is ridiculously hot.

What we have here, is a letter. A forged letter. A letter penned by our CIA at the behest of our White House.

The letter was intended to allow Dick-in-Bush, both hands empty of WMD, to save some face. Oh, and to continue propagating the fear so masterfully wielded ’til now.

This, after unilaterally invading a sovereign state that posed no threat to us. The neocons were looking to avoid the visual of nothing but empty sand running through their fingers.

Of course, there’s the eighty billion dollar oil surplus in Iraq. Wanna bet who gets that? I bet we won’t hear shit about it after tommorrow.

There are laws on the books forbidding any American intelligence agency from distributing false propaganda or disinformation in any territory controlled by the United States including, of course, all fifty states.

A guy named Tahir Jalil Habbush, chief of Saddam’s intelligence.

A Pulitzer winning author who wrote the first real book detailing events behind the curtain of Dick-in-Bush, “The Price of Loyalty” (January 2004), about Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. Good book. The tip of the iceberg.

He wrote another book. It’s better than the other one. “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism”

What is known:
The Bush administration ordered the CIA to fake a hand written letter from this guy Tahir Jalil Habbush to Saddam hisself. The letter details all things that never actually occured. It was meant to be proof that Hussein was pursuing the production of nuclear weapons AND that there was a direct connection between Iraq and al-Qaida.

The “memo” was dated July 1, 2001. It was written late in 2003. It says that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta “received training in Baghdad for “attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy” but also carefully noted the arrival of a “shipment” from Niger via Libya, presumably of uranium yellowcake, the sole export of that impoverished African country.” -salon.com

It’s complete bullshit. Beyond an elaborate falsehood, it is an egregiously distorted fabrication with nothing but a symbiotically enhanced affair between avarice and malice as impetus and catalyst. I may have just puked in my mouth a little.

Man, I hate these guys.

This all happened on George Tenet’s watch. He, along with Franks and Bremer, recieved the Presidential Medal of Freedom. These two facts make Tenet a pock-faced scumbag.

Ladies and Germs, this is your government. This is your government on greed and lust of all things power.

At this point, I’d like to invite any backward ass Republican to explain to me what concerns he or she the most. Just what, beyond this little snippet of potentially embarrassing information, might cause unrest among you?

Is it oil?
Sorry, they fucked that up.

Is it the economy?
Sorry, they fucked that up too.

The enviroment?
Bad news boys and girls.

Health care?
Ehem. Whoops?

National Security?
Fuck me.

The entire geopolitical dynamic from debts and deficits to human rights and respect?
Um. Fuck. Me.

Drinks for my friends.

I find myself again in position to beg your indulgence for the day’s most prominent issue.

See, what I can’t quite digest is the idea that somehow Our Man’s biggest liability has become his charisma. The great unwashed have been convinced to be suspicious of Obama’s incredible gravity.

They pay no time or mind to why he’s in possession of such copious magnetism. What the hopeful see in him. They have yet to ask themselves exactly why he is so special.

Instead, they choose to impugn him for it. Millions of knees jerking in unison.

Ignorant fucks.

Why?

Fear.

Fear of the unfamiliar. Fear of anything they have been too afraid to attempt to understand.

Cowardice. The real sissies in America are the intellectually incurious. They hide behind it to be judgmental and intolerant.

Fuck me if that isn’t silly. Ignorance as shield is no excuse.

An open mind does not make one more vulnerable. It does make one far more likely to be enlightened.

Like compulsory probing by my tongue of a sore in my mouth, I can’t seem to help checking things twice.

I don’t understand why other people don’t do that. It’s simple. And the world is a huge ass canker.

Maybe these idiots aren’t suffering from the advanced, potentially cancerous scurvy Dick-in-Bush have left us liberals with. It’s a conspiracy!

It’s either that or they’re really stupid. Or both.

If you’re considering voting for McCain, I don’t doubt you’re among at least half of the people discussed in this blog and you may just be a complete idiot.

After all, I hear they can make “pancakes tapdance”. -Paul Mooney

Drinks for my friends.

Forgive me for indulging yet again in the topic of the most singular contest of the day, but the news is a little slow and I needed to point out that McCain is waltzing with the Devil and he sucks at dancing in three.

Doubtfire accuses Our Man of naivete by disparaging his advice to keep your car properly tuned and your tires at pressure.

It makes sense. Three or four percent savings off the top. Immediately. Good answer.

It is the most honest short term solution that has been uttered thus far. Like sixteen cents a gallon right now.

The Bootlicker would mock our man for this. Passing out tire pressure gauges with “Obama’s Energy Plan” printed on them. Clueless dickhead.

Our man had this to say, “It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant,” -CNN

Nice.

McCain likes to talk about Obama not favoring nuclear power. A “zero emission” energy resource, he’d have you believe.

Bullshit. We still have no idea what to do with the waste. It occurs to me that the most indefectibly toxic, and therefore deadly waste known to humans, waste we have no place to put, renders the zero emission argument way bogus.

Until we figure out what to do with nuclear waste, it’s a spectacularly dumb idea.

The pasty little bastard would also have you believe because Our Man opposes anything but the most limited offshore drilling, he’s an elitist who doesn’t feel your pain.

See, here’s the deal, no matter how much oil they find off our coasts, it won’t amount to dick for a decade and not fuck all even then. McCain was in opposition to more domestic drilling than had already been approved until last month, when he changed his mind.

That’s “flip flopped” in the accepted journalistic vernacular.

Guess what happened next?

His campaign contributions from big oil went up by five hundred percent. Oil is down about fifteen percent as of today. Go figure.

He released an ad today by the way. In that ad, nestled in a basket among half a dozen other spurious proclamations, is the assertion that he has and will continue to stand up to big oil.

This guy is full of shit. He’s got nothing so he’s starting to lie. He’s not here to fuck around. He tossing tactical nuke sized lies. Not mere falsehoods that smear his opponent. No. Lies that compromise his very own bad self. He’s a fool and he’s pitiful.

He’s a joke.

Beware The Ides of March Mr. McCain, lest ye be subject to the tyrannicide your would be predecessor and former adversary has so far escaped. His peril and that of his surrounding is far from decided.

Drinks for my friends.

What we have here……is a huge celebrity. Worldwide. Global. Looks like it’s a problem. Our Man, by virtue of charisma, an absolutely uncanny ability to communicate, to orate a fresh and hopeful message, not just to Americans, but a good number of this planet’s citizenry, may have doomed himself for being so goddamn adept at showing us there is a better way.

Two hundred thousand plus showed up in Berlin.

What a shame, that so many of have grown so cynical as to stare so arrogantly into the mouth of this gift horse.

What a shame, that upon finally being presented with the real deal, so many many of us can’t help but be convinced that he must be an elitist. An arugula eating snob because he talks to the people of the world like adults.

I confess, I like arugula a lot. My favorite is a dish with perfectly grilled polenta, a thick vinegarette and a generous amount of gorgonzola. I get it to go and put a little Bob’s on top when I get home.

With the exception of the Bob’s, the other ingredients would probably lead most of the great unwashed to assume I’m an enthusiastic pole smoker. Were I to mention that it pairs well with a nice blanc de blancs, well then, I’m sure they’d be willing to assume the worst, that it’s not the only salad I’m willing to toss. Whatever.

They would be right. I don’t imbibe penis, but have no problem with those that deign to do so, regardless of gender. It goes without saying, I encourage and applaud the females. I am a progressive individual in both thought and deed.

I love sushi and crave caviar.

I believe health care should be free or at least affordable for the people of the richest country on earth. I think we should stop shaking our fists at countries that disagree with us. In fact, I really would prefer that we stopped bombing all the brown people. After all, the back of the most formidable military in the history of the world has been rent asunder by that very policy.

We should do our best to stop sucking our planet dry and instead utilize what the universe offers for free. The sun and the wind and the tide.

Know what else I like? Risotto. When prepared with care, it is like the most delicately textured pasta imaginable, in the unlikeliest pellet form. Mushrooms. Get it with mushrooms and aged parmesan.

I think we should legalize most drugs. Tax and regulate them to eliminate the criminal infrastructure and mitigate the astounding numbers of incarcerated that we pay for on top of the ridiculous “war on drugs”. On the other hand, it may suprise you to know that I’m thinking maybe anyone dealing meth or in the business of propagating it, might be better off dead.

Ever had a perfectly BBQ’d pork chop with a really good zinfandel?

You know what really chaps my ass? The erosion of our civil rights and liberties. FISA. Posse Comitatus. The Patriot Act. Amendments One and Four. All of the aforementioned have been severely and egregiously advanced in the last seven years while we voluntarily popped our thumbs into our asses and looked the other way because we were scared.

The most successful society in the history of humankind allowed itself to be frightened by it’s own so thoroughly, it’s literally frozen at the wheel. A deer in the headlights.

Both. Ha!

Try this:
Find a place with good, thin shoestring fries. Squeeze a lemon over them. Apply salt, preferably from the sea. Dip in mayonnaise and/or ketchup. I’m not a big beer drinker but most beers work well with this. Stick to lighter ones. Hefe weizen, pilsner and most authentic lagers work nicely.

I’m going to hold out two hands. You’ll need to pick one. Fair warning, in one hand is the very aggressive sale of fear and doubt. Let me know if you want me to tell you which hand it is.

I’ve started eating chili cheese fries. So far, Carl’s sets the bar.

I hear Cheney won’t be at the convention. Fuck me, that’s funny.

Drinks for my friends.

The day is quiet.

The day is warm.

Bright sun, though the forest floor is cool. I look at my feet, fascinated by the flotsam I’m crunching through. My boots are rugged. There’s a long knife on my belt. It’s the golden hour.

A few minutes go by and it’s wrong. It pulls at me. Foreboding.

I have no idea. More time passes.

Something is upside down.

Where am I going?

Where am I?

Find a rock to sit to think. Confused.

I don’t know why I’m here or where I am.

I take stock and seem to be allright.

I wear an elaborate pack with food and water and things I don’t immediately recognize or understand. Good news.

I’m left to wonder.

A bag of bricks slowly around my neck as I realize I don’t know my own name.

I don’t know who I am.

Panic floods. It gushes overwhelmingly through every corridor of reason in my head.

I’m as lost as can be.

I do not know my own name.

I don’t know where I am.

Anything I recall happened in the last thirty minutes.

No sign of my identity anywhere. No wallet. Nothing in anything I carry.

I have a gun. It’s heavy in my hand. The weight is reassuring. I have a box of bullets. It too is heavy in a way that comforts.

The knife on my hip has an impressive blade and a hollow handle. Tablets inside.

The sun sets and I have no idea why I’m here or who the fuck I am.

I gather stones and fuel to start a fire. Freeze dried scrambled eggs in a wafer thin skillet.

What is my name?

How can I not know?

I’m doing the best I can not to think about it. I feel familiar in my skin but that’s all. I hope, maybe, to wake up with a better idea of what’s happening. I unroll a sleeping bag filled with down and a thin pad for underneath.

I find some cigarettes. I guess I smoke. I light one. It’s good.

I realize I have no idea about the state of the world. This scares the shit out of me.

My dreams are filled with people I don’t know.

There’s blue kittens in an ancient wooden box, thick with dust and long abandonded cobwebs. Their eyes are gold and their fur is from turquoise to cobalt. I am in awe.

Among the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen or imagined.

Sheer grace of the twilight dance, I’m allowed to witness such beauty firsthand, despite it’s not existing, courtesy of the nocturne aided by a pale, butter fat moon.

Gorgeous Blue Kittens with gems of yellow fire for eyes.

As I sleep.

I can’t stand it. It just goes on and on.

Blatant.

Notwithstanding reason.

Geniuses and Jack O’ Lanterns.

The issue is this.

Abortion.

The right tries so hard to call it murder. Ahem.

It is far more nuanced and organic than that. They only do black and white.

Mother Earth will ultimately decide the the fate of humankind. She will be fine. She will prosper. The Earth does not need us. All the Earth needs is the goddamn Sun. Last I heard, the sun is gonna be around awhile.

Earth may decide that humans are no longer compatible with her goals. Her ideals. No longer congruent with her plan for survival. In a time not far from now, The Earth might shrug us humans off. She might just heat up and burn us out.

If she does this, She’ll have decided we do more harm than good.

If she does this, She’ll have decided to save her life and that of all her other inhabitants.

Who can blame her?

Maybe we’ve been tolerated thus far because we advanced so rapidly. We emerged as a species so very capable. So bright and creative. We made art and beauty while either reaching out with compassion and concern to everyone, or raping, bombing and killing every civilization in sight.

We stormed her peaks, plunged her depths and polluted her lungs. She’s seen us kill on a scale that is both awesome and terrifying. In a mere few thousand years, we developed the ability to destroy just about every life she births and nurtures.

She is impressed. Not in a good way.

Earth doesn’t need your language. You need hers. It’s not as simple as humans not understanding. It’s as ugly as humans refusing to understand. Willfull ignorance.

Mother Earth may choose to abort us. It is certainly her right and obviously within her power.

The Earth is a Mother and it is her prerogative.

Men have no business passing laws governing a woman’s reproductive rights.

Any of you at this point desiring to invoke God should just shut the fuck up. My God is The Earth. In precisely the same way you do not wish to hear about my God, I’m not interested in hearing about yours. Fuck off. I think your’s is stupider by far, than mine.

It is my right to enter into a decision with a woman about our pregnancy as opposed to allowing a religion manufactured from convenience dictate our direction without regard to our lives.

The comedy is this. You that have so much faith, so much conviction that we are acting counter to the wishes of your God, why are you so unwilling to let your God decide?

Why are you so zealous as to kill doctors to prevent us from committing this “sin”? After all, your God will sort us out, wont he? If you believe so absolutely, what are you so worried about?

Is your faith so weak as to force a question about your God’s ability to keep us heathens in check? A question profound enough to force your hand to take it upon yourself? You will say that we imprison others in society who commit murder. We even murder them. I say your definition of murder is flawed and you’re not equipped to judge.

You do your cause no favors by vehemently opposing such basic science as evolution and stem cell research. You force the hands of us with a modicum of common sense to look at you as retarded. Overly enthusiastic, euphorically fanatical, idiots.

Isn’t it your God that would deny us access to Heaven for using condoms?

Some people are stupid enough to believe contraception is a “sin”. This in a time when the world has way too many humans. Some people are just fucking stupid.

Abortions will occur. With or without your consent. The rich will have them no matter what laws you’re able to pass. The poor will suffer. Ill equipped to even bring a baby to term. Unable to afford any prenatal care. From a practical perspective, I’m just looking to keep the coat hangers out of it.

Drinks for my friends.

Doubtfire can’t help it.

Yesterday he stopped at a clinic in Bakersfied to have something removed.

Bakersfied?

To have something removed.

No worries.

“Bakerfield is a scumbag” -my Father

The media is all over his attack ads. CNN plays the one with Paris Hilton. Gasp. It’s all true. He’s the biggest celebrity in the world. He’s against offshore drilling and he’s gonna raise taxes.

All true.

The way I understand it, the world loves Our Man because he represents hope for a less unilaterally aggressive America and perhaps a more cooperative one. A smarter one. Less reckless. The world is weary of our retarded bull in it’s shop of very valuable things.

He opposes offshore drilling because it’s best hope is to be a band aid on a sucking chest wound sometime in the next decade. It’s an exruciatingly stupid way to treat a symptom. It does absolutely nothing for the problem and by the time it pays off, we better have a whole helluva lot more going on.

To wit and for purposes of reiteration, it’s really fucking stupid and pointless. Like finding change in the dryer eight years from now.

We may already be fucked from hell to breakfast. Nine ways to Sunday.

And yes, he will raise taxes. We are punk ass broke. At this point, if America sought to buy a house, she couldn’t qualify for a trailer. Maybe a tent from Costco. Listen carefully now, his stated intention is not to raise YOUR taxes. He’s going to take the tax cuts to the rich away. He says his intention is to shift the burden from the middle class. He says this because he understands that a robust middle class is key to a healthy economy, infrastructure, social equity and national security.

I’m not gonna stand here and guarantee his rhetoric, but let’s be honest, McCain doesn’t have dick. He’s foisting ads with Paris Hilton in them? The man is sweating profusely. You can’t see the actual moisture accumulating because it’s concentrated in the gluteal region.

In the audio trade we called it “buttsweat”.

He’s got nothing and he knows it.

Outmatched. Outclassed. Outsmarted.

At what point does a man as proud and accomplished as McCain step off? Walk away?

He can’t, of course.

The Republicans would implode entirely. Poor bastard. One of the last columns in a crumbling party. A party that asked for it. A party that bought and paid for it. Fools.

What I see is a man who understands he’s beaten. His opponent, clearly better than is he. He knows it. He’s lost the fair fight, unspoken rule being fists and feet only. Now he’s behind the dumpster reaching for a pipe to swing.

Sad.

I’d like to commend Stephen Colbert for acquitting himself with grace and talent, singing with CSN tonight while handling the high harmony of a four part, traditionally sung by Neil Young on the song “Teach Your Children “.

Way cool.

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.

Happy morning.

Oh, happy day.

So I’m experiencing some synchronicity with the Wachowski Brothers. Watched The Matrix for the first time. Then, V for Vendetta. Now there’s some Matrix sequel on. Keanu Reeves usually blows but they don’t seem to be burdening him too much with dialog in the Matrix franchise.

Clever stuff, imaginitive and the production is amazing. I’m a sucker for good science fiction. It’s puzzling to me that everyone in the movie can fight with a precision hitherto unseen but they can’t hit shit with an automatic weapon. There’s only so much kung fu without gravity I can take.

Is it just me or were William Gibson and Clive Barker way better fifteen or twenty years ago?

Everything excretes. All beings you’ve ever seen or can imagine, even stars, solar systems, galaxies and the universe itself, takes a dump.

Everytime I go in the kitchen after the sun sets, my youngest, a sleek black very petite feline who goes by the name of Beddy Beddy, follows me and yells at me for a treat. As I look down, her mouth opens and she looks at me and hollers right at me. When she visits me on the couch or bed, she likes to think it’s a suprise. She announces her arrival with a little pigeon trill. She slays me.

My oldest, a beautiful lazily quixotic calico, goes by the name of Swirly Girl or The Gurry, likes to leave the occasional steaming tootsie roll next to the shower when she’s not completely satisfied with current shitbox conditions. At her advanced age, it’s all she cares about. By the way, I only have two. With cat’s, you must have more than one.

I no longer give them three names. Turns out that was a curse.

Did you see the comment left by my friend about the end of my book?

“Nice Everclear reference at the end.
The world you created and lived in for your story is so claustrophobic, so evil, and so real. I feel like I’ve been bent over and stuffed into a box with one little air-hole stabbed into it by a rusty screwdriver. Just enough air and space to live, but not enough to thrive. Or escape.
Help.”

That made my fucking day.

Maybe now the the first draft of the novel is done I’ll start reading again. Books. Not just periodicals and blogs. Three weeks ago I bought Bugliosi’s book and McClellan’s and I haven’t cracked either one.

I live across the street from one of the better sushi joints in the Los Angeles Basin. I dropped thirty bucks today stuffing myself with albacore, salmon and Kirin. I went by myself so I read while I ate. I noticed a tiny, pale, nearly translucent bug doing erratic elipses on the bar. I studied it for a minute. Tiny. It’s eyes were the darkest thing on it’s body. Like a microscopic crustacean.

I flicked it and wiped my finger.

I can’t ever seem to figure out why shit goes wrong for certain people. My closest group of friends are all in the same shitstorm these days and they all seem to be complicit to one degree or another. I was a big part of the storm until we agreed it would be a good time for me to leave it.

I did it. I left. It was the smart thing to do.

I have chronic sleep apnea.

I’ve been thinking a lot about fresh tomatos, cottage cheese and avacados with sea salt and ground pepper.

I’ve pretty much stopped checking my mail.

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen but I doubt mine is worse than anyone else still breathing.

I adore Barney Fife.

George W. Bush is a punk ass bitch.

Drinks for my friends.

I doubt there’s another human being on the planet that could merely announce he would be there and have two hundred thousand Germans Show up in Berlin to hear what he has to say.

They can say he’s presumptuous. They’re saying it. Speaking like a President who is not yet a President. Looking like a President who is not yet President. Acting like a President.

Fuck them.

He is kicking ass worldwide. Understand, no way he could pull this off if he wasn’t whip smart, savvy and wise beyond wise. Our Man Has long held the official Brainspank Presidential endorsement but I’m here to tell you he’s over there making America proud with grace and dignity.

I hear he wasn’t sure how many he could draw in Germany. Can you imagine at all what it felt like taking the stage in front of two hundred thousand?

His speech was brilliant. Almost spooky to hear how far his voice was carried by successive amplified towers.

He’s in France tomorrow. That might be good.

I understand he’s not perfect. It’s been but a few weeks since I’ve written both angry and critical of him.

Having said that, the rest is true, he may very well be our last best hope. The best chance we have against my generation being second or third to last. Not because of war. But because of a lack of understanding that requires global participation when it comes to solving global problems. Enviromental problems. Poverty and waste. Fucking war.

Forgive my John Lennon moment.

I hear Doubtfire was at some burger stand or taco shack somewhere in the Midwest today. He may have told a joke.

All three network news anchors follow Our Man as he gets the Iraqi Prime Minister to endorse his plan for troop withdrawl.

If you’re McCain today, stepping out of the shower, what do you see when you look down? A dangling filbert, scarcely bigger than a clitoris.

You flick it for sport but the pod itself remains inert. This disappoints you but you weren’t anticipating a different result.

Woe is you John McCain.

I’m not sure how bad I can feel after your statement that Our Man would prefer to win an election at the expense of losing a war. That kind of talk makes you a punk ass bitch.

Where is your vanity? Your dignity?

You’re going to lose, your best option is to do it with a modicum of sincere decorum.

Mr. McCain, I believe you should grow now. Show us you understand just how bad things are and how bad they are about to be. Start telling the fucking truth. Participate and stop worrying whether you’ll be elected because it’s not going to happen. You know the truth. There was a time when you championed the truth. It is the only reason you enjoy any popularity today.

Tax cuts for the rich and an endless war in Iraq when our biggest problem is Afghanistan. Are you paying any attention at all? America is imploding you ignorant fuck and the best you can do is say shit like that? Fer fuck’s sake, who actually is more about the winning than the people?

More nuclear power when we still don’t have a clue what to do with waste that could kill millions. Offshore drilling that wouldn’t impact the price of gas for a decade. Phil Gramm, your top man on the economy, calls us a nation of whiners with delusions of a mental recession.

Fuck you you fuck, gas is near five bucks a gallon and foreclosures rival The Great Depression. They called it that, by the way, cause it sucked.

Yer a dick.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve no idea if the debt for my weakness has been settled by my death. It no longer matters to me. The universe pays no mind.

In the six or so months since this fucking warlock has entered my life, I’ve been as crazy scared as a man could be without going crazier than a shit house rat, the source of my sanity has been the notion that I would prevail. This idea, mostly predicated on some moral superiority, I took for granted. Some righteousness I possessed that he could not know was my assumption.

Looks like that ain’t shit or it’s not even true.

Arrogance is my demise.

I leave the world with this. Chaos is more prevalent than order. There is far less sense than even logic. I was right not to trust the world because it’s so goddamn random. There will never be a reason. No one will ever find it if there is.

As soon as you turn up the sound the goddamn gunfire starts.

“I am still living with your ghost
Lonely and dreaming of the west coast
I dont want to be your downtime
I dont want to be your stupid game

With my big black boots and an old suitcase
I do believe Ill find myself a new place
I dont want to be the bad guy
I dont want to do your sleepwalk dance anymore
I just want to see some palm trees
Go and try and shake away this disease

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die

I am still dreaming of your face
Hungry and hollow for all the things you took away

I dont want to be your good time
I dont want to be your fall-back crutch anymore

Ill walk right out into a brand new day
Insane and rising in my own weird way
I dont want to be the bad guy

I dont want to do your sleepwalk dance anymore
I just want to feel some sunshine
I just want to find some place to be alone

We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die” -Everclear, Santa Monica

Always keep your toilet clean. You may have to drink out of it.

Drinks For My Friends.

Studio City California, July twenty three, two thousand and eight.

Adrenaline and panic get him off me.

She’s a pile in the corner.

Small and bent. Folded.

This is not happening.

I shake my head hard.

Everything comes up the same.

In dreams you can’t ever scream or run or fight back.

Not today. I’m fucking nuclear.

Thermo.

Some ridiculous laugh volcanos from my neck. I have no fear.

None.

I fly off my back. I wail, kick and rage. I beat, muscle, force the fight, with fists, knees and elbows, into the bathroom. Lights on because he’s been playing with the fucking toilet paper.

The wet sound of flesh beating flesh. Sickening. Smacks and gasps.

A cloying steam of violence. Like fresh paint.

I swing and swing and scream and swing.

Against the wall. His neck a bundle of cables in my left hand. My right fist an anvil. I beat his face with it again and again. I swing my sledge, his mouth sprays fresh blood across the wall and the medicine cabinet. Again and again.

A tooth dances and rattles across the faux marble vanity.

His blood is humid. It thickens the air. He stinks like wild mammal.

Jacked up incisors lacerate my knuckles but I can’t stop swinging at them. I fucking loathe this fucking thing. I’m going to kill him with my hands. I’m bashing them in.

I will kill him.

I pound and pound.

He turns his hamburger face back after every blow to mock me.

On his knees by my toilet. More blood than I’ve ever seen from a man not dead.

He takes the beating and keeps smiling. He keeps smiling. He laughs like some mildly amused retard. Picture a Down syndrome kid with a Rubik’s cube.

My shoulder burns. I start to kick him.

The eyes spill too, joining the river beneath his nose and mouth.

He smiles as he pushes blood through his remaining teeth with his tongue. Wringing a sponge. It runs from his chin to his shirt, down over his crotch to splatter on the tile.

He has yet to fight back at all. I go cold.

His eyes find mine. Blue pupils suspended in blood. He’s locked, frozen. Staring straight through me.

He laughs like emphysema. A death rattle with mucus and mirth. I’m caving his head into raw meat while he sings a soliloquy minus any fear at all.

His eyes stay empty.

A demon version of the Rope-a-dope. I could beat his head off his neck and he would infect me with viruses that madden and fibers will squirm from sores on my arms and torso like thin white worms. No doubt the pain will be excruciating.

Biding his time while I cave his head in. Not bothered in the least. A lazy chuckle.

I picture the knife and spin to find it.

He’s not long for this mortal coil either. We’re tied. My end is his. His will be mine. I’m about to end it. He doesn’t know this. Somehow I do.

Cold War Policy. Mutually assured destruction. Quid pro quo.

He’s on me in a heartbeat. Before I feel it, he’s bitten a chunk from the back of my neck. It burns. Sickening pain. My stomach rolls hard. I feel air on the crater he’s made in my back. Maybe the weirdest physical sensation I’ve ever had. My own blood starts to flow down my body front and back.

He sucks at the the wad in his mouth and spits it on the floor. It lands with a slowmotion smack a foot in front of me.

I can’t believe it’s my flesh when I see the size of it.

He pounds the back of my head so hard, I go blind after every blow. He’s going to kill me.

Outmatched. I wanted to beat him and die last.

No chance here. High noon bitches. The difference between high school and the NBA. I’m about to die.

I throw my last elbow and manage to knock him off my back. Blind panic. I’m thinking the green dagger. I swim on my belly to my suitcase. Knees and elbows bang tile behind me.

It’s open.

I can’t believe the amount of blood on my hands.

He chuckles low through mucus and viscera. My hand finds the box. Somehow I have it by the hilt.

My calf in the grip of a reptile. I roll with the twist but my ankle snaps like balsa. On my back with the knife in my left hand.

My leg shoots fire. I can’t get up.

He hovers, bleeding on me. To own what I’ve done to his face…… His jaw dangles, my flesh hangs from it. How he took that chunk……..

Left eye dark, impossibly dislocated cheekbone from a countenance shredded and bloody. I flash on any gore I’ve ever seen. Fish guts on a plank to a deer without skin hanging from a rafter outside my bedroom.

All face angles are wrong. What I see competes with everything I know. What I’ve done to his face supplies me confusion and madness.

This amount of violence I’ve committed gives me pause.

It ends up being just enough.

To distract me.

He’s on me swinging so hard and fast I can’t see. He takes the knife from my hand. He plunges into me over and over.

I can hear it.

The sensation and abrupt pinch, blooming into a chrysanthemum of dizzying pain while still being stabbed and I can no longer breath.

There is no God. Yet I pay for my sins.

A dozen or so wounds and the blade shatters. The green inside burning me so that grey smoke clouds agains the ceiling.

A stink of hot grease and flesh.

I was very young, the backseat of a Mercury Cyclone with my family, headed to Reno. A Camaro with a paint job of red and grey primer, rocked past us on the the four lane blacktop. Faster than I could process, the Camaro crossed the double yellow and cars began to fly as high as the power lines along the left side of the highway.

My mother inhaled in confusion and horror.

My father didn’t hesitate. Tires smoked to a stop in the gravel and he’s running across the blacktop to stuff his shirt in the back of some dead man’s head. Somehow we had blankets and he was back in a hurry for those. My mother began a relay of helping her husband to help the smashed bodies and checking on us, telling us not to look.

Eighteen or nineteen dead or at least that many vehicles involved. It was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen. People in impossible positions all over the road. Bodies opened with that much violence and velocity, spill awful amounts of red. Every glimpse out the backseat window, the gore made me panic a little.

A man wearing a suit visited our house a few months later on a Sunday. He had a handful of money in an envelope for my father. He was there because he believed my father, a stranger, had saved his life. Dad didn’t hesitate, he thanked him and pointed out that he, the stranger, just might be in the same situation some day.

In his mind, he’d done the right thing and it was long since finished. He was not happy to see this man despite the man’s gratitude. He had done the best he could. He wasn’t interested in revisiting it.

I lose for failing to do the right thing. For choosing the wrong thing, one way or another, over and over and over again.

My sins. My recklessness. My fault. My mistakes. I pay.

I’m a bird hitting a window.

I flop and blood runs from my mouth. I’m helpless. I spasm and convulse.

My organs fail one by one.

Breathing stops. I’m bleeding out.

Panic surges like vomit.

My eyes are fixed. I can no longer blink. They begin to dry, my view clouds.

I am dying.

I often dream of catastrophe. Airliners plunging from the sky and exploding. Giant waves destroying civilization. Mushroom clouds and troops backlit by the sunrise of a detonation running along some ridge.

Seconds from death, I piss and shit myself.

I fucking hate that I’ve shit myself again.

My thoughts cease and I am dead.

The talking heads have coalesced on how to frame Our Man’s travels abroad.

Roaring success with a foreign policy/national security bump vs. overstepping his station. His place. Gergen was bellowing this crap tonight on CNN.

Looks to me to be establishing relationships so he can hit the ground running once he’s elected. They complain he’s so bold as to do the President’s job, yet the President remains both unwilling and incapable.

Forgive me, uppity?

Yup, it is. Big balls on Our Man. I’m impressed. Fucking A.

It is chronic, this adolescent navel gazing the media succumbs to. They pretend to ask themselves whether they talk too much about Our Man, while they talk even more about him, so Senator Doubtfire gets the short end of spotlight stick.

You can imagine, this conundrum doesn’t much try my patience.

I’m sponsoring the widely held elitist view that McCain is boring at best; doddering at not so best. He’s fucking creepy. Obama is way better television and he’s kicking ass over there. Got an official agreement on troop withdrawl from Iraq PM, Nouri al-Maliki. Looked very presidential with Hamid Karzai. He drained one from outside the paint on some army base.

Obama Don’t Bowl!
Obama drains balls?

Obama Don’t Bowl, in white on a good quality navy tee. I saw Stewart did his show on this tonight but by then I had the sound off. If he did something similiar, chalk it up to great minds thinking alike. I avoid Sir Jon when I’m writing politics.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.

As direct consequence of such shallow introspection, the media is poised to manufacture the slightest gaff by Obama into a Cat Five Vortex complete with flying cows that are shitting because they’re not used to flying. A shitstorm far beyond flying shitting cows.

No need to keep an eye out. It will hit you on the head over and over when it happens.

They had to do something. They’ve been caught red handed paying more attention to the more interesting, dynamic guy that just happens to be bowling them over, pun intended, in a good part of the rest of the world.

Whaddaya want fer nuthin? A rubber biscuit?

Today I purchased my first Southern Style Crispy Chicken Sandwich from Don’s place. The product has been sitting on my granite countertop since aprox. 3:20 PST. It is now about 9:45 PST and I’ve just taken my second bite.

It’s a good sugar to salt ratio. Kinda the bun in contrast to the meat postulate observed as key to most food products on the menu at Don’s place. Ever notice the powderiness of the salt they give you? Genius. Granules far better suited to adhere to your fries than ordinary table salt.

Wendy’s does this as well.

It was the random pickle chip protruding from underneath the bun in the TV ad that first got my attention. The way the sandwich rotated with golden culinary symmetry. Immaculately interrupted by that jagged corrugated fleshy green pickle chip………………….

It left me wistful but secure in the knowledge that someday I would purchase one for my very own to taste, savor and rejoice in.

I’m gonna have another bite and refrigerate it for the next round of tests.

I think pickles are a boon to fast food products of all kinds and should be exploited more. Compared to cheap ass mayonnaise and flavorless lettuce and tomatos, pickles are a zesty bold flavor and a real crunch enhancer. Provided they aren’t punk ass, chewy, vinegary cucumbers.

When I buy pickles I look for some dill and peppercorns in the jar at least.

So anyway, the texture is good, even after six unrefrigerated hours on my countertop. This does belie a certain structural integrity on the part of the sanwich. A good sign. I’ve no idea why they included the word “southern” in the title of the product other than perhaps the patty is chicken and of the fried variety.

My conclusion is that although tasty and gut satisfying, this new menu item at Don’s could use something more. More onions, more pickles perhaps. Mine had but two, barely larger than a quarter. It could use more committment on the part of the skilled and talented chef’s and their underlings.

I’m just saying, dress that product thoroughly. It’s new! Aren’t you excited to be making a new sandwich?

I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t a little premature. Not done yet basking beneath the flavor enhancing glow of the brighest, yellowest fast food arches in the universe.

It’s future as a menu item remains uncertain.

Tips: Order it with cheese for texture and a little whang. Remember, if you get fries, get some of Don’s salt. I don’t usually drink soda, but when I eat at Don’s, I has me some soda. I’m about the carbonation and not the sugar, so I order diet, but indulge in the bubbles, whatever kind blows your skirt up.

I’ve just now taken a bite of the below room temperature product. It’s really horrible in it’s gelatinous state.

Last test is to nuke the remaining bite and a half…………..

Drinks for my friends.

Various sources.

America closes in on one million foreclosures.

Indymac is the third largest carp in our country’s history to reveal it’s pale belly in the polluted waters of American finance.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in trouble and needing a federal bailout they will get. Two companies responsible for over half the mortgage debt in this country. Five trillion dollars.

Lists of vulnerable banks contain as many a hundred and fifty. Google the Texas ratio. At what point does the FDIC become FEMA?

Two million refugees from Darfur and and four hundred thousand slaughtered. Twenty first century genocide. A half a billion in aid a year from the US as opposed to to ten billion a month we spend in Iraq. Bin Laden used to live there so we favor their government with a blind eye because they occasionally share what kind of underwear he wears, his favorite Starburst flavor and pictures of his enormous horse package.

Over four thousand dead and thirty thousand horrifically wounded Americans by Iraq. Some estimates put Iraqi dead at over a million with some four million refugees. Meanwhile, we’ve blown the entire place apart.

National debt approaches ten trillion dollars. We had an actual surplus eight years ago.

A trade deficit approaching four hundred billion a year.

Nearly fifty million uninsured.

The Earth’s filthy nectar, which literally fuels everything we do, is imported by more than seventy percent. The price of that dirty ambrosia has risen nearly four hundred percent in the last seven years.

In America, the rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to plunge.

There’s a seventy five percent chance the icecap at at the earth’s north pole will be gone within the next three years.

Twelve percent of the electorate still believes Our Man Obama is a Muslim. Over seventy percent who voted for Dumbya in ’04 still believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for the events of 9/11.

“Most people are dumber than dirt.” -My Father

“The best country in the history of the world, and we’re going to fuck it up.” – My Mother

The stock market has been on a well oiled slide for a while now. One of it’s nipples went turgid last week because oil dropped three days in a row. First time in seventeen years. It’s because speculators knew we were gonna talk to Iran. They hoped we’d make nice. It’s a wash so far. We’ll see.

I encourage the stupid people to hold their breath.

I’m thinking it’s time to stock up. Get myself a gun.

I just jacked the sound on the local news. A story on corn ethanol. I’m not kidding when I tell you that a cutaway shot showed cars travelling backwards. If we go nuclear and corn ethanol, I think we should store all the nuke waste at corn ethanol stations.

Stupid fucks.

Forgive my pessimism. If you look at the numbers………..

My point is this. The Evil Empire is not looking at the same numbers we are. If they were, they’d pay attention and do something, like come up with better explanations for not giving a mad fuck.

Drinks for my friends.

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.

Yesterday we learned Dick-in-Bush would be sending one of it’s “most senior diplomats” to Switzerland to meet with Iran’s top nuclear official.

Today we learned of the Pentagon’s intention to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan earlier and more precipitously than anticipated or forecast. They told us everything was fine………

Tonight, Rush (the band) appears on the Colbert Report.

It is America’s smartest day in over seven years. It’s not saying much but I had to mention it.

Dumbya has broken with stated, fucking shouted, obdurate policy.

Oil went down for the second day in a row, further than it has in seventeen years. The NYSE rallied after having it’s ass handed to it for month after hemorrhage after month after hemorrhage. The Bear is back.

There is some idea that as a result of conservation, demand is down so oil speculation is down. Were that the truth, I’d be encouraged. I’m not saying it’s not possible, it’s just not happening yet.

Really, wouldn’t that be cool? A collective effort on part of the American citizenry having a global effect? Yes, that would be cool. It would be empowering.

Forgive me but that’s not what’s happened. Exercises in the Gulf weren’t doing the trick. More missiles should have been photoshopped I guess.

Us sending a diplomat to Switzerland is what happened.

It wouldn’t hurt at all for us to conserve and I don’t doubt that it could have a profound impact on the global economy. The onus is on us as the preeminent species to manage air, food, water and fire anyway. It’s an ecological mandate.

Unfortunately, the entire planet seems to be in an ugly state of nationalism. It’s almost as insidious as religion. It’s as though we seek to define ourselves by our differences while there aren’t so many when compared to our commonalities.

I’m here to tell you that if we don’t start thinking as a people, as opposed to American or Mexican or Catholic or Jew or Muslim or Arab, we will be responsible for our own extinction. It is inevitable. The only guarantee of survival is compassionate cooperation among all people.

We’re such assholes. That’s never gonna happen. Oh well, sorry I brought it up.

Did you know that it takes about two and a half bottles of water to manufacture the bottle you’re drinking water from? Did you know that fuel from corn is one of humakind’s stupidest ideas? Did you know that “bowtie” or “farfalla” pasta is the champion pasta shape for more delicate sauces? It works with gravies of medium density as well. Farfalla means butterflies in Italian. Make sure you use butter and capers.

If it were me instead of Obama, I’d have a tough time sleeping in the same room Dumbya had for eight years. Poor bastard.

Drinks for my friends.

It’s fucking awesome.

Know why? It fearlessly shines with the candlepower of our sun on the willfull ignorance and idiocy of far too many ‘Mericans. Three syllables is all these dipshits can manage.

Could this be collusion with Our Man’s campaign? Is there a potential boost with this most deliberate dust up? That would be cool. I like that they gave Michelle an afro and a gun. She’s kinda hot.

They did it by betting Americans are stupid and/or indignant. From here it appears to be a pretty good bet.

“Baracknaphobia” is what Jon Stewart would call it..

A cavalcade of morons paraded across my television screen during the latest news cycle. All actually feigning confusion, or sincerely confused by the cover cartoon. The same way the media covers a shooting in South Central, by finding the most gap toothed black person. Except, these were white people with nice teeth.

Sheezus, what the fuck is going on here?

It’s like the media has decided that you don’t have to be ‘ethnic’ to be stooopid.

Our man handled it like a professional wine taster from Alcoholics Anonymous. He noted it had gone bad, spit it out and moved on.

“It’s a cartoon … and that’s why we’ve got the First Amendment,” Obama said. “And I think the American people are probably spending a little more time worrying about what’s happening with the banking system and the housing market, and what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, than a cartoon. So I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it.”

“I’ve seen and heard worse,” he said. “I do think that in attempting to satirize something, they probably fueled some misconceptions about me instead. But that was their editorial judgment.” -CNN

The best comedy is always honest. So is the best satire. This is, without a doubt brutal a brutal example, but we are served by it. There is honesty to be had here.

Graphically, it defines the mindset and imagination of far too many of us in a time when we should have moved past
this shallow nonsense. We’re only a few hundred years old as a country, not a good enough reason to be as callow and stubborn as we still are.

In many ways, we’ve been walking backwards for a time.

The talking heads keep barking that America doesn’t know Obama yet. Where the hell have you people been? He’s been running for President for two fucking years. I hope the media is wrong on this one, the idea scares me more than the terrorists.

Arianna wrote a cool piece today on the mistake by the media for viewing Barack through a prism of liberal vs. conservative ideaology. I need to point out that Americans make the mistake of looking at the world through a lense of Muslim vs. Christian. Us vs. Them. Our God is better and more righteous than theirs, so Our God must kill theirs or at least we should kill all of them. We reserve the right to use nuclear weapons to accomplish any end resembling what we’ve just described…………

Note that many of these folks only show up on a meter that reads from hypocrite to sociopath.

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.
I’m crying.” -I Am The Walrus, The Beatles

“But we’re never gonna survive, unless…
We get a little crazy” -Seal

Seven thousand foreclosures a day while we spend half a million a minute in Iraq. In the same way we can’t pay for those houses, we can’t pay for this war. Do not adjust your set. This is the fucked up truth.

Drinks for my friends.

Doubtfire can’t seem to keep his withered manhood from beneath his corrective footwear. Just last week he called for the “exploitation” of America’s offshore and enviromentally sensitive areas for drilling. A top economic adviser to McCain, Phil Graham, said we were in a “mental recession” and a nation of “whiners”. Bootlicker continues to joke about bombing Iran.

He’s doing great. Let’s have a parade. They’re better be midgets and firetrucks.

Methinks his diaper hath sprung a leak.

An exemplary performance most likely the harbinger of an inevitable conclusion.

I’m inclined to believe it’s no longer premature to offer my ideal choices for Our Man’s cabinet.

The thing to remember is this. Our Man, upon winning the most important contest in the history of civilization, will also own, arguably, the worst position of any American President ever. He’s walking into a cave as dark as any in the history of this country.

His road will be of asinine yet lethal burlesque.

Secretary of State:
The apogee of any diplomatic career, my pick is Big Bad Bill. There simply is no man more gifted and revered on the world stage than William Jefferson Clinton. I don’t give a mad fuck about his stumbles on this most recent sojourn as his wife’s campaign surrogate. The prodigous talent this man is able to visit upon any scenario makes the former President an obvious choice as well as one to ignore at our peril in times as serious as these. Bill Clinton qualifies as an official brainspank endorsement. Further, this appointment will incur the good favor of we here at brainspank.

Alternates include Jimmy Carter, Andy Griffith was always so reasonable and Joe Walsh would clown the world and play blistering solos.

Secretary of the Treasury:
Bill Gates. The world’s richest man understands money. He owns trends. He gets it. The Feds took over IndyMac the other day. FDIC payouts will be as much as $8 billion. There’s Fannie and Freddie crashing on the rocks. Those two go down and it won’t be too different than a small nuke in a major city.

Hang the rich.

Alternates include my friend Jim Labinski, Gene Hackman, Ben Vereen, Lorne Green and Jim Beam.

Attorney General:
Walk in the park. My mother pointed it out. Edwards. A lawyer who’s adept at kicking the shit out of some pretty big boys. Nice and liberal. Wads of charisma. He’s Bobby goddamn Kennedy. John Edwards qualifies as an official brainspank endorsement. Further, this appointment will incur the good favor of we here at brainspank.

Alternates include Ironman, Judge Judy, people who collect beans and Negrodamus.

Secretary of Defense:
Wes Clark. Four stars, West Point valedictorian and Rhodes Scholar. I love the word secdef. He’s my pick for secdef. It’ll have to wait, I’ve got a meeting with the secdef. See what I’m saying?

Seems like a good guy. We liberals want our military leaders to smile a lot and have nice eyes. We also like it when they’re whip fucking smart and battle experienced with nearly spotless records. General Wesley Clark qualifies as an official brainspank endorsement. Further, this appointment will incur the good favor of we here at brainspank.

Runner up: Colin Powell. Yep, seriously. A good man and a smart one.

Alternates include Furnell Chapman, Ernest T. Bass, auntjudy.com and Bilbo Baggins.

Secretary of Energy:
Al Gore. Hey everybody! Let’s have an energy policy! Fuckin A! Seriously. Why are we fucking Iraq? Oil. Why are we fucking ourselves? Oil. Why are we fucked? Oil. Duh. I got one syllable for ya. Sun. Nevermind that it makes wind and everything else possible. See what I’m saying? Albert Gore qualifies as an official brainspank endorsement. Further, this appointment will incur the good favor of we here at brainspank.

Alternates include Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, any civilian on COPS, Nikola Tesla and Barney Fife.

Secretary of Homeland Security:
What I’m looking for here is one of those three part names with the word VON in the middle. Wernher Von Braun, for example. We all know this position is a shallow history of dipshits. Joe Biden is an intelligent hothead. Wish I had better for him but he’s my choice. He’s smart and he loathes bullshit.

Alternates include Fred Flinstone for sheer mental prowess, Donna Summer for Disco Lemonade, Larry Flynt for a golden wheelchair and enormous genitals.

Secretary of the Interior:
Willie Nelson. He’ll legalize pot on all government lands and convert every forest service/state park vehicle to biodiesel. There would be a national hootenanny every summer solistice.

Alternates include Newman and Redford, Cheech & Chong, and the Smothers Brothers.

Secretary of Education:
My ultimate preference would have been George Carlin but he’s since taken the dirt nap. Posthumous. I guess I’ll go with Gore Vidal. He’s smart, crazy, gonna die soon and I like his priorities. Wait, Noam Chomsky!

Alternates include Al Bundy, Mr. Spock, Henry Rollins and Alex Trebek

Secretary of Health and Human Services:
Dr. Sanja Gupta. Handsome, charismatic, smart and charming.

Alternates include Dr. Dean Edell and Dr. Drew Pinsky.

Director of the National Drug Control Policy:
Bill Maher. This one’s painfully obvious. Reverse this ridiculous obfuscation they choose to label policy. It’s unconscionable. America incarcerates more people per capita than any nation on earth and it’s because of hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders who aren’t criminals when they enter the prison system but sure as fuck are when they get out. An absurd and failed attempt at social engineering. It doesn’t work. It never had a chance.

Mankind has sought to self medicate since before it was even a possibility. It’s like shoving abstinence down the throats of American teenagers. No possibility for efficacy, no chance ever. It’s counterintuitive, misguided and in opposition to basic human instinct.

It’s a fundamental cudgel for oppression by our government and really fucking stupid.

Alternates include Snoop, Adam Corolla, Lee Van Cleef and Willie Nelson.

White House Chief of Staff:
Jon Stewart. Duh. He’d also be White House press secretary. I’d swoon at the podium in a non gay way. Mancrush. He’d tell us the truth and crack us up whenever his boss fucks up. He’d be allowed to bring his writers with him.

Alternates include Sean Penn, Cris Rock and Lewis Black. Lewis Black……….oooooooohh.

Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency:
Dennis Kucinich. When a Supreme Court vacancy occurs, he’s the man. He carries the Constitution on his person. Otherwise he’d run the shit out of the EPA. Smart, honest, principled. He’ll do the right thing. He’ll fuck shit up. Between his pasty white thighs dangle testes made of zirconia. Bitch. This would be good. Dennis qualifies as an official brainspank endorsement. Further, this appointment will incur the good favor of we here at brainspank.

Alternates include Al Gore, John Mellencamp and Don Henley.

Secretary of Transportation:
Ed Begley Jr. Ed knows. Ed cares. Ed will tear shit up. This would be good. Ed qualifies as an official brainspank endorsement. Further, this appointment will incur the good favor of we here at brainspank.

Alternates include Robbie Knievel, Dave Grohl and Scotty from Star Trek because he operates the transporter. Well, we’re both Scotsman.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs:
Anthony Zinni. We need an intelligent hawk in this office. He’s accomplished. Degree in economics from Villanova. Tough. Four stars and tons of experience. Opposed to at least the prosecution of the war in Iraq. Got fired for it. I’m going out on a limb but I think he’s a man of logic and compassion. Anthony qualifies as an official brainspank endorsement. Further, this appointment will incur the good favor of we here at brainspank.

Alternates include Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, Maj. Gen. John Batiste, Brig. Gen. John Johns, Navy Vice Adm. David Richardson……….no shortage of good men to oversee the right thing.

Secretary of Agriculture:
What we need here is someone adamantly anti ethanol. Fuel from corn is just dumb. It’s a destructive crop. Bad for the soil. Tons of pesticides It’s only redeeming quality is that it tastes good and it can be made into whiskey. It’s like twice the resources/energy to produce as it ends up producing. There’s already chaos on the world food market as a result of incremental increases in it’s production. Why are we so goddamn stupid? We need an enforcer. A sonofabitch.

That sonafabitch is Chuck Norris. He is what we lack in government. He’s a goddamn Republican, but a grown man that is capable and willing to roundhouse kick other men in the head. Chuck Norris did not slide from a common vagina. He was borne of the ultimate mother. Mother Earth. He will fight for you harder than Larry H. Parker.

Alternates include Bruce Willis, Spiderman, spaghetti western banditos and Sgt. Joe Friday.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development:
Dumbya. He needs to see what he has wrought at least five days a week. The damage he’s done to the average American family as well as the madness he’s unleashed on those families with soldiers in Iraq or dead or wounded from Iraq.

Brains scarred with or without a head wound.

Astounding, to behave as though you’ve done nothing but act in our best interest. I doubt a man as stupid even as you, could believe anything remotely resembling that sort of madness. It’s okay Georgie boy. you’ll be the titular head, a position so familiar, it’s all you know. Loser.

No worries, we’ll surround him with genuine talent to show him smart people who care against the worthless ones he hired. He’s a dog in a talent show. “Brownie” can be your office boy. Rove and Cheney will share shifts in the executive washroom.

Secretary of Commerce:
What’s needed here is a pro American worker, pro union. The outsourcing and weakening of American industrial capability must be administered to like the sucking chest wound that it’s become. Enough is enough. I’m looking for someone pretty adept with green industry.

An individual capable of overseeing an investment in our infrastructure that is far more enviromentally responsible than we’ve been so far. A man or woman capable of acting as a genuine secretary for the logistical nightmare of taking funds from the wrong things and directing them towards the right things. An intelligent hard ass.

Hills? She wouldn’t stoop for this turd. Arianna Huffington? Her grasp of the dynamic is unique and abundant with nuance. No way. Ted Nugent? Too stupid.

Any character from The West Wing.

This one has me stumped. Suggestions are welcome.

My point is, this cabinet position is ripe for empowerment. It could benefit immensly from the right candidate possessing the ability to wield influence and charisma to make the post and it’s authority pivotal.

See above for alternates.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development:
Oprah, Seann Penn, Brad and Angelina. Together they’ve done far more for the dislocated in New Orleans than our own government. Make it a collective effort and they’ll appoint a staff of capables. If they start to get fucked on funds or legislation, who’s not gonna send a camera and a microphone?

United States Trade Representative:
Bill Richardson. He gets it. He’s smart, experienced and an adroit negotiator.

Alternates include Jack from Jack In The Box, Gandalf and most migrant workers.

Director of the Office of Management and Budget:
What we need here is an honest individual. Joe Biden would be good here too. Chuck Hagel? Yep. I want a thoroughly vetted individual, with integrity and a strong sense of personal accountability. I’m stumped on this one too.

Alternates include David Letterman, Bullwinkle and Bobby Brady.

I’m not prepared at this time to offer a choice for VP. Forgive me. Further study is needed. Trust that I’ll keep you posted.

Bitches.

Drinks for my friends.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson aspires to remove the pearls from Our Man Obama’s bag. Cut them off and dump them out. So he says.

The vulgarity of “I wanna cut his nuts off”, helps me to believe it was sincere. A genuine sentiment. It cracked me up.

He was wrong, but he meant it. He was wrong, mistaken, underinformed, misguided but he meant it. We know it’s the truth because he didn’t know he was talking to anyone except the guy next to him. Awesome.

I point this out because it’s in stark contrast to the poisonous pale shit our elected representatives regurge on us every day deliberately, with avarice and cruelty, knowing full well it’s not in our best interest and that’s not why they’re there.

His own son, Congressman Jesse Jr., forced a turd into Jesse’s mouth and lit it. That shit is cold. He could have kept his mouth shut.

Forgive me, I’m no big fan of Jesse, except his reading of “Green Eggs and Ham” on SNL. He and Sharpton used to run pretty hard at who is whackiest, these days it’s Jackson by a full length.

Obama’s not “talking down to his people”. He is assuming the mantle of leader. Speaking up to everyone including his own.

His own who then?
Multiple Choice:

A) Blacks?

B) Fatherless?

C) Poor?

D) Middle class?

E) Marginalized?

F) Just about all of us in one way or another?

I can’t help but like Sharpton. I adored his convention speech and the bewildered chatter by the talking heads when he didn’t stick to the script. Sharpton was as cool that night as Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction. Newman in Cool Hand Luke.

He’s since seemed to own his brain more and his pride less. He’s far more thoughtful than he used to be. More intellectually honest. I like a lot of what he says these days, doesn’t seem to have lost his edge and he makes more sense.

Anyway, Our Man handled it with merciful aplomb:

“He will continue to speak out about our responsibilities to ourselves and each other, and he of course accepts Rev. Jackson’s apology,” -NPR

I’m still furious about FISA. There’s no immunity in the bill for criminal prosecution, but the one ‘Kingly’ right afforded the chief executive by the Constitutional Congress is an unrestricted power to pardon whomever the fuck Dumbya wants.

Dumbya signed it today. All the dominos will fall.

It’s all over but the shouting. There are many things we don’t know and that makes me nervous. Reid, Clinton, Boxer, Feingold et al. They all opposed. I understand they aren’t bucking for manager, but what gives?

Why then, did Our Man agree? For reasons we don’t know.

Yes, he cannot afford a sweat ball at the end of his nose over national security. It is the only issue with potential to gain traction on a gullible and witless electorate. Still, it’s unlikely. He just needs to make the case that we’re fucked as it is. It’s time to be proactive rather than reactive.

If this administration can be summed up in the simplest of terms; then it may be said that they have reacted badly, appallingly stupidly, instead of proactively. They are dumb and we have over seven years of sickening proof.

I’m pissed. As sweaty as this Fourth Amendment dynamite is, am I gonna vote for McCain? No, of course not. Neither will most of you. Obama knows that. It pisses me off.

The answer is G, all of the above.

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 were barely any cell phones and I’d never seen the internet.

Seattle Washington.

They were a band. A large one. Traveling minstrels who knew just how to navigate any situation as a single unit. There was a communal intellect. They moved through the lobby of our posh hotel with fluidity, silence and stealth. In seconds there was fifteen of us in the elevator without a sound.

With the precision of piranhas, they emptied the mini bars in both of our rooms. Appetizers before the cases of beer we’d brought. An organism of free hooch musicians.

We ended up in Rick’s room.

Sometime before five a.m. they sent a team to break into the hotel kitchen. The team returned with a mere few dozen plates. What went on next is something I’m unable wrap my brain around to this day.

Seven or eight of them shut themselves in the bathroom. There was chaos. Dishes shattering and maniacal chanting.  Ridiculous laughter. After a time, drunken pot induced stupor breached, I slithered my head inside the bathroom door. There was red wine everywhere. Everywhere, literally. They were dancing in a way that struck me as pagan.  Wine was gushing from their mouths. The look in their eyes convinced me not to say anything.

I’m not sure they even saw me.

They did.  They all looked right at me.

My mind’s eye has it as a Ralph Steadman painting.

Preservation as insinct reared a welcome head. I sweet talked the lonely waitress with the nice big ass to come back to my room. On the way out, I stole one of Rick’s gay Gucci loafers.

I followed her trailer to the elevator. My room was pleasant after the asylum.  Turn down service. Classical music playing low and sheers blown by  the smell of rain.  Chocolate on the pillow. Her name was Sabrina. She had really nice tits and cute feet.

She was sweet.

She had a way of almost whistling her consonants.  Like an anti lisp.

We talked on the phone for a few months and she came to LA and spent the night once.

The phone rang around eleven. Rick wondering if I’d seen his other shoe.

He was a floor below me. I took it down to him.

I knocked, he answered.  I gave him his shoe.

It smelled like crotches and armpits and booze and they were everywhere. Unconscious and reeking. One of them slept on top of a dresser. Thirteen dudes in one medium size hotel room. Wrappers, beer cans, broken bottles, jackets,ashtrays and wine stains on the walls. Broken dishes trailed from the bathroom as though there’d been a stampede of fucking cattle right out of a china shop.

He asked where the girl was. I told him. Fourteen other guys and she ends up in your bed he said. I’d be back down after I showered I said.

Checkout was noon.

Fifty minutes later I’d seen her off and was back. He answered the door in a towel. All I could smell was the shower. The band was gone and the room was spotless. Immaculate. He was as confused as I was.

There was time to kill before our flight and we had dumbovers that required a booze mop as the very first step. I impressed him by having scrambled eggs with salmon and a gin Mary. We were in Seattle. He had scrambled eggs, toast and  beer. We drank for a few hours until it was time to get a cab to the airport.

We snored on the plane.

The Psychodelic Zombiez from Denver Colorado showed up in LA the following spring.

We made a shit hot record.

Drinks for my friends.

There is a kind of brutal asymmetry about the death of Jesse Helms today, the same day that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson shucked their coils mortal in 1826. The birth of our once great country. A campaign season with the first ever African American leading in polls for President.

Happy Fourth of July.

Likely the best thing to be said of him, he had the courage of his convictions. He was consistent. Still, I wouldn’t cross a country road to piss on his grave. Mr. Helms was an evil bigot.

He opposed Martin Luther King Day in 1983.

“Helms once deeply offended a black colleague, Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, by singing part of “Dixie” on a Capitol elevator.

Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, “Watch me make her cry. I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries.” He then proceeded to sing the song about “the good life” during slavery to Mosely-Braun (Gannett News Service, 1993-09-02; Time, 1993-08-16″

“White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.” -From a campaign ad Helms was involved in creating.

Another ad featured photographs Helms doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham’s wife had danced with a black man. (FAIR 2001-09-01, The News and Observer 2001-08-26)

A former Democrat, Helms straddled the Republican expoitation of racial division in the south to fuel his own success.

He consistently opposed gay rights. Although he did once describe the genitalia of Strom Thurmond as “gorgeous” and a “splenderous tract of man flesh”. This, despite the fact that Thurman’s unit had seen battle in an African American vagina.

He was instrumental in the ascendency of Ronald Reagan and therefore a major player in the birth of contemporary conservatism. Neoconservatism. The beginning of what may be the demise of our republic.

Jesse Helms was an asshole, I regret that I have but one toast to hoist in celebration of his dirt nap.

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