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Journal - 2002
Here Be Monsters Life is strange… and funny too, if you let it be. Some major changes are about to take place in my life. Perhaps they already have but the shadows aren't reflecting them yet. I'm setting out in search of adventure, shadows and all. First, a stop at a friendly port to acquire provisions. It's autumn
again. It snuck up on my just like it always does. I had a nice bike ride
tonight - through the crisp air laden with the bite of the season's first
hearth fires. Now I'm home listening to Nick Drake. It's not much of a
home these days but that will change soon. I'm hoping to avoid Chicago's
January, February and March torture session. I say it every year…
fall is the most beautiful story ever written with the most horrible ending
imaginable. There are scores of you out there happily awaiting winter's
sweater days. Not me. I'm cashing in my sweaters. 10.20.02
I took a nap after dinner tonight so I'm sitting awake at nearly 1:am. I've recently picked up a lot of new music and thought I might tell you about it. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me: Go buy this CD. It's a calming and fresh debut release and I admit that I'm already looking forward to a second album from Norah and her band. She's a folky-jazzy singer who isn't a diva (unbelievable) and who isn't obsessed with showing off her midriff. This isn't to say that she isn't beautiful. She shares the writing duties with the members of her understated and tasteful band. Nobody overplays and it creates a laid back and refreshing mood that lasts the length of the CD. It's like a good red wine buzz rendered onto compact disc. Mark Knopfler - The Ragpicker's Dream: The former Dire Straits front man continues the progression of his last solo CD, Sailing to Philadelphia, from a couple years back. Nobody makes a guitar sing as lyrically as Knopfler, and now that the overshadowing big dollar expectations of his old band have been mothballed he's free to leave the lame singles off his albums. What thankfully remains is what has always been Knopfler's strong point - emotive and musical narratives of the everyman. Mark's guitar tone tutorial is once again in session - as always - documenting how the instrument should sound for future generations of traditionally misguided burgeoning guitar players. Steve Earle - Jerusalem: It's no small secret that I'm a big fan of this leftist redneck Renaissance man. That being said I was nervous to find out whether or not he could hit his 6th homerun in as many consecutive at bat appearances. More visible artists have risen from drug-addled tumult to produce triumphant Pheonix-esque returns to form. Steve Earle ranks among the best of these artists. Since he got himself locked up for drug possession charges in the mid-90's he cleaned up his act and began releasing one unbelievably strong album after another. Many artists have attempted to reflect America in our post-September 11th funk, some with horrific results rivaled only by the event itself. Earle's latest grand slam, Jerusalem, is the only example that has the depth and breadth to address the stark truths of the New New World Order. Earle is unafraid to reveal the chinks in our own armor and shine a light on the questionable policies that brought us to where we are at the same time that he extols the virtues of America and our malleable political handbook, the U.S. Constitution. In short, he tells it like it is instead of how we'd like to think it is. And he makes the truth sound damn good. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - The Last DJ: Tom Petty is a master of keeping it simple in the midst of a seemingly endless parade of stupidity. The man isn't as simple as we all think. He's offhandedly and deftly carrying the torch for good old-fashioned rock and roll. Somebody had better just turn up an amp and go without first posing for the camera or turning the soft drink can so we can all see the label. The music industry is broken. It has always been a stinking heap of shit, but now the national radio play lists are determined and issued by the corporatized Shit Central Command. Petty and the eternally tasteful Heartbreakers tackle the shit head on in The Last DJ. While it seems impossible to clean up shit without getting any on them, Tom Petty winds up smelling like a rose. He lambastes the sad current state of popular music and offers the rocking Last DJ to be played as penance for our uber-hyped transgressions. Bruce Springsteen - The Rising: The Boss could smell the smoke of a gutted Manhattan from his New Jersey home. The people that bore the hardest burden of September 11th were the very working class people that he'd been populating his songs with for nearly 30 years. Bruce lit up the Asbury Park bat signal and called up the East Street reserves in order to make The Rising, his first studio album with the East Street band since the Reagan era. The Boss fronting the East Street band is an unparalleled rock experience - a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline. It was a timely choice to reunite the band. The Rising is comforting because the old band plays new material with verve in order to remind us of a simpler time when national internal problems were the challenges of the day. Echoes of Rosalita and the bombast of Born in the USA permeate The Rising, if only to remind us that we're all still here. Bruce wants us all to know that we can survive this. Born in the USA indeed. I also picked
up Springsteen's Nebraska and Earle's Guitar Town - two
CDs I had been meaning to pick up for the better part of a decade. Maybe
I'll give you my two cents on those later. If you're wondering why I didn't
give any bad reviews you can kindly remember that nobody is sending me
music to review. I buy the music with my own money and these are artists
that I enjoy and respect. If you want bad reviews read Spin magazine.
Those assholes don't like anything. 10.12.02 Old friends are great. I had a dear old friend come to town for vacation over the weekend. This old friend of mine found himself an exemplary woman and he brought her along as well. He's a very lucky man. It's funny to tag along on someone else's vacation in your hometown. You tend to do things and go places that you might not normally do or go. I actually watched a Bears game at Mike Ditka's restaurant last night. We had to show up exorbitantly early in order to get a seat at the bar and now my rear end hurts from sitting for so long. It's hard enough for me to sit still long enough to make it through a football game. Waiting for it to start was a challenge. And then there's the bill… Ditka's should have financing available for their $5 plus Guinness stouts. As it was a rout, we decided to bail out of the football game and make our way to a pub that had been reported to have Bell's Two Hearted Ale on a beer engine. (That's hand drawn Real Ale, kids.) As per usual, once we got caught in the gravitational pull of what was going to be a pint or two of delicious ale, it turned into a lot more than two. We learned that the Clark Street Ale House is a 4:am bar. That's right, kids. That's 4:am in the morning. Despite my desire to slump over and pass out on my keyboard I wouldn't have traded the night for anything. I have other brothers around the world… in London, California, Germany and the like. I might not see them often but they ride around in my heart with every step I take. Out In the Middle of Lake Ontario I also saw my Canadian friends in the band Blue Rodeo on Friday night. If they come to your town, do go out and see them. They're the best bar band I've ever seen. It's almost a joke, but they're a big deal in their native Canada. Down here we have the good fortune of seeing them play medium sized clubs. I've taken great pleasure in turning new people on to them over the years. I scored a new recruit on Friday. Selling Ghosts to the Highest Bidder I made my
annual pilgrimage to a pumpkin farm on Sunday. I've been going to the
same rural farm in order to pick my Halloween pumpkins straight out of
the pumpkin patch for as long as I can remember. I did grow some pumpkins
of my own this season but I needed to augment my personal crop. This particular
pumpkin farm isn't nearly as rural as it used to be. It used to be situated
at the farthest western reaches of Northern Illinois civilization - where
the far western suburbs ended and the serious cornfields began. There
used to be nothing between the last pumpkin vine and the Rocky Mountains
other than seemingly infinite miles of corn and the Mississippi River.
Here in the year 2002 you can hear the wheels on the shopping carts from
the nearby Target or Super K mart or whatever giant shopping labyrinth
that grew up next door. The pumpkin patch itself is now butted up to a
row of houses back yards and a middle school. It tends to detract from
the sincere Great Pumpkin nature of the place. A couple years back I found
a new pumpkin farm - without the nightmarish urban sprawl - that is even
farther out west but I didn't have the time to get out to it on Sunday.
The old one has all manner of crazy inflatable rides and a snack bar that
sells corn dogs and chicken strips. Nothing says old-fashioned autumnal
tradition like chicken strips. They charge the kids through the nose for
every little rinky-dink ride and second-rate hay bale maze. Not even the
pumpkin farm is safe from overzealous Capitalist proliferation. And that's
scary. 10.8.02 I was occupying my usual spot at The Hopleaf last week, drinking Two Hearted Ale with my compatriot Bill, and I got up and ambled into the bathroom. A long-standing asset of The Hopleaf are the single occupancy bathrooms. They're a place of relative quiet and respite in the salt and spray of the barroom. I stepped inside and locked the door in order to keep the din from spilling into the little room. I begin to take care of business and glanced to my left. Some jackass had etched a swastika into the drywall next to the sink. A goddamn swastika! I was incredulous. Maybe in a sports bar, maybe in Mississippi roadhouse or in some militia bar in Michigan, but not right there in my beloved neighborhood pub. I finished, washed up and fumed back to my seat. I explained what I saw to Bill and said that something must be done - at once. I grabbed my key chain with its little black Swiss army knife attached and headed straight back to the bathroom. I once again closed and locked the door, this time making sure that no one was waiting to get in behind me. I observed the obviously new powdery whiteness of scratched drywall particles on the floor beneath the offensive symbol and deduced that the Nazi prick was most likely still in the bar. I set to work, scratching four connect-the-dots lines that transformed the swastika into a box with a cross in it. (See figure 1.)
It felt odd
to be vandalizing my favorite pub, but as I etched I figured that it was
my duty to see to it that no one, especially the proprietor, lay eyes
upon this now-vanishing little symbol of evil. Jesus. Who would do such
a thing? It felt a little like sinking a mortally damaged ship so it didn't
fall into enemy hands. I finished and ran the water to feign hand washing
in case anyone was listening just outside the door. I stepped out of the
bathroom and back to the low light at our booth. There was no way I was
going to stare at a swastika every time I needed to take a leak in my
favorite pub. There was also no way I was going to let the owner - who
is often a bartender - get the impression that his bar was being disgraced
with Nazi clientele. As our conversations turned back to Star Wars, music
and failed relationships I remembered that our Nazi vandal prick was among
the patrons currently laughing and drinking somewhere in the bar. The
Hopleaf is small and we looked around trying to suss out which one he
might be. The funny thing was that everybody looked about the same, which
might be the moral to the story. People who think like that are not just
out there somewhere else and speaking guttural languages. They are just
like you and I. We need to remember to start with ourselves and to make
sure that hate doesn't live in our own hearts. 9.30.02 Don't patronize
U-Haul. I paid money in advance to reserve a truck from them over the
weekend and they didn't have a truck for me when it came time to pick
it up. I've always felt that the concept of a reservation was a simple
one. In every endeavor there's always the isolated human screw up error
and I'll grant them that. But my call to Penske, one of their competitors,
revealed that this sort of thing is a regular occurrence at their office.
The helpful Penske employee I spoke with said that they get several Saturday
morning calls not unlike mine every single weekend. U-Haul has shafted
me before so this incident is the last straw. I recommend that everyone
use Penske or some other competitor for their moving needs. I told the
U-Haul corporate phone guy that I would be actively campaigning to get
people to not rent from them. I also told him that - in the future - I
wouldn't move across the street in a U-Haul truck. My open letter to U-Haul
merely reads "Kiss my ass." 9.29.02 Honorable mention goes to a tiny pub in Bath, England. I'll dig out the name when I unpack all my shit and locate my CAMRA pub guide after I find my new apartment. This little place in Bath was only marginally larger than my old closet apartment in Hell's Kitchen. Only my apartment didn't have any tappers or stools and sat at the top of 5 floors worth of stairs. This tiny back street pub had amazing hand drawn ales and some nice décor made up of paneled walls with prints from the golden age of aviation. If I close my eyes I can still taste the stout. Incidentally,
the address for The Blind Tiger is 518 Hudson Street @ 10th Street in
Manhattan. I stopped
at the local 24-hour supermarket to pick up some late night Spaghettios
on the way home from the pub the other night. The woman in front of
me in line was making a big scene about exchanging some ridiculous
trinket she had purchased several weeks prior. I wandered about the
store to kill some time and give the poor clerk some time to sort
the situation out. I discovered that Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter
Cup flavor will give you 156% of your daily USDA allotment of fat.
I also discovered that one can purchase 16 ounces of Mexican Adobo
seasoning for under $3.00. I also wrote the following song to the
tune of God Bless America. From the
pale ale, God bless
the Hopleaf, Life is strange.
Just when you think that things couldn't get any worse, they do. Sometimes
things get a lot worse. The sun just keeps coming up. Good things happen.
Bad things happen. I try to at least learn something along the way. 9.16.02 Many thousands
of lives will be lost in a vain attempt to either right America's past
foreign policy transgressions, or perhaps more appropriately, draw attention
away from the fact that American foreign policy hasn't been working. I'll
refer to a bit of a Nelson Mandela article below that I lifted from a
news site. I'm sure I am once again violating a copyright law or two -
but hell, people can download my own copyrighted music from this very
site. We'll call it even. In a rare interview, the South African demands that George W. Bush win United Nations support before attacking Iraq Sept. 10 - Nelson Mandela, 84, may be the world's most respected statesman. Sentenced to life in prison on desolate Robben Island in 1964 for advocating armed resistance to apartheid in South Africa, the African National Congress leader emerged in 1990 to lead his country in a transition to non-racial elections. As president, his priority was racial reconciliation; today South Africans of all races refer to him by his Xhosa clan honorific, Madiba. Mandela stepped down in 1999 after a single five-year term. He now heads two foundations focused on children. He met with Tom Masland early Monday morning in his office in Houghton, a Johannesburg suburb, before flying to Limpopo Province to address traditional leaders on the country's AIDS crisis. Excerpts: Masland:
Why are you speaking out on Iraq? Do you want to mediate, as you tried
to on the Mideast a couple of years ago? It seems you are reentering the
fray now. With the impending broadcast of The Soprano's 4th season I am desperately trying to watch the entire 3rd season on DVD before Sunday night. This sort of viewing onslaught has been the standard practice for all my Sopranos viewing. I did virtually the same thing when I discovered the show a year and a half ago, back when the 1st season was released on DVD. I'd heard the buzz but hadn't seen an episode until a Friday night when I found myself home and alone with my roommate's DVD copy of season 1. I popped it in and sat down with my dinner. In 30 minutes my dinner was gone but my interest in the Soprano family was growing exponentially. My buddy and I ended up watching the first season in toto by the end of the next day - stopping only for trips to Whole Foods to pick up more beer. When season two was released we did something similar. "Why stop now?" I'm thinking. It's hard for me to sit still either way so why not just do it in one big sedentary lump. We made it through 5 episodes last night before we ran out of beer and remembered that it was a school night. Not So Long AgoSeptember 10th, 2002. 365 short days ago we were enjoying the yellow sunlight and pleasant late summer Chicago temperatures. My biggest concern was where I was going to find another day job. The economy was becoming an issue but it didn't seem like anything serious. We all went to bed thinking nothing in particular about the coming day, just like most average humans do all over the world on most average nights. It has been quite a year. I'm just happy that I'm still here to write and that you're there to read. I'm not so happy about the current climate and beating of war drums but I need to save that for when I have more time to write. I'll just say that I miss the days of politico/fellatio scandals. 9.10.02 R is for Rocket Today is Ray Bradbury's birthday. The man lives still, guardian of my childhood dreams of rocketships and lightning bugs. Happy birthday, Ray, from little Joey Armstrong. 8.22.02 Big Wheels Keep on Turnin' I've made some updates to the site. There is not so much clutter on the first page. The site needs a major overhaul, but the lawn needs mowing, the wash needs washing and the sun is shining so I'm headed outside. Maybe I'll find the time and motivation to reconfigure this thing when the weather breaks. It looks as if I'll be heading for a change of scenery soon. I've been desperately trying to signal the mother ship in order for them to take me back to my home planet of beer and salsa. They're not returning my calls. For now, I hope all of you are enjoying your summer. I am. 8.20.02 The 7th Day Telemarketers are low down. They're calling me on Sunday now. That's pretty damn low down. 8.11.02 Ebenezer... Ever felt like a ghost? I have. Ass Rocking We taped a cable access music show called Rock My Ass over the weekend. It was a lot of fun but somewhat disconcerting to play to a studio audience. You're up there playing and there are hot lights and cameras glaring at you and you feel as if you're hanging out there in space. That's pretty much because you are. Would I do it again? Hell yeah. I put together a powerful band for the show as the regular band is in some kind of limbo. I'd rather have us be in some kind of limo but we'll take things one step at a time. 8.5.02 This Just In My cousin Lance just claimed an 11th Stage victory, as well as the overall lead in this year's Tour de France. Go Lance! OK, so he's not really my cousin, but we do have the same last name and are both avid cyclists. Maybe he's a lot more avid than I am. We do share a love of the sport and that's close enough. Like Jimi said, Lance stands up next to a mountain and he chops it down with the edge of his hand. 7.18.02 Never the Twain Shall Meet A copyright-violating excerpt from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - "But lord it was only just words, words they meant nothing in the world to him. I might just as well have whistled, Worlds realized nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe. There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and complacently about "the working classes," and satisfy themselves that a hard day's intellectual work is very much harder than a day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much bigger pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because they know all about the one, but haven't tried the other. But I know all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn't money enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pickax thirty days, but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as near nothing as you can cipher it down - and I will be satisfied, too. Intellectual "work" is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dispensation, and is its own highest rewards. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the magician with the fiddle bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him - why, certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair - but there it is: and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash , also. And it's also the very law of those transparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship." The Good News "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long and plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side." - Hunter S. Thompson That's the good news for today, kids. 6.21.02 Dancing in the Streets Summer's here. Not officially. And not really weather-wise, either. It's a chilly 57 degrees in my neighborhood this morning. It has been hot over the last several days, however, and I've loved every minute of it. I can never get enough. I do have my first sunburn and it smarts in a good way. I've been writing songs again after a long drought. That feels pretty good too. Things they are a changin' in the band. People have chosen to pursue other projects and lineups are being rearranged. New blood is good. The Rolling Stones wouldn't have stayed together as long as they have if they hadn't made millions. Money tends to lubricate human interactions. Change is good. Change is natural. Change is healthy. It's also a pain in the ass. No matter, I'm used to it. 6.12.02 Union Jack I just returned from a week long tour in England. I couldn't have had a better time. I saw Bath, Sherborne, Chipping Campden, London, Croydon and Canterbury. Visiting places like that reminds you how recent our American heritage is on a worldwide scale. We're the new kids on the block. I'll go into more detail soon, but for how I'll just say that my right arm is stronger than my left from hoisting pints and that I was always thirsty but could never find a bathroom. Three cheers to Detox, FKA Perrenchio, Jessie, Mr. Peepers, Anne, Tonya, Patrick and the rest for a grand time. 6.3.02 Man Overboard I happened to see The Man Show for the first time last week. It is brilliant in ways that I never thought possible. I haven't laughed so hard in ages. California Dreaming This just in - The Kings of Sacramento have defeated the Lakers of Los Angeles in game two of the NBA Western Conference Finals. The Lakers are at least not entirely invincible. 3, 2, 1, Contact A copyright-violating excerpt from Carl Sagan's Contact - "You see, the religious people - most of them - really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Of if he hadn't made Lot such shithead, maybe she would have listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The Biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition." It's on page 285 of the paperback version of a great book. 5.20.02 Uncommonly Good Thanks to everyone who made it out to our Uncommon Ground show on Saturday night. It really is one of the best places to see live music in Chicago. The black bean soup comes in a mug - which made me want to sip it contemplatively. Annie Capps brought her unique songs, as well as her talented guitarist from Michigan, and Tony Piscotti (see below) brought his crafty songs and smart arrangements from his apartment a mere 2 blocks away. His guitar player was pretty good too. Ch, ch, ch, ch Changes Changes are afoot. The scores aren't in so I can't tell what the outcome is going to be yet. I'll keep you posted. Raindrops on Roses In other news, the weather still sucks in Chicago. It's not snowing anymore but it is quite chilly and rather wet. It rained all weekend. "When it rains, it pours" goes the expression and Chicago has been no exception over the past few weeks. The flora loves it, but I do not have petals, bark or leaves and as a result I'm not so sure that I do. I do love the flora so I'll have to wait it out, just like every year. Cornholio The Corn Cam is back and that always makes me happy - even though that lone web cam placed next to an Iowa cornfield is currently posting regular pictures of acres of nothing but dirt. There have been trees in the distance for the past couple years and that always gave the series of stills some kind of scale. Soon there will be seedlings and they'll all be knee-high before you know it. Yes, Michigan I've been producing an album for my friend Tony Piscotti for the past year and a half. Things would have wrapped up much sooner except for a few personal setbacks and national cataclysms. Now that things have settled down a bit we are down to mixing the five remaining songs and then mastering, which I won't have much of a hand in. Tonight I leave for a 2-day studio stint in St. Joseph, Michigan to do the final mixes. I'm looking forward to time away from the city. The weather is pretty unreliable in St. Joseph on the other side of the lake as well, but at least it will be green and quiet and not so congested. And I won't get cut off at every intersection by girls carrying handbags that cost more than my car and everything in it driving Lexux SUVs that will never get mud on its tires. City life. I'm so ambivalent about it. Are the readily-available sushi and myriad of late night taco joints worth the noise and the traffic and the lack of parking and the dismal weather? I've often wondered what my ancestors were thinking when they settled here. My grandfather was born in Southern California. He did spend some time in Chicago but he didn't stay. Perhaps a smarter man than I? He settled in the south, where spring starts in early February. The south has its own set of idiosyncrasies which I am all too aware of. We'll leave those be for now. The other side of my ancestral tree came over to America from Lithuania so maybe Chicago was like Florida to them. That's a harrowing thought. They wound up here after a growing up in Southern Illinois and I can only imagine that work brought them north to Chicago. Sometimes I think that I could use a change of scenery. To a dreamer, the same old same old of one's current life pales in comparison to the adventure of anything new. Anywhere but here, wherever here may be. 5.13.02 Was Voltaire a friend of Ben Franklin's? I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. -- Voltaire We're Gonna Go Ahead and Have You Come in on Saturday The Mike Judge film Office Space was dead on. It was funny as hell, too. Peter, the protagonist, is sitting in therapy discussing his professional life. He says "So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life." A glitch in hypnotic therapy leaves Peter suspended in a semi lucid state in which his apathetic bemusement with his job becomes his ticket to career transcendence. It's funny beyond belief. A New Hope The newest installment of George Lucas' Star Wars series is due in theaters soon. I've mentioned this before in my journal, but the influence of Star Wars on my personality cannot be underestimated. I don't own any toys or dress up like a Wookie and I definitely haven't been waiting in the ticket line for the last few weeks. But Star Wars was released the summer I turned seven years old and it changed my life. It's a simple as that. The funny thing is that I didn't want to go. I used to spend Sunday mornings with my father and he always tried to get me to watch Star Trek reruns. I never liked it all that much because the alien monsters were obviously guys in foam suits and the spaceship looked more like a Tinkertoy nightmare that my little brother made. My parents dragged me to see Star Wars in a cool theater in the heat of an Alabama summer night. When I emerged from the theater 121 minutes later, my life had been changed forever. Just like that. I spent 1980 to 1983 in a childhood depression because Han Solo was frozen in carbonite, his fate unknown. Episode I sucked by most accounts. The only thing worse than one Jar Jar Binks is a whole damn village of them. Lucas surely dropped the ball on that one. Now we're on the brink of Episode II. How could it be worse? I readily admit that the reduced hype and initial reports of this installment have got me very much looking forward to seeing this picture. I was giddy for the release of Episode I and have been looking forward to the release of the next one since I left the theater after 133 minutes of second-rate Star Wars lore that got dropped on us by a kinder, gentler Lucas back in 1999. Nobody's arm got lopped off in a seedy cantina by a cantankerous retired warrior in Episode I. Nobody's foster parents got burned alive on their front lawn. Nobody was even sacked by nomadic humanoids with spark plugs sticking out of their heads. All we got was an impaling of the coolest Jedi to date and the subsequent demise of his killer, who seemed like a disposable villain dressed up like a bee to me. This time we Star Wars geeks are looking forward to a gaggle of Boba Fett lookalikes and a fully-digitized Yoda. Ewan McGregor is looking more like Alec Guinness with every frame. At least we were spared the sight of an awkward, pimply Anakin Skywalker during his pubescent phase. My biggest hope is that they leave the mitichlorian/Jedi thing to its brief role in Episode I. Anyway, we are now mere days away. I'm certain that I'll post my review on here at some point. 5.1.02 It's Back That's right folks, it's my favorite Internet diversion. The Corn Cam is back once again. It will be a bit before the empty brown dirt field begins to show signs of green. Soon enough. Summer is coming. Finally. 4.29.02 Yeah, I'll Bet You Have The biggest cinematic tragedy of the 20th century? The depiction of Greedo shooting first in the cantina scene in the Special Edition of Star Wars. What a crock of shit. Do you hear me, Lucas? What kind of family-oriented Spielbergian crap are you trying to pull over on us? Han Solo was the greatest bad good guy in the history of that far away galaxy because he shot first. The Tax on the Stupid $174 million dollars. That's what the estimated one-time payout of the current Big Game jackpot would be. I could buy a lot of shit with $174 million dollars. They say money can't buy happiness, but you can't eat happiness. And happiness wouldn't buy me a water park if I should decide that I want one. I would rather be happy, but if I'm going to be sad I might as well be sad and debilitatingly rich. I don't have an extravagant lifestyle. I imagine that that wouldn't change much with all that cash. I just wouldn't have to go to work. Think of all that free time to brew beer and play Tetris. I would buy a blimp, though. Buying lottery tickets is a funny concept. It's like a tax on the stupid. We all know the legitimate odds of taking home the jackpot but so many people dutifully line up and spend money they don't have on the lottery anyway. The one or two odd times that I actually purchased a ticket did give me a distinct and interesting feeling though. For one dollar you aren't really buying the chance at millions - you are really paying a dollar to dream. Putting that dollar down and holding that ticket makes you feel - however remotely - that you hold a chance to fulfill all your dreams. Anything you ever wanted. Houses and boats and cars and water parks. That license to dream just might be worth a dollar. 4.21.02 Nibblin' on Spongecake Jimmy Buffett is a Goddamn Genius. That's all there is to it. The guy has created an industry out of tropical escapism. Some smart and enterprising young musician is going to have to follow in his footsteps. It might as well be me. Millions of Parrotheads will need a Grand Puba when the mayor of Margaritaville eventually retires. And that's another question right there... where exactly does Jimmy Buffett retire to? He's been retired for 30 years and he doesn't even know it! He writes books, he records the occasional contractually obligatory album and he tours around the country (in the warm season only, mind you) playing pseudo-Carribbean country music to fans who would give him all the money they might happen to have on them just so he keeps on doing what he's doing. Goddamn Genius. Someone needs to pick up the Buffett reins the same way Phish did for the Dead. I'd be happy to sign up myself but I can't seem to find enough rhyme schemes for words like crustacean and SPF 30. And just think how sore and cramped my hand would be from signing all those checks. 4.20.02 What Is and What Should Never Be What kind of day am I having if I get a Lionel Ritchie song stuck in my head? I am currently reading a book written by Richard Cole, who was Led Zeppelin's road manager for the lion's share of their career. First off I'd like to say that there is a reason that Mr. Cole was a road manager and not a writer. Even with the assistance of a co-author this book reads like an 8th grader's term paper. "Then Led Zeppelin did this one concert. They played in front of a lot of people. Oh, and there were lots of groupies. And there was beer. And some drugs. Led Zeppelin is good." I've known my share of road managers and I'm pretty sure that Mr. Cole would kick my ass for comments such as these. They're an excitable lot and are not to be trifled with. The story is good, in a nonfiction truth-is-stranger-than-fiction sort of way. I will commend him about the fact that the first sentence of their Led Zeppelin book was about The Beatles. As it should be. 4.12.02 Sleigh Bells Ring It snowed every day for the first 5 days of April this year. It snowed on the Cubs home opening day. It snowed and snowed. Then the rain started. Now it has rained every day from the 5th until the 9th. What a crock. Pop Goes the Internet I am an avid user of the Internet. (Perhaps you've heard of it?) I generally obtain my news, weather, sports scores over the Internet. It's easy, it's cheap and I can be informed what I want to be informed about without having to sit through a 30 - 60 minutes newscast that is comprised of 20% commercials for products that I'll never buy. The new problem is the proliferation of "pop up" ads that appear when you visit particular websites. They are akin to television commercials because they demand action to be dealt with and properly dispatched. Much to the chagrin of my past several girlfriends, I mute commercials while watching TV. Frankly, I would rather listen to the new hum that my halogen lamp makes in my stereo than two and a half minutes of ads about anything. (This new phenomenon occurs when the lamp is on half power whether the stereo is on or off.) These new ads automatically open a new browser in which the ad appears. This new browser window opens in the background - behind whatever you happen to be doing on your computer. I imagine that any of you who are web savvy enough to read this online journal have experienced this new Internet pestilence. It robs bandwidth and processor power that should and could be allocated to muscular programs like Photoshop. The loss of bandwidth isn't as big a deal to users with a faster-than-dialup connection but it is still intensely annoying. Just like the way the 20 minutes of commercials and other nightly news fluff that comes before the weather, these advertising bastards have burned us again. And they've got me good, too. The prime guilty site that affects me is weather.com. They know that I'm hooked on constantly knowing the weather in far off places. To get that information I will apparently have to withstand a barrage of "Amazing X-Cam" and Online Casino ads. 4.9.02 Just Hear Those Sleigh Bells Ringling... Here's a Midwest Weater Update. It is April 4th and it is currently snowing in the City of Chicago. This is not entirely uncommon. It is, however, entirely annoying. Must move south, west or both. Be like Mike MJ decided that he'll ride the bench for the remainder of the season due to his aging knees. The critics are imploring him to retire and he's saying that he'll play as long as he is healthy. He should play as long as he likes as far as I'm concerned. Little brothers the world over can attest to the fact that "you're not the boss of me." I concur. We're not the boss of Mike. Play on Mike. It might smart a little to see you put up 2 points in a game, and never again may you be able to stand on the scorer's table with tickertape streaming down. No matter. We don't own you. We never did. Play on. Play because you love the game. Play because you're the most talented individual to touch a spherical object. Play because it's called playing, and not working. Sure it's work. But it's play, too. The best work IS play to those fortunate enough to land the gig. 4.4.02 Into the Wild Blue Yonder I got the Blue Screen of Death last night. After the smoke cleared the field, all the bodies had been dragged away and all the innards had been hosed off the driveway, I sat answering the copious amount of e-mail that had piled up in my Internet absence. I was playing an old Bob Dylan song on my mp3 player - the same one that plays when Jeffrey Lebowski gets knocked unconscious and is flying over the lighted grid pattern of Los Angeles in the Coen brothers' masterpiece - and 'click.' Just like that I was staring at the dreaded Windows OS Blue Screen, replete with a torrent of computer gibberish. I monkeyed around with SAFE MODE and restarted no less than 5 times. Again, all's well that ends well - at least for now. In the Parlance of Our Times Which brings me to The Big Lebowski. As an avid Coen Brothers fan, I dutifully lined up to see that flick when it came out. All the usual Coen elements were in place and I left the theater satisfied with what was, to date, their latest installment. I caught the better part of Lebowski again a couple months back when my roommate rented it. I discovered that the film has aged perfectly and that it was at least twice as funny as I had originally thought it to be. I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. I bought my own copy last week and I've already watched it twice. I'd say that I have blind faith in the Coens. This is an exceedingly rare occurrence for me. Armstrong blind faith is hard-earned and, once earned, is precarious. Not that artists and filmmakers are concerned about my one ticket or CD purchase. Jersey Girl In other movie news, I got a chance to watch the DVD Spinal Tap outtakes. It's like a whole other movie. I'd highly recommend that any musician - or person who might know a musician - check it out. I finally finished off the second season of The Sopranos as well. My discovery of the show was random and feverish. The same roommate who had rented The Big Lebowski had borrowed the complete first season on DVD from a friend. I don't watch a lot of TV, but I got sucked into the movie-like tone of The Sopranos in an attempt to stay inside and out of trouble on a Friday night last spring. By noon Saturday I had watched half the season and had called a buddy in order to implore him to drop by and check out the show. By 3:pm Saturday we had to go to the store to get more beer, and by nightfall I had rewatched the first half of the season and proceeded on to take in nearly the entire thing with my friend. I don't have the cable, but I'm still waiting patiently for the 3rd season to be released and for the 4th season to air this fall. Now that the X-Files are a lame duck (as well as simply lame) I'll only have one show out of 168 hours of available weekly programming that I give a shit about. The Simpsons is still viable and entertaining, Austin City Limits is good, and there are plenty of science shows on cable and PBS but I can't keep track of much on TV. Like going to paid focus groups, my TV habits have revealed to me in no uncertain terms that I am not an average consumer. Hop Along My brewing compatriot and I finally figured out the homebrewing thing. We actually made a good beer. Really good beer. Technically we made an ale but there's no need to bore you with the denominational differences of fermentation. We appear to have made it through that initial phase where the end result is a beverage that your close friends ingest with a mildly-forced yet proud smile. Everybody knows about beer. Making it seems at once a mystical and eccentric pursuit to the masses. I can honestly report that it is both. It is in my nature to research the composition and origins of things that I love. Drinking beer was simply not elaborate enough for my curious intellect. 4.3.02 The Battle of Ameritech Part II Hey, all. Sorry about that. I've been mired in "The Battle of Ameritech." For the non-local or the uninitiated, Ameritech is the largest regional phone provider for Northern Illinois and other Great Lakes states. They rose from the ashes of Illinois Bell, which in turn rose from the government-drawn and quartered Ma Bell that monopolized the telephone industry back when phone companies only did phones. Ameritech (up until recently) provided my phone and DSL Internet access. Most of you know where this is going. I knew that I was moving. My new apartment is three whole blocks from my old one. I called Ameritech a month before the move in order to give them plenty of time to fuck up the change in service. Two weeks in my new apartment with no phone and no Internet connectivity. Asking them to move my phone line and DSL three blocks is apparently tantamount to asking them to rewire the space shuttle. They sent the wrong technician three separate times. I'm not really all that surprised and I'm not envious of their position. They have to provide the latest in hyperspace portals utilizing a bandwidth that was set a hundred years ago. The Battle of Ameritech Part III With the telco soldiers still trapped on the battlements I called in reinforcements by ordering service from a competitor of my local DSL provider. "Digital broadband is the greatest thing since the wheel" touted their propaganda and sales staff. Three weeks. My service worked properly for three weeks and then kaput. Nada. I placed the usual call to get them to fix it and scheduled the usual week long wait before they could get "a truck to my area." I was placing bets with my friends this morning as for whether or not they would show today when they called to see if I was still having any trouble. I appreciate the call, but that's like asking the guy who has been in the emergency room all day if his arm is still cut off. I had half a mind to shimmy up the pole with my Leatherman and some electrical tape and rig it myself. I've fixed VCRs, CD players, mixing boards, radiators, brakes, amplifiers, guitars, foot pedals, microphones, sinks, computers, bicycles, lamps, chairs, tables and a cadre of other mechanical and nonmechanical devices in my day. I'm sure I could handle monkeying around with a cable connection. All's well that ends well so they say. I have been informed that my Digital Broadband Connection is functioning once again. I'm going to head home, fire up my computer and start taking wagers on the next disruption of service. I wonder if I could start selling Service Futures? Bowk Bowk Easter has come and gone. This is fine. Growing up Catholic instills all manner of feelings about Easter and it's accompanying hype, also known as lent into you. Kids think in simpler terms. I give up something important to me for 40 days and at the end I get to color and subsequently find chicken eggs allegedly hidden by a mystical giant rabbit? The eggs have as much to do with a rabbit as a pine tree does to ornately-wrapped gifts. It's Harvey and self-denial all wrapped up in what ends up being another cold weather holiday. Big time fun. 4.2.02 Equinox This! Spring, eh? Not from where I'm standing. Here we are on March 23rd - fully three days into the long-awaited bosom of spring - and we're expecting 2 inches of snow on the heels of an Arctic cold front tonight. Total bullshit. Austin, Texas is expecting 69F and sunshine today. It's already a rather pleasant 77F this morning in Key West, Florida - which, by the way, has no known record of snow or sleet in recorded weather history. That just might be good enough for me. Again, I'm the fool who still roosts in the Great Lakes region. I should put up or shut up. I should exercise my right and privilege as an American and heal myself with a less volatile latitude. Chicago fools you every year. Those of you who actually like 6 months of darkness and intolerable weather can skip this next part. Chicagoans sit huddled together every March. They sit close together at home in front of televisions and on worn wooden benches in neighborhood pubs. They ride the CTA elevated trains past the steely cold and windswept I-beams of a vacant Wrigley Field. The Cub players - to which many North siders are loyal until death do they part - are off playing golf in Arizona. Only a couple months down the road and the concrete under every seat will be littered with the detritus of the American National Pastime. But in early March the peanut shells and waxed paper beer cups and plastic nacho containers are but daydreams for the suit-clad office workers downtown. The only thing you'll find under the right field bleacher seats is snow or maybe just bitterly frigid air. March is a bastard. After all, doesn't the first day of spring inevitably roll around just after mid month? Sure, on paper it does. March is a Winter Month here in Chicago. Every March it's the same thing - a cycle that invariably assures that I'll be around the following March and complaining about having been duped yet another year. March finds us shivering, clinging to the moral victory that mathematically occurs around the 20th or 21st. Every year, perhaps on my own astronomical schedule, I say "Fuck this. I am moving south or west or both." The systematic chilling and pummeling of snow and ice thows a switch in my brain that says GET OUT. I begin researching the Quality of Life indicators of other cities. I buy travel magazines and endlessly check the weather.com forecasts for far off places. The numbers are always higher. 50 doesn't sound so bad when it's 17 outside your window. I make plans to box up my things and get the hell out of Dodge. It takes a while to pack up one's life and get it into a truck, and by the time I've got a plan together that cruel old hag Mother Nature throws Chicago a bone and drops a 60-degree day on us. I fire up the grill and drag out my shorts and drive with the car windows open and maybe even throw my Frisbee around. "This isn't so bad!" we all exclaim to the bare branched trees. Then the hammer drops again and we get more snow and more steely gray skies. A week rolls past and the windows are once again opened. This Vernal torture cycle repeats until May, with each cold blast losing a little vehemence. Then the weather breaks and summer is on. Chicago is a great place to be in the summer months. But June, July and August go so quickly. September and October are very mild and romantic months that bring the smells and colors of autumn to keep us entertained. Halloween wraps up the warm weather holidays and November sneaks up on us as everyone prepares for the high family holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Sturm und Drang of another New Year rolling into town. The warm glow of all the gifts and relatives and traveling and snow-crested tranquility lasts until mid January - and then it happens. Like a 2x4 to the forehead... the realization that I've been fooled once again settles in. With the March snow ticking on the window next to my computer, I mutter "Fuck this" under my breath and begin to type Cabo San Lucas into weather.com's "Enter city or US zip code" field. A Gem Hey. Go to www.louford.com. Stop by the band's mp3 section and play the track A Mile Away. You'll be glad you did. 3.13.02 Shite Hey, I'm still here. I swear. I am amazed by my current ability to be busy without having anything in particular to do. I've been going through the motions. I've been reading Mark Twain. I've finally been brewing (along with my ever-faithful brewing associate) a damn fine Pale Ale. I've been thinking about the glory days of college. I've been pining for spring. I've been categorizing 26 rolls of newly-developed film from last summer. I've really been pining for spring. I've been unpacking everything I own. I've been lamenting Michael Jordan's sidelined status. I've been walking the dog. I guess I'm saving up life's experiences and dropping them into the blender of my head. A new batch of songs is no doubt gestating within me. Stick around. This is going to be good. 3.12.02 The Battle of Ameritech Jesu Christo! Sorry! I've been mired in a colossal battle with my local telephone company and have been unable to make phone calls, surf the web for esoteric tube amp companies or update my online journal. Damn. As Brian Johnson says, I'm back in black. I'll have more to say soon, but for now I'm beside myself with joy over being able to simply check basketball scores on a whim. 3.7.02 Sub Standard Subway. Inciting a near-revolution in fast food from about 15 years ago. I challenge any one to go back in time twenty years and try to find fast food that wasn't fried beyond recognition. I have one complaint. I have an issue with the "new cut" on Subway bread. They used to cut a little "U" shape in the bread, which assisted in keeping all the sandwich ingredients in the bun until consumption, not on your lap. This new cutting method is simpler and involves one swipe down the side of a piece of bread. I'd put money down that some consulting firm got big bucks to decrease bread prep time from 3.2 to 2.1 seconds with this revolutionary new procedure. Perhaps the most amusing thing of all is the fracas that ensues when I ask the Subway counter person to execute the "classic cut" on my sandwich order. "Oh, I don't know how to do that..." is the usual response. Are these people serious? Jesus. I could see how this antiquated procedure could quickly become extinct in the short memories of the adolescent sandwich artists. I'll grant you that. Most of those young folks are stoned anyway. How else could you perform a mundane task like slicing an infinite pile of green peppers? I won't be lobbying the Subway corporation to bring back the "classic cut" the way the Classic Coke people did when New Coke was introduced. I simply don't have the time. At some point I may have to jump over that curved plastic cover to show the greenhorns how it's done. I've had worse jobs. 2.20.02 Sweet Home Alabama As Woodsworth so eloquently stated long before I was born "The world is too much with us." I couldn't agree more. Thoreau and Emerson and even Charles M. Schultz had it right. Schultz was satirizing the commercialization of our society 50 years ago. Henry and Ralph were doing the same thing 100 years before him. If I drilled a litter further down I'm sure I'd find their predecessors alive and well in the history books, their feet firmly planted on a hand made soapbox with cast iron nails. Earth has simply grown too complicated. The more insulated by our society we become the more we become unable to do anything for ourselves. We're domesticating ourselves. If you have always depended on someone else for your ability to perform a particular task, odds are that you'd have a hard time doing it alone. I sometimes feel out of place in this regard. I suspect that at the factory I was programmed for deployment in a different century. My father's side of the family is full of frontiersmen and outdoor types. They were largely self-reliant men who had to know how to choose good trees, cut them down and use them to erect a homestead in a strategically located place. A place where it would neither get carried off by a twister or submerged in a flood. My great grandfather was one such man. Freeman Emmett Armstrong lived in a little house, situated in the near-wilderness hills of Alabama. He fought in World War I, the supposed War to End All Wars. We all know how that story goes. In true Southern fashion he found the use of turn signals to be an eccentric practice that was unnecessary on the whole. The narrow mountain highway on which he lived was frequented by speeding logging trucks which hurtled around the sharp turns with seeming abandon. One fine day, as he was slowing to turn onto his red clay driveway - sans signal - he was rear-ended by another random driver. Subsequent generations are thankful that it was not a Kenworth. Great grandpa got out of his car unhurst and verbally accosted the man, incredulously exclaiming "Dammit! Don't you know I live here?" Freeman was a blacksmith long before my grandfather was born. His shop was a weathered and gray wooden barn off to the side of his house and it was filled with wondrous, ancient tools for a young boy with an overactive imagination. All manner of red-brown iron tools for shoeing horses and working with wood, metal and leather hung from the walls and lay piled on workbenches. Brown wasp-like "mud-dobbers" buzzed around the ceiling building tubular mud nests in which to lay their eggs. The floor was made up of fine dust that was pocked with little conical pits made by ant cows. I'm sure that ant cows have a more scientific as well as a more vernacular name (doodlebugs, perhaps?). In this shop I learned the basic aspects of woodworking by building model warships from scraps of wood. I used seemingly antiquated tools like drawing knives and a slow manual hand-cranked drill. My dad would help me affix diving fins and periscopes and turrets until I figured out how to do it myself. How many other kids get to build toys to their own specifications? Alabama is nearly tropical in the summertime. All the July heat and humidity boiled in the sun until the cauldron sent enormous white clouds high into the atmosphere. Every day around 3:30 pm a deep, rumbling thunderstorm rolled over the sun-baked green brown hills. The forest steamed in the cool rain, which isn't wasn't all that cool - just significantly cooler than the sultry air that the family had been basting in since daybreak. Great grandpa's barn had a tin roof, and when the rain started I would keep working while the torrent drenched all creation just outside the big weathered door. A hundred-thousand swollen raindrops cascading off the tin roof sounded like applause. The cadence of cheers would rise until the crack of thunder shook the ground and everything on it. When the show was over the air would be saturated with the smell of life and ozone from the lightning that had torn the sky just minutes before - the lightning that had frightened the dogs and small children - the lightning that had walked the storm off to the adjoining county - was all but forgotten when the sun stole the show in an encore appearance, I would emerge from the barn with a newly-commisioned battleship, destroyer or submarine - just in time to give the new boat a shakedown cruise in the foot-deep puddle gathered in grandpa's front yard across the highway. The reasserted sun would have turned the new lake into mud by supper time, and would then slide itself behind the pine trees across the road. After the sun is gone the bats and lightning bugs came out. Sometimes we would answer the gentle yellow green strobes of the amorous insects with the orange spark squeal of bottlerockets. Most varieties of fireworks were illegal in my home state of Illinois. Not so in the rustic, time-lagged hills of rural Alabama. After two days my young hands were often blistered from shipbuilding and the hours I spent learning how to crack hand made whips that great grandpa made. What young swashbuckler would turn down the opportunity to learn the trademark weapon of Indiana Jones? My ears rang from the report of a thousand bottlerockets. My legs burned from the traditional young boy mode of transportation, which was perpetual running. My entire body itched from an army of vile burrowing insects and my eyes were full of the joy of summer in full swing. I always slept good in Alabama. 3rd and Fat Chance Some sports fan I am. I slept through the Superbowl. And I don't mean snoozed with the game on. I mean slept. Under covers. O-U-T, out. I heard that it was an exciting finish and that the underdogs stole the day. I'm fairly certain that I would have watched if the Bears hadn't got their asses handed to them a couple weeks back. I happened to be walking around downtown a couple short days after the loss. I observed some sullen city workers removing the Bears banners from lightposts with a cherry picker. I would surmise that they had just put them up a few days prior. Glory is short-lived in the annals of Chicago sports history. Unless you're a Bulls fan, that is. Aside from the more recent DARK TIMES, it has been pretty good to be a basketball fan in the city that used to be renowned for gangsters and shitty weather. I guess that nowadays we've been reduced to shitty weather. Michael Jeffrey Jordan, clad in less-than threatening blue, made his first pheonix-like return to the United Center recently - on the same fateful day as the Bears' debacle. The eager press billed it as THE BIGGEST DAY IN CHICAGO SPORTS HISTORY. The reality turned out to be anything but that. We all know what happened to the Champaign-bound (as in Champaign, Illinois, where they'll be playing for the next however-long as Soldier Field gets a character-reducing facelift. NOT the bubbling celebratory beverage) Monsters of the Midway. All of the Jordan worshipers and I were hoping that His Airness would light up his floundering old team for his first 100-point game - just to show the Jerrys whose name still graces the bedroom walls of many a high schooler that they are busily trying to recruit. Michael, as we Chicagoans call him as if we know him, proved that the unstoppable force could only be shaken be the immovable object that is the infallible adoration of Chicago sports fans. After a roaring 90 second pre-game ovation Jordan once again proved his mettle, this time in an exemplary display of class and restraint, quietly winning the game for his new franchise. We forgive you, Mike. Godspeed. We wish you were still here with us, but you're the greatest human to touch a spherical object. I'll be the last person who will presume to tell you what you can and cannot do. 2.4.02 Snow Trouble at All January 31st. The last day of the cursed & frigid first month of every year. Chicago rode out a 6-inch snowstorm last night. My girl (dog in tow) coaxed me out into the snow for a "walk" around 10:45 PM. It was a picture-perfect snowy night - where the flakes are as big as junebugs. In the quiet of the wintry night the temperature was at the precise point that doesn't feel cold and the snow packs like it does in childhood memories. I suspect that the girl knew exactly what would happen. She was playing me like a song. She lured me into my snow gear and then into the fray under the pretense that we had to walk the dog before bed. I guess I knew what she was scheming and I played the role of the willing fool. The dog, of course, thinks that the snow is the coolest thing since the time she found a dead squirrel. (Decaying squirrels are apparently nothing less than a delicacy for a young canine. The key difference is that I don't have much of a problem if she eats - and subsequently vomits up - as much snow as she wants. This is not the case with unfortunate fuzzy-tailed rodents. The car seat upholstery still emits an unsavory odor on humid days. But I digress.) The dog is running back and forth at flank speed, the girl is chasing the dog and I have instantaneously reverted back to grade school mode and am trying to nail both of them in flight with hastily-fashioned snowballs. I'm glad that they delivered the proper snow this time. This was the good stuff - no screwing around attempting to pack dry, dusty, unpackable powder. The frozen projectiles were being launched as fast as I could pick them up and clamp my gloved hands together. As I drew some return fire I recalled historic snowball battles from my formative years. Some skirmishes even escalated into protracted snowball wars and territorial conflicts. One gray Midwestern Saturday my wingman and I were on a recon mission several houses down the block from base camp - where the safety of our front yard fortress stood empty a hundred yards away. Younger brothers and other neighborhood conscripts had gone AWOL, bivouacking in warm, yellow-lit houses replete with chicken noodle soup dispensed by doting moms. Even the wet-footed glory of a snowball fight was a tough draw when there were Japanese monster movies on TV. (I can still hear that elephant-bathed-in-reverb bleat of Gamera the flying turtle.) This lack of troops meant that the day's battle was two on two - Frank Howard and myself vs. The Brummel boys. Donny, the older of the two, was a year younger than me but had a stout build. These more muscular kids always had a throwing advantage but weren't agile on the battlefield. Donny was a valuable asset in a traditional fort vs. fort conflict but could be easily pinned down with hit and run tactics. Danny Brummel was a couple years younger than his formidable older brother and didn't share his threat capabilities. He was thin but not particularly agile. As a result, a favorite Brummel tactic was to use Danny as bait for an ambush. The opposition would send him deep into our territory in order to verbally taunt us until we gave chase. Once we were in pursuit we knew that we would have to be on the lookout for a clandestine Donny, who would most likely be lying in wait, hiding behind a bush, shed or car with a cache of munitions. The first time they attempted this, Danny ran us right through a gauntlet of enemy fire. Luckily, skinny, fast kids like me could stealthily dart to and from the battlefield in a flash of blue snowsuit nylon. I could easily be back in the friendly environs of our snow fort in a matter of seconds. My crony Frank was a little older than me and was fast and maneuverable as well. On the day in question, Frank and I were on patrol deep in Brummel territory with no air cover. We had fashioned a couple snowman sentries to guard the perimeter of home base while we were away. We were loaded down with a full complement of weaponry - a snowball in in each hand and several more stowed in our snowsuit pockets. We were securing the area in order to stage an ambush of our own when several snowballs whizzed past our heads. The Brummels had staged a spectacular ambush by hiding inside the family boat under a tarp. The boat was sitting on its trailer in their backyard as it did every winter - and probably still sits today. Luckily for Frank and myself, their initial volley missed us and allowed us the split second needed to return fire and take cover. Danny and Donny jumped from their blown cover in the boat and took off running counter-clockwise around the house with Frank giving chase. I suspected that they would double back around the far side of the house and pass the very spot on which I stood in their haste to escape the fleet-footed Frank - who was assuredly closing the distance and catching up with them. I ducked behind some sort of faux-wildlife lawn ornament - most likely a hollow plastic fixed-gazed deer - just in time to see Donny Brummel cruising past me as fast as his stature would allow. I stepped into his field of vision and drew a bead on him. He saw me, but it was too late for anything but a desperate evasive dive. He dove sideways, exposing the full front cross section of his magenta snowsuit to my snowball which I had already loosed and timed to anticipate his speed. What I hadn't anticipated was that his balls would be exactly at the point at which I had taken aim. So here's Donny, hanging sideways in midair with his arms stretched above his head. And there is my snowball scoring a direct hit in slow motion. I think that he had assumed the fetal position long before he hit the ground. And hit he did, skidding to a stop in the slushy snow laughing in pain. What else do you do when it feels as if someone is squeezing all your internal organs at the same time? Hard. If my snowball had been a Japanese torpedo, Donny's keel would have already been settling into the fine sand at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Donny was fine once the bilge water was pumped out. He jumped right back into action with his hard-earned Purple Heart medallion proudly displayed - primarily in his head. CUE CLOUDS OF SILVERY SMOKE AS THE TIME MACHINE BRINGS US BACK TO THE SNOWY NIGHT OF JANUARY 30TH, 2002. So there is me, the dog and my girl rolling about in the fresh snow. The city is quiet, the way that everything is quiet when the big flakes fall. Instinctively, I begin to roll a little snowball over and over on the grassy area next to the train tracks. My hands know what I am doing before I do. Making a snowman is an art and a science and there is definitely a knack to it. Some pitfalls are unavoidable, like getting sticks, grass, leaves, dirt and dog pee wrapped up in your growing snowman's lower torso as you roll it around. And let me tell you something about city life. Every square foot of commonly-accessible grass has been periodically saturated with dog urine. Maybe even human urine if you're lucky. I kept seeing yellow patches rotating past as I rolled my prenatal snowman and I just tried not to think about it. After an hour of hard labor and a trip to my back porch to get some charcoal briquettes that he might see, smile a crooked grin and have some buttons - our snowman was born. We named him "Mortimer Steve" and headed inside and off to sleep and dream of warmer days. Habit Forming I had the misfortune of attending Catholic schools from 1st through 5th grade. To add insult to injury I had attended a Montessori school for preschool and kindergarten and then got thrown to the dogs. For the uninitiated, Montessori schools stress creativity in their program. My memories of these early years are idyllic. In second grade the shit hit the holy water. My second grade teacher embodied all the things that fuel of the self-professed "former Catholics" anti-religious fervor. I won't utter her name aloud or even write it here lest someone know one more iota about this evil woman. I can only hope that she is dead, no as much out of retribution but out of concern for subsequent generations of Catholic school children whom she will no longer be able to torment. Sound serious? I witnessed her physically and psychologically abusing children firsthand. I myself bear the emotional scars incurred by this supposed messenger of God. I'd call that pretty serious. I thought of this earlier today when I was thinking about the fact that she taught me to write. I never thought about it, but perhaps the decision to print everything I write in all caps with block letters was a subconscious way of giving her the dotted-line-paper finger. Here's to you, Sister. You're number one. 1.31.02 Are You Experienced? To paraphrase James Marshall Hendrix... "But first, are you employable? Have you ever been employable?" I'd like to discuss a long-disputed topic among musicians, and that is the concept of the DAY JOB. There are many common misconceptions about the lives of musicians. The general populace see these MUSICIANS parading about in ridiculous clothing on their television sets and in local concert halls. These alleged MUSICIANS move in chreographed and infinitely-rehearsed dance routines. Being a MUSICIAN looks effortless. These pretty boys and teen sexpots don't CARRY AMPS or LOAD OUT AT 3:00 AM IN THE RAIN. Maybe Tom Petty doesn't CARRY AMPS or LOAD OUT AT 3:00 AM IN THE RAIN, but I would put good money down that he has. More than once. MUSICIANS can be found virtually everywhere. Whereas every waitress is an aspiring actress in the burg of Los Angleles or New York, MUSICIANS can be found in similar jobs in your very hometown. Observe the guy next to you on the train. BEWARE! Those worn out shoes just might mean that he is a member of the elite and OVERPAID echelon of the MUSICIAN. Ha! Like similar industries in the arts, a select few MUSICIANS are making the lion's share of the money. For every ROCK STAR WITH A STARBUCK'S IN HIS HOUSE there are hundreds - even thousands - of people trying to MAKE IT, all the while wondering what exactly "IT" is. These teeming wide-eyed masses regularly probe the armored underbelly of the STINKING BEAST referred to as the MUSIC INDUSTRY. Excepting the rarely-endowed TRUST FUND MUSICIAN, all these plebian, struggling dolts are afflicted with a festering afliction known as the DAY JOB. Speaking only for myself - a habitual MUSIC JUNKIE - I have held all manner of questionable employment positions in the senseless pursuit of my goals. My scorecard reads (in no particular order): kitchen aide, janitor, office product delivery man, warehouse picker, warehouse packer, waiter, bartender, head bartender, host, sound engineer, technical director, receptionist, administrative assistant, office manager, dog shit specialist, salesman, truck loader, retail clerk, envelope stuffer, web content manager, certified deputy court clerk, guitarist, vocalist, percussionist, fork lift driver, guitar teacher, garbage picker-upper, web designer, interior re-habber, and card dealer. This means that SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE paid me to do all those things at one point or another. The sad thing is that I'm sure I'll think of more. I was also a radio disc jockey for 3 years but nobody was paying anybody for that particular endeavor. The Goddamn station didn't even have both channels of the stereo mix functioning at any given time. I was once paid to replicate a legendary college basketball coach's signature about 2000 times on a giant stack of 8x10s with a silver marker. The funny thing is that I can't remember his name. I've veered way off the original topic here so I'm going to stop. I promise that I'll revisit this later. 1.30.02 This Blessed Plot, This England, This Pub It looks as if I'll be doing some shows in England this May. It's been a while since I have been overseas. I'll get to have pints in pubs older than our country. More soon. 1.24.02 Girls on Film I always think of something to write in here during the day and then I forget it by the time I get home. It's January in Chicago and I think that I have a bad motivator, Uncle Owen. It doesn't work when it is consistently cold outside. A look out my front window gives me a slate and slightly peach-colored sky. The trees are bare, although I can see the little buds on the second-story branches waiting to feel the less slanted sunlight of spring. It is a little-known fact that most trees grow their buds before spring - that they are sitting dormant on the branches all winter long. In the springtime they swell and shed their little protective covers which is in turn followed by the grand entrance of the leaves. Soon. I have so many pictures of my mountain biking trip out west last summer that I can't afford to develop them. I must have 20 rolls. Some of this is indicative of the fact that I went with a girl. Most girls that I know are much more camera-happy than I am. If one could chart my photographic history en toto there would be gaps whenever I happened to be single. I did get a new camera for Christmas, however. That just means more film that I can't afford to develop. 1.15.02 Have a Beer - Don't Cost Nothin Friday night. Home alone. I have grown to enjoy the solace of my Friday evenings. Everybody is out and I have the place to myself. I can do, think, eat and sleep on what, when and where I please. I've never felt as if I had to go to the social epicenter of anything. I college, the epicenter tended to come to me. I do miss the days of simplistic college parties. Not the 500-underage-kids-in-a-dilapidated-house-with-a-foot-and-a-half-of-beer-cigarette-butts-vomit-cups-and-ponytail-holders-on-the-floor sort of parties, but the "Hey, I'm having people over tonight" kind. I recall walking across campus going to and from classes uttering that very sentence to a few key people. They would then spread out and take the word with them. News like that travels fast on a small college campus. Come 5:00 pm or the end of classes (whichever came first) - the Usual Suspects would show up for a trip to The Beer Store. Sure, it was a fully-implemented liquor store, but to us blessed alcohol really only meant one thing. Beer. There was no elaborate snack table. Hungry mouths were fed toast - and in more plentiful times - turkey dogs. Nobody dressed up to impress anybody much. Ok, so maybe the girls did. Some things never change. The theme of the day was an elaborate and structured game of skill simply called "Caps." Monday morning was light years away and adventures lay around every undergraduate corner. Warmer seasons called for pilgrimages down dusty rural train tracks to a large bridge under which someone found a catwalk once upon a time. How are such things discovered? College kids and free time. For all the overloaded schedules there was always time for adventure. I loathe to sit still at virtually every job I've ever had. I reckon that touring is about my speed. Dust can't settle on you if you're moving fast and often enough. I've been out on the road much in my life, and I hope that I can continue to do so. No dust and adventures. Tally-ho! But for tonight it's home and precious solitude. 1.11.02 Dih-kah... Sahs-age... Scu-lly Sunday 9:45pm CST - I'm ready for bed. Cold days and long nights make for sleepy Midwesterners. Three cheers for the Chicago Bears! I'm always happy to see the home team doing well. For most of the season I was content to see the home team getting lucky. People start to use the word talent instead of luck when the win column is weighty. And as far as sucking goes... boy, the bottom sure fell out on the X-Files. I have watched the slow decline of my sole remaining television diversion over the past few seasons and now I seldom catch an episode. I'm just as smitten with Dana Scully as I ever was, but even she's not on the show much anymore. I made it a point to catch an episode tonight. I like John Dogget well enough. He's no Fox Mulder but he looks good enough wielding a pistol and a flashlight. I don't even know the new girl's name. I guess that it's the writing that seems to have gone down the shitter. They've exhausted all the good conspiracies and are now picking the bones of their own rotting faux alien carcass. Boo! Seinfeld is gone, The X-Files has been for some time now but nobody at Fox will admit it. That leaves The Simpsons as the lone television program worth sitting through. King of the Hill has its moments to be sure. And I'm fairly certain that all those doctor shows lawyer shows and cop shows still churn out their weekly prefab dose of beeping machines, office trysts and paperwork-stricken beat cops. No thanks. I'll pass. At least I don't have to mute the commercials in a book. 1.6.02 An Odd Curse Happy palandromic New Year, all. Some simple math tells me that this will be the only palindromic year that I'll see in my lifetime... unless I live to be 142. It was a good set of holidays. My tree is rapidly drying out and will have to be removed soon. Pooh pooh to the Whos! The days are ever so slowly increasing in length... or the daylight hours are at least. It might be frigid outside but I'll take the moral victory for now. I just found out that yet another one of my ex-girlfriends is engaged. I wish them the best. To think that I once had it in my head that she and I might marry someday! Ha! Another ex-girlfriend is also married with a dependent now - she's happy and baby is an angel. Nearly all my ex-flames are - or at least were married. One of them is on their second go round. There are a couple that I have lost track of. I'd almost be interested to pull a High Fidelity-esque ghost of relationships past visitation to see what they are up to, but I know that some things are better left to the imagination. They're all song fodder now. We're all safer because of it. 1.2.02 |
