codes and if you feel that your dog has to go wherever you do, than you have bigger issues than the way people ask you not to enter a store with your dog.

I’m sure there are dog owners out there who disagree with me and I’m going to have to say I don’t give a rat’s ass; I do not bring my screaming infant to see Saw IV, or walk him into a bar – it’s not appropriate!

And this woman, this tar clogged, self righteous whore has the right to actually say the words, “I feel entitled to free” dot, dot, dot. A person was standing up to your inappropriate behavior, enforcing the health code, and you feel like you entitled to free stuff.

And I guess what really makes me furious is that I’m in a position to supervise the coddling of these retards.

Hell truly is other people.

Big Black Wave In The Middle Of The Sea

I felt it after it had hit me; the first wave of depression. I was tired and losing a battle to a cold when I started to go into a bit of panic mode.

The neighbors were having a birthday party for their 1 year old, born a scant month before Kickers. There was stress of trying to keep a very curious infant out of someone else’s expensive things, then add to that the birthday boy himself in a fit of yanking and hair pulling. Then add the grandfather’s continual bellowing to the children, in a stage worthy Long Island accent, as if they were deaf; or foreign language speaking visitors from another continent. Then add a large number of people in a one bedroom apartment. All of these things were putting me out of sorts.

Then add the feeling that all of the guests were young and professional types who seemed to be very into appearances and things they owned. Admittedly, I’m being very unfair here, I did not get the chance to actually know any of them or talk past a brief introduction, but it was a feeling that was coming to me in waves; it was the high heels and expensive clothing worn to a birthday party for an infant. Added to the almost claustrophobic feelings I was already having, well something was going to have to give.

Even the one obviously bored guy in a sweatshirt was solely focused on the football game playing on the mammoth flat screen TV. When it became obvious that Riley needed a nap, I gladly retreated; shaking.

I made the mistake of turning on the TV while I rocked Kickers to sleep. The flood of pill commercials, the sad celebrities clinging so desperately to some sort of fame, the dead smiles of the news anchors while they let me know of travesty after travesty, the constant buzzing of voices telling me to buy, buy, buy… Somehow the cynicism shield had broken and I was left to internalize it all, bad spoonfuls of everything wrong with the world. I began to have this sick and panicky feeling, a tired certainty that we’re not going to make it out alive, a weariness at having to protect my child somehow.

And then it made sense. It’s that same sort of breathless maladjustment you get when you’re depressed. It didn’t make any the problems better, but at least there was a feasible goal to work on before trying to fix the world. I realize there has to be those bits of depression, I truly feel it’s an important piece in our experience, a fantastic learning tool, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try and fight it, try and elevate myself.

Trying to remember the altogether different breathless feeling that came with standing at 1st and Pine Friday night, cold as cold, and watching the last couple minutes of passionate red sunset over the Olympics, Puget Sound not quite ready to let the daylight out of the water, a lone flashing buoy in all that nearly glowing midnight blue. And then I turn around to walk home up the hill with a full moon painting the rooftops silver.

Trying to hold onto the feelings of a hug from an 11 month old and that hum of “Mmmmm” that accompanies it, how absolutely glorious it feels to have a baby asleep on you.

Trying not to take it all too damn seriously.


Rocktober song of the day: “Raw Power” by Iggy and the Stooges. You better believe it.

Accidentally 6th Street

So I’m walking on into work this morning, too sleepy to be cognizant of much, when I pass by the BMW service shop. I pass by it daily, there are typically some guys wandering around the lot, doing their BMW service shop things. This morning as I’m passing, I notice two guys detailing a Beemer with this crazy little car washing doohickey – it sort of looks the machinery that resets the pins in a bowling alley, but this sprays sudsy water on expensive cars.

At first I was thinking, “Huh, I’ve never seen machinery such as this. I wonder if this will count for my something to learn today.” Then I thought, “It’s six in the frigging morning. These poor guys have to detail Beemers at six in the morning.”

I have had some disgruntled moments in my career, moments where I question the amount of shitty work I’m doing while CEO’s give themselves a few more million in bonuses. But I have to imagine that washing someone’s expensive status symbol in the dark of the early, what with the water spray in the early winter cold, I’d be signing up for the draft for the building class war. “Yeah, smoke up Johnny,” I said softly to the detailer with the turned around baseball cap. “Why not?”

This then, for some reason, reminded me of my misspent days in Newport Beach, CA. When I was living in Orange County, I fell in love with Newport Beach. It’s odd as Newport is the center of conspicuous consumption in Orange County.

And no, to nip it in the bud, when I was living there, we did not call it the “O.C.” We did talk about an “orange curtain,” beyond which all good things could not get past – things like art and culture, things that would shock the deadened senses.

But yes, I was taken by the Balboa Strip, a thin stretch of land sandwiched between Newport Bay and the ocean. I was specifically taken by 6th Street. Things were a bit more rundown towards that end of things, there was the old Balboa Theater that played Rocky Horror on Friday and Saturday nights, there were alleys (one of which I used to conceal my vomiting of a large number of Kamikaze shots done on the beach) – you didn’t see a lot of alleys in my part of Orange County.

It was where I was when I smoked my first bowl, and I would return there to do so many times while watching storms blow in over the Pacific. It was often where I wished I was. I remember quite clearly standing outside a Western themed restaurant near Ojai while Captain MIA purged some more of his Santa Barbara excess into their men’s room toilet and thinking, “Man, I wish I as on 6th Street.”

Odd, the thoughts that car detailing will bring to mind.


Rocktober song of the day: “Fascination Street” by The Cure. It came out around the time of these misspent days and reminds me of them. It also reminds me of being all done up on hallucinogenics and thinking I was an amazing dancer. I may have been, it’s difficult to be objective with a head full of blotter acid.

For North Street

For the sadness that there is in realizing that there is so much north of North Street, so many miles that seem to get larger with each one you add to the belt.

For seltzer shots.

For twosies on said shots.

For hotel room microwaved Hot Pockets, and of course the discussion on having sex with these pockets that was naturally to follow.

For getting to share in the excitement of someone else’s success, in their major changes.

For the surly looking biker guy, wooed by a baby’s smile.

For the rather unexpected flood of emotions a city can bring.

For the word “home;” so many connotations and possible definitions, a word that strikes me in an emotional way all the time.

For various secrets and affirmations. Did Steve tell you that?

For the ability to sit, unconcerned with appearance, with weakness, with concerns, and feel the mad rush of shorthanded conversation, of unforced understanding, of love.


Rocktober song of the day: “Where I End And You Begin (The Sky Is Falling In) by Radiohead

Depressive Slide For The Wonder Twins

“Okay, seriously Jayna, if we’re going to do our part in trying to do something about the rampant consumerism that’s going on, we better get a move on.”

“Jiminy Christmas, you Donny Osmond looking mother fucker,” she replied while half heartedly flinging her hand his way.

“Wonder Twin powers – Activate!”

While Zan took a moment for to think up the bestest watery object he could muster, Jayne jumped in with a sarcastic lilt to her voice.

“Shape of a giant toad.” And as per usual, she turned into what she stated.

“Giant toad? You’re going with giant toad? Oh that’ll be really useful.”

“Do not mess with me today douche bag, I am not in the mood for your passive aggressive crap.”

“Sweet Poseidon’s puckered anus, you wanna see passive-aggressive Jayna? You wanna see passive-aggressive? Just because you’re in a bad mood doesn’t mean that you need to force everyone else into one. Form of a giant ice toad.”

An exact replica of Jayna’s donkey sized amphibian, made of ice, appeared where Zan stood.

“How you like me now?” He asked.

“Do you realize that I could melt you with my frog pee? I’m out.” Jayna’s toad shuffled off.

“Where are you… But I’m… This is no way to fight crime and complacency! How am I gonna get anywhere?”

“If you can get that blue-balled monkey off your mom for long enough, maybe he’ll carry you.” She continued on, singing the newest piece she and her death metal group Shemp’s Tumor were working on, “These Are The Things That I See With My Eyes When I Look (Atchoo)”

“Hey that’s Gleek you’re talk… And it’s your mom too!”


Rocktober song of the day: “Divine Hammer” by The Breeders

Helping Friendly Billy

A short list of things not to give to a schizophrenic

Cutlery
Your address
The impression, even in jest, that you might want to marry them
Hallucinogens in their breakfast beverages
The new Smashing Pumpkins – it’s really not very good
Those transmissions you get from that Magic Bullet infomercial, you know the ones that message by message tell you how to dismantle time
Your debit card, your PIN and a ride to the closest IKEA, this is not a good way to get your place decorated
Advice on their imagined relationship with the tall, bald guy from “Night Court”
The option of white, wheat, sourdough or English Muffin
That patronizing, wide eyed, “you crazy” look you tend to give

Confidential to Loco in Leavenworth: No, under no circumstance should you recreate the Taj Mahal in feces.


Rocktober song of the day: “Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)" by The White Stripes

This Time It's Personal

Trying to sneak in a quick one while the baby sleeps, while the wife sleeps, but I keep getting caught up in watching the leaves falling outside. I keep closing my eyes to the simply strummed acoustic guitar of Mr. John Darnielle.

I feel that a lot of lately has been grasping at feelings and trying to put words to it; poor, clumsy words. I feel like everything is ripe with meaning and my head starts to spin trying to fit the meaning with the lesson; spins with trying to create a lesson. I feel this strange dichotomy of striving for more and absolute contentment with where I’m at and what I have; who I am. I feel like I’m taking on the season, I feel a dormancy coming on, a hunkering down, but below that the stirring of something yet unknown getting ready to burst out a bit down the road.

Without a show coming up on the near horizon, I feel this sort of useless wave coming over me. I think about all the free hours coming my way and I fear them a bit; I worry there will be no excuse to not use them well. I worry that there may be no show past the bit of horizon that I can see.

Thinking of previews that I’ve seen of direct to video releases and just how awful the acting is. I wonder if I sound as stilted and awkward when I do what I love. I think about those mid-line actors who aren’t horrible, but never make it to the pantheon of critically acclaimed or relevant enough to adopt an impoverished minority child; actors who make a good living making awful films. Let’s say the actors who made Jaws The Revenge.

Hold up for a second, some of the actors in Jaws The Revenge aren’t the type that I’m talking about, some of them were awful – porn worthy.

Jaws The Revenge is miserable, it’s awful and somewhat of a testament to what passes as a studio film. I will sit through some awful shark movies, I have sat through some awful shark movies, and the most recent of these was Jaws The Revenge.

Problems? Aside from the afore mentioned porn acting, there is the idea that a shark has taken it upon itself to stalk the family of the police chief who killed a great white in the first Jaws film. There’s the idea that said shark would go so far as to follow the family to the Bahamas where the water is too warm for a Great White to live. Let’s forget for a moment that the shark knew to go from New England to the Bahamas as if in a scene trimmed from the director’s cut, the great white had snuck into the Brody household to hack onto their personal computer and pull up their travel itinerary with those shifty, bad guy eyes before jumping back into the Atlantic. Hang on, I’m not done. There’s the shark itself who sometimes looks like a plastic chew toy in a miniature tank, and sometimes when it’s leaping out of the water (which is quite often), looks a lot like the awfully phony shark that scares tourists at Universal Studios.

Stir in the main heroine having sepia toned flashbacks of moments she was not there for, add a dash of shark EXPLODING when it is rammed with the prow of a boat, and top with a liberal dose of stealing the exact footage of the sinking carcass of the shark from the first film and you have a recipe for one big pile of celluloid crizzap.

Do I recommend it? Enthusiastically, with a twelver and friends who crave this sort of thing. Will I watch it again? Try and stop me.

I’m really unsure how I got here…


Rocktober song of the day: “Beginning To See The Light” by The Velvet Underground

Travelin'

There’s some sort of mathematical theorem out there , I know there is, in regards to the ratio of amount of eye makeup a young woman wears to miles away from a major urban area.

There’s strange gas stations, a lot of pressboard and none of the snazzy beer marketing, in strange little corners of the state, none too far from Seattle. Little bastions of civilization 10 miles from I5, found on a corner named, but supporting only two buildings, one of which seems deserted. Inside, I come across an older man disciplining a younger one who had apparently made some disparaging remarks to the Asian woman manning the register. Young man escapes to his truck full of muddied all terrain bikes and older man purchases his half rack of Schaeffer, which I didn’t even realize they still manufactured. I look at the laser sites and bullets available as impulse items on the counter where you would normally see breath mints and dried beef products. I walk back out to the car through a steady rain.

There’s these towns along two lane highways through the western wilderness that exist for a mile or so before thinning out to weed choked plots that used to be a parking lot or a mini mart of some sort. They’re these same little towns that you remember from passing through them a year before, somehow so vividly as if coming up in a town like this. You remember dreams where the geography is made up of these exact sort of places.

There’s an inordinate amount of bears made out of chainsawed trees.

There’s a number of towns up and down California’s northern coast; just stretches of well lit fast food signs and beckoning hotel/motel ads is all you would really see as your car passes through. We stop in one for the night, you can smell the ocean and I get that sort of winsome feeling of nostalgia realizing that I missed those windblown cypress trees from my time here. I walk past a kid on a smoke break from the McDonald’s right off the freeway. He sits sort of hunched, head down toward the asphalt. He glances at me for a second as I pass then takes another hit and eyes back to the ground. I wonder if he counts down the minutes until he can escape. I wonder if he resents the folks who come through to buy hamburgers and speed on out to somewhere else. I wonder if he wonders why I’m here, walking to the Safeway. I realize that maybe he’s happy to call this home, that he takes pride in a place where people know your name and nod hellos when they pass in the street. Maybe he dreams of opening a business, of raising a family, of petitioning for the freeway to move ten miles east and leave his town unscathed. Maybe he has vaguely disturbing dreams about sharing space with skyscrapers and ports, about how goddamn easy it is to hide in that anonymity of city living.

There’s a lot of beauty to be found in this country.


Rocktober song of the day: “C’mon Billy” by PJ Harvey

Walkers

I saw her shuffling along as I was coming down the hill and towards I-5. I sort of kicked the concentration into overdrive to make sure that I was indeed seeing a woman in short shorts. And I was; at six in the morning. And while it’s not quite winter yet, it is Rocktober for the love of Pete. It was cold enough in the predawn this morning make me think that my exposed hand was beginning to hurt with the chill and I might think about shoving it into my everlovin’ pocket.

Short shorts!

When she started walking again, I noticed the really bizarre gait she was using. It reminded me of a T.Rex – well, it’s the first thing that came to mind. I began to think maybe her legs were going numb on her, or maybe she was getting used to her new robot legs, perhaps even she’d been shot recently in the hips. But then I noticed, and wondered how the hell I’d missed them to begin with, the white stilettos. The heels were bigger than my head, well my head at age 9 let’s say. It was no wonder she was walking as though crossing a tightrope with a razor blade in her ass crack.

Now I don’t like to make assumptions, but…

Well, that is a ginormous lie. I like to make assumptions; big, inappropriate assumptions.

If that woman wasn’t a prostitute, she might think about looking into it as a gig. She has the appropriate wardrobe. It’s not the first time I’d seen a prostitute to be sure, but I was a little stunned by the location. Capitol Hill is more of a junky neighborhood than a sex worker one. I kept walking.

Down around Pike Place, I noticed a shambling woman crossing the street with a deflated piece of rolling luggage. I couldn’t hear her singing, as my headphones were on, but I could tell she was by the way her mouth bounced and arms flailed about. It was much like myself when I’m taken with a song and all done up and six kinds of . She was approaching one of the few other people on the sidewalk this time of morning, a man with a tie, nice overcoat. I again couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she threw her rolley bag down and reined in the flailing, meanwhile our nameless sharp dresser had a look on his face that was a combination of fear and smelling something bad. I kept walking, but…

Said woman stopped me a few paces later, tapping on my arm. I pulled the headphones out of my ears and waited.

“Hey man, do you think you can spare a couple bucks? I…”

“No,” I said, not waiting for the sad sack tale that was about to spill. “All kinds of no.”

“I’ll just keep following you,” she said with a sick little smile. “I’ll keep following you and bugging you.”

“Have at it,” I said. “I got about two more miles to go and headphones that will drown out pretty much everything.”

I popped said headphones back into my ears just as Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” was kicking in. Perfect. Rolley bag lady apparently wasn’t up for the challenge and continued on a different route. Oh early morning city trip, how I love thee.


Rocktober song of the day: “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations” by The Arcade Fire

For You

The douche bag who tried to merge your Mercedes Benz full bore into my car – the one with my infant son in the back seat - just so you could jump ahead a full car length in the traffic.

I realize that blowing a ridiculous wad on a car doesn’t necessarily make you a bad driver, it just seems to make you more of a dick face when you are one.

For being amazingly inconsiderate and endangering others I say, “lick it where it’s dirty.”

I hope it bleeds when you poop – a lot.


Rocktober song of the day: “Stop Breathing” by Pavement

I Can't Get That Sound You Make Out Of My Head

Before Portland, well at least before our last trip to Portland… Was there ever a before Portland? A B.P. that delineates some golden age from the heathen, dark days when there were no bridges slinging the Willamette like sutures? Wow, just barely out of the gate before I totally derailed myself.

As I had begun to mention, on Friday night – before going to Portland on Saturday – we went and saw us a little show. Kickers left with the grandparents, earrings put on Biff, parking procured for an astronomical price, and it was us for a night at the Showbox to see Camper Van Beethoven and Built to Spill.

After two quick whiskies and a couple of PBR tall boys (I said it, PBR tall boys), we got into a good position for the coming of CVB. Biff and I had gone to see Camper Van Beethoven when they reformed a number of years back and we were both pretty blown away by the show, so we were jazzed for another shot at seeing them live. Save for the bass player, these guys do not look like a band. Lead singer David Lowery, in his beard, glasses and paperboy hat, looks like one of those 40 something men who hang around coffee shops and speak to promises of a great writing career soon to come. Jonathan, the violinist, looks like any number of men you might see wandering the streets of any small burg in northern California; very long hair, untucked flannel shirt, crazed look in the eyes of just having ingested any number of psychotropic drugs. The bass player, in his short silver/gray hair, plays bass as if nothing else makes him feel sexier or cooler. I like that.

I get all hot over a band who does not have that cookie cutter, “I’m in a band” look and can rock it like nobody’s business. I was crazy down with the CVB from the get go, but when they invited Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch on to sing their “Good Guys & Bad Guys”… Well I was somewhere else altogether. I was pretty thrilled with the Camper Van Beethoven set, but when I realized that we were scant minutes away from Built to Spill, I got all tingly in my stomach.

I really don’t feel like I have developed any other words of praise to bestow on the good men of Built to Spill, I have not learned to explain a way that this band makes me feel any better than I could do last year. And yet I will vainly try again for a moment…

Built to Spill is one of VERY few bands that take me to another place altogether when I see them live. They give me that dry mouthed, adrenaline filled thrill of being caught in a moment that will never happen the same again ever. They give me that drugged up feeling without taking any drugs. A Built to Spill show for me is something I would equate to a tent revival – call it God, call it the infinite, call it magic, I am left feeling a hard sought connection and as though something has fundamentally effected my soul. It’s church, praise Jeebus.

The guys were on fire and seemingly having a good time. I remember at one point looking up at Doug while he tried to find God up there through closed eyes, apparently hanging around the crystal sculpture of guitar runs he had just left in the air, and I laughed an honest and true laugh. Hearing “Car” with Riley now in my life became an emotionally overwhelming moment – the line, “I wanna see it when you find out what comets, stars and moons are all about” made me hold my breath and cry. I can’t really explain it, but in that stoney/dream logic that holds true in the middle of an experience like this, I felt that this show was a necessary door to go through before we hit the road, a blessing from the boys for a good trip.

After the final notes of “Velvet Waltz” reluctantly shimmered out of existence, Doug walked around the stage, picking up his gear and talking to a handful of fans. I felt as though I was walking around in small little circles, enjoying the sense of fulfillment I was swimming in. When he sort of glanced my way, I waved up to him and called out “thank you.” He gave me that sideways wave and that smile.

Good show. Good, good show.


Rocktober song of the day: "I Would Hurt A Fly" by Built to Spill

Run For The Roses

Less than a year after having a baby, Biff went and ran herself a marathon this weekend. She’s a powerhouse and a force to be reckoned with. She’s a super lady.

Said marathon was in Portland, which is a three hour drive through less populated areas of Washington and into a whole other world altogether. Portland, and all of Oregon for that matter, has always had a very David Lynch feel to it for me. There’s this feeling that something horribly disturbing and funny can happen around any bend. I’ve only been to Portland a couple of times now, but there’s always this feeling like people are avoiding the sidewalks and hulking down for a storm coming any time. I always expect to hear the lonely whistle from a saw mill.

There was the added little bit surrealism with staying in Jen Jen and Michael’s place while they were not there. It was very kind of them to offer it up while they were in Spain, and it was comfortable, but I always somehow felt like a thief about to be caught where I shouldn’t be, their books and decorating choices staring down on me like judges. What doesn’t help these admittedly paranoid feelings is the person who has been tapped with the task of keeping the cats alive bursting into the apartment like some sort of vice cop on a bust. I jumped up, the baby (who had just finally passed out after a difficult night) awoke, and this woman – who was probably just as surprised as I – said she thought we would be gone by Saturday. She then said she needed to use the bathroom and jogged back towards it to do so.

Getting around a city to pay witness to a loved one running a marathon is not the easiest thing to do. Yeah, I realize that running 26.2 miles is also not all that easy either, back off. But there is a problem with maneuvering around marathon routes where they have closed off a large number of streets for the obvious safety of the runners; and in the case of Portland, this involved closing apparently very bridge that crosses the river to downtown where the start and finish lines are. Biff, feeling finally too aggravated and panicked to care, added an additional .8 to an already long run by bolting from the car and charging over the bridge on foot.

This left me and Kickers to slowly peruse the still sleeping streets of Portland in search of a grocery store. I was singing lightly to myself, feeling comfortable in the charming city. Kickers was babbling quietly in the back, apparently also taking in the sites along the Hollywood section of town. I realized that this was the sort of moment I had imagined before he was born, the two of us cruising a city in early darkness on some errand for mom. At one point I looked back at him and he returned an even glance, taking me in for a moment before smiling one of those smiles that erases any aggravation from the sleepless night before.

A couple of hours later, we found a way to other side of the river and took on the pursuit of meeting up with a marathon finisher. All those things that I mentioned above about the slight difficulties – add to that driving around a city you don’t know and a fussy baby. By the time I found a place to park the mighty Honda – illegally it turned out – Riley had fussed himself into a daze. I hoisted him up and hurried down the crowded street with him in my arms, this it turned out was a good time for him to sleep. He awoke while we waited at the reunion spot, that “what the fuck?” look on his face when he realized that the last time he had been conscious there was no one around him where now there were several hundred- most of them wrapped in foil, combined with the sweater print on his face from sleeping against my chest made me laugh out loud. Even the guy dressed as the Nestle Quick bunny wasn’t enough to shake his utter confusion. It did make me wonder though why there was a Nestle Quick bunny roaming the streets of Portland.

Biff came off her finish as though she had done nothing more strenuous than carrying a load of laundry up the stairs. Again, she’s a super lady and I’m crazy proud of her.


Rocktober song of the day: “Cracked Actor” by David Bowie.

C'mon Over, Do The Twist

Sweet mother of Jehosephat, this day…

I feel like I’m having an aneurism. I’ve never actually had an aneurism, but I sort of feel like this cinching belt in my neck, cruise missile razor blade tearing up my brain tissue must be reminiscent of what it might feel like to have an aneurism.

All of which has nothing to do with the awesome Nirvana song “Aneurism”.

I’m not going to be terribly surprised if I fall down into a convulsing, self-defecating mess with blood pouring with some authority out of my eyes. I also wouldn’t be surprised if I started speaking a language lost to the ages, lost to God, and barely heard by the few shocked coworkers who might notice my convulsive, eye bleeding fall.

I might not even be surprised to find my head splitting open with a tremendous cracking sound and a bloody Slinky bursting forth as if reenacting the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus, or the chestburster scene in ALIEN if you’re not all hot on Greek mythology. I imagine this Slinky doing its Slinky walk down the cubicle aisle, independent of gravity or floor grade. I imagine it somehow gaining a voice and singing the Slinky song with a sing-songy, faux child voice:

“What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound?
A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing…”

At which point I hope to have the energy to mutter, the wherewithal to stop speaking in this forgotten tongue, and say, “you ain’t that marvelous.”

When this day began I was so excited about seeing Built to Spill tonight that I shot 4 ½ loads in my pants. Right now I’m generally numb to everything.


Rocktober song of the day: “Buick Mackane” by T. Rex.

The Last Day

I think that it’s fairly normal for people to develop a neighborhood bar, their meeting place, their hang out, their end up. I remember trying out a few places in San Francisco before its proximity to the office made the Crowbar the place of choice for awhile. I was smitten with the Hide Out on Nob Hill for a bit, but on my first few tempestuous years in the city it was The Last Day Saloon on Clement in the Inner Richmond that was home away from home.

I find it odd that this was the watering hole that we picked. We were living right next to SF State and the Inner Richmond, while not exactly a trip to Ohio, was a little far to go to get a drink. What is perhaps even more shocking was the complete lack of drinking establishments near a university. Not to exclude the Chevy’s at the Stonestown Mall of course.

The Last Day was a nice normal, neighborhood bar. There were big windows facing out to Clement that let in a lot of (typically foggy) light, so the place wasn’t nearly as dank as I tend to enjoy in a bar. There was a pool table and a jukebox, that I remember had a pretty good selection but all I can really remember was the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.

It was right across the street from Taiwan, so there was good, cheap food nearby. It was also close to the Coronet, so made for a pretty good place to pre funk before seeing the likes of The Matrix during it’s 8 ½ month run.

There was also an upstairs where bands would play. I remember the ceiling feeling remarkably close. I also remember seeing Dieselhed put on a damn good show there more than once. One of these nights included a blistering and immensely entertaining version of Pink Floyd’s “Time”.

But when I think back on those lost days at the Last Day, there are two occasions that really stick out. I remember sitting in the booth near the front window and looking across at Dave who had just shaved his head after years of wearing hair well past his shoulders. I could tell he was feeling a bit insecure without the protective sheath of curls. I kicked him lightly and told him softly to stop worrying, that he still looked cute with no hair. And he did… Incredible amounts of alcohol continued to flow.

I also remember the first night we met Sasha; Beth and I sitting in that same booth and splitting a to go carton Hot Sauce Noodles from across the street at Taiwan and sharing the secrets that a sparkling new couple shares. Later, Sasha would replay her first impression of us, splitting that Chinese food and occasionally looking at each other and smiling; she always said it was adorable. When I try to see it through her eyes, I bet that she’s correct, I bet we were adorable.

Eventually, Magnolia became our hang out, our end up. It solved the question of good food and great beer, and got about as close to a neighborhood bar as we got in the Haight. When I start to feel a little nostalgic about San Francisco, it’s typically for my people still there, for the Haight, for Magnolia. But the deeper, more fundamental sadness that comes with saying goodbye to place, or more accurately a time, comes from missing the Last Day, and Dave, and Sasha, the cheap Hot Sauce noodles and the Slurpee for dessert, the thrill from hearing the opening of Dick Dale’s “Misirlou” come through the jukebox. I miss the occasional quiet afternoon of driving up through the park, sipping a jack and coke, smoking generic cigarettes and playing a couple games of pool.

The last time I was in the city I noticed that The Last Day was no longer The Last Day. It had changed names, and as San Francisco was no longer home to me, it didn’t effect me greatly. But I do seem to remember feeling one of those sad little smiles find its way to my face.


Rocktober song of the day: “Thursday” by Morphine.