Why Bother?

Haven't really felt like writing since we've been back. Probably because of the heat. So, for the majority of this post, I shall resort to using god's gift to those who don't really feel like writing: bullet points.

But first, I would like to post nearly worthless pictures and video from the Tom Waits concert. Jeannie and I got to Columbus, OH without a hitch, ate a decent Vietnamese dinner at what appeared to be a scary scary Vietnamese restaurant, and then went to the Ohio Theatre, which looked like this:


It was described thusly by the metal heads sitting behind us: "This place is awesome. It's like, bejeweled. It's like a Faberge egg."

The concert was very good, I thought. Not life-changing good, but pretty much just what I expected. I came out of the show having decided that if Tom Waits ever goes on a solo tour, no band, I would slaughter little children in order to get tickets. This is a very poor quality video of a little sliver of "Lie to Me":




Now for the bullet points:

* Tom Waits looks, from a very far distance, like a cross between Frankenstein's monster and the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz.

* Once again I was reminded: it's all about the bass, drums, and vocals.

* Though our stay in Ohio was quick, it was damned good to see the Schluetermetz'. Hard to believe that we'll probably never go back to good ol' Bellefountaine, OH again.

* There are certain St. Louis foods that Jeannie and I crave (Imo's Pizza, gyros from Olympia), but no Baltimore foods we crave. When we leave B-more, is there food that we'll crave? Crab cakes? Enchiladas with a fried egg on top?

* Hanging out with Rich Riley was one of those old fashioned, go-out-for-a-drink-and-get-a-little-tipsy-and-talk-about-life type nights the likes of which I haven't had in awhile. It was especially nice that Dressel's was nearly empty and quiet and playing Dixieland jazz.

* I like the new Coldplay cd, though I have mixed feelings towards Coldplay.

* I like the new cd by the Fleet Foxes. I think I could confidently recommend it to many people who read this blog.

* Adios!, Chuy Arzola's mexican restaurant!

* J. Knese, just by being himself, makes me laugh just about more than anybody I know. And I was truly surprised and bummed to hear about Casey's roller-derby induced broken arm.

* E. Elz makes me physically ill.

* "America's Best Value Inn" in Zanesville, OH is probably not really America's best value.

* I am overwhelmed by the gifts that Jeannie and I received while we were in St. Louis.

* "The Tudors" is not as good as "Rome". Not yet, anyway. We've only watched one episode.

* I indulged in beer and meat while I was in St. Louis, but now I am back on the starvation/exercise/misery wagon.

With a Little Help From My Friends

Still on the road. What a wonderful trip it's been. Don't really have the time to write a big post, but I wanted to give a shoutout to Uncle Rico. Thanks for hanging out with the J-Dog and I last night, Buddy. I've been picking around today with Whitey. He looks and feels great. And I can't wait to get home and try out the Pod. Reading the users manual makes me believe that this is the piece of equipment that I have been longing for but have been too lazy to get off my arse and actually look for.

Next round of beers is on me...

More once we get home.

"Hash browns, hash browns, you know I can't be late..."

Tomorrow: A trip to St. Louis with a stop in Ohio to see the Schluetermetz' and Tom Waits.

What a great sentence to write.

More from the road...

Cause I Look Really Good Bald...

...was the answer given to me today by a mentally challenged customer when I asked him why he shaved his head. For the record, however, he does not look as good as me bald. Not by a long shot.

Not too much has been going on. Working out a lot. Running a lot. Not eating a lot. Feeling good. Thinking a lot about music but not actually doing more work. Haven't touched the song that still needs a lot of work, but I might have come up with a very basic idea for a new one. We shall see.

Saw a picture today on Facebook of all the cool kids in Chicago, and it looked like a good time. Sure would've been fun to head to Chicago on a road trip to see the play and catch up with Bewley, but alas, the timing was just slightly wrong. Sure hope the Schluetermetz' write about how it went...(hint, hint)

Tomorrow, my goal is to go to Sherwin-Williams and buy me some aluminum roof coating and paint our roof a nice, shiny, reflective silver so as to try and drop the average temperature of our apartment by a few degrees this summer. I'm looking forward to getting up on the roof and rockin' out to some Tom Waits in the ol' headphones and gettin' a little sun and having some fun.

This week, by the way, is my "Tom Waits Immersion" week. In preparation for the concert (this weekend!), I have been reading a good biography, listening to all his cd's (at first, alphabetically by song, but I listened all day on Friday and only got up to the E's! So I switched to chronologically. And I'll probably skip over some of The Black Rider. Sorry, Tom.), and gettin' myself all pumped up. I'm very excited.

I haven't had any booze or bacon since June 1st! Who are you and what have you done with the real Dan O'Brien?

On and On It Goes

I spent nearly all day yesterday working on some music, and I'm pretty pleased with the results. And, more importantly, Jeannie seemed to like it, too. It's not finished yet, I still have to re-record all the vocals and add the last verse and chorus and ending and all that jazz, but I think it's a promising start. I'll just go ahead and put it over there on the sidebar...

Have a day off tomorrow, during which I hope to go to the gym, get laundry done, and maybe play a little Civilization III, which I haven't played in about a bazillion years. But I saw the CD-ROM for it the other day when I was fishing in my desk drawer for something, and it put me in the mood.

In the past 10 minutes, I have consumed:

1. One Cheeserito Just Cheese.
2. About 15 strawberries.
3. 3 dill pickle chips.

I'm wondering if eating fruit right before bed is gonna keep me awake.

Thaings for dooing sumthing you dont wunt to do.

Also not in my job description:

chasin' transvestite shoplifters all over the parking lot and traffic circle.


Long story that can pretty much be summed up in that one sentence.

It's good to be home. I'm gonna have a G&T.

Not Too Shabby

It's been a few days since I've written, and I have to say, things have been going pretty well during that time. The diet is still going strong; I still have yet to eat any meat (despite my proclamation that I was going to be eating some [I forgot to defrost the bacon]), and I've lost about 6 or seven pounds in the last week and a half or so. I'd like to lose another ten.

But anyway, I feel good. Much less like a tub of shite. Work has been good, easy, and I've had too many people scheduled which means I don't spend all day by myself, I actually get to hang out with people, which is nice.

It's been alternating between balls-ass hot and just warm. On the balls-ass days, the Jeanners and I turned on the window unit in the bedroom and camped out in there. Played some gin rummy.

The Tom Waits concert is only two weeks away!

Been doing some tentative, hesitant song writing, and it's felt good. I think that, in accordance with my new "write the song before you record it" guideline, I'm going to work on songs with the idea that I should be able to play it live. Maybe even go to some (shudder) open mic nights on the down-low. Who knows. Maybe not.

The other day at work, Chris asked me what my favorite Tom Waits album is, and what my favorite TW song is. It was tough to answer, but I've recently discovered a version of a song that I think encapsulates everything that I like about him. So I'll go ahead and post it over there on the side...

A day off tomorrow. Chores, and maybe some recording. Wish gas weren't so damned expensive or I'd consider heading to the beach...

Happy Birthday, PKP! I may take you up on your omelet offer.

It's Finally Here!

Yippie! It's finally arrived! The day of the year when it gets balls-ass hot in our apartment is really here!

So yeah, it's getting pretty derned hot here in B-More. Which is bad because it's uncomfortable but good cuz then the J-Dog hangs around with less clothes on.

The diet is still going well. Tomorrow morning I'm planning on eating the first meat that I've eaten since last Sunday morning. And that includes cock-meat!

Work has been feeling painful lately...

I've been thinking ahead to eventually moving away from Baltimore, and also thinking ahead about potential future employment, and right now the only job that seems halfway tolerable would be breakfast cook at a diner. It would be funnier if it wasn't true. (sigh).

Pinch a muthaf***in' inch

I am finally, FINALLY starting to shake the disease I picked up from Jack/Henry Steinmetz. Damn those Steinmetz kids and their immune-system-resistant viral strains.

However, thanks to Schlueter and all the fruit that she fed us while we were visiting, I have been on a diet since we got back to Baltimore. Eating a lot less, eating a lot of fruit, more veggies, etc. In fact, I'm hungry right now. That's gotta be a good thing, right? I think I can feel my six pack starting to poke out a little bit...

I am so very very tired of advertisements where they take half of one person's face and put it next to the other half of a different person's face and it makes a single, really f***ed up-looking single face. I'm really tired of those.

I am pleased to announce that "Operation Buy a Used Broken MP3 player on E-bay and Use the Parts to Fix My Broken MP3 Player - 2008" was a success. So my good ol' music player is working great again and it only cost me twenty bucks.

I was listening to the Tom Waits song "Time" the other night on my way home from work, and I think I stumbled on the idea that will guide me through my next round of recording: write the songs first, and then try and record them. I don't know why this always seems to be the opposite of how I work, but I think I need to focus more on the words and less on the music.

Oh, and I don't know if y'alls read my friend Jeff's blog (which is great in and of itself, although he hasn't written in a few days), but he links to this blog about Ice-T and his wife, which is very funny. Although it has occasional semi-sorta nudity, so you might not want to view it at work. Check it out.

Tom Waits Self Interview

This was posted on Tom Waits' website, but I'll repost the thing in its entirety here just in case they take it off his site:

TOM WAITS’
TRUE CONFESSIONS

(A conversation with himself)

I must admit, before meeting Tom, I had heard so many rumors and so much gossip that I was afraid. Frankly, his gambling debts, his animal magnetism, coupled with his disregard for the feelings of others… His elaborate gun collection, his mad shopping sprees, the face lifts, the ski trips, the drug busts and the hundreds of rooms in his home. The tax shelters, the public urination…I was nervous to meet the real man himself. Baggage and all. But I found him to be gentle, intelligent, open, bright, helpful, humorous, brave, audacious, loquacious, clean, and reverent. A Boy Scout, really (and a giant of a man). Join me now for a rare glimpse into the heart of Tom Waits. Remove your shoes and no smoking, please.

Q: What’s the most curious record in your collection?
A: In the seventies a record company in LA issued a record called “The best of Marcel Marceau.” It had forty minutes of silence followed by applause and it sold really well. I like to put it on for company. It really bothers me, though, when people talk through it.

Q: What are some unusual things that have been left behind in a cloakroom?
A: Well, Winston Churchill was born in a ladies cloakroom and was one sixteenth Iroquois.

Q: You’ve always enjoyed the connection between fashion and history…talk to us about that.
A: Ok let’s take the two piece bathing suit, produced in 1947 by a French fashion designer. The sight of the first woman in the minimal two piece was as explosive as the detonation of the atomic bomb by the U.S. at Bikini Island in the Marshall Isles, hence the naming of the bikini.

Q: List some artists who have shaped your creative life.
A: Okay, here are a few that just come to me for now: Kerouac, Dylan, Bukowski, Rod Serling, Don Van Vliet, Cantinflas, James Brown, Harry Belafonte, Ma Rainey, Big Mama Thorton, Howlin Wolf, Lead Belly, Lord Buckley, Mabel Mercer, Lee Marvin, Thelonious Monk, John Ford, Fellini, Weegee, Jagger, Richards, Willie Dixion, John McCormick, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Hoagy Carmichael, Eurico Caruso.

Q: List some songs that were beacons for you.
A: Again, for now… but if you ask me tomorrow the list would change, of course.
Gershwin’s second prelude, “Pathatique Sonata”, “El Paso”, “You’ve Really Got Me” (Kinks), “Solider Boy” (Shirelles), “Lean Back” (Fat Joe), “Night train”, “Come In My Kitchen” (R.J.) “Sad Eyed Lady”, “Rite of Spring Ode to Billy Joe”, “Louie Louie”, “Just a Fool” (Ike and Tina), “Prisoner of Love” (J.B.) “Pitch a Wing Dan Doodlec (all night long)” H. Wolf, “Ringo” (Lorne Green), “Ball and Chain”, “Deportee”, “Strange Fruit”, “Sophisticated Lady”, “Georgia On My Mind”, “Can’t Stop Loving You”, “Just Like A Woman”, “So Lonesome I Could Cry”, “Who’ll Stop The Rain?”, “Moon River”, “Autumn Leaves”, “Danny Boy”, “Dirty Ol’ Town”, “Waltzing Mathilda”, “Train Keeps a Rollin”, “Boris the Spider”, “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me”, “Red Right Hand”, “All Shook Up”, “Cause Of It All”, “Shenandoah”, “China Pig”, “Summertime”, “Without a Song”, “Auld Ang Syne”, “This is a Man’s World”, “Crawlinking Snake”, “Nassun Dorma”, “Bring it on Home to Me”, “Hound Dog”, “Hello Walls”, “You Win Again”, “Sunday Morn’ Coming Down”, “Almost Blue”, “Pump It Up”, “Greensleeves”, “Just Wanna See His Face” (Stones), “Restless Farewell”, “Fairytale of NY”, “Bring Me A Little Water Sylvie”, “Raglan Road”, “96 Tears”, “In Dreams” (R. Orbison), “Substitute”, “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues”, Theme from Rawhide, “Same Thing”, “Walk Away Rene”, “For What it’s Worth”, theme from “Once Upon A Time In America”, “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing”, “Oh Holy Night”, “Mass in E Minor”, “Harlem Shuffle”, “Trouble Man”, “Wade in The Water”, “Empty Bed Blues”, “Havanagila”

Q: What’s heaven for you?
A: Me and my wife on Rte. 66 with a pot of coffee, a cheap guitar, pawnshop tape recorder in a Motel 6, and a car that runs good parked right by the door.

Q: What’s hard for you?
A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.

Q: What’s wrong with the world?
A: We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. Leona Helmsley’s dog made 12 million last year… and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio made $30,000. It’s just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.

Q: Favorite scenes in movies?
A: R. De Niro in the ring in Raging Bull. Julie Christie’s face in Heaven Can Wait when she said, “Would you like to get a cup of coffee?” James Dean in East of Eden telling the nurse to get out when his dad has had a stroke and he’s sitting by his bed. Marlena Dietrich in Touch of Evil saying “He was some kind of man.” Scout saying “Hey Mr. Cunningham” in the scene in To Kill A Mockingbird. Nic Cage falling apart in the drug store in Matchstick Men…and eating a cockroach in Vampire’s Kiss. The last scene in Chinatown.

Q: Can you describe a few other scenes from movies that have always stayed with you?
A: Rod Steiger in Pawn Broker explaining to the Puerto Rican all about gold. Brando in The Godfather dying in the tomatoes with scary orange teeth. Lee Marvin in Emperor Of The North riding under the box car, Borgnine bouncing steel off his ass. Dennis Weaver at the motel saying “I am just the night man,” holding onto a small tree in, Touch of Evil. The hanging in Oxbow Incident. The speech by Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner as he’s dying. Anthony Quinn dancing on the beach in Zorba. Nicholson in Witches of Eastwick covered in feathers in the church as the ladies stick needles in the voodoo doll. When Mel Gibson’s Blue Healer gets shot with an arrow in Road Warrior. When Rachel in The Exorcist says “could you help an old alter boy father?” The blind guy in the tavern in Treasure Island. Frankenstein after he strangles the young girl by the river.

Q: Can you tell me an odd thing that happened in an odd place? Any thoughts?
A: A Japanese freighter had been torpedoed during WWII and it’s at the bottom of Tokyo Harbor with a large hole in her hull. A team of engineers was called together to solve the problem of raising the wounded vessel to the surface. One of the engineers tackling this puzzle said he remembered seeing a Donald Duck cartoon when he was a boy where there was a boat at the bottom of the ocean with a hole in its hull, and they injected it with ping-pong balls and it floated up. The skeptical group laughed but one of the experts was willing to give it a try. Of course, where in the world would you find twenty million ping-pong balls but in Tokyo? It turned out to be the perfect solution. The balls were injected into the hull and it floated to the surface, the engineer was altered. Moral- solutions to problems are always found at an entirely different level; also, believe in yourself in the face of impossible odds.

Q: Most interesting recording you own?
A: It’s a mysteriously beautiful recording from, I am told, Robbie Robertson’s label. It’s of crickets. That’s right, crickets, the first time I heard it… I swore I was listening to the Vienna Boys Choir, or the Mormon Tabernacle choir. It has a four-part harmony it is a swaying choral panorama. Then a voice comes in on the tape and says, “What you are listening to is the sound of crickets. The only thing that has been manipulated is that they slowed down the tape.” No effects have been added of any kind except that they changed the speed of the tape. The sound is so haunting. I played it for Charlie Musselwhite and he looked at me as if I pulled a Leprechaun out of my pocket.

Q: You are fascinated with irony, what is irony?
A: Chevrolet was puzzled when they discovered that their sales for the Chevy Nova were off the charts everywhere but in Latin America. They finally realized that “Nova” in Spanish translates to “no go.” Not the best name for a car… anywhere “no va”.

Q: Do you have words to live by?
A: Jim Jarmusch once told me “Fast, Cheap, and Good… pick two. If it’s fast and cheap it wont be good. If it’s cheap and good it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and good it wont be cheap.” Fast, cheap and good… pick (2) words to live by.

Q: What is on Hemmingway’s gravestone?
A: “Pardon me for not getting up.”

Q: How would you compare guitarists Marc Ribot and Smokey Hormel?
A: Octopus have eight and squid have ten tentacles, each with hundreds of suction cups and each have the power to burst a man’s artery. They have small birdlike beaks used to inject venom into a victim. Some gigantic squid and octopus with one hundred foot tentacles have been reported. Squids have been known to pull down entire boats to feed on the disoriented sailors in the water. Many believe unexplained, sunken deep-sea vessels, and entire boat disappearances are the handiwork of giant squid.

Q: What have you learned from parenthood?
A: “Never loan your car to anyone to whom you’ve given birth.” - Erma Bombeck

Q: Now Tom, for the grand prize… who said, “He’s the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of”?
A: Mae West

Q: Who said, “Half the people in America are just faking it”?
A: Robert Mitchem (who actually died in his sleep). I think he was being generous and kind when he said that.

Q What remarkable things have you found in unexpected places?
A:
1. Real beauty: oil stains left by cars in a parking lot.
2. Shoe shine stand that looked like thrones in Brazil made of scrap wood.
3. False teeth in pawnshop windows- Reno, NV
4. Great acoustics: in jail.
5. Best food: Airport in Tulsa Oklahoma.
6. Most gift shops: Fatima, Portugal.
8. Most unlikely location for a Chicano crowd: A Morrissey concert.
9. Most poverty: Washington D.C.
10 A homeless man with a beautiful operatic voice singing the word “Bacteria” in an empty dumpster in Chinatown.
11. A Chinese man with a Texan accent in Scotland.
12. Best nights sleep-in a dry riverbed in Arizona.
13. Most people who wear red pants- St. Louis.
14. Most beautiful horses, N.Y.C.
15. A judge in Baltimore MD1890 presided over a trial where a man who was accused of murder and was guilty, and convicted by a jury of his peers… and was let go- when the judge said to him at the end of the trial “You are guilty sir… but I cannot put in jail an innocent man.” You see - the murderer was a Siamese twin.
16. Largest penis (in proportion to its body)- The Barnacle

Q: Tom, you love words and their origins. For $2,000…what is the origin of the word bedlam?
A: It’s a contraction of the word Bethlehem. It comes from the hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem outside London. The hospital began admitting mental patients in the late fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century it became a lunatic asylum. The word bedlam came to be used for any madhouse- and by extension, for any scene of noisy confusion.

Q: What is up with your ears?
A: I have an audio stigmatism where by I hear things wrong- I have audio illusions. I guess now they say ADD. I have a scrambler in my brain and it takes what is said and turns it into pig Latin and feeds it back to me.

Q: Most thrilling musical experience?
A: My most thrilling musical experience was in Time Square, over thirty years ago. There was a rehearsal hall around the Brill Building where all the rooms were divided into tiny spaces with just enough room to open the door. Inside was a spinet piano- cigarette burns, missing keys, old paint and no pedals. You go in and close the door and it’s so loud from other rehearsals you can’t really work- so you stop and listen and the goulash of music was thrilling. Scales on a clarinet, tango, light opera, sour string quartet, voice lessons, someone belting out “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”, garage bands, and piano lessons. The floor was pulsing, the walls were thin. As if ten radios were on at the same time, in the same room. It was a train station of music with all the sounds milling around… for me it was heavenly.

Q: What would you have liked to see but were born too late for?
A: Vaudeville. So much mashing of cultures and bizarre hybrids. Delta Blues guitarists and Hawaiian artists thrown together resulting in the adoption of the slide guitar as a language we all take for granted as African American. But it was a cross pollination, like most culture. Like all cultures. George Burns was a vaudeville performer I particularly loved. Dry and unflappable, curious, and funny – no matter what he said. He could dance too. He said, “Too bad the only people that know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.”

Q: What is a gentleman?
A: A man who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.

Q: Favorite Bucky Fuller quote?
A: “Fire is the sun unwinding itself from the wood”.

Q: What do you wonder about?
A:
1. Do bullets know whom they are intended for?
2. Is there a plug in the bottom of the ocean?
3. What do jockeys say to their horses?
4. How does a newspaper feel about winding up papier-mâché?
5. How does it feel to be a tree by a freeway?
6. Sometimes a violin sounds like a Siamese cat; the first violin strings were made from cat gut- any connection?
7. When is the world going to rear up and scrape us off its back?
8. Will we humans eventually intermarry with robots?
9. Is a diamond just a piece of coal with patience?
10. Did Ella Fitzgerald really break that wine glass with her voice?

Q: What are some sounds you like?
A:
1. An asymmetrical airline carousel created a high pitched haunted voice brought on by the friction of rubbing and it sounded like a big wet finger circling the rim of a gigantic wine glass.
2. Street corner evangelists
3. Pile drivers in Manhattan
4. My wife’s singing voice
5. Horses coming/trains coming
6. Children when school’s out
7. Hungry crows
8. Orchestra tuning up
9. Saloon pianos in old westerns
10. Rollercoaster
11. Headlights hit by a shotgun
12. Ice melting
13. Printing presses
14. Ball game on a transistor radio
15. Piano lessons coming from an apartment window
16. Old cash registers/Ca Ching
17. Muscle cars
18. Tap dancers
19. Soccer crowds in Argentina
20. Beatboxing
21. Fog horns
22. A busy restaurant kitchen
23. Newsrooms in old movies
24. Elephants stampeding
25. Bacon frying
26. Marching bands
27. Clarinet lessons
28. Victrola
29. A fight bell
30. Chinese arguments
31. Pinball machines
32. Children’s orchestras
33. Trolley bell
34. Firecrackers
35. A Zippo lighter
36. Calliopes
37. Bass steel drums
38. Tractors
39. Stroh Violin
40. Muted trumpet
41. Tobacco Auctioneers
42. Musical saw
43. Theremin
44. Pigeons
45. Seagulls
46. Owls
47. Mockingbirds
48. Doves
The world’s making music all the time.

Q: What’s scary to you?
A:
1. A dead man in the backseat of a car with a fly crawling on his eyeball.
2. Turbulence on any airline.
3. Sirens and search lights combined.
4. Gunfire at night in bad neighborhoods.
5. Car motor turning over but not starting, its getting dark and starting to rain.
6. Jail door closing.
7. Going around a sharp curve on the Pacific Coast Highway and the driver of your car has had a heart attack and died, and you’re in the back seat.
8. You are delivering mail and you are confronted with a Doberman with rabies growling low and showing teeth…you have no dog bones and he wants to bite your ass off.
9. In a movie…which wire do you cut to stop the time bomb, the green or the blue.
10. Mc Cain will win.
11. Germans with submachine guns.
12. Officers, in offices, being official.
13. You fell through the ice in the creek and it carried you down stream, and now as you surface you realize there’s a roof of ice.

Q: Tell me about working with Terry Gilliam.
A: I am the Devil in the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus–not a devil…The Devil. I don’t know why he thought of me. I was raised in the church. Gilliam and I met on Fisher King. He is a giant among men and I am in awe of his films. Munchausen I’ve seen a hundred times. Brazil is a crowning achievement. Brothers Grimm was my favorite film last year. I had most of my scenes with Christopher Plummer (He’s Dr. Parnassus). Plummer is one of the greatest actors on earth! Mostly I watch and learn. He’s a real movie star and a gentleman. Gilliam is an impresario, captain, magician, a dictator (a nice one), a genius, and a man you’d want in the boat with you at the end of the world.

Q: Give me some fresh song titles you two are working on.
A: “Ghetto Buddha”, “Waiting For My Good Luck To Come”, “I’ll Be an Oak Tree Some Day”, “In the Cage”, “Hell Broke Loose”, “Spin The Bottle”, “High and Lonesome”.

Q: You’re going on the road soon, right?
A: We’re going to PEHDTSCKJMBA (Phoenix, El Paso, Houston, Dallas, Tulsa, St. Louis, Columbus, Knoxville, Jacksonville, Mobile, Birmingham, Atlanta). I have a stellar band: Larry Taylor (upright bass), Patrick Warren (keyboards), Omar Torrez (guitars), Vincent Henry (woodwinds) and Casey Waits (drums and percussion). They play with racecar precision and they are all true conjurers. I’m doing songs with them I’ve never attempted outside the studio. They are all multi-instrumentalists and they polka like real men. We are the Borman Six and as Putney says, “The Borman Six have got to have soul.”

Pipe down, Tito Puente!

Still feeling crappy. REALLY don't want to go to work tonight, but there's nobody else who can cover...

Just finished watching the LOST season finale...it was both satisfying and unsatisfying. It answered some questions but in a rather matter-of-fact sort of way. All in all, I give the season a "B". Maybe a "B+".

Yesterday when I got home from work, the doofus who lives next door and plays drums was playing his drums. For like 2 hours. So I got kinda sick of it and went over to tell him to shut up and Jeannie was getting home at the same time, so we went over together and she very diplomatically told him to shut the f*** up. I think when we went over and knocked on the door he thought we were the cops, so he never even opened the door and just talked to us from behind it. He did, though, seem genuinely clueless that his drumming might be annoying to the entire block, so at least he was just dumb and not malicious.

That's about it for now.

Memorial Day Weekend

We're back from another great Ohio trip. I always feel a little post-trip depression when I get home, and this time is no exception, but I also feel renewed. Ready to put more into creative projects, ready to remember that there's still another life out there that has nothing to do with being a manager at the B&N.

Here's what I want to remember from the trip:

1. got a speeding ticket on the way there. Yuck. I knew there would be extra police out for the holiday weekend, but still let my speed creep up too much.

2. Meeting young Jack, who is a big ol' slobber factory. And cute and curious and a frequent napper.

3. Baseball games in the backyard after dinner.

4. Really stinky farts during Phase 10. Losing to Schlueter by points.

5. Sitting at night, after the kids are in bed, talking. Old stories and new stories, laughing, silence. It's the best.

6. I started coming down with some sort of weird cold last night/this morning. Still feeling a little crappy but nothing too terrible. I am glad, though, that I'm off work tommorrow.

If you live in Chicago, go see North!

Very Gay -4 -3 -2 -1 This Post 1 2 3 4 Very Straight

I'm having a pretty damned good day. I'm just coming off of a long stretch of work, and today's been my first day off in awhile, and I've been enjoying my sunshine and solitude. Started off the day with a good trip to the gym, then took a decent walk to the Radioshack and Giant G at the Rotunda to purchase a new cordless phone battery, a set of precision screw drivers (for small electronics, so I can figure out what in the hell is wrong with the touch pad on my MP3 player and stop being forced to listen to it in random all the time), some salt n' vinegar potato chips, bananas, chicken patties, and bread. On the walk and back, I took a detour along this trail that is near our house that sorta runs through some kinda woods, and it was just a damned nice walk in the semi-sun, with headphones, and I felt like a 10 year old kid. But happier, because I was a miserable little sad bitch of a 10 year old.

When I got home, I did some dishes, and then decided to surprise the J-Dog by making some quinoa salad for us to enjoy together for dinner. So I walked down to Eddie's and bought a red pepper, lime juice (cause I didn't feel like squeezing 6 limes to death [and, I gotsta save the real limes for the G&T's, yo]), cilantro, and green onions. And I came home and made some quinoa salad that, when I tried it, tastes a little too...spicy, maybe...it's too something, but I can't quite tell what. But anyway, hopefully we'll have enough left to bring some to Ohio with us when we leave for Ohio tomorrow.

That's another reason why it's been such a good day. All day I've been looking ahead to our trip tomorrow evening; picking up the J-Dog from work tomorrow at 4 (with 2 vegetarian fajita burritos from Chipotle in the back, and a bag of salt n' vinegar chips, and bananas, and nuts 'n raisins), hopefully missing the traffic, getting out of Baltimore, cranking up the tunes and hittin' the road. Aah, it is the best. Can't wait to see the cool kids. Speaking of the cool kids, check out this little enticing snippet from the play that Schlueter wrote and directed:



I think that from this clip it's pretty obvious that the play is a thinly-veiled reference to the brief but passionate affair that Schlueter and I had back in Kirksville. (does the bald guy in the video look like anybody you know?)


And, I don't want you to think I'm gay (what with all the quinoa salad and such) so here's something manly that I found amusing from my friend Jeff's blog:

Schminventory

I'm just getting in from an inventory, and because inventories always make me think of Bewley, I'm enjoying a tasty Guinness in her honor.

On the drive home:

1. The moon was bright.

2. I saw a deer not too far outside the city limits, on Charles Street.

2. I listened to 2.5 Dan Fogelberg songs. And enjoyed them, dammit.

I'm just getting over the mild cold I've had for the past few days, and feeling like I need a day off work. Unfortunately, I still have a couple more days to work before I get that day off. But then it's off to Ohio and the fun begins...

When I was walking into our house tonight, I felt like something felt very strange and then realized it was because there was no noise outside because of the late hour. I don't know that I've ever been here and not heard some type of noise, somewhere. But not tonight. It felt totally quiet. Weird.

Welcome back, Ricky.

I hesitated, not knowing if Elz' new blog was going to take off or die a slow death like the last one, leaving me staring at a page that said IMAGINE A BLANK SPACE whenever I checked to see if he had written...

But it looks like Eric is in it to win it this time, so I'm gonna go ahead and link to it over there in the sidebar to make my daily shit-checking even easier.



And I'm getting sick.

PEHDTSCKJMBA

I am the proud owner of two tickets to see Tom Waits in Columbus, Ohio on June 28th.

Tom Waits is on my list of Top 5 People (or Bands) I'd Like to See in Concert Before I Die (whether it's possible or not). The list, in it's entirety, being (in no particular order):

Tom Waits
Jimi Hendrix
Bruce Springsteen
Bob Marley
Frank Sinatra

So, seeing as he's one of only 2 living people on the list, I figured I should do my best to get tickets. Well, now I just have to figure out the logistics of getting to the show...

By the way, if you're not sure what PEHDTSCKJMBA is, watch this.

A List of Gratitude

1. Headache gone

2. Made it to the gym today

3. Saw this video at the gym. The future is here!

4. I don't have to work till tomorrow night, which means I can attempt to get Tom Waits tickets tomorrow morning.

5. I've made it to page 350 of Mason and Dixon (just under half way!). Reading that book is kind of like walking through very deep snow. Enjoyable, but slow and tiring. I'd say that Infinite Jest is about 5 times more entertaining.

6. Trip to Ohio soon. Can not f@#$'in wait. Long overdue.

A List of Mild Complaints

1. Rip-roarin' headache

2. Bad tooth

3. Had to work an inventory tonight at the Bowie store (about an hour away)

4. Late night driving makes me crave a cigarette

5. Had a fight with Korn at work the other day. Still relatively pissed.

6. Didn't get to see my ladyfriend at all today

7. Wasted the day

8. Feel like tomorrow's gonna be another wasted day

It's raining hammers, it's raining nails

It has been raining a lot lately, which means our apartment is leaking, and it means that the store is leaking, and trees are falling over, and all sorts of shit like that.

Yesterday I got a big stack of CD's from the library, catching up on some older releases that I'd been interested in but never picked up, including:

Johnny Cash, The Great Lost Performance. I give it a "B+". A concert from 1990, which was when he was starting to sound old, but still had that great Johnny Cash thing goin' on. Listening to it makes you proud to be an American.

The Stars of the Lid, And Their Refinement of the Decline. A solid "A". If you ever need background music for anything, but especially something relaxing, look no further than Stars of the Lid. It's soothing without being new age bullshit.

Hem, Eveningland. A "B". I have mixed emotions about this album. I love the lush country-folk instrumentation (guitar, piano, pedal steel, strings) and the vocals and melodies are gorgeous, but at times it feels a little schmaltzy.

Sparklehorse, Dream for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain. A "B+". Catchy yet weird, more accessible than other Sparklehorse albums. Not for everyday listening, but good to listen to when you're not sure what you're in the mood for.

The Twilight Singers, Powder Burns. An unfortunate "C-" (although I haven't finished the whole thing yet). Greg Dulli, please please please get an actual good producer to produce your next album (and stop acting and writing like a young, oversexed junkie).

Josh Ritter, The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter. I haven't really listened to enough of this one yet. I liked The Animal Years, and so far this one doesn't sound as interesting, but it still sounds decent.

And a few others as well. (Hot Chip, Marah).

And now a few random thoughts:

1. I think I feel comfortable enough to say that the lime is my favorite fruit. I realized the other day that a lot of my favorite foods (and a few choice beverages) have a lime involved in some way. So let's celebrate the incredible, edible lime!

2. I think the umbrella is perhaps the stupidest invention ever. I would rather be absolutely soaked all day than have to carry an umbrella around for 5 minutes.

3. Writing that made me remember the time that Jeannie said: "I would rather poop in my pants and sit in it for an hour than watch Jay Leno." How true that is!

Aloha!

Miss LGG: I have also been listening to this CD lately. And no, I'm not joking. I'm a sucker for slide guitar and vibraphones.

I also did end up buying the new Black Keys' album, Attack and Release, which at first I was luke warm about, then I really liked a lot, and now I'm back to being luke warm about.

I shall post some songs on my handy-dandy little playlist player over there in the sidebar!

I spent the day today hanging out in the city and in Robert E. Lee park with my sister. Then went and enjoyed a tasty Thai dinner with me sister, her hubby, and the J-Dog.

Plans

Today I found this old picture, which is I think just about the weirdest picture ever. It is of my grandma and grandpa and, I think, my uncle. I played around with trying to use it as a CD cover for while. Looks like it was taken on the moon.



Somebody should write a movie about this picture...

I've been listening to Death Cab for Cutie's Plans album. I bought it the other day, along with Daniel Lanois' new CD, Here is What is. So far I much prefer the Death Cab. Death Cab seems to be really good at conveying vague melancholy. Although sometimes they're pretty good at conveying very specific melancholy, too. Is melancholia a word? If it isn't, it should be.

Busy day at work today.

Tomorrow I hang out with my sister, who is in town.

Now I'm gonna go soak my butt and drink a G&T.

Opening day, G&T season

Well, I feel a little bit better today, although a few people at work commented that I didn't seem my "usual self." Whatever that might mean. But, nonetheless, I feel better. The J-Dog and I had a great day yesterday, got to go outside and lay in the sunshine in the park. The first park we went to, Herring Run, seemed to be infested with caterpillars, so we headed to Clifton Park and enjoyed looking up at the trees and planes and watching the golfers. And while I am not a hippie and love the good, old fashioned, American indoors, I have to say that gettin' outside and enjoying the trees and sunshine was good for the ol' psyche.

I've been thinking about recording lately, and, more specifically, my method while I was recording 'Long Drive Home.' I realized the other day that my method has changed a lot since then, most notably in the fact that I used to use drum samples looped together and layered on top of each other, and then play along with the constructed drum lines. I think I'm gonna go back to that method, with the exception that I'm going to create my own drum samples instead of finding pre-existing samples on the web. I've experimented with it a little bit in the last couple of days and the results have been promising. So I think I'm gonna spend the next month or so building up a library of drum samples, before I even start to think about other instruments. It kinda takes away the pressure of starting with nothing and then trying to finish the day with a mostly-completed song.

I enjoyed my first G&T of the summer tonight. It seems to be doing the trick.

Should have a busy day at work tomorrow, but hopefully that should make it go by quickly.

Oh, and I got a call from my brother tonight, who told me that, contrary to what I had previously reported not too long ago, they will not be having another kid. False alarm, apparently.

Each week, of course...

Not too much going on. I feel like I could use a day off work, cause I've been tired and grumpy and and overly sassy lately.

Two nights ago Jeannie and I came into possession of a free ticket to a This American Life live satellite event that was beamed to a somewhat local movie theatre (and other theatres around the country). So that was cool, we headed down to a theatre in Columbia, MD and watched Ira glass talk about stuff. It was good to go on an unexpected date, and it was fun to see something live, something that wasn't afraid to show things going not-right (technical glitches, people adjusting to unexpected questions/situations on the fly) on a large, national scale.

Then last night we went to a dinner gathering of folks from Jeannie's job. Which was fine. Good food, low-key. Then I went home and watched the latest episode of LOST, which was pretty uneventful but not the worst episode ever.

Anyway, I feel like I'm ready for another vacation already. This sucks.

My sister and her husband will be in town for a visit this week. Looking forward to it.

Salisbury Steak

Enough about turds. Although, yes, Miss LGG, it was a nice turd.


Today I was working at a store on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, which meant that I had to drive 2 1/2 hours to and from work. Which kinda sucked. But they're paying me 50.5 cents per mile, which means I'll make an extra 120 bucks for my trouble. Which I can use. I went down there to train some dude. Who was from Belfast so he talked funny.

I am tired this evening. But my girlfriend has promised me ice cream if I go for a walk with her, so it looks like I'll be going for a walk. I hope the ice cream doesn't give me immediate and forceful diarrhea. But just to be on the safe side, I don't get the ice cream until the end of the walk.

You shoulda seen the dinner I made for myself tonight: two burgers, green beans, baked potato (My name is potato!), and a big glassa milk. Yum goddam yum.

Jeannie just said:

"Don't you fuckin' look at me! Grrrrr!"

To my homeboys:

If you're ever out and about, maybe hanging at your local grocery store or, I don't know....say a bookstore, and you think it would be a funny joke to take a shit in one of the urinals in the men's room, don't do it. Cause somebody is gonna have to clean your turd(s) out of the urinal. And that somebody might be the only male manager in the building, even if it's the music manager, who has nothing even vaguely resembling "turd removal" in his job description. Think about it.

Um, I forget...what was your name again?

I found this YouTube clip on the blog of someone I don't know.

The woman in it kinda reminds me of myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdXfML9gUmU

But then again, the animated potato also reminds me of myself.

The Office

Jesus Christ. I had to go to an 8 hour meeting today, and the topic of said meeting was the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. This, by itself, equals a bad day, but my day was made even more painful by the fact that:

1. 6 of the 8 members of the "team" (including myself) had had this meeting before, about 6 months ago, but at least then it was stretched out over 6 weeks. So we were talking about all the same shit except with 2 new people.

2. I had to poop for the entire 8 hours.


Fuck this.

Spring Wind (or, I am a big can of clever)

I found out today from my brother that he and his wife are expecting bambino numero 3. Huzzah!

The weather here has been beautiful lately, it's getting warm (at times a little too warm...a too-early preview of the hot bullshit that is to come...) and sunny and thus it is, for the most part, nice to be outside. So I spent a good portion of the day in bed. And then went to work, which was boring and stupid.

Tomorrow the J-Dog will be gone for at least a good chunk of the day, and I have the day off work, so I will be forced to drum up some entertainment for myself. At the moment I have grand schemes of going grocery shopping, doing laundry, dishes, and going to the gym. We'll see how it all pans out. I would also like to start working on the next Spiff song.

I have, for the first time in the 8 or so years that the book has been sitting on my shelf, reached page 100 in Mason and Dixon. I'm a little unnerved, because once I've finished this book, I don't have any other books on my "I will finish this book one day, goddammit." list. There are a couple of books that I may or may not read (Moby Dick, Don Quixote) but none that I've sworn to conquer.

If you're feeling nostalgic for some mid-80's, feminine male, British, politically savvy pop music, go get yourself the Housemartins' cd's, London 0 Hull 4 and The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death. Some catchy shit. WARNING TO BJ AND POSSIBLY OTHERS: Several members of the Housemartins went on to form The Beatiful South, so if you don't like The Beautiful South you probably won't like the Housemartins. FUN FACT: Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, was the bass player for the Housemartins.

Huzzah!

Two and 2

Only a quick 2 things to note:

1. Last night I began, yet again, to read Mason and Dixon. It made more sense than I remember it making. Maybe I will make it past page 30 this time. This one's for you, BJ. You owe me an Infinite Jest attempt.

2. I think I might have finally put together a decent mix of the Seanyboy song I've been working on. I just have to take it to work tomorrow to test it on our super-bass headphones.

Oh, and if you want to see picture of a good kid lookin' like an idjit, check out the Schluetermetz blog today.

I am a failure. And a loser.

Got up early this morning to go to a meeting at work that had been canceled. So I went to the gym instead. Came home and worked on a lot of music of different varieties. I spent some time last night and continued today) working on a song of my own that I knew was a big waste of time because it was too repetitive and got too muddy. And I was right, it was a big waste of time because it's too repetitive and gets too muddy. Also spent some time trying to mix one of Seanyboy's songs but it never really came together. So I'll work on that one again tomorrow. And then I also worked on another song of my cousin's, and the jury's still out on that one, but if I decide to put more effort into it, it's gonna need a lot more effort, so I have to decide whether it's worth the time or if I should just start over.

Then I took a nap and then I went to work.

So today was kinda frustrating, but not too frustrating because I didn't have any high hopes. Tomorrow I'm off work (for the most part) and so hopefully I'll be able to put more focus into working on Sean's song.

I was thinking about collaborative art the other day, and I decided that I function best during the early stages of a project: getting from the point where you have a few ideas and not much else and making something worthwhile out of them. I'm really not very useful once the project has progressed past that point and you want to turn it into something good and beautiful and detailed and polished.

Plans for a potential trip to Ohio in late May are brewing.