This Is The Sound of Guthrie.

2006-07-26T21:50:00.000-04:00

So then I...
...said to come see me at http://suburbfabulous.livejournal.com .
I don't what else to say.
Goodnight, for the time being. I love you, both of you, all of you.

2006-02-11T11:31:00.000-05:00

All the sky's alight.
Before the storms come, let us give thanks for this briefest of sunny days. I wonder what all of it means, and when I'll feel good again. I'm trying not to get discouraged, but it's not easy. I don't have any religion, drugs, or obsessions to hide behind. This is me, under these conditions and trying to find a way back up...and I will do it. I have to; too many people are relying on me, too much rides on my beating this malaise, this great darkness, and burning my way back into brighter tidings.
I know I'm a whiner. I know it could be worse. I also know that a great deal of this is all my fault, and that's a lot to live with. I wouldn't wish my conscience (and I most assuredly DO have one!) on anyone, right now. I can't even remember where all of this started, but I'm pretty certain it goes a long way back.
Maybe I shouldn't have bought into others' expectations, but it seemed a better path at the time...and frankly, it still does. Would you rather live with the notion of being monstrous, misunderstood, and prone to stupid, stupid mistakes, or would you rather believe that it is your great gift to always find a way to make things work, make people like you despite your deformities and strange ways, and you can do whatever you set your mind to?
In between, there is reason. I know there are odder balls than me; I know there are taller, fatter, and less attractive people; I know that other people make bigger mistakes, or face far greater challenges...but that awareness does not change the fact that I have to fix my own life, my own heart, mind, soul, and body, and I have to do it myself. Nobody is going to speak up for me; nobody is going to hold my hand; nobody is going to validate my existence or, in the absence of such validation, blow sunshine up my ass.
It's down to me.
Solo.
And I have no idea what to do.
Dammit. This is one of those times when even the wrong move is a move, and even a mistake can bring a learning opportunity. The sad, sick fact is that I am scared of letting people down again. Yes, that includes myself; one of the first casualties of a compromised conscience is altruism. I'll do everything I can for everybody I can, but I think I might have to fix myself first...at least, that's the case if I want to do more than offer lip service to those in need. I've done that for long enough, I know.
Now is a time for heroes.
If you see one, tell them to call me. Please.

2005-10-09T16:09:00.000-04:00

Cancel The Search Party.
I can't seem to lay hands on a copy of Word/Office/Excel (or The Incredibles, for that matter!), so it looks like I'll have to stash chunks of my awe-inspiring novella right here.
Warning: I swear a lot.
Other Warning: I don't want you reading Word One if you won't comment. Be prepared to justify anything you say (for it can/will be held against you), but stay stiff and we'll be cozy.
Another Warning: I really do swear a lot. I try to avoid that online, but sometimes the MF is all I can type.
Last Warning: Even tin-foil underwear will not save you from the Guthrie radiation.
This shit is for Red, the last bitch on my literary pirate ship. This shit is for the League, my homies from then, now, and forever. Names change, but the mission is still the same. Outdo the other guy, quip mightily, and resist.
I'll start posting stuff in the next 72 hours, as time permits.

2004-11-05T19:55:00.000-05:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 11 and then some.
Adolf's car was a brutalized mess just forward of the driver's side door, but none of the Unseemly Trinity were injured. This doesn't explain a blessed thing, I realize, and so it's time to tell you Something Important.
People have passed through my life, will pass through my life, and maybe some of you are transients now. Some of you will come in and leave more often than I'd like; some will stay for no good reason, or leave for the same.
When Matt and I were running our overweight white heinies off, we weren't doing it for Adolf, Muggs, or the Gook. I wish we were. That would be the caring thing to say, the nice thing to say. The truth is that we were running for someone who slip by us one time too often.
We were running for a kid named Joe Barbiero.
Matt wasn't always the cuddly drummer boy he is today (ever see Jason Patric, the actor from Lost Boys, Rush, and Geromino, with a beard? That's Matt.) He was a clean-faced kid from The Hill when I met him. He'd been hanging out one day, and had made the acquaintance of a slick little hipster from Fair Haven (this being Barbiero...at Notre Dame, you get an insulting nickname, a self-enforced title, or you lose your first name for four years.) In Matt's sophomore year (my junior one), Joe introduced us. We hit it off immediately, two incredibly manly music geeks with good teeth and questionable judgment.
Joe was trouble, and he was one of the best friends I ever had (namely, because of his troublesome nature.)
I first met him during my first freshman year (I had two, because I was so good at it). He tagged along back to the house for lunch, along with two other misfits. After a lengthy discussion of how tough he was, we decided to wrestle.
I learned a lot that day; namely, never let a Fair Haven kid keep his keys, or he'll smash them into your genitals, several times, with great force and alacrity (I have two older sisters; it wasn't debilitating until later in the evening.)
Given this bizarre melee, we decided that we should be friends. He was obviously a great fighter (ok, he was a cheap-shot artist...but an artist, nonetheless!) and I was clearly a great strategist (I let him wear himself out abusing my family jewels, then fell on him at top speed)
We shared many a lighter moment, and many a lighter for many a moment, over the next three years.
He was always calling me to join him on some stilted double-date, often suggesting that I might get lucky. (Given that I was almost always due to endure the recycled affections of a girl that Joe had dumped, I don't think luck is a word I'd use.) Sometimes I went...and there'd be no girls at all, for either of us. I learned a lot of ways home from Joe's house, and I came to realize that, if he was assuring me of a ride home from one of our hangs, I'd better bring bus fare.
On September 24, 1988, he called me and asked if I wanted to tag along on a mass expedition. Several people were piling in a car, and he assured me that there would be at least one unattached girl. I demurred yet again, citing a need to actually do homework (for a change), but, in all honesty, I was really tired of being a fifth wheel. I knew some of the girls involved, and frankly, I didn't see a chance with the one I liked...nor did I trust the girl who was driving. She was Joe's girlfriend, a girl with a history of family issues and mental instability. She'd just gotten her license, so her father had either lent her a new car or bought her one. I never really asked about that part.
They'd just left her house on Hartford Turnpike in North Haven when she decided that they were better off driving down a two-lane state road at almost 100 miles per hour.
Then she turned around to talk, according to all accounts. Turned around. At 100 per.
Joe grabbed the wheel, or tried to. He wasn't wearing a seltbelt.
The car swerved, hit a low retaining wall, and bounced. Joe was already through the windshield when the car flipped twice.
It took a few hours for the chest trauma to finish him.
That's what Matt and I saw, not a carful of friends broadsided at just-past-walking speed.
Adolf, Gook, and Muggs were fine. In retrospect, it was obvious that Matt and I were not (in comparison).
You'd think that this, with all its delays and stammering attempts (on my part) to write it, is close to the end.
No. The car accident was the biggest event of that evening, but this is not just about that evening.
A stone has been cast, and it is still in mid-air. The ripples are yet to come.

2004-10-08T09:47:00.000-04:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 10.
Drummer Matt is maybe 6 feet tall. He weighed 170 pounds, tops, at the time of the accident. He spent at least an hour a day behind the kit, which keeps one limber, strong, and pretty happy (if Matt is any indication, anyway.)
I was 6'7", 340 pounds, and I spent about an hour a day working my forearm muscles (playing bass).
It is 73 feet from my front porch to the accident scene, and Matt was never within three feet until I stopped running.
Oddly, nobody got hurt except Matt and I. His legs were spent, and my chest was on fire.
Go figure.

2004-09-09T19:21:00.000-04:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 9.
Sorry it's been so long, but the real world was busy dragging me into new stories; wait a few years, and maybe there'll be happy endings to share. Now is the middle time, where I struggle to find out if I'm at the denouement of a past life, the start of a new one, or just a long stay in the middle. If you were patient, thanks. If you weren't, I don't blame you.

After a solid hour and a half of E minor and drums, accompanied only by the sound of a swooning throng (these were our friends...they swooned a lot, some of them professionally), it was decided that we should all go back upstairs and drink heavily. I abstained, since I had a house party to run. (When the party was at my house, I saved my drinking until it was only Jono and I, and cleanup was over; many a melancholy moonbeam has lit our way from the porch to the morning...as with so many others, I can't imagine why he still puts up with my maudlin nonsense.)

Jacques was buzzing like Wall Street at an IPO, and it soon became apparent that he had quite a bit of company. With some folks, it's hard to tell; Teri was still bubbly when sober, for example, and Wendy was still utterly and completely bugheaded, so I tried not to offer her anything that might make matters worse. I chose this moment to start really laying groundwork with Terri, trying (somewhat) desperately to subtly chat her away from her friends, one of whom had apparently spent an afternoon with some Manic Panic hair dye...the other should have spent forty times that long on a couch in a brownstone. Together, they were like the postmodern Wonder Twins. I theorized to Jacques that if they swatted their pale, angry hands together, they'd take on the form of angry animals...but really COOL really angry animals. Jacques laughed, but it might have been the expensive beer talking (Jacques brought his own, many times...I never took it personally, for some reason; maybe I was just happy to have somebody nearly my size in attendance, so I'd look like less of a circus freak.)

The evening wore on, and some of the small fry (not a misnomer or insult, really; they were all younger and less prone to binge drinking than the dozen or so professionals lurking in the kitchen/living room/front porch) decided to leave. Adolf, Gook, and Muggs left (they were longtime saddlemates, and had arrived together, too), so Matt and I walked them out, watched them get into Adolf's car, and waved from the front sidewalk (in West Haven, only the Italians had hedges that year; most of the semi-Irish had hewn them down so we'd have a clearer view of the police. The West Haven Irish, at least in my old neighborhood, have long had a corner on the noise-complaint market, and we'll part with it only when you run out of cops.)
When they reached the corner of Ocean Avenue and Morris Street, the same corner that had so successfully eluded Dio Phil, time hiccuped; there was one long pause, one quick burst in the middle, and then there was an ache in my abdomen.

I used to wonder what God's piano sounded like when you hit that lowest E. The resonant gong would probably stop time, steam the blood from your veins, and drain every ounce of soul out of you. Assuming this wasn't the last thing you heard, the return of these natural essences would be like rebirth...but that's not what happened. That's not what I heard, actually, although for nearly a full second I was certain it was. What I heard was Adolf's car being slammed into at a reasonable speed by an oncoming motorist.

2004-09-08T13:57:00.001-04:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 8.
Sometimes we do stupid things to impress people. This includes climbing Savin Rock while steaming drunk, throwing a sleeper sofa to emphasize our displeasure with the leadership of the Furniture Department, and driving eighty billion miles from civilization into the heart of West Nowhere.
Or we invite Drummer Matt over to jam. That does just as much damage, but it let me stay home.
We decided to start with Working Man by Rush, since it doesn't require much guitar anyway...and we had, well, none. I plugged in my twelve-pound warhammer of a bass into my 300-watt combo, and away we went, he on his plumbing experiment and me on my loud black metal ensemble.
The air turns solid when we do things like this; the molecules get so agitated that their vibrations can be felt hundreds of feet away...I'd swear you could taste the air around us, probably the same ash-nylon-voltage taste that I got when I played somewhere with bad grounding. About fifteen minutes into this orgy of minor chords and overdriven low end, Jacques stuck his head around the corner and mouthed the words "cops at the door."
I have always been a responsible citizen, so I went upstairs and spent some quality time with the Bringers of Law. It seems my loving neighbor, Mr. Rudnicki, had summoned the gendarmerie yet again. It was nowhere near his first time, and it would not be his last.
Fortunately, the police were reasonable men (as well as being musicians themselves.) After two more such complaints, they stopped responding.

2004-09-08T13:57:00.000-04:00

2004-08-24T09:01:00.000-04:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 7.
Wendy was, frankly, a gibbering lunatic. She didn't mind displaying this fact in public, either. Chances are, if you haven't met someone like her, you won't because you're in solitary confinement. Otherwise? I recommend garlic, crosses, silver, fresh-hewn ash stakes, and, if all that fails, surrounding yourself with pretty girls and boys to distract the beast. She wasn't terribly picky in her distractions. A mop of shiny black hair with a veritable graveyard of Manic Panic attempts hiding at the scalp level. Two spindly legs, invariably in a black mini that looked like it was stolen from Roseanne Barr. Big, brown pleading eyes that said, "Shackle me! Confine me before the moon rises again!"
Yes, Wendy was Trouble for some. Thankfully, I was already aswoon over my lethal friend from downtown...at least for a little bit longer. That train was headed for a curve, and doing 90.

Teri was a really pretty girl, light eyes (I never got close enough to verify their color, though not for lack of fumbling effort), glasses, brown hair, and if memory serves, she was wearing a polo shirt that night. Teri was in a couple classes with me (probably the Honors College, before I dropped out), sang in the college choir with me, and never seemed to remember my name from one meeting to the next. I had a damn-near-black fern on my head, making me appear seven feet tall. I wore some of the worst-coordinated outfits since Paul Benedict on The Jeffersons (and somewhat proudly, as it disproved the urban legend of my homosexuality). Didn't matter. Every time I saw Teri, I had to remind her who I was. This did nothing to cool my ardor; for some reason, I thought she was one of the hottest women at any party. As I write this, I don't know why. All I remember is her being really, really attractive...even when there was considerable competition.

Competition was running hot that night, too; my friend Gina had stopped in with her recently-extradited-to-CT friend Dawn. Dawn was this post-modern sensible chick with feathered hair, eyes you could swim in, and a laugh that started somewhere near her duodenum. Needless to say, the Estroscope was working overtime.

My Guthrie-Sense was so distracted that when the cops showed up, I was completely surprised. That was a first.

2004-08-10T14:39:00.000-04:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 6.
If you're a bassist, then you know a drummer. If you don't, you should either find a drummer or take up something less strenuous and demeaning...perhaps being a lot lizard, alligator proctologist, or bunk punk at the nearest SuperMax facility.

My Drummer (when it's the one and only, you capitalize) was/is/will always be Matt. He's been my all-too-willing accomplice, musical and otherwise, for about 16+ years. As such, we have a history, a bond, and enough blackmail material to have the other guy put down like a rabid dog.
Matt's role was usually that of a facilitator; he made things happen, usually from out of left field, and with him in place, as he was that night, life was never boring.

Matt pulled up in his styling K-car (this was 1991, after all) and immediately started piling gear into the Pit. While it may have looked like a plumbing experiment gone horribly wrong, any trained eye would have identified it as an overpriced drum kit of considerable proportions.
Matt assured me, between trips to and fro, that there were even more girls coming, which confirmed Jacques' theory. The only problem, and he freely admits this, was his choice of wheelmen.

Dio Phil is a terrible, terrible driver. I'm pretty sure he could hit a parked car WITH a parked car, in fact. He's a good cat, even though he keeps trying to kill me (indirectly, of course!)
Exhibit A in my case against him is the fact that he was driving three girls from Southern to my house on that night.

Phil had it down to a science: he would blast past the end of my street at furious speeds, go about a mile, then call my house from a payphone. As his failure mounted, his despair started to get the better of him. If memory serves, he eventually just waited for us to pick up, then started mewling like a newborn.

Heeding Phil's third frenzied plea (somewhat), we took turns walking to the corner of my street and watching him drive by. After the 11th pass, I stepped out into Ocean Ave. and flagged him down.
There is only so much suffering I can stand to watch, although I find that threshold growing daily.

The girls, thankful to their respective deities, were more than happy to leave the Philmobile. One was Wendy, a known problem child with barely enough mental stability to nurture complete sentences, much less sustained conversations; the second was Teri, who possessed an amazing brain...but forgot who I was between meetings, even if I had hit on her (which might say worse things about my technique than I'd previously realized); the last one was M., and she's the one you should be watching.

2004-08-04T20:16:00.000-04:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 5.
There is a thin gray line, like some kind of mental grout, between our functional mind and our id...mine had been chipped away by a really boring adolescence. As such, I attacked parties the same way the Allies rolled on France. There was no tomorrow, no leaving early without a new friend, no work to do...there was only that night, and those people.

By 6pm, the bottles were lined up (by class of liquor) along the kitchen counter, the snacks were on the kitchen table, the living room looked like higher primates lived there, and my buddy Jacques was chain-smoking Camels on the front porch.

Jacques is from a very, very affluent community to the south of mine, the kind that people who aren't from Connecticut are talking about when they use "Connecticut" in a sentence. He provides a strangely strangled mirror image of me, even now. He's smart but he did something with it, he's a good guy who never really quit being a Boy Scout, and he's a generally class-ignorant cat who comes from money.

I stepped out for a Newport (this was during my Keith Richards Smoking Phase, when I spent as many waking moments as possible with a cigarette in my hand) and answered Jacques' unspoken question.
"Yes, I'm sure there'll be girls. Wendy's going to crash the party, and you know she had to bum a ride from somebody."
Jacques nodded, smiled, and took a long puff.
"That girl's crazy."
I took a long drag and gave him my I Know Stuff About Stuff Look (patent pending.)
"Then maybe her friends will be really interesting."
Being a fairly unintuitive soul, I had no idea exactly how right I was.

2004-08-02T21:05:00.000-04:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 4 or so.
After drowning my considerable sorrows in caffeine, I hit the streets of my beloved Elm City. In no time, I had uncovered an opium den, a white-slavery ring, and several varieties of Papist pedophiles.
Then I left Yale, and made my way to three liquor stores. Having filled the Oldsmobeast with alcohol (a fairly commonplace sight in those days), I sped home to prepare The Pit for company.
I will wax nostalgic, and you will indulge me. The Pit was my bedroom from 1987-1994. A converted basement rec room, it was part speakeasy, part command center, part swingers' club, part fashion disaster, part rehearsal space, part ready room, part pub, and all mine. I loved it, and if such things were possible, it loved me right back.
The 25x15 foot space was adorned in movie, rock, or comic book posters, and an entire wall was dedicated to Playmates (this was mainly for my friends, in all honesty; I preferred the notion of live girls.) My pride and joy was a 6x4 poster of Jimi Hendrix. (For any of you who follow such things, that means the poster was bigger than Jimi himself.) There was a fully functional wet bar, TV, VCR, stereo, discrete escape hatch from the adjacent back room, and a waterbed the size of a Buick.
In short, it was Heaven, and soon there would come a host of inebriated angels, all singing its praises.

2004-07-29T22:26:00.000-04:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 3.

Have you ever had that dream where you're scuba diving with friends, and suddenly a shark zooms through and makes man-sushi of your diving partner?

No?

Ever go to a party with your best bud and accidentally leave his naked, prone ass in the bathroom for all the girls to shave, dress up, and leave on his parents' lawn with a note about NAMBLA?

That was what it was like, being a hetero male in Monica's orbit. I felt like some kind of remora. She would find a guy, milk him, and leave his desiccated corpse next to me at the bar while she whisked away with the next lucky victim. We all knew each other, too. We knew each other's stories, and we still took that ride. Well, they did.

Pillhead John was already awash in self-medication when this platinum-tressed velociraptor sidled up alongside him, smiled that wide, beautiful, I'm-crazy-but-you-already-love-me-so-do-as-I-say smile, and swamped him. I don't know if he ever recovered, either from the pills or the smile.

Dave The Genius was a computer operator before everybody operated computers, and he had the misfortune of meeting Monica in the right wrong light. The next thing I knew, I was moving her stuff out of his apartment in the middle of the night...and he was vomiting like some kind of bad Japanese cartoon monster after trying heroin in a bathroom stall. He always looked haunted after that...which inspired me to never even think about trying heroin. Thanks, Dave.

She never touched me... well not like that. She called me when it was over, many times, and summoned me for a million rides home from failed assignations or generally hairy situations. In exchange, she'd hook me up with discounts or free food or somewhere to crash or...you get the idea. I got to play hero, which is my worst addiction, and she made it as worth my while as she could.

How does it reassure you to know that somebody always has your back, if they're as flawed, self-centered, and rank with nicotine as I was then? Does it, in fact? If so, she must have slept assured that the Last Son of Guthrie would pull on that trademark longcoat, fire up the Olds, and roar into the night like I had a chance into those pants...or, more precisely, that tremendous (if toxic and permanently damaging) heart.

Some nights, I ached with a nearly intoxicating agony, knowing that there were such hearts, and that I'd never been in one. Other nights, I looked at the trail of carnage behind her, and thanked my maker that I was broke, unfashionable, and lived in my parents' basement.
It's funny when you can be thankful for such questionable blessings.

So there she was, wrapped around my neck like we were something much different than we were, and all these people are looking at us. She kissed me once on the cheek and bounced off to seek a stray professional type, but not before throwing me a piece of sage advice:
"Be sure you primp tonight. I'm sure you'll meet someone, and you deserve to get lucky."
I'm forced to wonder what she considered lucky.

2004-07-29T17:50:00.000-04:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 2.
I was the pride of the litter, I am certain. One older sister had recently graduated from Albertus Magnus, which thought it was Junior Ivy; the other was attending NYU, Columbia, and Quinnipiac almost simultaneously. I was about to enter my fourth semester as a freshman at Southern Connecticut State U., and to paraphrase Hank Williams, Jr., all my loser friends were coming over tonight.
I dressed in my finest t-shirt and jeans, and resplendent in my comic shop finery, sought out my loci.
A locus is, in technical definition, a place of concentrated activity. In my years of throwing parties, I learned that I could never catch everyone at home, work, school, or on a coke run to the loading docks by the New Haven Terminal. Patience and persistence are the keys to recruiting fellow ne'er-do-wells... but knowing where they go for coffee to hammer back last night's hangover doesn't hurt. This brought me downtown to the Daily Caffe, a place of much magic and the occasional chick who would talk to me (if only to get Steinmetz' number, which I gave out using the digits of his local newspaper, The Hour...I figured they'd heard of him.)
As I whirled back my black trench to enter the Caffe, I was ambushed by a deathly-pale blonde lightning strike.
Coffee is good, but Monica was even better.

2004-07-23T12:00:00.000-04:00

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 1.
Note From The Author: This story takes place before the last one. I wanted to tell the tales in order, but that's just not going to happen. Sorry.
The sudden cold snap of a Connecticut winter will, if you're frail enough, knock you over. Sure, there are colder places, but part of the insular charm we Northeasterners exude is that we haven't heard of them, or don't believe they're worse than what we have. I'm told that International Falls, MN, is among the coldest places on Earth, for instance...but I've never been there, and they've never come within a snowflake's-breadth of wrapping their car around a Jersey barrier in slushy downtown Bridgeport (the barriers were put up to deter drive-by shootings; they were, and are, a phenomenal success in that department, but a terrible hazard to unassuming, and presumably unarmed, visitors to the Park City.)
Because we are used to colder climes, or perhaps in spite of the agonizing death of all the shrubbery, some of us celebrate New Year's with an ardor unseen since the Druids.
Every New Year's Eve, from 1987-88 to 1991-92, I threw a semi-legendary New Year's Eve party. And that last year, it threw me.

2004-07-16T22:58:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Epilogue.

Where they came from, and where they went.

Steinmetz who recently promo'd this blog and said some tearjerkingly nice things about it/me, was in my Marching Band, as he has recounted in excellent detail elsewhere. I decided he was ok the minute I met him, and I've yet to regret that decision. For some reason he called me Haystack on one of the worst days of my life, and it made me inexplicably happy for days. Ever unintimidated by my oft-fearsome countenance, he has never been afraid to tell me I'm stupid, and someday I hope to return the favor. That, or I will finally noogie him.

Jen had been in my Honors College courses, although I don't think I attended them often enough for her to notice me. She actually went to class, so she actually knows all kinds of stuff. She was, if you ask her, a bookworm when we met, and I briefly pondered that pursuit. Thankfully, my sense of inadequacy kicked in just in time, and we just became pretty good friends. How good, you ask? In 1993, when my son Will was born, she came to the hospital to visit ASAP. When she found out I was in dire financial straits, she got me a job driving strippers. That's a true friend, in my book.

D (not her real name, as far as you know) flashed across the Guthrian estroscope and was gone forever. I have no idea of her whereabouts, and that preserves her as perfect. Time has not wrinkled her brow, or made embarrassing sags in once-firm territories; she will end her days as a cute, engaging, and unfathomably desirable 21-year-old. We should all be so lucky. I hope she is as happy as she made me, albeit briefly, wherever she is. I only wish I'd learned my lesson when she was teaching; other tutors have been far less kind.

Kat ended up marrying Hobbit Dave. Their daughter Kia is beautiful, and is an ace dog-showing person. Kat is still a very kind person, even though she's got plenty of excuses not to be, as well as being a very tough person (which is understandable, but not obvious.) I get the feeling that she knows a lot more about me than she's letting on, and that's a really, really good thing. We like her. She always drags Elaine out to see me play, and they never complain about my utter lack of talent.

Skip is a writer/editor/copy monkey for the local Rag. He will never admit to any of this, especially the part with the Leftists.

Mike Bruce strangles women, so I'm glad he's not in this story.For starters, Jen would have put his eyes out...

Why you looked this far down is anybody's guess, but here's something to hold your eye and warm your synapses.

We were all just biding time until the end of our adolescence, and Jen's house was like a community center full of bored latchkey kids waiting to get naked or picked up by their parents... and nobody's parents ever showed up, to my knowledge. Far from abandoned, most of us hid here, in flesh or in glass, until Something Else Happened. The fact that nobody ever died from alcohol poisoning or contracted AIDS just insulated us further from the real world, even in memory. We were blessed to have this pocket, this seemingly grouchless trashcan full of like-minded underachievers. We abused it thoroughly, and I'm pretty sure that's what it was there for.

I have more stories to tell, but this is the only one of Austin St. I hope you liked it, or you're willing to smile and nod if you didn't. I'd appreciate feedback, no matter what you have to say. My next post will be up by Tuesday. Goodnight, and may tomorrow find you better than today left you.

2004-07-16T22:23:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Part 11.

By the way, if you're not supporting Stein's efforts to raise money for hemophilia research, or his wife's marathon blogging to aid breast cancer research, then I don't want to hear it when somebody you love dies. Simple as that. I don't give a good goddamn because you didn't. You have enough time to read my maudlin BS? Then you have enough time to send these beautiful people (ok, one beautiful person, one Steinmetz) some money, ANY money. Do it, if only because I said to do so, and I probably know where you live. They're nice people, and I am not. End of sermon, for now.

I staggered back a bit, wondering how quickly a pregnancy test actually works (mere months later, I would know that answer, perhaps a bit TOO well).
"What do you mean, you couldn't have done it without me?"

(My experience with women is pretty easily summarized as follows: I never understood them, I don't understand them now, and chances are, I will never understand them. I merely count myself fortunate that the ones I know are, for the most part, either nice enough to befriend me, despite my many faults, or sympathetic enough to sleep with me. Sometimes both, and never let it be said that I am ungrateful for this inexplicable good fortune. Ladies, I love you all, provided we're still friends/lovers, and I still don't understand a blessed thing. Go with that; it's a constant.)

D laid out a tale that flattened my already frail corpus callosum. It seems that she and a number of other women (many of whom I knew, including some good friends) were part of a sexual scavenger hunt. At one end of the gubernacular spectrum was Stein, who was hardly worth any points because most of the ladies involved had already slept with him, or knew they could do so at will. At the other was yours truly, the Maltese Falcon of Connecticut Man-meat, an elusive quarry whose only appearances in that most carnal of venues had been with unaffiliated coeds from other towns or schools, and those tales were apocryphal at best (these were not Canadian Girlfriends; other people met them, and they still exist, to my knowledge. References are available upon request.)

At the onset of the competition, there were probably questions raised about my preference (which is understandable; until my mother walked in on me with one of the aforementioned partners, I'm pretty sure everyone who knew me, including my family, thought I was gay) or my affability. Mind you, had any of them just walked up and asked, that scoreboard would have looked like a Floridian voting booth. D won the contest, just by landing the Great White Whiner.
It seemed so shallow, so contrived...not that I minded the part about coed Greco-Roman wrestling, but why the pretense?
"It just seemed like the right thing to say."
This girl from the North Woods had come down into my beloved City and tricked me out like she was procuring tenderloin for Gary Glitter at a Boy Scout Jamboree. I'd been played, thoroughly. It was as if she hung a sign on my chest that said, "Unable to defend himself against feminine wiles" that still hangs there today (if you look at me in the right lighting, anyway.)

I slunk away, tail (what little there was left of it) between my legs, and went back to Jen's house eventually. Time was slippery at best in those days, and it gets no easier to grab using my flailing memory; it may have taken an hour to traverse that half-mile. I was that stunned.

There weren't many people left, thankfully...I'd wager that Jen's harridan of a roommate had chased them out, or that Jen herself had, in a nurturing and understanding way, explained to the guests that it was really time to go, and she'd catch up with them later. I collected my car and oozed off into the greenery of Valley Street to make sense of things. I was happy (it had been an amazing night; even the cat got pregnant), I was warm (as I tend to be, most times), but I was extremely disoriented. It would be hours before I could think of sex again.

Just the post-mortem left to go, kids. Then you should go see what Stein says about the same evening.

2004-07-16T21:21:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Part 10.
It took a solid fifteen minutes to find my clothes (nigh-unthinkable, when you consider how large any article of clothing would have to be in the first place), and then I sought out my erstwile mate. The second story of the house was quiet; everyone else was still motionless, stashed away in oak cupboards, safe from the building whine of my insecurities. I believe Jen was snoring, although it was hard to tell; there were a lot of people left over, some stacked atop each other like a log cabin crafted by Vivid Video.

I stumbled down the stairs as quietly as possible (it can be done, when you have as many years of experience as I have) and reconnoitered. No D, anywhere. No beer. No angry jocks. Overall, not a lot to work with, although I did manage to locate Stein at some point. My dreams of connubial bliss fading like the stains of Jen's sofa, we decided to head back to campus. Oddly, we chose to do so on foot. I have no answer for that; I'd driven in much, much worse shape, and it would have been faster. It would have also provided a much-needed hasty retreat, later.

The sky can turn white when you've spent too much time in darkness, and it did so the moment we cleared the sheltering shroud of trees at the edge of Jen's property. The half-mile hike back to the Student Center (my unofficial advisor's office at Southern, where I signed many a schedule into being using a variety of assumed names) seemed endless, and my remarkable degree of dehydration didn't help. I felt like my lungs were sandpaper, my legs were iron, and my back had been stuffed into a can marked "Peanuts", just waiting for some poor dumb bastard to open it.

Typically, Stein would have analyzed my situation and damn near buried me with otherwise-useful truisms (I have a long history of ignoring the best advice, as given by some of the finest minds on the planet, and I doubt that's changed); this time, he mostly commiserated and shrugged. I have a feeling, looking back on the circumstances, that he knew exactly what was going on. He's that type of guy; he knows stuff. Sometimes, being the kind of guy I am, I pretend to listen.

Stein gave me a few more pseudo-mournful minutes of supportive conjecture (as he is contractually bound to do, I am told), then headed off to parts unknown (he kept muttering something about sleep, as he tended to do in those days.) I headed for D's dorm room, in the hopes of getting some answers.
Sure enough, she was sunning herself on the front lawn of the residence hall. I made sure not to stand in her light, having already spent an evening doing just that. Her hair looked like hammered platinum; she must have showered once she got home, since it had only looked hammered when I arrived on Jen's porch. I could just about smell her, cooking in the sun.
"Thanks," she said, "I couldn't have done it without you."
That was probably when my heart stopped. Then, or a couple of seconds later.

2004-07-16T15:55:00.000-04:00

Soon.
I haven't forgotten you.

2004-07-13T09:38:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Part 9.
At one point, I think the moonlight left us. It had done its job, and had nothing to apologize for, so I suppose moving on was in order.
Everything in its absence was all hands, mouths, backs, and sweat for what seemed like days. Good days, some of my best, perhaps, but days. It could have been fifteen minutes, or fifteen hours...time was liquid, especially since I couldn't find my watch after that first tussle. There is a hum that fills my ears during such times; it's less like tinnitus, more like a ritualistic metronome.
Then she signaled me to stop.
She wanted to talk. It was probably 3 a.m., which is not a time for talking when you are thusly disrobed. It's not an unforgivable breach of etiquette-in fact, I am hard-pressed to think of one, compared to, say, not mentioning your ex and his friends will be in attendance at the same party-but it certainly seemed oddly timed.
"I want you to meet my parents,"she said,"I've told them all about you."
For most guys, this would be a mighty blast of freon down their BVDs...but not I. I thought this was the best thing I'd heard all night, short of the sound of Stein's voice at that near-fatal moment.
I soldiered on, in warm darkness on a borrowed mattress, heedless of the world beyond. There were only two people in the entire world that night, and I felt reasonably assured that a sequel was inevitable.
Eventually, we both passed out, comfortable, exhausted, drained of whatever angels or demons we needed to expunge.
When I awoke, in the early blue hours, she was already gone.
More later.

2004-07-09T11:03:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Part 8.
Part of the Tao of being very big, as I'm told that I am, is that you can't run around pummeling everyone just because it's possible. This is especially true of drunken jocks, bad drivers, and handicapped people, at least in my opinion. One is pathologically unaware, one is truly inculcable, and one is just plain wrong.
I let Testostero return to his books and sought my tempest on the porch. Diane and Skip were practically atop each other, discussing the importance of voting, or political awareness in general. I passed by the bipartisan spectacle, paid my respects to this most incongruous pairing of pulchritudinous politicos, and sought out a Virgil for the next bolgia: the living room.
The room appeared to have been furnished in Early American Overcrowded With Horny College Students. Hobbit Dave, aptly named for his size and demeanor, was macking hardcore on Kat, one of the few nice girls in attendance. Jen, ever the perfect hostess, was talking to at least three different guys in two different corners. Stein was keeping the couch in order; if I know Stein, he'd already gotten his, and was here to bask...he didn't gloat, at least not in the same way I do, despite having been quite the annoying profligate Lothario of our little scene. He certainly didn't chirp when he was dating my cousin, anyway...though I imagine she'd have beaten him to death if he had. The baseball players were milling around the fridge, emptying my sacrificial Budweiser with disturbing alacrity. Some small voice from the other end of the cosmos, perhaps Stein's, perhaps any one of a number of people's, told me that D was upstairs.
Ordinarily, my perpetual libido would have propelled me up the stairs at top speed, but I paused briefly in the front hall. I still do that sometimes, physically stopping to grab a sense of perspective. This creates a bookmark of sorts, the purpose of which I'll explain later.
I put my mind back on my business and hit the stairs at full tilt. Sure enough, the door to the spare room was open just wide enough to provide a landing strip across the small of D's back.
It got dark again, and this time the baseball players stayed away.

2004-07-08T12:17:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Part 7.
I often wonder what we notice first about a strange bathroom. In Jen's case, the tub is on the left side of the bathroom, there is tile everywhere, and I have just been shoved from behind by a guy who has every reason to do so.
His mind was obviously untracked by the inner torment that results from what I call "circumstantial celibacy", that awful time between lovers when the greatest fear is your own inadequacy, and the greatest risk is self-induced tendinitis. He was sweating profusely, and his eyes seemed fogged, as if his frontal lobe forgot to turn on the dehumidifier.
A grave sense of unease grew between us, at least in my mind. How much did he know? Was he aware of my protected status as a non-matriculated loiterer in the Student Center? Did he have a knife (not that the idea worried me, comparatively speaking; the house was sandwiched by neighborhoods full of warring druglords, and I was more concerned about a stray bullet creasing my cerebellum during certain enterprises upstairs, really)? Had he ever dated the Stamford Girl, the one who had called me a "farmer"? What did he have planned, and could I get a hand on his throat before he made his play?
(A quick tale of the tape:
Mr. Pitcher: 6'3", 200 lbs in heavy slacks, about 67" reach, has been drinking and feels wrongly terminated from a sweaty, if not loving, relationship with the aforementioned Upstate Girl. Probably in semidecent physical condition, but fairly inebriated. Typically aggressive.
Mr. Guthrie : 6'7", 330 lbs, 80" reach, has been unjustly deprived of drink but reasonably assured of his favorite form of cross-training will soon be transpiring with the girl in question. Definitely not in superior physical condition, but just plain old big. Typically looking for only one thing in this world, and it's not baseball.)
He staggered slightly, apologized, and peed in the sink. I was understandably reluctant to use the commode at this time, as his aim may have contributed to his single status. (Jen, if you read this, I apologize.)
If I was going to take a preemptive swat at him, now would be the time. His teammates were interspersed throughout the house (many were the bedrooms, and there was never a shortage of outdoor diversions, as well). He was too drunk to use his athletic prowess to break my glasses over my face, then my face over his knee. We were alone in that domestic debir, and his back was to me.
I thought of Jesus, and cleared my throat.

2004-07-07T14:27:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Part 6.
There was a great roar and then a terrible hush as the world collapsed in on me. The air had become solid flesh, and the only hope I had was to swim, harder and faster with each second, towards the dimming light. Stopping at any moment spelled disaster, like a salmon trying to cop the digits off a passing Evinrude.
Most college parties were like this for me, once midnight hit and there were ladies present. This one was an exception, though. D disappeared to brush her teeth again, and I struck out for the porch. Stein followed, like some kind of barely-post-pubescent Willy Wonka on reds, and we soon found ourselves in the thick of a Moment: The head of the local NOW chapter (a lovely young lady named Diane, who had once helped scrape me off the pavement on Fitch Street) was shoulder-to-elbow with the head of the Young Republicans (a man called Skip, who once dressed as Adam Ant in high school...after his brief and inexplicable stint in the Marines, he returned an arch-conservative.) Typically, I would expect blood and fire from these two, but the night air works wonders on even the most sincere idealogues. There were no enemies in the hazy trenches of Austin Street, only misunderstandings (like pulling your best Barry White on a sporting good's girl, unaware of his proximity) to be redressed.
One of those misunderstandings was behind me when I went into the bathroom, in fact.

2004-07-05T14:21:00.000-04:00

A break in the action.
Dad would have been 69 today.
I don't know why I'm thinking of him so much lately, but I am.
Long day. Long night coming.
More of the story later. Part 5 is better than halfway done.
So am I.

2004-07-04T13:23:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Part 5.
It's often said that, in times of great mortal peril, your life will flash before your eyes. Oddly, that didn't happen. Granted, it would have looked like a Showtime After Dark presentation at that point, but even some mindless adult entertainment would have been preferable to the mystic vision I experienced.
I saw myself, blind (I could not locate my glasses, and blind is the only apt term for my myopic status), buck naked but for a pair of underwear (which were on backwards, at least in my nightmarish combat dream), fighting off the baseball players on Jen's front lawn.
(I'll give you a minute to stop laughing...although I must assure you that the idea was not humorous at the time. Now? Now it's funny, even to me.)
Salvation came hot on the heels of jeopardy. No sooner was the knob turning than I heard my dear friend and fellow reprobate Steinmetz, a Willy Wonka lookalike with too much luck with the ladies (in my humble but hypercompetitive estimation), urging the ballplayers to hit the fridge instead of the bedroom. According to his exhortations, there was a virgin batch of brew to be had. This excited the monobrows like a freshman next to an open locker, and they made off for the kitchen like a summer stock adaptation of Quest For Fire.
After we gathered our scattered clothing and confirmed our forsaken dignity yet again, D and I snuck downstairs, taking great care to be seen separately lest I have to demonstrate my ninja fighting techniques, albeit clothed and bespectacled, against a sea of foes.
I sought out Steinmetz, my brother, my Horatio, my St. Francis of the Sissies, and thanked him for my continued existence.
"I don't know if you should thank me. After all, it was your beer."
More later.

2004-07-02T12:42:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Part 4.
It goes without saying that I was rather alarmed by the arrival of the baseball team. Mind you, I was aware of the possibility, however remote, of their pitcher (D's ex) being in attendance, but it was rumored that he was a touch short of brow, and as such, easily distracted. This may have been one of the reasons for their dissolution; I didn't ask, when the topic first came up (during a marathon of cirrhotic antagonism at The Moon), and to this day I really don't care. My greater focus was on D's single status and overall attractiveness. She was an Upstate Girl, that strong mix of passion and durability...I have always had a weakness for durable women, and she appeared to be their Grand Champion, at least in the College Division. She was powerful but feminine, a credit to her genetics and upbringing.
Back to the peril at hand (and foot, and mouth, and several other parts I'd rather not see imperiled). The door is thumping like a Miami bass bin, and D has not moved more than a foot or so. She was still angry enough at this failed paramour to demand that he leave her alone, ad infinitum...she had, by her own report, a headache. (I can assure you that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her head or any other part of her.) This did nothing to assuage the damaged ego of the Boy of Summer (who'd been cut from the one roster I think he valued most), and his rowdy friends, many of whom sounded like inbred stooges, the kind of guys who like to drink beer and violate geeks on their slow nights, got even louder in their mewling protestations. It suddenly hit me that I had no idea where any of my clothes were, especially my glasses. As the blood ran north to my stomach, I heard a familiar click from just past my right shoulder. Mr. Pitcher was about to open the door.

2004-07-01T22:30:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Part 3.
No sooner had D crashed on a mattress in Jen's back room than a
nigh-mythical transformation occurred. Perhaps it was the healing power of
toothpaste, but she was suddenly awake, alert, and terribly fond of
physical affection.
Now, by the light of the day, yours truly was something of an
anthropological curiosity, I must confess. I was six feet and seven inches
of pure, unadulterated cool...from my mellow Shore Haven Afro, the Elvis
Costello glasses, terminal purple paisley shirt, jean shorts (well, at
least those were normal), to the bucked-down two-year-old docksiders with
more mileage than they were ever meant to take. Still, I carried myself
well, and I'd like to think I've always been a friendly sort, which can
compensate for my aesthetic (or at least stylistic) shortcomings. I'd like
to think a lot of things, but I know that most of them simply aren't true.
In the dark, I felt like Prince before Lovesexy tanked. It got hot, it got
sweaty, and I'm amazed there weren't ambulances. Some nights, I'll admit I
still think of those days, and the Kilimanjaro of those memories is that
party. The trouble with such romantic notions, though, is that you forget
the fear.
What was there to be afraid of, you must wonder?
How does the SCSU Fighting Owls baseball team, led by D's ex, sound?
It sounded like a knock on the bedroom door, at the time.

2004-07-01T12:46:00.000-04:00

Word Association To Increase Traffic
Torrent
ECW
Bit
Miike
Muggleton
Beer
Ferrett
Miyazaki
John Hughes
Edgar Allan Poe
Amway
Wicca
Mormons
Fatima Mansions
Irish
Evil

2004-07-01T12:44:00.000-04:00

TGSNT, Part 2.
Jen's house was an old Colonial with a big front porch, a sizable front lawn, and no driveway to speak of, all nestled into the shadow of West Rock. There was a party there nearly every day during that spring, and the attendance at each was considerable. As such, everyone parked on the lawn (how or if she got her security deposit back is anybody's guess; I'd wager there was kismet involved, as there always is with Jen). I slid out of the Olds like the suave cat that I am and approached the front porch. There was a small flock of bar hens there, including Jen and her friend D. D was drinking from a 2-liter bottle of MD2020 (which, until that year, had been known as Mad Dog 2020 for awfully good reason), and it was obvious that she was en route to permanent cellular damage. I dropped off my beer in Jen's fridge and scampered back to the porch. By this point, D's lunch was back to visit, and she was holding court by the far porch rail. As a sensitive modern guy, I am often found holding the gastrically-challenged's hair out of the carnage...and this was no different. Fortunately, she had really good hair (thinner hair will pull out, often leaving the already-beleaguered chunderer looking like a cancer patient) and strong shoulders (I once had a girl dislocate a shoulder while straining against mine in mid-void...you never forget that "pop" sound, or feeling, ever.) She was a pretty girl, too, despite her peristaltic difficulties.
In what seemed like an eternity, she finished purging the malt-beverage/motor oil from her system. Already spent, she decided (wisely, we all agreed) that this was a good time to brush her teeth and go to bed. Ever the gentleman, I could not demur when she asked me to keep her company.
It was hardly past sundown, but when you hide in the cowl of a mountain, it gets dark fast.

2004-06-30T13:09:00.000-04:00

The Greatest Story Never Told.
WARNING: This story contains elements of graphic and mature content. Some names were changed to preserve dignity. For others, it's too late. If you are easily offended, go away. Now. This isn't for you. If you're OK with stupid college kids being stupid college kids, you can stay.
It was the second week of May 1992. I can remember it quite clearly (it was a sunny day; I took Jones Hill to Wagner Place to Elm to Campbell to Forest, then cut over by Sheridan Middle, across Whalley and down to Valley Road, then took a left on Blake and a left onto Hard St., a right onto Austin; Delbert McClinton's "Every Time I Roll The Dice", the Spin Doctors' "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong", and The Black Crowes' "Hotel Illness" were on the radio that night, and their "Thorn In My Pride" would escort me home in the morning.) The birds were singing, the Kraft-Mac-orange sun was almost setting, the beer was in the trunk, and there were supposed to be all kinds of prospects at the party that night. I had about twenty bucks and a fresh pack of Newports in the pocket of my good purple paisley shirt, my beloved 1985 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale had a full tank of gas, and I'd shaved recently. All was right in the world, and I dare say I was at my most pimptacular, given my circumstances.
It was very nearly the last day of my life. Looking back, it might not have been the worst way to go.

2004-06-28T13:11:00.000-04:00

Two things must I give you.
I will fret no more forever.
Friday night was the most incredible night in my short life. I feel a renewed sense of purpose, of focus...and as always, it wasn't my idea. I was hanging out with a friend at her townhouse when she smacked me down...it was an Urban Legend Par Excellence, the kind you used to have to pay winos for (prior to the Internet), but she made it sound so sensible, laid down the science so clean and clear that it grabbed my cerebellum and spun it like cotton candy.
My rational brain rebels, but my creative side says that, even if this is strictly nonsense, there's got to be some meat to this notion.
Fretless bass excites women.
There it is. My two favorite things, working together like Siskel and Ebert.
I was floored. Ok, I was actually couched at the time, but the thought floored me soon enough. I had, as you might imagine, a good-sized handful of questions. My friend silenced these with: "It has something to do with vibration and the uterus." That's all she shared about the pimptacular science that she has now challenged me to drop. This was cagey on her part, an excellent parry to my curiosity's thrust. Nicely done. Why, you ask, was this such a great deflection?
Because no guy ever wants to talk uterus. We don't. Ever. Even doctors, although they're well-paid to hide this fact. Nope. Nil dicto uteratimum, or whatever. We'll talk about all kinds of other parts, and we'd certainly love firsthand, empirical research on the topic, but when you get to that strange, foreboding Circle of Life we call the cervix, that's like a conversational stop sign. There are no Uterus Monologues, and we won't be in the audience if you create them. Sure, you ladies can talk about our plumbing-it's all external, at least the important parts-but there's only so far you can go, when discussing the distaff counterparts, before a guy just stares into space. We don't get periods because God knows we couldn't handle them. We're stupid, we're useless outside of reproduction, we keep you from being paid fair wages...say what you like, vilify us as necessary, burn us in effigy (or in my boy Dave's case, in person)...but don't make us talk about the U word. We can't. You want to talk about your ascending colon, your experiences making stag films, the fact that we are unimaginably inadequate as husbands, boyfriends, or bassists? Cool. Just leave the U word out, and all is well.
Anyway...
If I want an unfair advantage, all I have to do is play fretless...and I can do that. I bought a cheap fretless back in 2002, when Strangler Mike and I were hawking mortgages in the City of Filth. Two years later, I can whomp the snot out of that beast (these are technical terms, I realize). We'll see what shakes loose on Tuesday night. No, I can't believe I said that either.
I can feel the pendulum, and it is swinging.

Yet Another Shout-Out.
Bill Steinmetz was, at one time, my personal savior. He's going through some rough stuff right now, and I just want to start this out by telling anyone who'd read this that he is an OK Guy, always was, and you should send him an email or something. His blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/theferrett (cut and paste it like I do; I'm still working out the link thing). Sure, he was dumb enough to date my cousin, back in the day, and maybe he didn't mean to save my life, but he did. I owe him, and I know it. I'll tell the whole story some other time, but right now let's just walk off with a big dose of gratitude.

2004-06-27T01:22:00.000-04:00

In the meantime.
I'll keep this brief, as brevity is supposed to be the soul of wit.
If Muggsy can go all-list, I can too. So there.
Sounds Abound In The Minivan of Doom:
-Damien Rice, O. It's good. Reminds me of This Picture or Feargal Sharkey...wish I could bring a copy of this back to my chillout days of 1990; I'd have gone nuclear, in terms of macktacularity (see below).
-Radiohead, OK Computer. Also good. What I like about these guys is that I hear something new every time I listen, and this is my favorite CD by them.
-Motorhead, No Remorse. This was my all-time favorite makeout CD, back in 1990...which may explain why I wasn't doing a lot of making out.
-Helmet, Meantime. Geeeeeeetar. Welcome to the Missing Prong/Glenn Branca wrestling album.
Lyrics With New Depth, Leonard Cohen Division:
There's a mighty judgment coming, but it won't take long...you see, you hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song.
All these hunters who are shrieking now, do they speak for us?
More later.

2004-06-24T13:51:00.000-04:00

In memento mori.
It's been a tough year so far, and this week was not immune. My friend Jim's grandma died over the weekend.
When Jim and I took up instruments (drum and bass; we predated techno, house, and trip-hop by decades), the only mammal who would house our rather noisy and unpolished collective was Grandma Bozzi, or, as she was referred to with great reverence among all the post-pubescent idiots who were fortunate enough to know her, Jim's Grandmother. (I think some of us called her that to her face, too. Didn't faze her a bit.) She loved Jim, and treated all who crashed that basement (a veritable Who's Who of Washed-Up Local Talent, nowadays) with love and respect that many of our own parents didn't offer. She kept a fridge stocked with candy and Little Hug drinks (those "fruit punch in a barrel" things, 12 for a dollar at Stop and Shop), and she let us smoke (cigarettes, at least in my case) downstairs. The place was available pretty much 24/7, too; many a dim blue hour saw Jim and I wheeling a Radio Flyer wagon, with my semi-monstrous amp on it, through the neighborhood. I could not have played Toad's Place if I did not play South Street first.
Just as we were approaching the end of high school, she took ill and vacated the house on South Street for a time. That was the end of the era, really. We'd spent two years, on and off, in and out, making a godawful racket and practicing our interviews. By that time, Jim had a girlfriend, I had...well, Jim had a girlfriend, and I guess that's the important part. (I didn't date much between ages 6 and 19. That's another rant for another time, though.)
I guess all you need to know is this: God bless her, and God bless everybody who shows such boundless love and hospitality to weird-looking idiots like Jim and I were. Everyone who knew her, or someone like her, is a better person for it.
More later.

2004-06-22T11:11:00.001-04:00

I am keeping it real.
Do you know how real it is?
I have two car payments, a mortgage, daycare, and insurance to pay...but the RIAA thinks I should pay $20 for two semi-decent songs and 15 chunks of worthless filler.
The government makes money off of the interest from my overpaid taxes during the year, but doesn't even send me a Christmas card.
My governor cut all kinds of illegal deals to get paid, but he already makes more than ten times what I do.
The CEO of my employer just got a bonus that is approximately 1000 times my annual salary, but the company is looking to reduce administrative costs.
My neighbor is constantly being visited by repo men in the dead of night, but he just got back from a cruise and feels free to comment on the appearance of my property. His is spotless, given its postage-stamp footprint...I'm sure the repo men in question enjoy the verdant scenery.
My house was overvalued to secure a mortgage I will probably never live to pay off. When the housing market sags again, I will be paying far more than the house is worth...maybe twice what it will go for in five years.
Girls don't talk to me because I don't hang out in bars. Both sides are sober, and that makes things more difficult for both of us.
I have a friend who wants me to form a bar band, but I don't drink, I don't like the idea of playing other people's stuff, and I'm trying to make something my kids can be proud of. All the bar bands are getting paid, and all kinds of people like them, I am told. Then I look at those people, and wonder how many will be carpooling with Bill W. by this time next year. I am not getting paid. I think I might be allergic to getting paid, at least that way.
I am keeping it real.

2004-06-18T13:14:00.000-04:00

Walk.
If you have anything to say, no matter how terrible, no matter how awkward it may seem, now is the time to say it. Your demands are agonizing, and I don't care how little of a surprise it should be that we're parting. I am very aware of my own stupidity, my own inadequacy, and the fact that I just never had a damned thing to begin with. I deluded myself, actively at times, about how you were what I needed, what I should want, something I could turn to if I had a problem. In the end, you only created more problems, and I don't consider it irrational to hate you, to a varying extent anyway, for the rest of my days. We were supposed to be so much more, but it's apparent that there wasn't anything to back up those promises. We were both making believe, and it doesn't matter who quit first. It's going to hurt, it's going to make me angry, and it's going to inform my life decisions for, in all likelihood, the rest of my days. You didn't play fair, but nobody ever said you would. I should have been so much smarter, but I'm not. I'm only smart enough to know that I've been giving away something semiprecious and will never be compensated for that sacrifice. If I'm lucky, I'll eventually recover from the shaking hands, desperate stares into space, and the odd wheeze when I try to say your name to strangers.
How bad could it have been? Probably not much worse than it honestly was. The money, the time, the social stigma of our being together...it would have overwhelmed me anyway, in time. I'll always think of you when I see a bottle of Corona, and the sight of a pack of Marlboro Menthol Lights is always going to slow my pace by a step or two. I've gotten over worse in the past, especially from your kind, but right now I'm in the thick of it, the long dark as I like to call it. It is nothing I would wish upon an ex-spouse, and given my devoutly petty and self-centered nature, that's saying something. There's nothing distracting enough to keep my mind off of you for a full day; thankfully, I get a lot of encouragement from my friends, or I'd have lost my mind. I can fight this impulse. I have to remind myself that things have been worse, and things will get better. This is just the hard part. I'll find something new to do with all the time we used to spend together. You'll always be around, buzzing in my brain like the chemical hooks attributed to most opiates...I don't know if your lingering damage will ever completely heal, but I have to keep my head up. I wish we'd never gotten started, really, but, as with so many of my more grievous errors, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
And yes, gentle reader, I just quit smoking AGAIN. What did you THINK I was talking about?

2004-06-17T22:31:00.000-04:00

Let's keep this brief, part 2.
It's hot tonight, despite the rain. The smell of wet concrete still permeates the air, stifling the rank odor of overaged chicken soup. I don't understand; how is it still so hot, so humid? Somehow, this is Muggsy's doing. I can't prove it, but I know this much is true.
The walls in my dining room are buttery yellow; I didn't pick this color, and on a night like tonight it is obvious that it is not healthy. My tired eyes play over it, in the smeifunctional half-light, and the walls appear to be mottled, like certain yellow roses, with mild reddish streaks.
Yeah, I'm tired. Nothing but work all around, and frankly I am worn out. I'm trying to keep my chin up, but all that seems to do is allow some folks a clearer shot...all's well for the weekend, at least. We're About 9 is playing at the zoo, and there's the possibility of some free meals somewhere (it being Father's Day and all).
Something tells me this will be an utterly unmemorable Father's Day, since the two older boys will be at their biological mother's (thank you, Family Court) and the wife will be taking my youngest to see her father (half a state away). Ah well. Someday all of this will seem like a bad dream.
Hopefully, that day will come before I'm too senile, screaming and drooling, to appreciate it.
Recommended listening for all you uncultured sorts:
Eschellon, A Sample Of...

Astronautalis, You And Your Good Ideas

I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, as performed by various artists you've never heard of.
Picturing Lily

Give the local kids some traffic. Some day, they'll be famous and you'll want them to think kindly of you.
Me? I'm already famous. I just don't know where.
Good night. I'm off to dream of large women.

2004-06-17T14:03:00.000-04:00

Flashes and dots.
I watch a lot of television, as you might surmise from my lengthy posts with only a modicum of actual content between them, and last week was no exception. I promised you advice on better living, and here it is.
- I liked The Shipping News. I still have no idea what most of the Newfoundlander characters are saying, but that just proves that the dialect coach should have won an Oscar. (Speaking of which: if anyone can tell me the name of the movie that had Scottish-to-English subtitles, I'll give you a dollar. Seriously.)
- I still like X2, but certain parts of it really irk me. The two female leads, for example. Now, Halle Berry can act sometimes, I've seen it (Monster's Ball, Die Another Day, and Losing Isaiah come to mind), but nobody's ever given an Oscar to Famke Janssen. There is a reason for this. Even Meg Ryan, America's Perkiest Cuckolder, looked good when they stuck poor Hugh Jackman into a frame with her. Famke ain't hard on the eyes, as my beloved Uncle Fred would say, but she cannot act. Can. Not. Act. It's like asking Dustin Hoffman to dunk a basketball, or Ben Stiller to be funny without a solid supporting cast. Never happen. Halle looks like she's about ready to take a nap, even during the action sequences...maybe she was all tuckered out after Monster's Ball. I was.
- If I Should Fall From Grace With God is a phenomenal documentary about Shane McGowan, the once and future leader of the Pogues. If you don't know who they are, go find out. It's what WinMX is for, for Grodd's sake. While you're doing that, I'll summarize: Shane is a transplanted Irish drunk in England. Shane took traditional Irish music and tugged it sideways into rock. Shane has a knockout girlfriend who thinks he's the greatest Irishman since Dylan Thomas, and he's still drinking more than any rugby team I've ever seen. Every slogger in an "Irish band" (the Reilly Clan, the Highland Rovers, Black 47, the Prodigals, the Tipperary Knights, U2, etc.) owes Shane, and most of us admit it.
Shane is truly blessed, truly touched, and truly gifted. Here's to the man, and to the biographers who did such a great job without demystifying the situation.
- Mean Machine is the English Longest Yard. It stars Vinnie Jones and Jason Statham. They made Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, as well as Snatch (two of my favorite movies, if you bothered to read the profile). This is good, if lightweight, stuff; I imagine the pitch was "Imagine Bend It Like Beckham, but with convicts." This movie will not raise your consciousness, but it will make you laugh a bit. That's good too.
See, Muggs? I can write about movies, THEN switch it up to a more serious topic. I'll write about the serious thing later.

2004-06-15T14:18:00.000-04:00

Let's keep this brief, part I.
Fear is a showcase.
You're afraid. Don't ask me of what, but you are. We all are. I know people who are so afraid of certain things, it clouds their otherwise-solid faculties and makes them do things that, in the cold light of day, they are not proud of, or at least know they shouldn't be. Fear grips the brain like Wilt grabbing a rebound; there's no slapping sound, to my knowledge, but the feel, the steely grip, seems to surround you. There's no release (unlike Wilt's outlet passes) until you beat the fear back, and then there's a flush of red heat as your shame and anger come flooding in. Sometimes that's worse than the fear itself; that anger, that epinephrin flow subverting any apology for hasty action or perilous inertia, can be the most memorable part of the moment. (Anger is something I'll discuss at another time. Trust me.)
Fear kills, sometimes. It finds friendships sleeping, and makes an abattoir of sacred trusts that would make Ed Gein nauseous. It takes marriages and other commitments unawares, uses cheap ire's power tools to vivisect faith, until the walls are covered in the gore of regret. That's assuming you get your left brain back in time, and can actually regret what your cowardice has made you do. Otherwise, you just leave a trail of carnage that you never see. What's worse than that?
I have always prided myself on my ability to reason my way out of most tense situations. Certainly, I possess certain physical advantages that give others pause, and during that break from hostilities, I try to find a common bond, exploit the shared tension to relieve the pressure. I have a lot of pride, in that respect; I haven't needed to engage in a physical confrontation in over a decade. I'm trying to reason away my insecurities now, and I am having an amazing degree of difficulty. That's going to make me do stupid things, frightened things...but I know it. Call this navel-gazing, but I think that will help.
All fear is of the unknown. Fear's first words, a husky whisper in the ear of an ordinarily-sensible person, are "what if?"
That whisper gets louder if you keep listening to it long enough...finally, it's a pandering scream, a plea for hasty and often ill-advised action. It picks apart the fight-or-flight reaction, almost always rooting for flight like a deranged Cowboys fan. It can be deafening; my own ears are still ringing from all of its recent advice, none of which is very good. Fear is not an intellectual exercise; it is a state where the intellect has been carjacked, where faith and hope are trying valiantly to restore control against diminishing odds. The more things you're afraid of, the longer the ride home (if you even have a sense of home left after the desperate, reprehensible behaviors that this icy stranglehold encourages).
I've been very afraid of a lot of things for a very long time, and it has definitely caused some damage. I'm not saying I'm all better (not even close), but I think I have a much firmer grip on myself as of this writing. I've had some help from some very unexpected sources lately, but that's a rant for another time.
More later.

2004-06-10T23:26:00.000-04:00

And when the rain stops, the burning sun begins.
Long day, peoples...Ray Charles is gone, my beloved managerette at work appears to be en route, a girl I briefly crushed on in summer theater went from cancer, and frankly, there's a lot more of me gone than here right now.
I'll catch you all tomorrow, I guess.

2004-06-10T11:59:00.000-04:00

One and done.
This one will be brief and cryptic to anyone but its target.
A lot of people will think it's for them, and if that makes them feel better, well...take it for yourself, then.
Thank you for being who you were, when you were. I really, really needed you, and for that brief time, you were amazing. I'm sorry I was a jerk, and I wish you every happiness.
That's all I have to say on that. More later, and on (hopefully) a much different topic.

2004-06-08T14:32:00.000-04:00

From the dreams to the trees to the cracks in the pavement...
Scattershot to start the shooting match:
Man, I can't get enough of Astronautalis (www.modelcitizens.org). I wonder if he'll say the same of my stuff, someday. Here's to hoping... Detroit 87, Lakers 75; even as a Magic-era Lake Show fan, it makes me happy to see that. Detroit, people. Kid Rock. Eminem. Dennis Rodman when he still looked human, but played like a machine. Alice Cooper before VH1 got ahold of him. Joe Dumars and the quiet competence that built this team and fueled the only non-Boston threat to Laker supremacy after Larry Bird got old. The White Stripes. Magic Johnson. Mitch Ryder, who warned me about that devil with a blue dress on (I should have listened, Mitch; my bad). James Jamerson and the Funk Brothers, without whom AM radio would be a perpetual stream of Perry Como or news radio. Detroit ain't a bad alternative to my beloved Nets, given that pedigree. Go Detroit. Teach them why the East is still in business, especially if it means making Shaq and Kobe cry... Coulrophobia is just a cool word. I have to find a way to use it more often, especially since this IS an election year... Good thoughts go out to my longtime sparring partner/hetero lifemate Mat, as his wife is due to deliver their first baby (a girl, no less...oh, Mathew, you poor devil...) even as you read this. L'chaim, kids... Ok, time to start focusing. I promised a sequel to the other night's rant, and I can only improve on the hastily-dropped science of the other day.
Signs and portents.
I've finally got the handle. I am at a crossroads, and while it's nice to think I have options, I really don't. Nobody who lives by a set of rules, or even a personally-crafted libertine code of conduct (I swear to God, Mike, I'll leave you out of this one as much as possible!) has as many options as they think. We are, to paraphrase Anthony Robbins, locked into the patterns we make, and until we take control of those patterns, we will always be within spitting distance of our dreams and goals, but never any closer. I know how touchy-feely, Leo Buscaglia-esque that sounds, but it's true. In addition, most of the sages who'll trod your nightstand for the low, low price of $24.95 (and up) want you to know that you have to enact change, not just react to it. Amazing. If I'd thought to compile these platitudes into a veritable phone book full of bumperstickers, I could be worth millions. That would make my dream of a big house in the hills, chock full of showgirls and vintage guitars (and no, those showgirls will never be allowed to touch the guitars; I learned my lesson when the ex-wife had Mat's sister model for her, using my beloved American-made Fender Jazz Bass...I was wiping the sweat/perfume smell off that thing for a week), a reality. As such, I have finally found my dream. I will become a self-help guru, that most popular of guests on any talk show, those uncostumed superheros who offer less contact with reality than a Superman comic, the unanointed popes of the First Church of Insecurity. Everywhere I've been has led me to this place, and I think of it less as a staggering pile of hubristic nonsense, and more as gleaming spire of folkish truisms just waiting to burst forth from the pathetic mesa of trite self-promotion.
Now, some of you may recoil somewhat from that spire, and I certainly don't blame you for your reluctance to believe in my lofty goal. How can I, a self-avowed indecisive failure, become such a staggering media personality? Can I cut it as a talking head (thank you, Marshall McLuhan, for that tag and so many others)? I know I can. You see, I was born to be famous. I was groomed for the notion of reality television before the first Real World ever aired. I was breaking the fourth wall before anyone ever put a camera on me, so I stand poised for personal greatness. They said I was mad, said I was a fool...and now they're all balding misanthropes, feeding at the very bottom of the bar scene, waiting for their chance for personal glory. I have that chance, and a full head of hair, to boot. (which is not to suggest you boot me in the head. Go back, reread it, and examine it as a turn of phrase. I repeat: do NOT boot me in the head. Violence upon the August Personage will not be countenanced.)
I have control of the patterns. I am ready to take control of my own life and many others, especially given the net worth of these self-appointed messiahs.
I can do this. Admit it: you can feel it, too. Now, all I need is a few investors to back my dream. That, and some practice showgirls.

2004-06-06T21:24:00.000-04:00

Performance metrics are my life, or Why I'm Here And Not There.
This may surprise you, but sometimes folks just don't catch my drift.
Why am I wasting words on words, anyway? I'll just cut to the chase, and use my boy Strangler Mike as an example. (To add a rather wordy disclaimer, I love Mike like an autistic little brother that my parents were smart enough to put up for adoption. He rocks, in his own short bus way, and his success at superficiality in all aspects of life must be respected, but sometimes I wonder if he even knows I'm talking, much less that I'm trying to tell him something/anything.)
Mike is deeply into cover bands (I believe he was bitten by a radioactive bar band as a child), and as a member of the inner circle of a rather successful local bunch of future 12-steppers, I view his insights into that realm as relatively verifiable, if somewhat disturbing on a sociological level. Mike came to see me play the open mic at The Space on Tuesday, and, upon my completion of a somewhat ragged, but otherwise satisfying, pair of original tunes (neither of which could be easily covered by Blink-182, Green Day, Limp Bizkit, or Avril Lavigne), he turns to me and says, with full knowledge of my history in his chosen field of endeavor, "You can still play. Imagine how much money we could be making in a working band."
Now I must give you the boring part of why he deserved a wedgie. I apologize, but the truth would have come out eventually.
I've been playing bass for 17 years in July, and over that time, I've done a lot of work playing a wide variety of crappy cover songs. In January, I capped off a nine-month stint in a cover band of growing renown by playing the biggest club in the county...and quitting five minutes after our set. I was done wasting time away from the kids, playing other peoples' music for no money, being (at best) underappreciated by any sticky-floored date-rape showroom that bothered to call us back, and generally spending more time in a practice space (see also: a shoebox with a door, shabby even by UNICEF's standards) than I did in the house I'm overmortgaged on. Now, I'm no John Entwistle, Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, etc. (Oh, what the hell do YOU care who the bassist is? Only the drummers and bassists honestly care who the drummers and bassists are...and most of us are really ok with that. You can go fawn over the cirrhotic imbecile guitarists and egomaniacal lead singers; the bassist is the guy in the back, occasionally tormenting the drummer to stay awake, counting the crowd so those typically inebriated cerebral nullsets up front still get paid. We're cool with that. We know those cats are lunch meat without us.), but I do figure that if I'm going to work that hard, I should be happier at the end of a night. That never happens unless I'm working with people who made their own stuff. I've told the same to Mike about 70,000 times since I quit the cover band...ok, maybe it was only 50 times, but it was still pretty often. Mike's the one who rode with me the first time I went to The Space, when a very dark cloud had obscured the stars, and I had a very real need to be somewhere more nurturing than one of his dive bars full of hepatically-questionable karaoke stylists. (That's all the cover band scene is: it's karaoke at its most egotistical, and yet it makes enough money, at least in the case of Mike's acquaintances, to strangle any hope for an original-music scene in local bars.)
I just looked at him, eyes awash in disbelief, and asked him when the crack habit had started.
There's more to this, but it'll have to keep. I'm just about passing out now.

2004-05-31T00:52:00.000-04:00

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).

2004-05-07T19:01:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-07T02:02:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-06T22:05:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-03T09:18:00.000-04:00

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.

2004-05-01T13:19:00.000-04:00

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!

2004-04-29T23:01:00.000-04:00

But wait, there's more...
Noise and Blue Light
It's getting late. The dishes are done, the boys are asleep, and I have just returned from the front porch. I am inspired by a combination of exhaustion (I've had 6 hours of sleep in the past two days, no big change for those who know my sleep patterns...I'd sleep all damned day, if someone would just let me, but it never happens) and wonder.
I can hear the city from here. It's not The City, that wonderful mecca of industrial-strength light and magic some 70 miles away; that's an entirely different high for me, one that beggars the work of any manmade chemical. No, this is just MY city, the place I was born, the world I love so dearly.
The gentle susurrus of constant traffic, overheard snippets of others' lives, and the odd siren en route to someone else's tragedy is like some type of musique concrete to me. Simply put, I live for that sound, whether it's atop a porch roof in Wilmington, DE or just hanging around the City of Elms.
It sounds condescending, but it's times like these that I feel for those who have lost their sense of wonder, who spend every day removed from the kind of small steady thrill that having a readily available (and perfectly legal) source of magic provides. When I was young, we spent a few weeks each summer in a small town in PA, just outside of Harrisburg. It was all I could do to strain for any source of sound (sound being my main source of sensory input; I've been progressively more myopic since I was seven)...sometimes there'd be a strangely constant run of freight trains about 300 feet away, through the woods, but other times I had to wait until morning, when the odd Amish hansom would make its way through the neighborhood. Despite my growing inability to sense it, that blue light just before dawn still takes me back there, to the cool concrete slab of a front porch, to the still, stifling hot air of August, the growing dread that each day brought me closer to another school year...good times, even when they were idle. Especially then, since my maternal grandmother was somewhat allergic to boredom (apparently its congenital, along with the occasional depressive/hypermelodramatic tendencies that have spilled down Crick and Watson's stepladder, too). My most vivid memories, my best stories, my turning points, tend to start or end in that blue light, whether it's a tale of youthful debauchery or the last time I visited the hospital solarium in December of 1992.
Not that it's more than a third over, but my life has been driven by that vigil for human sound, that watch in the twilight. I know it's just lack of sleep catching up with me, but I have to wax a bit philosophical and more than a little maudlin. I often thought my last breath would be drawn in the hour before dawn, since it was always such a powerful time in my life. That halfway point, that vacant rest stop on the highway between last night and this morning, is a kind of home for me even now. It's when I start the day, now that I have responsibilities, but even when I'm spent, as I am now, I am reassured by knowing that the space between days is still there.
Well, if you didn't think I was tired before, I suppose that just cemented it. I am Guthrie, and it's well past pillow time. See you all tomorrow or so; I'll try to update after the Mighty Purple CD release show tomorrow night, but no promise have I made.
...and to all, a good night.

2004-04-29T21:19:00.000-04:00

And now a word or two (or three or four):
In honor of the late Larry King, I will be using all kinds of fragmented
thoughts to start my second real blogpost. Feel free to comment, as always.
Bar bands are like hookers that try to copy each other's technique; sooner
or later, they all sound alike, and the floor will be sticky no matter
where you catch them...I have to vote for Kerry, but I'm far from proud of
that; remember when you voted FOR somebody? I don't, but my grandma used to
swear it happened sometimes...could I hate Shaq and Kobe more than I do?
No. It is impossible to conceive of two lower forms of basketball life, and
I remember the Larry Bird-less Celtics and Jordan-less Bulls...I like
hockey. I like ALL hockey, even NCAA or women's hockey. This is ironic,
since I know diddly-squat about the actual sport. It just looks like so
much fun. Same for football and rugby. I know almost nothing about them,
but woo hah, are they fun to watch...I once drank with John McEnroe at the
New Haven Coliseum; I was 11...The Space is the best place on Earth, and I
wish I had a million dollars to donate for their overhead and renovation
plans...if you want to give money to charity, don't have any, but manage to
scam it off someone else, you just MIGHT be a Democrat...if you steal it
for yourself, then condemn a guy who tries to take it from you, you're a
Republican...I like basketball; I stink at it, but on those rare occasions
where I make a play, it's sweeter than a cherry pie with Redi-Whip
topping...Snoop Dogg is the next LL Cool J, but snappier in the threads
department...we will never have peace on Earth, but as long as we have
Oingo Boingo, Motorhead, and OutKast in the van, I imagine we'll be okay...Dr. Seuss was a god, and Dr. Phil is a jerkweed...I like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, but if they
ever came to my house, they'd have to start with Muggsy as a warmup, and
that would kill them...Ever notice how Halle Berry keeps divorcing people
whenever her marketability improves? It's like watching Ann Heche bounce back and forth between the footlong at Shea Stadium and the tuna sub with hot sauce at Subway...If you believe in something with all
your heart and soul, you can still be wrong, but at least you're not like
all these newly-minted Pats/Yanks/Lakers fans, all of whom are bedwetting
halfwits. If you didn't stick with these teams through the hard times,
you're a coward and a loser. Granted, I started rooting for Chicago after
Magic retired, but that was just because I watched MJ vivisect the
then-hated PissTins...no matter how much times change, I still love saying
it: Zydrunas Ilgauskas...Someday we'll laugh about all of this; I say we start now.
I AM GUTHRIE, AND I ALMOST FOCUS SOMETIMES
- Muggs is my boy.
One time, back in 1990, a bunch of us were playing football at Bassett Park in our Unnamed Connecticut Stomps. This was done mostly to Impress Girls (namely, so our friend Mat could impress his girl, The Chihuahua...the rest of us couldn't buy dates, most of the time). Muggs had the good fortune to line up against me (he was still a male model at this time; in later years, he would go to seed, but back then he was only mildly awkward with a LOT more stamina, at least as far as football goes). I have always dreamt of being a running back (despite being built like a center or iron-man nose tackle), and in situations with no clock, I'm more than happy to move those chains. Muggs went for a leg tackle, missed my leg, and grabbed my tackle. My response was uncharacteristically succinct.
"Forward motion has STOPPED. The play is over. Let go, Muggs."
Muggs realized immediately what he had done, but being Grodd's Gift To Clever SOBs, he looks up at me and says, within earshot of the girls:
"I thought it was your leg."
When I achieve my cosmic destiny, Jonathan David Muggleton, know that your name will be spoken ONLY WITH DUE REVERENCE. I have the best friends on Earth; yours are OK, but mine are the all-time fking best.
Ok, time to go watch Dallas and Sac-town. I swear it's worse than watching my kids fight (at least I technically have the PPV rights for that!). I love Dallas and Sac'to, from owners to benchwarmers...and they're not the Lakers.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Oingo Boingo, Best O Boingo
I'm Your Fan, A Tribute To Leonard Cohen (as performed by a lot of people you don't know, a couple you do, but nobody who's had much success since this was made back in 1991)
Fatima Mansions, Lost In The Former West
Black 47, Fire of Freedom
Living Colour, Vivid
Coldplay, A Rush of Blood To The Head
Radiohead, OK Computer
GREATEST BASKETBALL PLAYER OF ALL TIME, THIS WEEK
Magic Johnson. Sure, MJ has the stats, the rings, and the money...but Magic played all 5 positions over the course of one postseason. Respect due, respect given. Anyone who says Bird was better is an ignorant cracker.
To quote the Self-Appointed American Poet Laureate, 1995: Go with yourself! Go with yourself!
I am Guthrie, and there's more where this crap came from.

2004-04-27T15:40:00.000-04:00

Ok. I'm stumped. I'll work on this later.

2004-04-27T15:38:00.000-04:00

4/27/04 pt 2, where I start messing with stuff...just tried to add comments section. Wish me luck.

2004-04-27T15:16:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my mind. I promised myself I'd never do an online journal, because that promotes a "dear diary" atmosphere...and I am not a private person. People tend to think that their precious little opinions are the most important thing in the world; this is pitiful on their part, and it speaks poorly of their upbringing.
(Only MY opinions are the most important things in the world. I will prove to you, once and for all, that you don't have to be smart to be an elitist.)
The best start is to tell you who I am, since we're going to be mortal enemies soon enough. I'm a proud father of three boys, ages 10, 8, and 1 (at this time); I am a published comics fanboy who had to give up on any collecting hobbies when the job at the stock market dried up in June 2001; I am a homeowner who does not trust his neighbors; I am a semi-decent musician who always has something on a back burner somewhere; I try to support the arts, especially modern dance (ecdysiasts, in particular), experimental music (my friend Jim and I INVENTED drum-n-bass back in 1987, since we couldn't find a guitarist who'd stick around), and painting (when you own a house, a Sears card is considered life support); I am a rabid centrist who doesn't trust the media, the two-party system, or Eddie Vedder; I am a Type 2 diabetic who misses cheap bourbon after most days at work; I am Guthrie.