Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

Rick morphed into executive producer by funding what we couldn’t scam. He funded a lot. We scammed a lot. Two prongs.

Prong three of the trident was our ability. What we knew how to do. The three of us. Me & Al, Rick and the band.

Not just demos, we were here to make a record.

Once those first five days were spent, it was a logistical clusterfuck to get ten broke musicians from Denver to LA, on schedule to do overdubs, track another song or participate in some mixes inside a tiny window we swindled for nothing or next to nothing. Part of the prongs were A&M’s a&r department. Suhy, Whittaker, and father and son Anderle.

More often than not Rick made it work.

His other contributions ended up being huge.

A sharp motherfucker my buddy Rick. A marketing savant. He devised black window boxes with an orange background, sourced them, and we spent a few nights mounting CDs and a six inch glass bong inside each one with twist ties and rubber bands.

Individually addressed, one box went to every A&R rep in town. The greater Los Angeles area. Delivery split among Alex, Rick and I. Rick paid for every move we made.

They loved it. They adored the record and they were smitten with the packaging. Almost more enthusiasm for the window boxes than the record. We’d made an impression. More than a handful wanted to see them live.

Cover art was a flashlight shown through the bass player’s ball sack. Abstract, but once you understood what you were looking at, there was no mistake. The record was called “S.A.C.”

Not three chords and hair.

Plenty of chords and hair. Accomplished musicians with more or less the same thing in mind. Not the least of which was pushing an envelope. I didn’t always recognize the envelope they were so furious about. I always ended up seeing it though.

It is a brilliant record. I am as proud of it as I am of anything I’ve done. Alex Reed of course, is a genius.

The studio rats liked it.

When I see them, they mention it and I smile.

It wasn’t wrong place and it wasn’t wrong time. Many understood the genius of the band. The powers that were simply had no idea what to do with them. It wasn’t a band that was going to break on pop radio or MTV. They were all so confused. The contemporary paradigm wasn’t a fit for these guys.

Punk rock was gathering steam.

We got that. It would have to be done the old fashioned way. Tour support and getting them on the right bill. The band had to establish a live presence in LA. They were rockstars in Denver and Fort Collins. I visited them there, it was impossible for me to buy a drink within a hundred mile radius. They could do that here.

Wherever they took a stage, it was like this, “We’re The Psychodelic Zombiez, we’re from Denver Colorado and we’re not here to fuck around”. I never saw them fail to win a crowd. Seattle, Lake Tahoe or LA. One night in Denver, the first night of school, they packed an airplane hangar. I was there.

My own nephew walked in on them doing bong rips before taking the stage in Tahoe one day about a century ago. He was five or six. He told everyone his name and walked back out the door. A memory both vivid and fond. Hysterically funny. Yes, he was expelled from a parochial high school in his senior year.

They had successfuly manifested the cult of their personality. If given the chance, they could do it here in LA. With time and reason. I’m guessing there wasn’t enough of either of those.

Then. This tale is past tense.

Mitch B. from MCA gave us money to try and make something into a three and a half minute single. I got the call when I was home for Christmas. Rick, Al and I were pretty fucking excited.

A fool’s errand.

Mitch used to have his secretary call us at the studio to schedule an appointment to rip from the elaborate waterpipe Rick had donated. We’d ride through the backlots and sets of Universal City in his convertible, out of our fucking trees, when suddenly we were cutting to the front of the line for the Back To the Future ride at Universal as many times as we wanted.

We did rough mixes one night in B. The entire band took acid and ended up stealing the keys to famous people’s cars and rearranging them according to some hallucinogenic ideal. I just about shit my pants when I found out what they’d been up to. Then again, it was five in the morning and I was still on my first beer. None of us slept for a day or two.

So, Mitch sent Al and I to Denver, we spent the better part of a week in rehearsal. Can’t remember why, but Al wasn’t able to be with me in the studio. I always hated being in a new control room with out him. Was Xantipa pregnant? I was with him through the time his mom died. This is where I’m a dick. I don’t remember.

The best I was gonna do without Al was fifty percent. I’d convinced myself it would be fine because I had no choice.

I’d do well to remember half the musical and production stuff. Particularly in this context, it was all about arrangement. Song structure. Kinda dangerous if I only retain my ideas. Al’s specialty, his territory. I was barely able to keep up with him, there was no way I could do what he did.

There were ten other guys in the same room. I couldn’t be counted on to remember it all. They ended up acquitting themselves with discipline at the very least. I don’t recall any of us being particularly inspired.

It may have been a disaster. I barely recall. So odd to have Alex by my side in a strange place for a week and not have him in the control room. Dav (saxes, flutes and the like) got terrifyingly sick. He played his parts and was a complete warrior but left the control room for the emergency room. That spooked us.

My assistant was this kid named Jeremy, I doubt to this day he was on my side. He had sharp edges like he thought we were playing chess and he had me cornered. I didn’t like him. He was smart but he had his own agenda. He left the taste of carpet in my mouth. I think he had stupid hair.

It was ridiculously cold and we spent a night at Koony’s smoking pot, drinking and watching “Trinity And Beyond”. It’s only the coolest atomic bomb movie ever. Moscow Symphony Orchestra baby.

I was unable to make it my bitch. It spat me out. I believe I failed.

The Fish visited me. We ended up backstage in Boulder at some Samples show. Al and I had done a mix for them.

It didn’t take long. They went kerplooey.

Koony (most mature member), looked me in the eye a season before and asked me if I thought they’d fall apart if they didn’t come to LA. I told him yes and pointed out that they were on the rocks already. He scoffed.

I’ll never be happy about being right.

We believed they could come the rest of the way. All of us. They’d never appear on tabloid television.

We were sure they could make a profound musical contribution while selling records and packing houses. Too good for us to discount the idea. I knew we didn’t have an arena band on our hands but we did have extraordinary talent by the handful.

In the end, we all fell down.

But we made a shit hot record. Great recording, awesome performances.

It did happen to be, one of a few straws too many, on the back of the proverbial camel. I’m no longer in the business of dreams. Now I sell tangibles.

Drinks for my friends.

A Monday morning in Studio C.

Hollywood 1995.

Spring clouds and humid heat.

Coffee from The Fish Lounge.

Shitty everday rocket fuel.

Go from control room to control room stealing patch cables and XLR connectors for the outboard gear.

Steal the goddamn outboard gear.

Standard methodolgy is to show up a day or two before and hoard as many mics and as much gear not bolted down as possible. Pile it on one of the ubiquitous grey plastic gurneys with shopping cart wheels, tape it off, attach a sign warning of death for trespass and park it in the room we’d be tracking in the next day or hide it somewhere, depending on the budget.

If Bill Kennedy was booked, steal everything from his stash. Prick bastard hoarder once used forty seven mics on a drumkit. It took two days for him to sort out phase. Prick bastard. Fucking Tazmanian Devil. I was trying to make a fucking record and he was jerking off back in Studio D with Motley Crue on a demo no one would ever hear.

I did loves me some Kill, however.

He’s dead now.

Crazy prick bastard.

We pulled Neve 1066’s and 1073’s, Focusrite pre’s, GML pre’s and Eq’s, Nueman U47’s 49’s, a C12, fet 47’s and every 87 we had. Plenty of 57’s, 421’s and 414’s.

I was gonna need everything for this band I made stupid promises to.

I raped and pillaged.

I was desperate.

Alex and I requisitioned gear. We um, hid it. We had secret stashes and by then we’d begun to buy and own our own. At a studio like A&M, in it’s heyday, an engineer never lacked equipment. Still, we were sluts for gear. Ask Al about his goddamn Panscan. I wish I could buy it now and give it to him for his birthday.

Same day as mine.

Next, assessment of strategy and tactics with co-consprator Al.  Poor bastard had no idea what I’d gotten him into but I did. Map it out, figure out where to put what musician where for basic tracks and then overdubs.  Figure out what performances we could keep and what what we’d have to do over.

A big band with complex arrangements and long songs.

Studio C was one goddamn tiny livingroom.

Fresh white tape above and beside each fader.

I liked doing that.

A Zen before the clouds burst.

Check messages at the front desk.

Leave a list of who will be arriving.

Thirteen guys in shitty cars or vans or trucks.

Remind the techs you’re first up and you need the machines aligned. Ampex456 +3. Agfa 468 on the half inch +5. Couldn’t always get good stereo buss compression so we’d learned to run the half inch hot.

Remind the runners you’re first up and there’s still no coffee or fruit. We’ll need one of you to help with setup. Who’s game? Were they to ask you to get permission for them, their vaginas became obvious.  Just do it.  Just fucking help us.

Choose one. Talk to the others, thank them for picking up the slack and we’ll return the favor next time you’re ballsy enough to volunteer.

Pussies.

Studio C was designed for demos and overdubs, never intended for anything on this scale.

But we have this room inside of the greatest recording studio in the world and we are going to kill this.

Scramble, scramble, scramble.

Feed them a click?

I didn’t think we’d need to.

I ended up being wrong on at least one song.

We were shooting for four or five songs in as many days complete, save for mixes. No time and no budget to lock up two multitracks, the whole project would be done on twenty four track two inch.

Tall order for a production so elaborate.

We always bit off more than we could chew.

She requests a double pirouette. I ask with or without skates.

The architecture of studio C was of particular challenge to this project. One live room, maybe twelve by twenty feet. Eight foot ceiling. No iso booths, the only other airlocked room was the machine room, barely real estate enough for an amp and cabinet.

There were varieties of closets and a tiled room with a prominent sixty cycle hum behind studio C we called The Dancehall. Some sort of ancient power grid in there. Blue and black tile. Part of an historical landmark. An honest to god chickenwire cage. Fuck me.

Crazy wierd shit everywhere.

If you recorded anything in the Dancehall, it better be fucking loud. Good place for a bass cabinet because you could always fuck with polarity between it and and a direct box to defeat the ground hum.

We didn’t care. We ran cables out to the street or the guard shack at the rear entrance. I used the public bathroom at least twice that I remember.

The console was a thirty two input, sixteen buss API with a twenty four input monitor section that was patchable and sounded wonderful. The desk itself was the best sounding one in the place. It smoked the SSL’s and even the custom Neve across the hall.

That API was my goddamn training wheels.

There was an eight channel self mix headphone system, a dozen real EMT plates and six live echo chambers accessible from the patch bay. We had Pultecs, Fairchilds, 1176’s, DBX 160’s, LA2A’s, H3000’s, API 560’s, Rev 5, Rev 7, SPX 90’s, AMS, an ETM, Eventide Harmonizer, two Studer A800 MKIII’s, Studer half inch, two DATs and two cassettes already in the walls.

Fresh fruit, coffee and water every morning. Half & half and milk in an ice chest with mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise

Allegedly.

About ten, the band loaded in. It was awkward. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, they didn’t know Al and asked after Rick. I told them he was dead.

I had killed him but he’d most likely be around after six.

We were lucky enough to have a little bit of a reputation at that point and they’d studied us.

They got we weren’t fucking around.

Still, they expected a bigger room.

They were recording at A&M fucking Studios fer fuck’s sake.

Buss assignments, cross patching and track sheet info shouted at a boy named Sperger. Over and over. He was new. Over and over. The chosen runner.

Enough mutual trust to allow us all to dive in.

So we did.

What we ended up with was gorgeous.

They played. That’s what they did. Fire and fucking brimstone. They gave us their very best.

It took about six months to finish after that first five days of furious activity. Despite some glaring flaws, it’s among the best work  I ever did. I believe I mixed “Insecurity Mishap” on my own in studio A.  Otherwise, Al was there. over my shoulder for most of it.

Al brings a difference to every table he sits at. He brought his genius and good sense to this record with a disappearing nuance and intuition.

We were lucky enough, and I don’t remember how, to track two more songs in Studio B. Best sounding tracks on the record. B was the best sounding room in the place if you bypassed the SSL and ran every thing through Neve and API mic pre’s.

We did that.

“Desert Flower” was a song that was new to us as the band hadn’t written it. It was beautiful but there was a problem with the horn arrangement. Al and I clocked it early on. There was an obvious hook they were ignoring. I had no idea what to do, but we understood the chart didn’t work as was.

Al had made his case.

What Al did was wake me up at about four a.m. and make me stay awake while he and G worked it out. Then, we had to record it. Two men put their hemispheres together and G translated it to staff paper. G, bari sax, shining light in a chandelier and writer of all horns, solved it. Gave us what we were looking for.

It worked. The album opens with it.

It’s an example of what Al really did and the musical prowess of Double G.

Al was always subtle in an overt way.

Over and over again I hear him on the records we made. A bridge or an outro that he would assume responsibility for. He would take a section, a chunk of a song, and shine a light on it. Exploit it shamelessly. Whether it was the melody or the lyrics or the music, he’d grab the vital visceral part and put it in your face with an understanding that often dictated the rest of the entire mix.

The record is a bit of a masterpiece because of him.

It’s flawed for sure.

That would be my fault.

I’d hoped to floor them the way they floored me the first time I saw them play.

Drinks for my friends.

My mother had this shiny metal bowl with a lid, a bakelite knob to lift it and bakelite handles on the side to carry it. Its function was to preserve the warmth of any kind of bread stored inside. It’s outside was decorated with penguins.

I never understood it but it fascinated me.

Of course, now I understand it functioned as a “Bun Warmer”

She used to order these craft kits. They came in small white boxes. The contents were always so compelling. Thread spools made of clean white wood. Swatches of fabric and suede. Pins and buttons and dowels. Paint and glue in tiny foil envelopes.

One Thanksgiving my mother transformed our little twenty by forty foot trailer into the most beautiful fall setting for a feast imaginable. She’d made the little white craft boxes into elegant, somber pilgrims. They were the centerpiece on a long immaculately appointed table. That penguin bowl was positioned on the far end. I remember Uncle Larry taking a poppy seeded roll from it.

I was very young. I woke to the smell of cooking and the sound of a kitchen. The scene in the living room, now a dining room, because it was really the only room we had, it honestly took my breath away. My mother had made it into something so strange and enchanting, I barely glimpsed the room I knew it used to be.

I got so excited, I had to go to the bathroom. I remember sitting there on the toilet, thinking about what I’d just seen.

She’s been doing it in one way or another ever since.

There was a time when there were no less than two Christmas trees, a Nativity, an elaborate snow village complete with a working train, more iterations of Santa Claus than you can imagine………

She had her own permanent shed in the backyard exclusively for holiday decorations. She’s a Harding. They don’t mess around, these people. They run straight at it, whatever it is.

There’s eleven of them. She has ten brothers and sisters. Well, nine now that uncle Warren is gone. The most amazing bunch of Siblings, In-Laws, Cousins and Begats you’ve ever seen. Good people, every last one.

Lotsa Republicans, oh well.

Uncle Larry is sick. Very sick. A small man who knew, understood and loved horses. A jockey. Some of my earliest memories are of him racing horses in San Francisco.

He was a dick.

He deliberately shocked me with the horse equivalent of a cattle prod. He told me he’d caught a frog and wanted to show it to me. With glee, he electrocuted me.

He once moved our Christmas tree into the front yard and decorated it with my mothers bras and underwear.

I woke up one morning with his socks in my mouth.

I watched him wipe snot on my mother’s neck from the backseat of my father’s Mercury Cyclone.

He visited egregious acts on everyone he ever liked. It really was his way of showing you he loved you. Really.

Ten or twelve years ago, the Hardings had a reunion in a small town owned by my uncle Tyke in Washington just south of the Canadian border. I brought The Fish, my new girlfriend at the time.

The Matriarch of the clan had just passed. My Grandmother, eighty nine years old. She was awesome. We’d been lucky enough to have her for the holidays.

There were color themed t-shirts indicating which family you were from. We were purple.

We tore it up.

A very small town. If you didn’t mention you were a Harding and therefore related to uncle Tyke, you got no service, not even a smile. Play the Harding card and you were royalty.

We tore it up.

One night we cousins got to talking about Uncle Larry and how we’d suffered his obstreperousness. His orneriness. We decided to act. We dispatched one of his own children to secure his motel room key. A younger Begat had caught a six inch fish in the creek that day; it was confiscated under rules of executive privilege.

We salted his sheets and crumbled potato chips in them. We removed all towels and toilet paper. We covered every surface with shaving cream. We turned the thermostat all the way up. I placed the dead fish inside his pillowcase. We returned to the reunion and drank with him.

We tore it up.

Last time I saw him was two years ago at another family reunion. He and my Uncle Skip are a pair. It occured to me they may as well stick thumbs up each others asses. There was chaos that only the Harding clan produce or tolerate. I’m sorry now we didn’t visit much but it sure was nice to see him. I can’t honestly remember if he knows I was the mastermind behind that revenge.

He is sixty six years old and cancer has invaded his body. There are plenty of loving Hardings, In-Laws and Begats to do everything they can. They will.

I will come too. I will make sure he knows I put that fish in his pillow.

Goodnight Uncle Larry, I will see you soon.

Drinks for my friends.

There once was a band from Denver Colorado named The Psychodelic Zombiez.

I never liked the name, but they were among the most exceptional group of musicians and people I’d ever make a record with.

All of them ringers. They could play. My God they could play. Ten piece band.  Not a weak link in the chain. They could literally play anything I ever asked of them.  I’ll never forget asking the horn section to double their parts.  I watched the light bulb turn on in their eyes.  And they nailed it.

I’d just returned from Madison Wisconsin, co-producing and engineering what would be my biggest claim to fame. My friend Rick had a band he was on fire about. So much so, he was willing to fly me and an A&R rep. from A&M to Seattle to see them live.  He was working for Jimmy Iovine at Interscope back then. He’d first seen them at SxSW the previous spring.  They couldn’t even get a venue there.  They showed up anyway and just marched and played down a street where all the clubs were bursting with new bands one night.

They’d been on his radar ever since.  They had a record out but it was watery gravy and Interscope didn’t give a mad fuck.   He’d already been to Denver to see them for himself.   A ten piece band playing jazz influenced pop funk that ruled Denver Colorado and the neighboring college town of Fort Collins.  A completely unlikely Cinderella story that had me thinking of the Primus phenomena in the Bay Area.

We’d booked a room at a discount through a friend’s mom at Sony in a charming but swanky hotel called the Sorrento. We landed, checked in at the hotel and went straight to the gig at a club called the Phoenix Underground.

I remember being intimidated by the complexity of their arrangements. An absolutely incredible horn section. I was a rock/punk guy. I’d never recorded a horn section, flute or half the other instruments they used with a grace and aplomb that I’d never heard before.  They were so confident. Tight. No air escaping anywhere. They rocked my goddamn face off.  I was floored.  It was almost too much.  So Rick and I got shitfaced enough to brawl on the floor in front of the stage at the end of the set. It wasn’t absurd behavior for us back then. We were nothing but thrilled with this force of musical nature we had just witnessed.

I was sure we’d blown it.  This wasn’t some nihilist punk band.  These were serious musicians.  They stared at us in confusion. They knew we were dickheads.

I remember standing there in that empty club, ashamed and embarrassed.  Sweating and out of breath.  Realizing just how ridiculous I must look.

But I think that’s where they figured out we weren’t suits.  I think that’s where they figured we were more like them than not.  They got that we were excited.

Still, I was bewildered when they asked us to their show the next night at a place called the Ballard Firehouse.

So Rick and I had a nice civilized dinner beforehand. Seared ahi and a Leonetti cabernet I’d called all over to find. The sommelier was pissed. It was his last bottle and he didn’t want to sell it.  I told him to sell us the bottle or cancel our order.  We had a nice meal.

We decided, in the interest of decorum and in light of the fact that this band was truly something special, there would be no rolling on the floor violence in front of them this time.

Little did we know what chaos would be.

They were brilliant that night. I’d never heard anything like that before and haven’t since. What they were doing would have confused my primitive musical sensibilities if not for the rhythm section locked into a groove so compelling and fluid that the rest was a platter steaming with flavors and spices at once exotic, strange and familiar.  Way more than the meat and potatoes that was my stock in trade.

They scared me.

I had no idea how to record them.

Sound occurs only with atmosphere as a requisite. A medium for the sound to excite. Vibrations and frequency allowed merely because of air. What they did was control that medium, with absolute authority.  With muscle and gravity.

I couldn’t believe it.

They were fucking amazing.

We smoked some wicked hash afterward backstage with the owner of the club and we all began to talk seriously in some backstage basement. They asked all the right questions. Cautious and careful at first but they could see we were thrilled and they started to believe we  had the means to actually do something with them and for them.  I told them I had the the keys to the universe.  I told them I would record them in good faith and that at I would do the the best I could by them.  We told them there was no need for paper between us.  If they could get to LA, We would make good on this conversation we were having.  I never told them I’d never even recorded a goddamn trumpet, much less a whole horn section.

I was panicked about the possibility of making good on this music I barely understood and desperately afraid this gem would slip through my fingers.

They agreed to let us record them without any strings except permission to shop them and make a record if we could.

Trust.

That’s all I wanted.

I became their engineer producer for the next year or two that night.

We invited them back to our hotel along with a charming waitress with a nice big ass.  That woman was brave for sure but she had no reason to feel threatened.  They were dirty but harmless musicians  more dedicated to their craft to than the subjugation of women.  The trust was flowing.

They were a two unit convoy back then. An ancient Dodge truck they called the Starfish and a beat to shit Van called Old Blue, both with CB radios. We shared a lot on that trip back to the hotel.  The CB crackled when we got lost.

They introduced themselves with names like Dijon, Chevy, Double G, Hoj and Doody.

They pulled up corners of carpet where they slept and ate up and down the west coast to show me their porn stash and offer private snacks to me. Some were barely nineteen or twenty.  Some were in their early thirties.  They were all far more innocent than Rick and I when it came to the evil business of music.

We stopped at a Safeway to buy five cases of the cheapest beer there was.

Cheapest beer was to become a staple of a long, satisfying but ultimately heart breaking relationship.

They actually wrote a song about it.

It would be nearly a half year before we saw each other again. When they showed up in LA, I had my fingers in half a dozen pies. I simply wasn’t ready for them.

Rick was in the same boat.

We talked and it didn’t take long to arrive at the right thing.

I arranged for time in studio C.

Five days I think.

Oh, they could play.

Drinks for my friends

My cat has been peeing on me lately. Seriously. She sneaks behind while I lean forward on the couch working the keyboard and performs a hot moist drive-by on my lower back. She’s in heat, Got to get her fixed. She’s crazy like a shithouse rat and I’m a broke ass procrastinator.

I’m disgusted but it cracks me the fuck up.

You can’t actually expect to communicate consistently and effectively with any given cat. They really just choose to understand what is in their best interest. They love and understand you with laser accuracy. If you’re confused because Einstein Feline can’t be taught some basic thing, ask yourself who benefits. The answer will be you and there’s a good chance you’ll never get your way.

If you’re looking for the upper hand, get a damn dog.

She’s very petite girly girl with the longest tale to body ratio I’ve ever seen. It touches her face. Wouldn’t be suprised if she was under six pounds. Outstanding jumper. Bed to the top of my over six foot bookcase with the grace of a flying squirrel.

She trots into every room with the urgency of feline curiosity and a dancing tail.

Le Chat Noir.

I’ve got several plants and a young ficus about to expire on the balcony because of heat and laziness. When it comes to phlegmaticalness and brutal temperatures, I try not to move much. Pretty cool word huh? I avoid exertion and soup. I love soup and adore soup weather.

This is not soup weather.

Now is not the time for soup unless The Fish makes it. She understands completely.

This is gonna be a brutal season and I intend to lay low.

I’ll try to maintain some focus on this election I suppose, but I’m thinking of a good Rose’ and some barbecue.

Gotta get me some popsicles and creamsicles.

Just so you know, I don’t like most people. I’m an elitist, in that I think most people are douchebags.

I have one of the world’s most impressive handblown marble collections. I’ve sold more glass penises than anyone else on earth. Therefore, I know about as much about glass as any layman can.

I’m somewhat of an expert on music and sound. I have a bullshit degree and worked as an engineer/producer for a decade or so. I was pretty good at it.

Now I sell an intangible. This pleases me if only because stock and inventory are no longer a factor. They’ve been this grown man’s nightmare for years.

I’ve gotten word that someone who owes me a shitload of money is going to pay up soon. That makes me smile.

I’ve almost finished the first draft of my first novel. I imagine that there will still be a lot to do but it’s a good tired. I have a friend with multiple impressive writing degrees and she has pledged to work through it page by page with me. How fortunate can a dipshit be?

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams … glitter in the dark near Tanhauser Gate. All those … moments will be lost … in time, like tears … in rain. Time … to die.” -Blade Runner

Life is crazy and I often wonder if I’m conducting mine responsibly. Correctly. I have no idea but I’m confident I can do much better.

I think I want to see the sun on the ocean.

I like girls a lot. I like boys too, but in a different way. I’m ok with it. I’m pretty sure I was born that way.

It’s been a while since I expressed my fondness for any cheese product in any kind of jar, plastic container or can with a nozzle. Let me tell you that they are among the products I’d miss the most on a desert isle.

No bacon or pork would really suck.

Wild Boars, heh.

Beans, onions, pasta, tomatos. I simply cannot afford to get stuck in any remote or abandoned place. It’s ok. I’m making a note. It won’t happen if I take a note.

By the way, who exactly does Jesus save?

I learned today that our own solar system is dented. Not symmetrical. From probes launched by NASA in 1977:
“Voyager 2 hit the southern edge of the solar system nearly 1 billion miles closer to the sun than Voyager 1 did to the north. Voyager 2 hit the edge at 7.8 billion miles from the sun.” -Yahoo News

Apparently, what lies at the end of our solar system is something called the “Heliosheath”. This may be the coolest word ever, naming the coolest thing, “the thick edge of the solar system”, I’ve ever fucking heard.

I want to be a superhero named, Heliosheath.

A few weeks ago I found myself in a place where I was the only white male. I didn’t think twice about it. I’d been there before. I’m a people watcher gawker. So I just stared at everyone the same as I would regardless. They didn’t seem to mind. I was with my girlfriend, she is of the color and on the pot. She thinks my nappiness is suspicious and that walking in to a place like that with her gives me the benefit of the doubt.

They assume I’m mixed. I’m honestly starting to think I am. Fascinating. I just want to know.

I just went in and cracked her on the ass a few times.

I’m not sure it would be wise to say more.

Drinks for my friends.

I was born with Tabula Rasa in hand.

I once wore pink socks with white hi tops, light blue cotton pants with pink flowers and a pink sweat shirt with the sleeves cut off. My girlfriend at the time was mad I wouldn’t at least give her the pants. I was studying audio/music in Atlanta GA. I also wore a white ankle length coat and a fedora.

I liked the Osmonds when I was nine.

I once killed rabbits randomly with a semi automatic twenty two caliber rifle. It had a scope. I was thirteen or fourteen. My grandfather gave it to me after I proved I could shoot it.

An afternoon of senseless testosterone, having our fun, I clipped one instead of killing it. It began to scream. Not unlike a human infant. I went from a great hunter wielding a ridiculous pea shooter, to humiliated, ashamed and afraid.

We weren’t complete idiots, my fellow retards and I. A few merciless seconds flew before we understood it must be put out of its misery immediately and it was my responsibility.

I found it in my scope. It laid against a dune, beneath a sagebrush, incapacitated, bleeding red, horror and confusion in it’s eyes as it wailed.

A creature no bigger than my cat. No less innocent.

I pulled the trigger until the screaming stopped.

I will never in my life forget what I saw through the scope of my rifle that day. I will never forget that sound. I will never not regret my ignorant arrogance.

Hunting rabbits is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. It’s easy for evil to gain purchase in adolescent boys. Susceptible and often willing vessels.

I was a vegetarian for almost a decade.

The ASPCA has access to my checking account to this day.

I liked the Jackson Five and Kiss too.

My fellow retards and I evolved. We began blowing shit up to satisfy our testosterone fueled cravings for destruction, mayhem and chaos.

There was a time at A&M Recording Studios when us runners decided it was copasetic to add a meal here and there to the check of a wealthy rockstar. We were all guilty of it at one time or another. Call in an order, add some crabcakes and pick it up with petty cash.

One can never justify taking anything that does not belong to them.

There was an inquisition. Spanish style. One of us was fired everyday. They sat us in the cavernous tracking room of Studio A and picked us off one by one when we wouldn’t talk. This was a place where careers were made. We’d all done it. Our peers who got fired protected the rest of us.

All of us, save one, kept our mouths shut.

His name was Jack Hayback. He got my good friend Dexter sacked for spending a rockstar’s money to feed a homeless person a sandwich. A man who would become one of my very closest and loyal friends joined me in cornering Jack in the back hallway. We told him in no uncertain terms, there in front of the coffee station, that his days at A&M Recording Studios were coming to an end. We also imparted to him, in very clear and certain terms, that he would be well advised to watch his back for as long as it took for us to get him fired. We both meant it.

We were called on the carpet for it the very next day. We never handed him his beatdown but were still able to end his career in a mere few days.

All the while, my ultimate boss was using studio funds to procure rare and expensive gear, selling it to other people and keeping the equipment and money for himself. He was a dirty bastard persecuting five dollar an hour employees for having a decent meal here and there.

This cancer of thievery was practised in front of most of us.

A decade later that close friend an I were drinking at the infamous Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset in Hollywood. Jack approached me with an open hand for a shake and a stupid grin. He asked if I remembered him and reminded me who he was. I was as concise as I could be. I confirmed I knew exactly who he was and still hated his fucking guts. I told him my old friend was with me and we’d always been disappointed we never had a hand in Jack being able to taste his own blood.

Didn’t see him after that.

It still makes me smile.

The elementary school I attended was literally across the street from my mothers office. I used to love to go there after school. Sometimes I never went inside. I’d bring a ball or a book and wait for her to finish for the day. She worked for the Council Bureau of the Nevada State Legislature, research division.

The offices fascinated me. The paraphernalia, machines and exact order of a government office in the early seventies. The possessions at each desk to personalize an anonymous workspace. The smell of fresh ink and old paper.

Volumes and volumes of ancient texts bound in leather that made very little sense when I cracked them open. I searched and searched for their importance. I barely managed to glimpse it but remained in awe.

Smart purposeful people. Men in ties and quick talking fast moving women in suits.

One winter afternoon she left me in her boss’s char. At his desk. His office was filled with interesting things. I liked being in there. I endeavored to be conscientious. Put everything back the way I found it. That afternoon there was a jar of M&M’s on the desk. I simply could not stop myself.

My Mother’s boss called her on it the next day. Sometimes I look back and think I lied about it because of just how much embarrassment I’d caused her. I could not face it. I have to tell you that to this day it easily one of the most shameful things I’ve ever done.

All these things cemented a certain ethical Rosetta Stone for me. I began to have hard and fast rules. Honesty was the imperative. It all served as a valuable lesson for me.

As of today, I’m an expert recreational liar. I can tell a clerk or a waiter anything. I can lie to a the DMV or any customer service representative. When it really matters however, a child can see right through me. I suck at lying.

Drinks for my friends.

I have a good friends. It’s that simple. It’s a fabulous blessing.

I’ve been invited to Marin County by a woman, married with children, whom I’ve known since she was a girl. She’s got a couple two masters degrees in literature and writing. When the first draft of Man In Picture is finished, her offer is to go through it with me page by page over wine and food. I’ve adored her since we first met and her husband is about as cool as really smart guys get.

His band was terrible. Don’t tell him I said that.

A good old friend in New York invited me to come stay. A sweet man I’ve known since the eighties. We were hired around the same time at A&M. We’ve been talking online for a time. He had just moved back to NY. We ran into each other in Vegas about a year ago. He had a serenity in person that impressed me. He’s married to a comic and has a son around sixteen.

Unfortunately, his son is a musician.

I fucking love New York. Last time I was there it was our birthday. Seriously, my old producing partner shared the same birthday, though a few years apart. We were working but still managed to see the city. Empire State Building, The Village and jazz, Little Italy, the works as best we could. We walked as much as possible.

Another excellent friend, the drummer from two different bands we produced, has invited me to Florida. He’s a chef now. Beautiful wife and kids. We had a code for when he blew into town. The message would read “plate of shrimp” and a phone number. It meant we would be drinking sooner or later. Call. One of the very best drummers I ever worked with. More here

Two of my very oldest friends with the same first name I’ve been in regular but not enough contact with, invited me to their homes as well. Northern California up around Bodega Bay and San Francisco proper. These guys and their significant others are among the heavyweights in terms of spiritual and intellectual prowess I’ve been lucky enough to encounter in my life. I’ve known the two with same first name since we were kids. They and their families are luminous to me.

All on this list are original and independent thinkers beyond what one can find on any given day. I’m proud to know them and gratified they think of me now and then.

I’m craving hot dogs. Gotta get some smoked turkey franks, cheap white buns, Tilamook cheddar slices and squeezable mayo. I got regular mayo but need it to squirt it like the ketchup (catsup) and mustard. Need to get an onion and some pickles, maybe some turkey chili.

I’ll shit like a goose.

There’s a pocketful of others I’d at least debate taking a bullet for, I just wanted to mention these ones for now.

Drinks for my friends.

You know, gently, when a foot slips from beneath the sheets?

Change is inevitable. Unavoidable. Hard.

I left a job I’d been at for almost a decade. I had to. I hear they replaced me with a ringer. That’s good.

Some days are productive and sometimes I never shuck my robe. I try to always brush my teeth. And write. My robe stinks.

Obama parked a dozen balls tonight with a Gibson Flying V plugged into a wall of Marshall Amps. Iowa. People with televisions heard it all over the world. The grace he exhibited when talking about the pantsuit was mesmerizing. It’s already been said and it will continue, yet I must; Barack Obama is as fine an orator as seen for generations. If he means what he says, and I believe he does, he will be the finest President in generations.

I try not to fire up the plasma too early. It’s been warm and she runs hot. It’s an anesthesia I need to monitor the consumption of anyway.

Bad news about Teddy huh?

My mother is so cool. She packed a grocery bag full of food for our train ride back from Yuma. Chicken salad sandwiches with fresh lettuce, water, juice, stawberry pie with an Oreo crust, rhubarb cake and potato chips.

We hung out under the awning of a palatial coach and a bigger thing on a slab with a structure of steel and a skin of white aluminium siding. We grilled and ate. We cruised the neighborhood in a Subaru to look at my uncle’s properties and where their friends live. Cocktailed and watched election returns. We drank good wine with stellar pork chops and a fantastic corn casserole. We drank better wine with a giant tin of Stouffer’s Mac & Cheese and Cesar salad.

There’s a bay on the side with a sliding platform. It has a refrigerator full of beer and sodas as well as my brand of gin. There’s satellite tv.

A three legged black lab named Billy who never met a man she didn’t like. She’s about as sweet as a domesticated animal gets. I think of her as Tripod. She enjoys licking and tug of war with toys.

Maybe we’re not supposed to live as long. After the age of fifteen or sixteen, how pure can your soul be?

We all lost consciousness. The train was to leave Yuma at 4:15 a.m. She must have been up for the better part of an hour. Everything in individual ziplocks or perfectly sized tupperware packed neatly into a grocery sack with a pristinely folded top. I have to tell you, that was the least of her kindness. My mother is very much the matriarch. She takes it seriously. She does whatever she can possibly do to help her children, her husband, her brothers and sisters and their children.

She will cook, clean, do laundry and ride a white horse over the horizon waving a broadsword.

She decides where everyone sits in the car.

I had a scrape with the law twenty years ago and could very well have ended up in prison for possession. She bailed me out of jail, took me home for a shower and change of clothes and we got down to business. Within a few hours and after a pleasant meeting with a very prominent attorney, my worries were over.

Too bad it made the front page.

My old man had that paper in his hand when he hugged me and told me he’d done a lot worse. My folks rock.

My mother is whip smart. An intellectual without the hubris of her son. She and my father are ardent NASCAR fans. Democrats who pay attention. She can cook. All her sisters can cook. Her brothers are awesome whackjobs. She comes from a family of eleven, all good people.

The in-laws are somehow crazier. Just about every man or woman selected by my mother and her brothers and sisters is arguably even crazier than his or her mate. Family reunions are an absolute blast. The amount of chaos is impressive.

By the way, my sister can really cook. I mean really.

She once showed up at my house with her entire family for Thanksgiving. They drove five hundred miles on a few days notice with an entirely prepared Thanksgiving meal save for the turkey languishing in brine.

In my family, if you get sick, you won’t spend a day alone in the hospital. If you’re down and out, someone will take you in and help you find a job. Be a shithead, and all will be forgiven.

These are my people.

It’s intimidating. I think I might be the lamest of the bunch.

Drinks for my friends.

Andy Williams looks like shit.

Am I loser because I’m sitting at home on a Sunday night for the second year in a row watching the Grammys? I never used to watch award shows. I was too busy. I was too punk rock! Well, maybe not, but I always found them boring. Have I changed? Am I even less punk rock than when I kinda pretended to be?

Maybe it’s nostalgia. That little ripple when you see someone on TV you’ve been face to face with.

It’s not as good as it was last year but I’m entertained.

That last sentence brought to you by Justin Bateman who I have on MUTE.

Fucking Foo Fighters. Best rock band on the planet today. Orchestra didn’t really work until the band kicked in, then it fucking slayed me. Engineering nightmare.

Nirvana? I was absolutely a fan. But I’m more grateful to that band for Dave Grohl than anything else. Fucking Foo Fighters.

Who the fuck is Brad Paisly? His tone sucks. Pretty good picker though. His tone gets better. It’s a dumb country song well played.

Did you see the thighs on Beyonce? Sheezus. Very unclean thoughts.

Take your fucking glasses off Kanye. Then he rambles self indulgently and more than a little pompously while invoking his mother. How old is this guy? He needs to back up and count to ten. Humility goes a long way on TV.

What’s this Aretha-God shit? Took the engineer a good eight bars to figure out the horns. After that it was pretty cool. Great drummer. Excellent band. Then Aretha comes back out in a tent and I’m wondering was this God shit her idea? Great choir.

Commercial. ‘Scuse me while I piss the sky.

Feist? Horns sounded a little loose.

Kid Rock. Nice try. Had to step out for a smoke.

Fucking Foo Fighters. Best rock record. Ha bitches!

I don’t understand the appeal of lizards dancing with a hot black chick to “Thriller”.

Stevie Wonder has won twenty five fucking grammys?

I want to possess Alicia Keys. John Mayer shows up to play and sing and they tear it the fuck up.

Country award. Time for a smoke.

Herbie Hancock with some asian cat playing Rhapsody in Blue. Two pianos, no matter how identical cannot be tuned perfectly simpatico. I live for the dissonance. The orchestra rocks. One of my favorite pieces of music.

Jay-Z is cool.

Amy Winehouse is excellent and the band doesn’t fuck around. No leaks. Air tight.

Natalie Cole is gorgeous but they’re here for Doris Day? Natalie Cole is a handsome woman with whom I’ve spent a little face time. Amy gets the trophy. It’s a very cool song. Natalie has a positively regal presence. You know, in person.

Had to slide out for some cat food. Did I miss anything?

Bocelli and Groban are awesome. Amazing. Who is this Groban guy again?

Jerry Lee Lewis is still alive? I know about this guy. He’s a whack job. I’ve read books. One creepy motherfucker. What the hell is Fogerty doing up there? I hate Creedence.

Little Richard can still sing and play like ringing a bell. Fogerty takes a solo and it doesn’t suck. They thought it would though because they didn’t turn him up. I believe Little Richard to be the gayest black man to ever appear on television. Whatever. He still belts.

will.i.am
Very nice job.

I don’t know. Herbie Hancock getting the big one resonates. And then he says “Yes we can”. They turn the fucking music on. You turned it off for Kanye but you can’t give this guy thirty more seconds? After he just acquitted himself like a rockstar on Rhapsody in Blue?

I recently saw Herbie on Bill Maher. He didn’t really belong there. He’s a class act and he belonged on that stage tonight, reading over the cheesy music because he wanted to thank everybody.

Hey Kanye, I’m just pointing it out.

Interesting. Official brainspank endorsee Barack Obama, beat out Jimmy Carter and Hillary Clinton today in some spoken word category. Um, he prevailed in Maine today as well.

Drinks for my friends.

This is my response to a woman I’ve met only once regarding a very old friend’s birthday celebration and her gracious invitation:

Where does he live? Does he have a nice TV?

Ice maker?

Smoking area?

What’s the menu?

I can’t do oysters, asparagus, things like that.

I like to be catered to. I like to feel welcome.

You should probably have a small gift for me.

I wouldn’t spend more than seventy five to a hundred dollars. Just something thoughtful and classy that let’s me know how happy everyone is that I’m there.

I also like toys and props and games. I need things to pretend to be occupied with when I discover that everyone is boring.

I only drink the best hooch. I love Bombay Saphire, but if you have a premium vodka, I can probably do that.

If you see me grinning like a dumbass jack-o-lantern, know that I’ve smoked too much pot and I’m not following the conversation I’m having with the person in front of me.

At this point, you should approach me slowly, put your hand on my arm, pretend to talk to me and lead me to a dark corner where it’s unlikely I’ll compromise myself further.

If I came with a woman and seemed to like her, try to find her for me. If I was avoiding her, tell her I left.

At the end of the evening, I’ll thank you each profusely, irritatingly and ad nauseam. I’ll break something on the way out and borrow twenty five bucks for a cab before I get in my car and endanger the thousands I’ll encounter while driving home.

You might think about calling me around one the next day to pick me up for a champagne brunch. Just the three of us. I’ll get the tip.

By the way, I really like a mildly spicy gin mary with celery, capers, green and black olives and cherry tomatoes along with a cold Pellegrino and lemon. It goes very well with shrimp and champagne.

Sorry, DVR locked up so you got the full eye.

There once was a band called The Ape Hangers.

Actually, when we started the record they were called
Throttle. In the middle of the record, about
the time the lead singer/guitar player’s brother died,
they had to change their name.

He never missed a step.

They were a trio.

We did the record over the Holidays. It ended up
being one of the three or four best records we ever
made.

We, is me and Alex.

One of the biggest reasons it turned out so good was
because they could goddamn play. The groove was nice and slippery but there were no leaks. They could play. No air escaped.

Another reason was Pete, singer guitar player, could write a motherfucking song. He had a charisma on the mic unlike I had ever seen or heard in a not yet rockstar. One of the very best rythm guitar players I’ve ever recorded. A consumate musician.

He bought me a bottle of Jim Beam and a copy of Leg Show for Christmas.

There wasn’t any click tracks, protools fuckery or razor blade abuse. No computerized consoles for the mix. All manual and hands on. Recorded and mixed in studio “C “, the redheaded stepchild of what was the world famous A&M recording studio complex.

Conventional wisdom was you couldn’t make a record in that room. It was for demos and overdubs. Me & Al made quite a few very good records in that ten by twenty space with the ridiculously low ceiling.

What most of them didn’t understand, was the little thirty two input sixteen bus API was by far the best sounding console in the place.

Even better than the Neve across the hall in “A”, built for George Martin with the basketball sized tracking room.

Fools.

By that time, Al and I had figured out how to squeeze every last drop of sound out of that woman. Nobody could do what we could do in there. We ate it and slept it.

The most manipulation the Ape Hanger record saw was Me & Al cutting the master sequence together. Al did an excellent job and I was present.

We’re talking master mixes here and I hated cutting tape. It caused my manhood to atrophy.

Al has had his own genius on most of the time.

I don’t know what Al would say, but it was probably the easiest
record we ever made. I say that because I can hear it
in my head and it sounds marvelous. It cracks and
soaks and chunks and bathes and bites.

I heard it in my head as we made it. During basic tracks I could here the vocal effect I would use. I owned it.

It’s true. We were good. Alex and I thought
differently about a lot of things. Born on the same
day, a few years apart, and nearly opposite in most
ways.

But a crazy understanding between us. I
brought an anvil and he came with a feather. I was the barbarian and he was the diplomat. I still regard him as a geek savant. An impressive intellect, and a very sweet man. Funny as fuck.

His feather was as awesome as my anvil. The feather
and the anvil were a good mix.

It’s true, Al had mad skills. He also brought an encyclopedic knowledge of virtually all music.

So we made this record, and we made others. Damn
near every record we made was quite good.

I knew we were doing something in there because the
opposition kept growing. Our contemporaries had begun to treat us differently, to look at us with different eyes and faces, and we could feel it.

I was coming off Everclear’s “Sparkle And Fade” debut on Capitol. I co-produced it with Art Alexakis (lead singer and guitar player) and engineered. It yielded a couple top ten singles and the album ended up in the Billboard top ten.

We had the president of A&M dancing and playing air guitar in the control room on his sometimes daily visits. He often came with David Anderle, an A&R legend among other things.

The promotion dept. had landed two songs on two different soundtracks and tracks in two different movies starring the likes of Liv Tyler, Renée Zellweger Andy Garcia and Christopher Walken. Empire Records and Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead.

We made an excellent record.

Empire Records was to be a high profile release with a major promotional push. Somehow, that never happened. It wasn’t a great movie but it didn’t suck. Must not have tested well.

We were told we’d be guests at the premier.

I think it went straight to video.

The band was a formidably cool hang.

Dennis, the drummer with the wandering eye. One of the funniest motherfuckers I ever met. He would drink with you until you were done. He would ride in the back of Rick’s piece of shit red Mazda without even being asked and he channeled Keith Moon constantly.

He played fucking brilliantly.

I understood that Dennis would follow you into hell because he’d already been there more than a few times. If you knew him, you knew that about him.

Then there was Bob. Bob played bass. Very well. I’m thinking he had a kick drum for a prostate. Very nice, a little dark, and I’m guessing more disturbed than the other two. I adored Bob, It’s just I knew him less.

These guys, along with Al and whatever assistant the studio may or may not have given us for the day, made up an absolute holiday of humans.

Really good times.

Pete eventually let me know I’d burned a hole in his pristine white carpet with a cigarette.

Either Bob or Dennis or maybe both, bought me a plastic candy cane tube full of mini bar booze that year.

Then it seems, everyone forgot about it.

Everyone involved.

They pulled support for the movie, so it tanked. Then, the entire tiny rustic lot of my record company forgot about it. They all walked away from a record they had either been on fire about or ordered to be on fire a few months prior.

They actually played live on that lot one hot afternoon, every employee was invited. It was catered by In & Out. I was sure Dennis would die that day.

No matter how good the record was, it hadn’t cost them a dime. To scrap it meant less than nothing. We were paid salary from the studio and the record company paid me thirty five an hour as an engineer.

And that was it.

All I can tell you is it’s a great fucking record.

Drinks for my friends.

I admire drummers who can swing a beat. They’re onto
something. Life should not plod or march. It should swing. It should speed up and slow down.

Carson City, at the base of the Sierra mountain range and near to a mile high, has peaks to the west that jut majestically over four thousand feet above the valley floor.

Lake Tahoe at some sixteen hundred feet deep and a surface elevation of sixty two hundred hundred feet seems barely contained by the monoliths to the left.

The wind blows every day. Carson City whistles all the goddamn time.

He left home at thirteen. Sixth grade education from a
one room school house. Hunted deer with a twelve
guage loaded with slugs instead of shot. He rode the
rails and stole produce from the fields along the way
to survive.

Lied about his age to work for the Forest Service.
After that, the mines, with an epileptic partner and explosives. I believe it was during this time he married my mother.

His father played semi-pro baseball and cards. Never
took a drink or smoke of anything. He died at age
eighty nine from colon cancer.

Killed an elk a mere few years before he died and drug it out
of the woods by himself. Probably sent me the teeth.
He sent me a lot of teeth from animals he killed, typically in
an envelope inside a shirtbox of fairly salty peanut
butter cookies baked by Grandma Douglass. I think she died at a hundred and one.

His son, my Dad, has been in the hospital for too long
now. He is seventy five years old.

A few days back, I sat in the dim light of the night’s
middle in a hospital and looked at him. I spent the
night with him. It was hard. Highways of tubes
everywhere, draining and feeding. I fed him ice chips
every half hour or so.

He pooped and farted that night, which was brilliant, yet
his hands shook as he gripped the door jam to the bathroom.

The thing is, long after his body has ceased to be
tough, his mind still very much is. He is fearless.

Vessel and carcass to be durable again soon enough.

First day I walked into his room in the
cardiac wing, I clocked a tube sucking putrid green
lungbutter and what looked like shaving cream, from
his nose and into a jar mounted and hanging from a
cabinet.

A trio of beeping machines were connected to him and
mounted on a chrome tree with wheels. There was a sensor on his right hand he referred to as ET.

On the same tree were bags of protein, glucose and
painkillers.

He didn’t look too good at all. The color of
snow and ashes.

He was himself though. Blowing kisses and flirting
with the nurses. They all adored him because he was
such a good patient.

My Old Man is a motherfuckin class act.

A few months back my mother arrived at the conclusion
that it was time for my father to have a colonoscopy.
Last one was about twelve years ago.

Turns out he had close to a ten inch tumor in his
small intestine. A big ass mass. When Mom
said over twenty five centimeters, my heart sank.

It had to come out no matter what.

It was the biopsy that loomed.

They could only access the front of what I imagined in
my minds eye to be a malformed and hairless rodent.

Benign. So far so good.

Still, the doctors told us, these types of rodents
always turned malignant and it had to come out.
Otherwise, it would metastasize and the world would tilt.

The first surgery, a laparoscopy, went routinely. They took the bald rodent and lymph nodes.

Routine. No big deal.

Subsequent biopsy was negative. Thanks be to the powers that be.

A few days and things began to turn. No appetite.
Not passing anything, even gas. Pain. A few more
days, keep feeding him said the surgeon. We all agreed. A
decision we would all come to regret.

Because his stomach’s cargo had no other road to
travel, he began to vomit violently. Bring him they
said. A second far more invasive surgery they said.

My sister, rockstar that she is, spent nights with my
father and worked during the day. She runs marathons
you know. I’m pretty sure she could kick my ass.

My sister’s husband, a man I respect, admire and
adore, lost his mother just suddenly enough to be
cruel, barely two months ago.

Yet he came.

My father’s best friend besides his bride of fifty two years, a man who once bit another man’s finger off
in a fight, is a man named Pat. He fretted over my old man like a stoic woman.

His other best friend is a three legged dog he inherited from his oldest grandson. Her name is Billy Jean.

The only thing he fears is anything at all happening
to someone he loves. This shit happening to him now
is Fisher Price. He’s merely waiting it out.

I’ve witnessed his bravery before. All of five foot
six, he’d go after the biggest fucker in the room and
then kick his ass. He’d already lost an eye in a
barfight before I was even born. A concrete
foreman and somewhat of a legend in his local labor
union.

A legend because he’d out work you, out drink
you, maybe kick the shit out of you and then be a
perfect gentleman to your wife.

Both eyes were black for my sister’s wedding photos.

That brand of bravery was foolish, compared to
what I see now.

I am so very grateful for how tough he is. Two
surgeries in the space of a few weeks. The second of
them elaborately invasive. We’re talking opened wide
up and disembowled. Crazy amounts of pain.

He smiles and tells you about the turd he just
dropped.

I am in awe of this man’s courage and life force.

We talked politics in the dark hours before dawn. We
talked about how the better a candidate is, the less
chance he has.

We laughed about how special it was for a father and
son to share the moment of his first post surgical
crap.

My mother. Everyday she tells me, makes an Italian
soda. In a tall glass with an elbow straw, she mixes
ice, sugar free cherry syrup, club soda and Mocha Mix.

I tried it. It was quite good. Tonight I poured a
healthy amount of grenadine in to a diet Pepsi. It’s
working.

Today was his first full day home. I literally slept
all day.

Can’t go down Endmunds or up Nye. Viking is
completely out of the question and so is Lompa. I’m
gonna need to stop in somewhere. Have a nap. See
what’s up. I’m no longer from around here.

Small chunk of a nightmare. Sorry.

I drove the first half. Through the high country
beginning with Topaz Lake, past Mono Lake and over the
Sierras down into Bishop. After that, The Fish drove
and I was able to gawk at the southern end of the
Sierra Mountain Range as it conducted it’s daily
finale with the impossible jaggedness of Mt. Whitney
as the sun sank behind.

I came home to a Christmas Tree where there hadn’t
been one. To a clean house where there had been a
disgusting one. To gifts wrapped in shiny paper. Oh
my.

Sort of an epilogue:

He’s pooping. All systems are go. Sat at the kitchen counter today and watched a little TV. Tam, Todd and the kids came as well as cousins Derek and Marlow. They had Christmas.

The canine tripod named Billy Jean is back. My father’s favorite underdog has returned.

Sometimes I feel like my life will walk away from me
if I let it.

Drinks for my friends.

Tonight on TV:

First time I’ve watched in weeks it seems.

Stewart owns another analysis of candidates particularly
when making fun of ABC for focusing on Kucinich’s
wife. It was odd, He focused on her hotness, with the
subtle implication that America is not ready for a
woman like this as first lady.

I’ve said the same thing.

Doesn’t she have a tongue ring?

Are we starting to take my little paste eater seriously?

Before that, Katie Couric talked about Leona Helmsley.
I understand that she was a cunt and that she was
very philanthropic. Obviously I never met her but she
just looked and acted like a miserable ugly woman.

Leona Helmsley was the epitome of what money can do to ugly. Amplify it. Her grin was a collagen softened rictus. She was the fucking Grinch. She was Cruella DeVille. Who honestly gives a mad fuck that she took the dirt nap. Fools and family.

Moving on. Then I saw a movie trailer and apparently Kevin Bacon is revisiting De Niro circa Taxi Driver. Looks cool though.

And the Halloween movie has a pretty cool trailer. The first one was a classic.

A few minutes into the Colbert Report and even though he’s funny, I’m annoyed.

Pause.

I’m a ram’blin guy.
Apostrophe, blin.

So one day a few months back I’m in the piss trailer
out in the warehouse taking my afteroon
constitutional. No air conditioning. I finish, wash
my hands and wipe the sweat off the my
neckhead and forehead.

I hear the unmistakable whelp of infant kitties.

Rick, our fearless leader, discovered four when taking
out the lunch trash. Found a box and carried them in.

He’s good like that.

I emerge to discover Timmy washing filthy week old
lumps of feline varmint in the sink of the piss trailer next to the
one I just came out of. Everyone else stands around
talking about what should be done.

I was kinda damaged by their appearance. They were in a bad way.

Today she is a silky sleek black medium sized kitten
with a spiderweb trailing from her left ear past her
shoulder like a stringy snot. She’s simultaneously
cautious and fearless. Adventurous but respectful.
She has the longest tail I’ve ever seen on a domestic
cat.

She’s the epitome of adorable and I do adore her.

Her eyes are almost orange and she’s figuring me and the Gurry out pretty fast while living the ultra care free lifestyle of a pampered kitten.

Without a doubt the Gurry rocks the alpha female.
Hissing and growling with plenty of ears flat stinkeye.

On that day her eyes weren’t even open and she looked
like she’d bathed in used motor oil. She appeared the weakest.

I was most worried most about her, but The Fish bottle fed them and
massaged their special bits to get them to pee. One of the four failed, thankfully not her.

They were then named Sumo, Spider and Bedhead by the Fish.

As of tonight, Bedhead resides with me and The Gurry.
Much to the consternation of the Gurry.

Bedhead’s eyes are like precious stones sparkling on a jewelers
cloth.

All good kitties strut. This one spent the day in the
Gurry’s super secret hiding place deep inside the walk
in closet. I think this is a pretty awesome move on
the part of Madame Bed Head.

The Gurry spent the day on the stove.

She’s getting tons of love. Both of them.

On my right, Bedhead plays and dances. On my left The
Gurry watches while she softens. Methinks it will be
ok.

Cats are the shit.

Drinks for my friends.

I’m pretty sure nougat is that stuff underneath the
peanuts and caramel in a Snickers bar. I just saw a
commercial with a cutaway of an actual Snickers bar.

Cutaways rock. Remember those ones of the Nina the
Pinta and the Santa Maria? Or a submarine? Remember
those life size plastic torsos with removable organs?

Anyway.

Everybody ok?

Good.

I like soup. The trortilla soup at CPK blows my skirt
up. Today I had the soup and the mixed green salad
with pears and walnuts. For five bucks I added
gorganzola AND shrimp.

I sat at the bar.

I had a glass of Nobilo sauvignon blanc.

I read the La Weekly and Valley Beat or whatever it’s
called. I wondered about all the pot clinics busted
this week and the ubiquitous ads they had already paid
for.

Prior to that I dropped off my preamp with a bad
capacitor and a ridiculously expensive CD player at
the house of my audio dealer for repair. I also go
to therapy and wine tastings.

I’m one metrosexual that can kick yer fuckin ass.

I love going to this guys house. We turned out the
lights in the kitchen and watched the commie capacitor
arc in my naked preamp.

The Fish thinks we engage in dick mingling.

He can be a little cranky and he admonished me for not
knowing that preamp tubes don’t need to be biased.

Then we went down to the listening room. You should
see this room.

I’m a former studio rat and I liked my control room
cold and dark-the better to see all the pretty lights
on all the pretty gear and for me to stay alert.

Being the geek that I am, I’m always aware immediately
upon entering a room that’s had some acoustic
treatment. No weird reflections and an overall
anechoic effect. Odd harmonics at a minimum, you know.

Then there’s the gear. There’s a tube power amp on
the floor that I swear looks like a small block V8.
Four tubes exposed in their sockets on either side at
a forty five degree angle. Power chords as thick as
your wrist snake around the wooden floor.

Angular, pretty slabs of sophisticated electronics and really ugly stuff that wouldn’t be out of place in a mid twentieth century typing pool.
Like that ad agency where Darrin from Bewitched worked.

Dali Megalines, beautiful cabinetry, at least eight
feet tall, like fifteen drivers in each side. Ribbon
tweeters flanking what looks to be six inch cones
all the way down.

You should see these fucking speakers.

Elliot played me some Janis Ian on vinyl once on those
Dalis. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d
ever heard in my life. A gorgeous recording, rendered
three dimensional with all the texture and nuance my
brain had the capacity to distinguish. Awesome.

I love sound. I used to get paid for making it. I
own a pair of Dalis. Not the eight footers though.

Before that I got a haircut.

The same woman has been cutting my hair for almost
twenty years. There was a couple handfuls of Carson
City hopefuls in this big city back in the day and she
cut us all.

I’m the last one.

I see her once a month. I’d prefer every three weeks
but she’s semi retired and has two kids. She once
told me that “a vacation is a drink in your hand and
something pretty to look at”.

We talk about politics, who I’m banging if anyone, the
last time she was “on the pot”, whatever. I adore
her. I wonder if she knows how much I like getting my
hair cut in that bustling little shop.

Every once in awhile I show up hungover. Before she’s
done she let’s me know that she knows. Her name is
Suzanne. She’s a very good woman.

Before that I made time to read, have a smoke and
people watch at the Starbucks across the street.

There are two adorable and petite young barristas, one
white and one black, that always try to have my venti iced
coffee and venti iced water at the register by the
time I make it there to pay.

Before that I looked on craigslist for cool furniture;
I scored an awesome coffee table once. After that I sent
messages to a few hookers in hopes they’d write me
back.

I took a shower.

I woke up around nine but had seven minute dreams for
the next hour between mashings of the snooze button.
I only set an alarm cause I had to get a goddamn
haircut.

Your government is lying to you about everything.

Drinks for my friends.

Tonight’s offering was gonna be this horror piece I’ve been working on, but instead it’s a conversation between me and my pal Timmy. I actually cut and pasted it for you because I’m a loser.

TIMMY:
i need hooch im startin to shake over here and my teeth are yellow whitish i need em purple …STAT.
im gonna go drink some cough syrip

ME:
Actually, just went through my stash, and I have no Pejut merlot. I think that box in my office has some. It’s right inside the door-let’s check tommorrow.

TIMMY:
good im out of nyquil

ME:
Dude, just steal some from the 7-11.

TIMMY:
stealing is wrong

ME:
Who told you that?

TIMMY:
the bible. and jesus aint no liar he says thats bad to but i here fucking a virgin girl in the pooper is ok by him and he turns water into wine …hero

ME:
You know, he’s my kinda guy. He cavorted with whores.

TIMMY:
so does that mean there are whores at church?
maybe ive been looking at this religion shit all wrong
i love jesus

ME:
Of course you do my son. Get thee to to the services on Sunday. Seek the harlots. You’ll have to shower and that t-shirt you wear for weeks on end won’t fly.

TIMMY:
hey i shower and i change my t-shirt daily the pants kinda stay the same for weeks but fuck it my legs dont sweat htat much and it aint like im free ballin..im church material damn it . amen

ME:
Yes my son, you are. I gotta get a towel for my passenger seat, remind me. Least you’ve stopped pickin yer nose so much.

TIMMY:
get a towel for your passenger seat. there i reminded you . and i pick my nose all day at work while conteplating what a grape nut is so by the time i get in your car im out of boogers and i still dont know what the hell a grape nut is there are no nuts in grapes yet you can buy boxes full of the fucking things it makes no sence .what the fuck is a grape nut

ME:
Nevermind. They’re for smart people. I’m gonna make you wash your hands before the ride home from now on.

Think harder about breakfast foods like Pop Tarts or Fruity Pebbles. You won’t be nearly as confused. Concentrate on the various iterations of the now ubiquitous Egg McMuffin.

Better yet, have coffee. Helps ya poop.

TIMMY:
dude are you speaking english? what the hell man.
pop tarts are mear pastries though if you take a frosted one and stuff it in your toaster and tape the button trigger thing down 4-5 foot flames will shoot out the top of your toaster ,try it go and hit up a thrift store for a toaster and grab an extention cord and some tape and dot forget the frosted poptarts i like strawberry ..then make your neighbors say “do you smell burning poptarts?”

what the hell is a grape nut

ME:
Ok. Here’s the deal. Grape Nuts have been around forever and they’re called that because they were sweetened with sugar from grapes. Um, there was this guy, Euell Gibbons who did the commercials in the 70’s. I think he looked like Orville Redenbacher.

So, let it go. These things are so easily solved. See?

Now, we should get together and put Estes “D” size model rocket engines in a thrift store toaster.

I can fund this if we do it at your place.

Did you know you can make a bomb from non-dairy creamer? It’s flammable as fuck.

TIMMY:
no we need hot wheels match box cars and rocket engines ive done it before when i was a kid ,almost set a feild on fire ,good times
ah ha grape sugar who would have thought.

so how does on make a bomb from non dairy creamer ,do i just dump it in a coffee can with a wick and duct tape the hell out of it light it and run like hell?
if so im doing it

ME:
Yeah, that’ll work. Buy the cheapest powder you can find. I’m thinking Costco. Disclaimer though, I’ve never tried that, I only know it burns fast, I’ve set alot of that stuff on fire in recording studios.

You gotta find that combustive power versus strength of container ratio. You know, the more volatile fuel combined with the a shell of higher structural integrity always yields more bang for your pyromaniacal tendencies.

Don’t know where store bought NDC fits the math.

Should be pretty fucking combustible.

I tell ya, the idea of rocket engines in a toaster has a certain allure. Can we leave this possibility on the table? I’m thinking we should serve malt liquor with an entree of this nature.

TIMMY:
im just gonna do some trial and error with the non dairy bomb and eventualy i will blow some thing up.

if there is beer involved we can stuff a rocket engine in a toaster ,microwave ,stuffed animal and then when were good and drunk we can tape one fin to them and just set them off and see who gets hit .fun i tell you

ME:
Done that shootin them fuckers off random thing. Ended up with huge bruise on my thigh the shape of Italy, Then it got infected somehow.

If we get some malt liquor and some whiskey, I might be up for that. And since we’re older than 14, let’s get some safety goggles before we start drinking.

My old man’s only got one eye and your’s has a not-a-leg sooo……….

TIMMY:
good call on the whiskey and the goggles is a good idea too. rocket engines are fun

how the hell does a bruise get infected ,is that when they turn yellow/green cuz ive had that happen a shitload of times usually on the really big bruises like the one i got from doing a high speed sideways kinda bellyflop on a bench before i moved out here, that sucked, damn skateboard left me at the worst time

ME:
I’m good like that ’cause I’m older and smarter, more experienced and probably better looking.

All I know is it turned yellow and oozed some puss but it was kinda clear and I never got a fever or anything.

You do this kinda shit on a skateboard on purpose and you just bought and aspire to drive a fucking car.

TIMMY:
Body: i’ll give you older…the rest well ..i dont wanna hurt your feelings

that sounds like a bruise burn i get those alot to i also get alot of blistered blisters from burns those are a treat.

and the idea was to slide across the bench but i landed on it wrong and the skateboard left me hanging.
damn car i gotta go to the dmv next week and get myself mobiler than the other four wheels

ME:
Don’t get all brave on me cause we’re bouncing off a satellite.

Yep, there was burnt flesh next to my young sack.

I got nothin for your blisters on blisters except to make sure your using the right ointment and I worked at KFC. I smelled my flesh a handful of times a day in that place. Topical antibiotic?

350 degree fat under pressure with valves everywhere.

We made greasy enviroment destroying heart disease causing chicken.

You blow glass. Very well.

Too bad about everything else about you.

TIMMY:
Body: brave? no truthful yes

how many fast food joints did you work at ?i worked at one and said fuck that i aint doing that again.
every here that story about the dumb ass that pissed in a fryerlator ,you can image how that went

why did you have hot fat under pressure? ive only seen it sitting in a vat

and yeah every thing else is kinda a shame

ME:
Shuddup and hold my soup fuckhead.

Just two food service occupations. KFC was like the fucking military and Der Weiner Schnitzel was like the Stripes/Animal House version. I was in charge and I ran one loose motherfuckin ship.

KFC that’s how they cook that shit. Big hydraulic steel rack lowers into a boiling vat of fat, oil and viscera, seals, and you crank up the pressure.

It was crazy. We polished those fuckers like they were fire engines. Peddled home in the dead of winter with my fucking pants frozen to my legs.

So I became a record producer.

At least you stopped picking your nose.

I’m out. Gotta make a phone call.

TIMMY:
kfc is crazy

later

I love that she knows and understands me. I adore
that she talks to me, despite not understanding a good deal of what she
goes on about. She’s a little crazy, I’m thinking
bipolar. One minute she’s cooing while warm and soft,
the next she’s all sinew, teeth and nails.

There are times I become olfactorily desensitized. My
affection for her is such that I’m able to tolerate
the odor of tootsie rolls that look like almond roca when
coated in litter, and the most pungent piss of any
domesticated animal. Occasionally I get a whiff when
I’m writing and I pour more sand in the shit box.

Then, some hot ass backsweat day on the drive home, I
open my front door to a bitchslap of feline excreted
ass and vagina molecules.

I mean, If I can smell that shit, hamfisted pun
intended, then I am inhaling that shit. So I put down
my shit and grab a Glad bag and some Lysol. I finish
washing the shitbox in the shower with a generous
amount of bleach. I sweep and mop the area and wash
the linens.

She herself, always smells very pleasant. “Kitty
Perfume” The Fish calls it. The Bean always smelled
delightful.

I leave newspapers on the floor of the bathroom for
her to have her way with.

I once sprung a leak and left a thin line of
catshitsand down the hall of my building. What am I
gonna do? Take the fucking Dyson out there? Are there even outlets?
Call a tech?

Having said that, I’m more than grateful she wordlessly
consented to shit and piss only in the designated shit and piss
box.

She won’t let a single rug lay flat, she’s an
attention whore, she often won’t speak to me in the
mornings. She’s shameless about pointing out that
it’s Sunday and that means Fancy Feast.

She’s an agile pain in the ass when I’m packing
luggage, she’s always up in my business when I’m
actually doing something but she’s pretty cool about
just hanging when I’m writing. She probably just
likes the quiet.

She picks my bamboo rug apart and distributes the thin
planks around the living room. She’s very funny. she
randomly gets all Halloween on me in an effort to
start a chase.

She likes to sit under things and stare/frown at me.
She rarely speaks during these episodes, when she does
it’s to admonish me.

The Bean engaged in similiar behavior but usually from
on high.

Otherwise she almost always sits facing away from me.

Her name is “The Gurry”, Girly Girl, Swirly Girl and
Girlfriend. Potempkin, Great Googely Moogely and
Fester Bester Tester. Benson & Hedges, Madame Crowley
and Mint Julip. Anyway…………….

She comes to bed with me every night and leaves as
soon
as I fall asleep.

She comes back before the sun does. I feel her nose
on my hand or my shoulder. She settles within arms
length and says a quiet hello.

I weigh everything in the most empirical light I can
muster. It is then that I have a snack and six drinks
or so.

Somewhere in there I begin to write. If I
don’t, by the next morning, my neglect typically
forces a course of action upon me.

Either that or whatever it is, festers for at least another day.

Once in a bathroom at The Studio, an Asian gentleman
pronounced the word lobster as “robster” to me. He
was very excited.

Trust me, it was all I could do.

In the very same bathroom I witnessed Eddie Murphy
wash his hands like a man with a monkey on his back. Manic. I entered, pissed and washed thoroughly. He scrubbed away the whole time, barely looking at me.

I pissed next to everybody in there. I also scrubbed
it with a toothbrush when I fell out of favor.

One of my best friends had to crawl under a stall door
to get Joe Walsh off the throne. It’s an excellent
story.

Someday I’ll share the tale of The Magic Booger. It was right there on the brass handle. For years.

Let me just say this. Ha!

Anyway.

I’m thinking it’s impossible to effectively break rules until you’re intimate with them. I believe it’s the responsibility of those who would violate the most mundane to the most sacrosanct , to first immerse themselves in the discipline that nurtured their buoyancy.

It is incumbent upon the rebel to understand what he
hopes to subvert.

All the best and brightest, at the very least, have colored outside the lines.

They know the inside of the box like the backs of
their hands. I imagine they all begin to grow bored with
it at one point or another.

It’s evident in every artform and occupation.

Here I began to make a list, and gave up. Way too many examples of genius. Musicians, scientists, writers and philosophers and the way they overlap.

The box matters because it divides the inside from the outside.

The essence of genius is creativity. It’s impetus is
inspiration. Along the way, the discipline of what
the box contains yields to the infinity outside of it.
It becomes an inculcation all it’s own.

Those outside the box must still reach inside, yet,
those inside have no imperative to reach, or even look
out.

May the sun shine on those that bother to even look around.

Drinks for my friends.

I just now remembered that one day, five or seven
years ago, a friend unknowingly demonstrated that had no idea how to pet a cat. He patted and stroked The Gurry awkwardly, without any
rythm. This, despite the fact that he had two of his own. It
was obvious that the pleasure of the cat was not even
in the periphery of the moment for him.

For reasons unrelated, I now think of this guy as a complete douchebag.

I’ve never been able to write a damn thing in
longhand. The tempo is all wrong. I must have a
keyboard. Plus, I loathe the physical act of writing.
Filling out a check or the return address on an
envelope represents a major pain in the ass to me.
I hate deposit slips.

As a kid I was fascinated by the maginfying effect of
water. I kept all manner of things submerged in
glasses and jars full of water. Rocks, marbles,
cereal box toys, coins……………

I can actually see sounds. What a cool thing it is to
have made records and then listen to them.
“Swallowing colrs of the sounds I hear” -Ozzy

I used to think most people weren’t stupid, they just
failed to pay attention. Now I’m not so sure. I
catch myself not paying attention and I’m not stupid.

The difference between Rosie and Paris is that Rosie
stands for something. It matters not how foolish or wise.
Paris is held aloft by our collective gasp, whether it
be in disgust, dismay or disbelief.

Dick Cheney is the most evil motherfucker to ever SERVE AT THE PLEASURE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. This is because he has never given a mad fuck about a single one of us. I fucking hate him and his little dog Dumbya too.

Sorry. Yay team.

Lewis Black on Stewart just said that a fake news show on Fox should show real news. I love this guy. I love that Stewart won’t let the latest Cheney hubris go. Way to go my little Jack Russel Terrier.

Coors Light has labels that turn white mountains blue when the bottle reaches an acceptable temperature for consumption. Genius.

CNN 360 with Andy C has been rockin the enviromental tip of late. Good for them. Andy himself endeavors to be remembered for never having spake the name of America’s favorite heiress. You gotta love that.

By the way, the last five or seven blogs I’ve posted have all included records I produced, recorded and or mixed in the ‘tell us what you’re listening to’ section. I used to be cool.

My shrink and I have had numerous protracted conversations about social networking via the internet and my level of participation in said. She’s careful to focus on the role it plays in my overall social sphere and she never strays into the pejorative.

It’s days like today that provide the most petite of ephinanies. I understand her emphasis, now that I cannot send or recieve messages on myspace and I want to kill harmless birds with a fork.

I honestly feel a low frequency shittiness right now.

Myspace is a pretty vital communication conduit for me. I interact with a lot of people every day on it. I’ve made good friends, rediscovered old ones and even found hot women to make out with and buy dinner for. I’m somewhere over twenty two thousand hits on my blogs.

It’s like I bit my tongue or pissed myself. It won’t go away.

And oh my, it is indeed darkest before the dawn. The lord taketh away and he giveth. The storm was violent and it did so raineth and bloweth on the land, as to have us believe our demise was imminent. Yet at the last possible moment, when my streets were awash and my infants in danger of being swept away, the clouds did part and the sun did more than showeth.

Seems like my goddamn mail is finally working again.

Takes pistol out of mouth and places it on table pointing away.

Drinks for my friends.

You know, even if you’re deliberately lazy, like me,
life continues to rush ever faster. With more weight
and steam, down slick rails towards inevitable
conclusions.

At the very same time it pauses without stopping.
Everything races along like a jet on a sled and then there’s a simultaneous
cessation of all activity so as to allow “The Piledrive”.

The Piledrive serves to provide at least one, if not several issues
to drive you mad for the day or perhaps, insane for life.

And it all manifests while your pursuing the land speed record.

When people get on your nerves, they’re vying for a
place in line at the controls of The Piledriver.

You know what I mean.

The people I picture, well, I wouldn’t mind seeing hip
failure in most of them.

Some of them, I kinda like, but were they handicapped, I doubt I’d be sad.

Sometimes mere objects make the list.

I have two rings on my keychain and nothing else but
keys. None of that random pointless detritus that
occupies most people’s key collection. One is house
keys and one is work/other. I can’t fucking stand it
when a key from one gets caught through the ring of
the other. How does that happen if I have to take the
fucking thing apart to fix it? It literally defies
the laws of gravity.

Another example, probably just as wierd: If you’re a
guy, no matter what, every once in awhile after you
take a squirt, you end up with a little moisture.
This is always well after you’ve shaken it like a
polaroid and closed up shop.

You may even experience a little trouser spotting.
When this happens to me, I really dig into my work to
give it time to dry.

When I piss my pants, I tie my sweatshirt around my
waste and announce I’ve got lunch with a client. Then
I drop a few mints into my crotch and have a nice solo
afternoon meal. A well worn urinal cake works in a
pinch.

If I’m out of town, I may have talc in my briefcase.

I really hate it when I blow bad air in my office and
someone comes in with a question. The whole time I’m
wondering if they can smell it. And then I’m
convinced they’re wondering if I know they can smell it.

When I shit my pants I tie my sweatshirt around my
waste…….baha! Announce I’ve got lunch with a
cleint, go home, shower and change my pants.

When I kill someone, I wear a jumpsuit, I prefer
orange, and wash up real thorough afterwards.
Then I dispose of all crime related attire.

When I drive a race car, all bets are off.

When I write, I literally need to set fire to my
brain. I’m not sure how it works, but I must manage
to light the fuse. Otherwise, nothing. The duck
quacks and there is no echo.

Sometimes, the old hot
poker shoved up the olfactory organ becomes necessary.

When I pet The Gurry, I’m looking to make her purr,
satiate my need for softness and innocence, and mask
the noise of The Piledriver.

Gin is an efficacious instrument for this
malaise as well.

A strange brand of lucidity reared it’s pretty head
upon combining the two powerful principals, booze and
prose. Ever greater doses of both tend to remand the
very idea of The Piledriver to recess in unlit
alcoves that can barely break for air when the
early morning mind movies that are dreams come.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That is to say, bullshit of the purest variety rises to the spigot like drunken vomit and Del Taco with all the force of a firehose and the next thing I know I’ve painted my entire immediate diorama with a fetor of extravagance, fabrication and hyperbole.

Ha! Guess what?

Sometimes it smells pretty good.

If you like my blogs, now you know. If you don’t and you’re reading this, well, you do.