Strange roads will offer us a new home.
Well,I'll be the first to admit that it's been awhile since i posted, but a lot is going on. That doesn't matter to some cold-eyed blogosaurus types, though; Muggs' blog calls me out, because Muggs is only working two jobs, raising a kid, and trying to make with the rent on time...he somehow finds the time to blog, and it's usually something fun (mostly movies, lately, which is no shock if you know the boy; if you don't, then follow the link on my blog and feel the joy that Muggsy brings).
Meanwhile, on the turnaround...I have been to the hills, of late, and have seen nothing and everything new. To preface this, let me start bby saying that I am a big fan of driving. Not that NASCAR bunk, where a man is graded by his ability to hang a California left in a pasture full of similarly-demented stewed acorns; not that road-rage, kill-em-all and let the DOT clean it up Fast and Furious skit either; I had Suburbam with no exhaust for two years, and the LAST thing I want is a louder car. A new road, or one long forgotten, is still a thrill, no matter what I'm piloting. I get the radio going (the songs have to be willing to ride the strange roads with me, the genre is unimportant), I roll the window down (I am known for being hotter than your average blast furnace, even in mid-winter; As such, I like to keep the cool air flowing as much as possible. My frequent copilot Bacon calls my ever-open window "the pneumonia hole" as a consequence), make sure the baby is buckled in, and we're off.
Many a quiet Sunday morning passes with us trolling through the hills, seeking out new ways to get to old places. Lately, I've been looking for new ways to get to and from his daycare without using the highway; while I haven't found that Columbian Passage to India, I have found some amazing country roads very close to home. This is exploring, as much of it as I can do, the only way I know how. The van slides through the suburbs and non-urbs like a silvery ghost; the mist barely parts as I steer through crazed twists and turns, narrowly avoiding certain embarrassment at the hands of a horse farm's thick white fencing (which seems to match the thick white people hiding behind the fencing, given my experiences with the locals), leaning as I try to hang the curves of a serpentine, barely-paved concourse between the hayseed section of my city and the outlaying plantation towns, sometimes awestruck by the fact that some of these roads haven't seen a hot tar patch applied since I was born (there are potholes big enough to have driveways leading through them; sometimes, when they fill with water, I expect to see periscopes peering up at me as I pass). I wonder what it's like to live in some of the big houses, some of which even have guest or staff houses visible from the road, gates closed like the paperboy was planning on leading Manson's followers up on a lark, stone walls (very big in CT) perfectly stacked like Eli Whitney had taken up landscape design, perfectly-manicured lawns, the very image that most out-of-state folks have of Connecticut)...and then I laugh at myself. How lost am I, and not just geographically speaking?
I live in a very, very densely populated area (there are more multifamily homes on my street than there are single-family ones, and everyone but us has twenty or so children, to all appearances). Given my proximity to the highways, main drag, and firehouse, any snow is plowed fairly quickly. How do these devils get out in the winter? Do they have to stock a larder for the winter, knowing that their seven-digit house needs more than a $20 shovel job? What's summer like in a land of dead air, where the trees are manicured but block the few breezes? The air must taste of pine fairly constantly, but if that same air is hanging over you like a poorly-crafted shul, the taste of pine must eventually make you less homesick and more just plain sick after a while. How green must your car be, after a gullywashing rainstorm, when that alien wind rises in the pines like a shrieking French teacher, spitting terse (but frequent) pollen invectives and cursing you to a week at the car wash? In comparison, everything blown by the wind crosses through my yard, sometimes catching along the sides of my hedges or driveway. It all ends up on the avenue, though, if the wind persists, so I spend less time raking leaves than you've just spent reading my rant.
Is there such a thing as succeeding too much? I doubt it, but I certainly rethink the trappings of affluence, especially what smells like recent affluence, after my time in the hills. It lends perspective, I guess, to a life that's otherwise bereft of such wisdom.
After all that rambling, it's hard to rein myself in; I've had a lot of caffeine this weekend, as well as a back massage and a palm reading (they said it looked like Cliff Notes). Given all of those factors, it's amazing I can string words together, much less press for a point (however well-concealed or idiotic that point may be).
Someday I will live in the hills, next to a bunch of other people who should know better. Until then, I will laugh to myself, just as they must when they drive through my comparative shantytown.
It's crazy, but it's just crazy enough to be true...
There will be more soon. I go now to ride the gray seam between the haves and the have-nots. It's a road I spend a lot of time on, but there'll be more on that later (get it? I said "moron". Ah, we are clever when the mood strikes us).

The looks and the lifestyle.
I want a new job.
It's not that I hate the company I work for (how do you hate someone who
keeps paying you, as long as they remain financially solvent and pay you at
least what they SAY they will?); I just don't think I can do another 10
years in Customer Service. Now, before you start asking me where I've
hidden the Just For Men (ok, ok, I admit it; I use Rogaine, and copious
amounts of it...), take a minute and realize that I have been in some form
of Customer Service position since I first started working. When was that,
you ask, snickering at the Ancient One, that August Personage In Cheese (my
apologies to the estate of Sax Rohmer)? 20 or 28 years, depending on when
you start the clock.
When I was almost 5, I trotted through the neighborhood door-to-door,
trying to sell postcards I'd received. I raised five dollars before Mom and
Dad caught up with me. I made sure that everyone who bought a postcard was invited to my father's upcoming 40th birthday party...well, I invited them. My parents may have had a different guestlist, but they've always had a slightly different social agenda than I do. I'm all about inclusion.
When I was 14, I looked about 19, which allowed me to purchase discounted periodicals of many, many varieties, some of which were less well-respected than they are now; a friend took them to school with
him, I found some buyers in homeroom, and we cleaned up (for a pair of 14-year-olds, anyway). In retrospect, he may have just bought them for
himself, but as long as the customer is happy, they can say and do what they like.
I believe that all fields are actually Customer Service, if you're doing
the job right. Pimps, hookers, lawyers, guys who run fruit stands...they're
just like normal people; they have a service to provide, and if you're not
happy, their profit margin can plummet. On the flip side, though, every
person you talk to on the phone regarding a typo that costs you thousands
in tax refunds, every cashier who seems a tad developmentally disabled,
every yutz you accidentally vote into the Oval Office...they're in CS, too.
They get gnawed on, just like you and I do (if they're even capable of
paying attention). People who don't realize the importance of good relations with the anonymous voice, the faceless waitstaff, the ubiquitous valet, are among the truly lost souls in this world. Treat folks right, and at least they'll feel bad when the transaction fails, the food isn't fit for Enron convicts, or the stain really won't come out of your good purple crushed-velvet fedora.
Does the world need love, sweet love? No. It needs people who sympathize, people who realize, who theorize on their own time but bust ass to make The Man's dime. They're all around you. Chances are, they ARE you, somewhere or other.

Just a note in passing...
The Lakers are now down 2-0 to the Spurs. Muggsy's Celtics are fighting for the remote, or for better tee times, and my beloved Nets are down 1-0 to a Detroit team that looks like some kind of Great Lakes War Machine.
I just wanted that noted.

Time and Space
Thanks for being so patient.
Ever wonder why we're here, why we all seem to run in such shrinking circles?
I used to do that a lot. I spend a lot of time at The Space ( http://www.thespace.tk ) lately, and it's the closest thing I have to a church. The same core group is there every Tuesday night (open mic night; I told them a wet t-shirt night would pack the place, but they have yet to listen.) The only real common bond is the love of music and the desire to see others get their stuff out to the public. This crowd will even clap when your open mic performance is, shall we say, less than polished and far from adequate. Soon, I shall establish myself as a singer-songwriter, just like Keanu Reeves did with Dogstar. Can rock stardom be far behind? Don't bother answering that; I've seen what passes for rock stars these days, and other than the money, I wouldn't trade a bucket of used Gatorade for most of them. Kid Rock is, of course, an exception; he's a single parent, he hires his friends as much as possible, he still lives in the Detroit area...he's as real as you can get while still being Kid Rock. I think I could handle being Kid Rock, compared to, say, Frank Sinatra.
My father was a Sinatra type; he grew up surrounded by Italians, and he always wanted to be just like them. He swore, he fought, he drank, he hung out with guys whose freezers were full of smoke-flavored ice cubes. Those freezers were invariably located in a rec room. I grew up in rec rooms across New Haven County, listening to grown men chittering around their clubhouses like Mouseketeers on p-dope. Dad was a sharp dresser, too, if you thought Herb Tarlick from WKRP was that generation's Jude Law...white patent wingtips and all. My father, fashion sense and all, was a Big Name in sportswriting in the Seventies, and a Bigger Name in the smalltown I grew up in (if it can be said that I grew up at all), and for most of my life I tried to get the hell out of his shadow. We even had the same first name, so some of his wetter-brained pals still call me "Billy." I don't correct them; I used to try, and then I realized that not all shadows are cold, dark places. Sometimes, there's a residual warmth from the object casting the shade your way. My father and I parted company with a lot of unresolved issues (my girlfriend of the time, who would grow up to be my ex-wife, was about five months pregnant with my oldest, and did I mention the unwed college dropout part yet? No? Well, I just did.) As you can imagine, times were tense. Sometimes I miss my father, but the most important lessons he left for me were written in ash. He knew he was going, knew I'd have to step up, and until my firstborn arrived, I completely lacked the lunchmeat to do so.
Prior to that, I was just another bitter little monkey; just as millions of others do, I wanted attention from the one guy who just could not provide it, assuming that to be the same as his love (which, in retrospect, I had...which means I've always been kinda dull-witted, despite the snappy patter). Freudian? Oedipal? No. Normal. Moving past the couch-time spectacle, one thing I inherited (one of many, to be sure) was the desire to be Known. That's what initially attracted a lot of my high school posse, and that's what tends to draw in a lot of my current friends. Sometimes they know this, other times it's just part of my considerable charm. My dad was Known, at least in his milieu, in his time. This blog, all the bands, all the exhibitionist demolition drinking in my late adolescence...it was all a bid to be Known. I used to want to be famous more than I wanted to be rich; that's certainly changed, but both wishes are still extant.
I'm not so sure as it's a bad thing, but it's definitely a thing. Do you know me?
If you're reading this, you do now .
May this humble entry meet your daily recommended allowance of self-absorbed rambling...the next one will have sharper teeth and keener eyes, I promise.
Good night from Bwanaville, kids.

Another Ounce of Oatmeal for an Already-Overdue Meatloaf
Sorry, kids. I slept less than 20 hours all weekend, so I'm home today, passed out. Grodd save the telemarketer who disturbs my slumber, too. I go now to visit with dreams of the dear departed and whatever cultural icons my subconscious chooses to summon...I once had a dream that Johnny Cash came to me for advice. We were standing in a harvested cornfield, just outside of a major city (visible in the distance, over his customarily black-clad shoulder), and he was asking me to help him with his NBA Finals bracket sheet for 1998. It being 1998, at least according to him (and the day will never come that I argue with Johnny Cash, dead or not, dream or not!) I told him to go with Chicago. I hope that his shade rests easy, somewhere in my brain's back nine, knowing that Jordan's Last Shot was just for him (or at least my approximation of him). Until this moment, it had not occurred to me that Johnny Cash never mentioned basketball *once* in the two autobiographies I've read.
I promise a *real* blog, or at least a better one than this one and its dwarven brother from Saturday, tonight or tomorrow. Much to report, long good weekend, but I'm just too tired to articulate. I leave you with the wisdom of OutKast, curiously apt in the case of a Yankee WASP like me:
"We missed a lot of church so the music is our confessional."

Good morning and good night.

Interim Blog Warning!
Last night was spent at The Space, www.thespace.tk, watching Mighty Purple.
My Grodd, those guys are good...they are as nice as they are talented; despite the fact that it honestly blew goats, my debut as a singer-songwriter (am I the only person who sees this as ironic? I'm a goddamn bassist; actual creativity is supposed to be SOMEBODY ELSE'S JOB) was nonetheless applauded.
I got in at 1am, at which point Jacob, my year-old the size of a 21-month-old, decided he needed some "us time" until about 3:08. This did not stop him from waking me again at 6am. It's a good thing he's cute; that kid is DEFINITELY trying to kill me. Tonight I go to my high school reunion, which bears twofold weirdness (although it's not a paragon or duality, for those of you playing the home game):
-it's been fifteen years, and my hair has somehow returned to the style I had for my senior photos (although I now know how to use styling products, which, despite the widely held urban legend that every teenager in the '80s had an uncaany knack with mousse, is quite an accomplishment);
-it's being held at the same country club where I held my first wedding (there have been two, and I plan to keep doing it until I get it right, by Jove!)
It will be a long night, but if it's even half as cool as last night, it'll be cool enough to justify staying up late!