Journal - 2005

In Rememberance

Bye bye, 2005. Good riddance. All in all I guess that it wasn't that bad of a year. I experienced very little of winter at all - which is just the way I like it. Glendale might not be the most interesting place in the world but I still get a kick out of the fact that there are palm trees just outside my front door and mountains in the distance. I am a midwestern boy and I hope that things like that never lose their novelty to me. I didn't shovel any snow whatsoever in 2005. I made a few obligatory snowballs. Once on top of Mount Wilson on Superbowl Sunday when we drove up to get a nice view. I made another one last Thursday when I arrived at my grandmother's house in Aurora, IL after a long drive from Alabama. There was one remnant of a pile of dirty, melting snow in the brown grassy mud of her front yard and I couldn't resist. I might have made one in Park City, UT when I did my last Dashboard show early in the year. I don't recall. And, yes, I no longer work for Dashbord Confessional. I have a much more localized job that is more conducive to getting my own band going again. One of the most important things that happened in 2005 was my finally doing just that. It was an arduous task and I can't believe that it took as long as it did. We've been rehearsing a lot and things are sounding great. Change is hard. And inevitable. I miss my old band a lot. But having a new band is like having a new girlfriend. Some folks say that there is nothing like a new relationship to help you forget about the old one. As far as bands go I guess that I've been single for a while, now. Michael Babincak is living outside of Atlanta, GA and he and his lovely wife Alycia are expecting their first child in the spring. Matty Katzfey just bought his first house with his wife Anne. They both play regularly with some old friends of mine in the noodle dance band, 56 Hope Road.


Remember Me?

I'm here. I'm alive. I have been doing nothing short of working my ass off. O.F.F. I barely have time to do much of anything these days. Being busy is a good problem to have, especially when the root of all this busy-ness is getting my new band up to speed. I've been rehearsing a lot lately and working extra hours to pay for it all. I feel as if I am burning the candle at both ends and in the middle but good things usually happen when I get into this sort of mode. I worked a full time job while making Sidewalk Chalk Manifesto and trained for a marathon the summer it came out. I was getting up before 6am, running as much as 8 or 9 miles and then riding my bike to work. It was a good summer.

It seems to me that what I need to do is open my heart to the entire world at once and put my head down. Move forward. Make decisions on the fly. I'm trying my best and hope that I'll land on my feet. 12.05 (date unknown)



The Men in Black

Chicago's oft-shunned south side baseball team have arrived on top of world of baseball after 88 long years. Like a little brother who finally blooddied his big brother's nose in the weekly backyard fight, the White Sox have brought the game of baseball back to Chicago. I have traditionally been a Cubs fan. My grandfather took me to a chilly early spring game at Wrigley back when I was a skinny, young kid and bought me a royal blue hat with a red "C." Since then I have maintained a somewhat fickle allegiance to Chicago's north side team. I moved to Chicago's north side when I was older, and Wrigley Field is a fixture of the neighborhood culture in that part of the city. There is an entire neighborhood named for the field. The elevated trains run directly past the park, allowing a view into the stands... filled with the confetti color of baseball fans in the summer and swirling snow in the winter. I used to take the CTA to work every day. A glance into the stadium provided a barometer of the tenor of the neighborhood. I have been to opening day at Wrigley. It was... well... cold. I'll never do that again. I have watched games from the left field bleachers on the one 80F degree day in Chicago in April. Trust me. There aren't many of those.

But enough about the perpetually ill-fated Cubbies. The White Sox are the team of the day. Of the season. Of the year. 10.28.05


Auto Mechanically Declined

The repairs I wrote about below were from a few weeks ago. Since then, my car has been leaking even more oil. Or leaking at a faster rate. My guess is that I seated the gasket improperly. I guess that that's what you get when you replace something to fix a leak. A bigger leak. It's Sunday again, and I'm watching the Bears game at my friend and bass player, Jayson Lauden's, house. After the game, I'm going to head home and get back underneath my car and see if I can fix this leak without making it better. If it gets any worse I might as well pour oil on the ground next to my car. I'll report back to tell how it goes. 10.9.05



Have You Seen Me Lately?

It is Sunday morning and I'm at the Crown City Brewing Company in beautiful Pasadena. Pasadena is right next door to Glendale, where I live. Contrary to assumptions, I am not here for the beer. They don't actually brew here anymore. There are a profusion of places like this... with the title "Such and Such Brewing Company" that don't brew anymore since the dusk of the microbrew revolution. I am here because my girlfriend is a dyed-in-the-wool Bears fan and this is the only place where she can see the games. As you can plainly surmise, I brought my laptop that I might catch up on correspondence and such. And journal entries. Remember those?

The A-Chord

I don't like working on cars. I do it because I have more time than money. Somehow or other I wound up with a crack in my oil pan. The garage down the block wanted around $400 to fix it, $150 of which would be a used oil pan as a replacement. The rest was labor costs. I decided that I'd better attempt to fix it myself. I found a brand new replacement oil pan on the Internet for $135, a gasket for under $20 and picked a recent Saturday as my D-day. Then, as I arrived home on the prior Thursday, I noticed that there was a profusion of coolant leaking out the bottom of my car. It's always something. Sometimes it's more than one thing. I traced the leak to a hose and worked on finding a ride to work on Friday.

I'd done quite a bit of reading and research online about replacing oil pans and determined that it was a delicate procedure. You have to figure that the bolts that hold it on are on the bottom of an engine have been exposed to the elements since 1990 or so. The rust of many an Arkansas and Illinois winter could cause problems when you go to tweak them off. I'd read horror stories about guys who attempted the repair on their own and wound up breaking off the studs from the bottom of their engines. NOT GOOD. I approached the process with trepidation and extreme caution. I even lost sleep worrying about it. So, yesterday morning, I awoke, surfed the Internet a little bit trying to glean any additional pointers on the procedure, procrastinated a little and got out and under the car.

I spent the better part of the day working on it, but the replacement came off more or less without a hitch. There were expletive-laden tirades, discussions with the feet of passing neighbors, drips of oil and coolant into my hair and repeated attempts to properly seat a gasket that was very nearly 3 feet in circumference. This is far more challenging that it seems. But I got it done. I lowered the car off the jack stands and set to work on the hose. I had to remove a bunch of other components to get to it. This is the nature of the beast when it comes to car repair. And it was the case with the oil pan replacement as well. I had to remove a stabilizer bar, the transmission flywheel dust cover and the exhaust manifold just to get to the oil pan. Anyway. The process was lengthy and annoying but I completed everything. I forgot to pick up extra coolant at the local auto parts store so I never did get to fire it up after I finished. I awoke early the following morning and picked up the coolant and some precautionary stop-leak for the oil and returned to find that my car had been pattered upon by tiny feline feet during the night. I only hope that it was a lucky cat and not some stealthy harbinger of doom in the skin of a black cat. I'm not superstitious by nature, but I do have some kind of aura that causes cars to break. The last thing I need is some damn cat to expedite the process. I did learn this, however. Printed in black marker on the bottom of my engine is the number J23-629. Who knew?

Divorce

It goes around. By my age I've found myself with at least a couple friends who are now divorced and remarried. This just increases my devotion to my friends. One could figure that spouses come and go, but my friends will be there through it all. I've known my friend Jeff since the 2nd grade. I hope to be cracking a pair of Octoberfests with him on my front porch in the waning yellow light of a Midwestern October Sunday evening in 2032. Not that Jeff is getting divorced. I was just thinking about the concept.

Where Have I Bean?

What am I up to? Working. Auditioning band members. Taking care of my dog. I never really had a dog until Sally came along. Here it is, not even a year later and I can't even imagine my life without her. There was a beagle named Peanut when I was a kid but the dog was short-lived, meeting its unfortunate fate at the hands of Goodyear. There was also a Husky named Wolf from my childhood howled at the mood from our backyard in town, chewed through - and dug holes under - our chain link fence and shredded my Hobby Horse. Wolf had to go. But I digress.

I have a carpentry day job. It pays a little better than the office stuff and I get to be outside. I got sick of sitting still and pretending to be busy. I had leads on a couple other guitar tech gigs but nothing came through. I bought a Powerbook and some recording gear and have been working to pay it off. It has been a tumultuous few years since I released Sidewalk Chalk Manifesto and the time is neigh for a follow up. I've been up to my ass in car repairs and the associated stress. Not that I have that just about wrapped up, at least for now, I can get on with other things. Recording. Running. Trying to eke out time to write in this journal.

I've been piecing a band together. I've had it with playing solo shows. They are just not as much fun for me. I found a great bass player. Great in the ways that I want a bass player to be great. Less-is-more. No flailing or ego problems because they're really a frustrated guitar player. Bass tone begins and ends with the Fender Precision Bass for me… and that's exactly what he showed up with the first time we played together. It's nice when you find someone with whom to play who is also a friend-grade person. As soon as I find a suitable drummer I'll begin regular rehearsals. I found an absolutely amazing guitar player but he's on his way to Nashville, literally. He loves my music and is among the better players I've ever met, but he had already planned to leave LA when he responded to my ad. That's the thing about LA. Housing prices are so inflated here that anybody who isn't overpaid - which is most of us - can't afford to buy anything. I won't stay here forever, but I am happy to be here now. The weather is amazing. I have any sort of restaurant I could ever want. I can purchase esoteric products like Adobo seasoning with cumin, amazing hummus from the extensive selection of middle eastern restaurants in Glendale, or accessories for my Powerbook at the Apple store located in the mall half a block away. There is a top-notch Whole Foods nearby. I do most of my running in Griffith Park - the largest municipal park in America. There is virtually no chance of snow. Aside from a few gray mornings due to the marine layer, there hasn't been a cloudy day since May. Just like anywhere, there are great things about living here and there are annoying things. I take the good with the bad in the understanding that this is where I need to be for now. My heart is in the Midwest, but it isn't going anywhere. In fact, of all the places that are dear to me it has changed the least. In terms of Southern California weather I have forsaken the good to avoid the bad. I don't get any crisp Chicago October days but I also don't get any frigid Chicago January days, either. I'll take that deal for now.

Katrina

My friend Kelly moved to Baton Rouge mere weeks ago before The Fair Katrina showed up and ruined the party. She arrived just in time to get pummeled by the catastrophic hurricane. Kelly made it through just fine, but her new city is full of evacuees and refugees from New Orleans, a mere 90 miles to the south. I have spent a little time there.. in the off season, thank god.

It is a place like no other. It will be back. And the event it sure did illuminate the moronic tendency of our current administration to place inept and unqualified idiots in key positions of our government. It sort of makes you wonder who else is inept and unqualified. I've said it all along. These people are going to be trouble. I'm a little incredulous that more people aren't vehemently pissed off about the situation. That moron was on vacation when the shit hit the fan. And then what did he do? He stayed on vacation for a couple more days. Meanwhile, we're all paying $3+ per gallon of cheap gasoline. And don't even get me started on all the assholes who drive SUVs. They are PART OF THE PROBLEM. The revolution is coming. Mark my words. And then there was Barbara Bush and her veritable "Let them eat cake" comment from her visit to the Astrodome on NPR's Marketplace program. Absolutely unbelievable. How about Laura Bush's interview during which she called the storm "Hurricane Corrina" no less than twice. Who in god's name do we have running this dog and pony show? Off with their heads!

But I need to digress. I'm getting all worked up. I guess that that is no particular surprise.

I have come to a point in my life where no place feels like home. There is a giant outlet mall built upon the land in the far western Chicago suburbs where I used to ride my dirt bike, climb and cut down trees to make forts. The pumpkin farm that used to be beyond the western limit of civilization is now boxed in on all sides by subdivisions.

Alabama never really was home. The house smells like home. I always wonder if that is a function of the things my mother cooks, the collective scents of all the Armstrong family heirlooms or the life essence of the Armstrongs who live there. But every time I open the front door… there it is. College feels a lot like home, but I can really only go there in my memories. I visit the campus in the real world, as I did last year for homecoming, but the people who made it live and breathe are all somewhere else. Some of them aren't even with us anymore. I want so much to walk up to the door of my old apartment, the second floor of a giant, old white house built in 1903, put my key in the lock and walk upstairs to find my friends waiting for me. There is a fridge full of Sam Adams Octoberfest and a contest of our favorite collegiate game, Caps, waiting for me on my hardwood living room floor. Cracker's Eurotrash Girl is playing on the stereo. The Christmas lights that I never took down are shining like a Bat Signal, telling the students of Millikin University that something is going on at Joe's Apartment. I might be willing to put money down that they haven't changed the locks in the decade since I've been gone. But listen to me now. Waxing nostalgic, as I am wont to be.

Bearsss

The Bears are winning big, scoring the most points in a single game since 1993. This win will bring them to a .500 team at 1 and 1. And still I miss the Midwest. Today would have been a good pub day in Chicago. A day where I check into my neighborhood pub at noon or 1 and settle in with a pint and my journal. I'd order lunch around 2 or 3 and call up some friends to join me. They'd arrive in short order and there would be more pints and football on the TV. I don't care so much for football, but my friends do, and I love them so it's all part of the experience. Noon games would switch over to mid-afternoon games and eventually on to evening ones. Lunch would be consumed, cleared, replaced with more pints and eventually it would be time to order dinner. There would be laughter, and stories of long-passed glory. Then, as the incoming tide of the arrival of autumn lapped up to the stoop of the bar and the sun faded into the peach-blue of a Chicago evening sky we would say our goodbyes and I'd walk home staring at the trees through the filter of a good stout buzz. The trees lining the streets of Roscoe, Ravenswood and School Streets never look as good as they do seen through the filter of a few pints of beer on an autumn evening.

There I go again. I'm like some kind of self-repeating nostalgia generator. The IPA always facilitates that. And I've had a couple with breakfast. Yes, I have toed the line of precipitous catastrophe this day by quaffing my first pint before the stroke of noon. The game is almost over so I'll be headed home soon. Back to my dog. Back to the sunshine. Back to my guitars, stacks of harmonicas and beloved amplifiers.

For those of you in the Midwest… enjoy these warm, yellow-light days of September and early October. The nights are cooling off, now. The corn is brown and will soon be harvested. The lake is just a little more slate gray. The darkness of evening spills in through the open windows just a little earlier than it did in what seems like days ago back in July. Somewhere in a field, your pumpkin is waiting for you. As is mine. And, just beyond it, a turkey and an evergreen tree. This is where our weeks accelerate... skidding faster and faster towards another frigid December night where it all turns around and faces forward again.

Jesus. It never stops with me. I always wind up ruminating about memories. I'm headed home now, to the rest of my Sunday. 9.18.05



The Fair Katrina

OK. I have so much on which to report that I don't know where to begin. Unfortunately, I don't have time to address much of it now. I'm tired and I can hear my bed from here. I can say that I have been following the tragedy in New Orleans by the minute since before the storm hit. What a colossal boondoggle. Our current administration has dropped not only the ball, but the whole damn court this time. FEMA's Katrina disaster relief can only be described as, well, a disaster.

My primary lingering question... do you think that you could see someone giving you the finger from an altitude of, oh, 1700 feet or so if you happened to be flying by in a plane? 9.6.05


Hey

I will take this opportunity to say... you don't speak for me, all you "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" people. I respect your right to protest the people who are already protesting. But, does anybody notice how ridiculous it is for people to protest protesters. All the so-called god-fearing right wingers protesting the antiwar protesters in Crawford, Texas are championing the cause of war. War means rape and destruction and senseless murder. And that's just before breakfast. We are approaching a year since the red states somehow usurped common sense and elected that moron. He's too busy riding his bicycle to meet with Cindy Sheehan. I'll admit that I'm ranting, but it pisses me off. It has been pissing me off for 5 years and counting. I knew that that guy was going to be trouble. 8.29.05



August

Here I is. August has rolled around again. Time passes so quickly now that I'm not a kid anymore. When i was a kid walking out of Annunciation gradeschool on the last day of the schoolyear summer stretched out before me like the ocean. There was an unlimited number of adventures to be savored. There were trees to be climbed, bike jumps to be made, creeks to be dammed, sandbox civilizations to be raised and razed. Another generation of lightning bugs was just readying itself for the humid cool of a June evening and the carefully clenched hands of a 9 year old boy.

Beverly Hills Joe

I've been working in Beverly Hills. I don't know where to begin with this one. Every other car that goes by is a Land Rover being driven by a really skinny blonde girl with a cell phone attached to her head. As far as I can tell there are no overweight people in Beverly Hills. The buses carrying the overweight people on the tours of the stars' homes drive right past where I'm working several times a day. There must be all manner of famous people in the neighborhood. The address of the house I'm working on bears the street name of Rodeo Drive. And that's "Row-Day-Oh" to all us proletariats. 8.17.05



Homeward Bound

Burbank to Dallas, Dallas to Huntsville. Delays abound. I'm subsisting on Balance bars, 1/2 ounce bags of pretzels and water with no ice. I lucked into finding an extra 1/2 ounce bag of pretzels in the seat pocket in front of me, which means that I'll have another 50 calories before I land in Alabama. I can use them.

Car Wars

The echoing thunder of the near catastrophic failure of my laptop, and therefore my life, continues to resonate through my life. I thought I might take the opportunity to send the computer in to have other problems repaired because the hard drive had been wiped clean and returned to factory virginal status. By the way, getting any kind of answer out of the Sears maintenance agreement people was like a shell game. After I spent several total hours on the phone talking to various people who thought they knew what they were doing I visited a Sears store and they just told me to call the phone number on my maintenance agreement. I wanted to smash the laptop over their heads and pee on the counter, but I restrained myself.

At long last I found someone who seemed to have the answers and this person said that they'd send out a box that I might ship it off to some Sears repair place where they would fix the broken right-click button. This button has been broken since I go the laptop in the spring of 2004. I just dealt with it because I was using an external mouse more often than not. It was just another of the long and storied list of tics in my life. The key that I had to wiggle to get the door to open, the small tap on the side of the amp that stops the hum, the gear shifter than needs to be put into neutral before you put my car in gear, the fact that the hot and cold shower knobs are reversed. These and a million others add up to the sum of my life. Seldom does something work the way it is supposed to in my life. As a result I have become a master at improvisational modifications and field engineering. My car battery was once held in place by a Reebok and a Foster's beer can. I once pulled an ex-girlfriend's shoe out of a storm drain with a coat hanger that had been acting as my car's radio antenna.

I used to have an old BMW. It had been a southern car so the body was in great shape, but its prior owner must have been a spoiled rich kid because the motor had been run out. It was the pinnacle of tics. The engine wouldn't idle if you didn't keep a foot on the gas at all times. The brakes weren't all that great so I had to use the hand-pulled emergency brake to supplement them. The linkage was broken so I had to learn a mystical pattern in order to shift from gear to gear and to keep the shifter from dropping out the bottom of the car. So, this means that to drive this car I had to keep the engine running with the toe of my right foot while simulatneously applying the brakes with my heel of the same foot. I would engage and disengage the clutch with my left foot while my left knee worked the steering wheel. I didn't have a free hand for that last task because my left hand was shifting gears while my right was applying the emergency brake. Did this stop me from having a sandwich and soda on the go? What do you think?

There was another time when I had an older Toyota Celica. Before it became my last college car it had been used by a shed/chicken coop by some family in rural Alabama. My father bought it, painted it red and it became my wheels. I was attending a state school on the plains of Central Illinois at the time and the large size of the campus dicated that I park my car in a parking lot over a mile from my dormitory. I received a call from the local police department on the morning of the last day of classes before spring break.

THE POLICE: Is this Darryl Armstrong?
ME:Uh, yes, why?
THE POLICE: Do you own a Silver 1982 Datsun?
ME: Uh, yes, why?

You get the rest. Some local degenerate had thrown a very fine example of a glacial-remnant rock through the passenger window and stolen my t-tops. They tried to wrench the stereo out but were unsuccessful. They left the rock, however. I headed over to collect my car, clean up the glass and head to the hardware store where I fashioned a cockpit out of cardboard and duct tape in order to make the 3-hour journey home later that day. I was chided for having used duct tape on the paint but anyone who has ever been to Chicago in March knows that it is far too cold that time of year to drive 200 miles with no t-tops and no passenger window. And that is how the Celica came to be mine. The vandalism of the Datsun prompted my parents to find me a cheaper car. It doesn't really come more price-conscious than a car that has been used as a coop for flightless birds.

This Celica had been around before she became mine. And around. And around. I think it had 160,000-some miles when I took possession of it. My friends Jeff and Kelly and I drove it to Orlando once and we lost a belt somewhere south of Indianapolis in the dark, wee morning hours of December 26th, 1991. A debacle of truck stop phone calls, underdressed winter outdoor repairs, epoxy and sleep deprevation ensued when the radiator exploded just outside of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. It was a rough trip, but young people are nothing if not determined, and we rolled into Orlando as the sun crested the eastern horizon on December 27th. I had contracted a cold while working on my car in what I thought would be sufficient outerwear for Florida in December. Upon arriving I was also too wired from the trip to sleep and ended up staying up that whole day. To this day, the record of three consecutive days without sleep stands as my greatest feat of strength in wars of attrition with complete exhaustion. Not that it's anything about which to brag. I'd just as soon sleep as do most anything.

Somewhere along the way, I was working a summer job at a medical supply warehouse about 15 minutes north of my house in the suburbs of Chicago. This particular morning I was eating some sort of breakfast sandwich with a drink wedged between my legs as I drove. This car was a challege to drive as well and although I don't recall the specific tic that required another hand it took a learned pattern to get around in this vehicle. So here I am, driving along Kirk Road with my radio playing and the windows down. It was common to leave one's windows open in front of one's house in those days. I used to leave the keys on the floorboard. Imagine that. Something catches my eye as I'm driving along, chewing and singing. It's a small spider, who had apparently taken up residence in my car overnight, lowering him or herself down right next to my head. I'm not afraid of spiders, but that doesn't meant that I want one on my face as I am driving. Because I didn't have a free hand with which to swat it away I decide to blow it clear and I do so, only to have it hold tight and swing back right at my face. I duck to my left and blow at it again and again it swings back towards my head. I am now driving, chewing, blowing and repeatedly ducking out of the way in a sort of systematic rhythm. I was somehow able to get a free hand to reach up and grab the top of the thin, filament from which the little spider was hanging with 8 legs and the determination of 100 more. I flipped it out the side window, finished my sandwich and worked out the rest of the summer picking orders of band aids, gauze pads and vaginal specula. Ah, youth.



In the Beginning

Where to begin? So much new stuff in my world. The new Son Volt record came out last week. It was more like a Jay Farrar solo record with Son Volt printed on the cover because he's the only original member. Granted, he's the founder, writer and singer, but it just isn't the same to not have the original, and until recently only lineup. The record is good. It's no Trace (Son Volt's 1995 debut) but it is quality music and there is enough of what used to be there to enjoy the guitars spilling from my speakers.

Over the year I worked with Dashboard Confessional I amassed a collection of beers from around the world and have been slowly working my way through it. I'm down to about four, now. There has been plenty of other beer consumed along the way but it's nice to think that I'm likely the only guy in California who is currently enjoying a Geary's Pale Ale from Portland, Maine at this particular moment. There is a lobster on the label and I think I might like to be enjoying one of those with this pale ale right now. This won't be happening as I am on what I call my "ghetto diet." I was on this diet all the way through my poor years in college, and in several lean years since.

A Ghetto Diet means that one is under advisement to consume food when it is available because one doesn't know when one might get the chance to eat again. It goes something like this example... you work a gig as a sound engineer at a fancy club in downtown Chicago. There is a sizable buffet and you are instructed to help yourself, which you do, because you know that you'll be having toast or perhaps a fried egg sandwich when you get home.

College students are experts at this sort of thing. I had many odd combinations of food in desperate attempts to make low budget concoctions palatable. Adding salsa to macaroni and cheese was a good one. Adding salsa to grilled cheese was another, similar modification. My attorney and my old roommate, Luke went through a drop biscuit phase. They don't taste like much but they are easy like pie to throw together with the remedial accouterments of a collegiate kitchen. There is, of course, always money for beer.

Another former roommate and legend in his time, Jeff, used to stand at the refrigerator door and eat slice after slice of American cheese. And he had a good job. Yuck. Yet another friend invented a peculiar dish called "special special." Special Special was as much a process and study in food chaos as it was a meal. It went something like this... take some of everything that you have in your cabinet, refrigerator and freezer, mix it together and bake it in a pan. One day it might be tater tots with French dressing, carrots and cream of mushroom soup. The next day it might be spaghetti sauce, peanut butter and potted meat links. I never tasted it myself. I shudder to think of it.

My personal attempts at keeping my belly from groaning usually involved adding salsa to something with cheese and bread. I also used to buy these little, individual serving pizzas with what by all accounts appeared to be plastic cheese - according to the government-mandated list of ingredients. I also had a toast phase. Regular toast. Jelly toast. Jelly toast with cream cheese. Cinnamon toast. Toast with butter. Toast without butter. I'd buy 6 or more loaves of bread at the bakery thrift store when I'd go home for some holiday or other and freeze them. My freezer was usually packed with bread and small pizzas with plastic cheese.

So, here I am at this late stage of the game, back to the Ghetto Diet. Some things have changed. I've sworn off canned and jarred salsa and the quality of the beer for which I still always have money has increased dramatically. No more plastic cheese for this skinny musician.

A Tale of Two Jasons

The bass player with whom I had my Chicago glory days was named Jason Upchurch. He is a well-read and intelligent fellow who makes good company on a pair of barstools. He, too, has moved away from Chicago - to upstate New York where he recently told me that he's playing with some impressive musicians. I wish him nothing but the absolute best. Alas, I am now in Los Angeles, and have been steadily working on putting my next band together. In the words of our illustrious, idiot "president" it is hard work. Hard work that is compounded by the fact that there isn't really any profit to be doled out at this stage of the game.

I had one bass player in the works and I'd begun to teach him songs. I really liked this guy as a human but he turned out to be a lackluster bass player. And then one day he vanished. Poof. Just like that. He stopped calling and wouldn't respond to e-mails I sent to him. I never said a thing that might have put him off... other than asking him to play the particular songs in a manner that fit the arrangements. Maybe that was too much?

I went back to posting the usual ads on Craigslist - an online community that you really should check out for yourself. It has classifieds and groups of all conceivable permutations. I also got wind of a guy who graduated from my alma mater, good old Millikin University, situated on the green, flat plains of Central Illinois. He was younger than myself and I knew very little about him save for the fact that we went to the same college, although I did have his e-mail address. I went for broke and sent Mr. Jayson Lauden a cold call e-mail. I said something like, "You don't know me, but..." He gave my music a listen and was impressed enough to call back. Here we are, weeks later and we've got a whole pile of songs and an even larger pile of laughs under our collective belts. I couldn't be happier to play with this guy. He is a consummate bass player in the highly-desirable less-is-more style of mature musicianship. He's a fine representative for Wisconsin out here over our home states' western horizon. Welcome aboard, Jay.

We Remain Unvanquished

The half-man, half-god-on-a-bike who shares my family name is at it again. I'd intended to have regular updates about Lance Armstrong's progress in this, his final Tour de France, but it's too late now. He's 2/3 of the way through the race and he's got a commanding lead. All Armstrong fingers and toes are crossed that he can hold out another 6 days to retire on top of the world. Go Lance. If it makes you happy...

Drive Hard

I've been around and around looking for an external hard drive on which to backup all my computer data. Websites, stores, friends' advice. I got fed up and went to the local electronics labyrinth late last week. I now have a 160 GB hard drive awaiting tonight's inaugural backup session. I will now sleep a little easier knowing that there is some sort of safety net below the other half of my brain. I will certainly sleep better than I did on the nights of June 14th and 15th of this year when the fate of my data was anything but certain. The ordeal that I have since survived was more frightening than any slasher movie I've ever seen. I now have a new definition of the word despondent. 7.17.05



Jesus H. Christ on a Bike

I have dodged a large bullet. More like a personal, nuclear-tipped MIRV ICBM targeted on my sanity. I arrived home from a small backyard BBQ in the San Fernando Valley last Tuesday night and went to my laptop to check my e-mail. Astute calendar enthusiasts will note that last Tuesday was the date of the most heralded of all American holidays, Flag Day. Late this Flag Day I sat down to a blank screen on my computer. Not even the dreaded Blue Screen of Death so familiar to Windows users. Black. Bupkus. The monitor was "on" but there was nothing on the screen. I'd been there before. No big deal. I attempted the usual hard restart procedure and waited. Again, nothing. Hmmm. Not good. I attempted to boot up into Safe Mode to see if I could restart from an earlier point in time. A clever little Microsoft trick that usually remedies problems of this nature. The thing won't even boot to Safe Mode. At this point I'm beginning to get nervous. A few additional attempts at a hard restart are made and short tirades of expletives are beginning to be dispersed into the ether.

I hook it up to an external monitor. I shake it. I swear at it. I mull over plans to put a hex on Bill Gates' bowels. I take small but pointless pleasure in the fact that I now own an Apple and that it might be time to finally make the switch.

Switching to Apple sounds like a great idea. Their software works better and their hardware is functional and sexy. I'd finally be the cool guy on the airplane. I've been meaning to switch over but have been hindered by the fact that I don't have much of the essential software that I need to work in the Apple universe - stuff like Photoshop, Microsoft Office and Dreamweaver. Either way, switching was not really the current problem. It was the fact that my HP laptop, which functions as the other half of my brain and interface with much of the world, was sitting on the table in front if me with a blank screen. The familiar DC-3 whine of the cooling fan was the only indicator that it was functioning at all.

This is a nightmare scenario to me. Worse than a totaled car. Worse than the flu. The loss of my computer data is a catastrophic event. Fuck the computer itself. Hardware is hardware and is therefore ultimately replaceable. Five years of digital photographs are not. Unfinished song lyrics are not. Contact information for everyone I know is not. The reality of what might be happening to me at that moment started to sink in. I began to feel sick. I was about to be spending a lot of time thinking about the unthinkable. I had to go to bed. It was late. There was nobody to call and no store to which to drive at breakneck speed in hopes that some pale, skinny 19-year old computer geek would calm me with a magic, healing touch and allay my fears. I didn't sleep well. In fact, I didn't sleep much at all.

My Sears protection agreement turned out to be basically useless. They'd replace the hard drive in the event it was broken. As it turns out, nobody is really accountable for software breakdowns. The hardware people blame the software people - and the software people blame - you guessed it - the hardware people. I realize that Sears can't make my data rematerialize but one scrambles for any tattered shred of hope in situations such as that.

There was a local computer store at the end of my block and I decided to patronize my neighborhood independent businesspeople rather than head for the neighborhood multinational conglomerate. The guys at the local computer store said that they could pull the hard drive, put it into another computer and attempt to extract the data. They said that they'd know right away if the hard drive was compromised. If the thing was trashed and they couldn't extract the data the charge would be $75. If the drive wasn't trashed they'd extract the data and ask me what I wanted to do next. I dropped the unit off and proceeded to go into some sort of borderline autistic state. I didn't sleep for two nights. Finally, on Friday, I received a call saying that they'd been able to save my data. I nearly collapsed.

Here we are, days later and I'm still reinstalling software and configuring things. The $150 didn't include enough know how to locate my old e-mails from my in box so I had to figure that out on my own, which I did. I downloaded my website last night and am finally finishing up this journal entry. Onward, upward and all that.

One piece of important advice. GO BUY AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE BEFORE THIS HAPPENS TO YOU. DO IT TODAY. DO IT NOW. 6.27.05


Joe of Arcadia

I've been working a carpentry job. A singer/songwriter has to eat. I'd grown tired of having sedentary office jobs where I'd find myself sitting for hours. Answering phones. Taking messages. Alphabetizing. Pretending to be busy. It's a good thing I spent all that money on college.

In any case, the job has been OK. It pays a little better and I get to be outside. I like outside. Outside can mean hot but that's never really been a problem for me. The liability of this sort of job - other than the chance that I'll cut off one or more fingers with a circular saw - is that it is often filthy. I've done handyman work in the past. They are nice skills to have when you're trying to keep yourself fed. A little drywall here and there isn't so bad. Days and days of sanding joint compound sucks. A lot. It sucks sucks sucks. I'm frequently covered in white powder. I come home looking like Al Pacino in Scarface except that the blow is caked into every pore of my body. My clothes are saturated. My shoes emit little clouds with every step. Exhaling into my breathing air filter launches particles into the air about my face. I started out using goggles for my eyes as well but they'd just fill up on the inside the same as the air outside. Pointless. I wear earplugs to help alleviate the constant droning of the electric sander but my ears fill up with powder anyway. I thought I had something in my eye hours after my evening shower the other night. I went into the bathroom and pulled down my lower eyelid only to find it filled with white dust. My eyelids. Both of them. The insides. Filled with powder. Ack.

The garage that I am currently renovating into living space began its life as a mechanic's shop. This means that there is the usual empire of spiders in there with me. Spiders don't bother me so much. Eight legs good, two legs bad. Oops, Animal Farm was a little different than that. You get the idea. So, there are spiders. A lot of them. Their nightly webs look cool in the mornings after all the aforementioned dust settles in them through the night. The particularly stange thing about this garage-cum-apartment is that it has been used to shelter rescued cats for the last few years. Lots of them. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 formerly-feral cats have called this place home at any one time. People always say that they can smell one cat when they arrive in someone's house or apartment. You might imagine the exponential fecund odor that one score and ten cats might make in several years of California summers. Go ahead. Imagine it.

Being allergic to cats, and having the day be in the midst of my yearly two-week period of allergy hell, my first day at this job was trying. Constant nasal drainage. Little slits of red, swollen eyes. Fortunately, my arrival on the job site was post-cat-shit-cleanup. I heard a couple stories of which I will spare you the gory details. Being asked to clean up years of cat shit might have incited the first job at which my first day was also my last. "I'm giving you you my two-minutes' notice." I missed that whole thing. Thank Jah.

I was, however, asked to install an air conditioner into the New Cat House on Wednesday this week. The cat complement has been reduced to a merely ridiculous seven. They have their own small, but well-built shed about 40 feet from their old digs in the garage. Inside this shed is food, water, a large litter box and a couch - upon which to sit and under which to hide, the latter of which they all did when I opened the door and faced a wall of hot, sour and fetid air. I managed to breathe through my mouth for the better part of the next two hours while I cut a hole and framed in a spot for the air conditioner. The seven cats can now rest in semi-comfortable, climate-controlled captivity. I don't even have A/C in my own apartment. I ended up roofing for the rest of the day. Better to be outside to get the smell out of my clothes, nose and soul. Even thus, later that evening, reminiscent of the eye-goo episode, I could periodically smell the Arcadia Cat House as went about my evening. It took me a day or more to get the stink out of my nose. They say that people who live next to dumps, pig farms, chicken houses, in Peoria, or work in slaughterhouses just grow accustomed to the constant olfactory barrage. Maybe so. As for me, I don't care to find out. 6.23.05



Beat It

Indeed. Michael Jackson has beat the child molestation rap - innocent on all counts. Aside from the indignation that anyone would feel anytime a child is abused in any way I could care less what happens to Michael Jackson. But I heard the verdict announced as I was driving home from my day job yesterday and immediately thought of the song Beat It. I never was a fan. I remember Thriller in all it's over-hyped, annoying and sordid glory. I was a kid and I didn't like it then. I recall hearing the O.J. Simpson verdict as it was announced and wasn't terribly surprised by the bedlam that ensued. Ten years, two black and one silver glove later, O.J. can sleep easy outside of the Big House and Michael Jackson can go back to his quiet, normal life at his ranch called Neverland.

Oh, and by the way, Happy Flag Day Everyone 6.14.05


Where have I Bean?

That’s a fine question. I’ll attempt to answer it as best I can. Things have changed fairly drastically here in the Armstrong Universe. I’m settling into my new California environs – as much as I’m capable of settling into anything. I have this silly temporary day job that I go to every day in order to make money to eat and pay bills. I sit around and do things like hit endless successions of CTRL C, ALT TAB, CTRL V, ALT TAB. It’s a good thing I went to college. I must have done that combination of keystrokes several thousand times in the last week. My left hand is sore from all the contortion.

I sold a guitar speaker to an Australian earlier in the week. It all stems from the fact that – at what can only be described as EXCEEDINGLY long last – I am putting together a home recording setup. I’ve been meaning to build this sort of thing for years, now. I use the term “build” loosely as there really isn’t any brick and mortar to the thing. What there is, is an expensive microphone, a laptop, an audio interface and a firewire hard drive. There is also software, but it is the least tangible of any of this stuff. One could argue that it doesn’t exist at all.

I acquired the microphone on Ebay – for a song. I got the mic that I wanted rather than skimping and getting a cheaper one. The reason for this is obvious to anyone who has ever recorded anything. The microphone is the precise point where sound vibrations in air get changed to electronic impulses. Garbage in, garbage out, you know? I have the usual complement of microphones for live instruments and vocals, but recording music requires greater fidelity. Mine is silver and has the perfect combination of futuristic retro. Like it was left behind at a party by Buck Rogers.

The hard drive is where all those ones and zeros go. I’d honestly prefer to be recording in the analog realm – lining up electrons on magnetic tape. The digital age has dragged the music business with it joyously and kicking and screaming all at the same time… like a kid who can’t sit still during his favorite movie because he had too much Mountain Dew. Recording with a computer is just cheaper, and the sound quality, however suspect to some analog audiophiles, has achieved a suitable level of clarity. The last stop-gap technology, the cursed ADAT digital tape machine got us over the hump between analog tape (beloved but expensive) and non-linear, computer-based recording (sometimes soul-less but cheap).

There is a little box that comes between your microphone and your computer. We’ll call it an interface. This box has connections for microphones, headphones, hard drives and a few knobs and buttons which allow you to tweak various parameters. Sounds fun, eh? Twist knobs and watch lights blink! It’s half the fun. The one I got is a little smaller than a high school math textbook. It is blue. It came with software that will allow me to record and manipulate recorded music and noise in wondrous and myriad ways. The hard drive and the interface have been ordered and are sitting in a truck somewhere between here and Florida.

Which brings me to the computer. I wanted my setup to be mobile so I could drag it around to musicians I like and set it up in front of them – as opposed to trying to get musicians I like to come and stand in front of it. It seemed easier, given that my musician friends are spaced somewhat evenly around the country - and sometimes beyond. The original plan was to do this whole setup around the Windows PC laptop upon which I am typing right now. After some research I had read far too many horror stories about getting digital audio working on a Windows machine. I must be crazy, but I have joined...

The Cult of Apple

Yes, it's true. After about a decade of banishment to the bowels of Bill Gates' empire, I have once again stepped into the light. I have no financial business purchasing a Macintosh. However, I don't have the patience and sanity to attempt to finish my next CD while trying to coax a PC back to life from the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. Repeatedly. All my IT friends say, "Hogwash," and they berate me for spending so much on an Apple computer. I cordially invite each and every one of them to build a home recording set up around a Windows machine. Some of them already have, with fine results. Personally, I have very little interest in coaxing the most out of a cheaper machine. I just want it to work. I want to make music, not tech computers. As a result, I bought an Apple.

And, speaking of apples, my dog just snatched the one that I am eating off the table next to my computer. I need to go lay down some canine discipline and wash off my snack. 5.2.05



Almost Popeless

Pope John Paul II is on his deathbed. In some ways you could say that he has been for a while now. CNN.com just had a breaking news banner saying that some Italian news source said that he’d died, but when I returned from the bathroom and refreshed the browser they had removed it. A quick visit to a JP2 biography page states – in the past tense- that he died on April 1, 2005. He’s alive. He’s dead. He’s alive. I feel sort of bad for the man. Just let him die in peace. Just like Terri Schiavo was allowed to do. Sort of.

I was 8 years old when the the pope that chose the names of the Beatles frontmen ascended to the papacy. I recall the church bells ringing in the autumn air. At that point I my life I hadn’t even been an altar boy yet. You can stop your snickering in front of your monitor. I can hear you. There never was any “hot clergy action” between me and Fathers David or Sebastian – or any other, for that matter. I was a catholic schoolboy in a light blue button down shirt with dark blue pants who knew enough about the pope to know that we’d just had three of them in a scant few months. John Paul I lasted only 33 days in the papacy.

Here we are at 5:28pm local time on Friday. The pope is still with us, insofar as you can believe the folks in Rome. He’s hanging on by a thread and I’m on my way home from my dopey temp job. What a contrast.

Friday

Friday in California. April 1st. I don’t have any good April Fool’s jokes in the hopper so I’ll just play the straight man this morning.

The NCAA Basketball Championship is heating up… with the Final Four games taking place tomorrow afternoon. My team will face Louisville tomorrow afternoon at 3:07pm local time. As a native Illinoisan I am pulling for the Fighting Illini of the University of Illinois. Because I went to college about 50 miles from Uof I they are my default college team for which to root. We used to use their library, quad, burrito joints, used CD stores, head shops, music venues and sometimes their women. One of my college girlfriends graduated from U of I, as did one of my cousins and many friends. I am very much looking forward to the game tomorrow afternoon. In the event you haven’t been paying much attention, the last game was quite exciting, with Illinois coming back from a 15-point deficit in the final 4 minutes of regulation. They won by 1 in overtime after a heart-in-your-throat final 15 seconds. It was legendary.

I’m having a little party on Saturday afternoon. Party for the game, partly for Daylight Saving Time – which is like heaven to me – and partly for no good reason. Just to drink some good beer and debate. I don’t know that many people out here so it will be small. My place is small so it all makes sense. 4.1.05



The Illini Pull One Out of Their Ass

OK, then. It is no secret that I am a fan of the game of basketball. My father has always been a Football Man - of the particular variety of college football. I grew up to the autumnal white noise of a college football crowd emanating out of the television every Saturday afternoon. Professional football was, as he put it, an "inferior game." That didn't prevent him from inundating the house with the white noise of a professional football crowd on Sunday afternoons as he dozed in his chair next to a wood-burning stove.

I came to basketball in high school, and then even more so in college. You see, The Chicago Bulls had had the good fortune of picking a talented young player in the third round of the NBA draft. His name was Michael Jordan and this skinny kid from North Carolina would eventually provide much drama, excellence and cash influx to my fair city. Other kids at Batavia High School were more into basketball than I was.

I'd been a more or less uncoordinated kid until I got to high school. Sports were simply not of great interest to me. I was too skinny to play football, but I did it anyway at my father's behest. I'm sure he felt no small amount of frustration when his oldest son spent more time trying to get mosquitos out of his helmet than paying attention to the practices held behind the gradeschool. As for games, the young Joey Armstrong played one play of one game the entire season. It was on defense on a kickoff return, if my memory serves me. The ball was kicked into the air and I ran forward. I never touched the ball. I never even touched another player. And that was the beginning and the end of my illustrious football career. I returned to my seat on the bench - a place I'd come to know well as autumn progressed.

I'd also done short stints on basketball teams at both Annunciation school as well as at Batavia's J.B. Nelson gradeschool. I could barely dribble. My lingering memory of my formative basketball experience was how I felt like an athletic David Byrne in my seriously oversized basketball uniform. I also remember it being Very Cold in the gymnasium. I'd "dribble" around and shoot at the basket which seemed to hang suspended in space hundreds of feet above my blonde head. And then I'd sit on the bench and watch the snow outside the paned glass windows as the other kids who had a better clue of which way our basket was played a scrimmage game.

There was also some track in Junior High and my freshman year of High School. In the 6th grade I'd tied Lee Bolin as the fastest kid in the school. I was a dark horse as I'd just transferred in from Catholic schools that year. In the spring the teachers had set up some sort of gradeschool Olympics. I ran fast enough to tie the generally-accepted shoe-in victor in the sprint event. My fame was short-lived. At that age I lived more in my head and in my own imagination than I did anywhere else. I went back to being that weird kid who drew airplanes all over his notebooks.

But I ran track for a couple years in there. I remember spending a lot of time sitting around on the bleachers, exposed to the chilly wind of spring in the middle west. There was often snow on the ground next to the cinder track as we ran, jumped and passed batons. I'd broken my leg in the autumn of my freshman year of high school and don't think that I was back to 6th grade speeds by the time track began in March of 1985. I ran - poorly - I sat on the freezing bleachers and I rode around northern Illinois in school buses going to and from track meets. Not much fun.

All through these lackluster accomplishments in the world of sport another young guy was making waves, first in high school, then at North Carolina - where he established a penchant for winning championships, and later at the Chicago Stadium - home of the Chicago Bulls. I thought his shoes were cooler than cool before I knew much about his accomplishments on the basketball court. I had a set of the original red and black Air Jordans back when it was unthinkable to spend - get this - $59.95 on a pair of athletic shoes. I wore them loosely un/tied, which was the style of the time. I eventually got a pair of white Air Jordans because I wasn't a flashy kid. Just plain white Nike hi-top basketball shoes that said "Air Jordan" on the side. We all, of course, rolled the cuffs of our jeans to accentuate the shoes. Jesus.

When I got to college I began going to bars to socialize, drink beer and try and meet girls. Everyone seemed to be glued to the television sets hanging above eye level in the ceiling corner of every bar in the universe. "What could everyone be so transfixed by?" I wondered. It was the Bulls of Chicago, winning National Basketball Association playoff games. I started paying attention. Basketball was Exciting. I'd watched my classmates from Batavia High School play the game of basketball.

I played guitar in the Jazz Band, which meant that my friends and I got to play to the enormous crowd in the gym before games and at halftime. We played the "square" jazz tunes in Bb and were then allowed - as the rhythm section of guitar, bass and drums - to play such classics as the James Gang's Funk #49. Oh, the headaches we must have wrought on our band director. But the kids loved it so we played our rickety, suburban white kid funk at the loudest possible volume. I had a 100-watt Carvin half stack amplifier, a 1980 Gibson SG on loan from my uncle and a Boss CS-2 compression/sustainer pedal. What I thought was pure rock emanated from a skinny, 16-year old me - bedecked in a Pink Floyd t-shirt, Levi's with the cuffs rolled up and red and black Air Jordans.

(Man, can I ever get off topic or what?)

So, here I was in the early 1990s - starting to get wrapped up in the Bulls' playoff run that would eventually lead to a repeat three-peat dynasty. In later years my attorney would join me at my Chicago apartment, where we'd get out every pair of Nike shoes we'd ever owned and line them up around the TV in order to provide good mojo voodoo for the home team. I'm sure all the girlfriends in attendance thought it was silly, but many things sound like good ideas when you're all lit up on Oregon India Pale Ales.

Michael Jordan would eventually rack up no less than 6 National Championships. He'd retire 3 times, win a gold medal in the Olympics and provide enough highlight reel footage to fill a vault. My lifelong love for the game of basketball had been set in stone. Here in 2005, after a seemingly-neverending drought, the Bulls of Chicago are winning some basketball games again. They're several games over .500 and are headed to the playoffs for the first time in a long time. It will be a while before we're back on top of the heap but at least I don't have to avert my eyes in shame anymore.

So, all that blathering brings me to last Saturday afternoon. I was headed to see Bob Dylan play that evening and turned on the TV to catch the fighting Illini play Arizona for a spot in the Final Four of the NCAA Championship. March madness, indeed. I made a typical Joe Armstrong simple math error and tuned in to halftime rather than the start of the game - which was what I was expecting. Illinois was leading by one at the half. Lordy, lordy. Dylan's opening act might have to wait. My alma mater, Millikin University has a basketball team. I even played Funk #49 in that pep band as well.

Millikin is in a whole separate, small school division that wouldn't be seen in the NCAA Tournament proper. As a result I tend to default to the nearby University of Illinois when it comes to collegiate sports allegiance. From time to time my Millikin cronies and I would traverse the prairie to the U of I campus in Champaign to get that big school experience. I had a girlfriend there for a while as well. Head shops, record stores, a legitimate library, bars, used bookstores, burrito joints and a quad just begging for a game of Frisbee awaited us on each of our trips. My band would play gigs there as well. We could draw a crowd that would have been a significant percentage of Millikin's entire student body to a gig in Champaign.

In keeping with my traditional rooting for U of I sports I have been following their near-perfect basketball season and progress in the championship brackets. When I turned on the game on Saturday afternoon I sat in rapt attention and watched the Illini fall to a 15-point deficit with a scant 4 minutes to play. Arizona had the ball, the lead and all the momentum. It seemed as if Illinois' number was finally up. The end of the road. See you next year. I remember saying aloud, "They're going to lose this game." And then something happened that would have been worthy of a quarter turn of Phil Jackson's mighty magic ring. Illinois made a three-point shot. And then there was a steal. There may yet be hope. But time - time was running out. How could they make up an 8-point difference in less than a minute.

First I was on the edge of my seat. Then I couldn't even sit down at all. This adrenaline-saturated excitement is precisely what I love about the game of basketball. It's a big gamble there at the end of a game - or even a season. You're locked into this heightened state of being but you don't know whether the chips will fall on this or that side of the line. Will you be elated or eviscerated? The seconds are ticking off the clock. You know that the end is inevitable and that the outcome will be decided right before your eyes in your next few heartbeats. You're trying to watch all ten players at once. Rumor has it that Jordan sees everything that happens on the court in slow motion. I'd believe it.

Illinois tied the game, sending it into overtime. Illinois almost dominated in the extra 5-minute period but wound up leaving the ball to Arizona with a 1-point lead and roughly 15 seconds to go. Arizona had owned the entire game in regulation and were rightfully not going to go quietly. Not an enviable position. The Illini had already done what seemed impossible, at one point erasing an 8 point lead in 7 seconds, but now they were left with nothing but their vaunted defense to keep them alive in the tournament and prevent their dream season from collapsing straight down the toilet. Arizona inbounded the ball. Now they were dribbling around past the top of the key. First right, then left. Seconds winding out into history. Now, a hesitation before the intended stab towards the basket. Illinois players were sticking to their man like a shadow. Another stab rebuffed, Arizona guards are scrambling to get free. A shot is taken and misses off the rim. The ball bounces towards the free throw line and is picked up by an Arizona player, who, realizing that there simply isn't enough time, makes a desperate toss in the direction of the basket. It's a miss. Reality rushes toward me at the speed of light. I hear the crowd. I see the clock at 00:00. I check the score. Did it really miss? It did. We did it! They did it. The fighting Illini did just what their namesake touts and are headed to the Final Four. And I love the game of basketball. 3.28.05



Martha Martha Martha

Everyone's favorite would-be ex-con and home improvement maven, Martha Stewart, was recently released from "prison." My attorney and I have differing opinions about the incarceration of Stewart. Not that either one of us has given it much thought. He has a zero-tolerance policy for white collar criminals. My policy isn't that disparate from his but I'm inclined to think that Martha got a raw deal. The reason I think this is because all those clowns from Enron and Worldcom continue to walk the streets. Ultimately, the problem isn't with the part of the system that sent Martha to the big house. It is the part of the system that allows guys who rob millions - billions, even - to not only not go to prison, but to keep their piles of money and houses and yachts. It pays to be on the Bush family Christmas list.

Jesus H. Christ.

Theaters in a few southeastern states have declined to show an IMAX movie about volcanoes because it has references to evolution. What is with these people? I'll admit that they have every right to show or not show whatever they please in their theaters. It makes business sense to show movies that will fill their seats with warm bodies. The problem is that the brains attached to many warm bodies in that geographical region are confused about the origin of the species. They've got it in their heads that life on earth started by some sort of divine spontaneous generation. Poof! Just like that. What really gets me is the fact these southern religious zealots are most afraid of the religious zealots who live in Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world. They fear anything different than their own narrow worldview and are quite eager to support wars to rid the planet of that which they don't understand. It's the age old, tried and true human propensity to kill anything different than themselves. 3.23.05



La Cuenta

Never write a check for Girl Scout Cookies. That’s my lesson for February 1st of this year – which was when I did just that. We’re coming up on two months later and the check is still outstanding. This irks me. This vexes me. This makes me feel like an idiot for writing a check at all. I avoid using checks for anything. I always have. Checks have always felt like a laborious way to pay for something. You have to write it out by hand, present it to your creditor and then wait, wait, wait for them to do anything at all with it. And then wait again for it to be processed and clear your account. Many people use this lag time as a sort of float by hedging that they’ll have the necessary funds in their account by the time all that mumbo jumbo takes place. I’ve never really cut it that close. It’s not that I have significant funding to the extent that a lack thereof is not a problem. It’s just that I’m not much of a gambler.

I wasn’t gambling that I would eventually have the necessary funds to purchase no less than ten boxes of Thin Mints when I wrote out check number 2250 – no less than six pages back in my check register. I had the money then. If I was in the habit of carrying cash around I would have gladly surrendered it at the time of my cookie mania. I have a policy of hording Thin Mints and then distributing them over the course of the year. This is my only way of circumventing the Girl Scouts’ coup of supply and demand. I missed my shipment last season as I couldn’t find a supplier… or perhaps, more aptly, a dealer. As a result I wound up rationing my 2003 supply for two whole years. The floodgates opened a couple weeks back. The coffers have been filled with bright green boxes of chocolaty mint manna. But then there’s that check. Uncashed. Undoubtedly sitting in some grimy envelope or overworked mother’s purse. 3.21.05



Incommunicado

Hello, friends. I'm alive. I swear. I've just been busy. Seriously, really, confoundingly busy. I've played a gig, worked a lot of hours at my day gig, had a bunch of beers, hosted an old friend, mourned the loss of HST, contracted the flu, finished two books and started a couple others, taken my dog to the dog park, spent entirely too much money on stupid shit, bought Bob Dylan tickets, purchased no less than ten boxes of Girl Scouts' Thin Mint cookies, discovered Ray LaMontagne, hung a bike in my kitchen, procured a really expensive microphone, witnessed my grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary, fixed a screen door, grilled some burgers, climbed a mountain (OK, so it was more of a hike but I did make it to the top), and done countless other menial tasks. I'll expound on some of those soon. For now it's off to buy more puppy food and Joe food. Beware the Ides of March. 3.15.05



Take the Ride

I am speechless. A great man, great by the standards not traditionally valued in our culture, is dead. Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was just found dead in his home just outside of Aspen, Colorado of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. I just watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the thousandth time on Friday night. In fact, I didn't finish the movie because I'd had plenty of beer, it was getting late I and wanted to go to sleep. The DVD is still in my player. Is it odd to shed a tear for someone you've never met?

He was an essential voice in the fight against the establishment. That voice, and its peculiar cadence, will be sorely missed, both personally and nationally. I can't help think that this might not have happened if that idiot hadn't been reelected. The good doctor campaigned hard for John Kerry and had even predicted him to win. But none of that matters now.

I am completely dejected. I don't want to get up from this chair. When I sat down he was still alive and all was right with the world - at least as far as I knew. When I get up I will have to accept that he's gone and get on with life. Nobody lives forever. At 67 years of age, he had done plenty in this life. I'll raise a pint to you, Doc. You buy the ticket, you take the ride. Goodbye. 2.20.05



Super

I managed yesterday to not take in a second of the most hyped event in our culture. I can't say that I'm much of a football fan and I tend to mute even the best of commercials during my normal sparse television viewing. Hype, football, commercials, awful food and cheap beer seem to be the themes of the day on Super Bowl Sunday. I had none of the above and I haven't missed a thing. I didn't see Janet Jackson's tit last year and I can't say that I saw whatever it was that did or did not happen the year before that. In fact, I know that I've watched a couple Super Bowls in my life but I couldn't tell you which. I have fuzzy memories of the Orwellian Macintosh Super Bowl commercial from the Reagan years. I saw the Bears of Chicago beat the Patriots of New England in 1985. I recall having seen the 49ers of San Francisco beat someone or other during the semester I went to college in Boston. I recall a Super Bowl party at an amazing apartment on Sheridan and Irving Park Road in Chicago in one of the waning years of the last century. I remember the exposed brick hallway but neither of the teams. Was there some ZZ Top at halftime? I'll never know. The Super Bowl used to be an excuse to drink some beer but I don't really need a reason, do I? I'm a grown up now. (Sort of.) I am a professional Beer Drinker.

In lieu of 7-layer dip, light beer and pretzels I drove up to the top of a mountain. By "up" I mean over the layer of smog that blankets the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area to where the air was clean and roads were serpentine. I saw snow and fog and trees and rocks on the roadway that fell from the steep hills above. The rocks lent a small element of danger to the sojourn. There was other danger afoot, however. The first came in the form of some serious radio frequencies being emitted by the cadre of transmitters and antennae at the top of the mountain. I was starting to get a headache when I noticed the humming, the yellow and black warning sign and then had the realization that I was likely being cooked from the inside. I made a hasty egress and played some in the snow around the bend. Oh, what a dream to be able to go to the snow instead of having the snow come to me. The reversal of fortune was everything that I thought it might be. Here, ensconced in the self-replicating near-perfect Los Angeles weather, I can make peace with the snow. My old nemesis is now a novelty - like the newly-detoothed Bumble/Abominable Snowman from the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer show.

The other element of danger came in the form of a run in with the 5-0. Strangely, it wasn't me that was being questioned at gunpoint by no less than two squad cars at the scenic viewpoint along the Pacific Crest Highway. There I was taking in the view with my traveling companion. There were four Hispanic guys in a Tercel who were milling about laughing and taking pictures. Everything seemed fine enough. From nowhere up pulls two squad cars and the officers get out with pistols drawn. Guns are fine on TV or at the bottom of a lake. I get nervous when there are guns about. My reasoning is that if there isn't a gun in the room there is a pretty low chance that I will be shot. As the process of interrogation took place with the four Hispanic guys - who weren't laughing anymore - my wingman and I slowly but purposefully got back into our car and slunk down as low as we could go in our respective seats. We figured that things might go worse if we did what we really wanted to do, which was make a hasty exit.

So there I was, sitting, practically lying, even, in the passenger seat while a couple cops brandishing 9mm pistols searched four guys with their hands placed on the Tercel. I didn't want to be a gawker - staring at the would-be crime scene like so many mouth-breathers - but I felt that it might be important to my future to keep a close eye on the proceedings taking place just 15 or so feet ahead and to my left. The suspects were searched and interrogated feebly with broken Spanish and eventually told to get lost. We received a warning that "real crime" happens up in places like that and were told to be careful. So much for getting out of the overpopulated urban sprawl of LA and into some scrub brush mountain solitude. I did get to make a snowball, however.

He's Your Man

All those veterans who voted for Dubya? He's cutting your benefits. All you soldiers who voted for your Moron in Chief - you will be veterans someday. As for education, where no child is to be left behind, Dubya is cutting anti-drug and literacy programs. He's also hanging the farmers out to dry again. Again. We here in the environmental movement knew that he'd slash our funding. No surprises there. 2.7.05



Babies All Around

The baby making has ensued. Not me, mind you, but my circle of friends. Most folks of my age group might even be wrapping up their baby making, but my associates are just now getting started. My sister just had her 2nd, little Caroline, back in November. My dear friends Jeff and Lauren had little Matthew back in August. My other sister is on the nest and is set to pop in a few months. My friends Al and Shannon had little Kenny a short while back. He's already old enough to have been given his first couple molecules of beer - by me, of course. All these new little people are cute and they smell like babies. They drool and laugh and smile and cry and look at you with that look of "what am I doing here?"

Over the last few days the new Bell child was visiting out in California and I got to spend some time with him and his parents. I must admit that it is funny to see my friend playing daddy to a child knowing the full width and breadth of his history as a public nuisance. This is the man who once jumped onto the CTA elevated tracks and walked on them down into the subway. Here's a guy who threw up in the middle of a sentence one New Year's Eve only to wipe his mouth and declare "Don't worry, I'll keep drinking." I have seen this man running naked through the halls of a hotel - in which we weren't even staying - wearing nothing but a pair of roller blades. He and I once drove all the way from Chicago to Vancouver and back in a scant 9 days. It is truly a wonder the he and I have survived to tell the tales. The tales are many and we love to drink beer and talk and laugh about them just as men have done since time immemorial. I'd wager that we even have adventures left in us, providing we can squeeze them in between his obligations as a grownup and my seemingly perpetual wanderlust.

He and his new family are on their way back to Arizona today and then home to Chicago later this week. I miss them constantly but I carry them around in my heart wherever I go. I am lucky to have friends like them. In fact, I'm lucky to have all my friends. 1.30.05



It Woke Me Up

There was a horrible train wreck in Glendale yesterday morning. I was asleep in the wee hours and heard what sounded like a garbage or perhaps dump truck making a lot of racket outside. The weather was fair and the windows were open so that the night air might kindle my dreams. The normally unflappable dog began to bark and was groggily told to pipe down. I used to live in Manhattan where it isn't uncommon to be awakened from a dead sleep in the witching hours by some sort of jarring cacophony. The dogs and I drifted back to sleep. And then there were helicopters. I recall saying something like "What is this - the fucking Green Zone?" It's funny how often the very first sentences of any given day of early rising are peppered with expletives. I've been sleeping in LA for a while and have grown accustomed to squadrons of helicopters flying around, hovering and creating a general aural nuisance. On this particular morning there were a lot of helicopters. So many, in fact, that I couldn't sleep for the noise. There were sirens as well, and as my brain begrudgingly pulled reluctant systems online I began to piece together the idea that something might be wrong.

The last time I had that feeling was the morning of September the 11th of 2001. I was a resident of Chicago then, and unemployed at the time. As I lay sleeping the phone kept ringing and I was doing my best to ignore it in the still quiet of a perfect Midwestern late summer morning. Over and over it rang until I decided that I might as well get up and see what was so important. Early morning calls are bad news for musicians because it usually means that somebody has died. Message one was a hang up. Message two was the same. Message three was my mother. Her voice was tense as she implored be to call home right away. I decided that my hunch was correct… something was afoot. I immediately thought of my siblings who live in a rural area and spend much of their time driving around with drunken fools on the roads of their dry counties. I called home. No answer. That wasn't so odd. I called my dad's shop. No answer. Now that was odd. The business line at Armstrong's Body Shop is always answered by an Armstrong. Something was definitely up. I called my sister and she answered the phone cheerily. The conversation went like this:

And that was how I learned that the world had changed. I turned on the TV just after the 2nd tower had collapsed. I ran to the bedroom and told my girlfriend that she had to get up right now. We watched the news all day. My attorney called and said that he was leaving work as his building was right next to the Sears Tower in downtown Chicago. He asked if he could come over and join us and I gladly accepted. He said that there was no place he'd rather be. I'm glad he did because there was no person I would rather have had there with me.

But back to yesterday. There were sirens and helicopters and on came the TV. What we didn't yet know was that some suicidal jackass had parked his Jeep on the train tracks and then bailed out at the last second. What we did know was that the result of this was a horrible train collision and derailment and that there were over a hundred injured and several dead people in a pile of twisted metal about a mile from our apartment.

That's when I realized that I'd heard it. Somewhere in my sleep I heard the sound of a tragedy in real time. I sort of wished that I'd been awake. In no macabre fashion a curiosity dawned on me that I'd heard what a train collision sounds like but that I hadn't been awake enough to tell you about it. Eleven people ended up losing their lives because of that selfish, incompetent moron. If you're going to take your own life at least have the common decency to not leave a mess. 1.27.05



And You May Ask Yourself

How did I get here? This is one of those moments where I ask myelf that very question. I am backstage at a private party at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. This is the sort of party where one goes to see and be seen. I'm here for neither. I work for Dashboard Confessional and we're headlining this party. Backstage at this venue means above stage left with an open view of the stage and audience. The first of four bands is performing now. We're the last of the four band, which means that we don't actually hit the stage until tomorrow. 12:20am to be exact. Give or take a little time depending on how much the prior bands dick around with the set times. I reported for duty at 10:00am this morning, which will means that this very minute, at 10:00pm local time, I have already put in a 12-hour day. All in all it will wind up being an estimated 17-hour day. Tomorrow I get up and fly home to LA and pull a 180 by reporting for duty at a temp job at an architectual firm first thing Monday morning. I'm broke. It's just that simple.

In any case, I have once again found myself somewhere I never thought I'd be. Why would I ever go to the Sundance Film Festival? I love films but I'm perhaps a little leery of festivals. Park City is beautiful... quaint in a monied sort of way. I had the feeling that the chamber of commerce might consider erecting a statue of Robert Redford, the founder of the festival years ago. Some of the more reclusive residents might consider burning him in effigy instead.

I walked around in the cold late afternoon sunshine and saw more snow than I've seen in a while. I also saw throngs of people. I had to walk all the way across the street to avoid a block of slack-jawwed gawkers who were apparenty staring at Lisa Kurdrow through a restaurant window as she had her lunch, likely feeling all too much like a goldfish. I guess she's used to it. Everyone on the street has that double take stare here - looking back when you pass them on the street just to check and see if you are someone famous. This is no bullshit, but a few people have told me that I have a passing resemblance to Viggo Mortensen (I kissed them when they said so.) and I got the feeling that a few people had suspicions about me as I walked around today. You can just sense when people are staring at you. I'm pretty sure that my fly wasn't open.

So here I am. Over two hours to go. The place fairly reeks of smoke because it is legal to do so indoors in Utah... much to my chagrin. I love California and New York in that regard. I recall days of yore at The Hopleaf when, upon returning home, my girlfriend would make me take a shower before she'd let me in bed. I don't blame her. My clothes would reek for days. I find smoking to be repulsive. 1.22.05



Black Thursday

Dubya's second inauguration speech was on shortly after I awoke in Pacific time this morning. I turned on NPR in the bathroom as I brushed my teeth and scratched my dog's head. I then ambled into the living room and turned on the TV just in time to see that jagoff Dick Cheney sworn in with his lesbian daughter riding shotgun. I fixed a bowl of cereal in the kitchen as a soprano belted out some patriotic song or other and then I returned in time to see Chief Justice Rehnquist feebly limp over to swear that fucking asshole George W. Bush into four more years of one step sideways and ten steps back.

All you fools who voted for him don't even realize that this is a sad day for America. Your small government isn't smaller, your children are going to face increasing cancer rates due to relaxed pollution standards, the rich will get even richer still and the poor will look a lot more like the person sitting next to you on the couch in your living room. There will be more wars and more bloodshed and the people who make the war machines that draw the blood will buy new yachts. The abortions that you seek to render unlawful will happen anyway and women will die from botched backroom procedures when you succeed. Gee, there never were any Weapons of Mass Destruction, were there, and how can it really not bother you that the whole reason we killed all those people was a lie? Isn't lying wrong? Doesn't it say it right there in your sacred text? Isn't it one of those ten commandments that you want hung around everyone's neck?

But I'll leave you alone. You are entitled to your opinion just as I am mine. By this time it is highly unlikely that any republicans are reading this anyway. Maybe I'm just pissed off because my associates and I had to pay an extra five dollars and fill out some kind of form because we weren't "members" of or had "sponsors" to get us into the local bar here in the pillar of western religious zeal, Salt Lake City, Utah. Jesus, indeed. Talk about ridiculous fucking laws. And just so you don't think I'm just a sore loser... it isn't me that lost. It's all of us. Democrats and republicans and independents and children and trees and birds and fish and the lot. Four more years. Fuck me. 1.20.05

Mississippi Joins The 20th Century

After considering whether or not to remain part of an arcane society ruled by an antiquated belief set, the Jackson-George Regional Library System board of trustees voted to lift their own ban on putting Jon Stewart's brilliant "America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction" into the stacks of the Mississippi library system yesterday. They had banned the book last month, thereby prompting a deluge of incredulous phone calls and e-mails from Mississippians, as well as from several other states. Only a hundred and four years too late, perhaps, but they've taken a step forward just the same. 1.11.05



Phew

Two thousand and five. Another year. What do I do with myself this year? There are some exciting things in the works. New adventures. Old friends. New music. New friends.

In many ways it will be hard to top 2004. There was a trip to Japan, two trips to Australia and another to Germany. I had real ale in London, set foot in Scotland and made an ill-fated pilgrimage to Kalamazoo, Michigan only to be denied my favorite beer at the fountainhead. I learned to surf in Hawaii. I lived on a tour bus for a while. One of my best friends and his wife had their first baby. My sister had her 2nd, my first niece, Caroline. My other sister got married. I got a new mountain bike. That dangerous idiot got himself reelected for another four years of lies, bullshit and bloodshed. I played a good deal of music. I got a dog. A dog! There was a spring and a summer and a winter and a fall.

Hold on tight. 2005 is here and away we go. 1.3.05

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