11.03.09

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.