Insomnialways

04.08.11......rumbles

2011-08-01T01:40:00.003-07:00

Lo and behold....five months later, a new post!!!! Can it be?! Is it real?!

Yes, but it's not going to be of much importance. Sorry, twelve readers.

Since the last post, here's a summary:

TT went on tour most of March in the US with The Red Chord and Gaza. This included three days at SXSW where I was completely miserable, because I hate heat and I hate people. The numbers for both temperature and poulation during this Austin stint was waaaay too high.

TT went on tour all of April in Europe with Rotten Sound, Gaza, The Kandidate and Haust. Can't describe how much I loved Haust, both as a band as people. Watching an awesome band go on their first tour was a great experience, night after night. Woody and Pal are the Swedish hardcore version of Jay and Silent Bob. I'm not even close to joking.

TT went on tour most of May with Converge and Burning Love. Mr. Colohan and I were able to share the road for the first time in about 11 years of communication. Mr. Pettibone was tour manager. Basically, I was surrounded by friends and played some of our most memorable shows to date.

Between all of this, I was in Seattle working full time. See? There's not much to tell. This is really it.

Next week, TT heads out on tour again, mostly on the west coast with All Pigs Must Die. Looking forward to sweating my balls off in the hottest month of the year. Yum.

I'll get back, go to work, and then do this again starting some time in October until mid-December.

What I'm hoping to have happen is to get done this tour in August and have some sort of mojo reincarnation occur. Take that as you may.

Soundtrack as of late: Fucked Up - DCTL, Young Widows - Old Wounds, Adele - 21, Slave - EP, Techno Animal - Brotherhood..., Victims - A Dissident Celluloid: Red White and Blue, I Saw the Devil, Chaser, The Alien Girl, The Man From Nowhere, Paper Man, I Love You Philip Morris, Newsradio (seasons 1-4, because Jon Lovitz sucks), Pawn Stars....and, of course, Step BrothersLife: only 3 more months and my wife is officially a vet tech, I love my dog more and more every day, and my sister is giving birth any day now, so I'll finally be the chemically imbalances uncle I always knew I could be. Tomorrow is my 3 year wedding anniversary. Choke on them apples, roadblockers.

0303.11....oh looky

2011-03-03T16:17:00.002-08:00

It has been a long time since I've put anything up on here, seeing as I've spent a majority of my time keeping the Trap Them blog updated.
Summary of the last few months: Complete lack of motivation to do the things I've wanted to do, which is run and work out and feel healthy.
My sleeping schedule is utterly decimated.
But I am enjoying myself to some extent. Netflix instant queue has kept me sane and has allowed me many hours of viewing enjoyment.
I leave for tour in a day and a half and am not prepared. Cool. I'm looking forward to possibly forcing myself out of laziness, and the tour itself should be a good time. I am lowballing on betting that I will get in at least two fights with drunken fuckheads at SXSW in Austin.

Reading pleasures:
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima
Vicious Circle by Mike Carey
The Tracey Morgan autobiography sucked
There was a few more that I've read, but my mind is blank.

Audio pleasures:
Lautstormer - s/t
Moutheater - Colonial 12"
new Ilsa LP
Vaccine - all
Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
Tear it Up - Nothing to Nothing
OFF! - first four EPs

28.12.10......clock ticking

2010-12-28T13:29:00.001-08:00

Only five more days on the remaining paintings. Two have sold in the first 48 hours. You may want to hit the wrap-it-up box on your decision making.
Thanks to all those that have inquired!

26.12.10.....paintings up for auction

2010-12-26T18:21:00.001-08:00

The rest of the Trap Them series of paintings are up for auction. Starting price is well below normal asking price, so if you've been thinking about purchasing one, this may be the best time to do so.

To take a look, search username : failgivers
or you can click on the username above, where the auction page is linked.

Please let any interested parties know about the listings. These are it until I have enough free time to work on some new ones, folks.

25.12.10.......oh, come all ye unfaithful

2010-12-25T04:18:00.006-08:00

It's probably pretty obvious at this point, but I haven't been updating this blog much because I've been putting a lot of effort into the wecraftindarkness blog. Plus, talking on here feels like going to confession....not that I know what that feels like, but one can only assume.

I think 2010 worked out pretty well in my little household. I had a large amount of time off from touring and was able to really enjoy the city I live in. Though a large portion of my days and nights were spent in a kitchen, the rest of the time was filled with family adventures (wife and son/dog) to the (dog)park and all around happiness.

But, unquestionably, the best thing to happen in 2010 to me is my wife quitting her job. She didn't want to be there. It wasn't her future and, thankfully, I was able to assist in her coming to terms with that.

It was in April, following our tag team defeat of strep throat. She didn't want to go back. I told her not to. She told me to shut up (jokingly). I told her I meant it. We took it from there.

So, it's not so much that she quit her job as much as what she was able to do after.

She's always wanted to be a vet. Now that she flushed the 9 to 5 away, it was time. When she enrolled, I couldn't have been happier. She was finally doing what she felt she should be doing. The initial fear of hers involved household things (rent, bills, etc.), to which I quickly put a squash to. I may make nothing working at a bar, but I can damn well keep us afloat. She still did part time work, which was more than enough to eliminate concern.

Not that I'm ever going to be considered a sugar daddy (or even close....), but the hope of someday being somewhat of a provider has always been something I've wanted for myself. I think this is the closest I'll ever get to being one, and it's enough to make me feel pretty damn good.

More importantly than all of that, however, is the feeling of watching someone having an ultimate goal start to become fully realized. There are people that want something and there are people that WANT something. Smashley Jean McKenney falls into the latter. I have never, ever in my life seen someone so dedicated to advanced education. From weeks before the first semester began, her nose was already in books, literally surrounding her on the couch. Maybe it was because I disliked schooling so much, but studying and homework never worked for me. It could have been the ADD, also, but whatever. Being an onlooker at her process was mindblowing. Monday through Friday, she'd wake up at 7am, drive to school, and then be home around 1pm. There was a time frame after she walked in the door which was about 45 minutes. In those 45 minutes, I'd make her lunch and she'd hang out with the dog. Once that time was up, it was right back to school mode. Books open, head down, glasses on, pen in hair or ear or hand. It was like my own personal hot librarian, and if I was too loud, I'd even get a "Shhh!!!".

Those books stayed open until bed time. No fucking joke. Most nights she fell asleep on the couch with her face stuck to the pages. What I'm getting at is that I have an unparalleled respect and admiration for, both, what she's doing and how she's doing it. There has never been a second of half-assing her way through any of it. I helped when I could, quizzing her on the spelling and vocab tests. But, besides that, the best I could do was make her breakfast, lunch and dinner and take the dog for his walks so she could focus.

Every time she came home with good news about a test or being chosen to sit in on surgeries (ahem....first in her class....ahem), I felt this overwhelming feeling of pride and excitement for her. Every little part of what she's doing gives me that pride and excitement. I'm watching someone's aspirations become a reality and I get to be the husband / cheerleader.

We're both doing what we've wanted to do and that's rare. The chances of those two people being in a marriage together makes it even more special.

She started her externship this week......right across the street from where we live. The vet hospital was her first choice and they scooped her up with open arms. Within days, she had already proven her worth.

....and that's the best thing to happen to me this year. A great marriage, the chance to be a provider / family man, and the privilege of watching my wife be absolutely amazing at something I could never do.

Eat shit, daily grind and pipe dreams. Smashley Jean is fucking your shit all up....I'll be the one in the background laughing and pointing.

That's about it. It's five in the morning on Christmas and I can't sleep. I figured that this time was about as good as any to update this little confession booth.

Things as of late:

Audio:

Slave - Demo 2010

Every Time I Die - New Junk Aesthetic

Massive Attack - Mezzanine, 100th Window, Heligoland

Adele - 19

GDP - Magic Bullet EP

Motown Christmas 2xCD

Tear It Up - Taking You Down With Me

The Explosion - Flash, Flash, Flash

Cast Iron Hike - Watch it Burn

Adem - Love and Other Planets

Funkdoobiest - Brothas Doobie

The Black Hand - Pulling Your Strings EP

Defeater - Lost Ground

Video:

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Elf

The Town

The A-Team

The Office seasons 1-4

Kick-Ass

X-Files: I Want to Believe

Gremlins

Cinderella Man

Currently reading: Tracy Morgan's "I Am the New Black"......and it's horrible. I'm so bummed.

I'm going to go bake muffins and drink coffee while I watch stupid parades.

20.12.10....decorationihilist

2010-12-20T05:36:00.001-08:00

In the next week or two, I will be putting a handful of paintings up for auction. They'll have very low listing prices to begin with. It's time to clean house and make room for new art.
Once they go up, I will post a link on here.

29.09.10.....hardcover hearts

2010-09-29T17:31:00.003-07:00

I took a detour on my reading route before diving into Jeff Long's "The Descent".

Knowing the third installation of Chelsea Cain's series involving Archie Sheridan and serial killer Gretchen Lowell existed, I kind of obsessed over it after finishing the second book, "Sweetheart".

"Exit to Evil" is utterly insane. It's the first book I've read in a while that literally grossed me out. I sat here twitching. It is so messed up, I couldn't believe it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, you sick little author, you.....you made the last five hours of my life very entertaining.
Go out and get these books....knowing they will continue next year with "Night Season" makes me extremely happy and impatient.

28.09.10......details by the mouthful

2010-09-27T23:18:00.003-07:00

I was thinking of writing this long, epic post on all kinds of trivial matters, but the part of my brain residing in the "better judgement" county took a vote, and "nay" won. I think they made the right decision.

Instead, you get this:
I didn't listen to too much new music while recording, for obvious reasons.
This was what I can remember:

Massive Attack - Mezanine
New Bomb Turks - Destroy! Oh Boy!
Adele - 19
Scanners - Violence is Golden
The first four Public Enemy albums
Swans - My Father...
The Sounds - Crossing the Rubicon
Milemarker - Satanic Versus
Gehenna - all
GDP - Realistic Expectations

Reading:

The thrift store next to Godcity had books for two bucks....I scored big with a few novels I'd wanted to read. A first printing of Lehaine's "Mystic River" for two dollars? Yes, please.

Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain - The 2nd book in her series about one of the most unorthodox serial killers in a fictional world. The first book, "Heartsick", was a good, quick read. This one upped the ante and was very smartly done. Highly recommended.

No Trace by Barry Maitland - Child abduction, murder and modern art all rolled up into one little package set in London's Northcote Square. It gets a little confusing at times, but the end result is worth it, especially if you find it for a buck, like I did. That equals out to about thirteen cents per hour of entertainment.

33&1/3 series: Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique by Dan LeRoy - I'll dive into this deeper on the other blog, but I'll just say it's a fantastic and quick read. A little over 100 pages dedicated to a criminally underrated album.

And it Don't Stop: The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years by Raquel Cepeda - same with this one.....more info when I get around to it. I will say, the article on Afrika Bambaataa alone made this worth reading.

Currently: almost finished with Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. It is so goddamn good. This guy needs to hurry up and write another novel. His storytelling is incredible.

Next: The Descent by Jeff Long (courtesy of Tim's generous hand-me-downings)

Wish list:
Walking Dead graphic novels, volume 6-whatever they're up to now.
Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain
Horns by Joe Hill
Free time to read everything,

....and for fuck's sake, Mr. King....finish Doctor Sleep. I'm dying over here....

22.09.10.......walk the lawn like a lion, hon

2010-09-24T23:39:00.002-07:00

This is how I spent the last few weeks.

Top three moments in my adult life:
1-Flying to Pittsburgh on August 5th, 2006 to meet up with a girl named Ashley. Two years later, she became Smashley Coffins McKenney. Best decision I've ever made.

2-Flying home from Boston to Seattle after nine weeks of US and European touring on April 28th or 29th (My memory is hazy....), 2008. When I got to the baggage claim area, I was greeted by Ashley. In her arms was a rat terrier puppy. I'd wanted a dog for my entire life.....thirty years later, I finally had my first little boy, and the closest thing I'll ever come to having children. I named him Panic, and he is mentally unstable....like his dad.

3- September 21st, 2010, I was given the first rough mix of the new record I was a part of. I put on my shitty headphones, kicked back on a recliner, closed my eyes and pressed play. Thirty some odd minutes later, I opened my eyes back up and took a walk outside onto the porch of the place we were staying. I took a deep breath of bitter fall air, the way only a place like New England can produce. I let it out and said to myself, "This is the one, motherfucker.....this is the one."

04.09.10......Do it. Now.

2010-09-04T10:25:00.004-07:00

www.wecraftindarkness.com

This is where Trap Them will live for the next eighteen months or so.

22.07.10......curtains drop

2010-07-22T23:33:00.002-07:00

So, this is what I've been up to:

http://blindisfine.blogspot.com

Enjoy? Hopefully......I know I am.

Busy summer to prepare for what's looking to be a very busy fall with Trap Them. Much more info soon.

How many more posts will I say "much more soon" in?

07.01.10....Hungry for everything sale

2010-07-01T19:37:00.002-07:00

For a brief length, all paintings on my other blog are $150 or less. A lot have been sold for twice that or more, but certain times call for unwilling measures.
If you are interested in two or more pieces, a further discount will be made. This is the result of not having enough room for storage, and to eliminate the momentarily red budget.
If you, or anyone you know that may appreciate the art, are interested, please email me at:
failgivers@gmail.com

Thanks, boys and girls. Hope to hear from you.

06.02.10.....trailers

2010-06-02T16:54:00.002-07:00

There's been quite an absence from this here thought-vomit basin. Loads of work hours at the bar and other numerous stress inducers have left me void of concentration.

On a particularly ridiculous night of making appetizers for drunken frat boys and indie douche bags, my walk home triggered something.

In the next week or so, there will be some new stuff to read on here.

Some will enjoy it.....those that lived in the golden era, specifically.

Until then, to the art form that has given me a re-obsession, all I can say is, "They (meaning I) reminisce over you...."

Much, much more to come.

18.03.10....Nomi

2010-03-18T16:25:00.003-07:00

It has been a long time coming, but I found myself with a spare hour before I go back to rolling burritos.

First and foremost, I read Under the Dome. An extremely generous person from the UK sent a copy to me. As a fellow Stephen King fanatic, it was probably one of the best pieces of mail I have ever recieved.

The post below contains a link to his awesome blog of his courageous battle to read every King work in chronological order. Respect is due.

February blew by. Out of the twenty-eight days, I worked twenty four of them. It was all for a purpose, you see. For the first time in fifteen years, my entire adult life, I am one hundred percent debt free. This is a huge step for me. Every time I came close, another setback would come running at me full steam and we'd meet in a head-on collision, me getting the worse of it every time.

So, February was a labor heavy month, but now I can be in the black instead of always floating in the red.

January was the month that became the birth of a new life on meds. The diagnosis of bipolarism was fully labeled for me, and, like my banished debt, was the first time in my adult life that I was able to actively do something about it.

Lamactil was the prescription. I was told to slowly increase my intake over the course of a month, testing the waters, so to speak. I actually noticed a difference within a few days. The outbursts and mood swings seemed to diminish. I was able to calmy converse and not pull my hair out.

Along with this, my ADHD was finally treated and, as of this week, I am on another medication that, I was quite shocked, caused immediate positive results. Focus was never my strong suit, unless it was something that clicked in my head. I've found it easier to do many, many things. I'm actually extremely pleased with the meds I ignored for so long. Better late than never, and at the ripe old age of thirty-two, this was one of the best choices I could have ever made.

Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to thank anyone that reads this that went to Scion Fest last weekend. I can say, without a doubt, that was the BEST show we've ever played. I was not prepared for that reaction. I was not prepared for the outright insanity that occurred for the forty minutes we were on stage ( or in my case, jumping off of it.).

I am home for another few months, though "down time" is not an expression that can be deemed suitable. TT is hard at work on the next LP. We'll head into Godcity at the start of June and spend the next four weeks there. I will be showing up halfway through because I am a vocalist, which means I scream for a few hours and then my job is done. I have literally zero musical talent, so the best thing I can do to help these guys is stay away.

This is the longest break we've ever had, but we all deserve it. Up until the end of tour last November, this band had done roughly 300-325 shows in just over two years. That's a lot of van time.

Having a long amount of time in Seattle has given me back the home life that I miss on these long runs. Having someone to come home to, to cook dinner for, to have great conversations with....it was exactly what was needed.

And for the first time in three years, I am home for the entire final season of LOST!!

In the next few weeks, I'll be getting into great detail on here of a brand new endeavor for me....something I've wanted to do for a very long time, and it has finally come to fruition. There will be a new blog in the coming weeks that will give a little more info. I am very happy to finally do something like this.

In the meantime, with humble self-promotion, if you find yourself with some spare tax return money and in need of some new art to redecorate your home with, please check out my paintings. The link is on the side bar. Anyone interested in anything, please get in touch. They are filling up my apartment, and I am ready to liquidate for the right prices.

Naked juice "green machine" is one of the best things I've ever tasted.

I bought a rowing machine the other day. I don't know why I'm so stoked on this, but I am.

Two weeks ago, I was sick and stuck in bed....in one day, I watched the entire second season of Breaking Bad. That show is fantastic.

I don't have much else to say. I'm actually feeling really good right now, and it's time to go roll burritos.

Current listening pleasures (I don't have time to sit and watch films anymore.....someday I'll return to my cellulite nerd roots)

High on Fire - Snakes for the Divine (amazing...title track is the best song to run to. Ever)

Daughters - s/t (fully realized Jesus Lizard by way of Providence noise....fucking brilliant. I can't say enough about how much I love this record)

Aerosols - s/t LP + 4th (?) 7"

Darkthrone - Circle the Wagons (I like black metal only if it doesn't sound like black metal)

Deathreat - Consider it War

From Ashes Rise - ALL ( My wife and I went to the reunion show in PDX....perfect. They were spot on and I felt like I did when I used to see them years ago.)

Sweet Cobra - Bottom Feeder 12"

The Breed - 7"

Gore - ALL (thank you, Southern Lord....thank you)

Catharsis - Samsara

many more....lots of dog walks, walks to and from work, and running have supplied me ample listening time.

Currently reading : The Terror by Dan Simmons

02.02.10....shhhh

2010-02-02T14:02:00.002-08:00

Nothing very exciting today.
I just want to recommend you all to follow this guy's blog. He's reading every Stephen King book in chronological order. This is awesome.

http://thekinglongread.blogspot.com

27.01.10....idiot sanctuary

2010-01-27T17:24:00.002-08:00

The rest of the years were good enough, though I did settle into a routine. Hating my classes, saying the wrong things to get kicked out once every other month, was one of the more prominent traits I further developed. I battled with teachers that told me I had potential if I would just focus myself. I fell in with a rather safe group of kids, whom I spent my weekend nights with, watching horror movies and listening to gossip.
I made out with a few girls. I delivered newspapers. I still got panic attacks once every few weeks and wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

Weekend days were reserved for going down to a local sports card shop, where for the nine or so hours the store was open, I talked sports with a bizarre cast of townies that had nothing better to do with their lives than, well, sit in a sportscard shop. There was a kid a few years older than me that worked there, who treated me as if I was the annoying little brother he never had. Just like an older brother, one second he would be giving me a rash of shit, while the next few hours were spent killing time, spewing out weekly statistics or theorizing what legendary team was better than the other. It never seemed to get old.
The owner, a local businessman that owned a sketchy chinese food restaurant, would make rare visits. Always scented with a tinge of alcohol, John would swagger into the shop, open a few packs of Hustler cards to look at some naked women without his wife knowing, eject a few inhuman belches, mutter the words "hurt me" as he rubbed his stomach and then say goodbye for another week or two.
David, the. shop "manager" would come in, sit at a back table while smoking cigarettes and harass any potential customer. He was the definition of the word "haggler", always coming in with some unnecessary items that he had scored at a flea market or garage sale for a dollar or two. He would give lengthy lectures on any and all subjects brought up and always seemed to fashion himself as a somewhat small town mystical philosopher. There was always a look on his face after he talked as if to ask, "Did I just blow your mind or what?"
Without a doubt, the most interesting specimen of the shop days was Stretch, a seven foot tall manboy that lived with his mother. Day after day he would come in wearing the same Chicago White Sox jersey with smudged ink on his face from delivering newspapers from his car. He had this bizarre high pitched voice that, when excited, sounded like dying airhorn. Naturally, I looked forward to this. He was, quite literally, the clumsiest individual I have ever been in contact with. His lanky frame seemed to never have a day pass without knocking over something in the shop, or, just knocking himself over.
There were a few other stragglers that found their way in and out of the store through those years, but we were the diehards, the ones who took the sour and dismal weekend offerings and ground them into sweet lemonade. I'd find a way to make it to that place in the dead of January blizzards with twelve feet of snow falling with another twelve on the way. So did the rest of them. On those days, I knew it wasn't that we all had nothing else to do, it was that this was exactly what we wanted to do. There was a comfort in that fucked up sports enthusiast family we had gathered.
Summer vacations, that place became my daily sanctuary. I would alternate between playing pick up games of basketball and sitting my weighty ass down in the air-conditioned shop. I know my parents would have been much happier if I had spent my free time with schoolmates, and, in my defense, there were a few. Unfortunately for my parents, I'd spend time with those schoolmates at the shop, them usually getting bored after a few hours while I was just warming up.
It went on like this for years, well into high school. I loved that goddamn place and all the fuckups that made it what it was. When I think of early teenage years, I don't think of many instances involving school. I think of that shop. I visualize Stretch tripping over a barbell and falling out the back door, setting off the alarm. I think of David, cigarette in hand, opening a pack of cards and getting something valueable, causing him to dance some mutant jig that shakes his beer gut from side to side, up and down. I like it better this way. I don't ever have to worry about where any classmates ended up, because I never made friends with them in the first place.
I don't know what happened to them. My mother would run into one of the guys every once in a while and would let me know, though that hasn't happened for a long time. It's quite fitting though, seeing as throughout my many, many moves since I left home, I don't have one baseball or basketball card to my name. My bedroom back then was filled with stacked white boxes of thousands of thousands of sets, divided into categories by players, teams, years, etc. I think collecting cards had done wonders for my OCD, keeping me occupied with something that, at the time, I could focus all my attention on. (and when I say "all my attention", I meant "all my attention". Homework had established itself as a nemisis..).
I do find myself walking in and out of card shops out here in Seattle, half hoping to overhear a conversation that peaks my interest and give me a reason to include myself. You hear people talking about good old days, or wanting to be able to go back in time to enjoy a school year again. I'd like to go back and spend a few more of those whitewashed winter days at the shop, watching snow fall out onto a modestly busy, small town Dover Main Street, watch the cars hurry down the slight hill all frantic with places the drivers need to be, while I'm exactly where I want to be. I can barely recall any of the stupid crap we talked about, all I know is that I had a great time doing it, being able to block out the thoughts of another day sitting at a desk, being told to do things I didn't want to do.

27.01.10...baseball sucks and so does companionship

2010-01-27T17:13:00.002-08:00

His name was Mike.
We were on the same little league baseball team. Baseball may have been the single worst sport I have, or ever will, play. I was absolutely horrible. Looking back, I think it had something to do with my lack of focus or attention on anything for longer than any given time. Unless I was utterly enthralled in the task at hand, my mind floated away, which is not very helpful when you have a solid, leather bound ball screaming towards you repeatedly throughout a few hours.
I was the token space case on the team. It was the Dover Elks Lodge, which made my mother quite proud. Her father, my grandfather, had been a proud member of the Elks Lodge for a great part of his life, before he passed away in my first of third grade years. I would not be surprised if she believes that her father was up there in that heaven of his, fishing in a pond with the God almighty himself, stuffing sugar covered jelly donuts in his mouth by the dozen (remember...in heaven there's no calorie counting...), and politely asked the guy to let me be on his pride and joy's team. Even how little I can remember him, I can picture this going on, him with his amazing talent at showcasing an unavoidable puppy dog look, something which skipped a generation, in my mom, and was handed straight down to me. However, the puppy dog look was given an added twitch of both sarcasm and hostility when it landed in my lap, which ends up giving me a slightly frantic and urgent look.
I'll make the baseball stories quick. There's not much to tell, other than my pure hatred of playing. It wasn't that I hated the game itself, however. It was my void of any talent whatsoever that pushed me over the edge. I dreaded going to practice. I found myself getting panic attacks each and every game, which garnered mixed results such as pissing myself while playing third base, which happened on two seperate occasions. I disguised it well and I don't think anyone even noticed because I always made sure my pants were nice and dirty by the second or third inning. I would strike out and bury myself back in the clubhouse, wanting to break down and go home.
My father, the supportive parent that he was, was constantly encouraging me, trying to provide any comfort he possibly could to make sure I knew he was still proud of me. For two of those wretched seasons, he was an assistant coach on the team, trying to make it to a practice or game whenever his oppressive work schedule permitted. I don't think he found the time to be there because of his love for the game, though he did have a passion for it. No, I think he was there because my dad, from a very early age of my life, started to notice that I was a bit on the fragile side. I think he saw how much I struggled to be a normal kid and, though he never said it, wanted to be there in case I finally had my impending breakdown.
The moment I had played my last game of little league baseball, I took of that glove and buried it deep in my bedroom closet, knowing that I'd never need it again. I went back to enjoying the game as a spectator and didn't regret it in the least. A few years later I went to some batting cages to remind myself how much I really did suck, and it only took about seven swings before the task at hand was accomplished.

His name was Mike, and he was on that Dover Elks Lodge team. He was one of the only kids on the team I made a slight effort in communicating with, and he seemed to enjoy me. We were in the same grade, so as I started junior high, we were finally in the same school. We hung out a bit, seeing as we knew each other well enough to do so, and on his end, I think he needed to know he had some friends in the new environment we were all thrown into. He had an older sister that took us to the high school football games on friday nights, where we would spend the time half paying attention to the game and the other half looking for other kids we went to school with to hang out for a few hours.
We'd sit at the same table at lunch, which was a relief to me on that first day of school. The cafeteria is a little piece of hell in it's ownright. You walk in there and wonder who your friends are going to be, who's going to let you sit at their table and welcome you. Years later I found the glory in sitting by yourself while there. Some time around a month into that seventh grade year, Mike stopped sitting at the table, opting to sit with other school friends he had made. We still hung out on occasion, but more times than not as the weeks progressed, Mike would cancel our after school plans, always having something else to do. A few weeks later, he started to forget he knew me.
Weeks after that, we had somehow turned into enemies. I don't think there's ever a way to figure out when a lot of things start to go south in a friendship, especially at that age. It just happened. We would walk past each other in the hallway, and he'd always have some verbal bullets to shoot out. This was before I found my venom tongue, so most of the time I would just look at him in a disgusted confusion, not sure how things had got to that point. It went on for months, until one day I wasn't in the mood to hear anything come out of him. He opened his mouth and I pushed him into a wall and shouted something like, "This ends now....". It had no authority behind it. It was all the effort I wanted to put into the situation, already tired of trying to figure out how friendships were supposed to work and how come they fall apart so quickly. Mike just curled up his lips into an obnoxious little grin and pushed me back, knowing he'd finally gotten me to break from my apathetic demeanor. A teacher seperated the short lived scuffle before anything escalated.
From that day on, Mike made no effort to mess with me in the hallway. I'd love to say it was my forceful nature, that I intimidated him from the moment I put my hands on him and backed him into that wall. I'd love to say that, back then, I had already figured out how to ruin a life and silence the assholes. But, truth be told, I don't think he ever messed with me again because another friend of mine, also named MIke, heard that he was messing with me that day, and knocked him out in the middle of a classroom.

27.01.10....life lessons

2010-01-27T17:09:00.001-08:00

I found myself getting in darker and darker personal places. I guess this is what happens when you start to come into your own. Once you've established who you are, you tend to battle with it internally, still trying to convince yourself that you're a normal, well adjusted piece of youthful exhuberance.
You go through the motions, finding friends that are supposed to supply you with a self acceptance, a self assurance. It doesn't work like that. I can't say that it never works like that, because there are a great many that are able to take those motions and spin them into golden years, golden memories.
This is not to say I didn't have great times. I went on all the same dumb adventures kids and teenagers go through, but at the end of it all, I came home at night, crawled into bed and felt empty as when I woke up.
You start to feel voids. You begin to rust the gleam of those shining adventures, and most of the time, there's no real reason to do so other than, as I've now come to realize, fully coming to terms with the fact at hand: you're kind of fucked up.

I spent my junior high school years floating in and out of social circles. I made friends with people that I would assume would enjoy me being around. I never had much to say, which never stopped me from speaking, though, it made me come off as just an extended part of the scenery. I was what a lot of kids that age would consider a simple acquaintance, never really finding my place.
I knew it would end up like this during these years from one very small instance. It was a week before I was to begin my seventh grade school year, the last week of august. I had had a friend named Jason since third grade. Looking back, there was no friendship....this was the very defenition of an acquaintance.
Jason and I were in the same third grade (my second third grade...) and with about a month left in that elementary school year, I realized while walking home from school, that we were always headed the same way home. He was actually the one that brought it up, as he sped past me on his bmx bike one day. He asked me where I lived, to which I replied Prospect Street before asking him the same.
"Highland...I'm the next street over from you. That's so weird. How did we not know each other until now?"
I shrugged in response, which was my trademark maneuver to any question someone asked me.
We started hanging out, naturally. When you find a kid the same age as you that lives only a three minute walk away, it's a somewhat given outcome. Jason had what every young male could want. There was a basketball hoop, a skateboard ramp built by his father who was a carpenter, and an unlimited supply of little debbie snacks in his kitchen.
We found ourselves hanging out on a daily basis, playing any sort of competitive game we could think of with other neighborhood kids, which blew me away, since I didn't know there really was any other neighborhood kids. Summer vacations were the grounds for early morning baseball or basketball games that lasted well into the night, until we both made our way home.
It went on like this until the last year of elementary school, being sixth grade, in which time Jason had found another set of friends that, I readily admit, were on the much more popular end of the spectrum. He found himself with a girlfriend, going on dates and such that, at my young age, was forbidden. If I were to be able to have a girlfriend at that time, the basis of the relationship remained waving to each other in between classes at school. There were no dates for me, as per order of my parents, which I can completely understand. My parents were born in the fifties and grew up in the sixties in the same small town and wanted thier son to do the same. Whenever I did find myself with a girlfriend in juior high, I would lie and tell them I was going to a friend's house before heading to the local movie theater.
So, Jason had good things going for him. We still hung out a lot, kept playing basketball or video games, anything we had the time for. The only difference is that he would end the sessions early, having somewhere else to be. He never wanted me to go hang out with his new friends, which never seemed a problem. I was never concerned with meeting their approval or finding out what they were doing.

That summer before junior high was bizarre. I spent most of the days doing my regular routine, but there was a fear hanging inside of me, knowing that in two months I would begin life at a different school with different kids. I was ready for a letdown, I just didn't know what that letdown would be. Everything seemed like it was going to change. I kept telling myself it would be for the better, that going to a new place with new faces and new options was something positive. It was, or, it would have been if I hadn't been the type of person I am. Instead, I prepared for the letdown of real life (or, as real as life could be when you still live at home and have no bills, rent, etc...).
There was a dance at the junior high, just a few weeks before I was to begin. I didn't want to go. I had no intention of walking into a large gym and watching as everyone would turn and unwelcome you into the new halls of judgement. Well, I went, anyways. I was coerced into it by Jason and my neighbor Kate, the girl who I grew up with that lived across the street. I wore some stupid outfit, in hopes to look even remotely cool, remotely in touch with what everyone around me was comfortable in.
There are a few small things I remember about the dance. I can recall walking in, having one of my minor daily panic attacks. At least it was dark. At least I wasn't able to make out the expressions on most people's faces. This was not me and never would be, but I did it just the same. I did it to prove to myself that it could be done. They were playing music of that era, a sad mix of commercial hip hop and rock. Every eighth or ninth song, though, I'd be given the gift of hearing Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" or something along those lines. Something that on the surface was widely accessible, but within me was a reminder of the other worlds where I'd rather end up.
Slow dances. I spent most of the night on the side benches, talking with a few people I had spent the previous years with in clasrooms, up untill slow dances would begin. At that time, like clockwork, I'd end up sitting there with maybe one other person, watching as the young romances were attmpting to be established on the dancefloor. I'd feel my face red and warm, sensing that the whole room was focused on me as I sat on that bench, wondering why I wasn't out there. The last dance of the night, a girl came up and asked me to go out on the floor with her. With my head dizzy and my heart ready to burst out of my chest, I walked slowly with her, knowing I had no idea how to do what everyone else was doing. I didn't even know where to put my hands. To this day, I'm surprised I didn't shriek, punch a window and run out of the building.
She wasn't the prettiest girl there, and the fact that she wanted me to dance proved she wasn't the most popular. But, the fact that she asked me to go out there instead of one of my fellow saps next to me was proof that she was, without a doubt, one of the kindest girls in attendance that night. There's no punchline to this. I went out there, messed up a few times by stepping on her feet. She was nice enough to show me where to put my hands. I hadn't touched a girl before that, so, yeah, it was enough to get me a little excited about my future. The dance was over, I thanked her and then I made a break for the door, ready for the night to be done, which it was.

I rode high for a few weeks after that, feeling as though maybe the next six years of schooling would bring about in me a welcome transformation from young nothing to young adult something. I felt good. Jason and I would go to pick up basketball games every day. It was something I needed, that I enjoyed.
There aren't many specifics about what happened. On the grand scale of worthless moments, this remains high, but it was enough of an incident to make me remember it even now. We went back to that gym, where two weeks before I had had my first slow dance, to play some more basketball. The school had opened the doors for anyone in junior high to come play. I set foot back into the room, this time bright and alive as opposed to the dark unknown world I had walked into previously. The smell of sweat and the noise of squeaking sneakers was welcome to me. It felt good and comfortable.
There were older guys there, somethat definitely hadn't been in juniour high for a few years. I wasn't intimidated. This was back when I had a competitive nature and was quite a good basketball player. I had no problem joining into pick up games with people older than me. I was able to hold my own. We shot around for a while before games were begun.
At some point I was standing near Jason when one of the older guys came over and said something to us, asking whether we were going to play. We both said yes, and the kid nodded in approval. He then started asking us the usual dumb shit about whether we were going to school here now, do you know this guy, blah blah blah. I stopped paying attention, ready to get out on the court and initiate the whole reason I came to the gym in the first place. I snapped out of my daydream in time to hear the older kids ask Jason and I if we were friends.
"Yeah." I replied.
"No..." was Jason's response.
I must have looked a little bewildered, because the older kids cracked a small grin and looked back at Jason, which was what I was doing as well.
"You mean, you're not his friend?" he asked Jason again. Jason wouldn't look back at me, trying instead to focus on anything but my surprised expression.
"No...we just live near each other." was all he said.
"This kid right here....right next to you, is not your friend."
At this point, Jason repeated himself, but not without a tone of guilt in his voice. He knew what he was doing, but there wasn't enough of a reason to stop himself. He was drawing his line in the sand and establishing what the rest of the school years would be like. There was something in him that was letting him know that he was only as cool as the company that surrounds him.
The older kid raised his eyebrows and looked back at me. Almost apologetically, he told me, "Looks like you had one less friend than you thought you did...."
I nodded in response. "I guess so."
I didn't look back at Jason after that. The older kid turned around and dribbled a basketball back to center court. Following close behind was Jason. For the next few hours he didn't say anything to me, and I didn't make an effort to force him to. I understood why he did what he did. Some just need that feeling of belonging, and for Jason, it was imperative to his future schooltime endeavors to be a part of what he considered was the elite.
He left the pick up games with the older kid and his friends. I walked home by myself, thoroughly enjoying my time playing basketball. I was supposed to spend the night at his house that night, but instead I came through our back door and was met by my mom in the kitchen.
"I thought you were over Jason's tonight." was all she got out.
"Me too. I guess he had different plans he forgot about." was all I could say back. I didn't want to get into a story, and didn't want to waste my time telling her how I'd just been sold out for my lack of social grade. Mothers are there to tell you not to worry about things and that you are a great person that will have a bunch of new friends when school starts, and, truth be told, I didn't want to hear any of that. I wanted things to remain as blunt and viewed in face value as they were inside my head at that moment.
We saw each other every day at school when the year started. We met up a few times, found ourselves at the same school sports games. I never brought up that night and neither did he, though we both knew what it meant. He moved away at the end of that year. He had a going away party that I was invited to, but politefully declined to be a part of. You spend your last days with your friends, and not the ones you'd lie about being friends with.
I'm sure that night didn't realy mean shit to him, and I feel the same. I've remembered it all this time, not because I lost a great friendship that I though I'd had, but because it was another good life lesson. I remember that night because it shows how very little the amount of people you can rely on.

22.01.10.....young photos

2010-01-22T13:48:00.000-08:00

I don't know who has it, though chances are it's my mother. She's the one with the scrapbooks. It started quite a few years ago when, just as most hobbies initialize, she found the need to express her creativity that had been bottling up. It went from one single, solitary scrapbook and erupted into stacks and stacks of pictures that would be divided up into different volumes. From what I can recall, she has them broken up into years, into holidays, into birthdays and special occassions. There's more, but, as I've already slightly established, I'm kind of a bad son and don't remember all of them.
Actually, that's a lie as well. I'm a pretty good son. I'm just fucked up. So, under the circumstances, let's just establish that my mother's a saint for being able to make it through all of her only son's repeated (though unintentional), shall we say, "episodes". And, so, under the circumstances, let's just establish that her son tried as hard as he could to walk in line and to make her proud, all the while fighting the urge, each and every rise, to run.

My mother, with the scrapbooks. She's the one who's got it. I'm almost positive.

There are a lot of them from up until, and including, my first five years. I'm not going to say everyone has them, because everyone doesn't have them. It's the closest to eternal youth you can give a parent. Posing in front of the camera while you're young, before you've learned to become self conscious, before you hate the idea of someone having concrete proof you've existed.
It's the smiles they love. It's that care free expression painted all over your young face, something they can look at time and time again to remind themselves that they have done something amazing. They have these to keep as the years go by and the smiles melt into something else. Not so much a frown as a sign of the times of the lives.
For her, it's the early pictures of Halloween. I know it. It's our holiday. There's pictures of me at one year old, dressed as a scarecrow, straw hat and all. That's the only one I can think of. They all had the backdrop of reds and golds and browns, courtesy of the leaves that had fallen from the trees surrounding that second story apartment I called home for all of those years.

For me, there's one photo that tells it all. One photo that sums up, quite perfectly I might add, how far I am from the young kid that had his eyes wide open and fell in love with the world. That's how it works, though. Everyone has that one piece, whether it's in your head or hands, that evidence that, yes, at one point everything made sense.

I couldn't have been more than three years of age. I know that because when I was young I had this golden blonde, curly hair. It grew out in little ringlets that stuck close to my head. Then, some time around four or five years of age, my hair straightened out and became a darker brown. It was random to say the least. (To this day, whenever I grow a beard, my facial hair comes out in three seperate colors. My moustache is blonde, while my beard is a dark brown and a reddish, copper color. This has absolutely nothing to do with anything said so far. Also, my hair has gone back to being curly.)
It was the fourth of July. For heightened style points, I'm going to say it was the first fourth of the new decade, the decade in question being the eighties. Now that it's been said, I can't believe how very long ago it feels. I never really feel very old until I think about what I've done in the last three plus decades, and then I feel ancient. We were three houses down and to the right from our home, the walk from our front door to the lawn party clocking in at a whopping ninety seconds.
Our family had lived on Prospect street for three years, my parents moving in, miraculously, at the same time as two other newlywed couples ready to start procreating, ready to turn the quiet, small town street into a bursting chaos of squeals and laughter courtesy of eager young lives. It didn't take too long for this to happen, as all three couples gave birth to their first child within two months of each other. Lo and behold, Prospect Street became an instant romper room. As far as the new street children were concerned, I was the middle child. The couple three houses down gave birth to a son in August. Thirty days later, on a rainy morning in late September, my mother had me. From what I've been told, I came out looking completely void of emotion, not even a whimper being heard from me for the first week I was alive. Three weeks after that, the couple across the street had a girl. This is where you assume I had a loving relationship with the girl across the street. Lovers from the moment we were born. You are very wrong. That would have been nice (and very convenient for me...) if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't stand the girl from the moment I was old enough to realize I could pick and choose my own friends, or lack thereof.
Our three households ended up spending quite a bit of time together, if you can imagine, considering how much easier it was for our working parents to entertain their kids when there are other kids around. Most holidays and birthdays were spent rotating around the different homes on the street. One big jovial goddamned family. Everyone knew everyone.
The fourth of July was always a big event. Cloudless skies accompanied by the New England summer weather (this is almost thirty years ago, before the climate shifts, so summer was still just warm and mostly dry and managable in New England....nowhere near as oppressive weather wise as it has become now), tables upon tables of comfort foods and drinks, and overall high spirits. Kids running around with sparklers, waiting for the sun to go down so that they can watch the city fireworks from the comfort of their own front lawns, which was possible, seeing as the trees were young and still hadn't grown to the size they would be ten years later, where any view of anything past those leaves was virtually impossible.
The photo is very simple. It's the three year old me, pale skin, golden blonde ringlets and all, dressed in a full Superman underoos outfit, playing miniature golf with a small neon club....actually, it's more of a small, neon five iron. There's a smile on my face. It's not ten miles wide, it's just there and very noticeable.
That's it. That's what all these words were working towards, this small picture of me back when I was just a little shit, running around in superhero underwear. That's all it takes, though. This is the picture. This is the proof that I've been in complete and utter bliss. This is the proof that there was life before panic attacks, before depression rears it's ugly head every odd month and / or year. It's the proof that my bipolarity hadn't slithered it's way into my each and every day, before my OCD started to cause me to clean random people's houses, to arrange the garbage cans in perfect lines, to arrange and rearrange all the writing utensils in the house, to vacuum three to four times a day even though things are already spotless.
This is a picture to show there was a time before my mind would crack and the memory bank would be bled dry, before I'd be sick of myself for not being able to remember simple things. But, most important, this is the picture I can point to when I visit my mother and look in the scrapbook titled "Young Ryan. Ages 1-3". This is the one I can point to and tell her that she did well. This picture gives her something to remember that her first born wasn't always the chemically imbalanced trainwreck he is now.
It's one little photograph, but it matters.

15.01.10.....how you go

2010-01-15T16:23:00.002-08:00

I'm not going to start the debate on whether or not the places exist, of whether or not you get sent down or up or sideways when the heart stops beating and you shit your pants and say goodnight, goodbye or good riddance. That is an arguement that I am not qualified to make, and it is an arguement I have no desire whatsoever to engage myself in.

But, for sake of what I'm saying, let's just assume they exist. Let's just say there are the golden gates and harp and all that shit. Let's just assume that you get to spend some sort of infinity nestled into the place of your dreams, which , in my case, would involve a neverending blizzard while my wife, dog and I are happily trapped inside our three story log cabin / townhouse that can magically rest halfway up the side of a mountain, overlooking a snowcapped field of fir trees.
In the distance is a frozen pond, close enough for me to take my son (my son being my dog) for a walk and we play fetch in the middle of the pure white, the only sound being the small hiss of the wind, the little guy barking in delight as I toss the stick, and the love of my life shouting out to me that the coffee is ready and that there's a heaping plate of tofu scrambler accompanied by a toasted everything bagel waiting for me when I make it back home. I guess if I'm pipedreaming, I'm also going to throw in that Cinnabon went vegan and was able to drop cases of cinnamon rolls with extra icing onto our porch from a helicopter. This is the afterlife, we're talking about. I might as well go all out, because I'm also going to assume it's impossible to be fat unless you want to be.

This is what it would be like.

But, herein lies the problem with "what it would be like".
If there is that three story log cabin, complete with endless breakfast, endless quiet entertainment, and endless love, there also has to be the other side. The endless cancer, the endless fear and the endless wounds. If there are such gods, then there are such devils. If there are such heavens, then there are such hells.
It's just the rules, man.

There's probably a many different rooms in those hells. Rooms reserved for the murderers, the pedophiles, the liars, the thieves. The corrupt cops and lawyers and politicians probably have their own wing. This is all inside of one monstrous buliding, mind you.

And, without a doubt, there's a special place hidden deep on the basement floor. You take the bitter stairs (there are no elevators or escalators in hell....convenience does not live here) down a few levels until you hit the walls painted in not so much colors, but dampened and distressed emotion. There are no giant numbers to announce the level you've hit. You rely on stench that leaks into your nostrils and your eyes. You start to dry heave. Your tear ducts break the dam and unleash a river of liquid that glides down your flushed cheeks, meeting up with the fluttering cobweb of snots that fall uncontrolably from your crooked nose. You cough in a voice that is no longer recognizable as yours.

This.
This is when you are here.

The uneven stones stink of soggy flesh and gravestone mold, of tainted blood and panic-induced vomit. The air, thick and curdled, weaves in and out of your dripping mouth and nose and with each and every inhale / exhale, your sight grows increasingly blurry. This isn't where they come to die. This is where all come the dead.
You stop walking, hoping there's been a mistake and there's no possible way that this is where you spend the rest of your eternity. You stop walking, hoping that at any moment an alarm will go off above you, and a deepened, broad voice will anounce that your name had been mixed up with another pathetic frame from somewhere you've never been to or wanted to go, and that he's the one that will rest his head down here with the moss and blood. You stop walking, only to be pierced and prodded from behind, the sign that, yes, this place is very much for you and all of your kind.
The special place. Your bare feet covered in mud and swamp and shit, Your body soaked in forced sweat from the muggy, stale breaths. Still pierced and prodded by the faceless guards that you were never quite given the chance to see before being hauled off, you are guided over to a single, solitary corner, where you are told to keep your head down, turn around and sit without making a sound.

"This is where you go." they say.
"This?"
"This. That is all."
"Nothing else?" you ask, waiting for another shot from the guiding spears the guards cherish so much.
"Do you think you deserve something else?"
"Me?"
"Who else?...You are the only one here, the only one asking questions. Get them out now, because we won't be back. In fact, no one will be back."
"Ever."
"Ever."
"So, this is really it. This is all."
"Yes. This is all." the guard says, turning his back and heading towards the corridor in which you had just been brought down. "Let's see how relieved you are after two hundred years.After eight hundred. Don't bother with time anymore, down. It's gone. Time stands still, or time is no longer time. Take your pick. This is your world, now. Your food. Your value. Your entire life's earnings. Enjoy. Your feet will become infected from the shit and swamp below in a matter of days. Enjoy. We are done. Are you?"
"Am I what?"
A quiet sigh of agitation comes from the speaking guard's mouth. "Are. You. Done?"

You look down at the brown muck you are settled in. One thick breath. Two. "I guess I am. I have only one question to ask...."
You never look up. You focus on the melting, swirling filth that is your new residence. Not your home. A home is where you want to be, while a residence is where you are forced to.

"How am I the only one here? Where are the rest of us?"
The speaking guard raises one eyebrow, a curious stare in your direction. You would never know, though. Your eyes are buried beneath you.
This is your world now.

"Very good last question. The rest of you? There are very few. Few enough that you all can have your own cages, jails, whatever you want to call this." The guard pauses, choosing has last couple lines carefully to provide maximum effect and maximum guilt. "You see, the few of you that there are? You are a very rare breed. There wasn't a physical crime. It was all up here..." The guard pointed once to his heart and once to his head.

"...You didn't kill a frame. What you did was slightly worse. You killed a memory. An image. And this is why you are here. Here you are. It's a good thing you have a while to think about it...."
The speaking guard resumes his walk. You listen to the footsteps squish in the wet ground until they become faint whispers and then nothing at all. There you are. Silence in silence in silence while the world revolves and you sift through the death in the air down there.
This is all.

The special place. They do exist, quiet one. They exist for those that sour the veins of good fortune. For those that slice the throat of lady luck. For those that bury the best of times in the worst done rest.

If there is that three story log cabin, complete with endless breakfast, endless quiet entertainment, and endless love, there also has to be the other side. The endless cancer, the endless fear and the endless wounds. If there are such gods, then there are such devils. If there are such heavens, then there are such hells.

If there are such hells, quiet one, they exist for those only sons, those first borns, that, at one time or another, had the war in their hearts to beg their mothers to kill them. To beg their proud parent to take the life of the one they cherished. And, yes, there are some of us out there.

I'm getting ahead of myself with all this. I never wanted to start this all out with an overly dramatic battle of good versus evil, of angels versus demons. But, sometimes, just as in real life, things don't exactly work out as planned. They do, however, sometimes work out the way they are supposed to.

I can explain the whole "begging my mother to kill me" thing. I can't decide whether or not it's as sad or pathetic as it seems. On good days, I can hold the reasons in my tattooed palms and squeeze them tight, knowing full well that in the heart of the moment, it felt like the selfless thing to say. On the bad days, I can hold every one of those reasons up to my tattooed throat (because lady luck don't come 'round here...) and just wait until they sharpen. On the bad days, sometimes you can look back and just know the days you were ready to die.

This a story of sick life. A story of a self ordered quarantine embedded into a restless mind. It's not exciting. There are no rules to storytelling, though, so if you are at all curious what another walking corpse lives with on the daily, this may make sense. Or not. It's your call.

I believe there are four types of people in this world:
a) Those that are born fucked up.
b) Those that are born to get fucked up.
c) Those that are born to fuck things up.
d) All of the above.

I believe that there are a great many of us that fall under the letter "d", For the rest of you that fall under a different letter, welcome to how our world works. Welcome to the world of the ones that your parents, guardians, teachers, priests and bosses warned you never to become.

11.01.10....dark / light

2010-01-11T11:15:00.003-08:00

It has been a very long time since my last confessional on here...so long, in fact, that I don't ever feel like trying to sum up the last few months.
I will say, however, that my world and future is taking bizarre turns with even more bizarre results.
I came back from tour about a month and a half ago. Since that time, a steady diet of work, reading and quality days with my better half, have consumed me.
I have brainstormed on how to finish the last few days of the next installement of Barren Praise....an LP that will come out on Prosthetic later this year. I'll divulge the title of said behemoth at a later date.

Right now, two things are keeping me going.....two things are doing thier best to help me keep my mania in check. Those two things are love and punk.
Some people can preach the chic message of imbalance, of being a fuck up....they can make it look or sound or seem glamorous.
I want any of you that may actually read this to know one thing: it's all bullshit. Bipolarity, ADD, manic depression, OCD....there isn't one beautiful thing about any of it.
Fucked up people may be able to make great art, but they can also dig thier own graves faster than a young bride to be can sprint into Filene's Basement for a wedding dress.

At thirty two, it's finally come crashing down for me, and I've given myself permenant reality slaps.

Basically, with this entry, I'm outing myself. Next week I will be going to a doctor and will be put on medication for the first time in fifteen years. I've lived my entire adult life as a bipolar wrecking ball, telling myself I didn't need the pills, didn't need the help. Certain situations have caused me to drastically overhaul my opinions and outlook on this, and I'm about to bite the figurative bullet before it's replaced by the literal one.

My goal is to document what happens, with the medication, on here. I'm extremely curious as to how I will take to what I'm given. I fear my art will change. I fear my thought process will be altered negatively. But, more important than any of that, I fear that if I don't finally do something, I will lose my loved ones, or they'll lose me.
I can't, and won't, get into storiesof how fucked up I am / was....not yet, anyways. Sooner or later, my need to lay down words vomits everything out of me, anyways...but not now.

I have a very long break from the road right now, which is both necessary and perfect. It will give me time to adjust, time to show my wife and puppy some love, and time to create and rebuild.
All to the sound that has paved my path for about two decades.
I find myself in need of distortion constantly lately. My walk to work includes headphones and any number of bitter young (and old) men and women, screaming in my ears.
Right now, I'm inspired. I have many plans for this year, and am in the process of creating my "to do list" for the next decade. So far, it includes releasing at least three books of short writings I've done, finally writing a novel, starting a record label, buying a house, giving my wife her dream wedding, and building my dog a dog house / pirate ship.
But, the most important goal is to work my own well being and how I affect those around me.

My art is one thing....I want to create violence and never stray from that. The key is to be able to seperate myself from my various artistic endeavors.

I think I've said too much as it is, so I'll end this now.
Let's get heavy.

As of late, this is what has been destroyingme, to my listening pleasure:

Cancer Kids "Possible Dream" LP
Aerosols LP
Kvelertak - Westcoast Holocaust demo
Fight Amp - Manners and Praise
Sweet Cobra - Bottom Feeder EP
Hatred Surge - Deconstruct LP
Deathreat - Consider it War LP
Threatener - all three 7"s
The_Network - Bishop Kent Manning LP
Alarm - Crossrot EP
Career Suicide - Attempted Suicide
AWK - Close Calls With Brick Walls
plus many more

long live eleven....

31.12.09.....noiserunners

2009-12-31T13:45:00.004-08:00

The_Netork will be on a west coast tour starting in two weeks. My wife will be with them, doing a few songs and making the merch area alot more attractive. Come out and rage...and by rage, I mean bring a nice bottle of grey goose and a desire to watch one of the best live bands I've ever gotten to witness.

For those that aren't familiar with them, The_Network revisit the glory days of 90s noisecore mixed with a punk as fuck attitude. It's done in an almost perfect, nihilistic manner and watching them in a live atmosphere simply cannot be missed....it's brutal, intense, and well worth the price of admission. You may want to bring a helmet.

I'll have another update soon, but in the meantime, here are the dates above.

You can listen to them here: www.myspace.com/thenetworkmetal

Commence rage.

26.08.09.....None more connection

2009-08-26T16:57:00.003-07:00

Above is a picture of me from a year and a half ago. I had a box of 38 vegan donuts. It was a magical couple of hours.

I broke my phone.

Well, not really. Wait....yes, I did. But, it was the result of my tazmanian devil of a rat terrier, who thoroughly enjoys running between my legs when I walk around the house. One quick dash from his skinny getaway sticks caused him to dart underneath me, which , in turn, caused me to trip, drop my phone and consequently step on it.

Because of this, I am now part of the iphone generation. I am partially disgusted with myself for submitting so easily. The other part of me is proud to know I was willing to join modern technology and accept it. The iphone is.....pretty fun, to be honest.

I have found it very, very entertaining. I got drunk and got a twitter account ( I will not tell you what my name is on there....my mother occasionally reads this, and, mom...you don't need to know how much shit I talk when I'm drunk. I'm doing this for your benefit...)

I have eliminated any way to contact me on the internets besides my email address. I have no online connection anymore, and I find it exhilaratingly liberating.

That's enough about the iphone.

I went outside and sat on my front steps this morning, breathing in deeply. Fall is almost here. That magical time where nature rubs my belly and I wag my leg uncontrollably like a dog. That beautiful scent of leaves dying, of crisp, cool air filling my lungs. The only thing better than knowing fall is coming, is knowing that I'll be on tour during my favorite season. Not just any tour, mind you.....a tour that will be FUN. A tour where everyone in the van is fucking awesome. Oh, by the way....we fired another drummer. He sucked. Bad. He will be talked about forever....that's how epically bad he sucked.

Anyways, back to the tour. I can't say who our new drummer is. All I can say is that he is one of the best dudes I've ever met, and he's an absolutely amazing drummer. I hope this works out. Shit, after six drummers in the last two and a half years, I'd almost sacrifice a couple fingers to make sure of it.

The tour is stacked. The Black Dahlia Murder, Skeletonwitch and Toxic Holocaust. Basically, it's a big party. It's a bunch of great guys all on tour together. I seriously want to do nothing but go insane for the month long trek. Toxic tea for everyone.

I fly back east in two weeks to do the vocals for our new EP, which should be out before the end of the year. The plans have changed. Three new songs, one remake of an old song, and one cover that will be very kvlt and unexpected. I'd never heard the song before Brian sent it to me.....mostly because I'm not a metal dude. I can say, however, it's a punk as fuck cover and it will be really, really fun.

Lyric writing for the next full length is in full swing. I kind of feel like I dug my own grave by making Seizures... so extensive. The next LP will follow the formula.....three sets of lyrics, etc. It is going to be thematically, very heavy and very, very dark. I don't really feel there's any other option. When you create a fictional ghost town, you can't really make anything very positive. I have about six songs done so far, which, when I look at the length of each piece, could easily be a double LP for most bands. The major trick with the next record is to actually convince people I'm not trying to be as pretentious as it may seem. Let's face it.....these are punk songs put through the metal grinder. I'm better than no one. What it burns down to, is that it's one hundred percent necessary to make each effort this band does absolutely devestating. You're not going to leave in impact rehashing everything that's been done a billion time before. You create art. You make it dangerous. You take risks, knowing full well that most of the collective public will not embrace it the way you do. Fuck it. Make enemies.

I just finished Neil Gaiman's "American Gods". Thank you Ryan, from VA Beach. I know it took me forever to find the time, but I'm glad I did. That novel is great. I've gone off about Roberto Bolano's "2666" many times on here....I almost feel as if Gaiman's novel could be considered a distant cousin. Epic, haunting, and beautiful.....all wrapped up into one little package.

That's it. Signing off. I need to go blow something up.

15.08.09......

2009-08-15T14:52:00.004-07:00

I feel as though I should update this. Maybe tell you a little more of what I've done since I got home? Nah. Boring.
I did a few good things.
On my wife and I's anniversary, Trap Them played a show with SUNNO))) down the street from our house. The show went very well....for anyone who was there, you know that we made our mark....I especially left many marks all over the stage.
The next morning, I took Smashley Jean Coffins McKenney away to a beach house in western Washington. It was, hands down, the best three days our relationship has ever had. I've never seen someone become so enthralled in their surroundings, but from the moment we were within the scent of the ocean, it was as if the lady was unable to frown.
It was very refreshing.

I'm now home until October, rolling burritos and saving money to afford to go back out on tour.

This seriously has to be the dumbest update ever.

current playlist includes:
masakari
torch runner
vaccine - demo
burning love - demo
coliseum - true quiet / last wave 7"
royal monsters 7"
the sounds - crossing the rubicon
GDP - realistic expectations
saviours - into abaddon LP
Run With the Hunted

16.07.09......Nothing is Fucked Here

2009-07-16T12:39:00.006-07:00

Where, oh where to begin. I am sitting here in an apartment in Echo Park in sweltering Los Angeles, waiting to head over to the Knitting Factory for tonight's show with Skeletonwitch and Saviours. It's kind of an important day. Tomorrow something will finally be anounced that has been in the works for quite some time.
Re-cap time? Sure. Why not.

Flew into Boston. Drove twelve straight hours to Pittsburgh to pick up Scuba, followed by five more hours to end up in Indianapolis. Spent fourth of July setting off fireworks. I, unfortunately, didn't get to blow anything major up.
The first two shows on the way back to Seattle were not mindblowingly amazing. They were, however, shows. I can't complain. We then found ourselves in Denver at the Blast-o-mat, a fantastically run DIY space. I was able to see my friend Morgan and chat for a little bit. The show itself turned out to be great. After two lackluster responses, it felt very redeeming to play a place we hadn't been to and have a reaction that we got from the onset.

And then came the drive.
Denver to Seattle.
Theoretically, it is only a nineteen hour drive. No big deal for a band that somehow finds itself with more than a handful of 20-35 hour drives tucked in our distorted belts.
Theoretically.
What we didn't account for, is to have a coolant pipe burst at 7 a.m. in the middle of Wyoming.
Hello, setback! My, how I've missed you.
In the grand scheme, it could have been WAY worse, but considering we had no money and had just driven cross country in this behemoth gas guzzler, it was not exactly what we wanted to happen. To make it worse, we WERE headed straight back to Seattle. You know....home. You know.....wife and dog and close friends.
All in all....we only got delayed about ten hours. This was after fixing the initial problem and then focusing our concern on a transmission light that turned on.
We made it to Seattle, though, early in the day. I spent some time with my wonderful wife who, even after being gone only seven days, is a sight for sore eyes. I wrestled with my basket case of a dog.
We met up with Skeletonwitch and Saviours that night to initiate our two week excursion down and around the absolute hottest areas the country has to offer in the dead of summer.
First three shows of this tour:
Seattle - awesome. drank too much. very fun night.
Portland - very fucking awesome. got to hang with the Toxic Holocaust dudes. drank too much. the show sounded amazing.
Berkely - gilman. awesome. The show was great. I did, however, drink too much way to early and wandered away from the venue before we played.

After that, shit got heavy again. The van broke down for a second time in a week. After a day and a half, it was fixed, forcing us to only miss one show. We now live in constant fear of our Big Ben, our green machine that has taken our asses around the country so many times.

The rest of the shows have been a good time. We've met some very good people and things seem to be looking up. Plus, throw into the equation being able to watch Saviours every night is awesome. Skeletonwitch? Probably the tightest playing band I have ever seen. Everyone's having a good time.
This is our first tour with a major roadie / tour manager, and it is incredible how much it helps out. The dude does so much work and he's so down for the cause, I feel lucky we were able to have him give up on real life and become a road ready motherfucker.

I guess that's it for now. We've got another ten or so shows before we go our seperate ways.
So, to wrap up.....Trap Them will be able to anounce news very soon.
One off show in Seattle on August 5th with SUNNO))), The Accused and Black Breath. It's part of a Southern Lord showcase. Hmmmm......

Full U.S. tour starting in October and going into November. Details soon. We are very happy with it.

Europe? UK? We're working on it.

Oh, and Australia.....prepare to be invaded. And, yes, to keep with tradition.....details soon.

If you live in an area that feels like a heatbox, chances are we'll be near you in the next week. Come out and rage. Scars align.

01.07.09.....filth rations

2009-07-01T16:09:00.005-07:00

I leave tomorrow for another tour. I will fly from Seattle to Boston to play four shows across the country and then start the actual tour back here in Seattle. Yeah. Trap Them will be out for the following two weeks with Skeletonwitch and Saviours. West coast and then heading towards Texas. In July. The only question in my head is not IF I will get heatstroke, but when.

I've been home for three weeks and have basically torn apart Seattle.....and it kind of felt pretty fucking awesome.

I don't know if this statement will make sense to anyone, but I'm at a point where personal safety is not a concern, especially when I am on tour playing shows. My wife hates hearing me say things like this, and I can't blame her. I tried remaining somewhat calm for a very long time, but the dam finally burst. Fuck it. I was supposed to be dead by thirty....at least, that's what I figured would happen while I was in my twenties. I had a very vivid dream a few weeks ago that the blonde bombshell I sleep next to had passed away and left me to be on my own, and it was one of the worst nightmares I'll ever have. I made her promise that I get to die before her. She looked at me with such sad, loving eyes, knowing I was being very serious. This is what it's like living an imbalanced lifestyle. You cause hurt and fear without even trying. Trouble finds you.

Where am I going with this?

So, I guess where I'm going with this is to say that I'll see you all soon and I'm sorry if bad things happen to you while we're playing as a result of my increasing disregard. Just show up and let's open our wounds together. When you mix blood and sweat, it actually smells very nice.

And, if any of you ever meet my wife, tell her she's a saint in a sinner's body for wanting to spend the rest of her life with me. It still boggles my mind that two sick people can find each other.

Let's fucking rage.

14.06.09.....and rage you did

2009-06-14T12:12:00.002-07:00

I never put show pictures up or anything, but this is the exception. I don't know if anyone reads this that was there, but for all of you that came to the scion show with Municipal Waste last wednesday.....thank you. I can honestly say I've never had such an insane show. Sold out crowd of 600. Chaos from the moment feedback was brought. Blood. Endless stage dives. BALCONY dives. Trap Them doesn't usually garner that type of reaction. That night, Hollywood made four angry young men very very happy.

I'll have a tour recap sometime soon, but this show deserved it's own post.

west coasters.....come rage

2009-05-27T10:01:00.001-07:00

21.05.09.....a futile attempt at recapping

2009-05-21T12:35:00.004-07:00

So, I'm hermited away up in Salem, NH at a cheap little hotel, where I've been for the last two days. We leave tomorrow morning for Baltimore, en route to the one and only Maryland Deathfest. This weekend will begin a tour with our Swedish brothers in Victims and Seattle's finest...also known as Black Breath. I'm incredibly excited about this tour for too many reasons to list. Plain and simple? It's going to be fucking fun....two bands I really enjoy watching and listening to, and to have the opportunity to watch them every night for a few weeks is exactly my cup of tea.

Where do I begin to document the last six weeks of touring? I sat here and thought about it and have no definitive answer. Most important is that I made some great new friends....the type I rarely make, which means I actually can't wait to see them again, can't wait to have more conversations and do a bunch of dumb shit. Things were blown up, laughter was in high gear and I survived my first successful blackout.
My battle wounds from this tour are rather large. My legs look likeI stuck them in meat grinders, my torso full of odd colored bruises and small lacerations. About halfway through the tour, my contempt for playing in front of barriers caused me to leave the stage by any means necessary as much as possible, including a stint in Montreal where I climbed into the balcony before realizing the mic cord had no more give.
After most of the shows there were a few diehards that would come to the merch table where I was usually stationed and would apologize for the small attendance. I had to explain to them that there's nothing to worry about. When you're the first band on a five band package, odds are people aren't going to show up at 7pm, which was around the time we played every night on this. It meant nothing to me. We were on tour with incredible bands and just playing every night was enough. I don't go into these tours expecting legions of people to attend early. It's just not the way it works. Instead, I made sure the ones that were there, the few that were familiar with us, were given every ounce of rage and intensity we had within us, and I think that was accomplished. Sure, small clubs are ideal...basements, halls, etc., but when it comes down to it, you have 20-30 minutes a night to do what you do. Be it a kitchen, a warehouse or a football field, I just don't give a fuck. I love doing this and as long as there are any witnesses, at the end of the set, there should be no confusion as to how serious we take our art.
I got to see many familiar faces during this stint, the ones that saw us play to five people. They'd ask me whether I could believe I was on tour with Napalm Death or not. Honestly, it still blows me away. I watched them almost every night without fail. I would spend the hours before the shows talking with Barney about everything random. There is a reason some bands become icons at their respective genres, and ND proved that to me night after night. Have you heard the new record? No? Go buy it. Now. No bias needed, it is absolutely fantastic. Some of the best songs they have ever done are on it....I'd go as far as to say it's my favorite album they've done, especially after hearing so many of the new songs played live.
And.....Toxic Holocaust and Coliseum. Fuck yes. I'm going to have a hard time putting into words how much fun I had with these guys on this tour. I was able to appreciate them as people, for who they are as opposed to just the music they write. It was just......fucking fun, you know? I looked forward to showing up to the venue every day, seeing Joel stagger out of the Toxic van, playing air guitar and headbanging. I looked forward to Chris from Coliseum riding his bike around, hopped up on caffiene, cackling like a maniac. I had great talks with Ryan about why we do this shit we do.
Yeah.....the drives killed me a bit. There were some tough ones on this tour, which caused many a brain cell in all of us to get a little fried from time to time. But, every drive had a purpose, and that purpose was to get to another stage where we could take our 20 to 30 minutes and fucking go down in a blaze of glory.

I guess that's it......I'm no good at daily journal stuff. I can't break down what was done every moment of the tour.

Many other things happened during this time that I really wish I could blab about right now, but, sadly, I can't quite yet. Trap Them will have TONS of news very soon. Tours, recordings, lives, etc. All go, no fucking slow.

I can say that we are doing one of Scion's free metal shows on June 10th. It will be in Los Angeles at the Knitting Factory with Municipal Waste. So fucking awesome. We are flying out from the middle of the Victims tour for this show. Come rage. Hard.

After the Victims tour is complete, I will fly home for three whole weeks (!). I then fly back to Boston where we will do six days across the country before arriving in Seattle on July 9th, where we start tour with Skeletonwitch and Saviours. This tour is heavy on the west coast and midwest...we also get to go back to Austin, which makes us very happy. Dear Texas, we're sorry it took us almost two years to come back and visit you before the Napalm tour. We'll make sure to drop in more often...it seems as if you like us....you really, really like us.

After that tour, there's a little time off. The fall season looks very.....interesting. There is this tour that we're crossing our fingers for. IF it happens, you will hear me scream bloody distortion from the hills. I don't want to get my hopes up.

We will be recording in August. Again.....information on this on hush hush right now. I can tell you it will be an EP with three new songs and three covers. And I can tell you that it will be heavy as catholic guilt. Everything else will find it's way to the information booths very, very soon.

In life news: my wife still loves me even though I'm never home, which is amazing. When I saw her in Portland, I brought her roses. She brought me donuts.....we understand each other.
My dog probably thinks I'm a deadbeat dad, which sucks. That's okay....when I get home, I'm going to spoil the shit out of him.

Also, the Corridor album, "Redux Doze" is out now on Manimal Vinyl records. Do NOT sleep on this record.

Current listening loves:

Gallows "Grey Britain"
Stax 50th anniversary box set
The Temptations "Definitive collection"
Kylesa "Static Tensions"
Hail of Bullets
Duffy "Rockferry"
all The Who we have in the van
Ceremony - all
I don't know....lots of heavy shit, fast shit, creepy shit....there's been a lot of driving hours

and, some of you may shake your head in shame for me, but I don't care.....does anyone watch Grey's Anatomy? Did ANY of you see that twist ending for the season finale coming? I, for one, did not and it kind of blew me away. I don't know why I love a show that depresses me so much, but I do. Call me a masochist.

Done.

13.04.09

2009-04-13T08:15:00.002-07:00

We're on the fourth day of the ND tour. We are the first band on a five band package, so we're playing to about a quarter of the amount of people that will end up at the show. This would be considered yet more of the old "paying the dues".
Chris from Coliseum did and amazing interpretive trap them song yesterday. beat box style.
Toxic Holocaust introduced me to "toxic tea". It is also referred to as "the green shit". I like it no matter what you call it.
Lots of Panera parking lots after long drives.

This is all for now. Too much driving and loading and merch selling to think. I haven't been able to find time to read a book in a week. I feel guilty.

So, yeah.

08.04.09

2009-04-08T07:06:00.002-07:00

Tour has officialy begun.

I need to learn to stretch so that the day after the first show, my body doesn't look like the picture above.

currently reading: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

I said the next post would be moderately adequate....I think I've acheived mediocrity.

Give it a week......much more will need to be said.

01.04.09

2009-04-01T15:20:00.003-07:00

I went to a show last night.
A very popular American black metal band played.
Everyone in the sold out crowd loved it....except me. I don't get it. I don't even WANT to get it. I am probably 99% wrong, but it seems like that genre is saturated with passionless bullshit when it's done by Americans. I know there are some good black metal bands from here....I've been taught well by someone who has given a shit before giving a shit was worth giving a shit. But, it still doesn't change the fact that it's a lot of what I don't desire out of extreme music.
This isn't even an angry rant or anything of that ilk, but more of a brisk shrug of the shoulders, since that is really all the effort I'm willing to put into something that means so little to me.

I have four days until I fly back east. I hug my dog for about eight hours a day, knowing how long it is until I see him again. I kiss my wife and tell her she's pretty. I try to get a drink with everyone that I can handle a conversation with for longer than five minutes.

I'm going to have a movie day today.
Halfway through writing this post, I realized how unimportant it is...I could have waited a week and had much more to say.

I just sold all of my paintings and climbed out of debt. A very large publishing company just signed me for a three book deal, including an autobiography.
They gave me a ridiculous signing bonus, so my wife and I are going to be fulfilling my life long dream and moving to London in August. Everything is perfect and I have more money than I've ever had in my life!
Oh, wait.....April fools.

I think I broke my nose twice on tour last fall and never fixed it, so my breathing has become gnarly. I can't wait to have it happen all over again.
I think that's about it. The next update will be....mindblowing? Well, we'll settle for moderately adequate.

26.03.09

2009-03-26T15:47:00.002-07:00

Trap Them will be recording a new EP in july. there will be new songs and we're recording a handful of covers. Some will make sense and some will make you scratch your head. More details in the coming months. After that, we'll be doing a few weeks on the west coast and into the midwest. More details in the coming months. I want the rest of my teeth to finally fall out of my head. More details in the coming months.

Cryptic today, aren't we? Hmmmmm?

I have two short stories that, for the life of me, I'm too lazy to do anything with. Maybe when my motivation is in high gear and my debt is in low gear, I will print them up in book form and sell them on a tour. Really, don't hold your breath....all five of you that may be interested. It may take a while for this to happen.

Lyrics have taken shape for the next LP. There is a title. There are about ten days finished as of this point....well, not finished. Perhaps, we'll say, very fleshed out and 80% complete. Want the title? Not telling. Want details? Okay....Barren Praise has turned into a writhing ball of hate. I'm very satisfied with the direction.

Much like my time left in Seattle, my whiskey bottle is almost out. I'm going to go take care of this situation right now.

I saw "Last House on the Left" the other night. It was good. Not amazing. But, it absolutely didn't suck. It was sadistic and depraved, as it should be.

I don't know who actually reads all this bullshit, but thanks.

23.03.09...want/need...then/now

2009-03-23T12:54:00.004-07:00

About three years ago, I had a record collection that, quite simply put, was to die for. I was not a collector nerd. I was a music enthusiast. There is a very large difference. I had a wall of LPs. I had 7"s in a shelving unit...six drawers of EPs. It was an overwhelmingly great spread. My friends would come over and sift through them, always pulling something out and saying something along the lines of, "Are you fucking kidding me? Where did you get this?" To which I would have to reply I went to the show when they played. Or I pre-ordered it, etc.

I worked at a record store for five plus years, and every little disorted gem that came through the back of that store in shipment I, more times than not, ended up purchasing.

I didn't buy clothes, or shoes, or cars....or, a lot of the times, food.

I bought records, cd, and dvds.

Present day, I now have about a tenth of the records I had back then. I sold them all. Not for pointless shit, not for every day needs. I sold these records off little by little to afford a touring lifestyle. Those records paid for plane tickets. They paid for ordering another box of t-shirts, for recording, for extra gas in the van. Those records paid for things that were necessary.

I've had so many people I know ask me how I could do this. So many people not able to understand how I was able to part with some of these gems. For me, that's where I realized I'm different than a lot of the people I know that value their possessions more than thier lives. I traded a wall of sound for a few years of making it. An LP can't drive you around the country or fly you to Europe to play shows for three weeks.

Do I miss them? Fuck yeah, I do. I miss them dearly. I miss the pining through the shelves for hours on end, being able to grab something I forgot I had, taking out that beautiful slab of vinyl and placing it carefully on the record player, dropping the needle and turning up the receiver loud.

When I sold these records, I made sure to play all of them one last time, giving them the respect they deserved. It was much like having my own musical autobiography, seeing as I was selling things that had taken up the last fifteen years of my life. I remembered which show I had bought something at, remembered coming home from work with a big mailorder package waiting for me at the front door. All of those things.

I did what I needed to do to make things happen and I don't regret it. I know that within the next few years, I'l slowly build that monster back up to what it used to be, and I know it will feel even better this time around. Being in my forties, sifting through those shelves, will mean just as much as it did twenty plus years previous. Until then, I can be happy with what I have: less records, but a full time touring schedule, the opportunity to create albums of my own, and personal artistic expression without barriers.

Boys, girls, men, women....sell what you own if it gets you to where you want to be. Don't worry, odds are the kids that buy your records from you will become jaded and disinterested within five years and will sell them back to you if you want them. If you're a lifer, then you know this already.

This whole piece just kind of seems like a downer. In a way, it's like trying to explain your longest relationship in your life, and how it ended, and whether or not there's hope for the future. Don't worry, wall of distortion....you'll be back in my arms as soon as can be. I just have some things to take care of in this life before we'll be able to see each other again. I know you'll understand, and I promise you'll have new friends added to you on a weekly basis as long I can still find my way to a record store.

20.03.09

2009-03-20T17:11:00.003-07:00

if any of you have the catharsis LPs for "samsara" and "passion", please sell them to me. i've been hunting way too long and just want this ordeal over with.

11.03.09

2009-03-11T19:04:00.005-07:00

dearest information superhighway...

It's been about two months since my last confession.

I don't have too much excitement to report, other than the usual.

My job as a burrito roller has been well recieved by the cast of characters I work with. For the time being, as in while I'm not on tour, this job suits me pretty damn perfect. Almost too perfect. Make food. Eat food. Drink. Drank. Drunk. Go home.

My next confession is rather HUGE on a personal interests front. Let me preface this with the quickest long story short ever. So, I've been an avid fan of Clive Barker's "Abarat" series. You know the one I mean?...The one with Candy Quackenbush visiting an undiscovered world? Yeah....it's fantastic. It has all the brilliant characteristics I desire in my fantasy novels, for which I read very few. Herein lies the problem....this is supposed to be a series of five books. The first one came out in 2002...the second in 2005(?). So far, this is all he has done. Two books in SEVEN YEARS. And, from what I gather...the third volume hasn't even been started. Clive, my man....you're killing me here.

Okay....so, long story short time:

Because of how much I loved this series, I continuously shot down the very notion that J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series was anything but second rate.

Fast forward to January of this year of the rat. A local bookstore had a 20% off sale, so you know my night readerism had a huge boner. I spent about sixty dollars on clearance books. Right before I got in line to check out, I looked at one last display. There, slightly taunting me, was a hardcover copy of Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" for two dollars. Two dollars. With the discount it would be just a bit over a buck and a half. I said, "Fuck it..." and tossed it in the shopping basket.

Two weeks later, after running through most of the books I had bought, it sat there and stared at me. I finally picked it up and started reading.

Twenty minutes, two chapters, later, I closed the book, sighed heavily and simply said "..shit..".

My wife looked over at me in a concerning way and asked what was wrong. I looked back at her, looked down at the weathered, second hand book, and then simplay said, "...this is really good."

I read the whole first volume that night, unable to put it down. I waited a week before going back to the bookstore, as I was preoccupied with the 900 page behemoth, "2666" by Roberto Bolano which, by the way, was so goddamn epic, the last hundred pages simply astounded me. Highly, highly recommended if you have a good week or two to kill.

After "2666", I was ready. I went back to the bookstore and bought the remaining Potter volumes (my mother, who works for a town schooling system, sent me the third, fourth and fifth volumes, knowing I didn't have expendable income to purchase six more books that month). I then proceeded to read volumes two through seven over the next three weeks.

It was an unbelievably fantastic series to read. I wanted to hate it, and, instead, I'm in love with these books. I HATE fantasy novels...wizards, dragons, etc. never interested me until I read this series. The last book almost hurt to read, knowing this little literary journey was on it's last leg. I had to talk myself out of starting all over and reading them again, knowing there's other novels calling my name.

Laugh if you want, but the Harry Potter series was exactly what I needed.

Last confession:

As much as I love being home, for the time being, I am a man of the road. I find myself easier to deal with and I feel like I'm accomplishing things better. I don't know how long it will be this way, but it seems like it will be for quite a while. In the end, as much as I want my feet to be cemented within the heart of rain city, it's better to do the thing that I do best, which is release my bipolaristic tendencies in twenty minute intervals on a daily basis. Two homes and two lives all squished into one six foot frame.

I leave again in a little under a month. I will be on a great tour that spreads across the entire country and parts of canada. This will last for about five and a half weeks, in which time Trap Them will then play Maryland Death Fest, followed by a three and a half week tour with the swedish men that introduced me to red wine mixed with diet coke (heavenly). We aren't allowed to talk about this tour until April, but I can say this band is KILLER.

Plans for this summer are starting to take shape. Dude Fest will happen, as with a few other tours being worked on. A tentative plan is to record a new EP so that we'll have a new release in 09. The other tentative plan is to record a new LP in late fall/ early winter. More news on that will make it's way to the internerds very soon.

Fall will also, again, be spent in the van. If the tours that are being talked about actually happen, I will be in full sonic bliss each and every night. This is what I do. This is how I make my living, no matter how bizarre it may seems to anyone on the outside. I provide better for my wife and son(son being puppy) in that van than I could ever do here in Seattle...at least right now.

Shit....I know there's more to talk about. It's been two months.

Fuck it....I'll remember in May or something.

Currents awesomes:

Film:

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Little Children

The Harry Potter series (watched after reading the books....the films are great. It's as if they took the volumes and made them all cinematic novellas)

The Wackness (perfect description of a virgin that loves hip-hop in the early nineties...not that I would know or anything....except, yes...I know very well...)

Frost / Nixon
Gran Torino

Blindness

.....and I liked Watchmen very much, because I'm not an elitist douche bag that wants to watch a three hour film and then bitch and moan about everything. I also like horror remakes. Almost all of them. I like almost all comic book films. Everyone wants to find faults in everything...maybe that's one of the reasons the world is so fucked....no one wants to enjoy anything for what it is anymore. Your loss.

Books:

Again...the HP series

2666 by Roberto Bolano

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

currenty about to read: The Flood by Ian Rankin, followed by The Ruins by Scott Smith

Audio assaults:

Dismember - s/t

new Mono

wolfbrigade - comalive

rotten sound - cycles

16 - bridges to burn

warcry - not so distant future EP

propagandhi - supporting caste

milligram - this is class war

mogwai - the hawk is howling

cast iron hike - watch it burn

born dead icons - work

anaphylactic shock - two thousand years

new Mind Eraser

many more....my wife got me an ipod nano for christmas....walking the dog has never been so fun.

speaking of my dog, up top is a picture. the blanket has since been eaten.

10.01.09

2009-01-10T08:17:00.003-08:00

holy shit!
two updates in a week?
You know what that means, right? Exactly....you probably won't hear from me again until September.

Moving on....

I have started 2009 with some pretty awesome reads. Among them:

Just After Sunset by Stephen King - shocker, I know. I don't need to say much. It's just really, really good. More short stories to tide me over until this next novel (tentatively titled Under The Dome I believe...) blows my goddamned mind. He's already gone on record as saying it's his longest novel and that it's one of the darkest stories he's ever written. I guess he's tried to write it twice so far, but it hasn't come out as brutal as he wanted until now.

The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames - graphic novel. Depressing as all hell, but one of the best reads out there. Do yourself a favor and get this.

and, last but not least, I broke down and started reading the Harry Potter books. I put this off for so long. I, for some reason, really didn't want to like them. After the first twenty pages of the first book, I had to literally put the book down, take a big breath and mutter to myself, "Shit...this is really good." What can I say? Well, I'll wait to say it once I've read the other six volumes.

I was also given a novel titled 2666 from the author Roberto Bolano by our good friends John and Darci. I had read about the book, but never got a chance to buy it. At nine hundred pages, it may take a while to get through, but the plot is so insane, I can't wait to start it.

That's enough book nerd talk. Besides, I can't hang with the big guns. I like crime fiction and fantasy and horror novels. I don't spend much time with all the authors you can name drop at social gatherings.

Mickey Rourke's performance in "The Wrestler" should give him an Oscar, but it won't happen. This movie killed me in the best of ways.

fin.

06.01.09

2009-01-06T17:01:00.003-08:00

It was brought to my attention that I haven't written anything on here in three months.
So, here's a recap:
I went to Europe. Trap Them did a three and a half week tour with Grief. It was much different than our first European experience, but at the root of it all, we still had a very good time. The guys in Grief had me laughing quite a bit. It was nice to tour with a bunch of fellow native New Englanders. I also had a passionate romance with alcohol each and every night, which is understandable if I went into great detail about the tour. Most would be surprised I didn't drink more.

Flew back home and had one day off before we did a week down the west coast with These Arms are Snakes and Narrows. It was, to be honest, one big party. Everyone had a great time. Every band sounded fantastic and at the end of the tour, even though I had been out for three months, I wished that this last leg had been another week or two.

Flew home from Los Angeles to Seattle with my ladyfriend, who was able to accompany us shitheads on this last week of tour. It was nice to have her there...nice to be able to see her after such a long time apart. When we landed at Sea-Tac, we were greeted by glorious snow. More snow than I'd ever seen while living here. After an extended cab ride back to the house, I immediately had to start christmas shopping, seeing as I hadn't had the opportunity to do it while in the numerous vans.
A day later, Seattle was hit with one of the hardest snowstorms it's had in a very long time. It lasted for days, turning the city into a white wonderland. Now, you have to understand, Seattle has only TWO PLOWS for the entire city and surrounding areas, because it never snows. So, when something like this happens, the city literally shuts down. Major streets and roads are shut off because of ice on hills. People sledding in the middle of streets. Utter and awesome chaos. This lasted for three days, causing my wife to not be able to make it to work. We took advantage of the situation and became lazy hermits.

Everything after that was your usual holiday routine. We had a christmas eve gathering as well as on New Year's. I've started to write for a few things and have begun the new series of paintings for the last Trap Them record. I've been able to read and relax, so now it's hopefully time for me to be successful in my job search.

That's about it. I gave the long story short, because I'm very good at that.

LOST begins in just two weeks. I'm so excited, I don't know what to do with myself.

below is my reading list for 2008. 2009 has already started with some amazing works, and looks to get better. I have other things to say about what I'll be doing this year, but I can't talk about them yet. It's kind of like Fight Club, but not at all.

also....I posted a lengthy story below this post.

Listen to Black Breath. And Heiress.

2008 reading list:

Hollywood Horror by Mark Vieira
The Consumer by M. Gira (again)
Pictures of You by Matt Thorne
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
Liquor by Poppy Z. Brite
Soul Kitchen by Poppy Z. Brite
The Fahrenheit Twins by Michel Faber
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
D.U.C.K. by Poppy Z. Brite
Crystal Lake Memories by Peter M. Bracke
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
White Noise by Don DeLillo
The Siege of Trencher's Farm by Gordon M. Williams
The Best Revenge by Stephen White
The Secret Life of Laszlo. Count Dracula by Roderick Anscombe
Insomnia by Stephen King
Bag of Bones by Stephen King
Prime by Poppy Z. Brite
Desperation by Stephen King
Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
Rose Madder by Stephen King
Lisey's Story by Stephen King
Heartsick by Chelsea Cain
The Regulators by Richard Bachman
Bleeding London by Geoff Nicholson
Lost Boy Lost Girl by Peter Straub
Everything's Eventual by Stephen King
Bigfoot: I Not Dead by Graham Roumieu
From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury
Duma Key by Stephen King
From a Buick 8 by Stephen King
The Value of X by Poppy Z. Brite
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
Dreamcatcher by Stephen King
The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub
Blaze by Richard Bachman
Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
Underworld by Don DeLillo

The Constant Reader

2009-01-06T16:57:00.000-08:00

I have quite a few regrets. None of them amount to very much, which is to say that on the grand life scale, the things that I have chosen not to do are, for the lack of better terms, unsubstantial. I don't regret not going to college. I don't regret quitting my first job out of high school. I don't regret not engaging in meaningless conversation with everyone around me. I don't regret keeping to myself.
No, my sincere regrets are minimal. They more have to do with personal choices that I've made over the years that, when I look back, may have helped me a bit more in the present. Specifically, I regret that I hadn't fully embraced who I am a lot earlier in my days and gone for broke before I started to hit thirty.
This isn't really about that, though. This is about lost time in another area, and it's very close to being a reget that I had no control over. My major gripe with myself? I really, truly wish I had read a lot more books when I was younger. Not too major, huh? Well, the root of it is fairly simple. I've found myself so buried in turning pages over the last few months, so engulfed in fictional and nonfictional character's lives, that I wished I had taken the time to get to know even more of these people, these places, these things. It's not something that will leave me on my deathbed screaming, "Why?!!! Whhhyyyy??!!". It's just a Spicolli-sized bummer for me.
I had started out alright. My mother provided fuel for the fire in me to gather as much information (real or unreal) as possible. My birthday presents from about four years old on had always included at least one book, sometimes more. I read a lot. Not just book books, but comics, cartoons, anything I could get my hands on. To this day, I have a hardbound coffee table book about The Muppet Show that was given to me by my grandmother at five years old. Garfeild books. Batman comics. The Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown series.Christmas books (two in particular that I remember are "The Sweet Smell of Christmas", which was a scratch and sniff book that I read about forty times every holiday season, and a book with a name along the lines of "Little Miss Suzy" or something to that effect, about a squirrel trying to hide inside a home during Christmas. At least, I think it was a Christmas book. We are talking twenty five plus years ago....I can't remember everything.)
As soon as I began elementary school, the library became a regular visiting station for me. Once a week, usually Saturday afternoon, my mom would drive me down to the Dover Public Library, a beautiful, three story brick building set around a legion of maple(?) trees. I can remember looking up at the building and always feeling so important walking into that place. The building itself was old, and planted right there where it was, set back behind a feild of green grass, I can now fully understand why some people are such die-hard, small town New Englanders. The major buildings are few and far between in these locations, but they always look to have been built with the care and consideration that is probably overlooked as the five plus story addresses became dimes of a dozen in larger, more populated areas.
The first summer vacation from school? I saw that library quite a bit, as I did every summer after that. Second and third grade was when I had discovered young adult suspense novels. The names R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike come to mind, though I don't really remember much about any of the books, only that someone would go missing and one hundred fifty pages later, they'd be found. I loved reading The Far Side Comics by Gary Larson, which made my mother quite happy, since she shared my bizarre and sometimes sick sense of humor.
It was mid way into my third grade year of school when it all happened, when things got darker and, in turn, the light in the attic started to shine brighter. Some people pull out the small violins and tell you that they had no friends, that they were the nerd in school, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to be honest and just tell you I was the vanilla center in the neopolitan bowl of ice cream that was the Dover School system. I was there, I had a reason to be there, but the reason wasn't very important. I was filler. I had a few friends. None that would last beyond a given school year, but I still had a few. I was pretty boring to most of the kids that came over. I hated "playing". I hated "hanging out". I really, really liked entertaining myself. I did, however, have a friend named Conor that was a good kid. We'd go over each other's homes quite a bit that third grade year.
So, what happened you ask? Well, Conor introduced me to a great, great friend. A friend that I have kept to this day, who has been there time and time again for me on rainy, snowy, or just plain shitty days, though he doesn't even know it. He's kept me entertained and has helped me bring out some of my true emotions late at night when no one is looking, here in overcast Seattle, when my wife is asleep beside me. He's told me all about love, about life, and, most importantly, about fear. He's a fantastic, brilliant person, and I honestly hope he outlives me, so that he can continue to rip apart all the boards up in my attic. His name is Stephen King.
Conor probably doesn't even remember me. He was a pretty popular kid in my later school years, so an early friend when he was still young can't really take up too much of his memory, I'd assume. And, truthfully, if it wasn't for the night at hand, I'd have probably forgotten about him a long time ago as well. That's the nature of school friends. It lived and breathed at the first ring of the bell on the first day of the school year and tended to die a quick and painless death the moment the last bell was rung deep in June. You'd run outside, ready to throw your backpack in an open field. You'd wave goodbye to the familiar faces and then forget they existed until the following September. Zombie friendships.
Everything isn't crystal clear to me, but there's enough there to make it a story. Or, at least try. Conor's mother was nice enough to allow me to sleep over on a friday night. There was something us kids had to do involving school that kept us there until long after most of the other students had left. Not detention, that stage of my life took a few more years to come to fruition. No, it was some sort of project, or sports game.....something. I really wish I could think of it. She picked us up around five o'clock, in which we left the school and walked outside into brisk winter New Hampshire air. It was already dark, and I absolutely remember that, so it must have been around late January or early February. It wasn't snowing, though there was a faint sleet passing down all around us that had made way for a half inch layer of slush to soak our sneakers. It may have only been a fifteen second run to her car, but it was enough time to let the wetness sneak it's way in and surround our socks and chill our feet.
I had been looking forward to the sleepover. Conor's mom would let us rent movies well beyond our age. Lots of them were horror films. His house was where I saw The Omen for the first time. Same with Halloween. It'd be a few more years before my mom would realize how much I thrived in horror culture, in which time she introduced me to Alfred Hitchcock (which is another story entirely). My mom's pretty great.
We went to the independant rental store in the heart of downtown Dover, all one major street of it, and I told Conor to just grab what he wanted to see. I had no real reference. I just wanted to see any horror films I possibly could. Fifteen minutes later, while I was still trying to get my oversized red gumball out of the machine in which I had just sacrificed my last quarter, Conor told me we were all set. I gave one last nudge to the machine, and my gumball somehow jarred loose and rolled into my hand, kind of like a bratty kid who wouldn't move until you told him you were leaving, causing him to cry and run after you. My gumball was screaming, "Noooo!!! I want to be eaten! Don't leeeaave!!"
We got back in the car and took one last errand at the ultimate of childhood treasures: McDonalds. Chicken mcnuggets, fries, a vanilla shake and cookies for later. A big pile of shit that would bring a smile to any youngster's face. Especially if you were a fat kid in training. The drive-thru made the process that much quicker and we were on our way. (Anyone shocked as to why a quarter of the nation's population is obese needs to look no further than the birth of a way to have food handed to you while you're still sitting, never having to move a muscle except to fish an Abraham Lincoln out of your wallet.) The final stop was my house, where that morning I had gathered my sleeping bag and a box of odds and ends for possible late night entertainment as Conor and I would pretend to sleep when we were doing anything but.
We made it to Conor's, our hands clamped with food, accessories and VHS rental cases. The moment the back door was opened, Conor's mother just stepped aside for fear of being knocked over by the youth stampede. Our wet shoes and socks kicked and pulled off, we ran with our overstuffed hands straight up to his room. I took a second to thank his mom for carting us around. I was a polite kid. More, I was safe. Most parents like me because I looked like the most innocent little boy ever created. Times have changed.
We layed out our high calorie bounty on his floor, situating ourselves with our backs resting against his bunk beds and our eyes able to feast on the television screen ahead place in the center of his extra wide bureau. This was the other thing that made Conor cool. He had his own televsion and VCR! We could watch whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. All the horror movies we could ever ask for.
I had already started to stuff french fries in my mouth, looking out his second floor window. Conor had a pretty big backyard. It was very unkept and always seemed a bit creepy, especially after a creature double feature. The mind can race as a kid, and my attic light used to pulsate violently when I looked out there. Tall weeds, a huge, crooked tree and an iron gate. All that was missing was tombstones with hands rising out of fresh dirt.
He asked me which one I wanted to watch first, shaking one movie in each hand. I told him I didn't even know what they were. Conor smiled, looking at my soft skinned innocence. He may as well have said "I'm about to corrupt you for the rest of your life."
Instead he said, "Tonight's Stephen King night."
"Who's that?"
"You're about to find out."
He put the black VHS boxes face down so that the labels couldn't be read. Then, as if he was a magical carnie, he swirled both boxes in circles back and forth as if he were going to command me to pick a card, any card . This went on for about fifteen seconds. Finally, he raised his hands and smiled at me again.
"Pick your poison."
I pointed to the left case. Conor picked it up so that he could read the title. I silently waited, shoving a full mcnugget dipped in honey mustard into my mouth. Conor turned around the box and in the worst ghoul voice ever said, "Looks like we begin the night with Cat's Eye!"
It could have been anything. I didn't care...I just wanted to be scared. He popped in the tape and sat back down as we finished our dinner out of waxed yellow, red and white paper bags and waxed paper cups with plastic straws, all emblazed with a giant "M".
The movie may not have been amazing, but it did the job. There was a severed finger that scared the shit out of me. There was a thing that lived under a little girl's house that frightened my third grade mind. It was evil, that movie. Plain and simple. Made up of three stories that all ended on sour notes, all three of them giving my young frame a shudder and causing me to avoid looking out the window into Conor's back yard every time I got up to go to the bathroom.
I still didn't quite get what Conor meant by Stephen King night, other than the stories seemed to have been written by him. He knew how to make a kid nervous, I gave him that. But, even though I got scared, I wasn't impressed. It wasn't as if the movie had torn at my very core. Conor ejected the tape and then turned and asked me a question that I remember to this very day.
"So, you ready for the main event?"
I shrugged in an I guess so way. Whatever was next couldn't be that bad.
In a rather large and theatrical presentation, Conor grabbed the other black plastic case and turned it around so I could see the label. "You ever heard of The Shining?" he asked.
Jack Nicholson's manic eyes may not have been staring straight ahead through that broken door, but they sure as hell were looking at me. Straight through me. And, Jack Nicholson (as Jack Torrence) was basically telling me he was about to fuck up my innocent little world.
Tape in.
Cue haunting strings.
Cue opening credits.
I read the words "Based on a novel by Stephen King".
And, within ten minutes, I understood why this was Stephen King night. I'm pretty sure Conor spent less time watching the film and more time watching my reaction to each tension filled minute.
There's really nowhere to begin. The twins in the hallway. Danny Torrence's talking finger. The young / old woman in the bathroom. Everything. All of it. The goddamned axe through the door. This wasn't a movie to my young head. This was an assault. And, scared shitless as I was, I loved every single second of it. That last scene, the panning out of the old photograph, ended. Credits rolled, and I took a big breath. I turned to Conor, shit eating grin still planted on his face, and all I could say was, "Stephen King is awesome."
(Come to find out, Stephen King hated this cinematic adaptation. When I finally read the book years later, I didn't have a problem figuring out why. The things is, Stanley Kubrick made an incredible film. A haunting, intense, piece of celluloid paranoia and psychosis. While watching the film, you were trapped in the Overlook Hotel with Wendy and Danny Torrence. But, it's not Stephen King's novel. Not even close. I remember getting three quarters of the way through the book and asking myself where most of this was in the movie. It was proof that two brilliants minds may not be able to see eye to eye, especially when one is requested to retell a perfect story and somehow also make it their own.)
I didn't sleep that night at Conor's. I didn't even toss and turn. All I remember is staring at his ceiling from the top bunk and thinking of The Shining. One scene at a time. Over and over. I was still young, and this was the first time I grasped the concept that they make films based off of novels. My initial though upon this realization, is that maybe Stephen King has other novels. And, hopefully, more movies to scare the shit out of me.
I left Conor's house early the next morning. As in, like, seven a.m. I walked back home with books on my mind. It was a short walk, maybe ten minutes at the most, that I took at lightning speed, dropping my sleeping bag several times along the way. I swung open the door in an overly dramatic hurry, as if I had been chased by a band of theives. I was excited. I couldn't help it. My mom was in the kitchen, fully armed with a look of disbelief as to why her son was already home. I just told he I couldn't sleep, or something along those lines. I tried to play it cool and not jump all over her, as I had a very important request for the day. I waited a few hours, until my parents had had breakfast. Finally I begged my mom to take the library.
Now, with my mother involved, begging to be brought someplace where the sole purpose was to find things to read was not very difficult. In fact, it wasn't begging. If it involved her son reading, my mom was willing to do whatever needed. We made it down there, to that big brick building and I ran on ahead. I had to ask at the counter for help, since this was big time important business and I had no idea where to look. I wasn't sure if there was a "spooked out of your gourd" section or not. The older woman looked at me a little weird, noting how young I was, but she brought me over there anyways. She patted her hand on a book and then said, "Here they are...." and moved her hand along the whole row. My jaw probably didn't drop, but I'd like to think my eyes bugged out a little bit. The holy grail. I thanked her and began my research.
Honestly, I was extremely intimidated that first day. Probably because my eyes laid first on that behemoth known as The Stand. All ten gazillion pages of it. In fact, all of his books looked pretty thick. After about an hour (and two check ins with my mom) I made my selections. I went slow and steady, starting small. First, was Cycle of the Werewolf. It had pictures. Yeah, that was the deciding factor. I also had watched Lon Cheney as The Wolf Man one Saturday afternoon Creature Double Feature on channel ten and loved the very idea of werewolves. It seemed to be a good way to dip my foot in the guy's work(after, of course, having my skull pummeled by The Shining). The second selection was Skeleton Crew, which was a collection of short stories. Perfect introductions.
I loved them both. I read Cycle of the Werewolf in a few hours and started immediately after with Skeleton Crew. Less than twenty four hours before, I hadn't known his name, and now, Stephen King was my favorite author. It went on for years. I would take forever to read some of his classics. I never found the time during the school years, so most of the reading was done on summer vacation whenever I wasn't outside.
It kept on like this throughout high school, except I'd read less and less, my spare time filled with either jobs, girlfriends or homework. Timing never seemed right, especially for the novels at hand. They deserved my full attention, and that was hard to come by. Then, as high school came and went and I plowed headfirst into the working class, a sad thing happened. I forgot about Stephen King. This is not to say I forgot he wrote, but I forgot to read what he wrote. Visits to Salvation Army stores, yard sales and flea markets would involve me buying a few of his hardbacks for a dollar or two, but then they just sat there on the shelf. I knew they were there. They looked back at me like a sausage on the sidewalk stares at a stray dog. They knew I wanted to ingest them, to soak their words in like a blood sponge. But, still, the time never felt right.
I would still read novels, but the frequency died. I'd get through three, maybe four a year. I'd read a Chuck Palahniuk story whenever it came out. Randoms odds and ends, never really paying attention to any given author. I'd waste my time on bullshit. I don't even have an exact description of said bullshit, but bullshit it was.
Somewhere around the winter of 2003, it all came back. The reading, that is. I had recieved Clive Barker's Abarat for Christmas. It looked incredible. I had cheated and thumbed through it after I had unwrapped it, knowing that Mr. Barker had done a generous amount of illustrations to help tell the story of Candy Quackenbush and her travels. About a month later, during a January snowstorm in which I had lucked out and had the day off from work, I happened to look over at the bookshelf after my first pot of coffee for the day had come and gone. The thick, bold blue spine just shouted at me, "Read! Do it now!!!" So, I did. Twelve hours later, as the snow outside had started to die down and my fourth pot of coffee that day was on it's last cup, I read the final page to the first installment of the Abarat series. Mr. Barker was the one to light that fire under my ass and convince me to resume my infatuation with turning pages.
By a stroke of luck, the next day as I left my apartment building to head over to a corner store, hungry for a Little Debbie cake donut, I looked across the minimally busy Broadway Road in Desperatetown (also known as Derry, New Hampshire). I saw something that I hadn't really noticed for the last six months I had been there. I mean, I'm sure I had seen it, but it never gave me that click! like it did that day.
A used and out of print bookstore.
I bought my little desert snack (two of them, actually...one for now, one for five in the morning when I would inevitably still be awake) and walked across Broadway and straight into the building. It wasn't very well advertised. No neon "open" light....come to think of it, there were no lights outside at all. Unless you checked, it may as well have been permenantly closed. Luckily, the doorknob turned, a little bell anounced to the owner that a new customer was about to present himself, and in I walked. It was a fairly small store upon first glance, but after my initial walk around the walls, I found more than enough to peak my interest. I found an early publishing of James Dickey's Deliverance, Patrick McGrath's Spider and many odds and ends. I took chances on unfamiliar authors, resulting in novels like Graham Joyce's The Tooth Fairy and Michel Faber's Under the Skin, the latter author becoming one of my all time favorites since my initial introduction. It went on like this for a few months and then, unexpectedly, the store closed. I was crushed. This place wasn't anything like a second home to me (I'm not going to be that dramatic...), but it was my adult library. I went there twice a week and bought a book or two, would read them on my days off, then repeat. All of a sudden, it was all gone.
So, I started to hunt. I went back to going to the yard sales, picking up more random novels, all while those Stephen King books longingly hoped I'd pick one of them up. The shelves filled up with no set order or with no end in sight. I'd love to be able to look over at my shelves right now and be able to list everything, but it's not possible. Not because there are too many to list (though, that would be the case ....) but because over the years I've downsized, minimalized and stripped myself of a lot (....if I still had them). I gave away books. I'd sell them back for more. I moved so many times and got rid of so much stuff that I don't have any idea where a lot of my things ended up.
About a year and a half ago, when my wife and I moved to Seattle, our first apartment was down in Pioneer Square. If you ask anyone in Seattle where not to move, they'd probably tell you there. I loved it though. At least, I really liked our studio apartment. It was high up and we had a minor view of our new downtown. The thing that sold me about the location, though, was that right next door was the Seattle Mystery Bookstore. Have I established that I like suspense novels? Good, I'd hoped I was making this clear. So, basically, this place next door was screaming bloody murder at me....almost calling my name. It took a few days of settling in and aranging the apartment before I went over. One project at a time, and every box needs to be unpacked before I can let my mind rest.
My first trip in there was overwhelming. I had no idea where to begin. I, unsurprisingly, became that guy and asked the counter clerk if all the books were really mysteries. She'd heard it before and could tell I wasn't being a dipshit, just another boggled crime reader that stumbled upon the promised land. She said yes, they were, and if I needed any help to please ask. My response was in the form of a question.
"Where do I begin?"
Luckily, she laughed and shot right back, "Anywhere at all, hon. Take your time."
I bookhunted here quite a bit. My main stops were always Elliot Bay Bookstore and Half Price Books. I'd scan the clearance and discount sections first, then move on. I've found some pretty amazing buys. All the while, I'd still pick up a King book whenever I saw one I didn't have.
One local store had a moving sale. I was back in the city for the day and it just so happened to be the last day before they moved. All the books left, hardcover or not, were under two dollars. For one dollar, I found a signed first edition of Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island. One dollar. The first ten pages were worth the price alone. By the time I had finished it, I had a new member of my top ten. (Oddly enough, once I read the novel, I considered how amazing a film adaptation might be. I checked IMDB and typed in the title. Three guesses what Martin Scorcese's next film is? I'm counting the days until I get to sit in a theater with a box of popcorn and see live action versions of all the characters running though my attic) I was able to buy a few titles at that sale that I would have never given a chance. For fifteen dollars, I purchased nine new novels; and since then I've read each and every one. I think I made my money back after reading halfway through the first stack of pages I flipped.
In a roundabout way, I have Poppy Z. Brite to thank as much as Conor. It was an interview in Vice magazine with her (volume 14, number 12). It was their "fiction" issue. I was immediately interested in reading one of her novels as soon as I finished the interview. The description of her early vampire / gothic stories sounded interesting, but it was her last few titles that really caught my attention, those being about two chefs from New Orleans that had decided to open a restaurant called "Liquor". I knew that the used bookstore down the street from our new apartment on Capital Hill (we escaped from Pioneer Square after six months....not a second too soon...) would have at least one of her books for me to buy. No sooner had I finished the article, I had my coat on and was out the door. Now, I'm the farthest from an impulse buyer, but when you want something, you want something. Go get it.
The store actually had three titles for me to choose from: Exquisite Corpse, which by the title alone sounded promising to my little black soul, Liquor and Soul Kitchen. I bought all three. No use deciding. Sometimes you can just tell when something is meant for you, and these books needed a new home. I read Exquisite Corpse first. It was wonderfully written. Graphic. Emotional. Intense. I finished it in one night. I like to read the whole thing in one sitting if I can, and her novels are perfect for that.
The next night was Liquor. It's an understatement to say I loved it from the very first paragraph. Some characters immediately make their mark and, for me, Gary "G-Man" Stubbs and John Rickey were those characters. I read both Liquor and Soul Kitchen, the respective first and third novels in the series, in one night. I bought Prime, the second (or as I'd call it, the cream filling) in the series within the next two weeks. another local bookstore, Bailey/Coy Books, had her novella, D*U*C*K*, that was also part of the series. Subterranean Press had published it, signed in hardcover. It was a little too pricey for my blood, and I knew I'd have to wait until a rainy day when I was able to either finally afford it, or shrug off responsibility for a week. Neither of those ended up being the case. I came home from a very long time on the road, and there sitting on my nightstand when I came into the bedroom for the first time in two and a half months, was D*U*C*K*. My wife is very good at surprises.
I've finally started to dip back into her early work, just last week purchasing Drawing Blood. Though, I'd be lying if I said I'm okay waiting another few years to read about Rickey and G-Man. Great storytelling takes time, so I'll continue to be patient. I'll be there on release day whenever she dives back into Liquorland.
After I had read all I could find by Ms. Brite, I went back and read the interview. She listed A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole as her favorite work of fiction. I figured, "why not?", and picked up a copy. Thank you, Poppy. It was another brilliant satire, told by a tortured mind. Toole commited suicide at the young age of thirty one, considering himself a failed writer. This novel of his was found after his death by his mother, who brought it to a local college professor to read. This novel of his was then published after the professor read it and realized how good it was. This novel of his, young John Kennedy Toole, a "failed writer" who commited suicide, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981, twelve years after he gave up on himself. John Kennedy Toole, folks, is the reason the phrase "stranger than fiction" is still used today.
Once I had read Confederacy, I went back to the interview. I wanted to see what else Poppy could tell me. I read a few more recommendations Most were entertaining. Some, not so much. But then, as if it were like the books in my shelf that I hadn't looked at for so long, I noticed one single sentence that I truly didn't remember ever reading. She called Stephen King her comfort reads, or something to that affect.
Click!
She was right. He is a comfort read! I looked up from my corner chair and stared at the shelves. There was one big book with a red and white cover that was finally plucked from the island of forgotten toys. Stephen King's Insomnia. I had the time. I had most of the summer free this year because I 1) wasn't on tour and 2) couldn't find a job. I was an involuntary international man of leisure. But, if I was going to be at home for a long period of time, I was damn well going to make it worth it.
It had been, man...like seven years since I read a King novel. Shameful. I had read one short story last sumer, wanting to know the literary version of his short story, 1408, before I saw the movie. It was in King's collection called Everything's Eventual, which was published in 2004 or so (the dates aren't that important, so if anyone wants to point a finger at incorrect statements, I'll politely tell you where to put it once you're done correcting me...). Like I said, I never stopped buying them, just stopped opening the covers.
I read Insomnia over the course of four nights, two hundred pages at a time. I learned the story of Ralph Roberts and the end results of gradual sleepless nights. By the time I was finished, my heart was aching. Part of it had to do with the story itself. It was, at the root, a perfect story of life and death. The other part of the ache came from overflowing of anticipation. I simply couldn't decide which of his works I wanted to read next.
I looked back over at that pile of books and it dawned on me that I had only read the man's early works...up to around 1991 or so. My mission for the summer was to play catch up with my new old friend, to find out what he'd been up to the last seventeen years or so. I jumped around, not taking it so seriously that I was reading in chronological order. I wanted to read them in the order of which title shouted at me after I had closed the back cover, feeling the finished book in my hands. And I learned that I enjoy the new(er) Stephen King more than the early version of the prolific novelist.
Bag of Bones was the one that hit me the hardest. I'm not sure why, but this one is the be all end all for me. I'll probably read it once a year for the rest of my life. There was just something about Mike Noonan's unraveling little haunted story that left me in awe. If you notice, I'm not really describing any of these books in great detail. The reason should be obvious. No one likes a spoiler.
There are a few others that I've read this summer that I hold in high regards. Rose Madder incredibly perceptive and, for most of the story, entirely realistic. There was an underlying redemption soaked in sorrow that King touched upon with every chapter with the greatest of ease. Hearts in Atlantis and Lisey's Story, were both heavy, heavy reads for entirely different reasons. In fact, Lisey's Story left me a bit shook up for a few days. It was so damn personal and, yes, depressing that I finally had to admit that I wasn't prepared for it. At all.
About halfway through writing all of this, I finished up his latest work, Duma Key. I spent six hundred plus pages finding out about Edgar Freemantle's first, second and third lives. About why he has only one arm. About Duma Key itself.
He's always told a great story. Always. I have no complaints about any of his forty novels and two hundred plus short stories, though, I've got about ten scattered novels and a large handful of shorts that I've not yet read. But, for me, somewhere in the early 90's, while every one else in the world was happy with a decade about nothing, Stephen King was telling us all something. His work became unflinchingly epic. He became so in touch with living, dying, with human nature, that his work became more than print. The stories leaped off of the pages and danced into my attic, waking the bats, kicking out the windows and screaming out into the open air.
And there are a lot of us that realize this about him. You don't sell three hundred fifty million of your books to a select crowd. Three hundred fifty million means you've got quite a few people who like you, who wait every year or two for an announcement about a new publication. Luckily, a new collection of short stories was released at the end of 2008. Mid November, there I was, somewhere in Europe, and my inner horror nerd wouldn't stop reminding me that back home there's a brand new book stuffed with new victims and villains. I waited until New Year's had come and gone, and Mr. King and I had a coffee date in my warm bedroom while the pacific northwest rain and snow fell down hard outside. He is also said to be working on a new novel, one he had attempted twice in the eighties to no avail. It will be his longest novel ever. I've read a brief synopsis and it sounds amazing. I'd tell you, but that would be no fun. Go find out for yourself.
So....regrets. In a way, taking this long to read the rest of King's latest works can't be considered a regret, because I really was waiting for the right time. I just regret the right time taking this long to find me. Now that is has, though, I'm going to give it a hard run. What will I do if I run out of new tales to read from him? Start all over. Find all the things I missed the first time around.
I'll probably never get the chance to say hello to him, to thank him for the hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours that he has held my interest. I'll probably never get the chance to explain my gap in time between our visits. Though, I think he would understand all of this, as I am one of the legion of the unnamed that are thanked in every book, united by his appreciation for his "Constant Reader". He provides the stories, and I provide the endless support.
Sometimes, that's all it takes to make a friendship last.

life worth living

2008-10-18T15:41:00.003-07:00

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

2008-10-18T13:05:00.002-07:00

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

2008-07-23T15:38:00.003-07:00

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:

2008-07-02T07:24:00.002-07:00

"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

2008-06-27T14:55:00.005-07:00

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...

2008-06-08T14:55:00.002-07:00

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

2008-06-02T14:38:00.002-07:00

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

2008-05-30T17:39:00.002-07:00

mission accomplished

cryptic city

2008-05-30T16:22:00.003-07:00

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?

2008-05-15T05:33:00.003-07:00

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

2008-01-11T01:30:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-11T01:16:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-11T00:46:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-01-11T00:16:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-11T00:02:00.000-08:00

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.

Failgivers, volume one

2007-11-07T17:40:00.000-08:00

I am taking orders for the handwritten version of failgivers, volume one.

This will be an edition of 100.

Failgivers, volume one will be an 80 page, handwritten, canvas bound hardcover book.

Handwritten, as in all 100 copies will be handwritten by myself.

Each book will also have hand painted covers and will be hand numbered....so basically, each one is unique.

Failgivers, volume one is a collection of writings from the years of 2006-2007 and is the first of three volumes.

The price (including shipping) is $120 per book.

The books will be numbered in order of purchase. So, if you are the fifth person to purchase the piece, you're number book will be 5/100.

All orders will be shipped via priority mail. If an order is made in mid-december and you need it by christmas, please add an additional five dollars for express mail.

Any other questions or inquiries about the purchase of multiple copies, please email me at:

failgivers@gmail.com

Again.....hand written, hand painted, hand numbered and limited to 100.

here's a story that sums me up quite well

2007-09-08T03:24:00.000-07:00

About six years ago, M. Gira's latest project, Angels of Light, was playing the middle east downstairs in Cambridge, Mass. It was a shitty late winter weekday. I say shitty so that most of you who hate winter can relate. I love winter. I love the cold. I'll take that shit over a "beautiful" summer day any time. Fuck summer and fuck spring. Give me whites and greys over greens and blues and I'm good to go.

Sidenote: Isis opened this show. This was both wierd and awesome. I remember walking down the stairs and hearing an incredibly loud and heavy band playing and I thought to myself, "who the hell is this and why are they playing this show?". As soon as reached the room I could see that it was Isis. I think this was before Oceanic came out and they were playing all new material, which explained why I had no idea what I was walking downstairs into. I love watching a band that doesn't fit on the bill...it's like rooting for the awesome underdog that half the crowd could care less about but you get to sit there and have the time of your life.

Okay, back to the real story. Back to Angels of Light.
Of course, I went. Of course, I made myself look like an idiot.
This was not the first time I'd seen Gira perform, but it was the first time I thought I would get the chance to meet him.
The venue wasn't even half full, but those in attendance all had thier eyes focused intently on the stage. Every epic song was followed by a sort-of uneasy quiet, where Gira would say something in a low voice, trying to almost not be heard.
So, here's the fucked up part. The band made it through a good three-quarters of thier set before they were told that they have time for "one more song". Yeah, because of the wonderful Cambridge music curfew. There is an actual person who has to go up and tell this man that his band can only play one more song. I wouldn't be able to do this...especially at this show. How do you tell a goddamn musical icon that he has to stop playing before he wants to? Seriously....how?
It was obvious to everyone there that he (gira) was completely furious / disgusted. Rightly so. He exchanged some words (calm words) with the man who had to tell him this before he approached the microphone and said in so many words, "Well, everyone....looks like this is our last song. For some reason they've decided we're not good enough to play our full set. Anyone else find this completely ridiculous?"
This set off a minor wave of utter dissappointment in all of us who where there to watch the man do what he does. And there were those that were quite vocal about thier opinions of the club telling him to stop playing.
Gira simply looked out at all of us, pulled one of those half smiles that all older man have and said back to us, "I know...I know. But, don't worry. We'll be back very soon and you can rest assured we'll never play this goddamn place again. We'll play somewhere that appreciates art and music and doesn't worry about how much the bar has made....this is our last song and we thank all of you..."
Moments like that are hard to come by, at least the way I see them. He said it so perfect and at that very moment you could see the man who spent his life bleeding expression and would not let anyone get in his way. You saw a glimpse in his eyes of a young, bitter man still battling a world of regulations.
They played that last song. It felt extra intense, more because you could tell they were not ready to be done. The applause lasted five minutes, with everyone not wanting him to have to step down.

Ten minutes later, once all had settled and he had a few moments to gather himself, Gira retreated to the back merch table, which I had avoided up to this point, knowing full well I'd want one of everything I saw. He was signing copies of a special tour-only acoustic cd he had recorded by himself, complete with hand-drawn covers.
So, it's pretty much a given that I was buying one....and with this was my chance to finally meet the man who molded my approach to lyric-writing, who had fueled countless late night hours hidden behind a notebook. I stood in line for about fifteen minutes before it was my turn. Every time another person left the table I'd look up ahead to see how many more were left, all while trying to think of anything I could say that would be considered important enough to express. Finally, the girl ahead of me had finished her brief encounter.
There, sitting at a chair, was a quiet, older man looking tired.
I was face to face with the one and only Michael Gira.
Michael Gira of Swans.

Unfortunately, I kept telling myself this instead of saying anything.
I suddenly snapped out of it, realizing he looked slightly confused. That may have had to do with the fact that I had the dumbest look on my face I'll ever have in my life.
The older man just simply smiled, tipped his hat and quietly said, "hello..."
to where I responded in an almost shouting voice, "HI!!!!!".

Oh, man....you're going to fuck this up. You goddamn idiot.

I wrote this "HI" in all capital letters because that's how it sounded in the quiet room, now that most had left. All of those except for the ones waiting behind me, who found this quite hysterical.
Once I had shrieked my greeting, he became completely and utterly entertained by me. A smile came to his face that, now that I think back, was more him trying not to laugh. I'm okay with that.

He then pointed to the cd I had in my hands and asked, "Would you like me to sign that?"
I had to think about this.

He's talking to you. He's asking you a question. Normal, well adjusted, non-psychos respond. You should pretend you're normal. That might help to get through this. Respond. Respond. Respond.

Why I had to think about this, I have no idea. But about five seconds silence was followed by a "yes.....please." said in a voice I'd like to think was at least a bit more calm.
I handed him over the cd and asked me my name. I told him and he made a personalized note on the disc for me and everything was amazing. He handed it back, tipped his hat once again and said, "Thank you, Ryan. Have a good night."
Michael Gira told me to have a good night.
Awesome.

I'm so proud of you!! You made it through unscathed. Now just say "thank you" and be on your way. You've met the man. He knows your name. All is well and you have a great new memory.

I had taken the disc back, smiling from ear to ear and said to him, quiet, composed and oversure of myself at this point,
"Awesome. Thank you for this. You have a good night as well. Thanks...."

No....

See how that last "thanks" of mine trails off with dots? There's a reason for this. Since that moment, I've thought long and hard about it, and I don't think "thanks" was the last thing I said to him.

No....

I'm almost positve I said, "thanks, dude."
I'm almost positive I called Michael Gira of Swans a dude.
I'm almost positive I'm a complete fucking asshole.

I need to go listen to greed/holy money.

......and?

2007-08-31T23:26:00.000-07:00

i'm watching a film with what has to be THE worst subtitles i've ever encountered....unreadable by any means.

....yet, i keep the film on.

i'll be away / on the road for about 9+ weeks starting 14 days from today....if anyone out there actually reads these things, come out and we'll talk....
if i seem antisocial, MAKE me talk.
really.
human interaction is good....i just need to get better at it.

i get to be on tour with bands i truly, truly enjoy....not just ones that i feel i may have a good time with, but bands that have songs that have, at one time or another, been stuck in my head for days on end.
unfortunately, i'm willing to bet there a lot of people that take shit like this for granted.....i guess i have no choice but to be appreciative, considering i spent years playing shows to no one in the middle of nowhere.....make no mistake, though....i still loved every second of it.

fuck it...i'm restless.
i've always been restless.
my leg twitches 24 hours a day like i should be doing something....and that something i should be doing is exactly what i plan on doing for the next few years.

i make no money,
i have almost no teeth,
i have almost no big dreams.....except maybe to sustain a living off of the art i live and breathe.

i keeep telling my back and my legs to give me another 5 years, and once that passes by, they can break down like i know they will.

i turn 30 in less than a month.....goddamn i feel young.

go now.

2007-08-29T23:58:00.001-07:00

i'm trying to force some writing out for no particular reason. somehow, even though i have things written for the next umpteen million works, i'm still acting as though i have nothing.
it's really quite ridiculous.

i quess i just have to finally get used to the fact that i'm not an every day type writer.....and once i get used to it, i then have to accept it.

seattle has welcomed me back with warmer than expected weather....i'm not too thrilled with this, and if it persists, we may have to exchange harsh words.

i fucking love m. gira.

angels of light "we are him"......brilliant.

but seriously.....

2007-08-14T16:32:00.000-07:00

i have an amazing girlfriend.

record needles, a french press, a black denim jacket and a green light for tour shenanigans.

yes, yes, yes.

dayquil ramblings

2007-08-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

quick recap of the last few weeks:

dudefest......best fest ever. insanity all around.

the midwest and it's oppressive heat.....not awesome.

i have gotten to see many old faces, i've made new friends from foreign countries, and i'm in a van doing what i love to do.

things are good.

my 2 days in nyc were completely fantastic....i have now convinced myself i could live there and have a hell of a good time.

i got to see disfear last night and innebriated myself into a very exciting evening.
it was also uplifting to find out cute girls find gnarly road-wrecked dudes attractive enough to buy them a beer (even if i don't like beer.....i still was polite and drank it.....i mean, she was REALLY cute)

tonight's show in boston had great moments and i was able to see many an old familiar face.

3 dates left until i start my trek back to seattle for about 7 weeks.....then i get to do this all over again in the glory of autumn weather.....

let's just say scuba and i will not sleep one moment with the amount of coffee that will be taken in on that tour.....which basically means it will be awesome.

yeah....things are good.

procession

2007-07-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

the van will be packed and we'll be on our way to indianapolis tonight around midnight.

we'll spend the next five days polishing up the set, and the tour begins next friday at dudefest.
come out and rage.

i've been practicing for my month long saltine and hot sauce binge with occassional coffee and luna bars.
i live a very healthy road lifestyle....i usually come back bruised, scraped and frail as a motherfucker....very entertaining to look at.

in other news, "seance prime" has been mastered and dropped off at deathwish...looks like it will come out some time in october if all goes as planned.

i am reading george orwell's "1984" for the first time....i've never seen the film, so when i finish these last hundred pages, i'll be hunting down a copy to watch.

fucking viva.

run

2007-07-10T10:58:00.000-07:00

I have two days left before i leave seattle for almost six weeks. Thursday i fly into jfk airport in glorious mid-summer nyc.....should be really comfortable and exhilerating.

i will be attending my sister's wedding this weekend, complete with relatives unseen for over a decade, walking my mother down the aisle, and dining at an upscale, downtown restaurant.

i haven't had to wear "pants" or a "dress shirt" in quite a while....i think most will be surprised i still exist, since i did such a spectacular job of severing ties with any and everyone.

following this weekend of mammoth celebration, i'll be headed back to new england. four days with my mother, where we'll talk art, she'll (unsuccessfully) try to convert me to christianity, and we'll make amazing vegan food that will make me wish i could eat like i used to be able to.

then to salem, nh. roughly a day or two of practice in nh before we drive to providence to pick up the van. we'll then drive back to nh, load up and head out to indianapolis.

there, we will spend an intense week of practicing new songs so that the two new members will be all shiny and rip roaring once our tour begins at dude fest.

so, thanks to the wondrous glory that is the elliot bay used book store, i found "yes, yes, y'all - the oral history of the first ten years of hip-hop" for a whopping $7.95. if only some other desperate soul would sell back all the ego trip books, i'd be great.

seriously, it's not possible to comprehend how amazing this book is. from the candid photos to the vintage flyers dating as far back as 1975/76. reading the first hand stories of setting up battles in the park, and dealing with the gangs that ran / frequented the early clubs / shows....it's just a fascinating read.

also read last week was the newest chuck palahniuk novel, "rant".

i have a confession: i did not read diary, haunted, or stranger than fiction.

NOT because i thought i wouldn't like them....actually it was the exact opposite. I knew i'd like them.....i knew they'd be brilliant, so i just didn't bother with them, knowing full well i'd get to them someday. I probably would have done the same thing with "rant" if it wasn't, once again, for the elliot bay used books section. it caught my eye and was one of those "can't refuse" moments....i had forgotten it came out the week before and here i am already looking at a used copy....i shall take it, thank you.

it's a quick read, but it's another in chuck's long line of novels leaving you going, "are you fucking kidding me?....how do you think of this shit?"

needless to say, i'll be picking up diary, haunted, et. all very soon.....and there's news on one of his sites talking of another novel on the way called "snuff".....i have a brain boner already.

and, it looks like some of his novels may finally make it to the big screen....way to get on the ball, hollywood...good thing it took you almost a decade since "fight club" to do something....and if you weren't so scared of offending the general public, "survivor" should have already been made, but you took the safe road.

on a prticularly frustrating and/or hopeful note.....i'm not sure if "insomnialways" zine #1 will be done by dudefest.....1-may not be able to afford it until fall, & 2- i want it to not be a piece of shit....i mean, it will mostly just be stories, anti-essays, and various writings, but i want it to be somewhat good.

and, i'd like to learn to use a computer a little so that it looks alright.

spiritstench

2007-07-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

i am in the beginning stages of learning to drink my coffee without sweetener of any kind.

it tasted weird at first, but the more i sip, the more i like it....it seems more harsh, just like me when i wake up.

i'm going to say this once and only once. against me's "new wave" is a classic. a fucking modern day triumph of goddamn epic proportions.

"insomnialways" issue one is taking shape.

i have some good ideas for other issues following the initial one...i have to make sure people give about half a shit before i follow through with them.

i have another showing of my paintings that will begin next thursday at the elliot bay cafe here in seattle. The art walk is from 6pm - 9pm, but if anyone cares to take a look, they'll be up for the entire month of july over there. Once they are taken down, and i'm back from tour in late august, i'll be posting pictures of the work on the other page.

i'm going to go work on projects and watch "fear and loathing in las vegas" for the first time ever.

really.

i know....more like poser extraordinaire.

open season

2007-06-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

i've created another site for my paintings, and the "sleepwell deconstructor" series is up.
you should go check them out and spend a little money.

the link is in the "about me" section on this here page.

better photos coming...

vacant

2007-06-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

i have been busy.

since the last time i put anything up here, the following has been done:

-the recording of trap them's debut EP for deathwish, titled "seance prime"

-i have finished the series of paintings i have been working on for a long amount of time. I'll actually talk about them now.

I did a set of twelve paintings, each one depicting a song from trap them's "sleepwell deconstructor" release.

twelve songs, twelve images.

i'm quite proud of them....more because when i think back, it seemed much easier than it actually ended up being, and now that they are complete, it feels like a damn fine accomplishment.

they will be / are for sale.

as soon as i have good enough photos of each piece, i will be putting them up online for people to see and hopefully some of you are interested to the point of wanting to own one (or two).

- i am doing a zine. nothing special, but this is something i've wanted to do for more than a decade, but never actually followed through with. The first couple i do will be small runs until feel i can do what i want.

it will be a collection of writings, essays, stories and whatever else i want to put in there. I've waited so damn long, i owe it to myself to do whatever i want with them, and that's the way it'll be.

the first one will be ready for trap them's summer tour with perth express that begins at dudefest.....probably a run of 50 or 100.

lately:

distort-

entombed - serpent saints

hellacopters-by the grace of god

death breath - let it stink

abc weapons "process of decay" 12"

wolfbrigade - everything in prep for their new LP that will destroy me

distort outside of sweden-

new baroness songs

burned up bled dry 7"s

stormcrow / sanctum split LP

fucked up "year of the pig" and BBC session

phobia "cruel" LP

pig detroyer "phantom limb"

lately:

celluloid / digital media-

awful truth seasons one and two

karate kid - special edition

reno 911 : miami

hot fuzz - over and over again.....this is one of the best action / thriller / comedies ever made

last couple things......do yourself a favor and watch vice tv.....it's good journalism, i don't care what any jaded fuck has to say.

and, dear boyfriends with pregnant girlfriends,

seriously, don't even think about killing her. just leave. it blows me away that all of these idiots still think they can get away with murder. news fucking flash-- you will ALWAYS be the first suspect, moron. and they will almosts ALWAYS catch you or get you to admit to it.

i mean.....why? because she's preganant?

dude, just leave. It may make you a shitty, shitty guy.......BUT YOU'RE NOT A MURDERER.

why in this day and age does this still happen?

i could go on, but i don't need to. it's a given....everyone (mostly) feels the same way.

no death sentence....make him sit in a cell and rot away, thinking about his stupidity every waking moment.

on a lighter note, i made vegan hot pockets from scratch and that shit rules.

passover on pike st.

2007-05-29T02:14:00.000-07:00

tonight i took a time travel machine back to the late 60's....it was inside neumo's and it brought me to a point where every band was fronted by a bearded, fuzzed out young man, and the music they made had an impact that couldn't quite be described.

they sang songs about war and the damage it does to everyday lives.

they put their heart and soul into the most beautiful and defiant sounds that these ears could ask for.

if i took acid, tonight would have been a good night for it.

the black angels - probably one of my favorite bands to watch...ever.

what the fuck is "the looking glass"?

2007-05-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

i have had a busy week.

lots of old faces that bring out new excitement.

acrylic bliss is very much in effect, and i'm almost ready to discuss what this bliss entails.

try as i might, my stereo just keeps asking for more partners in crime records....who am i to refuse?

i love knowing that everything i appreciate musically can be found in the dollar 7" bins....i love knowing i'll never grow out of my appreciation of all layouts that look photocopied and similar.

the fucking d-beat.....forever.

playlist for the last few days:

new severed head of state 12"

behind enemy lines - one nation under the iron first of god LP

assault - s/t LP

breathing fire - demo 7"

hatred surge / endless blockade split LP

disfear - brutal sight of war 10"

deathreat - discography CD

sage francis - human the death dance

tomorrow ups will be delivering me a new batch of d-beatness, and i'll have a party by myself....party favors will be canvas and paintbrushes.

high point of the day so far:

finally finding whole foods and a shit ton of tofurky products are on sale.

plus, a brand new jar of peanut butter.

and seeing an old friend...it's been five long years....there'll be a lot of catching up to do.

this all reads like a journal entry, and i'm disgusted with myself for it, but my mind is on overload.

and, in one month from right now, i'll have "seance prime" in my hands and in my ears....fucking riot eternal.

distortion on high

2007-05-11T15:39:00.000-07:00

the disruptdead box set is oh so amazing.

acrylic bliss is in it's beginning stages, and all will be well as soon as all the images in my head for the last 3 weeks finally reemerge.

i get to see phobia for the first time in five years on sunday. it will smell and sound perfect.

donuts, man.....fucking donuts.

a little gift from the distorted heavens

2007-05-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

walking into a record shop and seeing a new severed head of state 12" that i was not aware of: priceless.

also, finally getting to hear the new brutal knights LP, "feast of shame" : uber-priceless.

a mighty-o french toast donut, multiple pots of coffee, and two working feet were the other hi-lites of the day so far.

today was the first warm(er) day since i've been out here. so, i went out in just a short sleeve shirt. THIS is why i don't like warm weather....for the next few hours, every two to three minutes i had to hear or answer the following:
"dude, lemme take a look at those tats!...."
"how much did all that cost you, buddy?...."
"nice ink, pal....where'd you get all that done?...."
etc., etc., etc.

bullshit.

also bullshit? fed ex.
thanks for nothing, bastards.

wild step goose step chase step

2007-05-07T01:10:00.000-07:00

my thirst for cinematic viewing satisfaction has been quenched today.

afternoon delight: the edukators

i've probably watched this film a good dozen times or so in the last year and a half....it gets better every time. when jan and jule are on the rooftop discussing the need to never hault revolutionary actions, it's almost kleenex worthy. pretty much everything out of jan's mouth in this film is a quotable.

evening double feature:

criminal

john c. reilly as a grifter. ten thousand double crosses and twists. i eat that shit up. clooney and soderbergh co-produced it, which usually means exactly what happened after i watched this film tonight.....i say, "fuck....when are you two going to screw something up?"

not that it matters, but they earned my respect when i read they offered argento a large sum of money and complete creative control to do a film of his choice.

dot the i

as i said....twists and double crosses are my bread and butter. i won't blah blah blah this one. it's a love triangle that turns into an almost memento-like thriller. great, great film.

no acrylic bliss was had today. no canvas was sitting under a ray of light with sirens calling out my name.

instead, i went grocery shopping. this would, for most people, be a pretty straight forward affair, but i somehow turned spending thirty dollars on necessities into a four hour marathon.

no, i did not purchase all my items at seperate stores....just one store.

i had decided that there must be a closer supermarket than the one i have been bussing / walking to, so i did some internetational investigation. lo and behold, i was to have TWO whole foods supermarkets right in my neighborhood. i took note of directions, and headed out of the apartment at noon.

sidenote: the hills.....oh, the hills. my thighs hurt as i type this.

fast forward two hours. fast forward to me still within 0.2 miles of my place, still walking and searching.

there is no whole foods.

there are places and supermarkets to get some of the things i need, but i wanted whole foods.

and i was frustrated.

unfortunately, when i get frustrated, i do stupid things. today's stupid thing was that i suddenly snapped out of my determined walk, realizing that with every step i was saying out loud "wild goose chase".

as in:

"wild" step "goose" step "chase" step

repeat

i finally gave up, and even though i could feel a blister tearing the bottom of my left foot, i decided to walk to my regular grocery store instead of just taking a bus.

why?

i like to overwork my body so that when i finally do sit down, i just collapse.

i made sure to buy the essentials:

chocolate peanut butter

coffee

garlic hummus

and the most delicious multi purpose pita bread ever made.

multi purpose because it has, of late, been made as a morning treat grilled to perfection with natural peanut butter and a hint of chocolate chips.

i want to sell another fifty percent of my possessions for reasons that will hopefully become clear in the next few months. once i have a thought, it won't quit until i do it.....so all these plans in my head will come to fruition sooner than later, pretty much a fact.

insomnia theatre will present a night of mgm midnite movies....this was one of the best series of b-films ever released, and i bought every one. a big fuck you to sony for acquiring mgm and then ditching the series. this was something i looked forward to every year.

tomorrow....

acrylic bliss or die. fed ex better not fuck me on this.

prelude to acrylic bliss

2007-05-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

let's just assume we're in an alternate reality.

if this was the case, i would be knee deep in new canvas frames, all ready for me to cover in nonsensical arrangements that somehow will be sold for large sums of money and/or bartered for the following: premium kona coffee (NOT kona blend...the real shit....the real real shit), records, jellybeans, and a little pabst for the lady.

i love walking around this city. I spend a good 3 hours a day taking mini trips to no certain destination in particular....it's more just being out in a sea of people, and having the satisfaction of knowing that not one of them knows my name or gives a shit what i do.

i like taking the bus, and giving my seat to an elderly woman who doesn't expect me to.

i like being extremely polite and well spoken when i go into any retail establishment, more to watch the expression on people's faces, as if you're the only one that hasn't talked to them like complete shit.

the FOX network execs should be dragged out into the street and shot dead for cancelling arrested development....it's disgusting how a show as brilliant as this got an axe. i consider it a true american show for this reason.....just like the living and breathing, it's always the smart but misunderstood ones that get left behind.

I find that bryan maclean's voice is one of the most soothing sounds i will ever hear, and both his releases of collected songs on sundazed will go down as lifetime ear candy of mine.

absolutely and simultaneously haunting and beautiful.

one month from today i fly back out to new hampshire, and two days later will begin recording "seance prime".

i'm not quite sure how to explain how excited i am for this. i'm in a band making music that is everything i've always wanted to do. Not many people get to say that...there are always things you want to accomplish but never get a chance to, and for the first time i am able to say that things feel right. This is not to say i still don't spend days at a time with my head in my hands and an overwhelming pain in my heart and back.

that's part of the harsh reality of living with a manic and bipolar personality. unless you take medication, the highs are most of the time outweighed by the lows. the only thing you can really do is deny the lows any leeway. this involves waking from two hours of sleep, and forcing yourself out of bed so that you don't stay there for days on end, which i will readily admit would be all to easy to do.

my stress pains lately have been oppressive, to put it mildly.

not much else to say about that.....it's nothing new. looking back, i've been playing this game with myself since about the age of five. it's weird....i have flashbacks to my younger years, and now knowing what i'm like, and the personality disorders i have, i remember certain times that foreshadowed what was to / has come.

i don't know if fed ex delivers on sundays, but if they do, i'll be need deep in acrylic bliss tomorrow.

if not.....sunday will be book day.....and "find a show" day. i spent a couple years hermitizing myself, and though i don't regret it, i'm elated to be dragging myself back into an environment that i leave with a million new ideas a night.

i'd like to find a good two dozen lost souls out here that want to create music with me, and i'd like to spend every waking moment making sounds and speaking in tongues that the majority of modern society will never understand.

i told someone important to me one time that most people have that one ability or legacy that they will carry with them throughout their pulsed existence.....i was born to fuck things up....and that's what i plan to do.

in the beginning, there was fuck-all

2007-05-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

There's really no good way to start a conversation anymore. Not that the conversation won't be engaging, it's more the question of how to tell someone you're planning on doing everything the wrong way because you're convinced thirty years after you die it will be decided you've been right the whole time.
Living the head of a clusterfuck is not only a great deal of pointless work, but also a matter of unexplainable sacrifice and dedication. I mean, you REALLY have to want to do everything wrong just to make a dent in the "what are you doing with your life?" sweepstakes.
I've heard the expressions "big things" or "bigger things" placed on numerous, plentiful banners for as long as I can remember. Not to say it's directed towards myself (though, I have heard it on occassion....), but more on an underlying base that everything and everyone is dropped on with no real start or ending destination.
I don't know what it means, nor do I think I want to know. Imagine living a good full century waiting for your "big things" to happen, and on your dying day, some random bastard walks into your home, taps you on the shoulder and whispers into your wrinkled ear, "it happened when you were eight years old.....you won the second grade spelling bee."
Shit.
Are you kidding me? Second grade?
This, by the way, will not be happening to me because I never won a spelling bee, though I came close in the fifth grade until I studdered and added an extra "o" to the word neighbor, therefore terminating my as-yet ignited legacy.

As far as "big things" that are supposed to be milestones in your life, I have done my best to ruin them or avoid them early on. As this is being written, I sit in front of the keyboard as unemployed, divorced, unable to reproduce, bipolar and antisocial.
All before the age of thirty.
Let the good times roll.

I guess we can assume this is my "big thing".....my "what are you doing with your life?" for dummies. Shit, they've made them for everything else.

insomnianswers

2007-05-03T00:24:00.000-07:00

dear failgiverous self....i had such high hopes for you, and then i went and all but abandoned you for two months....my bad.

maybe if i finally put up all the shit i've written in the last eight weeks, your ulcer will settle.
maybe?

in the meantime, here are the events, sounds, and visuals that have been my life'sblood.

Celluloid:
The Stratosphere Girl
Boyz n the Hood
Pollack
Blow-Up
Stoned

Distortion, Blips, Bleeps, Strumming, and uncomfortable noise:
Parts & Labor - stay afraid & live @chop suey, seattle
C.aarme - Vita
Bryan MacLean - Candy's Waltz
World Burns to Death - totalitarian sodomy
adult. - live @ chop suey, seattle
Rise and Fall - into oblivion
Sweet Cobra - 3 songs from new LP & live in chicago
CocoRosie- adventures of....
Triumph of lethargy skinned alive to death - live @ showbox, seattle
Motorhead - ace of spades deluxe edition
the horror - live @ lit lounge, nyc
Architect - all is not lost & live @ siren records, PA
Amy Winehouse - all
Born Dead Icons - all
and more...much more. Muisc has never played such a prevelant role in my life as it does at the moment and i plan to kep it that way.

General insomniawesomeness:
-spending time in a van, and playing music to new faces for the first time in 4 years.
-the maniac mansion in worcester, ma....blood, bodies, and broken bottles everywhere....the most perfect tour kickoff i could have ever asked for
-spending quality bro-down time in brooklyn with the one and only scuba, one of the most solid dudes i will ever have the pleasure of knowing
-ridiculous amounts of natural peanut butter on luna bars
-seeing an old friend in louisville that i wasn't sure i'd ever have the chance to see again....another steve, another amazing dude
-the new trash art motto sweepstakes
-atlas in bklyn....vegan crepes. fuck.
-coming back to furniture in the apartment
-smash coffins with black hair
-Critical Space by Greg Rucka
-vegan garden "chicken nuggets"
-mastering the art of the 5 ingredient peanut butter cookie
-coffee, soy creamer, and daily three to four hour walks around seattle. I love this city already.
i was born to be surrounded by bricks and concrete.
-"seance prime" lyrics

primetime

2007-02-15T09:58:00.000-08:00

I'll be recording the audio version of the "failgivers, volume one" book this week....my best friend, and only true partner in musical crime, brian izzi, will be providing background music and noise on selected parts.
I'll have more info soon, but i'll be handwriting 100 copies of the book in a hardcover version....they'll have hand painted covers.
yeah, really....handwritten. Not that i think this will be anyone's favorite book ever, but i thought of how intimate and rare it would be to have the opportunity to own a piece of written work that has been literally transformed into a piece of art.
maybe 2 people will buy it...maybe all 100 will sell...i'm not too concerned....it's more something i'm doing for myself.

volume one was started in march of 2006, and was finished in august.
So, to keep the timeline patterned, i'll begin volume two in march of 2007.

weakened warriors

2007-02-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

in two weeks and 3 days, i'm packing shop and heading west ....my horse will be a toyota camry....to be 29 and be able to fit almost all of my worldy possessions in one half of this car makes me feel pretty great.

i've downsized more in the last 2 months than i ever figured i would have to again.....but, it just kept going, and i kept realizing i needed less and less shit.

from a year ago at this point, i have half the records, half the cd's, and probably about a tenth of the dvd's that i had. i now have a bunch of books and a shitload of canvas with paint all over it.

today i downsize some more, getting rid of unneeded record cubes and shelves, and tomorrow ii'll be storing my paintings for the next 2 months while i settle into the new surroundings.

the walls are bare.
the air is cold.
and the music is playing loud.

while all of this moving is going on, i'm booking a tour, and trying to make things happen that should be happening.
i've said it before, but i'll say here again....i plan on living my thirties like i should have lived my twenties, which is acting like a stupid fucking teenager.
some of us are born to fuck things up...it's what we're good at.
some of us are born to spread the gospel of distortion.
all hail feedback.

some recommended veiwing/listening/reading that has taken me hostage in the last few days:
author michel faber

the only show that matters

fin.
rjm

first words, last laughs

2007-02-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

while writing this, the first post i'm making, i was interrupted by the blinding glare of the sun coming out from behind an enormous grey cloud.
and there, for the first time, i actually witnessed a silver lining.
bizarre.

as time goes on, this blog will be used for random rants, updates on publications, and to showcase certain works of art of mine that i feel like sharing.

sentences will not be sentences, almost everything will not be capitalized, and it will be done just like how i think...which means very scattered, very untraditional, and...very bipolar.