Journal - 2000

The Millennium Chicken - and best of...

New Year's Eve Eve. Everyone and everything seemed to be focused on the year 2000, as if it were the beginning or end of anything significant. And now it's just as much history as the rumble seat. It seems to me that it is a pretty arbitrary thing. The only thing that it really means is that humans got smart enough or organized enough to begin counting things. Oh sure, we were counting long before that. It could be argued that it has only now been two thousand years since somebody had enough far-reaching and autonomous power to say, "OK. We'll start again here." And this is really only for western civilization.

And then we've got Daylight Saving Time. Spring forward and fall back - except for those rebels in Indiana who don't change. We've also got Stephen Hawking, who spends countless hours talking in circles about time and space and gravity and whether any of them have a definitive beginning or end.

OK, back to New Year's. The Millennium doesn't really start until midnight on Sunday because we can't start with the year zero. It was unbelievable how many people lost their minds last year at this time with the whole specter of the Y2K bullshit. It is proof positive of the paranoia of our culture, and of our resulting collective susceptibility to the harbingers of the media. They have to keep finding stories in order to keep their jobs. Sure, they play a valuable role in keeping our government in check. I'll concede that point.

It all comes down to one word. Hype. The battle of style vs. substance seems to be tilted to the side of style at the turn of this Millennium. There will always be substance underlying the whole battlefield, for style cannot exist without something to hold it up. Style stands on the giant shoulders of substance and stomps on its head at the same time. Style is like the scorpion who stings the turtle after the turtle has just carried it across the water. Hype is the fodder for style and I think that style had the afterburners on this year.

My point? I was thinking about putting a top ten list of albums released this year and then I realized that I don't think I bought ten albums in the last twelve months. I bought Steve Earle's Transcendental Blues, Nick Drake's Way to Blue, G, Love and Special Sauce's self-titled debut, Willy Porter's Falling Forward, The Jayhawks' Smile, Matthew Sweet's In Reverse (which was lame), Blue Rodeo's The Days in Between, and a copy of Little Feat's Dixie Chicken that I think somebody stole. Who would steal a man's Dixie Chicken? That's eight. I got some Everclear and Ricky Skaggs bluegrass for Christmas and I guess that makes ten. My scan of my CD collection has enlightened me to the fact that someone has also stolen my copy of Jeff Buckely's Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk. Balls.

I know that some great albums came out this year. I never did get around to picking up Radiohead's Kid A. I think it has to do with my suspicion of their new Aphex Twin direction. That doesn't mean that it isn't a good disc though. And I'm a big fan. I never actually buy as many CDs as I would like to. If I had the time or the money I am sure that I would have purchased way more than eight albums this year.

So since I didn't actually purchase enough music to entail a top ten list I am going to list some songs that liked that came out this year. Or at least the songs that didn't make me change the radio station... in no particular order.

I'm no music critic. At least I am not a paid one.

Have a great New Year's everyone. This New Year's Eve will find me at home once again. Last year I kissed my guitar at midnight and I very well may do the same this year. I always wound up getting in fights with my girlfriends on New Year's Eve anyway. I am having an "anti-hype" New Year's Party. There are no grandiose expectations that I feel we have to live up to. Just some good beer and some great friends and maybe another bottlerocket war. There's no big name musical acts performing in my living room. There will be no beluga caviar in the kitchen. And there's no three-figure all-inclusive ticket price. Maybe I'll see you here? Happy New Year! 12.30.00


Living on Hoth

We are now buried in snow. It isn't as bad as I have seen it in my lifetime but Chicago hasn't had this much snow this early in my memory. It snowed like hell for about 24 hours and it was beautiful. Beauty is easier to see when you don't have to drive in it. It was "warm" for snow - about 28 degrees F but that's when it snows the most. When I finally made it home I put on a pseudo spacesuit and went for a long ride on my mountain bike. It was quite a challenge but it was more fun than I have had since the warm weather went south some time in October. I even stopped by my neighborhood running gear store (shameless plug for Universal Sole on Paulina and Roscoe, they rule and the owner is a new daddy!) and their running group had just returned from a run. We both looked at each other with the exact same thought... "You must be insane to be biking/running in this blizzard!"

Aside from a very few insane motorists I had the city to myself. You hear the wind and you hear the snow hitting the ground but all the other city noise pollution is gone. I loved it. I guess it reflects my inherent love of the extreme. I am not happy unless I am pushing something somewhere. 12.12.00


Midwestern tundra

OK, now it's really cold. It's really really damn cold. It's really really really damn damn cold. I know. You don't have to say it. I voluntarily live where it gets cold like this. I will do something about it someday. For now my life is here.

I got a Christmas tree on Sunday. It doesn't mean as much as it once did as far as religious symbols go. It is a nice tradition though. When it gets cold and we aren't outside nearly as much we bring a little bit of outside into our homes. My place smells great... in ways that pine-scented cleaning products cannot replicate. I grew up a colored light person but somewhere along the line I made the switch to a white light person. I don't have any hard and fast rules in regards to Christmas tree light color, they just have to match. In college I got a balled and burlapped tree with all the dirt and roots and put it in a big keg tub. Even though Christmas trees are grown for the purpose of cutting and placing in our homes every holiday season my consumerism only goes so far. Despite the tree sitting in my living room this minute I still think that it is silly to cut down a perfectly good tree for my three-week amusement. I might make the bold suggestion that coniferous trees could care less about our religious convictions. They might be Hindu or Buddhist. Anyway, to my knowledge that tree from college is still growing in my ex-girlfriend's parent's yard. I tried to get a balled and burlapped tree last year, but due to the urban price curve, (Mexican food is nearly free but other consumables are seriously inflated) it was cost-prohibitive. My parent's tree looks like some kind of sick suburban dollar store aberration. After 5 children and one grandson the tree is heavily laden with homemade gold-painted macaroni stars, glued popsicle stick mangers, clothespin reindeer and paper plate and pipe cleaner angels. It has a charm all its own. My tree is more simplistic as I have no little people around to help me decorate it or make funky ornaments. I also have this awesome Charlie Brown silver metallic tree from the '50's that I found in my great Uncle Al's house after he died. While all the other older relatives were bickering about the recliner and credenza I found the mother lode in the basement. This "tree" is really cool and I usually decorate it with any random ornaments that well-meaning friends and relatives have given me over the years. What were they thinking in the 1950's? I mean, this thing is damn cool but it doesn't look the first thing like a tree. My mother tried to throw it away at least once as I was growing up but I successful rescued it from the curb before the garbage man showed up. Back then I always had more free time than Mom. 12.5.00


Cursed darkness

Here we are, almost December again. The older I get the faster time seems to pass. One could say that time takes forever when you are younger because you are living a greater percentage of your life. Summers seemed to last forever when I was nine years old. These days it's winter, not summer, that seems to take forever. It's like some sort of curse. Six months of dreary darkness in retribution for all your sins! I voluntarily live in this climate so I can be held just as accountable for these feelings. Where else could I and should I go? California has been calling me since I was a kid in some fashion or other. My grandfather was born there. Northern California seems more my style, but my style includes more heat and less fog. Austin, Texas seems like a cool place. I have spent a little time there and it had a good feel. Madison, Wisconsin is a nice place, but it falls north of Evanston, where I will not venture north of until spring. The same goes for Minneapolis. Vancouver was cool, but I would have to find, woo, and subsequently marry a Canadian girl. That's a lot of work just to live in a city. I think I would like to live in Amsterdam for a while. London was big and expensive. I did the NYC thing, and although I learned to love it in some ways I wouldn't go back until I had a pile of cash. Any ideas? Tell me about your hometown and why I should live there. 11.30.00


Pop culture unearths a blue dinosaur

I had more of those "real" dreams last night. Not the kind of dreams that come true in the waking hours of my life, but the kind that seem real. Once awake they are nearly indescribable. These dreams do leave you with the feelings they incited in you though. I started the day feeling as if these things - whatever they were - actually occurred.

Another peculiar twist of pop culture. Most of us saw the Volkswagen Cabrio commercial that featured Nick Drake's Pink Moon. Being a summer junkie who has been in love with the moon and starts for decades the ad left an impression on me. After a little research into Nick Drake's short-lived career I ended up purchasing one of his CDs. It feels a little odd to buy something that I learned about from a commercial, but I have to say that Volkswagen's advertising people make at least an attempt at making art out of their ads. Nick has an artistic voice and style worth hearing. And Pink Moon captured a distinct feeling unlike any other - which is perhaps the ultimate goal of a songwriter. Nick created something that still moves us 26 years after his death. He might not be here to see it, but he won. 11.27.00


LOST, one summer, REWARD IF FOUND

I want my summer back. It was a great one this year. It's over in so many ways. There will be more and I know it... but this one was nearly perfect. 11.25.00

Joe Mama

My old friend Joe Jencks was in town on Monday night. Joe was a gen-you-wine bona fide folk singer back in college and he's a gen-you-wine bona fide folk singer today. He finally got the gumption together to quit his day job and get out on the road to spread his word to the masses touring this fall. Joe has a carful of guitars, clothes, CDs and other gypsy accouterment on his journey. I have much respect for the man. Godspeed Joe.

Thanksgiving is upon us. Everyone in America will soon be up to their asses in food, drink and insane relatives. Cold weather holidays aren't my forte, but I am all for the food part. And then there's the driving... always the driving.

These are the days when faith is hard to find. I'll keep looking. 11.22.00


This will sting a little

"Wisdom is knowing that things won't always be as they are right now." - me

I might have a foolish heart but I am still standing. Pain is like fire. It cleanses you and baptizes you and if you survive you come out on the other side a stronger person. You have to be careful though, for if you aren't paying attention you could come out a stronger and bitter person.

Surviving anything is all about time. Everything in the Universe is moving and changing at speeds both too rapid for us to conceive and too slow for us to notice. The year 2000 finds us all in a time where everything changes too fast to even name it sometimes. The game is over before we have even bought our popcorn. Human time remains the same despite our best conscious and unconscious efforts to change it. We put our pants on one leg at a time whether we wear underwear or not. How can we tell if we are ahead or behind the curve anymore? I sure as hell can't. I'm usually too busy trying to keep up to notice if I have blown past it. 11.15.00


Put that shit away

It's Halloween, not Christmas!!! How can I properly observe the modern day descendant of Samhain in the shadow of Christmas decorations! Happy Halloween everybody. 10.31.00


Check under the couch

We lost an hour on Saturday night... or Sunday morning. Somewhere in there. Did it fall into the couch like so much loose change? Behind the dresser like all those business cards do? Did it wedge down between the seat and the carpet next to my car seat like that last coveted pistachio? I know where it went. It hammered in the last nail into the coffin of good weather and then caught a fast boat to Maui. Yeah, the changing of the seasons is great here in the Midwest. Change is good. Every day can't be Christmas. It is still quite nice out for the time being. The crisp air is permeated by low slanting light that is sliding farther and farther towards the dark oblivion of December and January where you sometimes don't see the sun for days or longer. But even then the cycle has begun again and the spinning machinations are slowly bringing back the light. It's just slow enough for humans not to notice in a moment. Moments are fleeting and so many things move far too slow for us to see. Seasons change like a second hand to a ten year old, unable to sit still long enough to tell for sure that time - seemingly eternal - really is ticking them towards a day when they will be children once again 60 years down the line. We fall in and out of love in these same measurements and the seconds past pile up around us on both sides of the scale, sooner or later tipping one way or the other. Lovers stay forever when asleep in your arms - and then you turn around and they are walking away. Running sometimes even. Those seconds seem to take forever. I wonder sometimes how many heartbeats I have. What is the mileage on my engine? How many miles are these strong legs good for? Humans tend to reach blindly for something permanent when they figure out that, according to the law of averages, they have more heartbeats behind them than they do ahead. Some of us reached that point before we knew enough to wonder about it. Were they lucky or unfortunate? Where will I be when the bell curve starts its downward slope? And then what? What of my consciousness after my heart jumps ship? We'll save that for later.
10.30.00


I do

I am still mired at the age where everyone is getting married. It's like a disease. When I was younger I was sure that I would be married young. I'm not that old, but I am old enough to invalidate the certainties about marriage that I had when I was younger. Don't get me wrong. I think it's a beautiful thing... or perhaps I should say that it can be a beautiful thing. It is also a challenge - perhaps one of the greatest challenges encountered as a human. A lot of us seem to get the marriage that they deserve. Others seem to inexplicably get the shaft. Love is complicated enough without clouding the issue with legal, monetary and child-rearing responsibilities and contracts. And to all you married folk who are getting pissed at my generalizations, yes, I speak from a single perspective. I have heretofore missed out on the splendor and grandeur of sharing my life with someone. "Bitter boy!" you might cry. Alas, I speak not so much from bitterness as from firsthand experience at talking through relationship problems that my friends are experiencing, married and unmarried. This doesn't even take into account my own indirect route through years of my own relationships. I am still the undying romantic, but I have seen the enemy and his name is ourselves.

And still, I wish the best of luck, along with years of happiness and peace to all who chose the ring and aisle. 10.17.00


Wayback Machines and flux capacitors

There is such a thing as a time machine.

I was visiting my parents on vacation over the summer a couple months back. I have a 4-year old nephew who pulled out a big box of little plastic pieces of pure, uncut imagination seeds one morning. I was instantly transfixed and catapulted back 20 years. Legos were the coolest things ever when I was a kid. I will never ever forget the sound of thousands of little plastic pieces clicking together as I plunged my small hand through them searching for the perfect piece. I spent countless hours of my formative years constructing spaceships and space stations to service them, tall-masted clipper ships, battle tanks, submarines, lunar landers, jet fighters and excavating earth movers. When I dipped my big hands into the multicolored plastic soup they came up dripping with the imagination of my youth. The dry, dusty plastic building blocks always used to rub the skin on my hands raw, and this summer morning was 1979 again. I always loved making something from nothing - like a giddy deity piecing together a dolphin or swallow or human with little plastic pieces of DNA. When my younger siblings arrived on the scene and got big enough to display personality characteristics it became evident that they weren't as meticulous as I. As I moved on to bigger, softer, more curvaceous and better-smelling toys my Empire of Lego blocks were passed on to the younger Armstrongs and subsequently lost - or so I thought. It broke my heart in no small way to watch my beloved Legos scattered to the ends of the known universe. They were smashed with hammers, ground onto sidewalks, flung like projectiles with slingshots, run over with bicycles, and seemingly and systematically destroyed like the Jedis after the Clone Wars. The last remnants of the old Republic had been swept away and I was too busy swashbuckling into cars and guitars and girls to do anything about it. In August of the year 2000 I stood before the raw materials of my imagination - choking on the air saturated with memories.

It started with a spaceship. Something obliviously half-built by small hands. It would need to be sleeker and more capable of defending itself from the unknown enemies of deep space. Spaceships need to a form that would allow them to traverse the vast expanses of nothing and find adventures and peril to test the mettle of humankind. Yes, Mr. Bradbury, R is for Rocket... only we can't call them rockets after we have seen the Millennium Falcon. Spaceships need a supply line... a base from which to launch. What good is an extended stay in space without a homecoming? A gray lunar base plate here, a landing gantry and fuel depot there and we have the beginnings of a mission control. Logically, fuel and gantries must be defended from unknown foes, so an advanced array of defense must be implemented. Manned or unmanned? Why, both, of course. The funny thing was, I sensed when I was finished not by the passing of time, but by the 6th sense that my raw materials were running out, the same way I did when I was 9. The biggest enemy to any space station was not Stormtroopers or Klingons, but 4-year old siblings... or nephews in this case. In that respect 2000 mirrored 1979. My space station suffered its usual fate. There isn't much hope for reinforcements from Earth when you sustain an attack from a 4-year old in deep space. And then I stood up and shook the tunnel vision. Blood rushed back into muscles that had gone unused while I crouched over my toys for hours. It had been hours. Just like it had been back then.

Time machines aren't made of titanium and space age polymers. They aren't powered by flux capacitors or dilithium crystals. The plans didn't come coded in radio noise from outer space. Time machines are made in Holland, at least the components are. 10.9.00



I'd like to go down to the bank and "share" somebody's money

Napster, Gnutella, what next? Only the names will change. Peer to Peer is here to stay. There is no point in fighting it - the battle was lost before anyone knew where the battlefield was. Who wins and who loses remains to be seen. Before our very eyes we are witnessing the death of intellectual properly and copyright law as we know it, or a metamorphosis in the least. Our government was built to be slow to change by design. The slow machinations of the gears of law forging couldn't possibly move fast enough to keep up with the current speed of innovation. Changemongers and the young embrace the fact that they no longer have to pay for music. The RIAA is crying wolf, but the the wolf has come and gone and it cleaned out the hen house along the way. Piracy of music is called "sharing," while theft of other mediums of expression is simply called theft. Somebody will figure out how to profit from this new game in town. After all, free commerce brings everyone to the game with similar capabilities. Free commerce also lowers the overall talent base. The NBA isn't as good as it used to be because you have more teams competing for the same prize. Additional teams call for additional players and that lowers the overall talent level. Who wants to hear more music if it all sucks? There will be Darwinism. The entertainment industry has always lived by the rule of popular Darwinism. The most popular artists stick around and there are two reasons for that... 1. genuine talent and, 2. the rule that people will eat what is fed to them. If all that's available is cheese whiz then people will buy and cheese whiz. Right now the people are being fed. We'll leave it at that for now. 10.5.00


Injun Summer

It seems as if it has been forever since I wrote anything in here... and it also seems as if I start off most of my journal entries this way. The weather is turning again and so far I am enjoying it. No leaves yet, but mornings and nights are cool. I am finding money left in pockets of jackets that are coming out of closets. It is dark more and when it is light it is yellow and slanted. I find Autumn to be a very romantic season... more so than Spring as Shakespeare seemed to think. Is it the cooler weather bringing people closer together? Simple math dictates that I am a result of cooler weather. Is it darkness and the candlelit intimacy that it brings? More time inside for inside things and less time playing outside. One had better like the person they are playing with or it could be a long winter... or perhaps a lonely one.

The band is doing great. We had to do another show without Michael over the weekend. I got to play the lead singer/lead guitar player simultaneous thing. It was fun in a way, but I don't think my ego is that big. Kevin Blackler from Gertrude has been sitting in as available and the Hammond organ sound fills in more of what I hear in my head. The show was a late one, and thanks to all who stuck around. How do you make a flyer advertising a show date when you will technically wind up starting after midnight - in the wee hours of the morning of the next day. We had the chick singers for the gig as well. It's a sound not unlike old Stones or Pink Floyd. It's all in there somewhere - all the music I grew up on. It feels good to have all those players increasing the weight of our sound. They are good people as well.

It has been an uninspiring day. Sometimes it just happens that way. Everything is clipping along and you get caught in some little side eddy of life's currents. You're not drowning, you're not sinking or in peril. You're just there - spinning. 9.18.00


That lake is COLD (and deep too)

I did a little camping over Labor Day weekend. Accompanied by my favorite wingman I set off driving Northward on Friday night and didn't stop until sleep became imperative. We had a carload of bikes and North Face gear, canned food and citronella candles, tents and sleeping bags and water purification tablets. This was no trip to the local woods to fall asleep listening to people whose idea of camping includes televisions and radios and a small, outdoor version of their living room. This was destined to be a weekend of bear poles and yellow jackets and the inevitable Great Lakes rain. All in all, the final score was Nature 6, Humans 4. We may have lost on the scorecard but we won our isolation and quiet souls as a result of the Church of the North Woods. There were times when all I could hear was the wind in the trees and my heart pounding in my chest. I learned that they are really the same thing .9.6.00


Inevitable change

My opinions of the whole radically unstable digital music universe as it is right now are in turmoil. I know that the old system is replete with old and antiquated protocol. The big record labels have been gouging prices and controlling what the public at large listens to for decades. The system needs to change and the change is happening faster than anybody knows what to do about it. I am normally into change because it always means something new. New might not be better but at the minimum it is different.

What fuels my fear of this change is that nobody knows how they are going to get paid. Napster seems both the atomic warhead that vaporized the camel's back and the Messiah that will free the enslaved masses of unknown musicians. My Mom was showing my CD around at her job in Alabama and this one guy was like "Cool! That sounds awesome! Here, let me burn a copy." I am torn between wanting to spread my music to ever corner of the universe by any means possible (free commerce) and my out and out NEED to finance my recording costs. Nobody likes to work for free and that is what is rapidly becoming the status quo in the music industry.

A horrific chill goes up my spine nearly every day when I overhear some coworker of mine say something like "my kids haven't bought a CD in over a year. They're always tying up the phone line downloading things from The Napster." I wish I knew what the answer was because whoever figures out how to utilize the Internet as a marketing and distribution tool properly will be famous... and rich. How rich, well - more than you can imagine. I don't know, I can imagine quite a bit. 9.1.00


Who are these people

Vacation. Is there such a thing? You travel far and wide to see your family and they drive you out of your mind. It's not quite that bad... but it's often times difficult to deal with people with a similar gene pool as you - especially when you don't see them very often. I have returned home safe and sound. Sane? Maybe not. I will revisit my vacation adventures in short order, but in the mean time I need to dig out of the immense hole created by my absence. (The family isn't that bad. They're good people... some of my favorites.) 8.14.00


Losing another one

Being sick in the Summertime sucks about as much as anything that I can think of. I was waylaid for a week with some sort of heinous throat infection. Being sick sure does make you appreciate the dull ticking of normalcy though.

I saw Steve Earle and the Dukes over the weekend. What a funny and amazingly talented musical anomaly he is. He will most likely be playing in a venue near you this Fall so get out and see him. He's in full on rock mode these days so twangophobes need not be afraid. Mr. Earle is a rather vocal opponent of the death penalty and I think that it is great to see someone with the balls to come out and voice such a strong and visible opinion on such a hotly debated topic. Steve Earle is one of those humans who are so good at being themselves that you can't help but like them.

My best friend is getting married this weekend. Where do I begin with that? Not here and not now, apparently. 7.31.00


Bachelor Party Blues

Somebody remind me to expound on Napster sometime soon.

I suppose that it is time to update this online journal thing. It has been a few weeks but it's not as if I am slacking. What could possibly be so important and time consuming that it could keep me from telling the cyber world about it? Summer, grilling, bachelor parties, girls, or a girl rather, Jedi training, serious illnesses, rehearsals, gigs, two holistic doctor's offices, family visits, lightning bugs, bike rides and new songs.

I hosted my best friend's bachelor party over the weekend. Those of us on the single side of the great river Styx will miss him greatly so we had to be sure to send him off in style. Now, style doesn't necessarily mean hookers and midgets in sailor suits. What style did and does mean was a concentrated effort to see that the impending doom groom had a good time with his male compatriots before the big day. This brings us to the Chicago Cubs phenomenon - a phenomenon that has far less to do with baseball that one would think. Their record is shameful and it has been since before the groom or I were born. And still the blind devotion pours in from all sides. I love a good bleacher seat a couple times a summer, but I can't seem to take the biggest beer garden on the North Side seriously as a competitive ball park. Getting upset about a Cubs loss is like getting upset about the sunrise. OK, digression time. The reason for the Cubs diatribe has to do with the fact that virtually every member of the bridal party pulled every string they had to come up with some tickets for the home game on the day of the big bachelor party. The soon to be ex-bachelor is the biggest Cubs fan I know. It came down to calling a ticket broker and a $70 per bleacher seat pricetag. No major league baseball at this betrothal it seems.

In lieu of baseball we chose the gender's other big obsession... golf. One little white ball and acres of grass between you and the little hole. Half the band is obsessed with it. I can understand the fixation but I am fairly sure that I would like to keep Pandora's Golf Box closed on the fairway. I properly connected with the ball three or four times over the course of 18 holes... and boy is that cool. A little simple math should tell you that the balance of the afternoon was a wash of frustration at being so incompetent at something that seemed so simple. I had a great time despite my obvious handicap. We had the prerequisite beer, golf cart antics a la Steve McQueen's Bullit, and Mike hit a goose with a chip shot. I stepped in goose shit. I only lost about 10 balls, which to be sure is down from my first golfing experience. The groom had a good time and chalk it up to mission accomplished. Now, on to the drinking.

At the grilled dinner we restrained the groom and made him don a prison uniform that we had acquired, complete with a hefty ball and chain constructed by yours truly out of a bowling ball and some unwieldy metal chain from a local hardware labyrinth. His initial balking was quelled when he soon realized the full comic potential of being dressed in such a ludicrous fashion in public. A Polaroid instant camera added some afterburner fuel to the evening.

My disclosure of the events that followed ends here... as in all good stories there needs to be something left to the imagination. It is human nature to speculate about unknown events and I am content to gamble as for whether or not what anyone thinks actually happened is better than what might have. Everyone survived. End of story. Mission accomplished.

I met another new girl. She's very cool. I won't write another word for fear of jinxing myself.

I wrote another song inspired by lightning bugs. What is it about those little bugs that puts me into a trance? I could watch them for hours. What a better life than coming alive every summer evening to fly free shining from within? I went stargazing while camping a few weeks back. It's almost as if the stars and lightning bugs are in love because they don't know any better. Just like us humans. We don't stargaze as much as we should. Why look down into a Palm Pilot when you can look up and see eternity? Is a LCD screen and AAA batteries more interesting than the universe before your eyes? It's all right there staring back at you.

Now I have to pose the question... is anybody really reading this thing? I realize full well that I am opening myself to responses from all manner of kooks and morons by asking such a thing. Feel free to respond here in case you have anything to say. Would I still write if no one was reading? I am sure I would. 7.27.00


Big Time Iowa fun

Check this link out for a good laugh or some very slow Zen practice. CornCam. As sick as it sounds I have been checking up on the progress on this site for a couple months now. It's one of those random websites that I stumbled across while wandering around the Internet. I spent a few years looking at corn while I was in college. There are a lot of endless stretches of highway bordered on both sides by corn in the Midwest and I suspect that Central Illinois is ground zero for corn density. Back and forth I went from the fun-filled and lackadaisical microcosm of college down state to the more urban Summer/Christmas vacation hangout called home - in any one of several cars which I would perpetually wonder if they would make the trip. That's a lot of corn whizzing by the open window and a lot of cassette tapes in a mostly functional stereo. Iowa, Indiana and Nebraska put up some serious corn competition though... although it's not a title that I would fight for. I even got a DeKalb corn seed ball cap from one of my ex-girlfriend's grandfathers who was reputedly a bona-fide farmer. It has the foam top and mesh back and some stains that I can fantasize about being tractor grease. 7.10.00


The Sticks (or how I went to the country and made it back alive)

I went camping over the weekend - camping and canoeing and the whole outdoor experience. The canoe trip lasted about 6 hours and I didn't even capsize once this time. I think the capsizing that occurred on the last canoeing trip was a result of first-time-in the great outdoors for the year overzealousness. We were playing pirates and yelling and throwing banana peels at the other members of our expedition and running around on small uninhabited islands saying things like "sucks to your auntie, sucks to your ass-mar!" Now that summer has set in and I have spent a considerable amount of time outside I could settle myself down and enjoy the day as a day of solitude away from the city. Here are some observations about rural living and camping.

Groceries are so cheap that they are very nearly free out there.

Those giant Wal Mart Super Labyrinths are sometimes almost as big as the towns they are built in.

You can still get free air for your tires somewhere out there.

To some people, camping means sitting around watching endless TV commercials outside on a battery-powered TV set instead of inside on an AC-powered TV.

The matriarch of the campground is usually on as big a power trip as any corporate CEO.

Never leave your jeans that you just changed out of on a park bench 13 miles upstream.

If you do, don't leave your wallet in the jeans.

Just like the beach/sand postulate that states that you should never bring anything to the beach that you don't want completely compromised by sand... don't take anything camping that cannot be compromised by water in one of its many forms (river water, dew, dog pee, etc.), mud or spiders.

Camping made me wish I had a dog.

Some campers have more amenities than any house that I have ever lived in.

It was a good day followed by a good night. We grilled our food and made s'mores and I laid myself down on a blanket in the grass to watch the stars before bed. Like New Year's Eve, camping is usually "Amateur Night." People who couldn't start a fire if their life depended on it try to start one and people who can't program a VCR attempt to set up a tent in the dark. Luckily for them, bears are not indigenous to our area of the country so it is likely that they all survived the weekend. Insect repellent has come a long way since I was a kid. (I remember seeing the neighborhood kids riding their bikes in the fog behind the mosquito fogger trucks that drove up and down our street in the summer twilight. Their kids will no doubt be riding their bikes behind the foggers of the future with three eyes.) I used to have to hold my younger siblings down to keep them from being carted off by the mosquitos in our yard. My so touted "waterproof" SPF 15 sunblock was in fact waterproof. Bully for the chemical people. They are improving our lives in some small way.

I bought a bunch of groceries at the Zip code-sized Wal Mart on the way home and didn't even encounter and holiday weekend traffic. Man, you rural people don't know how good you have it. Cheap food, cheap gas and no rush hour. If there was only a taco joint open until 4:00 AM I might be able to live out there. In the mean time I give up stargazing and seeing the horizon for cheap late night Mexican food and street parking. Fair trade? 7.3.00


Kick the can

Summer is finally here - indisputably and perfectly. I had breakfast on my porch this morning. The air smelled clean and alive and birds were singing to me. Maybe they weren't singing to me, but I like to think that they were. I guess they are singing to me just as much as anyone. As I sat eating my favorite cereal I had these flashbacks of being seven years old. I can still smell what the cool June morning air smelled like as it spilled in from the window next to my bunk bed. The iron taste of the well water from the hose always came out warm like blood and then cooled as the sun-warmed part that sat in the hose spilled onto the grass and your bare feet. The world has never looked better then it did when I viewed it from a fast-pedalled dirt bike or from the tops of the highest branches in the biggest maple trees in my Grandparent's yard. Lunch was Spagettios and baloney sandwiches with mustard and hot dogs and it fueled adventures the likes of which I haven't seen since. Twilight brought mosquitos and games of freeze tag and bloody murder... and the ritual of catching lightning bugs and putting them into mason jars with holes punched in the lid and a stick and some grass to make them feel at home. There is nothing like a living night light on your dresser across the room to keep your dreams on the proper side of the universe. Even now I would trade it all in to go back there. 6.29.00


Off with their heads

My distinct Medieval personality according to "Kingdomalilty," some sort of Medieval employment agency, is printed in the following paragraph. It's too bad that the band time machine is on the fritz. Jason wound up in the desert in 1324 A.D. instead of his intended time-space coordinate of Marilyn Monroe's dressing room circa 1958.

"Your distinct personality, The Benevolent Ruler might be found in most of the thriving kingdoms of the time. You are the idealistic social dreamer. Your overriding goal is to solve the people problems of your world. You are a social reformer who wants everyone to be happy in a world that you can visualize. You are exceptionally perceptive about the woes and needs of humankind. You often have the understanding and skill to readily conceive and implement the solutions to your perceptions. On the positive side, you are creatively persuasive, charismatic and ideologically concerned. On the negative side, you may be unrealistically sentimental, scattered and impulsive, as well as deviously manipulative. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today's corporate kingdoms."

Maybe, maybe not. 6.26.00


If you build it...

The disc was sent off for duplication on Friday. What a relief. It's sort of like college when finals are over and you don't know what to do, only I have plenty to do. Now that we will have product we shall have to sell it. No worries.

My friends staged a surprise birthday party for me recently. It's nice to know that you are loved. One of my dear friends actually painted a giant bedsheet-sized painting of my computer art Cliffs of Moher picture. I nearly died laughing when I saw it. The very friends who staged the party also chipped in and bought me a full-size Weber grill. It's a 22 and a half inch piece of backyard grilling bliss. I have been performing all my charcoal arts with a Weber Smokey Joe since college - which, because of the small distance between the coals and the food, gave the grilling a sort of atmospheric reentry cinder-like taste. It also took forever to grill enough food for all the usual suspects because the grilling surface was so small. No more! Last night I grilled chicken and and brats and burgers and shrimp and corn all at the same time! Will wonders ever cease? I can taste it even now. Next? All manner of backyard indirectly-cooked masterpieces await me. Not rain nor sleet nor dark of night shall keep this grilling enthusiast from his appointed delicacies.

I went mountain biking twice over the weekend. Now that's a good weekend. I realize that it's not the same "mountain" biking in the Midwest, but I do the best I can. I bled and got myself and my bike covered in weeds and mud. 6.19.00


Stars and Stripes

Flag Day, 2000. I have a really weathered 48-star flag that I found in a barn when I was a kid. Flag protocol dictates that I should destroy it but I can't bring myself to. It's too much of a time machine for me. This flag flew somewhere before I was born. It's red and white and blue and tattered and torn and filled with Postwar prosperity. It's hula hoops and muscle cars before they were muscle cars and drive-in theaters and milkshakes and Jazz and stacks of National Geographic magazines in my grandfather's basement. 6.14.00


Oops

Round and round she goes. Damn. That's all I have to say for today. I am in a fine mood, but it seems that the person that I relished conversing with has other people to converse with too. Onward. I always seem to get my heart broken in June. It's not as if I am completely dejected, but heartbreaks come in all sizes.

Some bastard stole the quick-release lever out of the front tire of my road bike. What a pointless and shameless act of thievery.. I guess that I would rather have someone steal something relatively incidental like that than something closer to my heart and more irreplaceable. I am no stranger to loss of personal possessions to thieves in my life. I have lost an electronic keyboard, a couple bike tires, and around $1500.00 worth of CDs out of my car. I can only imagine the chagrin of the thief who took my CDs when they discovered a bunch of nasal twangy rock bands and an almost-complete Tom Waits collection. I had signed CDs from bands like Cracker and Toad The Wet Sprocket too.

The new Steve Earle disc, Transcendental Blues was released this past Tuesday. I can only say that the only time that it has stopped spinning since I bought it was when I was transporting it from one CD player to another. Listen to me... you are getting sleepy... sleepy... sleepy. You must buy the new Steve Earle CD at the soonest available opportunity.

And before you wake... you will also buy the new Joe Armstrong CD.

I couldn't help it. 6.9.00


Isle of Joy

The year I spent in Manhattan taught me many things about myself and people and the planet that we all inhabit. That place clears out on holiday weekends. You think you know about things like money until you go to Manhattan. Those people have cash. Not all of them, mind you. I ran with the music and acting crowd, and although some of them had enough to eat, none of them had the "old money" that so many have on the isle. Come Memorial Day everyone headed up to Connecticut or New Hampshire or Vermont or out to Montauk or wherever. I have a similar feeling right now because a lot of my cronies are out of town. Paris and California have gutted my social circle... and that's before you take the damage control from weddings and impending weddings into account. I have been left with my guitar and my bike and my computer. I can't complain, because they are just about three of the best companions I could ask for, at least as far as inanimate objects are concerned. The band helicopter is still in the shop, so rotary-wing mischief is out. There's the car, but one can't get too far overnight when you have to be back in the morning, and where would I go around here anyway? There's plenty to do but no one to do it with.

I am in one of those phases where no food sounds good to me. It's inexplicable but legitimate. My mother is on this heinous organic diet these days. I am all for organic stuff but there's got to be a compromise in there somewhere. Right now Doritos and bulghur with seaweed sound equally unappealing to me. 6.1.00


Feels like rain - Free Willy

Three weeks from the longest day of the year and the weather still isn't cooperating. It's not altogether bad, but the holiday weekend left us waterlogged and lethargic. I spent some time outside in an attempt at doing something - anything - outside and ended up doing it in the rain. I didn't even get a chance to grill. What I did get to do was take a 4 hour nap on Saturday. I have read that humans can never actually make up for lost sleep, but my body seems to like to try.

Monday brought a day of pub athletics. Monday was Michael's (The best guitar player I know.) birthday and the band celebrated at a local brewpub. What a great concept. Fresh beer served up mere feet from where it was brewed. Factor in some food and you have a made a day of it. I am glad that one of the band women can properly divvy up a check. Actually, I was a waiter once upon a time in a past life. I can divide bar tabs and tip with the best of them... but I would rather be on the proactive end of the drinking team. And another Happy Birthday goes out to Michael Babincak. He is a truly gifted musician and a true friend. I couldn't be happier than to have him playing the band with me.

Tonight finds me taking up my first seat this season at Wrigley. Why is it that Wrigley Field doesn't sound like corporate meddling in sports venues, but The Staples Center does? Perhaps it's the closer relation between gum and other fun activities as opposed to the correlation between drinking outdoors and buying office supplies. Maybe not.

If anyone is looking for some great new music, check out Willy Porter's newest CD, Falling Forward. I opened for Willy along with some friends of mine once upon a time in one of my past lives. I like to call that life college, although I confess that I am not all that different from the me that used to have all that free time. I don't have the free time anymore but the goals are similar. But I must digress. Willy is a great singer-songwriter from Wisconsin who did his latest album with Neil Dorfsman producing (Neil produced Dire Straits) and Matt Chamberlain (former New Bohemians and SNL Band drummer) on drums. It's the best disc that I have heard in some time. And to those who like inside stories about their musicians... he was the nicest guy in the world back when I played a set before his. He has gone on to open for Tori Amos and others... six degrees you know.

I'll give you all a thrice-removed connection to Bo Diddely. Back when I lived in Manhattan I used to sell recording gear in a store near Times Square. Famous musicians would come in often and I got to deal with them just like the rest of the annoying customers. ("Cute cat, what's its name?") One day, this unmistakable attitude walks in and up to me... hat, turquoise belt buckle and all. "I'm Diddely," he says to me. "Hello Mr. Diddely," I reply to the music legend. "I'm messin' with a new sound... it's a motherfucker," he says. What does one say to that? 5.30.00


Spring sucks in Chicago - nacissism on parade

More London weather today. May is listing seriously towards the its end and it isn't even 60F outside. How annoying. 5.19.00

Band photo shoots are an exercise in narcissism. All performers have that "look at me" gene somewhere in their chromosome soup. I will admit that I spent a few years entertaining our parents and old folks in a whit suit with red sequins. As much as it amuses me to see several hundred pictures of myself and my band compatriots I also find it disconcerting. I am cool, but am I that cool? Many thanks to photographer extraordinaire Joshua, for making us scruffy musicians look good. For top notch photos of your band, wedding, bar mitzvah or backyard barbecue, contact Joshua at joshua@joshuanyc.com.

What I wouldn't do for a nap on this rainy spring afternoon. 5.17.00


We never talk anymore

Conversation is an increasingly lost art. Finding someone who can hold their own in conversation and smell good too is like unearthing a treasure that has been cradled in the bosom of a million miles of desert sand for a thousand years. Don't ask me to explain that concept. You either get it or you don't. 5.12.00


For every action...

Adages come up constantly in daily life. A stitch in time is better than two in the bush before the chickens hatch with the same stone… or something like that. I have noticed that most of those sayings have a contradictory adage that is just as applicable and advisable in a different situation. It’s like zealots interpreting the Bible to say whatever the hell they want it to mean to suit their particular agenda. “God told me to kill my entire family with an electric toothbrush! Look, it’s right here in Chapter whatever, Verse blah.”

Perception is reality. That’s a good one. Stop and think about the fact that reality is only what you have seen with your own eyes during your tenure on the planet, and that everything else was described to you by people who may or may not have even been there themselves. What you have seen on TV and movies and in books doesn’t count because you were never there. I can personally vouch for the fact that the Statue of Liberty isn’t nearly as big as it looks… especially when viewed from the Empire State Building. I can tell you that London is rainy, that Nebraska is flat, and that 100 miles outside of every city you will find backwoods people that are just as backwoods as that banjo playing guy on the porch in Deliverance. Once you factor in imagination and the human tendency to embellish stories you really can’t take anything about history at face value. It’s “Imagination is reality” for the likes of me. The inner play-by-play of my imagination is much more amusing to me than what is happening around me most of the time.

Truth is stranger than fiction. What’s the difference? I suspect that millions of us don’t actually know the difference. I won’t take sides in this thing, but do kids really think that we all get 3 lives like on video games? Bleep Bleep. “Aw shit, I just got hit by a bus again…only one guy left.” I suspect that most of us are still looking for that little programming quirk in life where we can jump on this mushroom by the stairs at just the right time and rack up a virtually inexhaustible supply of lives. If you find it, let me know. I haven’t the slightest desire to be around forever… but I wouldn’t mind seeing us cure cancer or live on an extra-solar system planet or finally see the Cubs take the series.

My official slant on the "half full/half empty" analogy goes beyond optimism. When posed with the question as for whether the proverbial pint glass is half full or half empty... I say that it's time for more. 5.10.00


Dreamweaver - sleeping with crickets

More disturbing dreams last night. This time the malevolent manifestation of my subconscious' wrath was cockroaches. They were everywhere, and as my brain toggled from asleep with bugs to awake and where are the bugs I had a hard time figuring out what was going on. It's like when your dream is more real than your bedroom so your waking self keeps kicking you back into play like a drunk turtle trying to right itself .

The good thing was that I slept with my window open, which has got to be one of my favorite things on the planet. I could stare at the night sky all night long. Back when I was a kid and I wanted to be an astronaut I used to stare at the moon for hours wondering what my footprints would look like in the moon dust. Now that I am a bigger kid I stare at the moon for hours wondering what my footprints would look like in the moon dust. I don't get people who spend their whole lives behind drawn shades. I want as much a part of the rest of the world as I can. It's all out there, just outside the window and I want as little as possible between myself and Paris and mountains and jungles and adventures. I sleep better when I can hear what is going on. The older I have gotten the less specific the conditions under which I can sleep have become. As a kid, the noise of a clock ticking in the other room would keep me up. Now, I am proud to say that I can lie down on moderately level ground with some grass and it's off to never never land. When I was a kid, you can just about forget about sleeping on Christmas Eve or Halloween or the night before the big family summer vacation. I had enough potential energy to levitate an X-Wing out of a swamp. I have a lot of energy still, but my body has better learned how to allocate it properly.

Oh, and Mom made May baskets with my nephew this week. I wonder what she dressed him in. 5.4.00


Diamond Dave - a Fox River Posiedon Adventure - and Mom

May Day. I have a distinct memory of being a kid on May Day. My mother and I made May baskets and filled them with candy and then took them to several people's houses. She would have me walk up to their door and ring the bell or knock... no doubt dressed up in some miniature spring little boy outfit. It was sort of a benevolent version of "ding dong ditch."

I just finished reading David Lee Roth's autobiography. It was pretty damn funny. I am back to Franny and Zoey now. Salinger is so concerned with that embittered attitude, and I enjoy it, but it reads like walking through tall weeds.

I went canoeing over the weekend. It feels so good to be sunburned. Sunburns and hangovers should be appreciated for what they are, which is reminders that you did something fun. I only managed to capsize the ship twice. The first time was when I was trying to clamor onto the muddy shore of those little uninhabited islands in the middle of the river. I have always had a fascination with those islands because they are largely untouched by man. I don't even think that they are big enough to sustain a mammal population. Perhaps some mice or something. I think it has to do with the concept of islands in and of themselves that attracts me. It has been said that no man is an island, but I have to say that I feel like one from time to time. But I must digress. The second time we went into the drink was when we began to fancy ourselves pirates and began to attack the other canoeists in our party by throwing food at each other. We were trying to maneuver the canoe in an attempt to get the banana peel that had just been launched at us so we could retaliate. Instead, we flipped again. The good thing about being soaked is that you can't get any more wet than you already are. The water was cool, but not freezing. I remember an afternoon tubing trip in Texas in June once when the air temperature had to be in the upper 90's and the water was frigid. As it turned out the water in the Guadeloupe River was released by a valve from the bottom of a deep reservoir where even the kindly Texas sun didn't have the wattage to penetrate to the depths to warm the water that we would be tubing in. It was so cold that it seemed to burn. It was a great day just the same. 5.1.00


Stay on target

It's been a while since I have written anything in here. It seems as if that's how all my old-fashioned book journal entries start anymore as well. The last few weeks have been interesting.

First off, all the tracks for the upcoming CD have been mixed and are awaiting the mastering process. I finished up on Saturday afternoon and spent most of the rest of the day sighing with that same feeling that I used to get after finals in college. (Some call it "Miller Time," but with all my beer snobbery I don't think I could get a Miller product up to my lips if I had to.)

Sunday brought that empty feeling that was exactly like in high school when you would finish the big musical that you had been devoting all your time to for 8 weeks... and you would wake up the next day and the stage would have been struck the night before thereby scaring away any initial memories of the what you just did. You couldn't go stand on the set before the house filled and feel the magic and energy of what was about to happen, or go stand by the lone lamp without the shade and listen for the echoes of laughter and applause after curtain. The first time I really remember being fully alive was when I started doing those musicals in high school. I didn't have enough Barrymore in me to keep doing it in college, but I am still enthralled by the intangible vibe of having all eyes on what I am doing. Being a songwriter fills you up in ways beyond that. Not only is everybody looking at you, but you just happened to have invented the song and put together the band. It wasn't there until you willed it to be so. Is this narcissistic? Sure. Does every performer have this unfortunate affliction? Hell yes.

I have been working on this CD for nearly a year now. If I had a wife/girlfriend I could have had a son or daughter in the time it has been since we first pressed the record button. At least we're not Def Leppard or Boston. How in the name of Christ do you spend six years on an album? I might feel completely different about any given topic that I have written about next week, much less six years from now. Now that we live on Internet time, six years is what it takes to travel at light speed to Kaplutis. Six years in Internet time is like 1747 "normal" human years.

Any way. Gotta jump. No sleep for the wicked or weary or motivated. More to come. 4.24.00


Subconcious rebellion

Today is one of those days when my conscious life has been set off kilter by the dream that I was having when I woke up. I don't remember much about the dream, but I know that it involved the house that I grew up in and my family as they were when I was younger. My family and I had returned from a vacation to find that someone had broken into our house and left several doors ajar. The resulting disconcerting feeling wasn't so much from the theft of anything valuable as much as the fact that someone had violated our personal space. That's about all that I remember, but it was apparently enough to throw off my whole day. 4.13.00


Hurry up and wait

Hurry up and wait. At times it seems as if that has become the mantra of modern life. Just as "Come here but don't" seems to be the mantra of modern love. 4.11.00


Yes, Michigan

Quote for the day... "Just because you are walking in front of me it doesn't mean that I am following you."

I spent the weekend holed up in a recording studio with the band mixing tracks for the CD. It seems as if we have been working on this thing since the dawn of time. This is not actually the case. It is very gratifying to finally hear with my ears what I have been hearing in my head for years. It's a pretty intense working environment. You can tell that it is day out because you see the sun through the blinds, but it could be summer, it could be winter, you could be on Mars. Mixing for 13 hours makes you appreciate silence like never before. I drove all the way back home without reaching for the car stereo even once.

Rural Michigan is strange enough by itself... and when you sequester yourself from the outside world and lose track of the normal barrage of information that assaults your daily life you see things differently. I grew up in a small town, but somehow things just don't seem the same. The town I grew up in now has an Applebee's just like every other rural American town that has been encircled by strip malls as if they were circling the wagons to fend off an attack from... well, from who? Where will boys damn creeks and make driveway ramps to jump their bikes on? Things have changed. 4.10.00


Shamen

I met a shaman once. At least he said that he was a shaman. More on that later. The weather sucks right now. I don't expect surfing weather in Chicago in April, but snow is a bit much. No time to write... as I am off to a sequestered weekend to begin mixing the album. I guess people still call them albums. It is mine so I guess I can call it whatever I want. 4.7.00


I'll wish I had this day back

What does Thursday say? I have been listening all day and it hasn't been saying much. I imagine that it would most likely be saying a lot more if I knew that this particular Thursday was the last day of my life, which as far as I know it isn't. I don't want to tempt fate by writing such things as much as make the observation.

What happens to memories when we die? Once upon a time I read a book in which the characters were primitive protohumans and in this book they were depicted as having the preprogrammed innate memories of their ancestors when they were born. That might be more annoying than helpful. Imagine having to deal with your parents and grandparents neighborhood bullies' pubescent taunting as well as your own. I don't know if I could deal with several generations of "Armweak, Armweak!" It would be genetic proof of some manifestation of Asshole Darwinism... that the strongest assholes survive along with the strongest of the rest of us.

In any case, I have a whole head full of grandiose memories that will go to waste if this soul doesn't go anywhere after this body has had enough. I guess my decedents could replay them for fun with a bowl of popcorn or whatever the snack food du jour is in the future as everyone sits around in those sheik silver jumpsuits. I do much of the same thing now without the jumpsuit. Moving picture memories play on the pale white screen of my consciousness - showing regular features of burning wicker chairs, cement monument heists, and any number of a myriad of inebriated misadventures involving shopping carts, a Java Sparrow, leaky radiators, sleep deprivation, pellet guns, roadtrips and belligerent ex-girlfriends. 4.6.00


Are we there yet?

"Cool is fear dressed in black." I don't know who said it, but it made me think when I read it. I had a girlfriend in High School who had a big all-black clothing phase. I guess most girls have a black phase at some point in their life. Johnny Cash made it cool. The Cure did the same thing 30 years later. I am typically an Earth tones kind of guy... especially being the summer junkie that I am. Playing acoustic guitar on my front porch while eating one of those red, white and blue bomb pop Super Star popsicle things just isn't as me while wearing leather pants.

Just what the hell are dreams anyway? What is it about them that keeps us fixated on seemingly unattainable goals and hopeless aspirations? Love does that too. Are dreams and love two different crops grown in the same field as the gods rotate the crops?

When is it in life that you stop thinking about arriving and realize that you're there? I have a dear friend who lives their dream every day and who is about to have tangible proof that they have arrived... arrived somewhere at least. Somewhere where everyone can see that they have done it. I sometimes wonder what would be left of me without my dreams. I think that my answer can be found reflected in the faces of the hundreds of people wandering to or from work every day. It is truly a blessing to enjoy what you do and I, like my friend Thoreau, think that the mass of men (and women) lead lives of quiet desperation. I write about it in my songs and think about it as I wander around the planet hoping that I am not reflecting unrequited dreams to those looking back at me. I am still immersed in mine. I am both foolish enough and smart enough to still believe that they can come true. It sounds like a load of Disney bullshit, but at least it gives me something to live for. Some live for religion, others politics. Some humans live to drink and some to eat... and some to climb and some to ride and fly and work and build and destroy. I think that I live to dream. 4.5.00


I don't want to talk about it

On the way to work the other morning I sat down next to a dour woman who appeared to be sleeping on the train. She gave me the evil eye when I took the seat next to her, thereby rousing her from her slumber. She neglected to move over when I sat down, and I was tired so I decided to deal with the violation of my personal space. Upon disembarking the train at the end of my morning trek I noticed that my rear end was wet... on the side that adjoined the disagreeable woman. Repulsed though I was, I did my best to try and not think about the nature of the substance responsible for the wetness. It was a nice start to my Monday. 3.29.00


When Irish eyes are quarter slots

I was in Ireland once. I learned to speak some of the important local dialects... Beamish, Murphy's, and of course, Guinness. I drove a backwards, manual transmission car all over the Emerald Isle. As if the fact that the steering wheel was on the opposite side wasn't confusing enough, I had to steer with my right hand while shifting with my left... all while attempting to stay on what my brain kept telling me was the wrong side of the road. A month long sojourn to Europe left me completely confused as for which way I should be looking when crossing the road upon my return to the States. I learned new definitions for concepts like Bed and Breakfast and "pudding" (Ack.), as well as all new definitions for words like dismal, dreary and damp. I sat on the edge of the world at the Cliffs of Moher with my feet precariously dangling over the edge, which was six hundred feet straight down to the ocean. It was all too similar to The Cliffs of Insanity depicted in a well-loved movie. I saw castles built by people whose bodies have turned to dust and back to living and once again to dust. In the castles I could almost hear the ghosts of frustrated altar boys forced to hold heavy bibles for ever-unappreciative clergymen when they would rather be playing in the mud just as I did as a young lad. I flirted with Irish college girls in an Irish college pub and was just as amused as they were to be bullshitting the other. I had a great meal in a town with eight houses and three pubs. I flew over from London on a plane ride that would put any big American roller coaster to shame. Just to remind me of traveling domestically the airline lost my luggage. I stayed with the Mother Teresa of Limerick, and I have never seen so many pictures of American Irish politicians in my life as I did in her B&B. I saw the outline of the sun through the clouds for all of about 4 seconds the entire time I was there. It's no wonder to me why those people got it in their heads that there was a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. An essential element of rainbows is sunshine, and since that commodity is at a premium in Ireland it stands to reason. After countless pints of stout I think I got the leprechaun thing as well.

All in all I had a great time there. I suspect, that given the opportunity and standing in the cold wet shoes of my ancestors, that I too would have braved the storms of the North Atlantic and the belligerent indigenous peoples of the New World at the mere chance of nicer weather. (For the record, as the descendant of those people, I am currently freezing here in Chicago.) At least starving and eating corn is different from starving and eating potatoes.

And so, heavily laden with as much Beamish as I could carry and wiser for having seen one of the most verdant parts of the planet, I made my way back home to the land of flat, tasteless beer.

Saint Patrick's Day is the second most important Holy day in the drinker's year, so I expect everyone to worship in the traditional manner... by tipping back a pint as the Sacrament of Communion. 3.17.00


Stop this thing, I want off

Time flies when you're having fun, so they say. Is this fun? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. I believe that people are ultimately responsible for their own happiness. If you chose to be happy then you work at it a little and you are. I learned that from someone cool once upon a time. I didn't believe her at first and fought it tooth and nail. When nothing else seemed to work I decided to embrace it... and what sounded so simple on paper was for once the same in practice. This does not mean that you won't have to work to get it. Some people don't want to be happy, and that's fine with me so long as they don't rain on my parade. Life is beautiful... Life's what you make it... say many a wise man. I couldn't agree more. 3.14.00


Injun Spring

It seems as if our late winter warm spell has come and gone. It was most enjoyable to play like it was spring for a few days. Yesterday at lunch I lay myself down on a patch of ever-elusive urban grass and stretched out like a cat. All around me people were runner hither and tither doing some manner of ultimately pointless business or other... and my only earthly concern came down to feeling the sun on my face. I am the first to put on shorts every spring in a fit of overzealous longing for summer. No doubt some of you reading this are sitting in front of a fan in shorts and a flowery shirt, but for Chicagoans mid-70 degree temperatures in early March are a gift from the gods.

And speaking of gods, yesterday was Ash Wednesday for the Catholics among us. It is hard for me to believe that I was once an altar boy. Tee he. So it goes. 3.9.00


I built this temple and I'll tear it down if I want

Fat Tuesday. Sort of like the ultimate Saturday night. People let out all their demons on Saturday night in order to get closer to the maker on Sunday morning. Is this rampant hypocrisy or necessary evil? I tend not to concern myself with deific retribution, but I don't derive pleasure from sadistic activities so perhaps I have some leeway. 3.6.00


Let's start with Marley

There are days when I know that I would be content to sit around and listen to records all day. Today feels like one of those days. 3.6.00


Two and two are eight

Synergy is such an amazing thing. Things that were cool before become exceptional when humans work together to make something happen. I had the opportunity to work with three amazing singers and great people today. Melissa, Ava and Anne made my week today by lending their amazing voices and hearts to a couple songs on the album. I can't thank them enough. Check out Melissa in the band Gertrude. Ava has a project as well, but I don't have a link for her yet. I am sure that Asia will be a wonderful singer as well when she grows up. Anne is just a kindred spirit and a joy to work with. Thanks for all your help Anne.

Now we sleep, or I do at least. I can't wait to get back to work tomorrow. 3.5.00


Size elevens

Much to my chagrin, I was awakened by a phone call at 4:30 AM CST this morning. Now, there have been times when it was relatively commonplace for me to be up and active at 4:30 AM on a Thursday, but not these days... and definitely not this morning. A male voice greeted me, saying "Joe?" I am at this point fearing the worst, not knowing that the fact that this rude person knew my name was perhaps the worst yet. "Yes," I replied. "Can I lick your feet?" the voice says. "Uhhh..." I say as my not-yet-lucid brain attempts to process this request. A quick follow up punch is volleyed. "Can I suck your toes?" As I gained my facilities, an irritated and automatic "Who the fuck is this?" was muttered as my only defensive maneuver. The mysterious caller's only reply, "Bad boy," and the click of their disconnection. I might have been tempted to play along had the caller been female, however, as an open request to my anonymous foot-fetishist caller... please refrain from phoning me during my precious REM sleep time. At least allow me my sleeping dreams. I spend too much time working on my waking dreams as it is.

I would now like to take this opportunity to express my disdain for childish and irresponsible people. I will be the last to carry the flag for the teeming masses of those who proffer "acceptable adult behavior," BUT I show up when and where I say I will.

It has been an altogether disconcerting day and I think I could use a nap.

The other day this guy was trying to convince me that humans can now get a Pentium microprocessor installed in their brain. Why in the hell would I want my personality to crash every time I tried to talk on the phone while doing the dishes? Maybe a G4 chip would be better. 3.1.00


Homegrown

55 Degrees Fahrenheit prompted a walk home from the CTA stop this evening... the stop about a mile from home. Life provides many opportunities to see things from a different perspective if you just let it do so. It won't be long now until I can sit on my porch and finish songs that don't seem to want to grow up indoors. A serious case of cabin fever prompted a February grilling on Sunday evening. It was a nice break from my newest endeavor, home brewing. I am now sitting next to a 5 gallon glass jug of fermenting pre-beer. I hope it doesn't suck. Also, another minor victory for me (at least on this planet)... as I finally got this goddamn thing to work and got the journal online all by myself. Onward and upward say I. 2.22.00


Preface - Shovel this

I don't know about you, but I am looking forward to summer like nobody's business. As I sit and ponder what to write for this, the opening installment of the online journal, Chicago sits poised on the brink of another snowstorm. I am not amused. Those of you who get to leave work at 5 will now notice that it isn't pitch black out at that point. Every day is one day closer to grilling, sandals and sleeping under an open window. I, for one, cannot wait.

The CD project is coming along nicely. Some truly amazing performances were captured earlier in the month during our overdubbing sessions. These sessions will be resumed in a matter of days, and I am looking forward to their completion. The rabid Joe Armstrong fans can expect to finally see product in May. In the mean time, sleep well... and dream of large women. 2.17.00

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