Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

There is a wineshop named Groezinger’s. 6484 Washington Street, Yountville, CA 94599. Groezingers.com. 800-356-3970.

When it comes to wine I can only say I’m an enthusiast. A fan and someone who’s drunk some really good wine. I do know good from bad because it’s like right and wrong. It really can be that simple. Yeah, yeah, there’s lots of grey, but that’s about flavor and varietal and other subjectve stuff. There is good wine, and there is shitty wine.

I’ve been to the Napa Valley a handful of times. Summer and fall. In the fall, after the crush, it is sublime. Not only do the trees burst gold and crimson but the vines do too. The entire valley smells like a cellar.

There’s these guys, Rick and Justin. Me and my formerly betrothed met them one day when hot on the trail for some Turley Zin. Some dickhead from another wineshop suggested they might have it while patronizing the shit out both of us.

I’m no snob. I’d read about Turley Zinfandels and we dined at a very cool restaurant that had a bottle on the list for a fair price. I got all seduced by it’s cooked plum , smoke and cedar as did my fiancee’, so we went looking for some the next day.

We ended up at Groezinger’s. Right place at the right time. I’m almost positive Sin City by AC/DC was playing when we walked in. The walls were purple and festooned with album and concert posters. The floor was littered with outgoing cases to be shipped. Turns out they had a robust mail order business.

This guy Rick walked right up and asked said something overtly pleasant. That kind of friendliness on a tourist who’s been snobbed upon all over backed me up a little. Flags went up.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Was I gonna have to punch a bitch?

I looked him in the eye and understood he was a little crazy. I began to feel a little better. Then another guy walks up and hands me a glass of wine. Not a tasting, but a full pour. I look at his eyes. He’s crazy too. His name is Justin and the wine is pretty fucking good.

Later there would be banjo. No shit.

My formerly betrothed looks at me with a fat glass of juice in her long fingers and a wicked grin only she can pull off. I will tell you, she was one gorgeous bitch. We spend the next three or four hours there at Groezinger’s. We met winemakers and locals, we tasted some serious art. They even told us where to to taste.

Rick and Justin. Two happy go lucky dudes in the unlikliest of places. Main Street in Yountville. Serious about very little other than fermented grape juice. Their acumen in that particular venue was immediately evident and unmistakable. They were very good to us.

If I leave you with nothing else, I need to impress this upon you. These guys know what they’re doing. They are at it’s center. In an afternoon we met winemakers from all over the valley with wines that were as different as any two red liquids can be. There was at least one instance where my girl and I were each asked to describe exactly what we were looking for. I tell you they served up an open bottle of what we imagined.

That’s how I remember it anyway.

I spent two or three hundred dollars that day. Rick and Justin are salesmen but they didn’t care what we were spending. Two well informed amateurs walked into their lair and they took us to school while the sun beamed in the western facing windows. I figure we drank somewhere close to what I spent and we walked with a case of excellent hooch. It was the best afternoon of juice I’d ever experienced and it wasn’t our first rodeo.

Go to groezingers.com. Read the newsletters. These guys are fomenting a culture. 800-356-3970. Call, ask for
Rick, tell him brainspank sent you. Tell him what you have to spend and ask him to mix a case for you. Tell your friends.

Drinks for my friends.

I hate reality television but I love a trainwreck. Donald Trump is a douchebag. He doesn’t even drink. I’m a little intrigued by Dice Clay, Rodman and Tom Green. I couldn’t possibly care any less about Joan Rivers or the other women.

Joan does look like a particularly bad movie vampire/transexual. A caricature inspired by less than elegant impressionism. I look at her and wish my penis was detachable. The bitch is scary ugly.

I hate it already. It’s insipid. I made it to the first commercial break. Thus far the only redeeming aspect of the entire egregiously contrived clusterfuck is that it will benefit various charities.

An adversarial demarcation is drawn between chicks and dudes. I’m confident it would have been more compelling to mix gender. I’ve made it to the second commercial break. The teams have been charged with the task of making and selling cupcakes. How inspired.

The drama ensues. It’s riveting. I wonder what I may be missing on another channel. I think about my toenails and how they’re getting a little long.

The tension and suspense is so thick I begin to wonder if the sushi joint across the street is still open. If not, the little Mexican place probably is. Can’t get a beer at the Mexican place though. Then I understand I’m not hungry.

I decide to smoke a bowl. I learn Dice is a blowhard and Rodman is a moron. Enlightenment.

I think about calling my mom but I just talked to her yesterday.

Chicks win, dudes lose. Dice gets fired. I will admit the end sucked me in a little. Now I feel dirty.

My mom and I are pretty close. I admire her. Both my parents have a work ethic I’ve rarely ever even glimpsed in another adult. Both in their seventies, open minded, generous and compassionate. It’s not like I grew up Brady but I consider myself pretty lucky. Good people, excellent parents full of love.

So I turned 44 a few weeks ago. Over Christmas when the prodigal son was home, the subject of my birthday did surface. My mother comes from a family of eleven siblings. My father from four but he left home when he was twelve. Birthdays were never a big deal in my family. Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter were Mardi Gras by contrast.

Sometimes I wake up on my birthday and don’t realize what day it is until half way through. I usually get a card from my folks with a few passages underlined, a sincere handwritten note from my mother reaffirming my parent’s love and a check enough for a decent bottle of hooch. When I was a kid I got a good book or two, H. G. Wells or Jack London and a cake. My sister calls early and leaves a voice-mail singing an off key happy birthday.

Anyway, like I said, it came up over the holidays. I told my mother, in all seriousness, what I wanted for my birthday, was an autographed copy of Harry Reid’s book “The Good Fight”. My mother and Harry are old friends. She worked for him back in the day when he was an Assemblyman in the Nevada State Legislature. He went on to be Lieutenant Governor of Nevada under Governor Mike O’Callaghan. O’Callaghan’s daughter babysat my sister and I for a time. He, the Governor, actually had a wooden leg.

She smiled and said she’d see what she could do. I knew she had taken me seriously.

Harry’s was the very first political campaign I worked in when he ran for United States Senator of Nevada.

He lost to Paul Laxalt by barely six hundred votes.

Harry Reid is now the Senate Majority Leader. One of the most powerful men in Washington. Laxalt, a Reagan crony, took the dirt nap some time ago. Harry’s from a little town called Searchlight. He used to box. He’s a Mormon.

My mother has since retired from politics but she still dabbles. The Nevada State Legislature still has bi-annual sessions. Mom took a job this year at the front desk for the Assembly side. She loves it. She is seventy three years old, she knows these people and she is so happy to be involved. She works hard and is beyond dedicated.

She’s been the administrative assistant to the Governor and headed up the economic development commission. She took me to DC when I was a freshman in highschool while she worked on a Bureau of Land Management issue of particular concern to western states; the ‘Sagebrush Rebellion’.

I had access to Nevada’s legislature as a boy. I was allowed to sit in the gallery when the Senate and Assembly were in session. All manner of bills and legislation were available to me. I had run of the library.

I eventually worked as a bill clerk before I left home to study.

I can’t get over how tickled my mom was when she told me about it all.

Harry was scheduled to speak a week or two ago. My mother sent a brief note through proper channels saying that we’d always been supportive (not entirely true), that I’d worked for him when I was eight years old and that I’d asked for an autographed copy of his book for my birthday.

On the day he was to deliver his address, a Sargeant at Arms mentioned to my mom that someone had been by her office asking for her. My mother is a busy woman even if she’s not. It fascinates me that she never stops. When she does, she wraps a sheet around her forearm and pulls it over her head like a bat. Three to five hours later, she’s done.

A little while later an aide of Harry’s appeared to tell her that the Senator would like to see her. She was escorted into a private room and they talked about personal matters for fifteen or twenty minutes. Just the two of them. Uninterrupted. They caught up. No politics, somewhat to my dismay, but he already had a copy of his book with an inscription and an autograph for me.

He called for a photographer.

Later, as he entered the legislative chamber, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries much like the President did last week, he bent and kissed my mother on the cheek on live television. When she told me the story she was just a schoolgirl.

Such is the magic of my mother. A sample of the blessing I enjoy from wonderful parents. To have played a part, to have been any kind of impetus at all in that day makes my heart sing.

Life is good.

Drinks for my friends.

Twain hated opera and loathed Wagner as do I. Ride of the Valkyries is kind of a shit piece if you ask me. Twain sought to disabuse the people of nonsense. He did so. Eloquently. Old school Hunter S. Thompson style. Magicians both.

Then there was Poe. Madness and genius. Same as H. P. Lovecraft. A volatile mix. Most likely killed while voting. Seriously.

Capote, Steinbeck and Fitzgerald. Vonnegut, Irving, Bradbury, Banks, Updike and Robbins. Faulkner was always a little too deliberately obscure and symbolic for me. I did record his cousin though, Jason Falkner. Nice guy. Extraordinarily talented. Among the handful of Hollywood musicians I had reason to believe were were aliens. Extraterrestrial. No way could he be from this planet.

Not many female writers come to mind. Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy was remarkable and Ann Rice was certainly firing on all pistons early on.

I have to wonder about the origin of genius. Can’t help it. I’ve certainly witnessed it. Right in front of me, mostly in recording studios and books. What impresses me is consistency. The good ones just keep doing it until their flame goes out. They produce art because they can’t help it. They are compelled. They simply must. Among all the things I don’t understand about brilliance, this is one thing I can relate to. It’s a compulsion. I can’t not. This I understand.

“Life is a comedy for those who think… and a tragedy for those who feel.” -Horace Walpole

We can’t all be geniuses. I’m sure the chances for divine inspiration are even more remote. Heh.

Two things I know. I’m no genius but I believe I can spot it. I’ve known a few geniuses I can’t like, I’d be just as happy to hit them in the face. Two more things: Despite years of service, my toilet plunger still wears it’s original price tag. Whomever is responsible for that adhesive might just be a genius. Life is huge. Um yeah, two things.

Let’s talk about the rest. A painting that hangs over the mantel. No matter how often I look, I still like. It’s why I hung it there. A melody, a solo or a bridge you can play over and over after years of playing it over and over. Movies and books. Al used to say there’s a fine line between clever and stupid. The line between crazy and brilliant is pretty thin as well.

I can’t remember breasts ever making a single sound. This, despite the time they spend in my mind.

Artistic geniuses always bring you to a profound place. Good or bad. They remind you while they move you. It’s that ability that is the hallmark. The ugly people know who they are. There’s a possibility it’s the rest of us that are out of are minds. I’m thinking it’s quite likely.

Perhaps the artists are sane.

I wondered about the creative process and thought about how I’ve often been able to see what I’m doing before I’m done. So I called two of my best artist friends to get their take on it. What they told me was consistent with what I already know. I can see it but not completely. I don’t see it finished. Sometimes I think I do but I’m lying. Often it changes almost completely. There were times though, that I saw it almost completely. Those occasions were really cool.

Dennys gave away free breakfasts yesterday. Had to be there by two. Missed it. Hmmm.

Kobe scored sixty one points the other night. Another art.

This guy Chris Hataway called me a little while ago. He’s a genius. One of the two I polled for this piece. He called to wish me a happy birthday. He missed it by three days but at least he was early. I was happy to talk to him. I bet he still hasn’t read my book. Prick.

The Fish did me a solid today. Thank you. Friend.

Drinks for my friends.

There is mad potential to read any given face. Much to be learned by countenance and demeanor. The younger you are, the fewer arrows in your quiver, fewer bullets spent, less likely you have any idea who you are. Less to know from your face.

The older the face, the more there is to see.

Beyond all that, I’m confident the human face is relatable, despite the plethora of bias and prejudice we are consistently shithammered with by institutions of religion, politics, racism, bigotry and media. An elaborate but clumsily orchestrated indoctrination that is visible on all our faces by the time we reach forty years of age. Not just America. Any “civilized” country in the world.

That sort of assault leaves scars.

Yup. Always.

There are times I’m able to see behind people’s eyes. I always look to an eye when I’m talking with someone. The trick is to pick one and focus on it. Otherwise, the other person sees you searching back and forth and that’s never going to work in your favor. It’s also your best shot at catching a glimpse.

I was downtown in the jewelry district today, trying to seal a deal for a fellow agent. I brought papers for a man to sign and he kept lowering his eyes, almost intently staring at my throat or chest when he spoke.

Disconcerting.

I began to understand the deal was unlikely to get done this day. He had legitimate points and concerns and I was unfamiliar with the history and specifics. His reluctance to look me in the eye, particularly as he spoke to me, allowed me to see this. I’m not one to aggressively negotiate when I don’t have all the facts ma’am. I might do more harm than good.

I couldn’t help but wonder what I was doing there.

I fell back to friendly and conciliatory. Assuring and soothing. I made sure he knew his agent would eliminate all wrinkles before moving forward and left the paperwork with him after seeing he had a fax machine.

I talked peripherally. Since Christmas I’ve been carrying appraisal and gem certification documents for an engagement ring I bought in my man purse. I asked his opinion on this ring I bought some seven years ago. He was happy to help. He began to look me in the eye.

He showed me actual wholesale price sheets detailing current rates for a stone similiar in color and clarity to mine broken down by carat weight. He confessed there were newer price sheets, his were well worn. It may be worth more. We parted friends and he gave me his card letting me know he’d be happy to introduce me to the right person were I to decide to sell the stone. He shook my hand and patted me on the back as I left.

I’d done my best. I went in search of a greasy hot dog to tick up my countdown to angioplasty, preferably from a street vendor. Grilled onions, mustard and some lemonade. Looking for the real deal and I found it. Three or four blocks down Broadway under a red and blue umberella. Plenty of napkins. I ate it on a bus bench. Stayed and had a smoke after, while I watched the people.

The afternoon shadows imposed by towering spires were epic. A static parade and a moveable feast.

What I saw in their faces was astonishing. Not so much pain as indifference. Hopelessness and resignation. Not like a mall, where there is empty optimism. The malls here are ghost towns these days anyway. No trouble finding parking.

Far more organic with a much stronger pulse. What they wore in their eyes and on the fronts of their heads was far more visceral and genuine than what’s available in a mall. Nothing to hide. A matter of least concern.

Desperation was a step these people had already moved well beyond. They live and that’s all. One day, one hour at a time.

It hit me that I was simultaneously in love and in hate with the world. No ephinany, just realization. Neither good nor bad. Reality. My reality. Everyone has their own.

I loathe boxing movies. No suspension of disbelief. I like submarine movies.

Drinks for my friends.

She was an ugly woman. Homely. A tremendous lantern jaw with a prominent cleft in a hemispherical swell at the tip of her chin. Any attempts to restrain the growth of the spindly but wiry black stalks and the requisite follicles of her upper lip and below her ears, was futile.

Discolored craters in her cheeks partially filled by a face paste not nearly up to the job. She was more than uncomely.

Her legs, given the task of supporting her all but shapeless largesse, appeared impossible. Unlikely to support her bulk for an entire day’s activities. Like the stems on a giant piano that would no doubt fail to afford any ambulatory activity. Her ankles gave me specific pause. They appeared to be seconds from snapping despite being stationary.

She wore copious perfume, acrid and never adequate in masking the natural funk of her secretions. No matter the garish garment she wore, her back and under arms seeped stains and were an obvious source of her elaborate pungence.

She spoke loud, with shrieking enthusiasm. She shouted “gotdamn” because she was God fearing. Normal to her in her head. A menthol fueled guttural cough and a viscous chuckle.

Her teeth were grey, gapped and stained by cheap lipstick, coffee and cigarrettes.

She sold Avon. She was from Oklahoma. Her husband’s name was Melvin. He looked like a Melvin. He possessed a grotesque tongue. It was always on display when licking his thumbs to count money or shuffle and deal cards. An organ that escaped his maw to reveal scarring and sickly violet color. He eventually elevated himself to City Supervisor. An elected post. They lived in a trailer about a mile away off a dirt road.

She was an awful cook. Her yams were stringy and her turkey was always dry. Lumpy mashed potatos and gravy without flavor.

She was the sweetest woman you could possibly imagine. Her name was Arlene. They were hicks. Oakies. But very good people. She loved me because she loved my parents. Always very good to me. She had love in her heart.

Two daughters and a son. Mike, Barbara and Mary Jo.

I remember Mike losing part of his heel to a motorcycle. He later spent a stretch in jail. Mary Jo took it upon herself to become popular. She was a cheerleader. Possible in my hick town despite one’s lineage.

Barbara often babysat me along with her mother. Barb was smart and saw something in me I think. She read to me in Spanish and from the bible for the beauty of the language.

I always recieved Christmas presents from them but for a few years there were presents from the family and an exclusive present from Barb. Arlene was generous with Avon products intended for young men. Barb bought me board games and things she imagined would stimulate or encourage me.

I learned on my last trip home for Christmas that Barb had passed. She had abundant red hair and wisdom and humor beyond anyone in her clan. Welcome to haunt me. To be a ghost in my slumber should she choose. I always felt like we never finished.

Sometimes life is a well maintained pinball machine. Other times it’s a ball peen hammer on the glass. There’s always blood.

Drinks for my friends.

Studio City. Never seen a hooker walking the street in The Valley. Goes without saying I’ve never seen a transgender hooker in The Valley.

Suddenly, there was one in the 7-11 two nights ago buying condoms. They always have the most impossible faces. Distended in the strangest directions. Cheek implants and lips like sausages. Eyebrows drawn on over bald, or plucked into a clown arch. Femininity exaggerated into the realm of caricature.

This one was black and had the longest face I’d ever seen. Her chin was enormous yet came to a point. First glimpse was confusing but not unpleasant. The second glimpse bought me a little more than confusion. You just never see trannies in The Valley. She ambled out expertly in five inch stilletos and climbed into the passenger side of a Mercedes SUV parked just around the corner. She was soiled. Dirty. She was doing her best but she looked like she’d been sleeping outside. As neat as she could manage, but not clean under the Kelvin temperature of a convenience store glare.

Tonight I’m coming around the corner and there are four of them, including the one from two nights ago.

My first thought is they’re like animals driven from the forest of Hollywood, much less to be had there these days. Like wolves or raccoons searching for sustenance. It’s a sad thought.

None of this really bothers me. It’s more color in my life. Entertaining. I lived in Hollywood for over a decade and transexual prostitutes were just a part of the scenery. The Fish and I had a game called “Spot The Dude”, upon catching sight of one dude looks like lady, one simply uttered that phrase and it was up to the other to clock the shemale in question. The grocery store, Rock and Roll Denny’s (RIP) or the mall. Good times.

I’ve always had what can best described as a morbid fascination for personal ads. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I discovered the LA Weekly, a full bowl of personal ads. Didn’t take long for me to notice the hooker paper, “The LA Express”. It was full of personal ads with a special section in the middle for hookers and trannies in full color.

I swear I’m going to wrap presents in it someday. It’s awesome. The shemales can’t seem to spell the word ‘functional’ and the publication doesn’t give a mad fuck. The straight ones not any better. Babey, breats, mines…………. I leave it on the back of the toilet because there’s spectacularly bad articles too.

They’re enigmatic to me. Chicks with dicks. I’m not sure why. I want to talk to them but I have no idea what to say. What is their ideal? Where exactly do they expect to land? I want to tell them that as a kid growing up in a small town, I never would have imagined they existed. I also want to tell them that sometimes they try too hard. Tell them that they end up looking like 80’s vampires or aliens. Can’t they see that? Do their customers like that?

Halloween everyday.

What’s the deal? Do you want to look like that or do you have to?

I’ve seen some pretty ones but they aren’t nearly as interesting. The pretty ones are always clean. I can’t discount the idea that females are born in a male body

To this day I still peruse the personals on craigslist. I can’t help it. “I’m a intelegent women”. Sheezus. I love it.

Seems to me that those ‘Lunchable’ jobbers from Oscar Mayer used to come with some lube.
Honey mustard or some goddamn thing.

Drinks for my friends.

We made this record once. Turns out it was brilliant.

Lush and complex, with balanced flavors of spice and chocolate milk. Nestle’s Quick. Cinnamon pastries, wasabi, soy and ginger. Kung Pao and various sauces including Hollandaise, port reductions, gravy and marinara.

Flowers and rainy wind. Lazy motes in a sunny meadow.

Nevermind the textures and colors.

Nearly a decade went by, I never listened to it. I didn’t care about it. Dug it out one night to impress a girl because the acoustic tracks were pretty and I could tell by her eyes she would like them.

It’s one of the very best things I ever had anything to do with.

I barely remember making it.

Alex.

It was Alex, that little fucker made sure it was a great big lovely record. His feather gathered mass over my anvil. He knew exactly what he was doing. He walked me through it, using my anvil when he needed it. You can hear where he did it. He used a bullhorn to demand my anvil. Emasculating. I was a monkey with a hardon for a beach ball and he saw it. He began by showing me pictures of the ball. He continued with elaborate puppet theater. Towards the end, hypnotisim.

In no time at all, I was a sideshow.

The production is extraordinary and it really is there the soul of Alex.

I was lucky.

His creative musical genius for arrangement and nuance amazes me. Born on the same day, we were otherwise polar opposites he and I. He was the architect, I was the general contractor and the subcontractors were all spectacular lunatics. You can almost never go wrong when pairing eggs with cheese and champagne with fruit. Champagne with eggs, cheese and fruit.

I like brunch.

There was Betsy, leader of the lunatics, exceptionally bright, extraordinarily talented and somehow, we’d earned her trust. She sang celestial and played with terrible conviction. She composed like a vulnerable wraith.

Betsy gathered quite the formidable parade of shiny muses. Calliope and Euterpe. Melpomene to Thalia. We had a blast. I don’t know how I wasn’t in love with what we’d done or her. I remember working at a pretty grueling pace and sometimes being confused by exactly what overdub we were in the middle of.

But that shit was normal.

Michael Whitaker too. He’s all over this thing. Crazy bastard. Feedback Monarchy. Mellotron mendacity. The personalities in that tiny control room left a pastel vapor trail that would show up like smoke under certain sensors to this day.

Actually, we only did the first nine of sixteen songs on the record. Michael P. Tak of Carnival Art fame recorded the rest at his home studio, “Sweaty Elvis”. Those songs were mixed at Triad in Seattle.

Our assistants were Bamford, Srebalus and Sperger. Bamford ended up playing bass on the song True Fluid and he fucking nailed it. He engineered a Weezer record a few years back. Srebalus has produced a documentary film. Sperger is a bathroom attendant in a Vegas titty bar.

Somehow, I didn’t really get it by the time we were finished. I was still upside down.

Al often shined (sic), but never more consistently, never so inspired, as on this record.

He had fun. There was a point where I surrendured the entire thing to him. Maybe it was early in the mixes, but I think it was well before that. He knew exactly what we were all doing. I did the best I could to be a shit hot engineer.

We ended up bringing in an auxilliary console for some of the mixes. Eight channel Neve broadcast consoles on wheels we called “Sidecars” for submixing etc. A ton of experimenting and ludicrous methodology. Backwards tape and lotsa flangers. Those days, A&M studios was a mall for gear sluts. We were prostitutes just inside the mall’s main entrance.

We earned a decent living and never wanted for gear.

Betsy slept in the live room. Not because she had no place to go. She was owning it.

She gave me a first edition Steinbeck, “Tortilla Flat” with the sweetest most honest letter I’ve ever recieved folded in it’s pages.

She was effusive with fruit. Ask me about it sometime.
She brought in a machine to make us lattes.

“incidents and accidents…….hints and allegations…..”

I’ve spoken to her a few times in the last few years but I’ve been a little self involved and have no idea how to reach her now. She has no idea of my sheer joy with this record. I started to tell Alex but I need to finish. This piece will help.

The bottom line is this. If you don’t like this record, the fault lies with Alex as he took it upon himself to rest his nutsack on my left cheek and all the while I allowed it. He was driving. I rarely remember taking the wheel.

It get’s worse. He then took the best I could possibly do and directed it towards his own vision. He used me. A kind but insidious man.

His hands were always much larger than his feet when it came to mixing. He’d have this schedule of mutes and fader moves we had to perform perfectly before we could go home. Just about every record we did was manually mixed. I was there to make things girthy and/or pretty. Once I did that I was thinking about whiskey and noodles in that order.

Al was way more musical. He was the doctor and I was the monster.

I liked making cymbals sound like silver air. Drums like mountains. Guitars like giant vibrating walls of electricity and dirty oil. Bass guitars taste like chunky peanut butter on mayonnaise covered popcorn with a side of maple syrup. Brass, woodwinds, strings, harmonicas, concertinas, banjos, percussion, all tasting like cheese from mild to sharp or fruit from sweet to sour. Sourdough toast with butter and orange marmalade. Best job ever. Except it never leaves you.

Do it right and you end up with a very drinkable wine.

You can take words but never even attempt to borrow a concept.

Drinks for my friends.

The most elaborate and imposing apparatus ever constructed to paint a room.

Lit like a boxing match.

See it from a mile.

A ridiculously grandiose set of circumstances.

The wall of one room removed for a live cutaway. My house. Where I grew up. Tree in the front yard. Moon in the backyard. Pancackes, pot roasts, dead cats, snow, rain, early mornings and late nights. Genuine random. One constant was the smell of my feet. Another was my drumkit. Comic books. Chewing tobacco and dark beer. My house dissected like science fair project. Absolutely impossible yet it all took place.

An enormous, convoluted steel and hydraulic apparatus for the painting of one small room. It stretches through back yards and occupies most of the block well before it begins to even labor and pump. Thrust, grind and mash. Pulverize and obliterate. It’s huge, smoking and steaming and spewing.

Workers scurry, pound and shovel. They shout and signal among themselves. I’m wearing a hardhat. Eye suffocating goggles that relentlessly shift from yellow to green to blue. Some mask for breathing. Feels like I’m in deep sea gear.

Illuminated like the scaffolding at midnight on a twenty four hour casino job.

Sprawling and archaic. I explain the deed can be done easily with aerosol cans or a rented compressor. Rollers and pans, brushes and cans. So much easier than this. They won’t hear me. So much simpler.

I’m so angry I choke the ends of my sentences.

They don’t listen. Not as though they can’t. Much more like they won’t. It spooks me.

They keep building. Assembling with machines themselves the size of houses. Monstorous vats filled with molten metal and boiling concrete, bubbling like simmering sauce. Cauldrons baking the damp earth in my chilhood back yard.

Splattering sparks and startling discharges of air and steam. The periphery of my senses kept busy with all things making me flinch.

I’m trapped here and there, now and then, by the giant engines and the things they are building. Malicious, mindless. Climbing out while watching for sudden tons of movement or keeping distance from an industrial dragon gone senseless.

Madness and they won’t listen.

I make it to the bathroom in time to witness all water pissing on every book I’ve ever owned. Hundreds, maybe thousands. My bathroom. Familiar. No soap. No shower curtain. No valve for the water. Nothing to do. The water slows pissing and stars gushing. I haven’t stepped foot in that bathroom in almost twenty five years. It haunts me, that bathroom.

Dad is on the roof hammering so hard the noise is from a cartoon.

Construction continues so before I know it I stand in the middle of what appears as a refinery Sunlight from the west glances off it’s gleaming spires. My boots are dry but caked and heavy. Wild iron contrivances looming like Vegas billboards along the 15, the size of office building skeletons without yet any concrete or glass for skin.

Bristling with cranes and open elevators, lifts and chutes.

Equipment dangles and sways. Before I know it, everything commences to swing and twirl like carnival rides and it’s all I can do to keep from getting crushed by the whipping insect head of an oil pump or sliced to ribbons from braided steel blown and slashing by an impossible tempest.

It’s these machines I fear the most as no human sits atop them.

Death is everywhere until a young latin boy in a tailgated old Chevy shows up on a construction elevator with hot dogs, tacos and flan but no onions or clean napkins. I see the front of his facade is a regular food truck and we’re dealing out of the back. I speak spanish to him but he ignores my requests or acts as though he can’t understand me.

I know better than to ask for mayo.

Just then, one of our forklifts is completely obliterated by a heavy metal object orbiting with abandon from a crane broken loose for reasons I can’t grasp or even see. I watch it’s arc and hold my breath at it’s apogee until it comes all the way down. The violence of it is breathtaking. It obliterates the dense little appliance like a wrecking ball vs. an ice sculpture. The forklift explodes and I see a man’s head cave like an egg filled with berries and pale pudding.

It’s chaos and massive amounts of burning steel lands like munition everywhere but where I stand. Destruction so sudden and extreme I can’t run.

The smell is is metal and fuel exhaust, fossil lubricants and the grit that finds it’s way into your lungs and under your nails. And burning. Burning. Tar. Constant fire.

The irony is not lost on me as it’s all for a very small thing. A task for two humans for an afternoon, maybe two.

At this point, I begin to wonder why my mind is playing me this movie. It’s not the first time it’s done this sort of thing. It’s crazy, my mind. It does this sort of thing. It plays me really weird movies.

It’s not who you are but where you are. Waitaminute. Not where you are but who you are. Something like that.

Who wants to go sledding?

Drinks for my friends.

I’m gonna tell you something and I’m not sure why.

I’m not religious at all. I have nothing but disdain and disgust for any organized religion. It’s a joke. All of it, Santa in the sky with diamonds for adults just about anywhere. People really should know better. That’s not a picture of God in that book, on that candle or in that fresco.

What it is, is mankind’s single most pervasive and insidious problem.

The concept of sin is a different matter. It’s not as simple as not believing in or caring about your God.

I’m well acquainted with sin. I do my best but I falter. Yesterday, a lifelong friend; one who has stuck by me and never let me down. I let him down. I disregarded him, his loyalty and his concern merely because I was able to solve my problem without him. Stupid and thoughtless. Nevermind the anger, the pain in his voice was humiliating. I know sin.

He knows I’m sorry but it’s not enough right now and I understand.

A good man with shoeboxes of integrity in his closets. I took him for granted. Huge stupid thing to do.

I’ll make it right. I have to. Not just because I depend on this man, but because he deserves it. I can explain some of it so it’s not the worse thing he was thinking, but it is ultimately my thoughtless mistake. Not entirely thoughtless because I was thinking of only myself.

Among the worst sins, are self involvement.

Sin.

I’m disappointed in me and so is he. Sometimes close friends are a mirror, actually, most of the time they are. They allow you to see yourself and hopefully you’re able to return the favor. If each of you are so lucky, you don’t always like what you see. That’s the gift and the tragedy of letting someone inside. No free lunch, but when it’s just a cheeseburger, sometimes it tastes like a juicy pork chop wrapped in bacon with shrimp and a nice zinfandel.

I’m not gonna dwell on it but I got hit in the face with a serious lesson yesterday and I totally had it coming.

Sometimes, I’m still a dick. It happens less these days but seems to matter way more everytime.

It’s of the utmost importance to figure out who you are. You will struggle with it constantly and you may never figure it out completely, but you really must keep trying. Sooner or later one must own one’s self. You cannot even begin to estimate another until you begin to understand yourself. Do the math.

The ego is a curious thing. The id is a walk in the park. Not really, but my best advice is to get a grip on the id. Duh. Grab it by it’s skinny goddamn neck and wail away. I did. I didn’t kill it, I established dominance. I’m better for it.

No matter how old you get, there’s still growing up to do

It’s allright, but I still do things I shouldn’t. I try not to tell anybody.

People are people wherever you go.

Drinks for my friends.

It’s actually the space between.

I’m going home and I can’t wait.

I’ll bring etchings and wine.

I hear I look like Toby Keith, despite his being a douchbag and all. Huge dipshit.

Whatever.

I need to tell you that I just don’t understand the contemporary image or model of the overly skinny, oftentimes emaciated woman proliferating the visual media. They always look a little skanky to me. I just don’t get the little boy look. Give me hips and ass at least. They always have raccoon eyes and fragile ankles. No hips.

Moving right along.

Yes, I am afraid to die. I’m not done yet. What sane human under seventy five isn’t afraid to die? Show me one that isn’t afraid and I’ll show you one that’s out of his tree.

I once knew a bartender named Diane. She had gorgeous tattoos of dolphins on her arms. A yellowing front tooth in the very front of her head. Rosewater perfume, giant blues eyes and the reddest lips I’ve ever seen. Porcelain skin. One of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.

We were friends for years. Went on a date. To a movie. Naked Lunch. William S. Burroughs. I moved to kiss her that night and she asked me not to embarrass us both. Damn. I don’t believe I’ve ever been so humiliated. She crushed me. Bittersweet. We somehow grew closer. I became a protector. A role I couldn’t stand but it was the only part in the play.

The Whitehorse on Western just north of the boulevard Sunset. It fell to the ground in the ’94 Northridge quake. Thank Zues.

The first bar in the world to put my etchings on the jukebox. I drank whiskey and beer in those days. Jim Beam and Budweiser. Cognac if the overtime was good. Cockroaches and all. It was a flawless shithole.

The Powerhouse. Highland and Hollywood. Lost my wallet there more than once. I actually had sex on that bar. I’ve since stopped carrying a wallet. The second place to put my records on the juke. Everything I did for awhile. Down By Law to Everclear. I played drums there one night for a band that was without a drummer. I think I did ok. By then I’d switched to gin. We played Wild Thing and Iron Man. I kinda did a solo through the breaks. Only way I knew to keep time.

They locked the doors just before two and let their favorite people keep drinking. I was always one of them.

Not long after, I split the atom. People were impressed. There were parades. I was given a space suit eventhough I had no use for one. Candles and food on my doorstep. Women swooning. Short, overly tanned men tried to lease me cars, suits and jewelry. I eliminated most of them in elevators. These dickheads were orange.

What would you have done?

I had to kill almost all of them. Stabbed them in the neck with a pen or a letter opener. Stupid wide lapels and a too quick familiarity. Ridiculous tans in camel colored suits with absurd ties. Idiots. They thought the neutral colors excused the circus ties. I killed every one of them. Thought they could fool Mother Nature. Oh my.

When you scoop from a jar for your toast, careful and mind what your knife brings to light.

Might be fresh berries, could be caviar, maybe mold, turds and wax.

Hey Jody, sorry about that.

Drinks for my friends.

I suspect we’d all be a lot happier if they could.

Oh, I don’t know. Merry Xmas. Yeah, Xmas.

I hate it when people don’t understand me. It’s worse when they think they understand me. Christmas. Man, whatever. My ass is broke and even the idea of it is daunting and depressing.

I’m anxious for family and friends. I just talked to my Mom. I needed for her to remind me what Cristmas is about for us, for our family. I needed to hear her say it. It worked. It helped. I’ll book a flight tomorrow.

Why do I still dream of going over a cliff in a motorhome? Giant waves and sinking ships? We debate until the end. Conflict is thick and before you know it, all is lost. Family and friends and me over a thousand foot drop. The bottom rushes at me. I lay in bed an extra half hour for that shit movie. Perverse nightmare lunacy. Why?

I’m a mess. This is a mess. I’m flirting with the wind and the very edge. Closest I’ve ever been. The gusts dictate my balance. We all fall down. That’s why. That’s the rumpus.

Broke for Christmas. Fucking awful. I have a reputation for generosity. I will bring wine and my etchings. That will be enough. Mom said so.

I just want to see and touch them all. My family, my friends.

My definition of crazy: Not Boring.

My definition of insanity: Sometimes blue is purple…………look at that truck.

Celery and grapefruit. Red cherries on green slices of melon.

Dive in headfirst and get water all up in your face. Like snorting horseradish.

Then there’s the ghosts. They move everywhere and beneath everything. They are on your side and then not. No way to schmooze them. They don’t care at all.

Drinks for my friends.

Man I’m in a ditch. Can’t seem to get out of the lower gears. Like a dream where I can’t sprint. Things taste funny and I barely clean up after myself. If only I could postpone Christmas. It rushes at me like a sheet of plywood caught and flung by a desert gust.

I think I should be some kind of Special Agent. I’d be very cool.

I’d still like to live in the forties. When you slammed the phone down in those days, everyone knew it.

I admit, I’m scared of chicks.

America is the only state to ever utilize nuclear technology as a weapon against another state.

The world was far more young then. Humankind had no paradigm available for such technology and it’s use.

We still don’t.

There’s been some championing of nuclear as energy of late. Help me out here. Have we come up with a way to deal with the waste that I don’t know about? I’m guessing we haven’t or I’d know about it. Understand that nuclear power is about as dumb an idea as can be without an efficacious methodology for dealing with the byproduct. The waste. The toxic fucking waste with a half life that lasts thousands of years.

Clean coal. Two words. No evidence.

If you wanna talk to me about this kinda crap, be prepared to blow me.

Moving right along. McCain can’t bring himself to vouch for Palin. Not because she’s stupid but because they both are.

Gas broke it’s eighty six day drop today.

Gun sales are all we can hope for.

Looks like meat’s back on the menu.

What exactly are we up to?

She said “Hang the rich.” -Robbie Robertson

Yeah, oh well.

Drinks for my friends.

Bear with me. Take your time. I had a lot to say.

Little explosions of pork fat in a heavy iron skillet. The fire is hot and I’m not sure, so I pull it off. Good move. The bacon just overdone but still sweaty and fatty. No aroma like that of fresh thick bacon. Most folks like it cooked this way. I use tongs to put it on a plate.

Motes bob and dance in rays of sun, a subject of birdsong, butterflies and dragonflies.

Man has almost complete authority over his own clock. Animals, from rodents to whales, have the sun.

I drop a fistfull of white raisins. Some diced yellow onions and a little butter into the cast iron.

Next up is to smack some eggs in the fat and put the skillet back on the crackling morning combustion. Beneath a canopy of primeval. This part’s easy. They cook like that, the eggs. Smacking and spattering. Hope ya like yours yellow loose. Quick and hot. Soft in the middle with brown bubbles at the edges. They’re done. Sea salt? Tapatio?

Someone else is doing coffee. I smell it. Raw like tilled earth. Berries.

Potatos cook the longest, garlic and rosemary. Moist in the center, otherwise crispy and taut. Steaming. Glistening with butter and oil. Fresh ground pepper. With potatos, I don’t play games I can’t win. The best way I’ve found.

Everyone stares up and around. Nobody looks at their food while they shovel it at their mouths. The savour does not compete with the vista, it compliments it, the ambiance of a deciduous forest in the chill of a late summer morning.

Have some champagne.

Next up, pine trees and a good classic novel. Some Fitzgerald or maybe Jack London. Twain. Capote. Then a nice clean spot to evacuate oneself and soap and water and towels after and what not.

I bring my own ointments and salves.

Maybe an afternoon walk.

I never would have made it as some pioneer or frontiersman. Maybe if I was some version of royalty. Afforded a certain amount of privilege and staff.

I just want to live in San Francisco.

Gin and chocolate.

I believe in mankind’s right to self medicate.

There is simply no reason in a country as wealthy as ours that people should go hungry, without health care or as much education as anyone can tolerate. I can’t stand it.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and proclaim that a little socialism might not be bad for us. Not just to give the folks who fall through the cracks a leg up, but to headbutt the absurdly wealthy who have enjoyed political, social and economic advantage by virtue of obscene largess for so long, the phenomena has manifested a momentum of it’s own now centuries old.

It may also serve to highlight the perverted version of Capitalism and Democracy we have chosen to embrace. We are in a place where our adherence to and practice of “free market capitalism”, as is the contemporary model, isn’t merely foolish, it is reckless, dangerous and unconscionable.

Fear and spying, rendering and detaining, holding people indefinitely without charging them………what does that look like to you? An economy hit by a wave any fool saw coming, so strong as to temporarily capsize us despite our size, displacement and power? More waves on the way.

Rotting infrastructure and an attitude of every man for himself on twenty million lips at least.

Hated so much a journalist throws shoes at Dumbya’s melon inside the Green Zone? More on that later.

We are stupid and greedy. Not necessarily in that order.

Fuck anything that moves.

Make these prick CEO’s live in a motel for a season. Three months. Twenty bucks a day per diem. Introduce them to the miracle of cheap chunky peanut butter and applesauce on the same spoon.

Ssshhhhhhhhh!!!

I covet and admire the idea of self determination. So far, the concept and my practice thereof has allowed me to reap almost exactly what I’ve sewn. Can’t ask for more than than that. What I’d like to see is that degree of parity afforded to not just every American regardless of race, color or creed, but every human.

We could render organized religion obsolete by achieving just that. Wouldn’t that be nice? I think so.

Replace an archaic institution that withholds (religion), with a concept, maybe a mandate, far more inclusive and progressive that holds as a fundamental ideal, prosperity of the earth and it’s inhabitants simultaneously. I’m a goddamn genius. Give me a can of beer and a Nobel, bitches.

Anyway.

I honestly believe that the defining moment of Dumbya’s reign occured on this very day, December Fourteen, the year of our Lord, 2008. I’m sure you’ve seen the footage by now. To his credit, our President did skillfully dodge two well launched shoes from not very far away. We learn that this is some major insult in that part of the world. To throw your shoes.

An Egyptian reporter with a pretty good arm fired said shoes at Dumbya’s head and screamed:
“This is a farewell … you dog!” “You killed the Iraqis!” -CNN

Ha! That’s goddamn golden. Forgive me, but if he’d taken one right in the fucking face? I would have called paramedics before screeching sobbing laughter could consume me. Go ahead, picture it. Me laughing ’til I puke or him taking one right in the kisser. Sheezus. That would have been gorgeous.

Picture it.

In any case, it was just so perfect. Vicariously cathartic. This really should be the swan song for the dumbest man to ever be President of America. We should remember him forever as the guy ducking shoes thrown hard by a journalist at a press conference in the “Green Zone”, the safest place in Iraq.

Bush Sr. had, “Read my lips…..”, Clinton had “I did not have sexual relations with that woman……”, Nixon had “I am not a crook”. Dumbya, among all the other ridiculous shit he’s said and done will nonetheless be remembered for his physical adroitness in ducking angry shoe leather in contrast to his profound lack of any kind of mental acuity in any shape or form.

He still doesn’t get that he’s an idiot.

Meet your legacy you stupid sonofabitch. Beet the Meatles.

I just want him to know what a complete loser he is. It’s not just angst. Hundreds of thousands died because no one in this man’s life had sense enough to teach him banjo and take him to the river everyday. They took him to school instead. Millions of Americans made the same mistake and now we’ll pay for it.

I went to hand her the remote. She said put it next to me dear, I’m scratching my butt right now. I looked and she was. So I did.

The Holidays. Weird. Didn’t have the Christmas I was used to last year. The old man was sick. Very. Spent my time at the hospital or sleeping because I’m a pussy and that’s what I do when I’m afraid. He’s so good now I want to punch him in the mouth.

To know my old man is to understand that he’s the shit. He’s only afraid of one thing. It has nothing to do with him. If you’re smart you’ll guess it.

My brother in law, Todd, a man I’ve known of since we were boys, lost his Mother just a few months before. Her name was Dixie and I really liked her. She was a writer. I see her face.

Here it is again. The Holidays. I’m expecting something different this year. It will be somewhere between now and then. Holidays are always a little step back in time. We may all have a similiar lense for this one. I hope so. I’m looking for the love and warmth of family unmitigated by illness and sadness. He is well now. I think it will be big and special.

My ass is broke so the only gift I have is my etchings.

Not being able to buy Christmas presents used to scare the crap out of me. It nightmared me. I was a fairly prodigious giver. I’ll bring really good wine.

Life is good.

Here’s the thing. A well worn theme for me, forgive me if I bore you. The difference between humans and animals is not the ability to reason. It’s not love or compassion. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to share your life with an animal you loved, you feel me. The difference isn’t even a sense of humor. Every cat I’ve ever shared a house with has been funny as fuck and tragic all at once.

The difference is art. Animals don’t make art for the sake of art. Humans do.

I sit telling you this, one of my cats is high up in a ficus tree I’ve had for twenty years that has been dead for at least a year. My other cat sits next to me on a dilapidated red velvet sofa staring at her. If only they could talk and I could understand them.

Happy Holidays.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve seen a spring.
I have.

We used to hike through the simmering sand and sagebrush to the closest mountain. Not far really, inside of a few miles. Other side of the airstrip. Hot and bright. Snakes in mind. Not much for a northern Nevada mountain. Maybe a thousand feet. Maybe.

Enough to pucker my starfish at ten years old.

The west face was closest, that was the side we climbed. A rockslide almost all the way up. Mostly volcanic I think. Pretty treacherous. The top was high enough to be cold with wind enough to make your jeans flap. It furnished an amazing view. Enough to put a choke in your neck when thinking about the same way down.

Scared the crap out of me.

The base of the mountain ended in a shallow canyon between it and a much smaller hill. Just behind the mouth of the canyon was a spring.

I clocked it’s greenery on the way up and wondered.

Very happy to be there after the way down.

Water pushing desert sand along with itself from a dark, half dollar sized hole at the bottom of a small pristine pool. This pool feeding a larger one under trees with cattails, reeds and grass growing lush. There were rabbits and birds and snakes.

Yellows, greens and blues with much sun and sky.

I had an epiphany that day. Frogs. The climb was the scariest thing I’d ever done. There was a gust of relief. Synapses lit up and dancing as I grasped the little oasis in a single swipe.

What I suddenly understood floored me.

We spent a little time. Maybe forty five minutes. Grateful to be there. I soaked it up. Moss, bees and dragonflies. Sunflowers and bubbling.

Was I a little late? I don’t know. Life’s complexity and requisite for balance began to reveal itself. An improbable ecosystem in an unlikely enviroment. Yet it thrived and sang. It vibrated and I knew why. I could see how and why it worked. It made sense to me. Scared me a little.

Pow.

I emptied a quart of sand from each shoe that day. That night I stared at the sky. I never stopped dreaming about that place one way or another. It allows me to contemplate the universe.

It frightens me now. It informs my nightmares. I’m sure it’s a scarier place today. Polluted.

The first time I remember my gaze landing on the big picture. The powerful gift of cognizance despite the self.

See what I’m saying?

Drinks for my friends.

“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee;
We don’t take our trips on LSD
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street;
We like livin’ right, and bein’ free.” -Merle Motherfuckin Haggard

I want to take The Swirly with me to Denny’s. There’s no way she’d be cool with it. Still, I wish I could.

All she’s gonna want is a small bowl of water with some tuna juice in it. She has never shown the remotest interest in anything besides IAMS and Fancy Feast.

Human food is barely on her radar. She no longer goes out of her way to even smell it.

If only she could accompany me so we could exchange glances and knowing looks while we people watch.

You can take dogs anywhere. They’re dogs. Dumb and overly optimistic. Most won’t bite. Far more likely they’ll try to nuzzle your genitals. I really hate that. Not so much for being violated but more for the dog snot on my hands after pushing it off my junk. No cat has ever done anything nearly as invasive. Except for peeing on me.

You just can’t take a cat to Denny’s.

If you bring your goddamn dog to whatever restaurant I’m in I might stab you with a pen. Maybe your dog. With a fork. Both of you. With a fork. Cat’s have enough sense to realize the craziness of any given human. Cat’s don’t give humans the benefit of the doubt. Cats are smart.

They don’t come running. Even if the only two faces to walk in your front door in like six months are the only two faces to walk in your door in that time, they still give you the up and down. I’ve had to let my oldest smell my drivers license. They let you know they’re happy you’re home at their own pace. Might not be until the next day.

I do wish I could just buckle a harness on Beddy and have her strut urgently to the 7-11 with me. Strutting urgently while looking back is her default. I hope she’ll talk to strangers as much as she talks to me. It would be fantastic if she would yell at others the way she yells at me when she’s cornered me in the kitchen. I’m there for a drink. She’s there for treats.

Did I tell you she’s got a real chip on her shoulder for the Latin homosexual and transgendered community? It’s pretty funny. I think it’s from me leaving the Hooker Paper on the bathroom floor.

Otherwise she’s a very classy broad. A lady.

Here’s what else:

1) I’d like to not ever have to scrub my shower. I’ve been kinda broke and decided to forego the magic defunkifying spray and it’s more than a little uh, calcified in there.

2) I need more info on these new LED lightbulbs.

3) I’m really tired of having things to do. I no longer want to have any scheduled activities. I’m exceptional at filling my waking hours with things that please me.

4) I’ve often thought that justice should be more poetic. Ironic. Limericky. There’s always a pay off in a limerick. What if a friend of Dick Cheney’s shot him in the face, and then Dick apologized publicly to his friend for the inconvenience his being shot in the face must have caused? You can see where I’m going with this.

5) I no longer wish to be burdened with the fear of cell phone radiation. I keep my shit far from my sack.

6) Here’s who I do not wish to hear on the radio ever again. Top of the list is the fucking Chili Peppers. I’ve come to hate them. The mechanicals alone pay them mad cash. “Highway Star” by Deep Purple. I hate that song. Any song by Cream. Clapton is way over rated. Oingo Boingo, I hate them. The Doors, fuck The Doors. I can’t really talk about contemporary music. I don’t dislike it, I just don’t know their names. We may have to come back to this.

7) I’d like for people who’ve never seen me before and never will again to stop acknowledging me. When I do that, it’s because I’m feeling confrontationally obnoxious. Why are they doing it?

8) Hot women should walk slower.

9) I’d like too see candy become a lot more nutritious and far less caloric. Science has proven that you can’t make food taste good without too much salt, sugar and fat so we really need to get going on this one.

10) Ok, this one’s big. No coincidence it ended up being number ten. Let me ask you something. Do you like this shit? You dear reader, do you like it? Are you entertained? Informed? Amused? Honestly.

If you are any of the above, and I sincerely hope you are, I’m asking for your support. Pimp me. Tell your friends. Post my banner on your page. I’m specifically encouraging pretty girls and hot bitches to post my banner.

Shut up. It makes sense.

Only you, can prevent forest fires.

The deal is this. The more readers I have, the better I look to advertisers and that’s easily the best way for you to get to continue to read me for free. See? It’s perfect. Symmetry. Help me out here.

11) Health and Human Services for us all. Happy Holidays.

Drinks for my friends.

What exactly is that? I’m thankful I’m not some random dumbass. Happy I’m cognizant and able to react and able to self determine to a degree.

Love in my life. Good family and good friends. Fuzzy loving critters. Animals are to your hands and heart what delicious pie is to your mouth and stomach. Try to have at least two wandering around at all times. Trust me.

A few days back my ex called me and asked if I wouldn’t mind not attending what has become the annual Thanksgiving dinner for the misfit toys. Those of us not from here and without geographically convenient family. A burgeoning tradition. She was bringing her boyfriend and was concerned about his comfort level.

In the interest of diplomacy and respect, I agreed not to show.

In the days since I gave her my word, I’ve begun to regret it.

These are my friends. Before they were her friends. The house at which the dinner takes place belongs to one of my very best friends of some two decades.

I smell chickenshit.

I’ve made other plans, I’ll be fine.

The more I think about it, the more it irks me.

She’s met my girlfriend. As a matter of fact, she met her for the first time at last year’s Thanksgiving dinner for the misfit toys. I realize I’m walking on ice here but I’m pissed off enough to flirt with indignant.

They’re about to move in together and he’s not comfortable enough to meet me with my friends and my girlfriend?

Then the very worst occurs to me. She’s embarrassed. Of me. Maybe it’s her and she doesn’t want him to know me because she’s ashamed. Maybe my friends agree. What an awful thought. Any part of that idea would crush me.

Sheezus, that’s ugly. I’d rather go with the idea of him being a gigantic vagina.

She could knock on the door of any member of my family on any day and be invited in, loved, engaged and fed under any circumstances. She could bring her man and not a single eyebrow would be raised.

My family adores her. Her family thinks very little of me.

This sucks. I’m pissed.

Thanksgiving day:

I had an extraordinarily pleasant evening in house full of people I’d never seen before. Nice, normal friendly folks. Excellent food and I brought excellent wine because that’s what I do. Wonderfully moist turkey, home made mac n’ cheese. String beans and red potatos with bacon, dressing with apple, pecans and onions. Serious cornbread prepared by an actual matriarch.

Lemon cake, peach cobbler, pumpkin pie cheesecake.

I’m not sure where we were but we drove around downtown. Way around. It stayed on my right. Downtown. We collected my girlfriend’s son in a place called Cerritos. One of the craziest houses I’ve ever been inside. Giant murky fishtanks everywhere. Wierd. Dark and bubbling.

He’s an awesome kid. At first he was detached and uncommunicative, but we were brawling openly by the time we got to where we were going.

I bought him a jar of ham glaze for his sixteenth birthday.

We stopped at a place called the Liquor Bank on Crenshaw for cigarettes. He and I sat in the car. He advised me to stay in the car despite my superpowers. This place was amazing. I need to go there again before I can tell you about it. She thinks as long as I’m cool, nobody would think twice.

Before it was over, he steadfastly refused to believe I could defeat a dragon with a fork. My point was show me a dragon and hand me a fork.

Warm people, good food. My girlfriend’s friend is awesome. A strong woman with one son in college and another bound for it.

We talked politics and we talked Barack. A well informed group of people. Skeptical and honest.

At the risk of sounding gratuitous, I was the only white man there.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve got to tell you how strange my life has become.

I don’t work anymore. Car and apartment dirty. Filthy. Full of unnecessary things, copious refuse and random detritus. Grime. Disgusting. Can’t bring myself to care. Keeping an eye out for bugs.

They knock at the door all day. They knock and check the knob. All goddamn day. They rattle it. In the afternoon, they pound. They hammer and that upsets me. It suprises me. I’m startled and so I have to clean up. Clean myself up. I shave and shower. Bag some trash.

Sometimes I dust and vacuum.

I leave my toilet a mess.

When I look through the hole it’s always at the instant they are turning away.

I hate them.

Short blonde women, tall dark men.

Short blond men. Tall dark women.

I get angry.

At night they wear hoodies up.

Many wear a blue apron but I can’t read the logo or the slogan. I think there’s a pig on it.

It’s a fisheye parallax view kinda thing. Can’t make it out.

I either make people like me or I don’t. It’s simple so I just do it. Whoever you are, I can make you like me.

What do you think of that? It’s totally true.

Really mad. I get super pissed.

I have a unique view from my balcony. I leased the place sight unseen. I saw that it had twenty five to thirty feet of uniterrupted tiled deck outside and signed the lease. I can see three stories up. It’s like a canyon. Everything reverberates. The click of my lighter. My foot steps even in slippers. At night sounds multiply.

From the balcony I see common areas, like where the elevator spills my neighbors. One of three jacuzzis. I got a letter on my door today about the jacuzzis telling me they were to be replastered this month. Great. Can’t wait.

Sometimes I see them from my balcony on the floors above me not really talking to each other. Their lips move. They touch a lot. It’s subtle. They never look at each other.

They always see me. Always. They look right fucking at me. They don’t exactly point with their fingers.

It begins. A clatter, some rustling and then some random knocks. After that, pounding, rapping and bell ringing. So loud! I get angry and charge the eyehole. Sometimes I yell at them as they turn away. Sometimes just one. Often groups. I feel better screaming at the groups.

I pound at my door as they scatter.

I never open it. That would be crazy.

Sometimes, I peer out the hole in the middle of the night and they go by in boats, the hallway a rushing river. Torches burning. Backs paddling away from me. Hoods up. The water is violent and green. My feet are wet and river water splashes the skin of my feet and ankles.

I dream of portals and portholes.

Morning, there is no evidence of a river, yet I wake with rashes on my feet.

They leave things at my door. Minature boxes of cereal, deflated balloons and wrinkled party favors. Glitter. Plastic champagne flutes. Soggy candy cigarettes. The hallway smells like leather and the sea.

Weeds and insects.

Everyone I encounter that day looks like they’ve been swimming. Dry skin, red eyes, wild hair.

Fucking grasshoppers careening, leaping abberantly in front of me wherever I walk.

People don’t know what I know. They can’t see what I see.

Every time I go to the 7-11 after sunset, one of the bastards opens the door for me. I recognize them all.

Crazy is everywhere you look. Color outside the lines. Be creative. Kill people.

This last one was old and chapped. His face was ruddy and he moved rheumatic. I usually try to give them something. Who knows what power they have. I hate when I’ve got no cash and say as much on the way in but they still ask again on the way out.

I’ve been avoiding it lately. Always bugs in the condiments at The Hot Dog Buffet. Only buy stuff that is prepackaged. Always bring home mayo packets.

They mingle by the elevators. They whisper. They always drop a few Crackerjack prizes when they gather. On the floor in the common areas. Little red striped envelopes with a semblance of a sailor in blue. Like where the mailboxes are. Sometimes I pick them up off my balcony. That spooks me. What bugs me most is when they’re beside my car. Sometimes all around my car.

Dozens. That spooks me.

There’s always a guy who’s balding wearing corduroy with bad teeth. Sometimes tall, sometimes not. An elegant redhead in black who maintains her youth by eating nothing but grains and raw vegetables. Children in costumes. An over perfumed elderly fat woman dressed immaculately. A guy I can only describe as Karl, The Mortition, and a handful of others. From the girl at the drycleaner to the hairy guy in a stupid shirt at the mall who kept walking in front of me.

I see the goats and hear the monkeys. I never see the monkeys and hear the goats. Never.

There’s a window outside of my apartment, in the hallway, that opens onto my balcony. That’s how they’re getting in. I close my shit up before I sleep no matter how hot it is.

A woman in the elevator the other night had what looked like a hamster cage. It looked heavy but she still held it high. Yellow plexiglass, the smell of woodchips and sour rodent turds. There were tiny frogs inside. They kept leaping against the sides, making me flinch. They slid down, leaving smears. It sounded awful. Smacks and whisper moist scrapes. She had a moustache. Sideburns. Her dress was a smock of burlap somewhere between lime green and pastel robins egg. It was morbid against her skin and the simian coating of black hair on her arms.

Burping amphibians with huge eyes. A woman named Halgromson, moles erupting with thick and ropy whiskers.

Sheezus!

Once in a while I smell crazy. Smells like dust. Smells like rocks and rotting flowers. Penetrates everything. Sweet but cloying and dense.

Smells like cabbage boiling with a fair amount of porkfat. Get used to it. Come to Daddy.

Drinks for my friends.

We would ride our bikes to school. Fifth and sixth grade. All the way across town.

The schoolbus was far more convenient, yet riding a bike to anywhere wasn’t far when I was thirteen. Time was a factor. It was fascinating. From east of town. From sand, weeds and sagebrush to old oaks, cottonwoods and pines of the west side. Six or seven miles apart. Always a headwind blowing from the west. Always. Everyday. Every goddamn day.

Like it blew to keep us away.

Gliding through office and government building parking lots I would later work in or have cause to enter. Jumping curbs and sending shopping carts careening down loading bays.

Eventually, we stopped going to school on the days we rode our bikes. We just explored. I learned the beginning of everything back then. Time no longer a factor. I began to spectate. I understood it was important to observe. Watch and learn.

Nothing too serious. A few days a month. Sometimes we took a cab. We earned money by visiting his mother at the grocery store. She gave us cold currency for the coupons we clipped. Completely illegal but she took it right out of the register. She was every bit as confused as we were. Not at all a good mother.

We’d walk away with twenty or thirty bucks a piece. Mad cash for a twelve year old in the 70’s.

I remember smoking pot for the first time with him and his mom. We watched Carrie and the first Rocky movie on cable. All of twelve years old and we were doing bong hits with his mom while mother and son passed a Benson & Hedges menthol back and forth. She was the first woman to cause me to notice misdemeanor eyebrow tweezing abuse.

Not a bad woman, just not equipped to deal with two teenagers on her own.

There was an older sister with huge boobs named Tammy. The third girl to live on our block by that name, my sister being the first. In the middle was a girl belonging to Tim and Mary but overseen by Fred and Mary. I actually kissed her once while she was in hypoglycemic fugue. The third, not the middle. We stole a bottle of Ten High whiskey out of a truck at the end of the block and she drank most of it. We all made out with her.

Then there was the stepfather, Bill. A large unpredictable man with a baby face and a history of being institutionalized. It was a four bedroom trailer and he had his own room. It was always locked. Cool Budweiser poster on the door.

I was smart enough to be wary of the man. I avoided him. I understand now he was bipolar. Effusive and friendly one moment, red faced and raging the next. He wasn’t always around. Sometimes he was in the “hospital”.

It being a trailer with weak internal doors, my friend and I soon figured out how to access Bill’s room. What we found was fascinating.

Guns and ammo. Lots of guns and lots of different kinds of bullets. Everything shining. Neat as a pin. Beer posters and porno mags. It was his paradise. He smoked a pipe and there was evidence everywhere. Cleaners and scrapers and multi-tool instruments that looked like nail clippers. All the attendant paraphernalia……

There was a twin bed and somehow his pillowcase was the same as mine. It was the exact same Star Wars pillowcase as on my bed.

I lifted bullets and powder from that room for my own experiments. I think he even had blasting caps. Drove a lime green faux wood panelled station wagon. It was the the impetus of my pyromaniacal season. It ended up being a long season. I wanted my own fort in the desert filled with porno mags and guns.

I ended up blowing a lot of shit up.

To this day he is one of the most dangerous and unbalanced men I’ve ever met. But a giant vagina nevertheless. I always knew that if things went south to black, I could call my old man at the other end of the same street. Realistically, there was six to eight inches between the two and probably sixty to eighty pounds.

Dad would have shown up in his workboots and his concrete caked hard hat, he never took it off until he showered before dinner. He would have kicked the big whiteboy’s ass or scared the living shit out of him. The next morning, well before the sun, he would have read the paper while smoking a cigarette on the toilet in our only bathroom. lit the furnace, and gone to work pouring concrete on some highrise in the dead of winter in the high desert.

I think it’s pretty obvious why I hung out there. The most interesting lives on my block.

We’d steal chewing tobacco and donuts from the blind man stands in the government buildings. A few times we found kitchens in office buildings and helped ourselves. I can only guess there were no security cameras in those days. I remember being fascinated and somewhat in awe of the amenities provided to office workers. Cool.

Somehow we avoided real trouble. I think because we became excellent thieves. We were shitty liars so we did our best to not end up having to lie. It was only when we had to lie that we got caught. We stole all the mail on our block once. I think we both ended up talking to Carson City’s finest on that one.

Somewhere in this time I had a bully. His name was Ron Dalton and I’m still confused as to how or why I let him push me around for as long as I did. Skinny little prick with a sour face straight out of a Beavis and Butthead episode.

I stood up to him one day and that was it. He was a giant vagina. It was that easy. I burned way more angst over it than I should have. I was a giant vagina too. I should have just beat his ass. Years later, his older brother pulled a knife on me and a friend we called Thos B. Right there in CC in the House of Ormsby.

Somehow it was a walk in the park to shut him down. He was at least as dumb as his brother. I actually got him out in the parking lot and got it away from him. We didn’t struggle, he gave it to me. Ask Thos B.

Anyway.

My friends place was filled with cheap paneling, avacado colored appliances, gold shag carpeting, bad linoleum, macrame, orange plastic ashtrays and knitted stuff.

Plenty of juice in the fridge and granola bars in the pantry. Far less supervision than my house.

If you lived in a Double Wide in that era, there were two huge windows at the front of your trailer facing the street. The windows were bisected by an architectural artifice intended to conceal where the two halves were joined. These windows were always so big as to bathe the forward most chambers with as much ambient light as could be.

When I was twelve, I put my hand through one of those windows and lost a chunk of flesh from my right wrist and muscle from my thumb. It all took place at my good friend’s trailer. He called the ambulance but sent them to my house. Told me he was looking to get in as little trouble as possible. This, despite the front of his trailer sporting the random graffiti of my sprayed blood.

We wrapped a roll of paper towels around my wrist and hand and pointed our bikes towards my place.

The ambulance ride was something.

There’s a lot more I want to tell you. Ketchup packets are an enviromental disaster but it’s the best ketchup there is. I’m now forty three. These events were thirty years ago. I imagine there’s plaque in my arteries and my teeth are gonna start falling out eventually.

I have no children and that’s ok because I never really grew up.

I entertained the notion but it’s just not for me.

I twisted and cheated but mostly in my younger years. I spent some formative years way off the map. I am flawed. I have regrets but I don’t lose sleep. I never really fucked anybody. Not nearly as hard as I’ve been, for what it’s worth.

I bought a house once. It was beautiful. Me and my fiancee lived in it for over two years. It makes me sad to think about it. The Bean died there. We painted and landscaped to make it our own. I still smart when I think of that cat and that life. I think her death was pregnant with things I could no longer avoid.

The whole thing certainly seems to have marked the end and the beginning of many things.

It’s always ending and beginning.

What to do with melancholy on any given day.

Sometimes I wish I could start over. I’ll bet that’s not uncommon.

Did I tell you about the five cars waiting for us at the county line and being issued foam slippers and an orange jump suit? Making the front page of my hometown paper?

Um, there’s plenty more. Lots more. Yep.

Life’s been good to me so far.

Drinks for my friends.

Nothing smells like a tire shop. I loved it. Always a chrome gumball machine. Newspapers, car magazines. Displays of motor oil, fascinating three dimensional cutaway presentations of tread and steel belts. All kinds of shit to look at and the coolest smell.

Kinda like the Barbershop behind Cactus Jack’s. It had it’s own vibe and there were comic books from Andy’s Smoke Shop around the corner on Main Street. A guy named Bob took care of me and the Old Man. Light blue smocks and the scent of Barbicide.

The tall jar of aquamarine disinfectant filled with combs is something that fascintes me to this day. I have an overwhelming compulsion to put red striped straws in with the combs.

Someday I’ll do that.

Dad always went first so I could get started reading a comic. I didn’t like getting my hair cut and I don’t know why. I’m not sure we’ve ever understood each other but he always understood what I needed.

The apparatus, gauges, hoses and tools at the tire shop set my imagination of fire. Pneumatic engines and hydraulic lifts leave a huge impression on a six year old. They lift the whole goddamn car! The sound and power of pneumatic wrenches. Every man’s hands were dirty but they were all friendly and smelled of hair tonic and aftershave. VO5, Tres Flores, Hi Karate, Brut, English Leather or Avon.

They all chewed gum. Some smoked cigarettes while chewing gum. They rarely removed the cigarette from their lips. They talked, smoked, chewed gum and worked on cars.

The Old Man was polite and talked to them with respect. They liked him. He liked them. They saw he was a man who made a living with his hands. Mutual all the way around. His Detroit muscle needed new rubber. Mercury Cyclone. Dirty snow steaming on the edges of the parking lot. Coffee in flimsy styrofoam.

I really like the sound of guns being cocked and loaded in the movies. Know what else? When the bartender in a movie slams the shot glass on the bar and fills it with whiskey. Great sound. There’s a reason musical instruments are made from wood.

I collect marbles. They fascinate me. I know the best glass blowers in America and I own their work. I keep them in large, shallow crystal bowls. The sound as I pick them up and put them back is sublime. I can barely stand it when somebody picks up a bowl and they roll in chaos against the side.

I have somewhere between two and three thousand comic books. I collected them from the age of eleven to sixteen or so. I read every single one. I haven’t looked at them since then. They’re in boxes in my closet.

Did you know that Ralph’s supermarket brand of SpaghettiOs is far superior to that of Franco-American? Not so sweet and much cheaper. Half the price. I bought five cans for five bucks not long ago. Off-brand Spaghettios should be a staple in any pantry. Cheap and nutritious. They’re best cold, straight out of the can. Trust me, I know. Use a soup spoon.

I’m really afraid of bees. Can’t help it. Took a barefoot walk through some clover when I was two. Don’t remember it but it’s a preternatural fear.

The last day before summer vacation in seventh grade was overcast. I don’t recall ever feeling lonelier.

I miss the eighties and the nineties. I’d go back.

I’ve done heroin. Twice. I smoked it and snorted it. I’d been around it enough, I was young. I was curious. I’d already done just about everything else.

The lead singer from a band named Dumpster indulged me. His girlfriend was a falling pornstar with the ugliest pussy I’d ever seen. She brought him his rig every night around seven. His name was Robert. She showed up with a black lacquered box that was somehow ceremonial. She was thin and white. Tall and sweet. Brunette.

One morning he was there before me, missing an eyebrow. He and told us an elaborate story about waking up and finding it intact on his pillow. Laid out perfectly, he told us with a sweep of his hand. An interesting and angry man. Compelling. He liked life.

We were happy to be there.

He told me about getting hit in the head with a full beer can from a speeding car while walking down a highway in the South. He said he thought he had it coming because he was just some punk.

His left front tooth was broken, he shaved his head and had brilliant blue eyes. He reminded me somehow of Anton LaVey. Very, very smart. Confrontational by nature, aggressive if you happened to be stupid.

He hid behind being a hick sometimes.

The drummer showed me some porn Robert’s girlfriend starred in. That’s how I know she had beef curtains like aging cold cuts.

I wondered how ugly a pussy could be and I found out.

One night she brings his rig and we’re finishing early. He’s ready to use the lounge to tie off, boil it in a spoon and slam it in his veins. He’s done his best to abstain during the daytime for the sake of performance. I respect this. He already understands I’m curious and we get along very well.

He starts by telling me he refuses to take responsibility for what will probably happen next. I tell him a big boy and not to worry. I can take care of myself and I own my actions. He prepares brown powder on aluminium foil for me. He hands me a glass tube and lights the foil from underneath with a Zippo.

I chase the dragon.

He goes to the lounge.

It is bliss. I walk the halls of the studio and eat an orange. I drop the peels on the floor. Everything I see is gorgeous. Each step starts like thunder at my toes and ends as pillows in my head. I drive my piece of shit Bug home and sleep like an infant.

I get home by feel. Instinct.

The next night he chops it for me. Razor blades not hard to come by in recording studios. It’s brown, like cinnamon and sugar. I snort it and so does he. He takes me for a walk. Sunset and La Brea. He takes time to point things out, people and situations. I’m higher this time. Everything is so much bigger. Lights and sounds and smells are grandiose.

Hoy’s Wok mixed with Burger King, Wendy’s, a 50’s Diner and a Mexican joint named Acapulco. A gas station, a couple dry cleaners and an El Pollo Loco.

So content. So happy. Inspired by the largesse of a warm and swarming evening.

I would be fine walking with this volatile bastard all night.

I consider pissing myself because it sounds like a pleasant idea in my head.

I understood then. I could never, ever do it again. It is the best drug I’ve ever tried. That was fifteen years ago.

Never did it again.

Another in a long series of brilliant bands that the record company either didn’t get or didn’t have the stones to sign.

See, when you work with a band in a recording studio, you can’t help but become a member of that band to one degree or another. Almost without exception, you become an advocate of their vision. When you make an actual record, if a bond somehow doesn’t form, something is wrong. It is by no means a normal enviroment. At least twelve hours a day, sometimes twenty four. An intensely creative and challenging atmosphere. Often a pressure cooker of conflict over vision, the big picture or the very small.

I was a producer/engineer. I came to know and understand people better in weeks than people who’d known them for years. In different ways for different reasons. The archetype of the dumb musician rarely applied. As a group, they are very bright and intellectually curious. Almost always more politically aware and better informed that the average shopper.

Robert was no exception. Axl Rose was, he was a complete moron. Tina Turner was pure class, elegance and talent. Mel Torme was as cool as a man that age can be. Bono and the band turned out to be very nice people. Annie Lennox endured a ride to her hotel in my shitbox VW Bug. We talked politics while she had a spring up her ass.

Art Alexakis is very difficult to describe. He’s very bright and knows exactly what he’s doing. At the same time he’s volatile, cranky and unpredictable. We definitely had fun but he’s a handful. Excellent songwriter and brilliant lyricist. He may just be a miserable man with a big heart.

I would have been happy to beat C.C. DeVille into a coma.

Chrissie Hynde threw a sausage at my head and I made sure Tom Petersson from Cheap Trick didn’t get the shit beat out of him in a titty bar.

Kenny Aranoff used to get pissed at me for playing his kit at night but Jeff Porcaro (R.I.P.) never said a word. I played just about every kit that came through. Dean Castronova and Terry Bozzio. Jim Keltner, Steve Gadd and Stewart Copeland. Vinnie, Omar and Manu Katché.

Over the years I met, worked with and came to understand some of the most interesting people there are, famous or not. I paid my dues but understood I was lucky. Hindsight tells me just how lucky. For a few years I was A&M’s Demo King. Sometimes a different band everyday. One day it was cellos and woodwinds, the next it was banjos stand up bass and concertinas. Wind up the week with a hardcore punk band.

I want to squeeze my nose with a pair of pliers so that it bursts like a cherry tomato and the pain enters my head in the sweetest and most delicious way.

Seems like it rained more back then.

Always direct the pyroclastic flow towards the ocean.

Drinks for my friends.

My girls sit on each arm of my couch, grooming. Benevolence. They could not be more opposite. Physically, temperamentally, even how we interact and the ways they tell me what they need or want. You’re never alone if you have pets.

I’ve let the nail on my left thumb grow. It weighs an outrageous amount. Subject to subtle surges of gravity. I can’t wait to clip it but I understand exactly why I’ve let it go this long. It offends me. I hate it. I can’t help it. My arm tingles with the anticipation of eliminating it. Sometimes at night, the thumb aches from it’s weight.

I must do it now. Right now. I loathe it. The need for relief from the mass I’ve allowed for has reached past solvency. One compulsion usurps another.

Giant, pastel green grasshoppers suddenly suffer mass abdominal explosions, yielding orange flavored Tick Tacks as soft and sticky shrapnel. Barely any sound.

I’ve done it. I’m lighter. Didn’t wait until I got outside. Sheared it off over the kitchen sink with giant steel toe incisors. Not sure the nail is short enough but I’m relieved. It was a wet fish I stuffed into my pants on purpose. Ocular organs of grasshoppers crisping and popping underneath my eye teeth. Ants and mosquitos mingle in my gullet sharing heartburn. They dance in my colon and I shit like a goose.

I need a shower.

Cindy Stepford McCain is creepy. She’s powered by yellowcake uranium. Just look at her eyes. She trips the lights fantastic with Lucifer hisownself.

The roof of my mouth bothers me. I could feel that nail in my mouth and nose. It made the tops of my feet itch; I almost wore a hole in one last night.

I lean back to discover The Gurry right next to me. She is flawless and wise. I rub her head just how she likes. If I’m afforded an afterlife she will be there. I’m hoping she’ll finally talk to me, I want to ask her about her moods and if she really was watching TV all those times. Beddy will tell me really bad jokes about latin homosexuals. The Bean will moderate while wearing those half glasses. Can’t wait to see her.

Men and women are so different it’s often tragic.

I wonder how far I could leave life behind while still being able to stay connected. I ask myself this question and realize I’m halfway there.

I just need cable, high speed internet and groceries conveniently accessible, all from a lower than alpine region. The side of a not too steep mountain. Ideally, a fresh source of water within a walkable distance. A well. A generator. Some solar panels. Plenty of tools. Morphine. Lots of beans and pickled vegetables.

Sometimes, I understand the need to surrender to certain things to be at peace.

I should go to bed but my dreams will have their way with me.

A fix of apathy is needed. It’s usually pretty easy to come by. Not today.

I know why I’m in this mood but I’m not gonna tell you about it. Nothing I can’t solve, get over or get through.

Bitches can’t hold they smoke, that’s what it is.

“I tell them there’s no hurry, I’m just sitting here doing time.
I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round.
I really love to watch them roll.
No longer riding on the marry-go-round.
I just had to let it go.
I just had to let it go.
I just had to let it goooooo.” -John Lennon

A chihuahua has dominated the box office for two weekends and that Russian rocket is way cooler than our Saturn Five. Russian rockets are way cooler and more sinister than American rockets.

Fall is here, it’s my favorite season. Candles, fireplaces and deciduous trees in the San Fernando Valley.

Clarity is a commodity in every grand prize. At least it should be.

I think I need to walk it back a little.

Drinks for my friends.

I came into the world only to discover my head is too big. I’ll come around. It’ll take me a while. I need a bone saw. It’s crazy, I have very broad shoulders. Yet my head is still too big.

Like I’m wearing a helmet.

It doesn’t really bother me. I have big hands and a deep voice. There’s some symmetry there.

Otherwise I seem to be normal. Typical.

That’s where it ends. I’m strange. I’m just fine on my own. For the most part. People like me because I know how to talk to them. The smarter the better, but I do fine either way. I like to sit and think. I don’t know many other people that do that. I understand life gets ever faster and our level of media saturation is invasive and insidious, but I need to sit in silence daily.

To be fair, I know a few who do at least something like turning the sound and fury off for a little while pretty regularly and I seem to get along with them well. I know some who think on their feet almost exclusively and I seem to like them too.

It’s the folks who just can’t be bothered that I have the toughest time with. Sometimes I can’t stand it and that’s just part of it. Sometimes I hate it. It makes it hard to care. People are stupid. The masses frustrate me constantly.

Many of your fellow Americans hate your freedom.

They hate it more than does the Taliban.

*GASP*

These Americans would take your right to free speech, free assembly, freedom from unlawful search and seizure, your right to privacy, your fundamental right to face your accusers, be appraised of the charges against you as well as access to counsel and the entire legal apparatus. I call them willfully ignorant mouth breathing Republicans. They are why Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitatus are empty shells today. They are right across the street.

Anyway, I remember that there are quite a few people I like a lot. Quite a few. I’m no misanthrope. I’m just a little hateful here and there. I can’t suffer fools.

I’m either going to realize my potential or not. It’s getting close. I’d bet on me.

She sings to me. All of the sudden her voice fills my head with a melody so beautiful and delicate I am awe. My mouth is wide open in despair and joy. I don’t make a sound. Who am I and what is this? Now I’m confused by a song.

The world should be painted blue. It’s too much you see? As it is, it’s way too much.

I can’t wait to consume more of it. Greasy kiosk tacos and ancient structures. Cannons, flowers and violent seas. Symphonies and wine. Morning in the forest and afternoon in a meadow.

Figure in concepts like dinosuars and Christianity, along with the Big Bang and love of family and cats. Hitler. Manson. Lobbyists and the greedy bastards they service. Great writers and great thinkers.

She walks back in to my head with a melody. Oh my she can sing. Velvet to gravel and back in a single word. Effortless. Sublime.

As near as I can tell, the closest thing to reality is ice cream. A well known quantity. Predictable, but ice cream always delivers. Soft serve from the drugstore, Häagen-Dazs or any ice cream parlor, ice cream makes the time spent consuming it a little better than it would have been. Always.

The opposite is giant green grashoppers busted open with orange tic tacs coming out. Crazy. I’ve seen and held giant green grasshoppers in my hand. The strength, torque, the thrust of those crazy hindquarters is fucking spooky. Hamsters and gerbils can’t kick or launch like that. I’ve busted them open and seen there eggs spill on the hot concrete too. Disturbing. I fear man sized grasshoppers more than just about any other man sized insect. I loathe bugs. I loathe them.

I had a lovely afternoon. I’m pretty sure I saw Angry John on the sidewalk before I got on the 101. I spent it with my girlfriend and her two daughters. Four and seven and they were delightful. We had lunch. Chicken pot pie, macaroni and cheese, a salad and cherry pie. Watching these two eat and color with crayons and talk to each other and talk to me and their mother is an essay on it’s own.

Walking back to the car, the little one asked for my hand. She talked to me the whole way. She asked me questions and told me about her favorite things and revealed that she’s a little afraid of stairs. I noticed she keeps a hand on the rail in her own house. She danced while her mother and older sister played the piano.

A little out of tune but the best sounding upright I’ve ever heard. It sings. A generous slice of sweet melon on a Sunday afternoon.

Wanna wrestle?

Drinks for my friends.

I’m sorry for the loss and the tragedies and the lies. It did affect me personally, but it turned out ok and my fiancee was safe. She was there and she was a flight attendant for one of the airlines. Scary for about forty minutes. I’ll take that and be grateful. That’s as far as it went for me and mine.

I am thankful.

We are no longer together but I’m happy she still roams the earth. Talked to her today.

Drinks for my friends.

The amount of energy my father poured into my brother, his first son, is more or less equal to the amount my brother devoted to me. I’m saying it was considerable. He is ten years and ten days older than me. From my father’s first, brief, failed marriage. From an impossibly broken home; some seven step fathers if I remember right.

Trust me when I tell you I had excellent parents. Perfect? No goddamn way. Solid, sound and wise? Yep. Check.

There just happened to exist a window in my development whereupon some original influence could be life altering and existential.

His wind first blew when I was nine or ten. A letter of immaculate script delivered by a sheriff’s deputy. He was living in Phoenix and looking for his father. I was in awe of his handwriting. Looping, consistent and artful. To this day when he takes a pen, it’s a river and a breeze on paper.

He appeared on our porch one Sunday afternoon after we’d gone taunting carp and slow moving trout with corn on a hook at the Carson River. He was a hippie, an idealist and a profound influence in my young life. To say that I admired him is an understatement.

Asleep in a floppy hat and a fringed leather jacket on our astro turfed awning covered deck in front of the new doublewide. Hair past his shoulders and a long mustache. His rusty, primered and bondoed Karman-Ghia, filled with stereo equipment, LPs and massive speakers, sat in front of the mailbox.

He moved into the living room and we made friends. He bought an H0 scale slot car set and performance kits for us to modify the cars. Balsa gliders so we could battle each other. He taught or exposed me to a huge variety of things. Music, art, drugs.

Most people aren’t what they seem. Despite what eventually transpired, I believe he is what he seemed. A loving and compassionate young man who sought the acceptance, love and respect of his new family. He had a charisma that may only be gained from a assload of adversity.

He played music for me and we talked about it. At length. He taught me how to listen, illustrating the role of individual instruments and how they worked to support melody and rythm. Without a doubt, his influence is the the most compelling reason for my pursuit and eventual success as a record producer and engineer. He’s also the reason I’m seriously embarrassed to reveal how much I’ve spent on my own stereo.

He went to work for my father pouring concrete. Most nights after work, he’d shower and we’d drive my dad’s orange Datsun pick up, “The Pumpkin”, to the 7-11 for Doritos and Pepsi. He’d smoke a joint on the way and we’d put on a record when we got back.

Eventually he rented a trailer my parents owned a short bike ride away. I spent a lot of time there. By this time it was my job to select what we’d listen to. I have no memory of us ever watching television. I chose between Joe Walsh, ZZ Top, Deep Purple, Tommy Bolin, Led Zeppelin, Phoebe Snow, The Ohio Players, The Who, The Average White Band, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Supertramp, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac………and I discovered the magical, perhaps symbiotic relationship between records and bong rips.

See, it wasn’t just the music and the drugs. It was the packaging of the LP itself. The way they smelled, the artwork and the liner notes and credits.

Heady and abundant times. He was singularly responsible for opening my eyes to a world I never knew existed. The other side of everything.

By the time I was fourteen. he’d married a wonderful woman that we all adored. It didn’t last. Probably his fault because he went down pretty fast after that. I became de facto marriage counselor one summer. I spent hours on the phone late into night with both of them. I hoped it could be saved. She was beautiful inside and out but she was eighteen. He was at the beginning of the end of growing up and it wasn’t going well. He’d already morphed into a member of a biker gang with a nickel plated .357 magnum in his saddlebags.

Drinks for my friends.

I want to talk to all of you but I don’t know why. I don’t think I’m lonely, I don’t get lonely.

Boredom. That’s it.

I’ve rediscovered the IFC and Sundance channels.

My life is kinda on pause. I’m waiting for things. Things I anticipate will transpire soon. I’ll be allowed to do more things. In the meantime, I should probably take out the trash.

When I was a kid, I was pretty good friends with a guy who went on to murder another man’s wife and then himself. I really liked him. Very cool and he never took things too seriously. Mike Walsh.

My memories are so vivid, I wonder if the atrophy of my senses with age is the reason life seems so two dimensional sometimes.

I’m watching the original Halloween on the IFC. The acting is but a single layer of corrugated cardboard, it plumbs the depth of cheese. I love this shit. Mike Walsh was crazy about it. He said it scared the fuck out of him the first time he saw it.

He strangled the married woman, went home and stuck a gun in his mouth.

I babysat some kids for a couple on my parent’s bowling team once. I actually lost track of the little girl. They were wrong to trust me, I was too young. I really can’t remember how it turned out so it must not have been that bad. They paid me.

I like hanging plants.

Remember when Bob Dole ran? That shit was funny.

I adore William Shatner.

I’m enamored of a full bustline.

I’m at the age where the decision to get drunk has become a walk in the park.

I finished the first draft of my novel. I’m having difficulty. It’s done but it haunts me. It haunted me while I was writing it; it is very dark and violent. There seems to be a lot left over.

I’m gonna have to start another one.

We’re a hundred days out from the general election. A glance at the electoral college map tells me we’re sitting kinda pretty. Oh boy. I’m hopeful. I’m cautiously optimistic. I have confidence. I’m not trying to forecast a blowout, but I believe the electorate has but one sensible choice.

It does speak volumes about America that this anything but a done deal. Whenever I think I don’t understand it, the weight of comprehension forces me to the ground face first and tries to hog tie me. In a time when I’m not allowed to take more than eight ounces of toothapste in a ziploc bag with non-negotiable dimensions on a commercial flight, freezer bags make much better sense for travel, it seems ridiculous.

Or does it?

No, it doesn’t. Very little public awareness, much less rage, over the recent FISA bill passed into law. Near zero attention paid to the demise of the Posse Comitatus Act. The Clear Skies initiative, No Child Left Behind. What I’m pointing out here is the plethora of things the average American doesn’t know shit about.

Never heard of it.

The media is complicit and that frustrates me, but nothing chaps my ass more than the laziness and apathy of the average citizen.

We live in a time when any excuse for being underinformed is fucking lame. Dandelion Salad, Truthout, The Huffington Post, The Daily Show even CNN. In less time than Bowflex would have you believe it takes to look like a superhero each day, you can be well informed.

I beseech you. As a liberal, I encourage you to study, to learn, to fucking pay attention.

Now I understand if you’re reading this, it’s not likely you’re an unapologetic dipshit.

Maybe you know a few. That brings us to the point. Engage them. Gently. Be friendly. Non confontational.

Remind them we’re not after the guns. Enlighten them by being personally opposed to abortion but point out it will happen anyway so let’s just keep the coat hangers out of it.

If they seem receptive, float a few more balloons. Agree that at the very least, healthcare is too goddamn expensive. Remind them how insane gas is and that the banks are beginning to look like dominos.

Once you have the pony at the watering hole, casually toss out the war thing. Point out it’s ten billion a month and we’re kinda fucked over here. After that, you’re on your own.

Remember, the first goal of any salesman is to make friends.

Drinks for my friends.

I used to see movies or television shows that depicted unbalanced people and think such a fate was impossible for me. I’d wonder at how it could actually happen. I imagined the unlikliest of scenarios.

I know what it’s like to be crazy. I once took a few too many fistfulls of mushrooms and lost my shit. Ever since then I’ve understood how tenuous a grip my mind has on sanity. Reluctant even. A a careless mistake or a tragedy away from not much sense at all.

A few years ago, as a result of an inordinate amount of stress, I began to have panic attacks. I was sure I was about to die. It was a temporary suspension of sanity and they were surgically debilitating.

I respect how close to an edge I am.

Dark days. My ten year relationship was ending, my job and boss as well as my best friend were imploding, financial pressure reared it’s head and my most beloved cat friend died abruptly.

I was losing my shit.

I went to doctors, sought counseling, ended up in therapy and on a serotonin re-uptake inhibitor.

I’m better now thank you very much, although I remain more than cognizant that the wall separating me from madness is paper thin. When the light is right, I can see right through it. I also know that the longer I remain on this side of that wall, the stronger and more impervious I become.

I wonder if I’m like most people who can’t help but dance around the maypole once in awhile.

I can actually see sound. I look at a bug and spend at least the next five minutes imagining invasion by it’s species. I can drink a quart of cheap scotch, eat some tin cans and consume a pouch of chewing tobacco and keep it down. I think of something random however, and puke til I dry heave. My biggest fear is the car accident but I drive like a maniac. I’m a germaphobe but my place is a wreck. I make up names for random people I encounter in public settings. Often I have a different name in mind for people right before we’re introduced, making it more difficult to remember their actual name.

I love unopened presents. One of the first things my shrink pointed out was that I was a chronic perseverator.

My dreams are blind shit house nuts. Frying my own feet, spatula in hand, in a skillet on top of hot plate, on top of a cheap vinyl flower print dining chair, my amputated ankles underneath, in a Boston apartment with green shag carpeting.

I obsess the minutiae and disregard the macro. It get’s me into trouble.

So, on top of all this, I regularly encounter people who lack fundamental reason. Logic. Rationale. On TV, on the radio, the internet and at the 7-11. They are crazy. Few dare to divulge the deranged stain on these human tiles, thus they are everywhere I go or even look.

They voted for Dumbya and have no moral or ethical dilemma with leaving a wad of gum under a table, bigotry or putting the family pit bull in the ring for a little cash. How much you wanna bet they worship regularly and invoke God consistently?

Forgive the tangent. I’m not here to preach, at least not tonight. Once in awhile I just get started and let the point find itself.

I suppose part of my point is that you, we, cannot afford to deceive ourselves.

I realize I fall well outside the sphere of what’s held as typical or normal. I like that. Let me just say that a good number of you what takes comfort in those labels or even deign to hide behind them are not fooling anyone but yourselves.

See, you think of it as you against us. We don’t. We look at it more like us for the rest of us and you’re welcome to come along.

What’s going on in America right now is a battle of ideologies. It’s brilliant and tragic irony that our own government is fomenting that polemic about the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, far too many of you don’t understand either wrangle. You keep staring at the trees instead of thinking about the forest. Get over yourselves.

Stop pretending you know why you’re here. No more assuming you have the answer because you do not. Start thinking more about the question.

Let me give you a heads up, two men standing on the corner, both claim to be Jesus. One of them has to be wrong.

Drinks for my friends.