Journal - 2006

Somewhere Over Texas

I can never resist the opportunity to fire up my laptop while flying on airplanes. It is likely result of all the times I've flown in the past while watching other people watch movies, write letters and play solitaire on their computers. My how things change. Now I have two laptops. One cursed Windows machine and one glorious piece of Apple handiwork. I shouldn't complain. My PC was a trusted companion over enough miles to circle the globe. Literally. Maybe more than once. I have since graduated to my silver 17-inch beauty upon which I am currently typing. It is admittedly difficult to to type with the guy in front of me's seat reclined into my forehead. We've also flown into some turbulence between the moment a few minutes ago when I made a mental note to describe how smoothly we were slipping through space. Back then it wouldn't have been as hard to convince someone what we were suspended motionless in space. Just crammed together in here for fun. Now we're on a Disney ride of some sort - being buffeted around as the flight attendants scurry up and down the aisle securing random items. And now we're riding on rails of glass once again. I have flown so much in my life that this sort of thing doesn't phase me. I did once have a harrowing flight from London to Cork, Ireland. I looked back at my friends a few rows behind me and we both just put our arms up as if we were on a roller coaster. We laughed in the face of what I perceived to be genuine fear. Of course, we had been drinking. It has really been the only moment where I was concerned that I might actually die while flying. A few pints of stout tends to make the professionals just that much more brave. 12.22.06



Still Not Good

It's Monday now and I'm still laid up. In a most unpleasant fashion, I mean. I've pulled the sheets off of both upper corners of the bed in my sickly noctournal thrashings. I haven't had solid food since Friday night. The ricketey scale in my bathroom says that I've lost ten pounds along the way. As my friend Dean says, "It's a hell of a diet." It is a wonder that I have any liquid left in my body at all.

As I was making a salvo of fevered Satuday morning phone calls in an attempt to reshedule the big recording sessions our guitarist, Tyler, said that it was "very rock & roll" to be puking in the studio. I didn't say so at the time, but I feel like it is much less rock if you're puking due to illness. It is much more so to be puking cigarette butts, shards of glass and random girls' earrings. 12.4.06



Back From the Dead

Man. I got hit by a train. I went to bed feeling fine on Friday night and awoke early Saturday morning feeling quite nauseous. I was hoping that I was imagining things as I lay there in the darkness. I was also hoping that it would go away. Well, here we are Sunday afternoon and I have yet to make it past the bathroom. Once my digestive system goes into reverse it tends to stay that way for a while. I've had some liquids and a little soup this morning but that's it. I still have a fever and can barely stand up. Boo. The worst part about all this is that we were supposed to be in the recording studio laying down tracks for our new album all day yesterday. I've heard stories of feats of strength when it comes to illness and go time. Michael Jordan's playoff 1997 NBA finals game 5 performance is exemplary. Eric Clapton is said to have recorded most of his Journeyman album with the flu. I couldn't even stand up yesterday. There was no way that I was going to make an album. I opted for bed. 12.3.06



Now Where Were We?

It's Sunday afternoon. The Chicago Bears are playing the New England Patriots on my TV with fuzzy reception. The holiday commercial blitz has begun and there is no heat in my apartment. I can mute the commercials but can't do much about the lack of heat. I had a space heater but it died last winter. having no heat isn't as big a deal as it used to be given where I currently live. My heat did go out once when I lived in Chicago. In January. That wasn't much fun at all. I piled up every blanket and coat I could find on my bed... along with all the dirty clothes in my hamper. It was a chilly night or two at 1346 West Bryn Mawr, but that's another story.

For now, I live in a sizable flat in Glendale and there is some sort of heater in a hole under the floor between my living room and dining room. The gas company refused to hook the thing up when they came to turn on my heat and I didn't really complain. It looks a bit dangerous to me and I'd just as soon night die in my bed. At least not for a few more years. There will likely be a trip to a local hardware store after the game in an attempt to find some sort of replacement space heater. There are several more weeks until the days start to get longer again. This wearing fleece indoors in Southern California just won't do.

This is nothing compared to the indoor temperatures I endured back in my hometown. But I always had heat. The gas furnace was right on the other side of my bedroom wall at one Chicago apartment. This meant that I could hear it rumbling to life countless times over the course of the night. This also meant that I was first in line as far as the sequence of heat registers went. I always felt for the poor person who slept in the front bedroom. There was an entire additional bedroom between mine and theirs. Sorry, Peter and Liz. I don't know how you two lived in that room.

But back to football. The Bears have managed to alternately muscle and stumble their way to a 9 and 1 record. At least until the end of today's game, which will change a number in one column or the other. I will always be a Bears fan by default. Just like the fact that Chicago will always feel like home. But I have to admit that I'm not that big of a football fan. I take stock in it because my girlfriend is. And just like so many wives and girlfriends who could care less, I pay attention and root for the home team because a victory will make my life easier. Somebody will be in a better mood if the Bears win. Somebody won't want to argue about anything if the Bears win. Somebody, namely me, will have a better afternoon and ensuing week if the Bears win. So... go Bears! I'll let you know how things turn out.

I will say this, however. She doesn't have the tic that makes it imperative that she mute the commercials like I do. So watching the games is almost unbearable when she has the remote. No pun intended.

All Hail Weber

In my universe grilling a Thanksgiving turkey on your charcoal grill is the crowning achievement in your grilling experience. As a budding grill master I have grilled hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, Italian sausages, onions, peppers of all colors shapes and sizes, steaks, chicken, bacon, asparagus, apples, pineapple, pork chops, salmon, corn, snap peas, green beans, potatoes, yellowtail, shrimp, toast, tuna, mahi mahi and zucchini. This year I set out to add a turkey to that list. Not just any turkey... a Thanksgiving turkey.

Everybody knows that the turkey is the centerpiece of the Thanksgiving feast. It sits nestled at the head of the table casting its shadow on mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, biscuits, gravy, cranberries, misbehaving children and disagreeable relatives.

My own childhood memories involved a trip to my grandmother's house where I'd impatiently wait around for the enormous table to be set and ringed with my giant Lithuanian uncles. Grandma spent all morning preparing the giant bird and grandpa would carve it when it emerged from the cavernous oven. The kitchen windows were always streaked with condensation and reflected the warm light back inside. My father and all my uncles withered away most of the afternoon watching football - just as I'd bet a major percentage of all American males did on that holiday.

(It isn't looking good for the Bears. There is 2:18 left to play and they're down by 4. The Patriots are moving the ball and the Bears don't seem to be able to do much about it. For what it's worth, Rex Grossman sucks.)

(OK. The Bears lose. Wish me luck.) 11.26.06



Gobble Gobble

Hey all. I'm alive. I swear. I have many things to write about and finally a little time to do it. But not right this minute. I'm off to shoot my basketball a little... which is something I have also been meaning to do for entirely too long. More soon. I promise. 11.25.06



Early and Often

That's what we say about voting in my home town of Chicago. It is sort of a joke now but it didn't used to be. It is 10:30pm PST on mid term election night. So far the Democrats have been projected to win the House of Representatives. That idiot Santorum is out of a job. The Senate is up for grabs and it's anybody's guess who will have the proverbial conch come morning. A few states banned gay marriage. Just another way to tell the states in which I don't care to live.

In other news, I saw the Borat movie over the weekend. I haven't laughed that hard in a movie in years. It isn't a Coen Brothers sort of movie that will hold up to repeated viewings but Sacha Baron Cohen has carved out his own particular slice of hilarity. At one point during the movie I was laughing so hard that I was crying. I'll admit that I am a sucker for mangled cross-culture broken english gags but you should go see it anyway. Great success. 11.07.06



There Came a Wise Man from the North

Garrison Keillor. A man kind and well-spoken enough for the right wingers to buy his books on tape... and smart and wily enough for him to move confidently in their midst while spouting common sense liberalism all the while. Here is a recent dispatch from one of my favorite Minnesotans.

Congress' Shameful Retreat from American Values Garrison Keillor - October 4, 2006 I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus. The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned. The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple of days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by President Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts. It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964--Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright--and you won't find more than 10 votes for it. None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Ideal. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner. To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well. For them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung. Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and after they'd collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the court will dispose of this piece of garbage. If, however, the court does not, then our country has taken a step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them. I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for "Homegrown Democrat," but they thought it better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics--I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We've got ours, and who cares? The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo Bay, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise. So why should they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing fine. If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

Indeed. 10.10.06



Back in Black

So to speak. My goddamn Windows laptop that I use to update this website crashed again. Catastrophic failure. It once again skipped the dreaded Blue Screen of Death and went straightway to the Black Screen of Death. I am now smarter than my machine and have been backing up data since last summer when it took a few years off my life when it crashed the first time. I lost a few random documents that I'd been working on since my last back up, but all in all it was just a frustrating low-intensity fiasco. I once again had to re-install all my programs and attempt to configure it to my liking. I haven't even come close. A lot of that is because I now use my Mac for nearly everything. I unfortunately don't have web or photo editing software for my beloved Powerbook so I still have to straddle the Windows/Apple OS line when it comes to tweaking anything.com. So. I'm still here. I'm still alive. Summer was good. Fall looks to be even better. The band sounds kickass. Yes. Kick. Ass. More soon. 9.29.06



I Thought a lot About My Jen-nay

I was listening to A Prairie Home Companion on Saturday. I do this a lot. I'm almost embarrassed to say how much I have come to dig that program. My NPR addiction started just after September 11th, 2001. I was working random jobs to keep myself fed and I happened to be doing some handyman work for a friend of a friend. The tranquil summer of my life in Chicago had just been turned upside down by a bunch of assholes intent on flying airplanes into buildings. I'd lost my cozy Internet job earlier that summer and ended up getting fired from my subsequent gig. I didn't miss it at all because my boss was a complete prick. He even lied to the unemployment people to shaft me out of unemployment benefits. But that's another story altogether.

I was painting and doing some other work on a kitchen and desperately needed news on how my world was changing around me. It seemed to be doing so at light speed. All the regular radio stations were heavily loaded with commercials. Loud, annoying commercials that seemed to take up the lion's share of any given station's airtime. And then I found WBEZ, Chicago's NPR station. I was floored. Intelligent discourse. News that was unsullied by the agenda of the station's parent corporate behemoth. I soon learned that they played jazz at night and on the weekends and that was cool in its own way. Of particular note was Gretchen Helfritch's daily news program, Odyssey. I'd never heard people discussing topics with such aplomb, such respect for opposing viewpoints, such heady professionalism. On a side note, I just looked up WBEZ's site to see what Odyssey was up to and found out - to my great sadness - that the program is no longer on the air. Now I'll really never move back to Chicago. No more El Chino Tacos, Inc., no more Odyssey, no more Hi Ricky's, no more J.T. Collins "Rehabilitation Center." Shit. I really am seriously bummed about this development. At one point I was madly in love with Ms. Helfritch. And it all took place since I started this paragraph.

But life goes on, as does this story.

I didn't get Garrison Keillor's program at first. It seemed like something that my grandmother would listen to. I also used to see all manner of Lake Wobegon tchotchkes for sale in all my mother's catalogs in the pile of magazines next to the toilet while I was growing up. I am now a regular listener. I'll admit that the sound effects segment still get on my nerves. But especially now that I find myself living a very long way from the big corn fields and bigger skies of my formative years I have grown nostalgic and I long for a simpler time and place. A Prairie Home Companion provides a little window into that world. I even went to see them tape a show at The Hollywood Bowl last summer. We had wine and hummus way up in the nosebleeds but Old Crow Medicine Show was great. At least they looked impressive on the video screens.

But I digress. I've been working up to this point since I started this entry. Just this last Saturday I was driving home from a trip to the dog park. My two panting canines had passed out in the back seat and I was left with PHC for entertainment. An act came on and sang a sweet little 3-part harmony ditty called "Swallow." The group turned out to be called The Wailin' Jennys. I simply cannot get this song out of my head. And that is a sweet pleasure for a person like me. A new song firmly stuck in my consciousness. "Oh, swallow, what did you swallow..." 8.8.06



A Midsummer Morning's Dream

It is early morning on a Saturday. This is a strange world that has only come to exist as I've gotten older. I'd just as soon be asleep as it's not yet even 8:am local time, but the powers that be, the sleep gods, have got me up and sitting in a chair writing to no one in particular. At least one of these deities takes the form of a 50-pound hound dog that sleeps in my bedroom. Her name is Sally and she's quite an alarm clock. It isn't the wet nose in the somnambulant, pillow cradled face that you see in the movies. It is her eviscerating her dog bed into a billion pieces of white poly-fill stuffing. It is her claws clacking around from one side of the bed to the other on the hardwood floors. It is her making vocal sounds that would make Chewbacca proud. She's the closet thing I have to a child and she's always up before I am.

I'm glad that I'm up early today because it is almost raining outside. For anyone living anywhere else in the country this wouldn't be unusual in any way. For Los Angeles in late July, however, it is tantamount to the rapture. It doesn't rain in July. At least not here in the LA basin. There are storms up in the desert and sometimes in the mountains but not down here. We bake in the cracked sunshine and let the innumerable sprinklers do the work of keeping death at bay. The whole place would sizzle like the sun-bleached tall grass in the wind were it not for the sprinklers. It is no wonder that the place catches fire in the dry season.

The cool water on my skin reminds me of lives past. Not the lives of others, but my own past lives, living in green places like Illinois and New York, Massachusetts and Alabama. Those lives marked time with the cycle of storms from the west. Activities had to be planned around the rainy days. Things as penultimate as weddings and as mundane as bike rides shared the same questionable fate in the face of cumulus clouds. Those lives are still out there. They've simply moved on without me. I somehow wound up living over that western horizon where the seeds for those storms might be flittering around high above my head, but they never take root in Los Angeles.

This city shouldn't be here at all. Humans built their cities in areas where natural resources were plentiful. Los Angeles has a lot of a lot of things, but it is sorely short on the very thing that humans need most save for air and gravity. The mist of water that is almost imperceptibly falling from the gray morning sky is like manna from heaven. It can't compete with those sprinklers but it is filling my heart with joy this midsummer morning. The rest of my city is sleeping. They'll never see it. I might talk about it later in the day and they'll brand me a teller of tales. "Rain, you say?" they'll chortle. "You were dreaming." Maybe I am. 7.29.06



7.3

July the 3rd is a good day for me. Usually. I once met a girl in a Port-O-Potty line at Chicago's downtown fireworks display on July the 3rd. I'd had a bad day at the office. I worked at an Internet company at the time and I was made to come to work. There might have been 5 of us in the office that day. I was sullen about it at the time and I rode the elevated train home in a foul mood. Chicago traditionally does their Independence Day fireworks on the 3rd. I love the 4th of July. It's probably my 2nd favorite holiday after Halloween. Not because I'm overtly patriotic, but because I like low-stress holidays. Halloween and Independence Day don't require a lot of travel or protocol. You dress up, you drink beer, you eat some candy. Or, you take in the sweet languor of summer, you drink some beer, you watch some fireworks on a blanket and you feed the mosquitoes. Easy. Like. Pie.

On that particular July 3rd I had exited the train and was walking West down Roscoe Avenue. I had plans to catch some food with my friends Matty and Anne and then head downtown to watch the fireworks. I decided that that was a fine way to spend my evening and that I shouldn't be down about it. Ahead of me lay the train bridge over Roscoe at Ravenswood. It is painted with a purple, chipped and rusted sign that announces the entrance to my neighborhood, Roscoe Village. I made a pact with myself that I would have a whole new attitude when I walked out the other side of that bridge. And I did. I turned it around by grabbing the wheel myself. I met up with my friends, ate a delicious dinner at my favorite seedy Mexican joint in Chicago - El Chino Tacos, Inc. - and we boarded the CTA for a train ride downtown. We had a backpack full of beer. And I like the sound of that scenario even now.

The CTA rides on July 3rd are an interesting study in the practical relaxation of rules and regulations. It is normally illegal to drink alcohol on the CTA. And for good reason. It is one of the places where the city meets face to face, butt cheek to butt cheek and social class to social class. I've had enough problems with inebriated CTA riders with booze being prohibited. As much as a pint of IPA would make the screeching, bumpy ride home more tolerable I am willing to wait until I arrive at my destination if it means that the rest of the usual assortment of undesirable characters on the CTA will be at least marginally sober in turn. On July the 3rd, most folks are in a jovial mood and are heading downtown to watch the fireworks. There is a palpable feeling of joie de vive and good vibes prevail on the trains. I can't speak for the buses. I'd just as soon walk as take the bus. A lot of people are enjoying a beverage of their choice while on the way down to see the fireworks. Come to think of it... it's 8:30pm in Chicago as I write this. The very scenario that I am describing is likely playing itself out once again this very second. I wish I was there.

In any case, I was in the bathroom line. The first rule of beer. That which goes in, must come out. A backpack full of beer pretty much insures that you'll be making a stop at the Port-O-Potty lines. No matter. There was time for a quick pee in the gathering dark. We stopped in line and I offered Matty another beer. Behind me in line I detected an unmistakable speech pattern. It was the gentle lilt and drawl of a person who has spent time in North Alabama. I turned to find two girls - who turned out to be sisters - standing behind us and I asked one of them if they happen to be from North Alabama. They were floored that anyone could possibly guess such a thing. A short conversation revealed that they are down to watch the fireworks alone and I insisted that they join us... sealing the deal with a gift of a couple beers to our newfound friends.

The fireworks were great. We walked up Lake Shore Drive... like I usually do on July 3rd when they close it to vehicular traffic for a few hours during the fireworks. I accidentally peed on my sandal when I snuck down a stairway for a clandestine but essential pit stop. We slipped over to the lakefront bike path when cars resumed driving on LSD proper. At one point I ran ahead to the North Avenue Beach House in order to implore the maintenance guy to hold the women's bathrooms open for another minute or two. Our new friends had to go and the stairwell option was an unsavory option.

Matty and Anne headed home after we all paid a visit to a bar called The Good Bar. I continued on up Sheffield with my two new friends... to the apartment of a new friend of theirs somewhere in Wrigleyville. We had more beers and discussed the "boxers vs. briefs" conundrum until the wee hours of the morning. I don't remember if I walked them home or not. It seems as if they stayed at their friend's apartment or maybe walked home together. All I remember is that I walked all the way back to my apartment on School Street by myself. Along the way I wound up sitting on the curb at the Northwest corner of Roscoe Street and Southport Avenue watching the sun come up. The city was quiet. The air smelled good. I'd been up all night. It was a moment of supreme beauty and it is locked into my memory like a Polaroid.

A few days later one of the girls came over and we watched The Iron Giant. We slipped into a very comfortable summer romance. It was simple. Easy. I liked her and she liked me and there wasn't much more to it. It truly was a great summer, wasn't it Margaret? 7.03.06



Get Up

Get up off the floor. Pick your jaw up off the table and shake the stars out of your eyes. Two days and two back-to-back journal entries. I find it hard to believe myself. It is a pleasant Thursday night. The second to last night of June, 2006. I am listening to The Little Willies. (Thanks, Tonya.) I just had a few bites of Ben & Jerry's Black & Tan ice cream. I am slowly checking things off my seemingly endless list of "shit to do." It has been hot here in southern California. I'm not complaining. There is so much to catch up on that I don't know where to begin. I've been to the San Diego Real Ale Festival again. It's a great event that has filled the void left by the now-defunct Chicago Real Ale Festival. I would fly back to Chicago in late February or early March every year - fighting the weather all the while - if only Daley would get his head out from his own ass and grant those guys the proper permits. As it stands I'll have to drive the mere 90 miles to Carlsbad to have delicious real ales served to me in the sunshine instead of the whirling snowflakes. This year's event wasn't without some unnecessary drama but everyone seems to have emerged relatively unscathed. Major thanks to out to my attorney, Tonya, Corey and the unparalleled DB for exalted wingman status. I couldn't do it without you folks. The band has been inching along. Congratulations go out to the newly-betrothed Mr. and Mrs. Andy Baker. We wound up doing a show sans drummer while Andy was off getting himself married. It was fun to do a semi-unplugged show but I am very much looking forward to getting Andy's beat behind us again. I hope that the nuptials went well. I have other friends getting themselves hitched this summer. Kjeldsen will no longer be Kjeldsen in a matter of weeks. Good luck to her. I'm hoping that I can make the trip back east to see the action go down. I could use a little midwestern wandering. I miss that sort of driving. The Star Wars trench of any given rural highway with the corn growing up on either side of the weeds. I have also been trying to catch up with my old friend Kelly. She has the unique distinction of dating my two best friends in the world. Not simultaneously. She has become one of those comet friends who careen out of my solar system and far into space only to come screaming back again for a time which always winds up being disappointingly fleeting. She's still out there. In Michigan tonight. She told me so. You're in my thoughts, Kelly. You're one of my only silver cords that is still attached to my youth in Aurora. It's funny where life takes you, isn't it? I got a new apartment as well. Did I already write about that in here? It is far superior to the old one. I have space to put my shit, to live and to breathe and to just be. I made it past my birthday without my computer crashing. That was a vast improvement over last year's gut-wrenching debacle. I have to remind myself to write about the week of the move. It was quite a fiasco. And, lastly, I was walking up to my car just last night and thinking how trusty it has proved to be. Filled with pride, I sat and turned the key. She turned over just fine. And then I rolled down the driver's side window. The whole pane made the type of sound that it isn't supposed to make and then fell into the inside of my door. Much to my chagrin. I dispensed a few of my favorite words into the ether and drove around the block only to find that the parking space which I had walked around the block to come back and claim had been usurped. A few more special words and a drive back down the block to park and attempt to wrench the window back into place. At least enough to keep honest people honest for the night. I got it up and walked back home wondering if I'd cursed myself or if my curse was just reminding me that it was alive and well. This evening I spent about forty five minutes taking apart my door and coercing the thing back into place with the help of a little epoxy. There were more of my favorite words but I managed to get it back. Now I have to hope that the epoxy holds. This isn't the first time that I have relied on epoxy to get me back to my home port. In fact, it isn't even the second. I'll find out in the morning. And with that, my bed is calling. More soon. And, as always, thanks for reading. 6.29.06



To My Beloved June

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. We have finally arrived at my favorite time of the year. High summer. When the days are long and are gently pushed along by soft breezes. Cool. Hot. No matter.

The evening sun is astonishing on the purple hills of the San Gabriel mountains. The neighbor's dog is playing in the backyard outside my window. I picked up my original copy of Dandelion Wine the other day. I have to chisel out time to read these days and I've been working hard at doing just that. It is sort of sad that I have to work to make time to read but the reward of repose and imagination is worth every bead of sweat.

Bradbury's prose cuts right through all the bullshit in my life every single time. I open to a random page and in a line or two I am there running with him through summers past. If you haven't yet read Dandelion Wine I'd highly encourage you to do so. Maybe it won't have the same magical effect on you. But I hope it does. 6.28.06



Time Flies

I can't believe how long it has been since I've written anything in here. Not that I haven't been thinking about it. I have started a hundred entries in my head but haven't had the focus to sit down and chip anything into the stone. Again, I am going to try and change that. Summer is almost here. You'd never know that the official first day is yet to come. It is hot enough outside to cook eggs on the sidewalk. In the last week I've had a run in with some ravenous mosquitoes at 3:am, a birthday, watched several episodes of The Sopranos' 2nd season, been to Carlsbad to a real ale festival with my attorney, played some of the rock and roll music and have eaten the best food I've ever had in my mouth twice.

I have also made a major change of scenery. I have a new apartment and it has made a major difference in my quality of life. I went from 600 to 1600 square feet in a matter of days. The first week of May was already scheduled to be booked solid. Some of my favorite bands of all time just happened to be playing back to back shows... back to back. Mark Olson and Gary Louris did a pair of shows at The Troubadour and I attended both. I felt like a breezy country rock deadhead. And then, the following two nights found me at House of Blues for a pair of shows with the the unstoppable double bill of Drive-By Truckers and Son Volt. That's four nights of rock in a row. Drive-By Truckers put on such an impressive live show that I would have gone a third night in a row if there had been another show.

The new apartment landed in my lap like a bag of lit charcoal and I had about 48 hours to decide if the deal was going to go down. I was already playing an out of town gig during that period. Once the decision to pull the trigger was made I had to somehow arrange the entire thing while working a 40-hour workweek and staying up late to see the four concerts. A big tip of the hat to my good friends Corey and Jay for helping out with the heavy lifting. I got the shaft from the truck rental people at Public Storage and wound up having to rent from U-Haul on the fly. It worked out fine, more or less. Now I'm sitting in my new living room typing on a wireless laptop. The dogs are dozing on the hardwood floor. Ceiling fans are desperately trying to push the warm fronts around.

The way my life has gone over the past few years I have had a sizable percentage of my worldly possessions packed into boxes. These boxes have been stored in a myriad number of places along the way. In the parking spot of the garage from my last Chicago apartment. Stacked in huge pile in my friend Jeff's basement. In the back of a broken down box truck with no motor sitting next to my father's business in Alabama. On the fourth floor of a storage facility situated in the geographic center of Glendale, California. My dishes, pint glasses, stereo, CD collection, mini-fridge, television, bed, some clothes, books, a bicycle, random musical instruments and who knows what else had spent the last few years languishing in and between different storage rooms. When I moved I got to open them all up and sort through the remnants of my past lives. More on that later. 6.19.06



Look, Ma

No hands. It's an actual update from me. I've been working my fingers to the bone. Like a dog. All work and no play. Joe has been a very, very dull boy. But there was a method to the madness. I have now come out on the other side and things are looking up. I have a little more "free" time. Such as it is. I aim to make good on my promise to keep up with this thing. And perhaps the rest of my life as well. For now, it's off to bed. I have lived to fight another day and that day is tomorrow. Oh, and the new band is finally booking shows. We have a show coming up at Taix in Silver Lake. It's even a weekend gig. Baby steps. See you there. 3.13.06



Low Pro

I’m in Sacramento, California. Why? Because I’m subbing on bass for a friend of mine. I played a couple gigs with Eugene Edwards and his band back in November. I don’t remember where their regular bass player, Brian Whelan, was but I sat in on two of their residency gigs at Taix. This time Brian contracted chicken pox. Chicken pox. Yeah. Those chicken pox. Most of us dispensed with those things in childhood. Brian managed to make it to his mid-twenties without contracting them.

My phone rang at lunchtime on Thursday. It was Brian. He had just been to the doctor where he’d been given the diagnosis. He was initially calling to say that he wouldn’t be able to make it out to my gig later that night due to the fact that he had the dreaded pox. I told him that it wouldn’t be the last time we played a show in Los Angeles. I had just bumped into him at a rehearsal facility the prior night. I was there with my new band and he was there with The Brokedown – one of the myriad bands that he plays with on a regular basis. He seemed fine that night.

By show time on Thursday night most of Eugene’s band was hanging around asking me if I was going to be heading up to Davis to play bass with them on Saturday. It would require some rescheduling on my part. I’ve been working what amounts to a second job in order to catch up on bills, and although I can set my own schedule I had initially committed to working most of the weekend. I got all the working taken care of by mid afternoon on Friday and placed the necessary calls to Eugene and his band members. They’d have to do most of the logistical wrangling because my new schedule had me working until 11 :pm Friday night – precious little time to pack for the morning departure to Davis. The dog sitting issue was solved by drummer Mike “Soupy” Sessa’s suggestion that we simply bring Sally along on the trip. I didn’t feel as if it was my place to bring up that option but it has certainly turned out to save me a lot of trouble. Sally has been very well behaved. She has spent the majority of the trip doing just what she did when I drove out to California over three days just over a year ago… sleeping and sniffing the air coming through the vents in the dashboard. She especially liked the stretch of Interstate 5 that passes directly through some sort of cattle yard. Humans find the stench borderline unbearable, and like many things that humans find repulsive it is like Christmas morning to a dog. If there is a dead squirrel in your yard, your dog will find it, roll in it and trot happily into your back door and lie down on your new couch. Count on it.

But I have to send out a big thanks to Eugene, John Hoskinson, Soupy and Darice for welcoming Sally into the van and the already cramped hotel room. It is always fun to play with them. Playing bass brings me a singular pleasure that is unique to the instrument. The instrument comes with a completely different set of sonic responsibilities. It is the ultimate in thanklessness and lack of glory. I’m not saying that I have a problem with this at all. The singer gets the lion’s share of the attention, generally followed by the drummer and guitar player. If there is a keyboard player and the band isn’t Europe or Billy Joel then that person is next in the queue. And then, standing in the shadows to drummer’s left, is the lowly bass player holding everything together. There are bands that feature the bassist… the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sting, the latter of which doesn’t really count because Mr. Sumner also happens to be the lead singer.

All in all, I enjoy playing bass precisely because it is an exclusively supportive role. I get plenty of attention when I’m fronting my own band. My ego simply isn’t big enough to need more. A friend of mine from Los Angeles who had never heard me play live until Thursday night told me that he was surprised to find that I hadn’t played the lead guitar on my last record, Sidewalk Chalk Manifesto. I told him that it was too much work. Besides, why would I bother when I have had guys as good as Michael Babincak and Tyler Macy in my band? There is a similarity in the two, Mike being my former lead player and Tyler being the new guy. They can each play circles around most players I’ve ever heard and yet they both refer to themselves as hacks. Each has said as much about themselves at one point or another.

The other reason I get a kick out of playing bass is that you get to move A LOT of air. The physics of sound moving in air dictates that it takes more power to make a low frequency loud. That is why bass amps are heavy. And also why there are big bass bins at the front of every club stage on the floor. When I drop a big, fat, warm low E in the right place it give the entire band a thick foundation on which to tear the room in half. I’ll also admit that there is a certain pride associated with being the lowest note in the ensemble. I first gleaned that pride when my voice plummeted from first tenor to second bass in one year of high school. I used to run around singing John Denver at the top of my lungs without so much as a strain on my vocal cords. In a short stint of time I was providing a low D – below the bass clef.

I have always said that I’d like to play in five bands. One band where I sang lead vocals and played guitar. That would be my primary gig. I would then like to have ancillary bands in which I played lead guitar, Hammond organ and piano, bass and drums, respectively. The problem is finding that many songwriters who are willing to let me be part of their bands. Songwriters who write good songs. And who aren’t idiots. It’s a tall order. Trust me. 2.05.06



Not Your Cheese

OK. It has now been a couple weeks and I haven’t been doing very well at updating as often as I’d set out to do. I’m trying. I swear. It isn’t like I’m sitting around eating snack chips. OK, so I am eating snack chips. They’re from Trader Joe’s and I’d bet my life that they have crack in them. Jay’s may have copped the “can’t stop eating ‘em” tag line but Trader Joe’s “Tortillas Salsa” chips have brought it home. This isn't the first time I've developed a physical dependence on a snack chip. I went through a hardcore Doritos addiction a few years back.

It peaked when I was living in Manhattan. I’d buy a big bag of the hallmark nacho cheese flavor and eat half of it while I shopped. I would then eat the other half on the way home. It’s a wonder I didn’t keel over from all the questionable chemicals hidden between the lines of the ingredients. I survived and my jones eventually ran its course. A year or more went by and I had all but given up snack chips completely. And then I stumbled onto a bag of Tortillas Salsa chips in my friend Sue’s fridge a couple years back.

I was staying with her while driving around the country and having adventures. I was hungry, looking for food in her house and chips require little in the way of preparation. It’s sort of like, open the bag, pick some up with your fingers and guide them into your mouth, chew, swallow, repeat. I knew right away that I’d stumbled onto something unique. Like a Sasquatch wedding or something. I wound up eating the entire bag of chips before I started in on the bag itself. Must. Get. More. Snack. Chips. That was the very day that Johnny Cash died and I somehow got distracted by other things. Sue came home from work with a sack full of In and Out Burgers. Then there was beer. Always beer. I filed the general look of the bag of addicting chips away in my memory but forgot the name. When I moved to California late last year I found myself in Trader Joe’s, in the snacking chip section, of course. A little flag popped up in my head when I reached the wall of tortilla chips and saw a pale red bag staring back at me. It was them. Tortillas Salsa. I ate half of them in the car on the way home. 1.23.06


Missing in Action

Well, holy shit. It is now the year 2006. What a year that was. All manner of natural disasters. Political scandals. But I need to look forward, now. I have much to accomplish in 2006. One thing I am going to work on is writing more in here. I've never been much for the traditional new year's resolution proper. That being said, I miss writing. I miss a good number of things now that I live in California. I am exceedingly busy trying to keep myself fed out here. I guess I'm not there right now. I am 38,000 feet above Nebraska moving westward at just over 500 miles per hour. My laptop battery will likely not hold out for much longer but I felt that it was important to set a good tone for the year and get a new entry up for this - the 7th year of my online journal. 1.1.06

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