life worth living

my wife will appear on the new LP from The_Network. She flew out east last weekend and recorded vocals with my wonderful spiritual distortion advisor, Kurt Ballou, over at Godcity in Salem, Mass. I have heard the unmastered version and it is fantastic. I knew she'd have a brutal recording voice because she talks shit like no other person on the planet. This is me being a proud husband.

Also, above is a picture of my dog, Panic, dressed up as a lobster. He ate the costume minutes after the picture was taken.

Don't get used to new posts on here. I'd love to say they will be frequent, but then I'd be lying and I like to save my lies for important things.

Those in the northeast, Trap Them will be around until the end of October. Those in Canada, we'll be there for a week in November. Those in Europe, we'll see you in mid November until mid December. Those on the west coast? Mid december.

After that, I'll a have a few months off, it looks like. I'm hoping to work on pieces for the "Seizures in Barren Praise" series of paintings.

The record comes out 11.11.08, by the way. I'm hoping the rest of the world appreciates it as much as I do. Heavy. Mr. Bannon took the lyricism to heart and has created a layout that is absolutely incredible. Epic, dark and iconic.

I've been writing. I don't know what I'm going to do with a lot of it. It may end up on here, it may be a zine. It may be a self published collection of fiction and non-fiction. I'll decide what to do once my debt is no longer debt.

Come say hello at a show and tell me where there's some cheap vegan eats and a quiet coffee shop where I can go read a book and hide.

clearly

The limits become more like cubicle walls. The difference is that they are clear and you can see what's on the other side. Instead of monitors hiding work safe porn and conversation statistics, you see faint bedroom lights through the thin curtains drawn together, blocking the outside price about as well as a band aid would treat a six inch gash. You see the cleaners buffering the hard floors in monuments of modern day.
In seven hours it begins again.
Maybe six. Maybe eight.
It all depends on the course of action taken. You decide whether you want to listen to the baritone clicks of heels on tired concrete from behind the single plate of a formerly anonymous shelter, or the double plates that fold your skin and settle you into a custom shaped coffin, where you practice shapeshifting your body into different imaginary scenarios that involve how you would land in front of those heels if you were to fall from the twenty stories above.
If you're lucky, you headed through the next cubicle wall while it was still dark, where you can stare straight through the heart, past the steam, past the watering hole pulling the brake and opening the drawbridge for the legions the filter out and commit necessary acts of audio vandalism.
If you're lucky, you get to see that heart while it's at it's darkest, while it's at it's most intense, because if you head in for the rise, you'll still hear those baritone clicks, but the purpose gets lost. The rhythm will crisp and will have a destination. The rays will tell them when to stop.
Some will call them vampires, hiding behind tinted glass in wheels tucked under the cross streets of every escape route that can be plowed through. Nevermind the orange cones and the blinking distress. Nevermind the race.
Good olds will try to tell you where you went wrong when you stop for ten minutes of escape from the escape. They'll try to tell you what you're doing wrong as their quiet, lonely daughters stand five feet behind them, and as they teach you lessons that bare no weight, you look at the young woman's eyes, telling her to meet you out back of the painted brick. You'll have seconds to decide whether to give her the quickest, most passionate fuck she'll ever have near that cell, or to simply brush the hair from the side of her face, softly kiss her cheek and whisper in her ear that she's the best sight you've seen that whole day....that she's not invisible and the rest of the world misses her while she stays here more than the man standing at the scratch tickets will ever miss her when she finally decides to leave.
You turn a key and get back to the wooden barriers telling you about the lives you take with preference and freedoms. You hand silver over to molesters on work release and drop roots in hands covered in blinding plastic gloves, followed by grunts or greetings and salutations. The voids range from minutes to hours, until you reach the next wall. You've been moved again within all of the cubicles, finding out in the next twelves whether you've been promoted or demoted.
They may call them vampires, but the dark is when you get there. Black blood in the air and the living live none alike.

Stuck

I was a pretty dumb kid.
No....that's the wrong adjective.
"Dumb" would be the word to use if I did the type of antics that got most young ones to be grounded for weeks...no television, no phone calls, no hanging out with friends. This was what usually troubled my parents seeing as if the rare moment where I needed to be grounded came up, they couldn't take much away from me. I didn't watch too much television, I hated using the phone (in which the feeling has never changed) and I barely hung out with friends.
Basically, they'd end up telling me to stay in my room....something I acted as though was an incredibly harsh punishment...harsh but fair. Then I'd get to my room and commence my regular after school schedule for the day, which involved me being antisocial.

Everything I had was in there, littered around underneath the bed, in a small corner closet and on my desk, which was supposed to be used for homework, but, shockingly never seemed to make it there. The desk was filled with tools for drawing, sketching, etc. and the drawers were stuffed with failed attempts. I stuck mostly to what enjoyed. I read books and comics, I had a ridiculous amount of sports cards that took up a good portion of the space.

Before my parents had moved in and called this their home, my room would have been the dining room for another family. The room had an entrance to the kitchen and to the back hallway, heading towards my parents' bedroom. There wasn't, what you would call, a lot of privacy in there, not that it really mattered. I wasn't hiding anything up until junior high school, where if my mother had even seen the cover of "Never Again", she would have sat me down with tears in her eyes and asked me whether I thought she was a bad parents. Seriously....this is what would have happened. I had a special cubby hole for my torrid affair with distortion, before we were able to make our love public.

I could, and did, spend hours and days in there.

So, "dumb" is not the word....maybe "ill-fated"?

Sure.....why not? That word will at least work in regards to what I'm telling.

My parents put up with my imbalances very well, now that I can look back two plus decades into my time before I had even turned double digits. I handled myself with an air of sarcasm so thick it can only be compared to trying to drive on a New England back road during a Nor'easter. It literally could and would not stop (some things in my life have not changed since birth...this being one of them). I didn't use it because I was a pouty brat not getting his way. I didn't bring it out when I felt intimidated by a situation. It just never stopped.

There was one particular evening at the dinner table that sticks out in my mind, mainly because it was a night where my infinite sarcasm brought me an ill-fated result. This was probably twenty one or twenty two years ago, deep in the heart of the eighties where, nestled snug in small town Dover, NH, we the McKenneys were all sitting down in the kitchen. This was rare, seeing as my father worked ridiculously long hours to make ends meet. He had never gone to college, so he was supporting the family of four on a high school diploma at around the same age as I am now. Elsewhere in the country, the night was just picking up, but for us, it was winding down.
I don't remember the dinner or any of the specifics. What I do remember is bringing my pattented sarcasm to the table. I'm not sure what was said, but chances are it was over the top and enough to drive my parents to send me to my room before the dinner was done. I acted pissed, but the truth is that my bedroom was right next to the kitchen. I'd be sneaking snacks for the rest of the night, so no worry about finishing the meal. Maybe that's why I turned into a fat kid. Wait....yes, that is exactly why I turned into a fat kid.
I got sent to my room. I just kind of sat on my bed, staring at the floor, not really paying attention to much of anything. I had a small nightstand which was a hand me down from my grandfather on my mother's side, Brent Shattuck. You know those old men that you can tell where a ton of both fun and trouble when they were young? Well, that was Brent. On cue at every holiday, there was this really loud whistle he'd do when I asked him. The main reason I always asked him to do it was that it hurt my sister's ears and made her cry. I mean, c'mon...I was a big brother. I was supposed to do that. So, I'd ask him to do it, he'd look around and make sure no one was in the room and then let it rip. Within seconds, my sister would hold her ears and scream, followed by my grandmother shouting at her husband, "BRENT!!!!". At this point, my grandfather would look like a scolded bloodhound. He'd hang his head, tell me not to say anything and then he'd hide until my grandmother gave up looking for him to shout anything more.
He passed away when I was in third grade. I never got the chance to learn how to make that whistle, though with my lack of teeth at this point, I'm not sure if I'd be able to pull it off even if I knew how.
He gave me this great nightstand. It was small, made out of oak and a perfect bedside table. There would be a lamp and radio on there at all times and, on the occasional well-behaved nights, would house a glass of milk and a pile of cookies before I was off to no-sleep land. The front consisted of two swinging doors with handles, that when opened had a small shelving unit to hold tobacco pipes along the side. Five holes on the left, four on the right, all to varying sizes.
This night that I had been sent to my room for an excessive use of sarcasm (normal for me), I found myself sitting on my bed near the nightstand, swinging the doors open and shut.
After a while, it became boring and I kept the door open, sticking my fingers into the small holes meant for tobacco pipes.

Meant only for tobacco pipes.

You see, my fingers were a bit thick for the holes. Once my finger would stick, I'd pull it out.....well, that's what you would think. No, instead, I pushed it in further, for no reason whatsoever.
I stopped, looked down at how far in my digit was and held my breath.

Yank.
Nothing.

again.....

nothing.

There really is that moment of panic when you do something like this. For me, it was trying to figure out how to shout out to my parents to tell them I was fingerbanging my nightstand out of boredom and got myself stuck.
"How do you do this?" I asked myself.
I finally settled for the casual, "Hey mom....dad?" approach. They came in the room and before they could say anything, I pointed with my free hand down to my new attachment.
They really didn't say anything for about ten seconds, the shock of their son pulling something this ridiculous beyond comprehension. My father was always the best to watch in these situations.....he always teetered on the verge of wanting to scream bloody hell and ask me if I'm serious, but instead always opting to just put his hand over his mouth and take it all in.

"Yeah......so, it's stuck. It's in there good...." was all I could really say. At this point all self respect had been thrown out the window.

They both remained calm in the next ten minutes, trying ti figure out the best approach to working out the finger. They brainstormed and came up with the following, all of which were used with no positive results:

shortening, soap, vaseline, canola oil......there were more, but these are the ones I vividly remember. Especially watching my mother lather up by finger in Crisco.

"How do you do this?" I asked myself once again.

Options were exhausted. There was no more loosening agents that could succeed. My father unscrewed the door from the hinges, so that at the very least, I was just sitting on my bed with the door attached to me instead of the whole nightstand. He finally looked at me, shrugged in the "this is all that's left" motion and said, "We're gonna have to saw it off, bud. You know that, right?"

I did. I knew it was coming to this. I'm not going to act like I wasn't worried, because I was. Saws are sharp, and eight or nine year old skin is not.

This is when the new problem arose: no saw.
It was gone. So the door that was stuck to my finger was not able to be taken out at home, because we had no saw.

Off to the emergency room.
Yup, really.

I put my jacket on (not fully of course....the door wouldn't fit through the arm hole) and my mother drove me to Wentworth Douglas Hospital, about a five minute ride from the house. I could tell she had no idea what to say. We parked and started to walk in the ER doors, with my mother asking me what I had been asking myself for the last half hour or so.

"How do you do this?" she said, shaking her head.
"It happens...." was all I could respond.

We walked up to the counter, about chin high to me, and the woman sitting behind it said hello.
"What seems to be the problem?"

To this, I simply raised my hand, door still stuck and dangling.

Her jaw dropped, her eyes bulged a little and all she could muster was, "Ohhhh....."

My mother responded with, "...exactly."

I was brought into a room where, for the next twenty minutes or so, it was very quiet, except for the random nurses who would pop in to ask if we needed anything, even though I knew word had spread and most wanted to come in and see the kid with the wood affixed to him.

A doctor made his way in and took a look without trying to laugh. He did, however, look straight at my mother and say, "You know how funny this is, right?"

Mortified, she smiled and nodded. "Not funny ha-ha, but funny sad...." was what she probably said to herself.

The doctor told us what we knew, which was that we needed a saw. He sent a nurse to go have someone bring one. The first person to come back brought a (I shit you not) full sized saw. The kind you'd use to cut down a goddamn redwood. I took one look and screamed. At this point, the doctor was trying really hard not to keel over with laughter. He turned to the guy who brought in the oversized remedy and told him something quite a bit smaller would do the job.

The saw came, the door was cut off and I went home, getting to keep the memento from the rather unfortunate series of events.

All because I can't control the sarcasm.

Sorry, mom. Sorry, dad. Sorry, grandpa for ruining your nightstand.

how to say "fuck you" in twenty five minutes:

"seizures in barren praise" is now mixed, mastered and complete.

for those that are interested in more than the one dimension of listening to a record, i suggest purchasing a copy instead of downloading it.
there are three seperate versions of lyrics to this record:
the written / lyric booklet version
the recorded version
and the live version(s) that will change every couple of nights

no...really
if you're going to make an artistic expression....make it worth it and continue to let it evolve into something more than a simple "write and repeat"

i'm not sure when a new song will be online, but you can expect it in the next month or so.
the record will be out in the fall and our plan is to tour from the beginning of september until the end of november with stops on multiple continents.
details are forthcoming.

soundtrack for the last week:
verse "agression"
torche "meanderthal"
ladytron "velocifero"
coldplay "viva la vida"
victims "killer"
world burns to death "graveyard of utopia"
furnace "doublewalker"
duffy "rockferry"
the black angels "directions to see a ghost"
nasum "doombringer"
mono"you are there"
pelican "city of echoes"
boris "smile"

since i've been home i've read some pretty great books:

the best revenge by stephen white - i like mysteries...this guy is going to be a new member of my literary candy jar

the secret life of Laszlo, Count Dracula by rodericke anscombe - forensic psychologist becomes brilliant author. so beautifully written, i'll probably read it again before the summer's over

insomnia by stephen king - when you're going to read 800 pages, you need to COMMIT....i've had this for a year, but finally found the right time...well worth the wait

currently: bag of bones by stephen king - with about 150 pages left i'm willing to say this is my favorite novel he's written

i'm on a stephen king kick this summer. next will by Desperation folowed by The Regulators, though, i first have to read Prime by Poppy Z Brite to finish up all of her "liquor" land writings.

this whole post was just supposed to be a line or two....go figure

the trilogy

When I was eight years old I lived and died for two things which, unfortunately for my parents, did not include school.

Those two things were art and sports.

I was that kid. If you named an athlete in baseball, football or basketball, I could rattle of a ridiculous amount of statistics that were unimportant to anyone within earshot. I stayed up late in my room on school nights with my one-speaker boombox and listened to WTSN (I can't remember where it was based out of...Seabrook, NH....Somersworth? Rochester?...whatever, it's really not a trivial piece of information to this story...) as, depending on the season, a Red Sox or Celtics game was being broadcast.

I remember Tony Armas hitting two home runs in an inning as the Sox beat the Indians 24-5.

I remember countless last quarter heroics by the one and only Larry Bird in the dead of winter, looking out my second story window at New England snowfall and thinking of the beautiful Boston Garden parkay floor with the squeaks of high-top sneakers.

Sundays in the fall were spent outdoors, except for 1 pm until 7pm, in which I would watch the Patriots.

It wasn't so much the athletes that drew me in as much as it was the art and nature of the sports, the sensation of that half second period between when someone releases the ball from beyond the three-point line and it either decides a positive or negative result.

....and considering I was a New England sports fan stuck in the heart of my youth in quiet, uneventful Dover, New Hampshire in the mid to late eighties, the outcomes leaned further and further towards the negative results.

My father, die hard fan in himself, was the catalyst to my youthful days spent in agony. He was born and raised in the same state as I and, sadly, endured many a years of high hopes in regards to the Boston Red Sox. He was the one who let me stay up those late hours in October of 1986 on those school nights and shared the living room with me as we watched in anticipation as our local hardball heroes went to the world series to meet the New York Mets.

Game six....it's well known what went down (or in between...) and my father could not control himself, which was to my benefit because it may have been the first time I found myself shouting both "Fuck!" and "Goddammit!" in his presence. It was around 11:30 pm, which at the late hour was enough to wake both my younger sister and my mother....needless to say they were none too please and/or understanding.

Game seven didn't even really happen...I fell asleep in the seventh inning as the future two innings were looking increasingly bleak as every moment passed.

Luckily, that year we had the Boston Celtics. We had championship number sweet sixteen against the Houston Rockets. I remember coming home from school as the games started at 5 pm eastern time....just enough of a gap from when I walked through the back door to finish my homework and give my parents no reason to not let me sit in front of the idiot box for such an immensely important reason.

....and, unfortunately, we had the New England Patriots in the super bowl. The playoff games leading up to this were amazing. I remember the "squish the fish" shirt my father brought home for me a day before the game against the Miami Dolphins. I remember my mother making pizza from scratch every sunday that was warm and ready the moment I came inside at 1 pm after spending the morning and early afternoon outside doing what kids do.

....and I sure as hell remember the Patriots getting absolutely annihilated (46-10, i think?). The week leading up to the super bowl was spent breathing disgust for the Chicago showboats in Jim McMahon and William "the refrigerator" Perry.

So, this is how my younger days were spent. Time and years went on, flooded by local team disappointment, but by over enthusiasm and love for the game(s) escalating. I tried my hand at playing baseball, but was quite possibly one of the worst players the game will ever own. Basketball I fared much better, playing up and through my junior year in high school before I gave up on anything that included me being part of a "team". And, as those times and years went on, I became "that guy" on a team. The away game bus rides were spent with a walkman and headphones and when asked what I was listening to, I would reply (any of the following: "sick of it all", "bdp", "black flag", "epmd", etc...you get the picture) to them, knowing full well that I'd get the weird look, the "never heard of 'em" and the turn back around. I got used to it....much like my opinions of being involved in underground and extreme music, I was never there to make friends. I was there to do what I wanted to do.

My obsession with all things sports related had come to a sad and whimpering halt some time around my senior year in high school, where I had dirtied my hands into the forms of crust punk and hardcore and it pretty much took over every spare moment I had. I'd still catch and inning or two late at night during my constant battles with insomnia, but for all purposes, my first non-female love had come and gone.

It lasted this way for quite a few years, as five out of every seven nights a week were spent driving to far off places to see a band I'd never actually heard, but was willing to give a shot. This, keep in mind was ten or eleven years ago, in my late teens / early twenties....back when gas was ninety cents a gallon and I could drive four hours to Connecticut without even thinking twice.

Sometime late in 2001 was when I first started to get the itch again. I had a job doing room service at the Portsmouth, NH Sheraton Hotel (just picture a dude with a little gnar all dressed up in a tuxedo shirt and a bow-tie....it payed my bills and I got free food) and one of the many days I worked in the fall always ended up being sundays. At first it was work as usual, delivering overpriced appetizers and cocktails to bloated, cigars wavers away on business trips spending their sabbath in their condo living rooms watching football pre-games, games and post-games. I delivered the items without much glance at the television until a few weeks had passed and I started to find myself more interested in whatever game was on than making the small talk that would earn me an extra buck or two a visit. I then found myself watching games on my break. And then, I became a Patriots fan once again.

Lo and behold, that ended up being the perfect year to go back to the one time excitement I had held. The Patriots kept winning and I kept watching. Before I knew it, the playoffs had passed and New England was in the super bowl once again. I tried not to think much of it. I tried to convince myself that the excitement of my youth had not completely rekindled and the flame would once again engulf all my anticipatorial sports fanaticisms.

But, it kind of felt as though it had already happened. I found myself loving those three hours of being a spectator. I wanted to see my team win a super bowl.

The side story to all of this is as follows:

My father had told me of an early moment in his marriage to my mother, within a year or so before I was born. My mother makes amazing chocolate chip cookies, as many of my friends could / can attest to. These were, by far, my father's favorite snack. There were days I remember seeing him with chocolate solidified on his face he ate them so hard and fast. One late December sunday, during a rather stressful and ill-fated Patriots playoff game, my mother decided to bake him some cookies to help soften the blow if the Pats ended up losing. With about two minutes left in the game, she slipped the plate in front of him onto the sturdy oak coffee table. The Patriots were marching down the field and needed a touchdown to win. Not a field goal...a touch down. My father couldn't take his eyes off of the screen. With less than a minute left, the ball was intercepted, as was my father's and all of New England's dreams of a super bowl year. In what both my parents have laughingly told me was the most non-violent outburst ever recorded, my father slammed his fist on the table, as much of New England must have just done. But, the difference was that most of New England didn't have a fresh plate of chocolate chip cookies set out for them. Long and short, the plate cracked, the cookies got crushed and flew onto the floor and my mother went bawling into the other room. To this day she laughs about it, as she did about a minute after leaving the living room, calling it one of the funniest sequence of events their marriage ever contained.

So, every year around December, I'd joke with my father about how since the Pats didn't make the playoffs, we didn't have to worry about any cookies breaking.

2001.

The New England Patriots were led to a super bowl victory by a then young and new quarterback named Tom Brady. It was one of the best games I've ever had the opportunity to watch. The game was done and I felt myself get a little choked up. For the first time in my adult life, I was witnessing one of my childhood loves win the game of all games. I got choked up mostly thinking of all the sundays in the living room with my dad, my teacher of being a fan. I knew that he was watching this game and jumping up and down screaming victory at the top of his lungs. After a life of watching football, his team had become champions. I tried calling him a few times in the next few minutes, but was never able to get through, which in a way dulled the feeling of happiness I had reigning over me. I wanted to share it with him and, for some reason, it was just not happening. I decided to try and call him one more time, picked up the phone and heard that I had a voice mail. I dialed the number to hear the message and for a brief second just heard what sounded a bit like pandemonium....people screaming, cars honking, etc. I then heard my father's voice. He had moved to Boston at that point...right near Fenway Park. He was outside of his apartment, celebrating with all the other Bostonians. He had held the phone out so I could hear everyone going nuts and then said one simple little thing that summed it all up:

"Hey Ry!!...Do you hear this?! Can you believe it?! Looks like I won't be breaking any cookies tonight!!...."

I hung up the phone and, much like I'm doing right now while recalling the story, had to fight pretty hard not to let the waterworks leak a little. My father's Patriots were now father and son's Patriots.

Over the following couple of years, football was a mainstay and baseball and basketball crept back into my viewing schedule whenever free time permitted.

I tried never to weigh too heavily on my enthusiasm for baseball because, well, I was a Red Sox fan. That's very close to saying I like being robbed and / or punched in the face for fun. I had seen all the years of misery....I had read about all of the years of misery from before my time.

My father, in his early teens, had actually made a scrapbook for one of the years. He started at the beginning of the season during spring training and documented the entire year, saving box scores and standings, team photos and pennants, interviews, tickets from some of the games he had been lucky enough to go to.

That year just happened to be 1967, the year the Red Sox went to the world series to meet the St. Louis Cardinals.

The year of Tony C, of Ted Williams and of my father's childhood baseball hero, Carl Yastrzemski, or just as he was call "Yaz".

Of course they lost, but for me as a young kid to have such a complete documentation of a baseball season written by my father at around the same age as me was pretty amazing. It still is, considering I've held onto the scrapbook through all these years.

So, he'd dealt with all the lows and lower lows of being a Red Sox fan.

...of the '75 series

...of Bucky Dent

...of that unfortunate game 6 in 1986.

He'd gone through it all.

2004.

There's no funny back story to this year, no odd little misquotes of wisdom. This was just a year I found myself at twenty seven years old wanting ever so badly to witness the Red Sox win their first world series in longer than both my father's and my life put together.

And they did.

I watched every playoff game as if it was the closest to religion I would ever come.

We'd call each other in between each game or two, for no real reason other than to maybe feel as though we were both still sitting there in that living room, watching the game together.

I wanted to be able to call him when that world series was over. I wanted to be the one who got to celebrate with him, if but only for a quick minute. We owed each other this, and we both knew it was going to happen.

Once the series went three games to none in favor of the Red Sox (against the St. Louis Cardinals, which every member of the Red Sox nation was at some point elated to even out after thirty seven years of grudge...), it was not a matter of if as much as when. Granted, this was still the same Boston team, but this year it felt different. During that game four, we called each other multiple times. Out of anywhere he could possibly be, my father found himself watching game four of that world series in the middle of New York City. He kept telling me that he was going to have to celebrate the first Red Sox world series victory in the heart of Yankee pride. To top it off, he somehow found himself sitting next to Manny Ramirez's sister who spent the game next to him at the bar, figuring the only two Red Sox fans in all of NYC that night might as well celebrate together.

As it's known, the Sox won. My father and I got to celebrate together over the phone, me in New Hampshire and him in New York. We got to have that moment neither of us figured we'd ever end up getting to have together.

Four years later, in fall of 2007, I found myself in a van on tour during October while the Red Sox were again in the world series. In the last inning, were driving on a highway in, yes, New York. I pulled off the road and we all listened to that last inning. The final out was made, I honked my horn and we resumed our drive back to New England, in which I called my dad and we talked about how bizarre it was for us to be able to see this happen twice in four years after eighty six with nothing to get excited about.

The only team left for us to have this moment with was the Boston Celtics.

2008.

Twenty two years after that eight year old kid came home from school to watch the NBA finals, I was able to return to Seattle after another month away from home with my band and I was able to watch the Boston Celtics take down the rival of all rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers. I watched game six from the Boston Garden as the cameras took every moment to zoom in on another of the long list of former Celtics that were with the team during it's dynasty days. Bill Russell, Danny Ainge, etc...

Two days after Father's Day, my dad got his late gift and I got to feel eight years old again for a brief few minutes.

The trilogy is complete.

I look at sports very similar to the way I look at music:

for every person that can play and plays for the love of it, there are twenty that play for the money and for the status it gives.

But the game, whichever one that may be, will always be played and my father will be there for a phone call after every win or loss.......whether it's mine or theirs.

I've seen the Patriots become a dynasty.

I've seen the Red Sox win two world series and come back from a three playoff games to none deficit against the New York Yankees (which had never before been done).

I've seen the Boston Celtics beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA finals.

...and I've seen my father smile, celebrate and be happy with where he is in life.

Man and son are doing alright.

five down...

five days to go.

"seizures...." is moving along at a rather steady pace.
vocals are 99% complete.

i had an operation on my lazy eyes roughly two decades ago that, as i now am well aware, has reversed itself. so, if by chance i am having a conversation with you and it doesn't at all seem like i'm looking at you....well, you're half right.

my sketchy appearance is increasing ever so slightly with every new rising sun.

fucking viva

fainting spells

the countdown is two days until we step into Godcity.
i've spent about eight hours a day for the last four days, shitty ten-dollar headphones on, listening to rough takes of new songs.
Trying to reinvent what I do and what is expected out of us.
I've immersed myself into music and art and creation for as long as I can remember, making unexpected and ill-advised breaks along the way. I'm sitting here writing this, taking a couple hours to watch "amazing journey"....another of the hundred or so amazing documentaries on the one and only The Who.

seriously....how fucking cool is this band?

completely off topic:
so, i found myself a new job.....something i can actually consider not shitty at all.
I'm going to be a nanny. really. most may laugh that someoneone would trust me with their five year old daughter, but it's something i've done before and am quite good at. I don't want kids....i'm in no way a father figure. But, a slightly off the beaten path uncle? I can do that shit with my eyes closed. In between tours while I'm in seattle, i'll be polishing off my babysitter's club card.

baba o'riley, man......fuck

last little note:
for those of you that have asked when the pressed version of "failgivers, volume one" will see the light of day, i can say this:
it's partially my own fault it hasn't moved forward.....the audio version just hasn't been recorded yet. between the tours, and the handwritten versions, i just haven't taken the time to do it. Until then, I still am taking orders for the handwritten version and with the next two months off from being in the van, much more will be accomplished this summer.
i'm working on a series which will most likely be self published some time in the next year. No name or specifics to reveal at the moment, other than to say that it will be a collection of short stories.

also in about a month, i'll be making a huge update to my artist's blog with a bunch of pieces that have been done in the last half-year.

back to seizures.....

update

mission accomplished

cryptic city

the next few days are spent doing, what i refer to as, "whisper screams". no, it's not what you're thinking.
this is how i learn the new songs whenever we record. everyone else is in lynn, mass, actually playing the songs while i shut myself away with headphones on, listening to rough versions of new distortion.
i don't know what else to say.....i'm in awe of brian's songwriting abilities.
i also love telling people how we write a record.....that look of confusion and bewilderment is priceless.
no, i'm not going to explain it in this....

so, i'm the vocalist.....do you know what that means in terms of recording? let me explain.
this means that in ten days, i'll do about two hours of work. i'm hoping i'm motivated enough to actually update this during the downtime....i really have no excuse.

i know this is not an impressive update, but it took me four months inbetween the last one and the previous, so i feel like i'm getting better.

listening/viewing lists for the last few days:

skitsysten - stigmata
victims - killer
duffy - rockferry
black angels - directions to see a ghost
parts & labor - mapmaker
a wilhelm scream - ruiner

coffy
hell up in harlem
taxi driver
LOST

last weekend highlights:
looking behind the drum kit at a very old friend
mdf actually being awesome
the lovely lads of disfear

that's it. i'm done.
back to whisper screaming.

oh, and i'm about to lose another tooth.

What the Fuck?

I'd apologize for the four month gap in between posts on here if I actually felt the need to.

But this would involve feeling like there are more than ten people who read these.

I also apologize to everyone in my life that has tried to get in touch with me in the last few months that I haven't responded to. I've shut off. I've stayed away from the internets. I haven't answered phone calls. Though at this point in the game, none of you should be shocked by my admittance of this.

I'd say I'll get better, but that's almost considered a promise and I don't want to make too many of those. Anticipation rarely trumps surprise.

I'm not sure where to begin.

How's about with this:

04.03.08

"I had lived in New Hampshire for the entire twenty nine years of my existence before my partner and I moved cross country to Seattle in March of 2007, so I guess it seems fitting that exactly one year later, I found myself on a red eye flight back to Logan Airport in Boston. From there, my bandmate and I were greeted with a truck ride back up to the city (Salem, NH) where I had spent my last year as a twenty-something. The thing is, once you've escaped the quiet life, knowing that if you needed anything at all you had to get in a car and drive, and made your way to a place where lives were fuller, busier, etc., you don't really want to go back. Fortunately, it's not a case of tucking my tail between my legs....it's a case of four men getting back in a van and beginning another round of touring that will, for better or worse, take up the next four and a half months.
The previous four months had been spent finally adapting and discovering the city I had been "living" in for a year. I can't say I had adapted, considering the longest time in between tours had been about three and a half weeks, which didn't leave much time to really get a feel for my new life. I mean, I had visited each and every vegan eatery, had gone to many a show, but I still hadn't been able to feel like it was my home. It's kind of like driving to New York. You don't fully realize you're there until you go through a toll booth and the collector either completely ignores you or swears at you One way or the other, you know you're in New York.
So, when I finally found myself back in Seattle in November of 07, I was able to soak it all in. I spent a good part of most of the days walking around for hours at a time with no real objective other than to become familiar with my neighborhood. I live in Capital Hill. I live in an amazing area, even more amazing when I compare it to the backwoods I had been stuck in while serving my time back on the east coast. Insomnia was what I consider an advantage of mine, considering that while a lot of the city was asleep, I was wide awake and able to walk the streets in silence for a few more hours until the sun rose and the daily lives woke up and began to bustle in and out of every corner. I'd usually find myself at a local bagel shop as soon as it opened at six a.m. One chocolate chip bagel, toasted with peanut butter and a sixteen ounce black coffee which was, over the next two hours, to be refilled two times. I sat in the window....I watched dogs sniff leftover piles of vomit from the night before (don't get me wrong....Seattle's a beautiful city...but Seattle can't hold it's alcohol). I watched delivery trucks make their drop-offs. I basically just watched people do what people do.
Once every parking spot on Broadway had been filled, every bus stop had a line of sleepy workers ready for another nine to five, and every seat next to me at the bagel shop had been taken, I'd take my five minute walk back home and sleep for two or (if I was having a lucky day...) three hours. The rest of the day while the sun was out is pretty unimportant, so I'm not going to waste any words on it here.
Night fell, I'd learned to frequent locals bars, which in years past of my antisocial tendecies would never had been visit"

This was what I wrote a few days after flying back to the east coast on 29.02.08 to begin what could be considered two of the most important months of artistic expression I have ever or will ever have.

I flew back to the east coast and landed at Logan in the midst of a small snow storm....something I no longer really had the pleasure of viewing once I packed up shop and headed to the grande pacific northwest.

Got in at 9 am, was drunk by noon, and the final tally was around forty-two hours straight with not a wink of sleep.

The following days were spent practicing in a living room and then getting the chance to hang out with some old friends.

And then I got in the fucking van.

The glorious, glorious van that I have since named "Big Ben".

For the following eleven days, Trap Them toured the northeast of the united states, playing many familiar places and sharing shows with many a familiar face.

Some of the highlights/lowlights/panic-inducing moments:

-sold out show at o'brien's in allston on 06.03.08 (so what if capacity is less than 100...when the place is packed, it does wonders for inspiration....a perfect tour kickoff)

-teaching someone from florida how to drive in a snowstorm up a steep inclined hill in albany....a normally ten second drive became a fifteen minute ordeal....the kind of moment you can look back on and laugh once you realize how close things came to becoming really, really bad

-getting to go out to lunch with my father in nyc before the show @ the charleston (it was a rare treat for him, considering he only had to see me with one facial laceration and only slight bruising)

-the fucking basement show in allston with furnace and black ships on 14.03.08....out of control in the best way possible.

-the final show of the tour in my hometown of Dover, NH. I can't explain this without sounding nostalgic or mushy. I don't care that there wasn't a ton of people. The thing is, I grew up in this town with nothing to do....no clubs, no real friends, blah, blah, blah. So, for this venue to exist in a place so close to being dead to me....well, it means a lot to play there. I saw people I haven't see in a fucking decade. Everything felt good on that tour.

After the show we had the following day off and prepared for the next in line of my punk rock fantasies to check off of the list.

Trap Them heads to Europe.

Now, this whole experience could be a post all to itself, which I will surely do at some point. But, we'll just consider this an abridged version of everything involved.

I'd never even been out of the goddamned country. To board that flight and know I was to experience thirteen countries I had never assumed I would make it to was very much a dream come true.

It all began with a total running time of about twenty four hours in or around airports or in the air.

We landed in Frankfurt at six in the morning. We were the first of the three bands landing and were to wait at the airport until noon, at which time Rotten Sound and Victims will have landed. We then all were to be picked up by the tour bus and head to the first show.

We had all fallen asleep by the time the rest of the bands arrived and were woken to about ten people standing over us laughing....I'm pretty sure we looked like a mess.

Quick breakdown of the next three weeks.....storytime will happen at some point when I'm not typing at six in the morning. Why am I typing at six in the morning besides my usual bouts of insomnia, you ask? I'll get to that.

-19.03.08 somewhere in germany that I already forgot....Hamburg, possibly?: Victims gets drunk and Jon, Johan and Andy introduce me to the magical flavor of red wine and coke. Jon cannot remember the actual name of the drink, to which I respond, "as far as i'm concerned, you showed me this. So, for lack of an official name, I'm calling this a Victim...."

Jon smiled and said in his thick swedish accent, "I like that."

There was no akward get-to-know-each-other time...within hours of us all being on the same bus, we felt as though we had all known each other for years. At least, that's how I felt.

-21.03.08 Paris, France: Locomotive Club....located directly next door to the Moulin Rouge

Great show. We started the set with about five people in the room...by the time the ninety second song was finished, there was over a hundred people. The room itself was very similar to Freddy Krueger's boiler room.

-23.03.08 Colchester, UK : Get this....Easter sunday. We played in a converted church. There was such a ridiculous amount of reasons why this was one of my favorite shows, that I can't name them all. Phil and Dean from ENT came out and I finally got to meet Phil in person after months and months of correspondance over emails. It was like getting to finally meet a pen pal on the other side of the world.

-24.03.08 The Underworld in London, UK: Everyone has thier dream place. Mine has forever been and will always be London. I've wanted to live there for as long as I can remember. This was a day long taste of my possible future. I had the chance to head over to local markets, dove in and out of a few bookstores and just tried to soak in all that I could. This also was the day that started one of my all time best tour memories. For the next few weeks, I was given the opportunity to come out on stage with Victims and sing "this is the end". Johan asked the night before if I knew all the words, to which I laughed and said, "man, I've been practicing this the last few years in bedroom...."

After the show, we had a rather late bus call, so most of Rotten Sound, Victims and The Ocean all headed over to a local pub where I had my first overseas Hot Toddy. Ahh, London....how I miss you already.

other random acts of awesome:

-Essen, Germany: World's largest beers. Headbanging contests. Vodka.

-Holland: obvious reasons

-Poland: golden vodka that completely flushed out the deadly cold I seemed to have caught

-Prague: two hours walking around the city center, Dr. Acula

-Slovakia: great show in a small room, amazing vegan food, singing "feet first" with Rotten Sound

-Switzerland: the birth of the fucking Man Brigade

-Munich: the explosion of the fucking Man Brigade....one of the most amazing days off ever

-tour manager Pete, night after night, coming up to me with his hand behind his back saying, "how much do you love me?" and then handing over a bottle of vodka.

Very much, Pete....very much.

I will expand on all of this at a later time. It was a life changing three weeks. I, along with three other friends, was able to create something that brought us to another part of the world. There are no words to describe it. As Brian put it while we walked, "our shitty noise rock got us to Prague....."

No truer words have been spoken.

I made lifelong friends on this....people I respect for thier music, I have now been given the chance to consider as something more.

We flew back to the states and landed at around three pm on sunday, 06.04.08 and went straight to Salem, NH. By morning on 07.04.08, we were back in the van to begin what ended up as a thirty six hour ride straight to Denver where we literally loaded in, played the show and loaded out. We then drove another fifteen hours straight to Tucson, AZ. Same deal.

Load in.

Play for fifteen minutes.

Load out.

Drive to California.

All in all, we drove about sixty four hours in three and a half days.

From NH to Cali.

This is what you call "road warriors".

10.04.08: We begin our ten day tour with Extreme Noise Terror and ADT.

Corona, CA at the showcase.

I wasn't prepared for the reaction we received. From the moment feedback occured, I witnessed stage dives after stage dives, circle pits.....the works.

The west coast has always been good to Trap Them, but this was top.

Show in and show out, things went much better than expected and to be able to watch ENT and ADT every night was the distorted icing on the cake. Getting to talk with Phil and Woody from ENT every night about random shit was great.

Seriously...Extreme Noise Terror.

My shitty noise rock got me on a tour and split 7" with Extreme Noise Terror.

What the fuck?

The last date of the tour was in Los Angeles at the knitting factory. The amazing(?) event known as "murderfest".

I will say this in print. I really, really hate fests. Be it the people, the crowd sizes, the fact you play for what seems like five minutes....I just hate everything about them. Give me intimate, not extravagant.

We played second to last on the side stage. I spent most of the day outside avoiding people and conversation.

three highlights:

-spending about two hours trying to keep Kevin from The_Network out of more trouble. lesson one, kids....too much whisky too early in the day? Bad news.

He's one of my favorite people to hang out with.

-spending a couple hours with another of my favorite people who moved to L.A. a few weeks before. He makes music that, no doubt in my mind, will one day be loved by the masses.

-meeting Barney from Napalm Death and the kind words he said to me.

oh, did someone say "road warriors?"

Directly after Murderfest we were back in the van to drive twenty hours to Oklahoma City where we were to play a one-off with Coliseum.

With the time changes taking two hours away from us, we arrived just in time, getting out of the van just as coliseum had started thier set.

same story.

Load in.

Play.

Load out.

On to Chicago, where we began the last week of touring.

This time it was with Disfear.

Couldn't have been better, honestly.....the situation, I mean. The band played well. I, as per usual, had microphone troubles because I do more than stand in one place, causing the cord to fall out repeatedly over the first two songs.

I was able to see Sweet Cobra for the first in a very long time.

Most of us went back to our friend Brittany's apartment where we ate vegan cupcakes and passed out rather early.

This tour marked the first Canadian dates we had ever done.

The border was kind enough to let us through, even with my arrest history.

Once you explain that the only reason you were arrested in the first place is because you drove a getaway car for two kids to streak through a Kentucky Fried Chicken twelve years ago, all you have to do is watch them laugh at you and then tell you you're not a threat. Little do they know...

Toronto and Montreal were fantastic.

Expand on this? No, sorry. That's it.

I will say that directly after the second show in Montreal we drove back to Mass, where we played the New England Metal and Hardcore Fest (to be said in a booming, godlike howl).

Would you believe me if I said everyone loved us and it was a great crowd?

Me neither.

We played at one in the afternoon to crossed arms and blank stares. What a shock.

We did, however, get to play an amazing space in Worcester that night with Disfear and Toxic Holocaust.

By the way....if you're counting, then, yes, Disfear and Trap Them played four shows in twenty four hours....oh, the beauty of it all.

The last day was in Providence at the Living Room.

The latest of bonds had formed and it was time to say goodbye to our new swedish brothers of distortion.

Once you become friends with individuals you only knew previously through their art, it becomes something special. Every dumb talk about vegan food, or the best crust 7" of all time, or the best alcohol to drink when you have a cold.....it all matters.

My shitty noise rock got me a tour with Disfear.

I had a day off in Providence before I flew back to Seattle.

Oh, Seattle....how I missed you. How I longed for your tasty vegan asian food...how I longed for the high pitched, off key songs sung by my beautiful partner.....how I longed for a quiet moment in my bedroom.

I was greeted at the airport by said beautiful partner with a little puppy in her arms.

A nine week old rat terrier who we named "Panic".

I can truly and honestly say that I've never been given a gift as memorable as this.

I've never had a dog....never.

Now, for the first time in thirty years, I have a little buddy who sits beside me while I watch a film, runs around the home with glee reserved only for those without opposable thumbs, and nuzzles up to my face every moment I try to fall asleep.

All hail Panic.

I've only been here in Seattle for two weeks and I leave today. In five hours to be exact.

I fly back east, where I'll spend the next week in providene with my man, Danger McArtor, helping him build the Trash Art empire.

I'll then head to NH, where Trap Them will play a few more shows with Disfear in NYC, Philly and Allston before we finish writing and record a new LP, titled "Seizures in Barren Praise".

The lyrics have been done for about a month....a process which, all in all, took about fifteen months of writing and editing.

I want this to hurt.

I want this to affect in ways unthinkable.

We have someone drumming on this record that is very important to me. Between him and Brian, my partner in distorted crime, this will be the record we've been wanting to make for a very long time.

I'll bring it home in mid June, where I'll brew a pot of coffee, turn out all the lights in our room except for a small string of holiday bulbs, and listen to the sounds of men on the run....of men doing what they want to do without a fear in the world

I'll spend the summer in Seattle working a shit job to get money together and then resume road warriorism in september. I'll spend the summer with said beautiful partner and said little buddy, watching horror films, reading books and living the life I want to lead.

My shitty noise rock got me to accept who I am, to get in a van or bus and see the world, to appreciate the sick girl who takes me with a grain of salt, bi-polarity and all, and sacrifices for my benefit.

My shitty noise rock gives me a chance to be an artist, a lover and masochist all wrapped up in one unhealthy package.

What the fuck?

new dusk

as you can see below, I've finally put in some new entries.

This is my way of saying, "I've been busy and neglected you...here are some things to make up for it."

The zine I had spoken of on here last summer is on what we call a "hiatus".
What I've done is taken some of the pieces that would have been in the zine and put them up for your reading pleasure(?).
Not that I haven't been writing, but more because all spare time in the last two months has been spent on my little book project.
Handwriting just one of these 100 page books, including the painting, etc. comes down to about fifteen hours per book.
Now, multiply that by 100 copies.
Yeah.....fuck.

Between what I pay for the books, how much I spend on shipping them to those that purchase a copy and the supplies needed, I did the math the other day and I'm paying myself about $4.25 an hour to make these.
To make matters more interesting, I had an obnoxious outburst by myself two weeks ago where I punched a beureau with, of course, my writing hand....I'm brilliant like that.
Now, every time I take a pause from putting utensil to book, my right pinkie finger will not uncramp and uncurl.

I spent most of the holiday season with my head down in those books, planted on my fouton / bed, listening to made for television christmas movies. I love that time of year. Everyone seems busy and stressed, happy and on the go. Just because I have depression flowing through these veins doesn't mean I'm hoping the rest feel the same way...I wouldn't wish that on most.

Sometimes it was four hours a day.
Sometimes it was fifteen.

This is also what they call a "labor of love".

I've also had time to read some books,

I had the pleasure of being present here in Seattle at one of Eugene Robinson's spoken word dates to promote his new book, where he spent forty five minutes captivating every muscle in my body. The man can tell a tale...

I've done only a small amount of painting since december....more on that in the weeks to come.

And, last of the updates, Trap Them will be on tour(s) very soon. Early march to be exact.
One will be on the east coast for eleven days, followed directly by a trip overseas for three weeks and then will be followed up five days later back here in these united states on the west coast....more to come on that one very soon. I'd like to get excited and spill the beans, but I can't until it's all set.

This will be followed by exactly one month off.....and then, the big one:

Siezures.

thank you for reading these.

and, for fuck's sake....buy a copy of the book.

the sickened traveliers

for anyone looking for info on ordering a copy of "failgivers, volume one", please go to the november 7th, 2007 entry

...............................................................................................

4/02/07

Four thousand miles and about twenty pictures.
Not even of anything that exciting.
A couple shots of a store called "crazy woman liquors" and some random glimpses of a boy walking a dinosaur, a devil's head peaking out of a vast field of nothing, and some mountains.
That's it.

I guess that's all you really need when the most important moment was the very point you headed onto I-90 in Mass. and got the fuck out of there.

We spent the first twenty four hours exchanging spots behind the wheel with occassional moments of nap-time, distortion on eleven and about fifty bags of chips.
I'm not sure whether or not a bitter mother nature had anything to do with it, but every time I drove there somehow needed to be a snowstorm. It was almost comical by the third time it happened if it wasn't so goddamn annoying.
Seriously.....that's it.
That's the trip.

I could go on in detail about the nothingness of driving through the midwest, or the fact that once you leave new england and you are hungry past ten o'clock, vegan-wise you're fucked.
I could go on about my bewilderment of tractor trailers flying past us at 70 mph on a steep incline while we were nestled deep in the heart of the cascade mountains. I could go on about being on those mountains and the snow falling so hard i couldn't see two feet ahead of me. I could go on about how hard I panicked at one particular piece of time while said tractor trailers were both blinding me and taking away any sort of notion I had of myself as being a strong individual, causing me to envision us tumbling down the side of the mountains in an avalanche where we'd be buried under mounds of snow and no one would find us for two weeks. I could go on about how all I wanted to do at that point was find a hotel so that I could not miss an episode of LOST.

But, I won't.

Instead, I'll go on about the moment we came up over the mounds and caught the first glimpse of our new home on the total opposite side of the country. Within the first fifteen minutes of parking our car, I must have said "I live here...." to myself a good hundred times. This may not be what could be considered a big deal to some people, but when you have lived in the same state for the first thirty years of your life, this is the biggest fucking deal that could possibly happen.

Fuck the lotto. Fuck a raise.

You put things off for the sake of nothing in hoping for everything that ends up being that nothing.

After the first few days in a new world (which this very much was.....from the roads and trees of new hapshire to the streets and breathing life of seattle is about as new a world as you can get...) you find your routine. It's a new routine and it feels much better than you could have ever hoped for.

And then you taste a vegan donut that brings tears to your eyes as if you've found the holy grail.
You go to a show in a venue you've never been to and drink coffee at a new spot.

These things matter.

Everyone wants to "start over", or have some sort of "new beginning", and it makes no sense. Why bother? There's no such thing....no fucking rebirths are ever going to take place, son.
What you can actually work for is to do what you want to do. That doesn't involve erasing all impact ever made or not made.
It means, "let's do something....."

Figuring out what you want out of anything takes a damn near infinite amount of time for most of us lost-at-first-chancers. The worst part is that the odds are against you that when you finally figure shit out, you won't have the means to make good on your new discovery and/or revelation.

I'm okay with this.
I'm okay with trainwrecks.....as long as that wreck is where I want it to be.

I'm good.
You're good.
We're good.

Fuck it.
Let's get damaged

Rest stops

for anyone looking for info on ordering a copy of "failgivers, volume one", please go to the november 7th, 2007 entry
...............................................................................................

7/02/07


For me, getting in a van to begin a tour is almost as if you dropped a child at the open gates of disneyworld and just said, "have at it....go get 'em tiger."

It's that awesome.
It's even more awesomer (yes, i know....deal with it) when you haven't been on tour in a good four years. And, for it being the first tour in four years, the short, ten day stint ended up being a perfect amount of time. I could have gone twenty days more once we started, but I was just happy to do it again.

You forget that feeling of driving up to a club / house / space, etc. That moment of watching the haggards standing outside that kind of give you the eyes of judgement. You forget starting to load in and having to say, "excuse me" in repetition with every cab brought in, trying to make someone listen and move slowly like cattle out of the way because you are holding a very heavy item and you'd rather your arm not fall off.

And, you forget all of those glorious, glorious rest stops and travel marts.

These momentary (and probably unintentional) amusement visits are priceless.
There's no real way to describe it....everything is much more exciting when you can park, take a piss, refill on coffee, and do the time-honored rest stop tradition of people watching. Believe me, there is a rest stop culture and code of honor. It involves babies crying, school buses of random college sports teams stopping for lunch / dinner, and families on road trips on the brink of breakdowns (my favorite).

You also have to walk into these places knowing full well that if you are dressed all in black, with neck and throat tattooes about six people deep, you will have one of two reactions from every person in there.

1- disgust and slight fear
2-overuse of cheerful interaction to show you are okay with them.
really.....this is true.

It may be personal experience, but that sums up the two most memorable responses.
Unless, of course, it's new york and new jersey.
In NY and NJ, they don't give a fuck who you are, they hate you and want you to leave.

So, anyways, rest stops.
There are quite a few vivid memories I have of certain stops, but the best are the following:

- On a particularly long drive inbetween shows (okay, particularly long doesn't even cut it....we drove from houston, texas to san diego, california.......straight. straight straight. except for blowing a tire....we stopped for that.) we had the chance to visit many a rest stop and mart ourselves up with said ridiculous snacks all for the sake of eating to pass the time. This was in the dead southern heat of august we were in a battered grey van. The driver's side window did not roll down. There was no AC. There was, however, a leaky sun roof that managed to completely drench the driver whenever the brakes were pressed. It was, by any explanation, a piece of shit. I'm not sure how we survived almost six weeks in that fucking sardine can.

So, on this long drive we stopped at one particular backwoods texas chainsaw massacre looking gas station. One by one, piss breaks were taken, and you would hear one person say to the next,

"you should really go to the bathroom now....".
Fuck that. I was tired and heat wrecked...this was at about three in the morning. Finally, after everyone had gone on thier bathroom trip, I was told again, "dude....just go to the bathroom."

me: "i don't want to....i'm good."
them: "no, really.....you NEED to go to this bathroom"

If I had any will to argue left, I probably would have. But I didn't, so I went.
Inside the stop there was that old, twangy country music you would expect to hear right before your arm gets cut off by a mutant wearing overalls and weilding a butcher's knife. I think that's why I liked it so much. It gave me that grindhouse feeling.....to die amongst jars of pickles and aisles of beef jerky on a wooden floor of an unfrequented deathhouse deep in the south just sounds so brutal / intriguing.
I ask the elderly woman behind the counter politely to point me in the direction of the restroom. She heads me to the door and lets me go do my thing.
The door is fine. It's a door. Great.

So, i step in......and there, in the mirror, I see the reflection of a women fully clothed, sitting in a bathtub. This, expectedly, scared the living shit out of me. My eyes focus, and then I realize that there is a propped, full size mannequin in the bathtub, basically put there to scare the living shit out of idiots like me.

It was amazing.
Even trying to go to the bathroom next to this plastic human was frightening.

And that's when I came to the revelation that I needed something to remember this by.....something concrete.
Or, in this case, something synthetic.
I took her wig.

Without even thinking, I grabbed that wig off of her head and stuffed it down my pants. Thinking back, i"m not sure where that wig had been, and I'd rather not know. I left the bathroom and said my thank you to my elderly escort and briskly walked outside so that we could leave before I'm accused of stealing a nasty wig off of a fake body in a bathroom in the dead of wherever the fuck we were. Though, if I did get arrested for something as ludicrous as that, it'd almost be worth it.

I got in the van, wig still in my pants, and we all laughed for a good five minutes while driving away about the sight we had just seen.
I waited about fifteen minutes before I finally said, "hey guys....guess what I got?..."
At this time, everyone had had the excitement wear off and had settled back in thier seats.....
no one really cared.
That's when I pulled the wig from my pants, and for a brief minute or two, I was treated as if I had masterminded the ultimate heist and was holding the mona lisa. There was an unsaid, but much needed, moment of jubilation and hysteria as we realized we had ourselves a token of appreciation from the road hell gods.
The wig made it's rounds the rest of the tour....we all took turns wearing it at the most inopportune moments.

I'm not sure where it ended up.
I'm hoping I end up back at that stop at some point (i have no memory of exactly where it was....) and that there's a fresh new piece of fake hair for me to shove down my pants.

-The other memory is not so much a story as just moment. On that same long drive, we pulled over drunk on road travel and wandered into another store. This one was more a neccessity....gas and new beverages not warmed to room temperature by the microwave we called a van. We bought our dumb shit....one of us travelers felt the need for a new mesh hat and found himself with a camouflage cap that said something along the lines of "texas is fantastic". I bought my jalepeno potato chips. That was it. We got back in the van, and one of my favoite partners in crime was heard saying,

"pecan pie......pecan pie. I bought a fucking pecan pie. WHY did I buy a pecan pie?....."

long pause.

".....I don't even LIKE pecans."

Five years later, and it still is considered one of the funniest things I have ever heard said in my life.

quiet.

for anyone looking for info on ordering a copy of "failgivers, volume one", please go to the november 7th, 2007 entry.
..............................................................................................



"have it go unbridled....have it make it's way through time.
it carried straw hats filled with cherry mints that dipped and fell to earth every time she leaned over and gave the spectators a kiss.
we painted special banners just for this, with solid gold eviction notes and an ounce of tattered bliss.
she looked over our way, looked well beyond all the things that we would say and just raised her stapled hand and waived a greeting meant to last for a hundred days.
.....and i made action mount for all of us in line, and lifted up my skinny arms to grace her notes with a passion nailed to mine.
we attached our everything.....sung a song without a sound, and painted parks of bliss and sanitation that we knew in our hearts would never live past design.
when she kept the walk in steady stride, though the horse and carraige followed in the case of collapse of more than just the night, the smells and heights fell below the aches and pains that brought us all to bring ourselves to meet the message guide.
....flowers wilted back to soil sights, leaves all but blacked their sour veins and fell to dirt that rearranged the seasons in our dreams of cold and kind.
she had me for the hours without bright, and she had the rest just looking on, looking down, and licked beyond the fault they'd admit to making more than versions sold for grains and wheats and nuts and bolts and all the like.
i had her take my fingerprints, i had her take my scent and hide it all inside the cherry mints that gave the patrons wide open stings on sleeves they'd rather shake.
once she reached the last station, the last hand of quiet wars gave her the last line of a thousand poems and told her that she did her time.....that she lasted longer than the others had and that she's free to run until she's caught and tried.
and this, my son of listening hints, my son of punishment to all the fastened wrists......this is why we cut our tounges to block the speech, because none of us will be the spawn of what tracks her scent to jaws of roads beneath."

This is how he talked to me, with his hands folded in his lap and a look of anticipation from his lips, as if he himself had no idea what was to come out next. But he kept going, kept letting the wheels turn and the gums flap, though every once in a great while there would be a slight pause, making me think i should have been paying more attention because he was bound to slip up and give actual bits and pieces of the story that would wind up being the truth.
He had no shirt on, revealing a large potbelly full of scars that each had a story behind them. I'd been given a virtual tour the moment I stepped into his apartment where he stripped from the waist up and would point to a specific area, take a deep breath and begin a haunted tale involving everything from russian mafia run-ins, sadistic games of truth or dare, or periods of boredom that took his self mutilation creativity to unfathomable heights. Quite impressive if it wasn't so goddamn nauseating. Even as he sat here in front of me in a large, orange plastic beach chair, those folded hands had a large kitchen knife underneath them and it wasn't difficult to assume that blade had done more time on the man's skin than it had ever done in food prep.

"I'm not sure what you want me to say to that...."
I partially trailed off, and partially became fixated on the realization that besides the two beach chairs, the man's studio was filled with books.....books and nothing else. There was a light in the dead center of the ceiling (no cover) housing one bright bulb, but that was it. There were books stacked together in various corners of the room masquerading themselves as couches or coffee tables......some even stacked together to make bookshelves for more books. No trash, no clutter, no food. Just.......books.

"Have you read all of these?" I asked, and motioned with a nod around the room, though he would have been hard pressed to be confused by the question. There was a good twenty second pause before his sunken blue eyes lit, he sat up in his chair and scratched his balding crown.

"Absolutely! Well, no....not all of them. But I will! Mark my words, you come 'round here next year about this time, and i'll be as good as done. Ain't got nothin' else to do.....I like books. they're 'bout my best of friends.....keep me entertained. When I get bored, bad shit happens...."
he said while tracing his left hand over a bed of thick skin on his lower torso.
".....yep, more pages means less trouble. Ain't never been good with conversation, but I always been a good listener. That's kinda the relationship we've got....'cept i don't listen to what they've got to say, I read it."

Brilliant. We've made it past nonsensical diatribes and progressed into a nonsensical Q and A forum.
Five minutes pass, and I let him sit and think.

"Do you know where she is?" I asked, point blank.

"Who?"

"You know who....I wouldn't be here, otherwise...."

"I know. It's just......" he paused again, letting the the question sink and float, sink and float.

"Gone. Dead and gone.....for quite a while."

"I don't buy that. Not at all." I shot back without hesitation, and making sure my eyes met his the entire time.

"Neither do I......'s just what I've been told to say whenever one of you bastards come 'round looking for her....for answers."

"What's it going to cost to get me some answers?" I've played the game for years. The cat and mouse, the connect the dots, the hide and seek.....

"Not sure....you're different. You seem to give a shit. The rest just come and go....come and go" another deep, deep breath and he finishes
"....and most don't last in this room for more than a minute or two before they've all but given up. Makes it easy on me.....I don't give a fuck whether or not there's an end to all this stuff. Ain't my girl. Ain't my daughter....my wife. I'm just involved, and truth be told, I'd rather not ever have to go through another one of these half-assed interrogations ever again. Got too many pages to read....too many stories to hear."

I sat and stared right through him for another couple of minutes. Watched his eyes blink more every passing moment, and figured he was about to snap unless I made a move, or at least an effort. So, I put on my hat, and rose out of the uncomfortable plastic seat.

"Put on a shirt....we're going out...." I declared, hoping to not have any further discussion within the studio walls.

"What makes you think I'm going to leave with you? What the fuck do you think this is?" he shot back, with a look on the fence of either pure agitation or pure panic. His expressions never really gave him away, which was great for him, but made my work even harder than it's already become.
I started my walk to the door, and gave him an answer that both impressed him and bought me another round of chance slip-ups on his part.

"Just put on your shirt......we're going book shopping."

Black Friday

for anyone looking for info on ordering a copy of "failgivers, volume one", please go to the november 7th, 2007 entry.

..............................................................................................

11/20/07


I could go about explaining this is some overglorified, self-gratifying way but I'd rather just stick to the basics. Even that in itself is fun enough for me. I've been awake for the last twenty four hours with not much to show for it, other than the following:

1-I spent four hours finishing reading a book.
2-watched a total of three films during said awakeness.
3-listened to multiple records by the usual cast in my regular rotation.

All of these collective instances were good enough to consider this bout of insomnia a success. The thing is, as I sit and type this, I am consuming my fifth pot of coffee, so the chances are I will be awake until the sun sets in another eight hours. For most people, this would be a problem, but considering I am now what I would like to consider a semi-proffessional (and dare i say soon-to-be international?) man of leisure, all of this falls under the category of "all in a day's work".
Since my special ladyfriend has now changed to overnight shifts at her job, there is even less reason to sleep. Of course, I'll still take in the sporadic five hour nap but I'm not exactly hovering over the pillows stashed in the corner of our bedroom, waiting for the next slumber session.

I'm gearing myself up for something much more intense....much more crucial.

This can be described in only two words....Black Friday (cue spooky echo and thunder clapping).
Yes...for real. The day after thanksgiving....also known as the busiest shopping day of the year besides the last two days before christmas.
A day where (almost) everyone falls into two categories.
You are either stuck in traffic because you are:

A) waking up at the crack of dawn to go shopping....making a feeble attempt at catching every sale item advertised in over glossy pull out flyers stashed in every day-before-thanksgiving newspaper, causing many a paperboy to wrench his shoulder while trying to carry his usual load with an extra two pounds tacked onto each delivery. Type A is usually reserved for overzealous holiday mothers...it sometimes also includes kids excited about the long weekend out of school, college, etc.

OR

B) you are on your way to your retail-hell location of employment, where you will spend the next eight to ten hours fielding questions from burnt out housewives and/or large groups of college kids that are "home for the holidays".

I spent the last six black fridays doing the latter, working at a larger independant music store chain that sold every possible cd, dvd and toy that every child (in age or at heart) wanted to open from various degrees of santas on christmas morning. I didn't mind it that much. I knew enough to head into the day knowing full well what was about to happen. I was always prepared...a cup of coffee on the way in, a pot of coffee as soon as I clocked in, etc. I also made it my personal duty to find the most frightened of christmas help employees and tell them that if at any point in the day the coffee pot had no coffee in it, they would see a side of me that is only reserved for extreme circumstances. I would give them the serious eye, which somehow seemed more intimidating because of my off and on lazy eye that tends to shake violently when I focus in on something. Say what you want, but it worked. I would spend the day listening to every soul christmas album we had in the store and would be told over and over how i've "saved christmas" because I knew where to find the new 50 cent cd and hand it to another soccer mom hoping to score points with her little ghetto king of a son that couldn't figure out how to get a job and buy it for himself.

Now, I know I said that I am currently a semi-proffessional man of leisure, but this last 12 months is the first time in my thirty years on this mudball that I have not had a job or jobs, so I'm completely within my right to laugh at all the unemployed highschoolers who think they have it rough.

Anyways, this is what I did. I actually really liked working in retail during the holiday season. People were happy. It's the one time of year where you are able to actually leave your job and feel like you got to do something worth showing up for. I mean, of course, you will most definitely "ruin christmas" at least four times because you run out of something that someone wants, but fuck it....not your problem. I've "ruined christmas" hundreds of times and it's safe to say I grew increasingly numb to the guilt.

So, I've decided that in this year of man-of-liesureness I am going to fall under the A category. I want to see the insanity through the eyes of an everyday consumer. I'm going to start my day at five in the morning, cup of coffee in hand.

......and I am going straight to the mall.
yes...straight to the mall.

I'm planning on not buying one thing. I will spend the day walking in and out of the hoardes of people. I'm not very social, so there's a very good chance I will not have to say one word to anyone and will, instead, peoplewatch on the day of all peoplewatching.

I want to see it all....the joy of the early bird shoppers, the horror of eveyone who thinks they will find a playstation 3 or Wii for thier little brats. I want to sit in the food courts and listen to the war stories told from consumers surrounded by ten shopping bags filled with every popular culture item that was given a five star rating in the NY times.
and, the most important of them all....I want to see those three in the afternoon breakdowns supplied by every child under the age of ten that has been involutarily dragged out for the day. They don't last....they never will and when they finally crash, they crash hard. I find it fascinating and highly entertaining...especially because they aren't my children.

Being as this is my first year living in Seattle as opposed to New Hampshire, I may spend the later part of the day walking in and around my new neighborhood in Capital Hill. I'm two blocks from Broadway and about a ten minute walk to the downtown area that will supply me with even more shopping extravegenza visuals.

It may be wrong to hope for this, but I want to come out of this day with stories of near riots. I know I'm stretching but, hey, I don't have to punch a clock on the busiest shopping day of the year for the first time since I can remember....I'm aiming high.