the asshat lounge

While I'm on the Subject

2012-02-01T07:11:00.000-08:00

Em through Eff i get up around 5:15 in the a.m. and if i'm lucky i get to bed before midnight, weekends the boyos might let me sleep unitl 7a.m. if i'm incredibly lucky and i won't even mention what time i go to bed then, in between i get alot of shit done, alot of un-rockstar like shit, like laundry and dishes and baths and sweeping and unloading trucks and moving furniture and the occasional bout with the typer, you see i'm a bad motherfucker and that's not in the fictional sense either or maybe i used to be but that side is always bubbling just under the surface and really don't worry about it, most people didn't aspire to be the things i was and nor should they it's just that at the time i was young and invincible and sometimes i like to think i still am though now i know i'm not, the boyos have made me understand perfectly the limits of my mortality, and don't feel bad you if ain't as bad as me, you know sometimes a motherfucker just got a gloat a bit, you know get a chuckle at how i've never been told to write books or go back to journalism school, fuck all that shit, you, me and my mother know i don't need it and it ain't gonna happen so why waste the time, breath or paper? and what is all this about you ask? dunno but i'm getting to it...

See a long time ago i had this car, it was a Chevy Geo i bought for 400 bucks and my damn near 6'5 frame barely even fit in the thing, it was a stick shift that i learned to drive in roughly a half hour before i hit the streets and through my rise up to the ladder to become King of North Oakland it's what i drove, even when i could have been driving a BMW740 and plunked down the fucking cash for it to boot, but flash gets you noticed and there is a reason some guys can walk around and you never know that they're running half the grass in the city, see one day on the way home from the connections i pulled up to a red light and low and behold there next to me was a police cruiser with a narc dog in the back going absolutely ape shit, of course the good officers looked at me and the car and went back to discussing what they were going to have for lunch, not realizing or maybe caring that the car next to them had 40 or so pounds of excellent cheeba sitting in it's trunk, when the burgh's finest did glance my way i calmly looked back and smiled ever so slightly and then the light changed and i got my arrow and went left and they went straight not realizing what might have been the biggest bust of their careers had just drove by while Rover was going ape shit, of course they needed to nab me then cuz the shit would be gone in a day or two and i'd be heading back to the connection but that's a fable for another time...

So yes, i've lived it, hard and fast, and since about the only things i've ever been good at are drinking, drugging, wheeling and fucking (not necessarily in that order either) the first two by my own admission, the last two i can provide references if you like, when i heard this song i was kinda like, shit man, this guy sorta wrote the story of my life or maybe the philosophy of it or maybe i just like it the fucking thing cuz it reminds me of where i was and where i be going these days, so pay attention to the words, you know i've always been a word guy but i'll just say that the music is pretty fucking good too, if anyone was paying attention (not that i expect anyone to) this if off my favorite album from last year, who knew fucking Jersey would kick out the punk rock or at least the spirit of punk rock, so au revoir, bon soir and all that other shit...

How's My Drinking?

2012-01-31T07:16:00.000-08:00

In this vast cultural and human wasteland known as the suburbs i've searched long and hard for a place to drink, of course i stumbled upon the Plastic Paddy only to have the place shut down a few months after i moved, i mean the PP wasn't the best place, it was a fake Irish pub chain and it was filled with local assholes who liked to flash expensive jewelry and talk loudly about how successful they were but the staff took a shine to me and gave me free booze so i could deal with it, it would have been interesting and terrifying i'm sure to these Wonder Bread fuckos if i had started talking about my rather colorful past but i kept my head down and drank and tried not to punch anyone, as for uptown (the main drag of my little hamlet), where the PP was located, there are fucking wine bars and the local where all the kiddies who grew up there hang, it's like a fucking class reunion to a school i didn't attend so i tend to avoid the place and wine bars? you really think i'm gonna fucking hang out in a wine bar?

(sidebar: i've been blessed with the wonderful and painful condition known as gout, in fact the first time i ever had it i was 27 (incredibly young) and since i didn't know what it was i proceeded to drink my way through it, now of course drinking is the main cause of this condition which basically feels like someone ground up glass and dropped it in your joints, a form of rheumatoid arthritis technically, and since i'm not one to fucking quit anything unless i decide to i just ploughed through it, now somewhere along the line someone told me that white wine was the only booze that didn't cause flare ups, so when i'd have a flare up i'd put down the Guinness and Irish Whiskey and switch to white wine, i'd drink it in pint glasses with some ice, even in some of the dive bars i'd frequent where the bartenders would all grin at me, on the average night i'd drink 3 or 4 bottles myself and i began to wonder why people even drank this stuff, i'd actually check the label to see if it had alcohol in it cuz even my friends would marvel at how little effect it had on me, of course back in those days maybe it had something to do with all the fucking blow but even know it seems that white wine has no effect... red of course is a different story and i do love me the red on occasion, that occasion being the limited availability of the black gold..."

So i've been trekking back to my favorite dives in my beloved old hood but i needed a place closer, i can't always be racing around the city now right? and since i live a stone's throw away from the city line anyway i have begun to frequent the Blvd, as i call it, the main drag of a white-trash section of the burgh and i do mean that lovingly, and i've found a couple of places that are just fine even if the jukeboxes lack a bit, one of the bars, lucky me, has $3 imports all night and Guinness on tap and i've taken quite a shine to the place and low and behold the Guinness is fucking top notch, which is funny cuz i've never seen anyone drink it in the place other than me, i mean most city kids drink horrible shit like Coors lite and Miller lite and IC lite, they drink brightly colored shots with funny names and ply the jukebox with nu-country, nu-metal and fucking hip hop, to each his own, i'll endure alot for my black pints especially when they're that cheap, of course what i like most about this place is it's a bit cleaner and nicer version of the place i spent years in slinging weed to the masses, in fact had i lived on this side of town back then it's the kind of place i most likely would've set up shop in if the owner didn't mind and even if he did there's a place right down the street that would be perfect as well and judging by my observations of that place it would have been no problem...

And so all is well with the world as i have found a new place to booze, i made it through the holidays relatively unscathed except for a few benders but i'm not the bender type anymore now am i? or am i? it seems i've taught myself to drink like the consummate professional derelict i am, i can tell you before my last drink the strength and severity of my hangover by the number of drinks and the amount of cigarettes i consume and can rise the next day and say, see? i told ya... and in case you were wondering there really is no point to this post, just a derelict rambling on about drinking and taking drugs and the like cuz really you don't come here for enlightenment, fuck i don't know why anyone comes here, i don't know why i come here except that i'm a creature of habit and i gotta entertain myself somehow... i wonder if the bar is open yet?

The Wilderness Years - Young, Drunk, Stupid and Incredibly High - Part 2

2012-01-24T06:22:00.000-08:00

And so it was that Jimmy Brooks, heir to the family clothing store and old money, turned and visibly shaken and weeping went back down the steps to his family store, entered his office and... meanwhile up in the apartment The Hassler and i celebrated, we laughed and laughed at the grown man we had made cry with threats of bodily harm and arson, of course the celebration was short lived as the Poet and his skeezer burst from the bedroom fully clothed, called us both assholes and dashed for the door telling us that they were leaving before the police arrived, it was at that point that it dawned on our hero here that he had a half pound of weed, baggies, a scale and a few other things of an illicit nature laying around, small town cops didn't always need a warrant to ransack the place so it was with great speed an efficiency that i threw everything in a duffel bag and stealthily climbed down the back fire escape, i ran to the Zinch's house and stashed the stash in the trunk of his car and then headed back to the apartment to see what would transpire next... by this time the Hassler had made his way to his room and passed out on his bed and i walked in locked the door and the put on the chain and crawled into my own...

I was just about to enter the wonderful world of dreamland when there was a loud pounding on the door, the Hassler was now near comatose as i heard the snores from down the hall so i rose and crept to the door and said who is it, Podunk police was the response and i took a deep breath and unlocked the door but not the chain, can i help you i asked in my most sarcastically polite voice and it was at this point that he stated the Hassler's Christian name and asked if this was his place of residence, i began to laugh as i yelled "Hassler the cops are here for you", unlocked the chain and stood directly in the good officers path, the good officer was a baby-faced young man who stood all of maybe 5'7 and at best was 130 pounds soaking wet, in front of him stood a 6'4 inch 190lb lunatic in boxer shorts and a button down shirt, long unkept hair and shit-eating grin, the Hassler came bounding out in a t-shirt and boxers and immediately started laughing, "how old are you he" cackled, "none of your business" was the officers response, name and badge number was mine and baby-face looked at both of us and i could see that he was wondering if it was to late to call for back-up, Hassler sat down on the couch and lit a cigarette as Officer Pack stated his name and badge number, i of course stated that this was just for the purpose of knowing who we were dealing with in case of course of any irregularities that might arise during his visit, i then queried the good officer on the fact that his last name was the same as a sitting town council member and he stated that said council member was his father, to which Hassler spat out "that nepotism wasn't just some big word in the dictionary", a statement that i do believe was lost on our young officer...

Officer Pack must have been thinking that he drew the shit end of the stick on this fine wintry morning, he then told the Hassler to put out the smoke and that he was under arrest for an outstanding warrant, seems that the Hassler in a drunken stupor had lifted a Snickers from the local 7-11 sometime last year and that the fine had yet to be paid, to which the Hassler said bullshit i paid it but which Officer Pack insisted that it wasn't and that if there was some mistake which he doubted there was that the Hassler could take it up with the district magistrate where he would be going directly, i of course sat on the couch as soon as the good officer told Hassler to get up and quit smoking and lit up my own conveniently blowing smoke in his general direction, i then stated that he looked a bit young to be a cop and he stated that he had all the proper training and Hassler added plus a daddy on town council and we got a good laugh out of it and i kept asking, c'mon man how old are you? you even old enough to drink? you old enough to vote? to which Officer Pack informed me that if i pushed my luck i could go for a ride too, to which i replied that i seriously doubted that and began to inform him that asking questions of a police officer was not a crime as far as i could tell and then stated how i had helped get one of his little Nazi buddies fired a few years back for flaunting laws and acting like some vigilante, "you might remember officer Hamburger i snarled, hell for all i know you got his job", so how old are you? we were relentless and poor, young Officer Pack finally blurted out 21, to which we began hooting and hollering and saying you're younger than us and a cop? Jay-sus H. Christ and good young Officer Pack began to dance nervously and told us to stay put as he walked back towards the kitchen, i got up to see what he was doing and he ordered me to sit down and i stated that this was our place and that he was not about to roam around unattended, he then quietly mumbled something into his radio and headed back down the hall towards us...

The good officer then informed the Hassler that he was taking him to the magistrates and the Hassler shook his head and mumbled how this was bullshit, he laughed and said, "well can i at least get dressed?", to which Officer Pack nodded and as the Hassler turned to go into his room the officer followed him, Hassler stopped and said "what are you doing? watching me get dressed?" to which young Officer Pack responded, "i need to keep a visual on you at all times", to which i laughed and snorted, "like when you were in the kitchen calling for back-up" and then the Hassler let out his second killer line of the morning and cackled "yeah you never know when i'm gonna come out with 45's a blazing!", to which Officer Pack's jittery hand jumped to his belt and his already pale face lost that last of it's blood and he looked more like Casper the cop than anything else, i sensing that this could go south real fast calmly said "easy John Wayne" it's a fucking joke, to which the Officer said "it's not funny and watch your language", of course me being a smart ass shot back "yes sir" and the Hassler pulled on some jeans and his coat and walked out to have Officer Pack spin him around and put the cuffs on him, of course still being somewhat drunk and stoned the Hassler and i began laughing like hyenas at this and Officer Pack shot me a look and told me not to press my luck to which i responded big bucks no whammies and he looked at me as if i had just stepped off a spaceship and he then shoved Hassler down the hall towards the door...

I got up to watch the parade of the Hassler and the diminutive officer and he told me to stay where i was, i could do nothing but shake my head and yell "if you need any bail money let me know, i'll be at the bar", to which the Hassler smiled and was lead out the door to his awaiting chariot... i was now sitting in an empty apartment bathed in the gray morning light of a fading westeren Pennsyltucky winter, it wasn't even 10am and i wandered toward my bed, which was once again a matttress tossed on the floor and noticed that the Poet and the Skeezer had left half a joint in the ashtray on his night stand, i lit it up and sat in the corner of my room, smoked it all and tossed the roach in the toilet for good measure, i climbed into bed hoping to get an hour of sleep or two until the bar on 5th ave. opened, the Hassler would find out his paper work had been screwed up and the magistrate would apologize for the inconvienance and yuk it up a bit about what a tizzy we had put good old Jimmy Brooks in, by 1pm we were both down at the 5th ave. laughing and telling our story to anyone who would listen, we lifted our 7&7's to the heavens and grinned like idiots...

The Wilderness Years - Young, Drunk, Stupid and Incredibly High - Part 1

2012-01-18T18:39:00.000-08:00

Back in the good old days at Podunk U. i had a radio show for three years, it was from 9 to midnight or more correctly whenever my co-host and i felt like signing off and since there wasn't much to do in the town of Podunk U. some of the best parties on wednesday night took place in the studio, i usually did my show stoned out of my gourd or blind drunk or both, preferably both but you know one or the other was fine, sober was not an option... the dope was smoked in the tiny bathroom and blown into the fan and the booze was drank stealthily in cups but really no one ever came up to the station, down below was the student union and sometimes when my co-host took over i'd roll down and play some pinball or wander the station and look at all the records that came in, being a college radio station we got a shit ton of records and it was the most infamous Hassler who one day pulled out a copy of the Pod while we were stoned silly, a vinyl copy no less, we put it on and it was if Boognish himself had shined a light down on us revealing the secret meaning of things, what things we didn't know but things nonetheless... and what does this have to do with this post? nothing really...

As are most college towns Podunk U. little hamlet was a haven for slumlords and scam artists all trying to take the money of the unsuspecting college crowd, of course by the time i had hit my last year i was damn near and expert in slumlords and since we were renting a prime apartment in the center of town at a good price we knew (we being me and 3 roommates) what the down side was, that being the dickheads who owned the place. It was located above the family clothing store, there was our place and two units next to us and if you crossed over a fire escape there were two more in the back, those were the nice ones and were almost exclusively rented to females cuz the Brooks family figured college girls wouldn't destroy the place, our fine dive had been handed down from class to class among the hardest partiers at the university, all of us knowing full well that the Brooks family was a raging pain in the ass, old money in a small town, on every board at the U. and with major pull with the Podunk fuzz and city hall, yet we stilled signed the lease, we being moi, the Hassler, the Poet and the good Doctor...

Now if we count the years this was during the Late Night Maudlin beginnings and i was pretty much adrift in the world, finishing up my classes and getting my degree so i could get on with things, hence by the second semester the good Doc had split (graduation) and me and the Zinch had usurped the town's local weed dealing legend as the guys who had all the smoke, see with the family finances all tied up in court the old man had told me i might need to find a job and i just sorta grinned and said yeah i'll look into it but he knew and i knew that there weren't many jobs for the student types at Podunk U., hence when the opportunity arose i sat down the Zinch, a short bespectacled maniac and started buying pounds and splitting them and wheeling to all the kids in need, it was a good way to keep myself high and put money in my pocket for shit like food and booze, mainly booze mind you, the food we mostly stole from the supermarket down the street, and before you knew it we were each getting our own and making enough coin to live pretty high on the old hog, he lived down the street from me so if one of us was at class it was an easy walk to the next ones place to score...

But let's get on with it now shall we? I had spent most of my spring break holed up in that apartment and drinking myself silly, there was also a bar down the street that i've written about that i spent a lot of time in, me being a ranking member of what the locals called the art crowd, but towards the end of break i packed up a few things and one of the girls i was seeing and headed home to spend a few days with the old man, it was around the day before i was due to go back that the blizzard of 93 hit and we ended up stuck for an extra day or two but that was alright, i was happy hanging with the old man and my temporary girl, my old man took a shine to her saying she was a pretty bright lass, see one day after drinking triple 7's or what amounts to pint glasses of 7&7's at the Literary Cafe in good old Tremont, that's the Tremont section of Cleveland and before it got all uppity and gentrified, at that time it was just starting and we always joked that Lincoln Park wasn't named after Abe but 77, as in 77 Lincoln, you could score pretty easy and the kids were hip back then, i had one of those all day fucking hangovers and the girl sat with my old man watching old movies and debating the universe and looking back it was probably a fine day for my dad, the girl seemed to think he was a righteous dude and i was like no shit he's my dad and knowing how my dad likes a fine pair of tits i'm sure he was a-ok himself... but back to the story now...

We finally got dug out and headed back to Podunk U., where i arrived about the same time as the Hassler and since we lived on a corner of Main St. anyone passing through town would see the lights and since the Hassler and i like drinking we started in immediately and then some people showed and then some more, nothing huge, but it was then as we sat in the kitchen doing bong hits that we noticed that the place had been painted, we then noticed that there was a box of shit tucked in the corner, not actual shit but plaster that had fell and remnants of drop clothes, paint brushes, fast food bags and the Hassler and i were like what the fuck? those cocksuckers came in our place without our permission when we weren't here? that shit don't fly, of course we knew that's how these people operated, at one point the old man Brooks showed up on a saturday morning unannounced about 10 minutes after a wake and bake and spent 20 minutes fretting about piles of laundry and burning incense, he didn't seem to understand that the place smelled like a Jamaican hash house he just doddered around mumbling his favorite words, fire hazard and eviction...

Well at this point the party had been rolling right along and the Hassler and i were like fuck these pricks and i proceeded to take a marker and write all kinds of derogatory things about our lovely landlords all over the freshly painted walls, the Hassler meanwhile wrote a little note and took the box down and plopped it down right in front of the doors to Brooks Clothing and left it, of course we drank more and smoked more and no one thought anything of it, i in a moment of clarity decided i better paint over what i had written on the walls and so me and a fine young lady started slapping paint all over the walls until you couldn't see it anymore only for me to take a close look and burst out laughing cuz the paint we used was a different color, not much different but a little more than slightly noticeable, of course were so proud of the handiwork we packed up more bongs and drank more malt liquor and at some point the Hassler left and people started leaving or passing out or in the case of the Poet and his slutty girlfriend, the bedroom, i of course kept right on going until i locked to the door and passed out only to be woken up an hour later by a pounding on the door, i wobbled over and opened it to see the Hassler well fucking wasted, he smiled and took a step in the door and passed out cold on the floor in his parka, work boots and hat...

Timmy Brooks was the heir to the Brooks kingdom, Timmy was more than a bit effeminate with a wife and kids and predilection for blowing men, of course in a backwoods town in Pennslytucky the last thing the heir to the kingdom wants is to be a known fag, of course everybody knew but it was a bit nudge nudge wink wink, except of course when he offered to blow a friend of ours after he threatened to evict him, no Timmy was not the toughest or meanest guy and when he saw that box outside his door with Hassler's elegant note saying stay the fuck out of our place you Assholes! it didn't go over to well, Timmy bounded up the steps and was prepared to let us have, well almost...

Meanwhile our heroes were just rousing themselves from a wasted slumber, i was walking around in my boxers and button down shirt smoking the remnants of cigarettes and doing the occasional bong hit, the Hassler was pulling himself up off the hallway floor and joining me and the Poet and his slutty girl were giggling and canoodling behind closed doors, that is of course when Timmy used his master key to try and entree but the genius that is El Kono had put the chain on, of course this elicited a scream from him to open the door and as i bounded over i could see he had the note in his hand and of course once again being 6'4 helps, i mean i wasn't the least bit afraid of Timmy but by the time i swung open the door he had taken a step back as i growled can i help you? now Timmy let loose with a diatribe how we should start packing our bags cuz we were outta here and i laid my best 1000 yard stare on him and said listen up asshole, you just fucked with the wrong crew cuz i'm pre-law (i wasn't) and began to run down a list of tenant rights about notification of entry and the proper amount of time and how him and his old man were in violation of more than a few things as far as tenant rights went and the more i talked the more he squealed and behind me the Hassler just laughed and shouted obscenities at him and before you knew Timmy was getting a bit weepy, of course he tried to counter-attack with what his daddy had seen but the Hassler and I were like fucking pit bulls barely tethered to our chains, i think he knew that we'd like nothing more than to beat the shit out of him and as he stood in the hallway shaking he once again screamed to pack our bags and that's when the Hassler let slip the most evil sounding sentence i'd ever heard, "yeah i'll go pack my bags... and i'll leave a lit cigarette on the carpet when i leave..." at that point Timmy began to full on weep and as his voice cracked he screamed at us, "I'm calling the police..." to be cont.

The Stallion... Mang!

2012-01-18T08:02:00.000-08:00

There is a reason and a story behind this post and let's just say it involves copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, i mean copious fucking amounts but i'll just leave it at that for now, parts 4 & 5 of the Stallion saga will be posted in the near future along with that story, of course the Stallion plays but a small part in that story but i know how much everyone loves stories involving the Hassler, a character of most impeccable yet dubious moral standing in the community so until then enjoy what i consider one of the greatest stories ever told in music, The Stallion, Mang.

Add it Up

2012-01-11T19:31:00.000-08:00

This song is the fucking American Pie of my generation, seriously, i've been listening to this song for 25 plus years and it still gets me every fucking time, i can still sing it to unsuspecting females at the bar at the age of 41 with the same passion and conviction that i sang it to females when i was 16 and drinking beer and rolling around in One-Eyed Bobby's mom's station wagon and of course sometimes those females laugh and other times they grab you by the collar of your shirt and kiss you, cuz i would love to love you lover, and since i've been living it a bit lately like a 16yr old father of two i decided to dust it off and sing along, soon i'll get back to the posts, i got shit to finish and shit to start but sometimes i just gotta let the mind run and see i had this conversation the other day with this lady at work, we were talking about this cat who's damn near 50 and hasn't lived a day in his life, he's a good guy and a friend of mine and i told him that he's gonna wake up on his deathbed and wish he'd have done something with all those days he had on the planet, this lady looked up at me from her desk and stated that everyone probably feels that way and she's a bit older than me but many times i forget i'm past the ripe old age of 40 and i smiled at her and stated that you ain't looking at one of them, that i've lived it, sometimes like it might be my last day, hell some of the ones i've lived should have been my last day but fuck it i woke up and the stumbled into the next one smiling, said that i didn't plan on stopping now either, sure i got some responsibilities and shit but when i wake up on that last day i might be a bit melancholy knowing it's the last one but i'll be grinning like the cat that ate the canary cuz i'll know i didn't waste it, that though there may have been some rough spots it was a good fucking time and i got nothing to be sad about, and i'll close my eyes and let the devil punch my ticket and head straight to the bar... and now back to the program...

Runner -Up - Hello Sadness - Los Campesinos!

2012-01-04T18:58:00.000-08:00

It's only hope that springs eternal/ and that's the reason why/ this dripping from my broken heart is never running dry... I'm half tempted to get this tattooed down my arm, it may be the most apt description of our hero ever put to music (or paper) and this video sums up many of the relationships i've had in my life, some i wore the mask and some i didn't but in the end they stood me in the abattoir and walked a white dress down the aisle, call it a metaphor, call it all a metaphor, call it on the phone, call it home, tell it to go, it doesn't matter in the end...

Muzak - '11

2012-01-03T19:05:00.000-08:00

You know kids i was gonna jam all this shit together but i decided to be lazy or ambitious i don't know which and break it up, of course when i'm done we'll get back to things like Night of the Long Knives and Wilderness Years but really what is this shit for but to entertain my silly little heart while i waste away the hours in the snowy and shimmering moonlight? So here it is kids, there's this band called Girls, you might remember them from last years Tis the Season, well this year they put out an album called Father, Son, Holy Ghost and it was hands down my favorite record of the year, don't get me wrong it had some competition but start to finish it was a fucking blinder, i off-handedly said one day it was like the best Jethro Tull album never made, it was kinda a joke but it kinda wasn't and Chris Owens, the singer and songwriter, freely admits that he rips people off constantly, it's as if you'd heard every song on this album but had never heard them, the boy is fucking good is all i can say and you can read his back story and be all wow or you can just listen to his fucking songs and be blown away, there are three songs in a row How Can You Say You Love Me, My Ma (which has some very personal shit for the Kono going on in it) and Vomit (see above) that are absolutely fucking blinding, so yes go out and buy or send me a blank disc and SASE and i'll burn it for you and send it back, either way listen to it, the shit is fucking good...

#2 record this year is Hurry Up, We're Dreaming by M83 aka Anthony Gonzalez, his last record was a tribute to John Hughes called Saturdays = Youth and had some great shit on it, the Kim and Jessie vid i posted awhile back, but this was a double album and though i can honestly admit he could have trimmed a few songs the record reminds me of the best of the music i grew up on, like he listened to a bunch of electronic alternative music circa 81-93 and took all the best parts, added some guitar and bass and drums and produced his masterpiece, and though there are many songs on this album that could be called my favorite there is one in particular with a French title that is nothing but a brilliant track with a little girl talking over it about how we could all turn into colored frogs and be friends and the world and hop around and man is it fucking good and no i wasn't on drugs the first time i heard it but i kinda wished i was...

#3 Kaputt by Destroyer, Dan Bejar is a fucking genius, every album is different but the man can fling words like a fucking master, he turns more slick phrases and observations on one song than most people do in a lifetime and unlike Jeff "I'm a Poet" Tweedy he's not trying to be a poet, just a brilliant fucking mind doing his thing, his new record sounds like fucking Steely Dan and Bryan Ferry, like bad 80's FM and it still blows the fucking doors off, you never really know if he's taking the piss out of the hipsters or if it's serious treatise on the state of independent music, complete with mellow sax and cocaine references, you can practically hear it as Crockett and Tubbs walk into some neon lit Miami cesspool... and apparently he did much of the vocals for it while laying on his couch.

As for the rest of the year's records, in no particular order: My Morning Jacket - Circuital, Drums - Portamento, Beirut - The Rip Tide, Cults-s/t, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Mirror Traffic, Los Campesinos - Hello Sadness, Yuck - s/t, Twilight Singers - Dynamite Steps and i'm sure there are a few others i failed to mention cuz i can't remember everything now can i and coming soon i'll do some re-issues and books and favorite posts and maybe just maybe favorite movie, there should be some bonus music up at Kono/Gulf music if i get around to it or i might just get lazy and put it here... alright enough already...

My Video of the Year - Diamond Rings - It's Not My Party

2012-01-03T18:08:00.000-08:00

Yeah kids i know i posted this a while back but since it's the kick-off of Kono's year in review i'd had to put it up again, in short this is like some fucked up John Hughes short film, perfect in tone and feeling and soundtrack, besides who doesn't love a fetching lad in a short skirt? really? there is obviously alot i can relate to in the video and no i'm not talking about walking around in heels and a dress motherfuckers, i am though talking about hanging out in hipster bars and popping pills and snorting drugs and getting ridiculously drunk and falling down or getting in a fight and then stumbling into some random pizza shop in a useless attempt to sober up, it reminds me alot of the places i've hung out over the years and the interesting things i've seen and the people i've met, i mean did i ever tell you the story about doing blow in a women's bathroom with a 6'6 inch drag queen and her slave? I also like the fact that this cat was in a hardcore band and got sick of all the macho stereotypes of what he was supposed to be and started a solo project that is obviously gender-bending, i mean good art i believe should ask some uncomfortable questions should it not? so yes once again Diamond Rings.

In the New Year

2011-12-31T19:47:00.000-08:00

As the last post of 2011 i wish all you patrons of the lounge a Happy New Year and all that shit, this song goes out to Gulfboot and the Kid for surviving another one, to the boyos, to me for making it through another year and waiting to see what happens in the new one, once again i'll lay on the couch as the old ticks into the new and though for the first time in six years there was somewhere i'd like to be tonight it's alright cuz it's gonna be a good year, you know, as the song says outta the darkness and into the fire, in fact the lyrics of this song sum up alot of what has happened since i moved out of the city and into the burbs, but i'm to lazy and high tonight to get into any philosophical ramblings, you know who you are, so cheers everyone, happy 2012 from your favorite derelict...

Tis the Season Vol 2 Song 17 - Replacements - Unsatisfied (Audio Only)

2011-12-31T09:32:00.000-08:00

And of course when shit goes south i turn to Paul and the boys, don't know how many times i've sung this song into the mirror, told you the last one wouldn't be the last one...

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 16 - Oh My Sweet Carolina

2011-12-31T09:15:00.000-08:00

I've been having it a bit lately, espcecially the last two days, i went on a bit of a bender and even as i sit here and think about what a fucking moron i can be i'm still staring at the beer in my fridge and wondering if it's to early? See on thursday i sampled something called Apollo 13, then i thought about driving myself to the hospital the shit was so good and for the next half hour i talked myself down from the ledge, it's not like i don't know better and i do and i'm sure that saved me an ER visit and cost the ER staff a funny story about some wasted guy who was so high he asked for a rubber room and a straitjacket but it wore off a little but not a lot and though i know people who smoke to dull the mind mine seems to race even more, which leads me to this bar and babbling like a fucking idiot to people i had just met, my mind going so fast that they thought i was cranking lines of coke in the bathroom, of course when my mind goes that fast i tend to rattle off shit that one might consider highly inappropriate or offensive, i don't know i can barely fucking remember half the time, it's not as if i intend to offend it's just i'm a fucking idiot with brain that won't stop sometimes, of course i drank like a fish to try to slow it down but it's debatable how well that worked and then i went and slept a few hours and went to work where a bunch of people got shown the door and we all piled into some downtown bar where i proceeded to drink 7 imperial pints of Guinness and some good Irish whiskey on an empty stomach and all before 4pm, which led me back to the burbs to be once again told what a fuck-up i am, as if i needed someone to point this out to me, which started a swift and wicked decline into what turned out to be a right shit night, not that it hasn't happened before but as i began to feel the hangover come on as i lay on my couch and listen to the wind all the dumb shit you've done starts coming back to you and you began to wonder why you ever leave the fucking house but then again even the house doesn't offer that much safety, at least not until everyone's asleep and you're alone but that's when shit might actually feel the bleakest, so happy fucking new year, i'm sure this won't be the last post today but then again it's early i could end up in all kinds a trouble if i put my mind to it...

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 15 - The Walkmen: "Canadian Girl"

2011-12-30T07:09:00.000-08:00

Someday i'm gonna make a list of perfect songs, or more correctly songs i believe to perfect and when i make that list this song is gonna be on it, maybe the other one i posted today as well, but this one is a definite, it's mood and tone and lyrics are fucking perfect, argue if you like but your nonsense will fall on deaf ears, see if the Smiths and Joy Division and Black Flag and Jane's Addiction were the music of my teens and twenties then bands like The Walkmen and The National are the bands of my thirties and forties, the guys in those band are roughly the same age as me, they've been plugging along and working on their craft and finally reaping the rewards of being in a nutshell, great bands with great songs, i mean we all know that Arcade Fire are the critic's darlings but i rate The National a bit higher and this band even higher than that, i think this band will be the hidden gem that is listened to years from now but then what do i know? what i do know is this is the music i've grown up with, literally, these are the bands that i was listening to as i grew into manhood, from boy to man and from son to father, the ones i hummed late at night while rocking tired eyes back to sleep with my own tired eyes and i realize now that i hold them as dear to me as my beloved Smiths or New Order, they just remind me of different things which in my small and drug addled mind is absolutely beautiful, it's as it should be, god knows i may be learning something, which is also as it should be...

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 14 - Daughters of the SoHo Riots by THE NATIONAL

2011-12-30T06:47:00.000-08:00

A day late and a dollar short, most of spent it at the bar last night, and let me tell you it was a good fucking night at the bar last night but i digress, this here is a tribute to my first 6 months in suburbia, sure it's shot in Paris or something, Vincent Moon is horribly French, in a good way of course.. and while i'm doing this 70 some more people are signing their walking papers here at the Big World Bank Machine, the ship is damn near sunk, from 300 plus to the handful of us left, i've avoided the ax so far but soon they will call me to the abattoir for my gutting, they've tacked another six months on the sentence and if i'm lucky this time next year i'll be posting from my last day on the job, one never knows which way the wind will blow though so i'll hang on and fiddle as the last of the lifeboats row away and my ship sinks into the icy waters, that's fine though, i've always been a good swimmer and when it does happen i'll adjourn back to the burbs to drive quiet streets late at night and listen to songs like this and dream of my sons and their smiles, dream of exotic women and roaring surf, dream of the neon and smoke that i left behind and sing how can anybody know/ how i got to be this way?

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 13 - New Order - Age Of Consent

2011-12-28T08:19:00.000-08:00

Remember that horrible Bon Jovi video where the first thing you see is them blasting through a tunnel and as soon as they leave it there's a city right in front? Well that's the city i live in and on certain days i drive through those same tunnels (now that i've moved) and get that same view, except today it was dark and icy and cold and as i sped through the fluorescent light of the tunnel i exited into the beauty of a twinkling pre-dawn skyline, to my left the mighty Ohio river began and the X-mas lights of Point State Park glimmered and i listened to New Order as i flew under an overpass and then i was zipping by the banks of the Allegheny, not ten yards from me, it's dark and choppy waters sending a shiver down my spine, it's really one of the most beautiful fucking commutes you could ask for once you leave the tunnels and i wonder if the people who do it every day realize how lucky they are? and i drank my coffee and softly sung along and dare i say was quite content and happy as i waited for the sun to rise, parking and walking through the bitter wind in the remnants of the Rust Belt, the mist stinging my face, my hands cold, still singing, i wouldn't have it any other way...

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 12 - Swingin' Party -The Replacements

2011-12-27T18:29:00.000-08:00

Man i'm tired today, a real good tired, you know the kind? so in honour of being tired and now stoned you get this, my boys the Mats and it's damn near like karaoke with the lyrics and all, i wish i could karaoke the Replacements, so go ahead and sing more brilliance from Westerberg and the boys, i got a couch to lie on...

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 11 - Fucked Up - "The Other Shoe"

2011-12-26T12:51:00.000-08:00

Yeah kids i know i already posted this song earlier in the year but as we all know here at the lounge El Kono is nothing but a sucker when it comes to a love story, i mean i may be a tall, unshaven beast with an accurate and deadly uppercut but really on the inside i'm just a sad, sappy sucker who idles away the hours with hopelessly romantic daydreams, besides i like bands that have some ambition to do shit that no one thinks they can do and Fucked Up certainly did that this year with a concept album about some guy named David, who meets girl, falls in love, loses girl (to death no less) and rises from the ashes, hell they even made a record of fictitious bands as the soundtrack to the story, so since i'm a bit lazy today from all the festive festivities this is what you get... enjoy.

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 10 - The Pogues "Fairytale of New York"

2011-12-25T06:23:00.000-08:00

Yes it's damn near a cliche at this point for the hip kids but this is my all time favorite fucking x-mas song and if you ever get the chance to hear Mr and Mrs Gulfboot sing it consider yourself among the privileged cuz they do a fine fucking version, basically after Thanksgiving i play this song in every pub i enter, until New Year's, and even though everyone knows it and hears it a ton you can see the faces change, the slight smiles, the heads bobbing, the sing alongs, so on this fine day my gift to you is the Pogues, so Happy X-mas to my favorite patrons of the lounge, Gulfboot and the Kid and Sybil and Daisy and Rachel and Twin and anyone else who stops by on a regular basis, where's hoping Santy Claus brought you what you wanted, i know i got what i wanted... cheers.

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 10 - Black Sabbath - War Pigs (Live in Paris 1970)

2011-12-24T10:57:00.000-08:00

I had a pretty long day yesterday you know, of course don't get me wrong my day was fucking brilliant for reasons that will remain concealed but then this morning rolled around and i awoke to the boyos going all batshit cuz it's X-mas eve and i set off to fucking destroy shit, i mean so far today i've done 4 loads of laundry, swept my kitchen and living room, the dining room, the stairways and hallways, i've cleaned one bathroom and made motherfucking chocolate chip cookies, i've made and served breakfast and lunch to the boyos, broke up a few fights between them, changed the fucking litter box (yeah i'm a cat guy) and all of that was without the aid of drugs or alcohol and all before 2pm, later of course the boyos and i will get to see Uncle Furious at his annual X-mas eve bash and at that point daddy might have a few bevy's, i mean let's face it ladies, i'm a fucking rock star when it comes to this domestic shit and someday i'm gonna make somebody and tall, hairy and lovely wife but for now i got more shit to do but since we are in a momentary lull in the activities i figured i'd post a song, and since i've been tearing shit up i decided to go with a little Sabbath in honour of the upcoming Jesus day and all.... now of course i'm gonna pour me a black pint and fold some more laundry all while grooving to the smooth stylings of Tony, Geezer, Bill and Oz.

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 9 - The Walkmen - Juveniles (Live on KEXP)

2011-12-23T05:45:00.000-08:00

Haha remember when people used to read this shit Kono? fuck no, well we're in a fine mood this morning and as i wait to down the first of many black pints (and yes i'll start before noon) i wanted to post one my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands, the National and Arcade Fire may get all the attention but these guys are the fucking business and this song in particular was like a my personal theme song for a bit, in a way it represented my long and contentious relationship with the fairer sex, which someday i may get around to writing a full post about, but for now you can hear me roar and smile in this one, see that first line, "you're with someone else/ tomorrow night/ it doesn't matter to me", it's perfect, it sums up what it took me the first 32 years of my life to learn, i don't own you and you don't own me and i don't give a fuck what you do tomorrow as long as while you're here you're here dig, kiss me, bat your eyelashes, rub my thigh, just stay off your phone and pretend like your in love, doesn't matter if you are just make me feel better about the time i'm spending and then the song winds it's way through a verse or two until it hits the line, "i'm a good man/ by any count/ and i see better things to come", which after years of thinking i wasn't i finally figured out i wasn't that bad, i mean i've been told i'm damn good with the boyos by a number of people, that i go above and beyond what most men do, i know what fucking fork to eat with first when staring at table setting with 3 or so, hell dare i say i might have one, two or maybe even a few redeeming qualities, believe me i counter those with the devil in me, the side that drinks to many black pints and has a taste for good Irish Whisky and a weakness for drugs, i like to gamble on the horses, with my life, with my sanity, i'm a notorious skirt chaser, a flirt with an eloquent tongue and an easy smile, i'm all the things daddie's have warned their daughters about yet they still find me and in the end i've learned that none can break me, cuz at the end of the day when they walk out the door another one will look across that smoky bar and smile and the cycle starts itself all over again, doesn't mean it might not hurt for a while but the sun will rise and the boyos will jump on their daddy and their daddy will smile and laugh and know that it all works itself out in the end, you know... so sing along, "you're one of us/ or one of them/ you're one of us/ or one of them...

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 8 - Lana Del Rey - Video Games (live on Jools Holland, Oct.11, 2011)

2011-12-22T05:53:00.000-08:00

You know i don't give a shit if her daddy's a millionaire and helped produce her demos, i don't care if she was a well planned internet sensation, just close your eyes and listen to the fucking song, it's fucking gorgeous, i mean shit, have you ever been in love? remember being 16 or 18 or 25 or 41 and feeling like this? she's says bestest for shit sake's which is one of my favorite words, she says wit' instead of with, the whole thing is imperfect, it's flawed just like life and love and most of what i call high art, the lyrics are fucking amazing, the emotion is spot on, i could fall in love to this song on a daily basis, i don't care if i ever hear another one of her songs, hell she might never be able to top this and the fact that she's standing there looking and sounding nervous is all the more endearing, this song makes me want to stare out at the rainy streets and daydream of a girl, it's fucking brilliant... enjoy.

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 7 - Fear - Fuck Christmas

2011-12-21T06:15:00.000-08:00

And in keeping with our X-mas theme for another song, let me state that i will have a swell time on X-mas with the boyos playing with Power Rangers, plastic tools, puzzles, toy trains and all the other fun stuff the boyos are into but then... i'll have to leave my house and put up with fucking adults and other assorted adult types who i could care fucking less about, they'll annoy the the shit out of me and i'll do my best to stay drunk and hide in the corner and while i'm subjecting myself to these endless cruelties i'll be singing this little diddy in my head the whole time... so turn it up kids cuz this band is one of my favorites...

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 6 - Brenda Lee Christmas Will Be Just Another Lonely Day

2011-12-20T11:19:00.000-08:00

You know this is the second annual Tis the Season and i just realized i'd never put up any X-mas tunes, so here you go, this tune is the bee's knees.

Tis the Season Vol.2 Song 5- The Twilight Singers - Teenage Wristband

2011-12-19T04:55:00.000-08:00

Let's just call it a non-descript friday night, our hero is zipping through the city, from the bottoms to the tops, in one seedy bar downing black pints and debating the merits of Cormac McCarthy and J. Spaceman, high on those little blue pills, the sweet warmth of the poppy tingling around in his veins and then he lights his cigarette and heads to the door to fly through tunnels and up hills to land on a street that overlooks this place he calls home, he pulls up a stool next to a most fetching lass, and she smiles and he smiles and he orders another black pint and lays a cigarette on the bar and looks into these stunning eyes and they talk about things and she leans in closer and says, "you wanna go for a ride?" and a devilish grin creeps across his face and he says "uh-huh" and they laugh and make for the exit, her hand easily slipping into his and as the cold air crackles, he laughs and says "break it easy to your boyfriend" and she laughs back and says, "i got thirteen hours to kill and i wanna stay up all night" and the stars burn down with their ancient light...

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 4 - Loving Cup - The Rolling Stones

2011-12-16T08:14:00.000-08:00

Now if you're real fucking special you can make a request here at the lounge and it might get played, granted most of you ain't that special so don't bother, Gulfboot and the Kid, Nick Disaster and the I-mac, and who's the last one, who loves this song, hmmm, well i'll give you a hint, they are mentioned somewhere in this song, and I'm sure the world wants to know who's my favorite Stone no? of course the obvious answer would be Keef, Mr. Richards and i have a lot in common, the hipster answer would be Brian Jones and i must admit i am partial to Brian but he's a close second to #1... Mick, come the fuck on now, no my favorite is easily Charlie Watts, why? cuz he's the coolest motherfucker in the band, really, for some reason i can picture the 70's and Keef all smacked out and Mick running around and Brian dead and the assortment of other Stones all acting like maniacs and there would be Charlie, doing his coke and smoking his cigarette and drinking his booze with more than a modicum of composure, wry smile and sharp wit, nother line Charles, cheers mate, yep Charlie Watts is my favorite.

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 3 - Sugar - Hoover Dam (1992)

2011-12-16T07:43:00.000-08:00

Anyone who pays attention, (meaning Gulfboot and the Kid), knows that i'm a big fan of Husker Du, and just this morning while perusing the interweb and fucking off at work i stumbled upon this lost classic from Bob Mould's second band, well lost to me at least cuz i haven't listened to it in awhile, but i remember when this came out and my roommates and i would sit in our apartment above the clothing shop that overlooked Main St. at Podunk U., and we'd be pulling tubes and drinking left over 40's from the night before, classes would be over and we'd be plotting our night and between the fluorescent yellow of the lamp and the perpetual gray of the outside world and we'd play this record over and over cuz it was fucking brilliant, i used to sit in the corner of the kitchen and gaze out to the window at the traffic light and the drug store across the street spinning imaginary stories in my head and watching the cars crawl by and the people cross the street and sometimes the snow would be falling or it'd be raining and i'd be high and drinking day old beer and it was all fucking beautiful...

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 2 The Black Keys - Tighten Up

2011-12-14T12:34:00.000-08:00

This park reminds me of the one by the house i used to live in, except without the hot moms, now in the burbs things are a bit different, i didn't get in any fights, i'll just leave it at that...

Tis the Season Vol. 2 Song 1 My Curse- The Afghan Whigs

2011-12-13T19:28:00.000-08:00

If Greg Dulli is God than the album Gentleman is his son and if the album is his son than this song is the gospel as told by said son, in the Kono cannon of records Gentleman holds a holy and exalted place, i fucking love it, it's caustic and bitter and angry and hopeful and in love, it reminds of those intense relationships that burn so fucking hot that they have no choice but the rip apart and explode and though they usually don't end pretty when it's all said and done the two parties stand back from each other with a respect and admiration, with that knowing that they both took each other further, that they pushed their boundaries, that they are both better off than when they started, that the ultimate pain and pleasure are inextricably inter-twined and you won't get one without the other, it couldn't happen if they both weren't there...It's why people will sometimes fall headlong into situations that they know will be painful and beautiful, it's that fucking rush, that fucking rush is better than any drug you can find and it's why perfectly sane people will sometimes take that leap...

and this song? fuck me, if you don't get goosebumps or tingle you must be dead, it's pure raw emotion, it's revenge, regret and remembering, it's smiling at each other from across the room before tearing each other's clothes off one last time and fucking, and please understand me that when i say that i mean the most beautiful kind of fucking, the kind that even the walls are dripping wet from the amount of lust and passion and knowledge that this is the end, absolutely beautiful, i wish everyone could experience it, i'm glad i have, it was written by Dulli after a bad break-up and he very rarely sang it himself, this is the girl who sang it on the album, Marcy Mays from the band Scrawl (another Ohio band), it blows my doors off every time, she fucking nails it, brilliant... see what happens when i write stoned?

...or maybe it's just a sweet song that reminds me of my youth.

The Light Bulb Changer

2011-12-13T05:38:00.000-08:00

A long time ago i was this skinny kid with a Bernard Sumner haircut, i was cutting grass for the city of Parma, drinking myself silly and smoking dope, playing hoops after work and then going out into the wee hours of the morning, this would be the last summer i would ever live at home, basically it was the last time i would ever call that place my permanent residence, being that the next summer started those beautiful years known as the Ocean City saga but back to now or more correctly then i was the young college kid with a smart mouth and i worked with a bunch of blue collar guys who did this shit for a living and supported families and the last thing they wanted to hear was the opinion of some hot shit basketball player who perpetually smelled of booze and weed...

Of course most of these guys had barely escaped high school and were just happy to be pulling in a decent wage but the Joker had a degree in engineering and it took me years to figure out that he just didn't give a fuck, i remember sitting around asking him as we smoked grass at the end of our shift why he didn't use his degree, why he worked this shit job with a bunch of morons and he'd usually just shrug and smile and say who needs the hassle, looking back on it i'm guessing he was either cooking up blotters of acid in his basement or growing some wicked pot in a closet but then fast forward fifteen years to our hero the post modern light bulb changer aka me...

If i've learned anything at my time at the Big World Bank Machine it's that sometimes if you want to really get ahead you need to blow a lot of people and suck a lot of ass, something i've never been quite good at, see there were alot of complete morons promoted into positions based on politics and ass-kissing, some i think were promoted based on the dirt they had on supervisors but in the end what did it matter to me? i was the fucking light bulb changer and like the Joker before me i was happy making sure everyone could see because in the end, who needs the fucking hassle? but at some point it slipped out that i had a degree and since i spent a lot of time reading books everyone just assumed that degree was in English, though it wasn't, and when the admin's would piss me off bitching about light bulbs not working or furniture not moved i'd print off their emails and correct them in red pen, walk them back to their desk and kindly state that if you want to berate me please do it in a grammatically correct fashion...

Of course if you have concrete evidence of people being stupid and drop it like a warm, steaming dog turd on their desk you'd be surprised at how nice they suddenly become, hence how the Light Bulb Changer suddenly became proof reader and grammar checker for half the fucking bank and as anyone who reads this run-on sentence knows what the fuck do i know about grammar? really? but soon i was getting all sorts of emails and the really sharp ones would basically just ask in a round about way if maybe i could just like fucking write it for them but instead one fine day i pulled the three biggest culprits into a room and sat them down as i stood at a dry erase board and gently smiled at them, i then wrote out the words: they're, their and there and began to explain that though you wouldn't know it by anything these three wrote that these words are not interchangeable nor do they mean the same thing, now i believe this is like fucking freshman English and when i say freshman i mean high school but since they all stood THERE gaping at me like dundering morons i then proceeded to break down the finer points of you're and your and much to my amazement i noticed that they were taking notes, one of these people easily made double what i made and all of them had fancy titles, much fancy than light bulb changer/ furniture mover/ shithead and could only giggle as i watched them scribbling away...

Now i didn't want to get shit-canned so i did all of this in the most sarcastically polite way possible and closed with the fact that i really didn't get paid to think and from this time forward would not be doing any thinking for them, (cue Superchunk's Slack Motherfucker), i then wiped the board clean and wandered back to my desk, it was at that moment i realized i had become the Joker, my burning lack of ambition had made me just ambitious enough to teach a short seminar on grammar cuz i didn't need the fucking hassle, i probably should have paid closer attention to his lessons, i can still see him in his straw hat riding around the parking lot of the public works dept. on a bicycle he garbage picked, i smiled as i put my feet up on my desk and went to sleep.

Summer's Kiss - Winter Version

2011-12-10T10:27:00.000-08:00

Why? Because i woke up with a smile on my face this morning. So if you know the words/ sing along with me...

Disclaimer

2011-12-03T10:22:00.000-08:00

I would like to stress that the Night of the Long Knives is a work of fiction, not everything posted on the lounge is ripped straight from my life and fiction though often rooted in reality and experience it doesn't necessarily have to be and it definitely doesn't have to be my reality and experience. If it reading it makes one uncomfortable then i'm doing my job, life is not comfortable, my goal has never and never will be to write things that are comfortable but then again what would i know about comfort today with this wicked cigarette induced hangover that not even pharmaceutical drugs are helping... cheers.

The Night of the Long Knives Pt. 2

2011-12-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

As he lay there that night and listened to the hum of the window fan and the faint sounds of traffic he could feel this cold, swirling pit in his stomach, as would become custom they both turned their backs toward each other and he looked out the door and down the long hallway that he had spent half the night walking, he knew that things were most likely gonna get worse before they got better but if he knew anything it's that the human condition seemed to always offer this glimmer of hope even in dire circumstances, so when the alarm went off the next morning he got up and went to his new job and tried to occupy himself with other things, he had taken to riding a stationary bike to work off his anxiety and he'd come home from work and pop on the headphones and ride, she of course had begun to take this opportunity to get on the phone and talk to her friend, and so the week went along and the next weekend rolled around and once again she announced that she would be going to the club with her friend...

On the nights she went out she would take a long shower and spend twice as long on her hair, she'd carefully apply the little make-up she wore, she had beautiful skin and eyes and didn't really need much if any, and then spend some time figuring out what she was going to wear, he made the comment that she seemed to like to get a bit dressed up to go out with her new friend, he said it seemed as if she had bought some new clothes and she replied she had and that she felt like looking good and what was wrong with that? nothing was his reply and then she quickly added that though he may have wanted to walk around looking like a bum all the time she didn't, he stood looking at her dumbfounded when she said this, she being one of the only people on the planet who could get to him, to actually hurt him but she didn't notice as she continued her preparations, he walked back towards the spare bedroom that doubled as his office and sat at his desk, that feeling was back in his stomach, he wondered if she really thought he dressed like a bum or more correctly was a bum, they'd been married not more than 45 days or so at this point and he wondered why all this was coming out now though he knew why and so when the horn honked outside she practically sprinted for the door, no kiss goodbye just a see you later as her boots clicked and the door slammed, the silence of the apartment felt deafening...

This was when it was worst, when she was out with him, his slow unravel began to quicken and he began to look around the house, he began to go through her things looking for clues, he felt like complete shit, what am i doing? he thought, what the fuck am i turning into? am i paranoid? am i really just this asshole? this bum? but his gut kept telling him, his gut that had told him when to walk away from deals and get out of certain places, the gut that had kept him safe for the last 7 or 8 years and he paced the long hallway and attempted to watch television, he watched the sunset through the kitchen window as he tried to eat a t.v. dinner that he couldn't choke down, he fed most of his dinner to the two cats as they rubbed up against him and purred, the cats that would lay on the hallway floor as he paced up and down, finally he grabbed his jacket and took a walk, walked the neighborhood for an hour or so, he didn't have a destination and didn't really know why he was doing it but he knew he had to get out of the apartment, in the back of his mind maybe he'd see them but he knew that they were downtown at one of the clubs or at least that's what he thought and so he went back and paced some more, pissed around on-line and then around 11 or so attempted to sleep only to rise every ten minutes or so and peek through the blinds of the front room, back and forth he went, hour after hour, he didn't know why or what he was hoping to accomplish but then sometime after 1a.m . or so he saw headlights pull onto his street and he froze...

Of course this wasn't the first pair of headlights he'd seen on his city street that night but these slowed down and pulled to a stop in front of the apartment, it was about the only time he was glad to be on the first floor, their place being a stones throw from the hood, cuz his view to the street was pretty clear, he sat with a blind pushed up ever so slightly and he watched as they sat and talked for a few minutes, she smiled and laughed and it struck him how he'd not seen her do that with him in a long time, sure they'd been together longer than most when they got hitched but he thought that this would be one of those blissful times, in those long hours spent pacing he laughed at what a fucking fool he was, like an idiot who watched to many Hallmark movies and actually believed that the hero rode of into the sunset with his fair maiden but as he sat there now he blinked at what he thought he saw, after all the smiling and laughing, did they just kiss? or was that a hug? did he really just see that? and then her door opened and he got ready to drop his one cracked shade but he couldn't, he watched as she smiled and talked into the car for a few more minutes, as if they didn't want to leave each other and then as she shut the car door he let the shade drop and raced back to the bedroom and hopped into bed, was it a kiss? was it a fucking kiss? or was it just a hug? friends hug all the time he thought and i don't want to look like an ass if that's all it was but what if it was something else, could he trust his own eyes?

He heard the latch of the metal gate outside and then a few seconds later the heavy outer door shut and then the key hitting the lock, as usual she walked down the hall and into the kitchen and he could hear her flick her lighter, he was frozen in his place, his mind racing, what did he see? what did he fucking see? he wasn't sure and that was all he could be sure of, when she had finished her cigarette she stepped lightly into the bedroom and and began undressing, he rolled over and said why don't you skip the pj's tonight and get in, she nearly jumped out of her skin when he spoke and asked why he wasn't asleep, I have trouble sleeping when you're out this late he said and i figured since we're both up, his voice playfully hinting at sex but she just kept getting out of her clothes and then quickly put on her pajamas and said, I gotta pee and then i really need to sleep, maybe tomorrow or something, i'm gonna be exhausted as it is, glad i don't open and it was here that he knew that what he thought he saw he probably saw but he still wasn't sure, all he was sure of was that swirling pit in his stomach had went from a category 1 to a category 3 in a matter of seconds, she walked back in, took a sip of water, wrapped the covers around her and went to sleep, his heart raced and he thought about saying something, thought he should call her out, grill her on her activities, let her know that he had seen the note cards, could tell by her behavior that something was up, that he thought he just saw her give "her friend" a kiss goodnight, but then he stopped, he still didn't want to be the possessive asshole, his gut that had served him so well over the years wasn't the only skill he had, patience he thought, patience... to be continued.

The Night of the Long Knives

2011-12-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

He watched and he waited, that's all he could do, he knew what was going on even if in his mind he preferred not to admit it to himself, he had spent the better part of the last decade honing this skill, the skill that sniffed out the bullshit, that looked through the fidgets and shifting eyes and it was this skill that had served him well, kept him out of jail and in the black, this skill had made him successful on the street and now he was using it as he watched her, watched her talk on the phone with him, watched her expression, timed the length of the calls, because it was all innocent right? these hour long phone calls after they had worked together all day right? just friends is what she told him, he's just a really good friend and i don't have many is what she said, in his mind he wondered what that made him...

The apartment they lived in was long and sometimes he would pace up and down the worn wooden floor boards, re-tracing the steps that had led him to this point, a drunken night in the hallway of their old place when she smiled and her eyes were shining and she said are you ever gonna marry me and he smiled and said sure we could do it tomorrow and she grinned and said i'll ask you again in the morning when you're not drunk and the next morning she asked him again and he said sure again and before he knew it there was a wedding being planed and invitations being sent and tux's being rented and cakes being ordered, it was one of the more relaxed times of his life, of course he had a few loose ends he had to tie up out on the streets but nothing that would get in the way of the rest of his life and then one hot, muggy summer afternoon he said i do and she said i do and that was that, welcome to a new and happy life...

Except that's not how shit ever works out now is it? and so now he paced the floors and thought, tried not to let his mind get away from him, tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, cuz really all he had to go on was his gut instinct, an instinct that he trusted, but he didn't exactly like what it was telling him now, not even two months from that hot and humid afternoon when they said all those words to each other and promised all kinds of meaningless things, cuz he was watching and noticing, at first it was just a group of friends going out after work and then it became her going to watch his band practice with a friend or two and then it was him and her going out to the clubs, so as discretely as he could he began to ask questions, things like when you go to the club who do you dance with? what do you do before you go? he didn't want to look like the possessive asshole, he was never that guy and didn't want to become one but he could see the signs, his gut told him that there was more to this friend than met the eye, the way she'd avoid being in the same room with him when she was on the phone with her friend, the way she laughed and would sometimes talk in hushed tones, one day as the idea festered in his head he began following her from room to room to see if she'd keep moving away from him to continue her conversation, she did and he could feel his heart sink ever so slightly but then he'd remind himself that it was all speculation and wander to the front of the apartment and sit in the sun and pet the cat...

Slowly though he was starting to unravel and slowly she got a bit careless, one day she had left a stack of note cards out, note cards that he, her friend, had drawn pictures on, some were about some of their escapades and though none of them were sexual they hinted at things that she hadn't told him, things that she normally would have, mishaps or funny moments, instead she was sharing it with this new guy, as if the blissful time as newlyweds included this guy but not him, of course as he sat there alone in his apartment he knew that he was not the innocent victim in this impending disaster, for years he had run the streets doing what he had to do to get by, leaving her alone, leaving her lonely as he trampled through dive bars and back alleys in pursuit of something only he could define, but now that was over and he thought things would change and they had changed just not in the manner he had expected...

And then one night she came home after 2 in the morning and when he heard the key in the lock he pretended that he had been sleeping as she walked down the hall to the kitchen to smoke a cigarette when really he had been laying there all night tossing and turning, checking the front windows to see if she had come home yet and when she came in the room she was beaming and whispered how she didn't mean to wake him up but that it was late and she had to work in the morning, he asked if she had a good time and she nonchalantly said yeah, he asked what they did and she said they went to the club and danced and he mentioned it was kind of late and she really didn't say she was going to close the place and she said she didn't think they were going to either but it was a good time and now she needed to sleep cuz she was going to be exhausted tomorrow at work and with that she crawled into bed, kissed his head and fell quickly to sleep as he laid there and stared at the ceiling...

He did his best to rein in his worry but he kept probing and questioning and she kept talking about how much he'd like this guy and how they'd get along and liked alot of the same music and at one point she stopped and said you don't have to worry about anything we're just friends, i like hanging out with him and i haven't had anyone to go out with in awhile, of course he didn't point out that he would go out with her he just shrugged and mumbled something about not being worried about anything, giving a weak smile as she bounded by him to get ready to go out again, back to the clubs, but on this night she wouldn't come home until after 4am and when she did he sat up in bed and said what the fuck? she was like what? he said that the clubs have been closed for a couple hours and you just come strolling in i mean what the fuck were you doing? he said i'm trying really hard to be cool about this shit but a courtesy call would be nice, at least let me know you're okay and when she proceeded to blow this off he knew things were fucked, she apologized quickly and insincerely and said sorry we were just driving around and listening to music, we drove through the ghetto for fun what's the big fucking deal? he wanted to yell what's the big fucking deal? the big fucking deal is you're out with some guy til 4am and you wonder what the big fucking deal is? if i came home at this time after hanging out with some girl i'm sure you'd have plenty of questions about what my evening or more correctly morning was like but instead he just bit his tongue mumbled something about just call next time, turned over and attempted to sleep... to be continued...

The Wilderness Years - Cool Runnings

2011-11-20T18:11:00.000-08:00

After the halcyon summer of 93 i left Ocean City with all my shit packed in the good Doctor's car and drove north to upstate New York to see his lady, where i spent a few days sleeping on her floor and he in her bed and then we headed back to the wilds of Pennsyltucky to sleep on floors or couches or where ever cuz at the time we were technically homeless, wandering around with all our possessions stuffed into his trunk and backseat, i lucked out and found a bed to sleep in, the charming man that i am, but the point was there were no jobs in the town of Podunk U. and we needed to get our shit together quick, so after about a month of couch surfing we finally found a place in the burgh and moved down to the beauty that is North Oakland, you know, the place with the hole in the ceiling, three rooms, a balcony, snow gently falling into the kitchen in the winter, a corner with a laundromat and bar and grocery store and liquor store, everything a young man could want...

We both started off by working the midnight shift stocking shelves for the local monopoly on supermarket's, those in these parts might recognize the giant bird that is this monopoly and it was there one fine night that we showed up an hour early and the boss man laughed and said, "damn you guys gotta sit here for an hour" and walked out and i looked at the good doctor and said, "fuck him, i'm out" and asked for the keys and made my way back to the apartment where i drank a beer, got stoned, turned on the radio and stared out my window into the chilly November night, jobless again, roughly the the seventh job i had held since May but fuck it i was young and then a few nervous days passed and i scored a gig at the bagel shop, the same one mentioned in Robert and the mittens, of course all the while i was on the lookout for a side gig and then the gods smiled and a friend showed up and said he had a line on something and that at 16 an elbow would most likely provide us with a substantial amount of extra income and not only that but he could front us the shit cuz his friend back home was hooked the fuck up as they say, seems his friend had a dad who was a coke dealer to the stars back in the 70's, photos with Mick and Keef, Stevie Nicks, you know the line-up, well friend went to see dad, who was doing a pretty long stretch, on work release but it seems that daddy had done it right and not narc'd anyone out and was well positioned to set up the kid he barely knew in business, a grand stroke of luck for all involved if ever there was one...

and so began the first go-round, two pounds on the front, nickel and dime shit with the occasional weight tossed off but since we were broke and young the smaller we cut it up the better, more profit, and even though i was the point man and the good doctor more or less answered the door and got people beers i cut him in on the profits, i mean shit man we were in this together, and like most things of this nature it began to snowball, the grass was decent and after a month or so we were doing just fine, moving our fair share and stashing money, of course i immediately re-enforced the fire escape window and devised a slick place to hide the gear and the money i saved and though it was three long flights of steps i was glad to be on the third floor, basically another level of security in a building that had one door to be buzzed in and another at the top of the steps before you could even get to our door, a healthy dose of paranoia never hurt in this game and though we dealt with people we knew or had good references you never knew when that fucking scumbag was gonna walk through the door and devise a way to rip you off, it's the nature of the business and the business was going well...

Then one day we needed to make an emergency run, the supply had gone faster than expected and since the bagel job and parking cars didn't make either of us rich it was important to keep product in the house, my check basically covered my rent and my student loans and if i wanted to do anything like say eat or drink i needed the side gig, so it was that me and Torsten the connection borrowed the good doctor's car and set off on a journey to the Laurel Highlands aka the fucking armpit of Pennsyltucky, named after those Scottish highlands most likely for the absolute shit weather and harshness of country, and on this day our goal was to beat the snow which was coming our way, and so we set off as the flakes were lightly falling and we drove to Ligonier about an hour and fifteen minutes away, i hung out at a mutual friend of ours and Torsten set off for Mr. Big's and as i sat and drank coffee and watched the flakes get bigger and faster i tried not to think about the drive back...

So i sat and waited and then Torsten and his curly blond hair burst through the door, covered in snow now cuz it began to come down even harder and we all made a few jokes and then he and i trudged out to the car and began our drive back, a drive that would take twice as long, a drive with him at the wheel and me riding shotgun and being the extra set of eyes and five pounds of southern Cali's semi-finest stinking up the backseat, we crept along on roads so covered that there were no lanes or lines and we kinda just followed the tail lights and hoped that the people in front of us didn't run off the road, now on the side of the road i counted almost 20 cars that had landed themselves in a ditch or stuck or spun out but Torsten and I just kept right on chatting away about all sorts of inane shit as if by acknowledging the situation would be to fuck ourselves right in the dumper, and so he drove and i watched and my feet were cold and we hit a white-out and slowed even more and then slowly we began to see the lights of the city and the roads got a bit better but not much, you could maybe make out a slush filled lane possibly and cars were still stuck on the side of the road and the backseat still smelled really fucking good and when he finally made South Oakland, where Torsten lived, we both kind of let out a sigh and laughed, he looked at me and said "that was fucking nerve-wracking, did you see all those cars spun out" and i laughed and replied that i was pretending that it wasn't happening and they didn't exist and he laughed and said he was doing the same thing cuz there is a fine line one walks in the game, fucking luck plays more a part in success than you'd like to think, you can try and cut out the loose cannons and minimize the risk but all it takes is one mistake, like this night, getting stuck and having the cops show up to help or a tow truck driver who carries a bible in his truck and isn't hooked on speed, of course the other option in that case is to dump the stash but then you gotta come up with 8g's somewhere and at this point and time that wasn't gonna happen...

And so Torsten jumped out and grabbed his three and sent me on my way with my two and i drove carefully across my neighborhood and ran up the three flights of steps where i turned on my little portable heater and put my feet next to it while Sylvia the cat purred and rubbed up against my legs, i packed the bong and then packed it again and then packed it again, listening to the college radio station, i drank some hot chocolate and then climbed onto my mattress, the one i took off the pullout couch that i found in my room, the one i threw a couple of eggshell mattresses on to get me a whopping 4 inches off the floor, pulled up my blankets while Sylvia curled up and purred and i thought this sure isn't how this shit looked on Miami Vice and i grinned and rubbed Sylvia's head as outside the snowflakes fell fat and white.

Memories of my Wasted Youth

2011-11-20T07:36:00.000-08:00

Many moons ago i spent many nights in this place, exiting with my clothes drenched in sweat and heading towards the Big Egg or Denny's, anywhere but home, still needing time for the drugs to kick out of my system, this was one of the first places to serve that long dead fad called Smart Drinks in the lovely city of Cleveland, a place where i'd smoke weed across the street from it in the parking lot, a place where i ate copious amounts of acid and danced until they threw me out, a place where i had friends and girlfriends buy me shots until i turned 21 and could buy my own, a place where we heard about some new drug called Ecstasy, the place where i candy-flipped for the first time, a place with a kicking fog machine and strobe lights in the floor, where i scored and lost girlfriends, where i met some brilliant souls and some total assholes, a place that was open until 4am and sometimes later, a place that i'd leave with the birds just waking and the sky beginning to lighten and i'd be high as a fucking kite and running on the adrenalin of my young and what i thought indestructible body and mind, covered in sweat and talking with my friends and with any luck holding the hand of some girl or exchanging numbers under the street light, in a short a very beautiful and dare i say innocent time of my life... and now i see this, years later, but the place where the club once stood was a porno shop last time i went by, located next to a gay bar, of course there's a very amusing story involving the Cleveland Indians, the Florida Marlins and a very drunk, tall man wandering down the street and attempting to find solace in a place of his youth after a game 7 loss but mistakenly thinking the gay bar was the Nine of Clubs but as i said that is for another time...

It's a Wonderful Life

2011-11-11T20:10:00.000-08:00

I'm adjusting kids, don't get me wrong i miss my dirty and littered backstreets of the city proper but i'm adjusting to life in the tree lined and deer flecked drives of the burbs, of course four pints and 15mg of sister morphine in and maybe i'm just being romantic, but as an old, wise bartender once told me he said, "you're the kind of guy that anywhere you lay your hat will be your home, you just make it that way", and you know maybe i didn't want to pat myself on the back and admit the truth but i'm starting to realize maybe he was right, even out in the lily white suburbs, i've become a known face at the Plastic Paddy, a place inhabited by rich assholes and suburban hipsters and in the employ of many twentysomethings but already i'm stood a free pint or two each time i walk in, i'm handed shots of good Irish whiskey on the gratis for no other reason i can figure than the absolute beauty of my large and greying sideburns, and tonight as i sat and listened to some young Asian kid in a Chelski kit no less prattle on about sports and claim he has a photographic memory i couldn't help but smile at the fact that even though the staff knew his name he paid for all his drinks...

and i had the day off and me and Nick Disaster went to breakfast and listened to the Happy Mondays and the girl came home and i picked up the I-mac and we had milkshakes as daddy searched for certain x-mas toys as if his very life depended on it, and let me tell you this as i sit here in all my silly and unkept ways, if you would've told me at 20 or 25 or 30 or even 35 that i would have enjoyed being a dad this much i might have shrugged and laughed it off but fuck if i can't sit here now and do nothing but think of those boys, my fucking boys, the mere thought of them makes that cold deep pit in my stomach evaporate, turning my once cold and dank heart into this big bulging type thing, makes me fucking smile, makes me glad to know that i was fucking wrong about how i would take to this task and how i would gladly give up my life for their happiness, me the most self centered prick on the planet, the two little set of eyes teach me more and more every day, teach about things i've lost or forgot or never knew and goddammit if i'm not grateful for every fucking second...

of course i couldn't really attribute the title to this post if it wasn't for the holy trinity of Gulfboot, Furious and the Kid, three friends, counted on one hand and pretty much all a man could ask for, many faces will drift in and out of your life but i've been lucky enough to find a few that will remain constant, even if we don't live on the same street or state or even fucking continent, my brother Gulfboot came for a visit recently, a short one but one nonetheless and on his last night here i sat in the Plastic Paddy with him and the Furious one and was nothing more or less than a very happy man, the only thing missing was the Kid and if i had the money i would have sent him a plane ticket to be at the meeting of derelict philosophers, so as you see i'm getting back to where i belong, just with a bit more room to roam, who knows maybe one of these days i'll even start typing again but if i do or if i don't it doesn't matter, the demons may still creep around the edges and i may still piss and moan but these days it's a wonderful life even with my melancholy sunglasses on, i got nothing to complain about...

Portrait of the Derelict as a Young Man Vol. 3

2011-11-08T18:28:00.000-08:00

I believe there is a saying that goes that you can take the boy out of the city but you can't take the football team out of the boy, you see i was born and raised in Cleveland and no matter where i roam on the Earth i will always be a Browns fan, even living in the city that was once our biggest rival, a city where it might actually be dangerous to sport the colors of brown and orange i wear them with pride even though my team hasn't had much to be proud of in a long time, so it was on some windblown and gray fall sunday that i walked into Joe's Bar to watch the Browns play the Steelers for the last time in Three Rivers Stadium...

Now i will state that at this point and time i was a rather well known hood and this is the same bar that once appeared in a post called the Pizza Man, the one where i used to pick up pounds of weed off Pizza John and walk down the street and back to my apt. with them in pizza boxes, of course by this time i had moved to a slightly swankier neighborhood right next to my beloved North Oakland, to a tiny place that might have been the cheapest place for rent in that neighborhood, hence why i now had to drive to Joe's Bar, but this is nothing more than background, the real reason one went to Joe's on sunday was for the cheapest booze and the free food, Pizza John was nothing if not a righteous motherfucker and his specials consisted of quarter drafts and $2 pitchers, dollar shots and free pizza, subs and wings at halftime, mind now that this was a fucking hole in the wall joint where the roaches roamed the bar and the rats hung right outside, had the smell of cigarettes and stale beer and piss ingrained into the very fabric of the building, it was a place where the hard core drunks drank in dusty daylight and the coke dealers all worked at night, it's what a select few of us would call paradise...

My beloved Browns had just been resurrected from the scrap heap after that scum sucking twat Art Modell moved the team to Baltimore and re-named them the Ravens and the Steelers weren't having the best year but were having a much better year than the Browns who i believe would finish this year at a pathetic 3-13 but let's not get to far ahead as there was this particular sunday when the stars would align and us hapless dreamers would obtain at least a brief moment of solace, and so i walked in and took off my jacket and openly sported my beaten up Browns t-shirt, of course everyone in the place knew me and i took my good-natured ribbing and began to drink and watch the game with the rest of the crowd, of course being a ranking hood has it's privileges and even though i tried like hell to pay for things the bartender, who was Pizza John's mother, wouldn't let me, i usually just left a twenty on the bar as a tip and of course this wasn't the type of place that took credit cards and on this day as the Brown's hung around and i gave my good natured ribbing back the drinks just kept piling up in front of me, like i said it was a friendly crowd who couldn't believe their team was tanking against the worst team in the league...

Well it finally got to the fourth quarter and the score was some god-awful thing like 21-19 in favor of the Steelers, the fact my Browns had hung around this long was cause for celebration and the beer and the horrible coconut rum that was the dollar shot special was flowing like water and as the rest of the bar looked nervous i sat there smiling, well on my way to being drunk as a fucking monkey, it was at this point that Pizza John offered to bet a day of free drinking up against a quarter of my finest weed, a bet that would cost me roughly a Benjamin and him roughly nothing cuz i drank in the place for free all the time anyway, of course earlier in the day i had tried to lay a Benjamin on the Browns to cover through Pizza John's bookie friend but apparently many people had the same idea and the book wasn't answering the phones, and so Pittsburgh was driving down the field and the clock was winding down but Korky Kordell Stewart, the Steelers quarterback managed to make a few blunders that stalled the drive and gave the ball back to the Browns with a long field ahead of them and roughly 2 minutes on the clock...

I stood up as my boys managed a first down or two, in fact i believe it was on this drive that i did a shot every time they got a first down, it was also on this drive during a timeout that more than a few people came over and told me win or lose i was a most devoted fan and that was something they could respect, of course by this time i was ripping fucking drunk and was doling out the hugs like Barney the fucking purple dinosaur, a good three hours of heavy drinking in and it was all coming down to this, they Browns got another first down and then another and before i knew what happened there were 3 seconds left and they were lining up to kick a 38 or 40 yard field goal, they line up and the Steelers call timeout and the whole place is holding their breath, a dozen and a half Steeler fans and one tall drunk boy from Cleveland, then the timeout is over and Phil Dawson trots out and at this point i'm thinking of all the fucked up things that have happened in the history of Cleveland sports and how if i had to bet now i was almost sure he would miss or they'd fuck up the snap or get it blocked but then the ball was snapped and the kick went straight through and the clock struck double zeroes and the fucking Browns had won 22-21...

At this point i donned my hat and bolted into the middle of S. Millvale Avenue and began singing There's only one Cleveland Brownies/ only one Clevleand Brownies/ walking along singing a song/ walking in a Cleveland wonderland... it was a takeoff on a soccer song that Gulfboot had taught me and all 6'4 of me, in the middle of Pittsburgh, in a Cleveland Browns shirt and stocking cap, was in the middle of the street stopping traffic and singing at the top of my lungs, so loud that a friend of mine who lived around the corner would call the next day and ask if i had been at the bar for the game, yes my team may be shite but we had just beat our biggest rival and now, even though i was already loaded it was time to celebrate, in fact i got carried back into the bar by a couple of Steelers fans who had watched the game with me, one asking if i was trying to get myself killed pulling a stunt like that in the middle of the city, apparently Pizza John had basically said, go get that crazy fucker before he gets himself run over or shot...

Now at this point and time it may have been prudent for a man as inebriated as me to go home and bask in the glow of my team's victory but instead i headed back towards my neighborhood to another bar i worked out of and sold most of the staff weed, to torment the world's worst bartender, a short and stout lad who claimed to be from Trinidad but had lived his whole life in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, at this point i can barely remember going to this place and i then proceeded to start downing triple shots of Jack Daniels, a fact i learned a week later from the bartender on duty who was a top geezer, who then told me that i had the whole place roaring as i talked shit to everyone in the place as well as serenading them with my victory songs, when i asked why he didn't cut me off, he said i seemed quite lucid and that people were buying me drinks and telling him i was the best thing since peanut butter and jelly, now at this point i had lost all track of time and i kept on singing and finally the world's worst bartender showed up and admitted that he almost turned around and went home when from the street he could my rather raspy and booming voice singing my favorite song, from what i gather i harassed him a few minutes and then left...

Now let me tell you something about brown liquor and myself, i'm like that fucking Mogwai who suddenly gets fed after midnight and Stripe ain't got shit on me, i become and evil and mean motherfucker with a tongue that dispenses acid, and so i drove myself home and proceeded to eat my pizza on the floor and later that morning when i woke up on the couch i asked the lovely young lady who i lived with what had happened last night? her response was something like, what? can't you remember King Fucking Asshole, so being the smart fellow that i am i left it at that and began to try and get ready for work, of course i didn't realize how drunk i still was what with the raging pain in my head and body and i wondered if i hadn't fell down a flight of steps or something, i was attempting to make myself lunch because at this point i was still entertaining the thought of going to work figuring it would ease the visual daggers i was receiving from my young lady when i suddenly just puked on the floor, looked at it and then kept right on making my sandwich, of course now she went ballistic and i told her i'd get to it and that could she please keep it down and i finished making my sandwich and cleaned up what had to be pure alcohol off the floor, got myself dressed and headed out to the car with her due to the fact i gave her a ride to work some mornings...

I began walking towards my car but it wasn't there and then i turned and said it must be over here and after a few minutes of looking for my $400 car i found it but the rather deep hole i had put myself in with the lady was now about the size of the Grand Canyon and she looked at me and asked if i should even be driving and i smiled and said sure and drove her the three blocks to work, the whole time being lectured about how i better go to work and blah blah fucking blah, i had already made up my mind what i was doing today and so i dropped her off and drove to the store and scored some Gatorade for later, a chocolate milk for now and bee-lined it back towards my bed, i set the alarm for about a half hour before she'd get home and i drank my milk and smoked some herb and passed out and when i awoke some hours later i hopped in my car, found a nice quiet parking lot, set the alarm on my phone for about the time i should be getting home from work and passed out curled up in the backseat, yeah it sure sounds like a lot of work but in the end it was worth it... the Browns had won.

The Bar is a Beautiful Place

2011-10-21T18:25:00.000-07:00

No i'm not dead, not yet anyway, last week may have been a long and wicked week what with three trips to the ER with Nick Disaster, a few more doctor visits and one stop at an urgent care place but you know we came out the other side and maybe we'll have a week or two of relative peace and quiet, seems Nick Disaster had acquired another staph infection and he and i spent the last week bonding as only a two year old and his daddy can do and after our third visit to the ER on saturday he wouldn't even let his mother help, his daddy had to take his temp and lay with him and put cold clothes on his feverish little head (cuz on top of the infection he also caught a virus), if i left the room he'd start crying and so i spent that afternoon and evening laying with him and carrying him around the house and when he finally fell asleep i sat there and watched his little chest rise and fall and felt as if my heart had grown three sizes i love that little dude so much...

needless to say daddy needed a break and when i was offered a free hockey ticket by the Furious one for last nights game i jumped at the chance to blow off some steam and so we drove into downtown and drank beer and smoked a joint and popped some pills all before the puck dropped, and inside we saw a great game, damn near a shutout until Montreal scored with a minute and a half left and we then walked to the car and drove down to my favorite dive, you know the one with the great jukebox on some non-descript street in Polish Hill...

and damn if that bar isn't a beautiful place, a place i've been going to for damn near 17 years, a place where i don't have to pay a cover if there are bands playing, a place where the staff treat me like royalty and the regulars all stand and shake my hand and say where you been and how you doing, a place where the young hipster kids all stare in awe as the bartender gives me cigarettes and never charges me for a drink, doesn't matter if i was there last night or haven't been there in six months the reception is always the same, i've poured my own beers at 4am and mopped the floors for fun all fucked up, a place where the old school ethics stand, in short a beautiful place.

and after a few hours of sleep 5:30am rolled around and i got out of bed and showered and blew the cobwebs off the brain, made some coffee and drove to work, i popped in this brilliant CD that Gulfboot had made of songs about drinking and being drunk and i drove through the misty morning and of course this song was on it and it brought me back to the night before and that brought a smile to my lips as i thought of just how fucking gorgeous life can be sometimes...

and not that anyone was wondering... but i'm getting that itch back to post some new stuff...

The Why and the What...

2011-09-29T19:16:00.000-07:00

"There are bullfighters who do it just for the money-they are worthless. The only one who matters is the bullfighter who feels it, so that if he did it for nothing, he would do it as well. Same holds true for damn near everyone else." EH

There are certain truths that we adhere to here in the lounge. This is one of them. We'll be back with The Wilderness Years... someday.

All The Umbrellas In London - The Magnetic Fields

2011-09-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last hours typing letters into the ether in hopes of fucking a ghost in a motel room, this on the 9th anniversary of my own personal shit sandwich and third anniversary of my entering the monastery in hopes of fucking what? really? i don't know so i sit and toast the demise of the Toxic Towers and Harpo Nunez, he's taken himself from the vast fucking wasteland called the interweb and who can blame him really? it's a thankless fucking task and he's actually got talent unlike some tall septic with a fading jump shot and a gimpy ankle, so here's to Harpo and the Kid and my fucking cats and to thunderstorms and to bad fucking poetry read in the same monotone voice with the same dramatic pauses that tell me i should be listening... but i'm not, cuz poetry is what you do when you can't write fucking songs like Stephen Merritt, and this song is one of my all time favorites, and though i may seem a bit caustic as i sit here and sweat in my tinylittleroom i'm not, in fact i'm in a good mood and relatively sober and typing away and thinking about wanking and leaving the monastery and washing that shit sandwich down with a nice cold Guinness and finding that ghost and fucking her like Santa's Reindeer on magic beans and pixie dust... but instead i'll just sit here and you (whoever you are) will get this and probably not understand a word of it but at least the tune is good and in the end that is all we can really ask for...

Spiritualized-Walking With Jesus (BBC Session)

2011-09-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

A song for all those important people debating in Florida... and for that guy who got high on his couch and somehow spaced his grass... cuz he's sick of hearing about REM.

It's the end of the world as we know it and i feel fine

2011-09-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

I saw today that R.E.M. broke up and while i'm not a huge fan of this band as a child of 80's alternative they were pretty hard to escape, this song here is my favorite R.E.M. song and i'd most likely say Document is my favorite album, it's also the first one i bought though i remember hearing things off their early records on Cleveland State University's radio station back when i was a wide eyed boy sitting in my room and dreaming of Molly Ringwald, of course you might be surprised that Automatic for the People is a close second in the album dept. and it was after that record that i didn't really listen to them anymore, yet i still couldn't avoid that pang of nostalgia at seeing them call it quits, it's a part of my youth that is no more and it hearkens back to an era of my silly little life that i look on with much fondness, before the wars of divorce and adulthood would kick whatever joy i had left in me to the curb and i realized how absolute shit the world is, but back then Document was owned on cassette and sat on shelve above my bed along with the Smiths and New Order and the Psychedelic Furs and old punk tapes and i would own and lose and re-own many of REM's records and today i don't own either of my favorites but i do own Murmur and Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction cuz that's what all the hipsters own right? so good-bye REM all i have to say is birthday party cheesecake jellybean boom.

Random Notes from a Suburban Derelict

2011-09-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

Well kids we still ain't doing shit here in the burbs other than eating pills and drinking stout, a shame really cuz i got all these things lined up to write i just don't feel like doing anything, way i see it it was roughly two years ago that the Wilderness Years started and we had a pretty good run but the bulk of it has yet to make it up here but we're getting there, patience as they say, sometimes daddy needs to pull tubes and watch crap telly and take time off to re-charge the batteries and i'll admit that losing that one post was a killer that sorta set my mind back a bit but fuck-it, as i've said before they're only words and i've tossed out more than i've kept over the years cuz in the end i'll just make more...

that said i don't know if anyone else out in the ether watches Breaking Bad but it may be the best fucking television show ever made and i'm hoping they don't fuck it up, the beauty of it comes from the fact that if you've ever been in the game on a serious level they get alot of things right, of course i'm not speaking for all the Mexican cartel shit cuz hell i've never been in one of those but as for the street level and some other things the producers are spot on, and you see it all starts so innocently when a guy who has cancer wants to leave his family with some security instead of bills and mortgages and the like, kinda like this guy i knew years ago who dropped out of grad school and devised a plan to sell weed to pay off his student loans and credit card debt, thing is shit starts to happen and things snowball and the success puts a spin on why and how and what happens, basically a classic tale of a good deed gone bad and the moral ambiguity of of one's actions, Breaking Bad has done a masterful job of showing Walter White's decline from a "morally upstanding" science teacher who could have left his family broke, to a world class "cook" whose ethics have taken a decidedly new bent but may leave his family in a better position, of course that remains to be seen and if you haven't started watching it i suggest you start from the beginning to understand what i'm rambling on about, brilliant acting and writing, it's the only show i actually sit down and watch and have gone out of my way to watch in the last 15 years...

And am i the only one or are there others out there who think that Midnight Cowboy is some kind of demented take on Of Mice and Men? see i stumbled upon Midnight Cowboy last night and for some reason as i sat on the couch watching it i couldn't get the parallels between it and the Of Mice and Men directed by Gary Sinise with John Malkovich, maybe it's all the drugs i take and maybe it's nothing more than they're both buddy movies about a couple of misfits who are always dreaming of a better life somewhere else but it's been bugging me all day.... so this is what i do when i don't sit at the typer, but it's getting dark early and soon i'll be able to go for walks and avoid neighbors and who knows maybe i'll this whole Wilderness Years thing back on track...

And Now a Word from Our Sponsors

2011-09-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

Of course we don't have any sponsors here at the lounge, unless of course you count Big Pharma, coffee, Lion of Judah rolling papers, herb and assorted kiddie breakfast cereal, but since i've been fucking about and deleting everything i write before i post it, (seriously i've written about a half dozen posts and hit the delete button every time, why? i don't know, maybe just not up to my critically high standards... can you hear me laughing) i've been doing nothing but posting music and ridiculous missives over at the Crazy 8's site with Gulfboot, so if you wanna be one of the hip kids i suggest you head over there cuz i gotta feeling ain't shit gonna be happening over here for a bit and the bonus is you'll be like the coolest kid on your block or some such shit. cheers.

Where have all the Trees gone?

2011-09-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

It's been five months since a Wilderness Years post, five fucking months and then i finally get one done and the fucking interweb eats it, and man let me tell you that last one was a hoot, of course nobody read it but me and even i didn't get to read it i just typed it out and the problem here lies in the fact that i really need to do it over, that Raskolnikov's Blues pt. 1 cuz without it we can't get to part deux and without that we can't really get to the rise of the North Oakland Player which snowballs into the coronation of the King of North Oakland which for those of you paying attention becomes an acronym for a certain tall, graying, bearded man who roams the interwebs dispensing useless knowledge on unsuspecting strangers, but here we are, at an impasse as i'm to fucking lazy or bored or confused or high to get around to it, not that i don't have the time, which sometimes i don't but most nights you can find me lounging somewhere in my humble abode listening to the crickets and watching futbol highlights and eating another bowl of Fruity Pebbles or Fruit Loops or Rice Krispies and dwelling endlessly on the texture of these wonderful cereals...

needless to say, when i leave the house and head to the local, usually the Plastic Paddy, nothing but weirdness abounds, of course yesterday at the supermarket the lady behind the deli counter, who was easily over 60, commented on how much she like my sideburns, now let my state that right now it looks as if someone has taped badgers to the side of my face as they are long and graying and triangular and pretty much out of control, i almost asked her if she was into Civil War re-enactors, of which i'm not one, but she was so sweet i just thanked her and shuffled off, of course i need to get my license renewed so i don't believe i'll be shaving before that but here in the burbs i'd venture to say they are a bit out of the norm, hell my old hood they might be a bit much but what the fuck right? then of course there was the episode earlier in the summer where an even older woman stood at the bar and drunkenly hit on me while downing copious amounts of red wine, then told me not to let to many people in the community know i was an atheist, hence why i haven't worn my Kiss Me I'm an Atheist shirt to the pub, of course Joan was a Catlick and i finally told her that i was taken, much to her dismay, i figured if that didn't work i'd just pretend i was gay cuz when she wrapped her arm around my waist i thought i might have to punch her to get her to let go...

Which brings us to last friday, seems i'm like that big fucking lion in Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, you know the one with the huge wings who flies around and collects misfit toys, cuz as i stood downing my beer last week i met a guy named Billy, Billy seemed just a tad bit unhinged and we had a rather in-depth discussion of punk rock, he told me he was living on his mom's couch after the New Orleans stripper he had married left him and took all his stuff and threw his record collection in the garbage and that he'd hitchhiked or some such shit back to the Burgh, he then proceded to pass me a dime bag of grass cuz he thought i was a righteous dude, of course while all this was going on Trainwreck was gleefully hanging about, Trainwreck being the nom de plume of a young man with many tattoos, including one on his neck, i sat back and listened as they traded stories about how many mushrooms they could eat and Trainwreck soliloquized on about his younger days as a meth dealer and i smiled as thought about how fucked up the suburbs are, as the evening wore on Billy had to catch the last bus and he asked for my number, which i gave cuz one i knew he'd never remember who it was and number two i actually felt bad for the guy, meanwhile Trainwreck stood there and told me how i should just delete it cuz the guy's a bit tweaked but not a bad guy he added just tweaked and proceeded to tell me how just last week he was on the other side of town Hoggin'( his words) and how he had to play his cards just right cuz the big girl he was with had just ordered a pizza and after they ate some pie they were gonna fuck but he had to make sure it lasted cuz he didn't have any way to get back to this side of town until morning, he then told me that his current girlfriend might be a tranny or maybe not exactly a tranny but a post-op sex re-assignment, he wasn't sure but he had this hunch, but hey man he didn't care and then he said i should give him my number cuz i'm such a riot, though i hadn't said much all night just sat and listened to the yarns... by that time i felt a bit like one Randall Patrick McMurphy, the only sane man in the asylum, and as i strolled to my car i couldn't help but laugh and think about how i thought the suburbs were gonna be boring.

The End of the Beginning

2011-08-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the I-mac's first day of kindergarten and as we drove through the Liberty Tubes this morning his old man got all misty-eyed cuz you see from here on out his momma gets to drive him to school but for the last five years or so give or take a few days here and there this has been my responsibility, and you see as we drove through that tunnel this morning i told him that this was it, the last time i'd be his regular driver, and his eyes, eyes that look exactly like mine, met his old man's and the look on his face broke my fucking heart or maybe more correctly mine broke his as he explained to me that it would be alright and that i'd still get to take him to school sometimes and then we both kind of stared out the window for a few seconds until Nick Disaster broke the silence by asking about wild turkeys...

You see this first born of mine and me have sorta grown up together, in all actuality he's probably ahead of me in that dept. but we used to drive through Oakland to his old daycare when he was just a wee little baby all bundled and sleeping most of the time, it was on those drives that i listened to the complete Fall BBC sessions, Joy Division, the Pavement re-issues, they were hectic and pleasant drives and in the morning i'd stop in at the local bodega where a Russian man would be smoking behind the counter and we'd bullshit and i'd get my coffee and be on my way, it was here that we met the world's greatest kid-sitter, who to this day is still the person i trust my kids with most if i'm not able to be around... after that it was the nightmare, a place that was cheap and convenient and run by a woman who the I-mac would call a witch, right to her face, a year after we left the place as we stood in line at the post office, of course his daddy just stood there and smiled and agreed and the experience of that place would be multiple posts, which leads us to his last place, the place he and his brother have been the last 2 years roughly, the place that was once close to our little house in Little Italy but is now a good 25-30 minute drive in the morning and even worse during the evening rush hour, a place his little brother will still attend for the time being...

What i'm gonna miss most with my little dude is the conversations and the songs and the all the words his father taught him as he raced through traffic as if he was the only person on the planet who knew how to drive, see just today we talked about the difference between mountains and hills, debated the various merits and coolness of volcanoes, sang some songs, ( he asked if the Dum Dum Girls cover of There's a Light that Never Goes Out was a Morrissey song, yes i was very proud), it's just been one of the times when we kinda blocked shit out and talked, hell i remember talking to him when all he did was goo and gaa and burp and shit himself and now the kid's off to school where year by year i'll become just a little less cool than i am now in his eyes until the point where i'm the world's ranking fucking idiot, as i'm fond of telling my dad "you're alot smarter now than you were when i was 16", but that's what i signed up for and now it's time to let loose on the reins a bit but i'd be lying if i said it didn't put a lump in my throat and make the eyes a bit wet, yeah i know, i'm a big fucking pansy, if you didn't know that by now you haven't been reading close enough...

That said, it will now be Nick Disaster's turn to get 3 years of hanging with his dad on the way to daycare/pre-school, without having to compete with his big brother for attention, i'm sure it will be rough at first cuz though they like to beat on each other the I-mac is Nicky D's fucking hero, we'll be alright though, mainly it's just a melancholy daddy thinking about the last five years of his morning commute with his oldest son...

as for the video, well that's just something i like, seems i learned more from School House Rocks than i learned in class, but we all know i wasn't the brightest fucking bulb on the tree, here's hoping that the I-mac is a better student than his daddy was...

Who's that Gigolo on the Street? Crazy 8's is back Again.

2011-08-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

Let us thank Jah for Gulfboot, he has magically removed the elitist censorship from the brilliance that is Kono and Gulfboot's Crazy 8's, from here on out you can go there to get all my ramblings about music, hear all the hip shit the cool kids are listening to, find obscure artists that need to be found, basically it's like Pitchfork but way fucking cooler, a Septic and a Limey prattling on about whatever catches their fancy, you'll find a link to the right i believe but before the Lounge goes all boho-bourgeois-art star-chic, we'll leave you with this glorious TOTP performance of a pregnant Neneh Cherry and two of the worst dancers ever.

Eff Blogger

2011-08-21T18:52:00.000-07:00

Yinz was about to get a very long installment of the Wilderness Years, right up until fucking blogger ate it. We'll try again in the near future and maybe break it up more just in case the beast gets hunry again. cheers.

In the Future When All's Well

2011-08-20T18:20:00.000-07:00

As written by the I-mac, sometime in the distant future...

"The closest i ever saw my father prescribe to a religion was his friday night journey's into the city. He moved us out to the suburbs to get away from the shit and find better school's but his heart stayed chained to the filthy streets and neon of certain neighborhoods. On friday's he'd let me lay in his bed until he came home, he'd get my younger brother to sleep and then walk in and change his shirt, kiss me on my forehead and say, "see you when i get home kid." I'd lay in bed and watch Animal Planet and my mom's taped soap operas until i couldn't keep my eyelids open any longer. When i got older he told me that sometimes he'd just drive around his old neighborhoods stoned on grass or pills or both, just listening to music and watching the people, watching the action that went down on corners, in alley ways, between cars in parking lots. My old man had this shit-eating grin which let on that he knew more than he was telling. What i remember most is being 5 or 6 and waking up as he carried me to my room, his long arms holding me and my pillow and my blanket, the faint smell of cigarette smoke on his shirt and the smell of cheap beer on his breath. He'd lay me down and tuck me in, kiss my head again and creep towards the door, where he'd stop and whisper, "i love you son". He'd gently shut the door and i'd listen to floor creak under his feet. I don't think he knew that i heard him but i did. My father wasn't a saint and he had demons that he kept to himself. All you really need to know is that he loved his sons fiercely and that's all a son could really ask for."

Fight Like Apes - Jake Summers

2011-08-16T19:31:00.000-07:00

A song for Sybil.

Goodbye Crazy Eights

2011-08-16T18:25:00.000-07:00

Fuck that Crazy Eights site, it's been nothing but a pain in the ass, if you can find it you might see a PIL video, all very clever and shit by my genius ass but since i can't seem to figure it out through my drug-fuelled haze i'll just dump all my shit here, what's the difference really? i'm only here to entertain me in intermittent spurts between sleep, work, wanking and trips to the park, but lookee here kids, Fucked Up put out a video for that song i like so much and here it is, i'm a sucker for a love story, call it a farewell to Crazy Eights, it was like a decent one night stand but she wanted to talk to much when i was finished and i all wanted to do was have a cigarette and head for the door...

Welcome back Crazy 8's

2011-08-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

I think it's time to bring back Gulfboot and Kono's Crazy Eights site, then i'll just dump all my music musing over there and whine about useless shit over here, haha, this one is an oldie but a goodie, if you consider something from 2002 old and there is a special guest appearance in this clip, got all kinds of shit to write but spend to much time in the garage smoking spliff's, so be it...

Smokin' from Shootin

2011-08-13T07:06:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the wonders of the internet i found that song i love so much from the show i was at and seeing how it's saturday morning and my head's a bit fuzzy i figured i'd post it so i wouldn't have to go to youtube everytime i wanted to watch it, then i could think about where i is, where i was, where i at and smile and be depressed all at the same fucking time...

Do you see my smoking guns?/ they're smokin' from shootin' , smokin' from shootin, smokin' from shootin' at nothing dear/ do you live your life on the run?/ losin out on lovin/ asking for nothing/ runnin' from something that isn't there...

An Evening with My Morning Jacket

2011-08-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

I'll just state this now, these guys get my vote for best live rock band on the fucking planet and if they're coming to a town near you i highly recommend you get a ticket and check them out cuz they will blow your fucking doors off, this was the 6th time i've seen them live over the last 9 years or so and they keep getting better every time, (this is the band i missed last year when Nick Disaster was in the hospital), I'm starting to wonder if they ever play a song the same way twice, and just how good are they you ask? well inevitably when you go to a show there will be songs you don't really care about hearing but last night even the ones you didn't feel like hearing kept you riveted they were that good, Jim James seems to love the burgh and he gave a nice little sermon about what a gem the city was and how gorgeous it is, how they rode the incline and ate on Mt. Washington, seems like they were more than up for it last night, it'd be hard to pick some highlights cuz the whole show was pretty much one but we'll start with a 20 minute version of Dondante that morphed and twisted and ended up right back where they started, it was one part Miles Davis, one part Grateful Dead and one part Black Sabbath and yes you read the correctly, at one point during the song Carl Broemel put down his guitar and started playing sax, it was fucking mind melting, combine that with an 8 minute blues-ed out version of Honest Man, which is one for the seasoned fan, an old tune that separated the old dogs from the new kids, another old one Eveleyn is Not Real, and a killer version of Smokin from Shootin' which just might be one of my favorite songs ever put to tape, it hits home on one of those personal levels in a number of different ways, then of course there was the complete fucking jam of the end of Run Thru, a Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers cover with Neko Case, fucking brilliant start to finish, what's great about the Jacket is that they actually are having just as good a time as the audience, at one point watching them i said that they had the best job in the fucking world, they were all smiling and rocking and enjoying themselves, i enjoyed the show with special guest The Hassler who by the end of the night looked as if he had had one swell fucking evening...

I'd also like to commend Stage AE, yeah it's sponsored by some mall kid clothes store but this venue is gorgeous, great sight lines, great sound, looks out over the north side and up into Mt. Washington, the staff where friendly and relaxed and didn't bat on eyelash at the amount of herb that was being blown through the whole show (which had to be a fucking ton judging by the smell and yes i helped contribute to the cause), a beautiful night for a show to boot, the above video is from last night taken by someone i don't know, i was to busy jumping around and drinking and getting high to take any footage, enjoy...

Set List: Victory Dance- Circuital- Off the Record- I'm Amazed- Gideon- You Wanna Freak Out- Knot Comes Loose- Slow Slow Tune- Evelyn is Not Real- Honest Man- Dondante- Movin Away- Smokin from Shootin- end of Run Thru- First Light- Touch Me I"m Going to Scream Pt. 2- Mageetah--- Encore: Wordless Chorus- Islands in the Stream (with Neko Case)- Holdin' on to Black Metal- One Big Holiday

drunken vig-net

2011-08-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

it's strange how the taste of clean fryer grease can transport you back almost 20 years in the matter of an instant, full of beer and smoke, from a south side fast food joint, miles away from the memory, whizzing down the unlit streets of suburbia towards the sound of crickets and sleeping children, i may have gone a thousand miles but i've only taken three steps...

John Maus - Believer (Official Video)

2011-08-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

I've just discovered this guy's music and i'm really fucking digging it, apparently he's got a PHD in political philosophy and he seems completely out of his mind in interviews hence probably why i like it so much, besides that this song sounds like something Joy Division might have done had Ian Curtis lived, add to that the fact that this video is right out of 1987 and it all adds up to a winner....

Portrait of the Derelict as a not so Young Man Vol. 2

2011-08-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

Michael Stipe once said that if you believe, they put a man on the moon, and of course i believe cuz i've been the fucking guy on the moon on more than a few occasions in my illustrious past, see i've often been a proponent of better living through chemistry, i've got the utmost respect for those scientific types, the people out there solving problems and curing cancer and making acid and strange designer drugs, of course i've never been big on those designer drugs but what the hell i'm sure if it wasn't for the curiosity of the scientific mind man never would have created beer, which brings us to this little tale about synthetic THC...

Of course you may be wondering, why in the hell would you need synthetic THC? and i of course would agree with you why? seems to me that the real stuff does the trick just fine and good ole' mother earth with the help of a few scientists has pretty much perfected this wonderful little chemical compound over the past million years or what have you but you know onwards and upwards as they say, so one day a friend of mine handed me a little vial of whitish powder and said, "next time you get some average shit, sprinkle a little of this on it and you'll be good to go." Now one must remember my trials and tribulations with a certain angelic dust that i'd had in my younger days and i quizzed my friend on the exact substance he was handing me and he of course assured me that it was nothing of the sort, basically it was a way to get higher off shitty weed or even higher off quality smoke and i said gracias and was on my way...

Now over the next week or so i tried out this little powder on various grades of herb and found that it did do exactly what he said it would do cuz hell, i'm a bit of a scientist myself now ain't i, of course i stuck to the directions i'd been given and sprinkled a tiny bit on each time and was happily on my way... then one fine friday night i was having one of those days and was trying to get out of the house to have a few bevy's so i put the boyos to bed and headed down to the basement, needless to say it had been a frustrating day at work and home and as i pulled out the little vial to sprinkle on my pre-bevy smoke i looked in the mirror at my graying beard and said, "fuck these bubble gummers, i'm the fucking King of North Oakland, i can handle my shit better than anyone i've ever met and tonight i'm going all in on this hand" and so i proceeded to put about five times the normal amount on my little appetizer and smoked away...

Now i should preface this by saying the appetizer i was enhancing was not your daddy's smoke, it was locally grown organic high test, a strain of which is named after the Aurora Borealis, good shit that really needed no enhancing but sometimes i'm like fucking Major Tom, you know like fuck it ground control i'm gonna step through this door and see if i can make the grade, and so i took a few tokes and then a few more and headed up the steps, i realized i forgot something and headed up to the second floor and by the time i figured out what i had come up for my heart was racing and my vision was skewed and as i attempted to go back down the steps i had to hold onto the rail cuz it felt as if my legs were going to give out...

Downstairs the girl was laying on the couch and watching some crap telly and i began pacing and taking deep breaths and finally i sat down on the couch and wondered what the fuck was going on, she looked at me and then back at the telly and asked "are you going out?" and i kind of stammered and said i don't know i might need to sit here for a few minutes and get my shit together, she was like okay and paid me no mind and i sat on the couch about ready to crawl out of my skin, i walked into the kitchen and ran the tap, dousing my face with water, i took a sip and walked back to the couch and sat down, pretty much so fucked up i didn't know whether to shit or chew bubble gum, now remember the girl has known me long enough to know that i could have done any number of idiotic things and she would just shrug it off and laugh at my stupidity, i then blurted out that i needed her to talk to me and she, who was always telling me we needed to talk more sighed and said "i just need to relax, are you alright?", to which i replied "well i'm kinda fucked up, see i took sprinkled this powder on my dope and i'm starting to think it was dust or something, though i did put like three or four times the recommended dose and now i think i'm having a panic attack or a heart attack or i don't know what but it helps me if you talk to me you know sweetheart, how you always want to talk and shit", she turned to look at me, cocked her head and said, "you'll be alright just watch the show"...

What the fuck? oh i love you too dear, one of the few times i actually need a conversation and she's clamming up, i'm on the couch gurning and fidgeting like a spastic and she's watching Guiding fucking Light and ignoring the poor guy who's losing his mind, so i began walking from room to room and splashing more water on my face and generally trying, in my own head, to talk myself down, i'd stop and sit on the couch and then start the process over thinking that maybe a half an hour had gone by and then i'd see the clock and realize not more than five minutes had elapsed, a commercial comes on and she asks me "do you want to go to the hospital?" and i'm like fuck no besides i'd have to walk cuz someone has to stay with the boyos and like what the fuck am i gonna tell them anyway, that i smoked some non-descript white powder that was supposed to enhance the weed, just saying it now makes me sound like a fucking imbecile, i paused for a second and tried to watch some Guiding Light then said, i'll be okay but if i pass out call an ambulance and tell them that i just came in from the bar and that i think someone slipped me something, i don't want them to know i did this on my own dammit, to which she laughed and said "i'll make sure to tell them", i replied that i was glad she thought this whole episode was amusing cuz i'm losing my fucking mind and for the first time in my life i think i want to come down, i want it to stop and the whole space time continuum on the soap opera is fucked up, she rolled back towards the telly and laughed...

So here i was on my own and losing my mind, thinking i was having a heart attack and wishing for the clock to move just a little faster when i had an epiphany, i figured that if i could get a hard-on then everything would be alright, cuz how many guys having heart attacks can get an erection? right? i mean i didn't have time to really think about the science of it i just knew that if i could sport some wood things would be okay, by this time about two hours had elapsed and the girl had gone upstairs and gone to bed and i paced back and forth and with nothing other than my imagination i produced a glorious fucking boner, i don't think i was ever happier to have a hard-on then i was right at that moment, that boner meant i was going to live dammit, i was going to live!!! i danced around the living room as if i had just won the lottery, the almighty boner had saved the day, i started making jokes about it, inserting various names for erections into song titles, movie titles, book titles, i was going to be okay, it was then that i decided not to waste that boner and rubbed one out in record time, cuz this boner was mine, not to be shared with anyone but me, i laughed thinking of what a fool i'd been and then came that faint flickering of idiocy, i thought to myself, you know that whole experience wasn't that bad, maybe i'll try it again, yeah i'm that stupid... for the record though i tossed that vial in the garbage the next day, singing, last night a boner saved my life...

JurgenfuckingKlinsmann

2011-07-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

It's about fucking time those muppets at US Soccer got their shit together (I'm looking at Gulati you fucking idiot), this is the best news i've heard all day, now i'm going to have a beer and celebrate...

The Other Shoe - Fucked Up

2011-07-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

Lately i don't much feel like sitting down and typing anything, funny huh, i'm not one to sit around and force myself to do shit i don't feel like doing so instead i listen to music and think to much and play with the boyos and try to make sense of my surroundings and basically i really don't give a fuck about much but skinning up and having a bevy once the boyos have hit the hay but this song might be the perfect song in my book so i'm gonna ramble on about it for a minute or two before i fuck off to the kitchen for a bowl of Rice Crispies, see this song is everything i like about music and possibly living, it's fucking abrasive and dirty yet at the same time there are parts to it that are almost painfully beautiful, that fucking guitar melody anyone, and of course i could sit here and dissect the lyrics cuz i have listened to it enough to know the words but all you really need to understand for now is the chorus, and i think we can agree we know what they're saying and it's the combination of things, i mean listen to it and then listen to it again, that fucking bass line, the chug, the chime, i mean you could tell me i'm wrong, but i wouldn't fucking hear you, cuz i'd be listening to the song and day dreaming about something more important...

I'm really just a Teen-age Girl

2011-07-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

I mean the title says it all now doesn't it or maybe i'm just a hopeless romantic all pilled up on my couch, yes in a trifecta of mundane posts i give you my wild night watching Pretty In Pink, a fucking classic in my book, reminds me of being 15 and stealing schnapps out of my friends mother's liquor cabinet and smoking grass in home-made tinfoil bowls, the real life Andie was the theatre girl i've mentioned in passing whose family ran a funeral parlor, of course she was a brunette and not a redhead but it all shakes out now doesn't it, but being 15 and hoping to be in love one day says all kinds of horrible things about me i'm sure, i mean i'm this tall bad ass ex-hoodlum, i should only fuck not be in love and though at the ripe old age of 40 i'm now jaded and bitter enough to know that i do only fuck there's nothing wrong with a bit of nostalgia on a quiet summer night...

I'd be remiss though if i didn't throw in a brief bit on the Furs though, see i saw the Psychedelic Furs at Blossom Music Center in Cleveland back in 1987 at the ripe old age of 16, the Smithereens opened the show and a bunch of us went and we got bombed on pony bottles of Little King's Cream Ale and weed, it was the first time in my life that i'd somewhat hook-up with two girls in one night, one was my recent ex-girlfriend and after i started making out on the lawn with another girl she decided that maybe she wasn't ready to let me go just yet, so she pulled me away and started kissing me and soon i was going back and forth between the two and engaging in what could only be called "Heavy Petting", which happens to be a favorite phrase of mine, the Furs recent album was Midnight to Midnight i believe and though it wasn't one of their finer ones i certainly did like it, and while i rolled in the grass with two girls alot of other shenanigans were being engaged in by my friends, of course there always has to be some downers there and the old couple, basically 17 yr. old's who acted like they'd been married and attending church for the last 25 years, were appalled at our behavior and started herding us toward the car during the encore of this song, i stopped at the top of a hill and told them to hold the fuck on and my ex stuck her tongue down my throat and wrapped her hand around, well, a rather sensitive and swollen area of my body and i listened to the Furs rock and had i been old enough or aware enough i would have realized that this was one of the best nights of my young life, even if the ex did tell me that i was a hopeless case and there was no chance of a reconciliation as we walked towards the car... not that i wanted any, i really just wanted to get laid to top my night off... nothing beat the ride back to the West Side with cool air blowing into the open windows of the back seat of someones parents car, i do believe i was quiet as i watched the scenery roll along, a slight smile on my lips, the possibilities of a lifetime ahead of me...

Playing in the fountain and riding in the car

2011-07-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

In the burgh we have this great fountain at PPG Place that shoots out of the ground, sorta one of dem dancing fountain things and the kids get to run through it and tear shit up and have a good time and that's just what i got back from doing, a splendid little jaunt downtown and back, of course on the way back we listened to this song cuz it's one of the I-mac's favorites, at 5 he can sing all the words and it makes his daddy proud that he's a pretty hip fucking little dude, usually when the song ends he says play it again dad and since i'm just gonna fucking post for no reason today now you get this, one of I-mac's favorite tunes.

Still Ill

2011-07-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

A good night in L-ville always leads to a morning that's a little rough around the edges you know, but it was good to get back to the city and bullshit with some guys who actually know their shit unlike being at the Plastic Paddy listening to adult children who can barely wipe their own arse, i had a cigarette (just one) some PBR tall boys, a Car Bomb and ended the night staring at the blackness of the woods of suburbia while enjoying a bowl of Fruit Loops, must of been that special ciggy i partook in that made me a bit hungry now, i do miss the city, miss her like i miss certain ex-lovers but alas she is really only 3 miles away maybe another 3 to the part i like the best so now she is more a mistress than a wife and that's okay, so today i may just post all fucking day, cuz i can and i will and i while i swept my floor this morning i was listening to this album and i fucking dig this tune so here it is...

I Taught Myself How To Grow Old

2011-07-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

You know i've never admitted the fact here on the lounge that i'm a huge fucking fan of this man, he's been with me at some of the lowest points of my life, walking the streets so fucking heartbroken that it seemed that he was the only one making any sense, that said i listened to him a lot this weekend, drinking coffee on the couch while the boyos played on the floor, then i'd join them playing cars or pirates or building stuff, watched as they tore up the park and then a party yesterday and i'll tell you now that i'm fucking glad i lived long enough to see them and i'll be the first to admit that at times i wasn't all that concerned with making the next sunrise and someday i might even get around to writing about that time period but for now i'll just let it lie, see things are not all that tranquil around the lounge these days, especially in the domestic department but that's just how it goes, ain't no use bitching about it... of course this post was interrupted last night to the sounds of a screaming boy, seems Nick Disaster caught something and in his fever dreams he dreamt about a spider or bug and after that the little dude wouldn't get back in a bed, so i took his little feverish butt to the couch and barely slept while he tossed and turned on his big, tall daddy, gave him a Popsicle at 4am cuz he was so warm but by the time the sun broke and docs office opened he was doing a bit better, tired and grumpy but better, no ear infection or other funky stuff, so now it's just him and his daddy and he's sleeping in my bed while Sesame Street plays in the background and though this post had a completely different bent last night that's alright too, the point is the same, somehow i taught myself how to grow old, even with the romantic pull of dying young, and lord knows it wasn't from a lack of trying, but every day i wake up and see those little smiles i knock on wood, cuz i'm fucking lucky, fucking real lucky...

The I-Mac is Cinco

2011-07-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday kiddo, you know in the last five years you've grown up and learned alot and you've made your daddy grow up and learn alot as well, he learned that a man is more than throwing a punch or drinking whiskey, a man changes diapers and walks creaky floorboards at 4am and sings you back to sleep, a man takes you for walks and has crap on his shirt constantly, a man re-thinks what it means to be cool and realizes that it's much cooler to raise your son than run the streets with the low-lives, you've taught me a lot boy and it was only a quick five years ago that i stood on a street corner shaky and nervous, whimpering to Uncle Gulfboot about how lost i was and how i didn't know shit and though i still may not know to much i'm definitely not lost anymore, your a kick-ass big bro and you have a mouth and a mind a lot like your daddies and though it may drive me nuts sometimes when you challenge your old man deep down i'm really proud, mostly though i'm just happy to be your dad kid. love, your old man.

Who Gives a F*ck

2011-06-28T18:28:00.000-07:00

Gulfboot once said that the reason he quit the blogosphere was that he was tired of screaming into the void, of course i understand him, seems the longer i go the less of an audience i have, problem is i never set out to have an audience, i figured i could just write Gulfboot emails and he could save them and be my Max Brod, publish all my fucking brilliance once i had moved on to the next world but he set this thing up and now i have to finish it, whenever that may be, so fuck it, i will press on with my little stories and rants and missives cuz if i don't i'll end up doing more drugs than i already do or become one of those suburban dads who wear Hawaiian shirts and get tipsy off two glasses of shitty red, for the few of you who still stop by here on a regular basis i give a heartfelt thanks, as i said i understand what Gulfboot was talking about cuz Toxic Monday was some of the best writing i've read period and should have been making him more dosh than all the shit mommy bloggers combined, me? i'm a special case, i spent so many years talking my way into the beds of females all while pretending to be a writer that now that i actually resemble one at times i don't give a fuck what anyone thinks, i have this sense of self belief, a horse and a vendetta against windmills, moped gangs, MFA's and bad writing (a redundancy) that i'm gonna sit out here in the quiet with my crickets and groundhogs and bang away whether anyone likes it or not, it fucking entertains me, and really that's all i give a shit about, so there it is kids, that was damn near a pep-talk now wasn't it, now it's back to my crickets and groundhogs.

The Walking Dead- An Old Drink for the New Drunk

2011-06-27T18:45:00.000-07:00

Let's just say that addiction is something that i'm more than casually acquainted with, of course i've always been to lazy to be a serious boozehound, in my younger days i may have had it in me but basically booze was like the appetizer, like the cheese tray i picked at all night while the main course was usually some kind of Class A, be it weed or acid or coke or pills or mushrooms or dust, the bevy was just there, that said i would say i have a keen understanding into the mind of the addict, i've known enough and more than likely been alot closer than i'd like to admit to being one at certain times of my life so this piece here is no judgement on anyone, more a snapshot of what happens when you let it spin helplessly out of control until you are so deep in it you can't find your way back...

See i work with a woman at the Big World Bank Machine who is spinning deeper and deeper into the darkness, it started a few years back with more than a bit of infidelity with the BWBM boy toy, a move that put a huge strain on her marriage as she denied and her slightly nutty husband went mad trying to find out who what when and where, the boy toy was a guy she met on the BWBM fitness team and while she worked herself into great shape for hotel rendezvous's i'm sure hubby was left with nothing but his right hand, she liked to walk around and spout that the next time she married it would be for money and not love being as she carried most of the financial burden of the family, and yes did i mention she has a young son?

I work pretty closely with this woman (and no i'm not the boy toy) and one X-mas eve we took a long lunch at work and talked, she was in the middle of the affair and though i was not supposed to know about it we talked in a round about way about the damage it could do to her relationship and kid, talked a bit about life and philosophy and the demons that we sometimes battle, be it drugs or sex or booze or shopping, it was a good conversation, i was a bit surprised when people told me how highly she thought of me and what a wise derelict i was, i mean really i'm just the guy who changes the light bulbs and moves furniture but i figured i might try to offer up some wisdom before shit really came apart on her...

Well things went relatively smoothly for her until that day when we got the fucking news that the axe was coming and that we should all loosen up or necks for the block, see this was a woman who had worked here half her life, a high school diploma and a powerful benefactor in the shape of our boss, a woman who helped promote her up the ranks and land her a cushy position that paid pretty well and involved a minimum of work, that day she knew she was fucked, she knew she would never score a job that paid her what she was making and as the days went by she became more and more distressed and distraught, i asked if she was alright one day and she broke down crying at her desk, i gave her a hug and some Xanax and said keep the chin up, i like her was another one who wouldn't get a seat in a lifeboat and would go down singing on this sinking ship, remember this was in February...

As i speak another round of human resources is being shown the door at the end of this week and the BWBM is down to about 30% of it's former capacity, many of the bigwigs have jumped off and headed for the mothership in C-town or found other gigs, our included, and with no one to keep tabs on her things have gone south rather quickly starting with her marriage, of course her drinking was a catalyst for this, at work she started leaving for lunch and coming back an hour or two later drunk, then it turned into going to lunch and coming back 4 hours later trashed, then it turned into coming to work at 10:30 or so, leaving for lunch at 11:15 and not coming back until she could barely walk if she came back at all, she's scraped the wall of one of the tunnels with her car, a move she's lucky didn't wind her ass in jail, the hospital or the morgue, instead she sped home and the next day took it in to get repaired, when she let that slip i gave her a long hard gaze and stated that she had a son who she might not see if her soon to be ex gets wind of that info, besides the fact that she could kill herself or someone else, a sheepish look and shrug followed... then last week she got so drunk she had someone drive her home, on the way she threw up a few times, then passed out and missed her son's play...

I've sat back and watched as a long line of her friends and co-workers have tried to talk to her all to be met with an icy indifference, some of them, knowing that i've run the streets for a long time have talked to me, we've agreed that the job thing is more than likely the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, they ask what i think and i tell them the truth, when you've seen this shit up close you know, she won't change until she wants to i tell them. Junkies, drunks, cokeheads they don't give a fuck when they are in the middle of it, all they want is the next fix or drink or line and even though she's using the booze to forget her other problems the booze is now her main problem and she's not gonna listen to you or me or Jesus H. Christ until she hopefully has a moment of clarity or does something so stupid that it shakes her out of it, hopefully without hurting anyone...

I'd like to show the powers that be what their decision has cost in human terms, see this whole consolidation thing was a farce, i'd have had some respect for them if they'd just shown up and shut us down but this shit's a fucking joke, breaking off bits and pieces and shuffling them all over the place, fuck them and their six figures, they don't give a shit that even one of their soon to be former employee's is basically breaking down in front of them, yeah there are other factors, but the fact is she was okay until that day in February and now she's just a wreck.

Late night, Maudlin street- I Hope Your Singing Now- Adieu

2011-06-16T18:50:00.000-07:00

When i was in 3rd grade in had double pneumonia, i can remember laying in a dark bedroom and staring out into the hall, a head full of fever and lungs full of fluid, my mother was in her yellow Big Bird bathrobe and my father was wearing a blue pinstriped suit, getting ready for work, my mother was practically in tears and it was one of the rare times that my father actually looked worried, i felt quite lucid as i lay there and studied them, my parents, the people i loved, i wanted to tell them that i would be okay, that i'd always be okay even when i got older and began to run the streets and take shitloads of drugs and drink myself into near coma's, when i hung out with junkies and whores and dealers and thugs that i was going to be fine, for some reason my 8yr. old self just knew it, there was nothing to be afraid of, and though i couldn't hear them i knew they were worried sick as their tall, skinny boy lay there wheezing with each breath he took... i ended up laying there for another six weeks or so, my mother attending to my every need as i beat back the illness and began getting stronger, i remember her turning me on my sides and beating the shit off my lungs, something the doctors had told her to do two or three times a day, i remember Popsicles and Gatorade and Chef-boy-ardee as i sat in bed and watched cartoons and read history books and sweated out the last of my illness, i remember her laying there with me half the night when i was smack in the middle of it and she was afraid, afraid that her little boy might not make it...

Twelve years later she stood in that same room and asked me not to hate her, at the time i told her i didn't and that it would never happen but before long i had heard to much and seen to much and i became that right bastard who froze her out, wouldn't take her calls, wouldn't talk to her, i went out of my way to hurt her, to cause her pain, cuz i wanted her to feel the same thing i was feeling, it never dawned on me that maybe she was feeling the same way i was feeling cuz i wouldn't listen and would only open my mouth to let fly with some cutting remark, in fact when i left that house i remember loading my stuff in the my father's car and not even saying goodbye to her, just walked by her and her tears as if they weren't there and then came the Wilderness years when no one in my family really knew what i was doing, her least of all, i spent no holidays with her, didn't call on her birthday, no card on Mother's day, nothing...

But as i said things change, i'd like to think that i somehow got smarter with all the books i read and capers i pulled but i highly doubt that, maybe i just learned how to forgive and maybe i even learned how to forgive myself for some of my own fuck-ups and misdeeds, i was no saint, i had done more than my fair share of damage to women and people over the ensuing years and some of those people still talked to me after i acted like an asshole on repeated occasions, it dawned on me that even i, fucking uber-mensch, was not perfect and so began the process of trying to correct some of my errors and with that came an olive branch to my mother, yeah i skipped her wedding to her new husband but i think even now she understands, i believe her husband understands, he knows how loyal i am to my father and in a way attending that wedding i felt would have been an insult, a slap in the face to my old man, even though he told me to go, i just laughed and shook my head, but soon after i accepted an invitation to sit down and have dinner with her, of course i've been over most of this and the fact that in the meantime i had become a parent myself and understood how much you sacrifice and love your kids, even if they are complete bastards helped this idiot get over the hump...

The boyos love Ooma and Papa and Pops. Pops is my what i call my dad, it's what my sons call my dad and when they are in town he goes over to the house that he paid for and hangs out with his grand-sons, he never says a bad word about anything, never says he got fucked on the deal even if he did, it was watching my old man that really drove it home, he once told me that he was proud of the man i had become, oh he didn't want to know what i was up to cuz he had a good idea and preferred not to think about it but he was proud that in an age when kids moved home and borrowed money his son had always somehow made it on his own, never asked for a dime or couch to sleep on, but in truth i was the one who was proud, i was proud that he was my dad and was a no bullshit kind of guy, the divorce may have hurt but in the end he was not bitter or angry, it's just the way shit happens sometimes and you deal with it and get on with your life...

And so it was on a recent trip home that i stood in the kitchen and talked to my mother, it seemed my sister, who had always been pissed at her baby brother, was being a right asshole now, not letting my mom see her other grand-son, bitching and moaning and whining about all kinds of things but often about her baby brother in particular, seems she liked it better when i was on the outs and being a bastard, it was no big deal to me, it's something i've dealt with my whole life but i could see how much it hurt my mom and it suddenly dawned on me that in the last twenty odd years or so it seemed that one or more of her kids had been pissed off at her at any given time, of course to get into the relationship between my mom and sister would be a tome the size of War and Peace and a bit more complicated at that, it would most likely involve shrinks, lawyers and fist-fights but i digress, mainly what i saw was my mom looking old and sad and hurt and for the first time in a long time it hurt me to see her that way...

And so the next day as i loaded the boyos and the girl in the car i stood in the hallway looking at the sadness in my mom's face, i knew she was still thinking about my sister, her husband was outside playing with the boyos and i stopped my mom in the hallway, not 10 feet from the spot where all this shit started some 20 years ago, i looked at her and smiled, my voice cracked and my eyes welled up and i said, "i'm sorry mom", i didn't need to say what for, "I'm sorry for the things i said and the way i acted", tears rolled down her cheeks, she said "i'm sorry too, son. i should have talked to you more, should have tried to explain things better, i made alot of mistakes", she paused for a second and gave me a hug, "you're my boy and i love you". "i know mom", i said, "i just wanted you to know... now stop it before you make me cry." and with that we both laughed, i kissed the top of her head and walked off towards the car...

As i pulled out of the driveway the girl looked at me and my misty eyes, she then looked back at my mom and saw her eyes and as i pulled into the street i grew up on to drive back to my adopted city i waved to my mother standing on the front porch, the front porch of the house i grew up in... and she smiled. The girl looked back and forth and i as i drove down the street she asked if everything was alright, i took a deep breath, looked in the rear view mirror at my sons in the backseat and as my eyes welled ever so slightly, i said, "yeah, things are alright, maybe for the first time in the last twenty years things are alright."

Press play on the above song. Roll the credits.

A Lazy Bastard reminisces about the old days while watching the grass grow

2011-06-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've found most people either love this band or hate them, for the record their first two albums are brilliant and go progressively downhill from there, but this is not about the Hold Steady, it's about what Jimmy Carter would call the general malaise i'm in when it comes to sitting down and doing anything productive as far as the typer goes, oh i've been good at drinking and eating drugs but not being able to take walks has really been fucking with me, i'm guessing i'm gonna have to start soon, maybe pop on the headphones and stare in suburban windows as i attempt to get back to the posts that entertain me so much instead of the complete bullshit i seem to be up to these days, yeah maybe it's summer and i should be doing other things but i don't do other things except maybe listen to tunes and read books, i was gonna do a weekend update but who wants to hear about fucking cleaning my house and tanking on the Belmont and battling poison ivy and having some senior citizen hit on me at the plastic paddy pub, so here dear readers is your chance to help my dumb ass... three options, all winners, all will get written but which one first? The last installment of Late Night Maudlin Street? a new tale from the Wilderness Years? or should i get back to the Portrait of the Derelict as an Old/Young Man? of course right now i'm so whacked i can't remember what i was writing about when i started and forgot the jist of the above mentioned posts but you know the deal right? voting will close in 24 hours or five minutes or next thursday...

Suburbs, 2011

2011-06-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

You know as good as this move was for the boyos it's been a bit rough on the old man, see the old man was a creature of the city and man does he miss the city, it's funny how people keep asking him if it's quiet out where he lives now and he nods and says yes and fails to mention that off in the distance he can hear some nameless main road and he stands in the quiet and listens to the cars faintly rushing by and dreams of the ocean waves while watching the deer have a late night snack and the turkeys waddle by, needless to say he doesn't really walk anywhere anymore for the fear of having to talk to people who seem alien to him and he's doing his best to not rely on the bottles and pills that seem to somehow take the edge of his existence even though now he feels like he needs it more than ever, about the only bright spot, if you could call it that is the fact that his commute went from like 20 minutes round trip to over an hour round trip which gives the old man ample time to listen to music... so now will switch person and tenses and what not while i struggle though this...

i saw this band open for Superchunk before the masterpiece ever came out and it being 1995 and me being superfuckingcool i didn't pay much attention to them and then a few years later they released this and it just kinda stuck with me (and every other sniffling indie kid) for years and then it seems i forgot about it and then i pulled it out for a morning commute recently and about fucking cried listening to this song because it makes me fucking smile, who wouldn't smile at a supposed love song to Anne Frank by some tall misfit from Louisiana who wrote his masterpiece and then disappeared for the next 12 years, and it's that chorus that reminds me to just hang on and work it out and i'm getting there even if i did almost punch some fucking rich knob in a horrendous polo shirt on my first foray into suburban drinking at the plastic paddy pub, but i met some kids who worked there and we talked weed and futbol and i left the place almost feeling good, maybe i'll turn those kids onto this album, seeing as they were 11 or 12 when it came out, either way, lately my head is fucked and tired and missing the helicopters and sirens and coffee shops within walking distance, here's hoping i get back to the storytelling and away from the belly achin'.

Nick Disaster is Two

2011-06-04T18:21:00.000-07:00

Your daddy had a few beers tonight and some birthday cake and grinned like a fucking idiot watching you open presents and make a mess of your cake, i remember when you were born and the doctor told me you were a thinker, a calm kid who observed and took it all in and so far he was right, that way you have of doing your own thing when you feel like it is something i hope you never lose kid, two years already, like i blinked, just thinking about you in your little pajamas, so worn out you could barely keep your eyes open brings a smile to your rough and tumble old man, i love you kid.

The Walking Dead- Shiftless When Idle

2011-05-31T18:44:00.000-07:00

Motherfucker it's hot and this new gaff of mine was sans air conditioning and now i'm sitting here and sweating and man if it doesn't remind me of my summers at the beach when life was free and easy, instead today i got to watch the first wave of former co-workers be shown the door, of course there was much hand-wringing and misty-eyes in certain quarters and i'd just kind of look at these people and wonder what the fuck, though i'm sure they probably think the same about me as a i walk around the place air guitaring heavy metal in my head but really people, you're my fucking co-workers, except for maybe one of you i could give a fuck if i ever see any of you again, see i remember when i gave up the business and all these wastoids who i'd known for years sat there and told me how they'd be in touch and stop by the bar and have a beer and i would laugh and say, i'll never fucking see you again, at least not on purpose, i'd don't have what you need anymore so i appreciate the rays of sunshine you're blowing up my ass right now but save it, it's okay, really, i don't much want to talk to anyone anymore, my business made me and know that i'm out i don't really give a fuck. Of course i couldn't really drop that on all the snivelling idiots walking around like their dog just died so i did what i do best, i hid in my cave and read books and took a nap and let all the people who's world revolves around the place they work drama it up and hand each other tissues, which brings me to this...

Some fucking dickhead named Scott Perry, see Scotty here is a member of America's largest full time state legislature here in good ole' Pennsylvania and dammit Scotty is mad, see Scotty thinks that people out there are playing the system and not getting jobs cuz damn you can make over three bills a week sitting on your ass, so Scotty here has a new game, he's gonna change unemployment and save the state money, see he's gonna re-figure the way the equation is done thus reducing the average weekly benefit from $324 to $277 cuz motherfuckers are getting over and the state is going broke dammit, in case you haven't guessed Scotty is one of the Brown Shirts, oops i mean GOP, one of those compassionate Christian types who love god and guns and rich benefactors and well you know those poor or down on their luck, well fuck them, they just need to work harder cuz this here is the motherfucking youessofa man, and Scotty is tired of people loafing, Scotty believes that some of us out here are scheming our way to a life of leisure all on 3 bills a weeks, i mean fuck things like rent/mortgage or food or health care, i'm taking my three bills and buying a teener and heading to the casino to play poker all night and then the strip bar and maybe i'll close out the night with a bag of Rap Snacks and a crack rock cuz hot damn the state be paying for it i'm gonna live it up, of course if i was Scotty i'd have a car (paid for by taxpayers), lifelong health care for me and my family (paid for by taxpayers), a number of publicists and aides (paid for by taxpayers), and a nice fat salary (paid for by taxpayers) that i barely touch due to the per diems and other perks handed out to those in America's largest full time state legislature, so Scotty, from the bottom of my heart, go fuck yourself you fucking prick, someday maybe, though i doubt it, you may realize that most of us don't live like you and most of us don't really enjoy paying your fucking salary, i'm all for saving some tax dollars here in the Keystone state so why don't we can a whole bunch of you useless motherfuckers and save all that money in health care, pension, cars, publicists and much more... and then when we, the taxpayers, are finished, we'll cut your fucking unemployment too.

Goin Home- 18 Summers Later

2011-05-24T18:40:00.000-07:00

Tell me do you miss me? no not the general public, you, yeah you, do you remember half a lifetime ago? in a hot muggy room on a third floor, a bong on the floor, a surfboard in the corner, Perry Farrell hanging on the ceiling, you of the white hot and blinding love, do you remember? a short navy skirt with white flowers, a Yankee's cap, a sweaty A's hat, the checked flannel and Jane's Addiction t-shirt of mine you wore, the sheets you bought for a lost boy on a rented bed, yeah someday i'm gonna write a proper post about you but for now i'm just gonna give you this, a cosmic trigger back to 1993, years later i would see J. on this tour do this song and wonder, maybe i'm still wondering, in the suburbs and under the stars...

Children of the 80's, unite and take over...

2011-05-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

While we wait for me to get my new gaff in order and back to the typer, i give you this, a song and video for all us kids who grew up to John Hughes, except this one involves a cross-dresser... and it's a day late, but's it's been 31 years since Ian Curtis died, some people remember Elvis, i remember him.

Farewell to the Smoke

2011-05-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

In 1993 i moved to North Oakland, a neighborhood in the city of Pittsburgh, a third floor walk-up with a hole in the ceiling, it would actually snow inside the shitty little apt. in the winter, it had a bar on the balcony and weed in the closet, if you would have told me then that i would spend the next 18 years or so living within a two mile radius of that first place i probably would have laughed at you, but life is strange sometimes and except for some summers making fries and an ill-fated stint in grad school, the East End became me barrio, my friend, my lover, i know this neighborhood as if i was born and raised here, have a secret knowledge of the back roads, know the bars and the restaurants and the back streets, can walk down the street and here my named called out from many an establishment, it is my home or more correctly was my home, see this is most likely the last post i'll be writing from my little brick house in Little Italy, tomorrow i sign the papers and move to the lily white suburbs, i say goodbye to the helicopters flying over and the endless sirens, the wheeze of buses and the clamour of the garbage trucks, i say goodbye to the action that is just steps from my front door and though i know i am moving for the right reasons i can't help but be a bit sad at what i am leaving behind...

See this is the neighborhood that gave birth to the Kono, just some enterprising young hood who needed to pay off his college loans, a drop-out with a plan and a credit card, and so in the back room on the second floor of S. Millvale he set off, set off on a long and strange journey into the underbelly of it all, learned bad habits and ran with badder people, new the strippers by their real name, scored whatever you needed, hustled and worked and hustled and worked and slowly built his kingdom, all the while paying the bills and driving around in a $400 Chevy Geo, he saw guys get run out of the game for stupidity, saw friends die from their habits, he studied human nature in all it's hideous and beautiful glory, sometimes he got burnt and sometimes he got lucky, he moved to the swanky neighborhood and his business took off, he paid off his college loans, he saved some money, he quit the game, he was lucky, he came out of it with all his fingers and toes and with some of his mind still intact, he tried to settle down but the gods conspired, he had to much free time and tax free money, he cultivated bad habits and pretended like he had a handle on it, sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't, he moved closer to the hood and the Penn Ave. Arts corridor, he got hitched and then kicked in the balls and then lost his mind for a bit, he bought a house and buried some cats and along the way became the father of a bouncing baby boy...and then another one...

Along the way he met the Limey early on and the Kid later on, the Limey by plopping down a bottle of Scotch and rambling on about his grand-dad and the Kid by dumb luck, just happened to pull up a seat at the bar next to him after almost punching a bartender and her boyfriend, the Kid was in heavy brood mode and El Kono bought him a beer, they talked books, found a mutual admiration for Celine and the rest was history, the Limey gave him courage, the Kid gave him hope, the world was not lost when you could find souls like these and he found them both a few miles from that very spot he first landed in 1993 like some drunken Christopher Columbus on acid, the world is filled with raging no-talent shitheads who want to tell you about their band or their art show or their poetry book, the Limey and the Kid were no bullshit, they never talked about any of that tripe, sometimes they didn't talk at all, they didn't have to...

And with each minute El Kono gets closer, closer to the quiet and the crickets, closer to manicured lawns and bad fashion, but it is okay, every thing's a cycle they say, the first 17 years were spent in the suburbs of Cleveland, the next 5 or 6 spent bouncing back and forth between college and home and the shore and the lonesome, uncrowded west, and then 17 or so living in the shit, so it's only right that i go spend the next 17 to 20 in the burbs, drink in strip malls and study the inhabitants of the fancy zoo, i already know what it looks like at the pound, i'll investigate the other half now that i'm somewhat intelligent enough to form some kind of half-assed opinion on the subject, of course you may beg to differ with that last statement, besides i seem to do better when i can't walk out my door and look at it, seem to be able to recall more from the recesses of my fucked up skull when it's not right in front of me, and i like it that way, it makes me work a bit and i need that, and really this move has nothing to do with me at all and everything to do with the boyos, they'll get a top notch education and then come home and learn all kinds of things from their old man, i won't have to worry as much about the stray bullets or the bums or the thugs, in short they'll be able to grow up and not worry about a lot of things, they'll be able to do more things and when the time is right their old man will point them towards the interesting parts of the city, the shady parts, the fun parts or at least he'll teach them what to look for and how to find them, cuz then it'll be their turn to learn that all you really need to know about human nature you can learn on your front porch...

So farewell to the smoke, to the all-night diner around the corner and the strip bar a block away, to the park and the bar just 67 steps from my front door, farewell to my back streets and dive bars, goodbye me barrio, i love you, you've taught me well, you've entertained me, fed me, fucked me, kept me drunk, got me high and made the last 17 plus years pretty fucking interesting, i'll miss you...

The Twilight Singers on Saturday at Mr. Smalls

2011-05-10T19:54:00.000-07:00

Mr. Dulli, me, few hundred other people, a new album, a stellar back catalogue, the boyos at Grandma-ma's, it's setting up to be a good night for some tall, shady cat with a penchant for cheap booze and hard drugs and loose women.

Holiday in the Sun

2011-05-09T19:05:00.000-07:00

I went to Mexico, with onetwothreefourfivesix in-laws and 5 kids under the age of five, two tweens and a 17yr old. The bar opened at 10am but by day three Roger the lovely bar keep was handing me drinks a good hour before it opened, he also offered me coke and whores and had i been younger and not with my kids i would have spent the next few days doing rock star lines with Mexican hookers and walking around my hotel room in a lime green speedo, swim goggles, an orange feather boa and a wig circa Ziggy Stardust era Bowie, all while smoking French cigarettes through a ridiculously long cigarette holder, i would have remained my normal pasty white, but instead i spent copious amounts of time swimming with my boyos, going down water slides (drunk), ocean kayaking (also drunk), swimming in the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean Sea, i don't know which? and watching some of the funniest fucking diner theatre i've ever seen, see this place was geared towards the kiddies and i got to witness four different shows but only one needs mentioned as it was the best fucking show in the history of shows, see it was a bunch of Mexicans singing and dancing in a Michael Jackson tribute and it fucking ruled, it may have been the highlight of a week filled with well... not many, needless to say by the time i left i got to hang out with the guy who played Mike and have a few drinks, a swell cat who was actually Argentine...

Needless to say in-laws can be a pain in the ass and mine are no exception, i know they mean well (sometimes) but i just prefer to hang with my kids and loiter at the pool bar, i won't get into all the graphic details but i will glance over the highlights... first Fabiola, the girl at the desk was an absolute stunner and made me wish i had brought a copy of Fante's Ask The Dust, she was the kind of beautiful Latin girl who you could easily piss your life away chasing after while she strings you along and wrecks you all in one sweet motion... Second, Futbol, it was on all the time and i enjoyed the Mexican league more than i thought, besides there was a ton of Limeys around to debate the merits of many an English team and most were stunned to learn that i support Crystal Palace Football Club (we're staying up)... Third, watching my boyos tear shit up and pass out each day, they are much like their daddy... Fourth, the food, cuz i dig Mexican food... Fifth, all the free booze i could handle and the fact that there are many top notch Mexican beers, at least i think so but then again i like PBR, and finally...

Mexico and it's people, let me say that i didn't want to like the place since they are us Septics biggest rival in this part of the world as far as the futbol is concerned but the people were for the most part a friendly lot (even if someone did nick my camera) and the country is a hard and beautiful place, on my last night Nick Disaster and i went out for a stroll and stopped to watch the sun set over the rough terrain, a brilliant sunset that went from orange to red to purple to dark blue and it was as i was watching this sunset, looking west towards Sinaloa, over a country sure to see if fair share of murders on a friday night, i was in awe of it's toughness and it's beauty, the land had much in common with many of the people i met, people making 55 pesos a day or roughly 5 bucks, people who worked hard and smiled and seemed to know how to live just a bit more than the Septics and Euro-trash they were serving, a trait i've tried never to lose and one i admire... as for me i spent most of my spare time looking like the guy in the above photo.

The Walking Dead- Hold the Line

2011-04-28T19:26:00.000-07:00

It was another happy Thursday meeting at the Big World Bank Machine, a rather uneventful one, it's interesting to watch the amount of grovelling as people attempt to gain employment at the district office, my supe being one of them, the big boss being another, not that the upper management types have much to worry about as they, like most upper management types, come equipped with that thing called a golden parachute, seems many of them have already found gainful employment while the rank and file are left to suck it, even the HR dept. has gotten cheeky and started posting dish washing jobs in the hallway that looks like an old telephone polled, plastered with flyer's about job opportunities, as for me i'm like the violin player on that fateful ship, destined to ride it out til the very end, when i'll turn to my cohorts and say, ladies and gentleman, i'd like to say it's been an honor but really it's been more of a laugh, a sick fucking joke and i'm quite glad i didn't really take it all that seriously...

So they call meetings and hand out notices and my dept. still kind of hangs in limbo but we know it's coming sooner or later, probably later at this point cuz they need someone to turn off the lights and lock up, for my part i've dialed down actual work to under two hours a day, not that there's much to do anyway, the free time has helped me read most of the Ballard short stories and i think i'm averaging somewhere around 3 hours of sleep per day, i'm beginning to take advantage of the gym as i prepare for the over 30 football (soccer) league that begins next spring, yes next spring cuz most of us need that much time to get into some kind of shape, i for one have already volunteered to play goalkeeper cuz one- it cuts down on the pounding on my creaky knees and back and two- i'm just the kind of fucking mental case that would make a good keeper, big and rangy and good with my hands, i'll leave all the real work to the guys who've played before and since most people want the glory of scoring goals i'll be more than happy to stop shots and talk shit, besides then i get my own special colored jersey and a sweet pair of gloves but back at the Big World Bank Machine things plod along and it's good to see some of the more decent people actually finding jobs and getting of the ship before the water is up to are asses...

As for me i'm going to take advantage of the free money they hand out if you wait until the end, a nice severance package, possible retention bonus and 5K to use toward school/training, of which i will use mine to attend bartending school cuz i want to know the proper way to mix my absinthe, that and i've always been told i'd make a great bartender, not that i think my little certificate will get me a job but then again it just might, i've often been offered jobs as the doorman/bouncer at a few of my local hangouts but i'd rather go all Brian Flanagan and throw bottles around (not really)... that's about it for now, i've got all these things i'd like to write but i've been a bit lazy and tonight i bit off a bit more than i could chew from the boys at Big Pharma and lounged about on the couch to long to start anything really productive. So i'll see you at the far post.

The Bunny Rises and We are Saved or Weekend Update

2011-04-24T19:10:00.000-07:00

First off i'd like to wish one Gulfboot Johnson happy birfday, born on St. George's day i let you septics sort that one out to see if you can guess, second i do believe this weekend was all about the crucifying and rising of a giant Bunny in order that i may fucking shake like a junky eating copious amounts of fucking chocolate, see i got a sugar jones something fierce and if you leave out bite size pieces of candy i'll devour the whole fucking bag, so please, if i show up at your house hide the stuff, i'm trying to live to see the boyos grow up...

Speaking of which the I-mac is doing his best to look like a the world's greatest almost 5yr old bar fighter, last week we got to spend a little quality time in the ER with a split eyebrow and now today he does his best Evil Kneivel impersonation and hops on some tiny bicycle and heads down a steep slope at his grand-dads house and wipes out like a fucking champ, now the kid is nothing if not resilient but right now he's got a cut above his left eye, a scrape on his right cheek and chin (covered by a bandage), cuts on both hands and and a nice scrape on his arm, i'd post a picture but i'm afraid CYS would show up and haul the kid off, about the only saving grace was that he managed not to put a hole in the last pair of jeans that he hasn't already put a hole in, man i love that fucking kid, the best part was how i explained to him how he was told not to ride down that slope but he just looked at me all serious and says, "but i didn't wipe out the first time dad", to which i all i could do was laugh...

The best part of my weekend was spent on the side of the highway receiving my very first moving violation, can you believe that? all these years speeding and i finally got my cherry popped by some short fucking state boy in the middle of fucking nowhere, for the record i was a mere 19mph over the speed limit and when State Wanker asked me how fast i was going i just kinda smiled and said "i don't really know officer?", i then played dumb and stated i thought the speed limit was 65 and not 55 were i was at and then i waited for him to give me a lecture cuz i had the two boyos in the back seat, lucky for him he didn't, just handed me my ticket and sent me on my way, didn't even tell me to drive safely the fucking knob, let it be known that i don't hate the fuzz i just like it better when they're not around, in fact i feel sorry for most of them cuz they obviously have self-esteem issues and most likely small johnson's, hence the tough guy act and big firearms, but hey that's just conjecture i'm sure they are all very nice people...

And last as we celebrate another year of the Bunny not seeing his shadow or something like that it dawned on me as i drove back from POM, Pa that the only thing open on Easter sunday were the odd restaurant here and there, movie theaters and porno stores and let it be said that the porno stores were all doing booming business, every one i passed on my shitty, slow (observing the speed limit) drive back to the Burgh had a packed parking lot, which just goes to show that a lot of things were rising on this fine day... and now, Bunny willing, we'll get back to our regularly scheduled program...

While we're on the Subject

2011-04-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

I was listening to this song today and it struck just how apt the lyrics are as the pertain to yours truly, see i've been accused of never opening up by most of the women i've known and i've often told them not to pin their hopes or pin their dreams on misanthropes, guys like me cuz the truth is over-rated i suppose, of course many of them didn't listen to me and in alot of cases instead of my usual i told you so i'd apologize if i could now but hell, what's the use fretting about the past, i've been a glorious fuck-up this long so i'm not about to ruin my track record by straightening myself out now, see i've been contemplating chronicling my long and tenuous relationship with the fairer sex and someday i just might do it, as for now i'm a bit busy and today i'm finally shaking off the hangover and i have other posts that need written before i get to that but don't worry i'm gonna get to it, i'm sure you're all waiting anxiously for it but for now we can sit back and listen to one of my heroes sing one of the ditty's on the soundtrack of my life...

The Replacements - Bastards Of Young

2011-04-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

and while we're on the subject let's listen to one of my favorite songs, you know it would have been nice to show you the video, which is top notch, but the dinosaurs of the fucking music industry, Sire and Warner Bros. won't let me, hence why i hope they fucking fade into oblivion while all those independent labels i love so much put them out of business, kinda like how i hope all the big box stores give up selling music so i can still walk into an independent store like Championship Vinyl or Paul's in Bloomfield and buy my music from people who actually like music and there won't be a fucking Lady Gaga or Nickelback record in fucking sight... and though i'm a bit late today was Independent Record Store Day, and yes i went and bought a few things but the thing that pleased me most was how crowded the place was every time i went by it, days like this help keep these stores going and you can snag some pretty cool shit in the process as bands release new and limited edition music just to the indie stores, by the way this fucking blogger upgrade sucks left hind teet, thanks you fucking tech wizards, i'm off to the couch.

COLOR ME OBSESSED, another teaser

2011-04-16T18:49:00.000-07:00

That somebody made this fucking documentary, so now please, get it in my local "art house" so i can get ripping fucking drunk and go see it.

ColorMeObsessed - Trailer

2011-04-16T18:47:00.000-07:00

Well it's about fucking time...

12th of April

2011-04-12T18:57:00.000-07:00

I stood in the hallway and listened, listened to the girl tell her mother that it was okay, that everyone was going to be alright, that she could go, it was somewhere close to 11pm on April 11th, she said that she loved her, that she was the best mom a girl could ever ask for, that she taught her so much and loved her so much but that now it was okay and i wiped my eyes and walked away before she came out of the room, i looked at her and she at me and she took a deep breath and said she was going to try and sleep and to get her if anything changed, it was really just a matter of waiting now and as we looked down the hall towards her room we listened to the machine and her wheezing breaths, i walked her to the bedroom and looked down at my son sleeping in his porta-crib, all sprawled out and peaceful as his mother slipped into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin wondering if her mother would make it one more dawn...

I of course had already helped myself to a couple of percocets and was cracking a beer, i was sitting in a recliner, remote in hand watching hockey highlights, the house was quiet, all the kids and grandkids in bed, just me and the girl's father who was doing laundry and keeping busy as the woman he loved slipped slowly into the ether, now let me add that this man was not a very good father to his children, yes he provided money and a home but as far as love and care and and the like he was severely lacking, in fact he was pretty much an asshole until his wife got diagnosed with a brain tumor and had to face the reality that the one person he loved above all else would soon be gone, it was during this illness that someone had made the remark that maybe the miracle we were all hoping for is the fact that the guy finally realized he had some pretty damn good kids and began to build relationships with them...

and the clocked ticked and the pills kicked and i got another beer and was settling into my chair when i stopped cold, cold because somehow my unconscious became conscious. the wheezing had stopped. the machine was still plugging away but the familiar rhythmic wheeze had stopped, it was as if the waves of the ocean had stopped, i had become so used to the sound that it took me a second to realize that it was no more, i sat frozen in my chair for a minute and then i heard the basement door open and the girl's dad looked at me and i looked at him and he said his wife's name and went running into the room, it was two minutes after midnight...

Death up close is not pretty no matter how it comes. He stood there calling to her and i gently put my arms around and him and told him she's gone, it's okay, she's gone, i then sat him in a chair and ran to get the girl who sprung out of bed and ran to her mother's room, then i got her younger sister from her room and i left them, walked into the kitchen and finished my beer, i walked into the guest room and gazed at my son, i walked back out and opened the door for her brother and his family, i don't know how much time went by, it seemed as if there was all this activity and yet nothing to do, as things calmed down her dad said he needed to lie down, three years of waiting and now it was up and maybe finally he'd get some sleep, i asked him if he needed anything and he said some aspirin and i went and got him some along with a bottle of water, i walked him to the spare room and pulled back the blankets, i handed him the pills and gave him the water, told him he needed to rest cuz the next few days would be stressful and hectic and tough, i pulled the covers up over him and leaned down and gave the man a hug, shut off the light and headed towards the door, he said my name softly and i stopped, thank you he said...

Back in their mother's room the girl and her sister asked if i could shut her eyes, it works just like it does in the movies, they then began to wash her face and clean her up a bit, i sat on the floor and watched and said that might be one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen and for a brief moment they both looked at me and then each other and smiled, it was then that i told the girl i was going to sleep, seeing as how i was going to need to be ready to chase the boy around come morning and that they would probably be up most of the night dealing with things and she came over and gave me a hug... in the bedroom i laid in bed and stared at the ceiling, it took me a minute to calm down and then i smiled as i caught the sound of my son's gentle breathing, the waves had started up again and the sound of them easily breaking on the shore was just what i needed to hear...

I went to kindergarten orientation today, took the I-mac and watched as the kid grew up in front of my eyes, as if i sneezed and he went from being this baby to this little man who is way to smart for his own good, much smarter than his daddy though he did seem to inherit his father's stubbornness, but watching him today checking out his new school i couldn't stop smiling, three years to the day that his grandmother died, and though i'm not one to believe in what the sermons be selling i'm pretty sure his Gigi would be mighty proud of him too.

Farewell to the Smoke- Part 2- All the Places that Died

2011-04-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

And so we get to the venues, the clubs, the places where i went to see the music i loved, the music i grew up on, some of these places have been gone for years, one just changed it's name, stopped serving booze and became a kiddie dance club that still hosts shows you just can't get any booze there (See the Public Image Ltd. post), all of these places were within a few miles of all my apts/houses, in North Oakland and the Strip and downtown Oakland, now they're gone...

The Graffiti- i used to live a half a block from this place and the when i moved again i lived all of two blocks from this place, a great venue that mabye held 500 people tops, i'm not sure, i never found out, all i know is that it wasn't that big and it had a balcony and held some of the best shows of my life, i knew alot of guys in local ska bands and every know and then i'd be in the dressing room of this place getting people stoned and i used to like to look at the wall, there was one particular scribble by some guy named Kurt that stuck out among alot of other scribbles but it was in this joint that i saw Superchunk (at least twice, my nights here and at all the other places got real fuzzy), Dinosaur Jr., Mudhoney, Ween (which was fucking a brilliant 3 and half hours long or something, i just remember smoking copious amounts of weed) and a certain band known as Guided By Voices...

Rosebud- This place was connected to another venue on this list but outlasted that other venue by a few years i believe, another good small place to see a show, once again i'm guessing it held 5 or 600 but once again i have no fucking idea, i saw J. Mascis do an absolutely stellar solo set there, Camper Van Beethoven, The Black Keys, My Morning Jacket, Luna (at least twice i think), Calexico, The Dirty Three (who to this day i thank my lucky stars for seeing, there might have been 50 people at this show and i remember being fucking loaded and gushing to Warren Ellis about how much i loved the band) and Built to Spill on September 13th 2001, two days after the attack, a show where it seemed no one really knew how to act with all the shit going on in the world, a great show when i think back on it but i think the greatest thing about that night was when the band walked out and busted into the strains of Freebird for their encore, i mean America had just taken one on the chin and here was this American Indie Rock band playing a truly fucking American song and they tore it to fucking shreds, it clocked in at over 12 minutes long and for those 12 minutes the place maybe didn't forget but we remembered why we kicked ass, and this is from a bunch of dirty hipster kids who probably on the whole weren't all that patriotic to begin with but man did the place fucking erupt, people dancing and hugging and screaming the lyrics and beer flying and man did it feel good to have a release, easily one of the best moments i've ever experienced at any show...

Metropol- it was mainly a dance club for bad house music and techno, the site lines sucked and the sound could be muddy but it held a bit more people than the other places and was next door to the Rosebud, needless to say i developed a man crush on Jack White one night at this place watching the White Stripes, i also saw the pre-dad rock Wilco there a few times including a show with the late Jay Bennett, also say Son Volt there a couple times, a beautiful evening with the Cowboy Junkies, a kick ass show by the Flaming Lips and a couple of shows by Morphine, that last of which has been immortalized on this site and was one of the last shows the great Mark Sandman ever played before collapsing on stage in Rome, a great front man for a great band and another band i was honored to see play live...

Club Laga- was in the heart of Oakland near the university of Pittsburgh, a place i saw the least amount of shows in but a place that i saw a couple of doozies, i saw Jay Farrar solo here as well as a great show by Grandaddy but easily the best show i saw at Laga was Spiritualized, there is no need to profess my love for J. Spaceman and the gang, it has been well documented but on this night, with a seven piece band and J. sitting in a chair the whole time, the club called off the under age rules and let you drink wherever you wanted, as everyone filed out of the bar and towards the stage i got a spot right in the middle of the bar with a perfect view of the stage, i had a pocket full of sweeties that i began eating and had a couple of beers to wash them down with, needless to say i felt like i was levitating i was so high and the band was the perfect soundtrack to my warm and numb existence, absolutely mind blowingly good... of course Laga is also the place i saw the worst show ever, a not yet sober Chan Marshall mumble her way through a Cat Power gig, fucking awful...

Of course now Laga is the home to upscale condos or some such shit, Graffiti is the home of a high end car dealership, Rosebud is an empty space that has been about ten different things with nothing making it and Metropol is now that under 21 kiddie dance club, so if you happen to have a drink in your hand, raise a toast to the music of the Wilderness Years and hum along with me...

Farewell to the Smoke- Part 1- All the Places that Died

2011-04-10T17:58:00.000-07:00

A list of the places that are no more, beautiful and hideous joints that have gone the way of what a more cultured person would call progress but what a low life calls gentrification or modernization, places that just didn't have a place anymore for a variety of reasons and we'll begin with the Olympic Flame, a diner around the corner the 759 abode, a place where you could get an omelet and a stiff vodka-7 at a 7a.m., my favorite waitress was in her 50's with a loud laugh and pack of kids who caused her no end of grief but she always had a smile and a sharp comment and it made me tip all the better, the food was pretty good (the gyro omelet was my favorite) and though i never ate dinner there the place said it specialized in Greek food, the booths were red vinyl, the clientele was mostly old and they knocked it down and turned it into a Einstein's Bagel store...

Anthony's Lounge, my home away from home, a strip bar, described before on this site as something you might find in your swinging uncle's basement circa 1977, the door opened directly on to the street and the young kids would open it and gawk and run, when i first moved to the city the place would open at 4pm and the Engineer and i would go over and sit and talk to the girls and down drinks and eat .25 slices of pizza, the amount of capers i pulled in this place would in themselves fill a book, i won't go into it but let's just say i've most likely lived every man's fantasy in a place like that, the girls were for the most part kind and good looking and the owners pretty much left me alone, it closed down and re-opened as a gay bar which us old hipsters thought was comically ironic...

The Mustard Room, real name the Deli Bar, dubbed the Mustard Room because of the color of the walls, it was a place of business for me, i hooked up most of the staff and sometimes the owners, my drinks were usually free and the staff kept a close lookout for anyone who might give me trouble, the jukebox was good and since it was in a swankier part of town it provided one with lots of eye candy, i once spent a x-mas eve in there and got so drunk i was lucky not to burn my apt. down after popping in a t.v. dinner and blacking out for the next 8 hours, a place where i met some damn good friends, some of which i still talk today, now it's some Ultra Lounge filled with kids all dreaming of Brooklyn...

The Party Goods store i worked at circa 95, a place that on my third day i was so drunk that i fell down basically from still being so wasted, my boss loved me, the owner was scared of me, i came to work stoned out of my gourd 90% of the time, i smoked coke on my lunch break, i sold smoke to a good many of my co-workers and worked with a the owner's dad, who was the coolest and funniest old Jewish guy you'll ever meet, used to come in to work and tell me it was sex night at his house (he was 78 at the time) and we'd laugh like a couple of jackals, my boss once told me he thought the owner's dad liked me more than he did his son, it was a great gig for an aspiring hood as it they paid like shit and were just happy if you showed up most of the time, my record for calling off was 7 fridays in a row, the building it was in was bought by a giant medical conglomerate and now sits empty...

Ray's Bar, home of the greatest New Year's Eve ever, is pretty much the same place under a new name and owner, the reason it makes the list is that once the place changed hands all the drag queens and weirdo's stopped coming in and now it's just a run of the mill hipster bar, basically people trying to be interesting instead of people who actually were interesting...

Joe's Bar, a place that's made a few posts and will likely make a few more, bought by an ex-palooka who opened the pizza shop and took over the bar, at one point there was a problem with the taps that made the place reek of moldy yeast, a stench so strong you literally wanted to vomit within the first ten minutes in the door, but since the booze was cheap you drank fast and before long you barely even noticed it, a barfly hangout by day, it soon became a hip-hop bar at night, me being one of the only white guys crazy enough to actually enter the place, i was often called the Tree Man by black gentleman i didn't know most likely due to my acquaintance with a certain ranking hood, it got closed down after a shooting, re-opened as Duke's, closed a short time later and was demolished and now is home to a Qdobo parking lot...

The Laundrette in North Oakland is gone, now empty, it was next to an old hangout where i'd get plastered and do my laundry at the same time, across the street from that was another diner that's gone as well as the neighborhood pharmacy and lottery joint... in Bloomfield the old movie theater is now a Starbucks and some sub chain, the old bagel i store i worked at in 93 is now a Cricket phone place, i've lived in this part of town so long that i've seen so much change and yet so much is still the same, just now the hip kids are hanging in the old man bars and the coffee shops where once it was the kids who grew up in the hood, but that's how shit goes and i'm not for it or against it, i know i'm getting old cuz i'm experiencing new wave for the third time, but i miss some of these places that are gone, they are part of what shaped me, made me who i am in a weird sorta way, maybe it's misplaced nostalgia or that fact that i'm getting older, but they're little bits of a big picture, like a Hieronymus Bosch painting or something like that, in order to take it all in, i need all the little details...

Guvment shutdown

2011-04-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

I've got all these posts lined up to write and lately it seems i just can't be arsed, seems my general apathy has got the best of me and i sit at the computer and decide it's better to fuck off and look at videos or books or better yet i lay on my couch and watch hockey or futbol and don't give the old site much thought, but there's no excuses or writer's block or any of that shit i'm basically just lazy at times, hence i give this video by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Ted shares a birthday with yours truly, same day and year, he's also known as one of the nicest guys in indie rawk and one of the smarter fellows in the indie world, you might notice that this video takes a certain jab at a certain Broadway musical by a band i absolutely fucking loathe, so good on Ted... and you see i had this great idea to write about tonight but somewhere between here and the coffee shop and the pills kicking in it got lost in the shuffle known as my head, so fuck it, nothing new just more lazy, i'll be back whenever.

The Wilderness Years- It Ain't Easy

2011-03-31T17:29:00.000-07:00

Business is business and you'll never know that more than when you're in a business that's only laws are don't get caught, of course if you are in a business like that you have no form of say, legal re-course if you get fucked on a deal so it then boils down to what they taught me in 8th grade social studies class, a concept called opportunity cost, see in the game there are an awful lot of fuck-ups, in fact i'd say 8 out of every 10 people you deal with is a complete and utter moron, most hellbent on getting wasted and having a good time and acting the part of the heavy, the guy with the connections, you'll be lucky to ever meet him, you might know someone who knows him, someone who can get things for you but it takes awhile to actually get in his good graces, to get granted an audience, even if he still works the bars for his small time clientele, alot will depend on when you meet him and what you can do for him, see we already know what he can do for you, so have you shit in order which leads us to Techno Tim.

Techno Tim was the classic rich kid, a trustafari with a slush fund, he wore expensive clothes and liked to dance, he drove a big fat SUV and hung with the brothers breaking and popping his way into no one's pants, i met him through a couple of sexually ambiguous hairdressers, guys who had girlfriends but seemed to enjoy each other's company alot more than say i'd enjoy my male friends company but that's superfluous, the sexually ambiguous hairdressers were good guys, they had the dosh in order and did their thing, of course they had some lame brained schemes they'd run by me now and then but i was pretty much used to that from every one i associated with, they vouched for Techno Tim and so he got in the door, he'd stand there in my room shucking and jiving to his own personal soundtrack and i'd bag and weigh and send him on his way, he wasn't what i'd call a bad sort just real fucking annoying...

And so it was that Techno Tim was selling an oz. of the finest in a gas station parking lot to some bubble gummer who had set him up, at least that was his story, a second strike for TT as he was recently popped for a DUI and possession not a month or two before, of course in this business one needs to have a very fine and delicate bullshit detector so when TT called me up to tell me he got popped i immediately told him i'd call him back, from a fucking payphone, cuz sometimes those fucking detective movies ain't lying, and so it was that Techno Tim told me how he'd been set up and this was his second case in as many months and he didn't know what to do, i subtly pointed out that his mother was a lawyer and he didn't seem to really be hurting for money so maybe he should get a reference from mom and find himself a fucking pit bull to go to down on a couple of uniforms and get it reduced to a fine, he sighed and told me that the fuzz were leaning on him and i got that feeling like i might either throw-up or bludgeon the phone, now when presented with news like this one must remain calm and not show any sign of weakness so i calmly informed Techno that he might want to think long and hard about what information he might wish to divulge cuz it would be a shame if the world was deprived of his stellar dance moves do to an unfortunate accident, now on the other end of the line came a slight quickening of breath and the words came spilling out that he was cool and he'd never say shit and he knew it wasn't much weight he was just worried about the accumulation of his offenses, to which i replied that i wasn't worried about his other fucking offenses i was more concerned with the problem at hand and of course the small fact that i had fronted him a half fucking pound of grass... i told him that there was no need to call me for the time being and that i'd be in touch...

Now the news would have you believe that the world is run by huge cartels that produce and distribute and what not and though that may be true in a few cases, in H'america it is mainly a hodge-podge of independent contractors all doing their thing, basically like an insurance agent with a bit more danger involved, so one needed to have muscle in case such situations arose or better yet the illusion of muscle, cuz here's where it gets tricky, one must decide if it is worth it to fuck someone up or more prudent to take a loss and keep on rolling, of course sometimes something must be done or everyone and their mother will try to fuck you over but if you manage to keep the nimrods apart and from talking, nimrods being the customers/foot soldiers then the illusion of violence can work extremely well, especially if you're tall with the ability to become somewhat unhinged when necessary and so it was that after a few more tense conversations with Techno Tim i advised him that we would no longer be doing any business and that if i happened to see any, say, unmarked cars or muppets loitering around my humble abode, i would be heading out to his neighborhood pronto to end his fucking dancing career...

And that was it, i thought, until one fine Tuesday night down at Tony's Lounge, a strip club that looked like your uncle's basement complete with a door that opened out to the street so that every now and then you'd see a bunch of 13yr olds swing the door open and stare wide eyed at the stage, my young pit bull of a friend T-Bag and i were having a few beers and helping the kind girls pay their way through college, cuz i don't think i've ever met a stripper who wasn't pursuing an advanced degree, when who walks in but Techno Tim and his sidekick Kool Moe Dee, now Techno immediately motions to the bartender to buy me a drink and she gives it to me and him and KMD come sauntering over, so of course it's all yuk yuks and back slaps from my boy Techno Tim and T-Bag, who knows the story with this guy, is standing behind me and whispering not to softly, "do you want me to knock this motherfucker out?" and i assure him that it'll be alright and since TT and KMD are picking up on a bit of tension in the air KMD tries to regain a bit of footing by saying, "you're Kono?, did you used to score hash from those dudes up on Chesterfield?" and i nod and say yes that was me but this was a good six or seven years ago at this point and then he proceeds to tell me that his right hand is fucked up cuz he had to "splttter" some fool the other night and i smile politely and comment that that's good, when the shit kicks off i won't have to worry about his right and thank him for the info...

So we drink our drinks and Techno starts dancing, which i'm starting to wonder if it isn't some kind of fucking nervous tick at this point, he begins his routine, which i've been waiting for, as T-Bag and KMD eyeball each other in a rather unpleasant fashion, TT is all about getting back in my good graces and goes on and on about what a righteous motherfucker i am and how the fuzz put a lot of heat on him to roll and how i'm like the king of of fucking cool and man would it be great to get back on the team and as he's saying this he puts his hand on my shoulder while i'm sitting at the bar watching my favorite brunette strutting down the stage and i wad up a tenner and toss it towards her and she smiles and blows me a kiss and then i tell Techno Tim to get his fucking hand off me...

About the only thing that could have ratcheted up the tension more is had the needle slipped off the record and i calmly looked at TT and asked, "what about the other seven?" and he's like what? and repeat the other seven, there are eight fucking ounces in a half pound and he got caught selling one, so would you like me to say it slower? the other seven and my fucking money? where'd it go? and now of course TT is stumbling and stuttering and and slobbering out excuses about the heat and the lawyer and what the fuck and i calmly remind him that he's a fucking rich kid, of course then we learn that the trust fund only gets doled out once a year and blah blah fucking blah, i'd heard enough, i cracked a smile and said "sit down dickhead" and he looked at me like i just fucked his imaginary girlfriend and KMD was all clucking away and T-Bag was muttering that i should just let him beat the shit out of the fools but i smile at T-Bag and tell him to stand down, then i turn to KMD and tell him to sit down and shut the fuck up cuz this has nothing to do with him and that though he might not run with the best crowd these days he gets a pass for his Chesterfield days, i then turn what T-Bag would call the 1000 yard stare onto TT and explain to him that we ain't friends or bro's or business acquaintances, in fact we're nothing, that the $1000 or so dollars he owed me was the cost i absorbed for being stupid and fronting shit to a fuck-up, a fuck-up who had the money to pay but didn't feel like it and that my loss also bought me his silence and in the end his silence is more valuable than anything, valuable for my business and valuable to his health and that if what i bought is not as it seems his current health could take a turn for the worse, Techno Tim sat there staring at me mouth agape and i patted him on the shoulder and said now that we understand each other you have a nice life...

i then turned to the bartender and told her to get me a six pack of Heineken to go, she looked relieved that i'd calmed down and as i glanced around i noticed that the few patrons in the place had become visibly nervous at the action going on at the bar, the place wasn't that big and though it was loud it was pretty easy to tell that things were not all copacetic between the four gentleman at the bar, by the time it all shook out my favorite brunette was walking past and i ordered her a shot and she gave me a hug and looked at TT and said, "don't get him riled up, you boys could get hurt" and made her way towards the dressing room, the bartender set my six pack on the bar and rang up the beers and the shot and as she told me the total i laughed and said "Tim's getting that" and headed for the door as he slid his money towards her.

Acid King: RIP Owsley Stanley

2011-03-29T18:11:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit late on this but i figured i needed to post it, the godfather of quality acid died a couple weeks back in New Zealand and if you watch the clip you can learn all about the Bear (thanks VH1)... see you either try LSD and never try it again or you try it and say "that was the best fucking thing ever", i fell into the later and once i got on that train i stayed on for a long time. The summer of 91 was the summer of the blue peace signs, good clean fun any way you slice it and i couldn't even tell you how many i tossed in my mouth while living in my one room above a t-shirt shop in Ocean City, usually i tripped 6 nights a week but hell after awhile i lost count you know, they say that if you've dropped more than 7 times in your life that you are legally insane, an urban myth i believe cuz if that's the case i'm insane an hundred times over, though i've never tried to actually count, but there was the summer of 91 which was one long trip, there were the days of me and the good Doctor being The Bad Acid Kings at Podunk U., basically eating all kinds of shitty acid that gave you no visuals but made you grind your teeth for hours on end, there was the girl back in 94 and 95 walking down the boardwalk to where i worked all pie-eyed and handing me hits while i was at work at the Fry Hut, there have been blotter, liquid, sugar-cubes, micro-dots, all eaten with a smile, i've tripped in the summer fall winter and spring, in the country and in the city, at clubs, in my apt., in strangers apts, while walking down streets, by myself, with friends, in various cities, with various females and i can honestly sit here and tell that not once did i have a bad time, not once did i even have an ok time, every time was a fucking good time and some of them were great and some were fucking life changing events where i had unlocked the secrets of the universe only to forget to write it down. I could easily sit here and tell you enough stories to fill a very large and long book but in honor of Owsley i'm only gonna tell one... It was Labor Day weekend and this girl and i had nothing to do and the next day off so we decided to eat some sugar cubes, of course as i threw it in my mouth i said Oh Shit, that was a heavy dose, so heavy you could taste it and so i asked her what she needed and i ran to the store, it was a warm day with big puffy clouds and once in the store i could feel the rush coming on so i left my sunglasses on and wandered around the mini-mart for about 20 minutes cuz i was on the way up and couldn't remember half of what i came for, basically a lot of Gatorade, some Life-Savers, gum, a bag of pretzels, some smokes and all the while it felt like i was doing quantum physics and there was a lot of people milling around and looking very strange and the lights were fucking with me through my sunglasses and when i finally paid and hit the humid air i felt like jelly, a big giggling mass of jelly cuz i had a permanent grin stuck to my face, so i walked back to the apt. and up to the second floor and this girl was sitting there looking worried and basically she was tripping so hard she was starting to lose it so i began talking her down and i don't know how long it took but it took awhile and i told her it was cool, the door is locked and we have like supplies and shit and there are a couple of really mellow cats walking around and right on cue one jumped up and laid in her lap and she started to breathe and since we were both so whacked we turned on the telly, to tell you how high i was we began watching Selena for some reason, the J. Lo movie and it was about half way through the damn thing when i looked over at my tripping mate and said "when are they gonna start speaking fucking English?" and she laughed and said "they are" and i said "bullshit, just listen the whole movie's in Spanish" and she just smiled and shook her pretty little head and i sat there and concentrated really hard and was like "well fuck me it is English" and proceeded to elucidate on how i was really just translating in my head but didn't know enough Spanish to do that but somehow i did, of course after that we were like fuck this and watched a Planet of the Apes marathon and around 11pm or so we walked up to the pizza shop to get a pie and the breeze was cool and it seemed that every other human we came upon was completely out of their minds, but not us, by the time we got pack with our pizza and soda we locked the door again and both laughed at how fucked up the outside world was, after that it gets blurry but i do think i remember hearing the birds chirping as the sun came up the next morning... so in the words of James Marshall Hendrix, Owsley can you hear me?

The Walking Dead- Shiny Happy People

2011-03-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

Man if thursday morning hasn't become my new favorite part of the week, see that is the day the lumpen proles all file in to the big room, it's a big meeting room that for some reason invokes a Third Reichish feeling, all Nuremburg like with it's rows of chairs and steel art and vaulted ceilings, of course it is in this room where they let us know when our train will pull up and take us to the unemployment line and on this day they began to outline the timeline as to when we could apply for fucking foodstamps...

Of course every one's favorite honcho bailed on the meeting, leaving her poor underling to face a roomful of angry and upset faces, as she began she almost burst into tears and then gathered herself and began the power point of fuck you to all those in the room, now this poor woman was left with a thankless job and i actually happen to like her and as i stood in the back i began to think out loud about why the Superstar VP of the Big World Bank Machine couldn't be here herself to let us all know about the breadline but if there's one thing i know about the BWBM it's don't ask questions of those in big offices, and so the underling gave us the news and then got steamrolled by Joey Dickhead...

Joey Dickhead has been grandfathered in as we say, got the job way back when cuz his mommy worked there and when they opened the floor up to questions Joey Dickhead unleashed the Blitzkrieg and of course the Underling couldn't answer most of what JD asked but Joey would not be silenced and before you knew it another high ranking manager was shouting down Joey Dickhead (who's a Dept. Lead, don't ask me what that is cuz though i've worked here over 8 years i still don't know the way the hierarchy works, i do know that everyone is more important than me, that is until their fucking lights burn out) and telling him to sit down and shut up and that the Underling, who by this time looked like a deer run over by a semi-truck, was doing the best she could and then the rank and file, most of whom had just been told they wouldn't see Labor Day, began to grumble and some started yelling "i've heard enough" and other sundry exclamations and walked right on out the door, i stood in the back and found this highly amusing cuz amid all the hubbub at least these people know when the axe will come, over in my dept. the powers that be shrug and go shopping when confronted by any questions, utter inane shit like "you have to do what's best for you" and "gotta look out for #1", which is quite the change from pre-shit can when us lumpen proles were repeatedly told that we should be devoting our life to the BWBM and our superiors...

Needless to say i stood in the back and was highly amused at the seeming breakdown of civility at what can only be called the most politically correct place in the universe, i mean here we had a serious breach of protocol by JD and the lumpen proles actually speaking up and lashing out, and let me not forgot my two favorite guest speakers, one doddering idiot from Cleveland with a lengthy title, who had driven through a snow storm and rambled on about it like he should receive the fucking medal of honor for his actions, walking up to a podium for a few seconds and basically saying, wow you're all fucked and then passing the hard shit off to the Underling, and of course after all the hysterics and handbags caused by Joey Dickhead another genius from the crack team that presented the losing proposal a few months back, Johnny Brownose, got up and gave an eloquent soliloquy on how brave and daring the doddering idiot and the Underling were for standing there and telling us what our fates were, which in turn drew a round of applause from those with titles and their own office cubes...

It was a highly amusing fifteen minutes let me tell you and as the meeting came to a close i slipped out the back door and went back to my desk to finish up the NYT crossword and take a nap.

Women's History Month Vol. 4 As it is, When it was

2011-03-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

When i was a kid i used to sit up on sunday nights and watch 120 Minutes on MTV and because i had an over-active imagination and watched to many John Hughes films over and over as i sat there in the dark and watched the television flicker i'd daydream, usually about a girl who's dad owned a morgue, a girl who had dark hair and dark eyes and refused to acknowledge my existence, i'd wait for those songs that made me feel hurt and longing and what i thought was love, with images to match, this song and video came out a few months ago but damn if it doesn't make me think i'm 17 and staying up late, curled up on the couch in the quietness of the suburbs, dreaming...

Gulfboot, it's me I'm Kathy I've Come Home- Women's History Month vol. 3

2011-03-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

I will start by saying that if you could name say, three Kate Bush songs back in the early 90's, say when i was in college, you could pretty much get laid any night of the week, i mean she is the ultimate in girly songs but a strange thing happened on the way to bed co-eds, i actually began to like it and then one day Gulfboot sent me a mix tape cuz we are the gayest straight men you'll ever meet, and on that tape was this song, a song i hadn't heard in fucking ages,the last time most likely in some girls apartment post-coitus while she talked and i slept but hey man that's not a cool way to honor WHM now is it you asshole, so let's just say that this video has become a staple here in the old burgh, in fact this video here is Nick Disaster's favorite bar none, he's absolutely transfixed by Miss Kate and if i turn this on he toddles his little ass over to the computer sits down and is utterly rapt at the performance, at the end he likes to look at me and say "where she go?" and then laugh when she reappears, when it's over he says "again again" and i've seen him watch it over a half dozen times in a row, he's not yet two. The I-Mac on the other hand doesn't really care for it but if his daddy walks around and sings the first word of the chorus, Heathcliff, he will chime in and finish it off for his old man. The old man, well let's just say he has become completely enthralled with this performance, i mean we all know it's absurd but is it meant to be absurd or is it serious? either way it's fucking brilliant and the strange thing is that though i sit and watch it and gawk at how bizarre it is i can't help feeling ridiculously aroused at the young miss Kate dancing around in some English field as if she has just dropped the best fucking blotter ever created, this video fucking turns me on in a very strange way and i find it somewhat disturbing but still i can't stop watching it, as if it's visual crack or something or like that episode in the old Twilight Zone where that sound starts coming through the telly and everyone sits around all fucked out of their gourds and days slip by and they don't know it, that could happen to me with this video... or maybe Miss Bush has cast a spell on me, she is a witch you know, so be careful how many times you watch it, you'll find yourself in your weaker moments singing and mimicking that dance around the living room when no one is around, at least i do. And don't be surprised if this video is revisited at a later date with an even more in depth study of it. Now if you'll excuse me i've a ghost to attend to.

Still Partying?- Women's History Month vol. 2

2011-03-19T19:36:00.000-07:00

To be honest A-Palm aka Amanda Palmer would probably annoy the living shit out of me if i had to sit next to her in a bar but hell the girl sure does make interesting music and since this song fits in nicely with my weekend and happens to be a personal favorite well here it is, of course this is her in the Dresden Dolls and not solo and i'd like to steal Brian's hat but hell i'm just happy to get something posted cuz there's been alot happening here lately at the lounge and i've got a backlog of shit to write, be it Women's History Month, the final installment of Late Night Maudlin Street or the new Walking Dead series but in a nutshell i'm fucking lazy or bored or drunk or high or changing diapers or doing laundry, and in what could be called a compendium piece to a missive from one G. Johnson i'll be posting a piece or maybe two entitled Farewell to the Smoke, but we'll keep that close to the vest for now and right now i'm slogging my way through a gigantic book called the Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard, so hell i got a lot on my plate right? wrong? indifferent? but basically it's just lazy, so i'm counting back the number of the steps it took to get back on the wagon of the weekend... and for the un-lightened this tune is called My Alcoholic Friends.

Am I the Only One celebrating? Happy Women's History Month

2011-03-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

Happy Women's History month dear ladies and since it is your month i decided i would post some of my favorite females singing some of my favorite songs and first up is one Karen O. of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, fucking hell do i love this woman and she had to run off and marry Spike Jonze which just proves that life's not fair, of course this song was written for Angus of the Liars but i do believe it was really written for me, in fact i'm hoping some day, like the teenage boy that i am that a girl will sing this to me and hopefully her name will be Karen O. For the record i think Karen is all class, substance and style and if you watch enough of her you'll realize that there is a talentless hack running around co-opting many of the things Karen did some 7 or 8 years ago, that is when the talentless hack is not ripping off Madonna but hey i'm an indie kid at heart and in my book Karen O. is the fucking bee's knees. This song is one of the greatest love songs ever written in my book.

The Walking Dead- Here Comes the Hatchet Men

2011-03-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of posts about the soon to be unemployed at the Big World Bank Machine and the process and shenanigans that ensue. This series sponsored by the Kid, one of the finest people i know, who urged me to write about it. And just in case anyone i work with reads this... it's all fiction.

Friday's in the business world are never good when it comes to remaining gainfully employed and this one would be no different, you see the original meeting was scheduled for Tuesday but it was bumped up and when the news got round the Big World Bank Machine what was once a ripple of dread gained both speed and momentum, i mean this place was never much on what the Bad Brains called PMA, positive mental attitude, it was full of Chicken Little's always waiting for the sky to fall but it'd survived longer than most branches of the BWBM, an institution started by one Woodrow Wilson when as he put it, "I've just sold the country to the bankers", and as we all know you can always trust a banker...

Consolidation is a dirty little word that should read, a bunch of you are about to get fucked in the dictionary, a polite business term for fuck off and don't let the door hit you on the ass, now understand that the place i work has people working in it who've never worked anywhere else, some 30 or 40 years, a quasi guvment institution and what most would consider a bastion of stability, i've been there 8 and half, my longest tenure of any job, even the dealing but at least that job i chose to leave unlike this one where i'll have no choice, that said we all piled into the big hall to await the decision, i was standing near a television that showed the branch president in Cleveland and my initial comment was "we're fucked", she wouldn't look up and it looked as if someone had pissed in her coffee, of course when the management group walked in we all could have left, they looked like someone had flat out shit in their coffee so it wasn't much of a surprise when the V.P. from Cleveland told us we had just gotten the fucking shaft, of course what did this stammering tool care, he still had his six figure gig and that was after he ran a private bank into the ground as risk manager, see somehow he ended up at the BWBM in an even cushier gig and in a moment of blissfully stupid eloquence he mumbled, "isn't this a cold bucket of water in your face", i was like what the fuck did that idiot just say, of course as he made this announcement there were tears, i saw two women almost pass out and of course the head idiot in charge stood off on the side of the room blubbering... of course the blubberer was the genius in charge of our banks proposal, a rising star who had pissed off more than her fair share of important people on meteoric rise to the top, but more on her later...

How did we get fucked you ask? aren't people losing their jobs all the time these days? yes. We got the shaft due to the fact that we'd been told the decision was purely economic, based on performance and cost, well the numbers released that very morning showed that between our bank and the bank in the shitty cold upper Midwest, our rival, that we did it significantly cheaper and much more efficient yet somehow they were awarded the gig and the powers that be from HQ in DC decided that they did not need to give any justification for this decision, basically they told us to suck it and as talking dignitary after talking dignitary, all with jobs mind you, got up and praised us for our legacy and hard work i finally said rather loudly, "we don't need to hear this shit, get on with it", which drew some worried looks and alot of smiles from the rank and file, i mean fuck i'm just the light bulb changer and i knew i didn't need to hear these suits blow any sunshine up my ass, i know i do a good job cuz first off a fucking monkey can do it and secondly all the lights in the room were fucking on, it was at this point that me and few others just headed for the door...

Sometime in the near future our Superstar V.P. will get her own post about the ramifications of her actions that helped our downfall but believe me that is a post in itself, what happened next on this fine day was that the BWBM let all non-essential personnel go which created a mass exodus to a bar across the street, of course my dept. wasn't included in that and i myself went on the jack jones to a quiet little place where i slammed Guinness and Jameson's because basically i don't like people very much and damn sure didn't want to drink with the twats i worked with, of course at the chain bar they went to they drank like rock stars and cried on each other's shoulders and our Superstar V.P. got wiped out and walked around the bar screaming "we got fucked, those fucking assholes, we got fucked", a sentiment echoed by many others just not as loud or obnoxiously, and then another manager, a short dough boy with a huge sense of entitlement, got so out of hand he shoved a bartender and proceeded to call the waitresses cunts and whores and all kinds of shit that if had i been standing next to him would have gotten him shipped to the fucking hospital faster than he could blink, see the girl was a waitress for a long time and just so he knew, a few days later i stood within earshot of him and told someone how i heard somebody was hassling the waitresses, i then explained that if i found out who they better never let me catch them on the street cuz if they did i'd fucking throttle them, explained that the girl was once one and that those women put up with an endless amount of shit from the idiotic general public and that anyone who over-stepped that much was due for a righteous ass kicking, this fucking douche bag is all of 5'5 and he's a soft and lumpy piece of shit, another one who runs around trying to bang his sub-ordinates cuz his whole life he was picked last on the playground so now he's trying to make up for it, of course i looked right past the person i was talking to and glared at him the whole time so i'm sure he understood my point...

and that was the day the hatchet came down... more to follow.

Bongo, Blowjobs and the Barney

2011-03-09T17:43:00.000-08:00

Ostensibly this is a post about the release of the Joshua Tree, see it was 24 years ago today that it was released and though i was a fan of the band at the time it was really just another cool band to add to the list of cool bands that i listened to in order to impress high school girls, it was roughly the same time period that i got into the Smiths and New Order and those two bands have stayed with me through the years, are still listened to regularly and have had a profound effect on me, i do remember watching the video to With or Without You and wishing i had a girl to listen to it with... U2 was a bit more acceptable in my white-bread working class high school mainly because many of us had just discovered the wonders of cable television and they always seemed to be on, then this record hit and they blew up in the States and even the squares started listening... this is when it seemed that Bongo dropped that whole flag waving Red Rocks thing and began dressing like some boho-semi gay cowboy in leather vests and no shirts and the Edge looked like he could've stepped out of a Peckinpah film, in short it was cool to a sixteen year old me and i ran out and bought the album straight away...

It was around this time that i was coming out of my hardcore phase and had begun wearing the Barney, a haircut patterned after one Bernard Sumner, all shaved on the sides and up the back and with a nice floppy lock hanging side parted and hanging down the front, a very British hair-style , a haircut reserved for the cooler kids in city schools who snuck into the clubs i'd soon be going to when i was of age, it was this haircut and of course my new found fondness of Bongo and the boys that helped me score a girlfriend, a girl on the fringe of the cool crowd who had broken up with her parted down the middle feathered back boyfriend of two years and took a liking to the basketball playing weirdo who secretly pined for the theater chick who's daddy ran a morgue and since the theater girl wouldn't talk to me i did what any horny young boy would do and dated whoever showed some interest and that my dear readers was one Wendy Grech, known as a rabbit among the mothers, a fact my mother let me know that she knew, a girl who was most likely dating down by dating me if we go by the high school hierarchy of cliques but who told me she liked the fact i was different and didn't give a shit, i took it as a compliment...

The Joshua Tree was the album that Wendy and i bonded over and by bonded i mean fuck, she was the first girl i dated who really understood the art of fellatio and i mean that as a compliment, we spent many a drunken weekend night parked in the high school parking lot in her dad's light blue Chevy Caprice that was rusting around the wheel wells, screwing our little brains out, sweating and looking for cops and laughing when we saw the condoms still there on monday morning, what bliss for a 16 year old boy, of course we didn't make it til the end of the school year and when she dumped me it wasn't as traumatic as it should have been for juniors in high school, though my memory is foggy i'm pretty sure the dumping had to do with an infidelity on my part, no actual penetration mind you just some drunken make-out session with a girl who was an incredibly bad kisser and who's best friend was the one i was really after but Wendy was not amused and as she stood there in my friends room after one last go round on his water bed she looked old for someone so young, she then proceeded to pop in a tape and play With or Without You and dump my silly white ass... i, for one, thought it was cool that i got dumped and laid at the same time and did alot of shrugging and smiling and was told that it wasn't going to work and that i was just a fucking weirdo and a loser and not a part of the In crowd, in short i wasn't Jake from 16 Candles nor did i want to be...

So what does this have to do with the Joshua Tree? fuck i don't know but what i do know is that i listened to it quite alot the summer of 87 and was more than stoked when One-eyed Bobby's bigwig radio dad came through with 4 tickets for us to see the band at old Cleveland Stadium, it was October by now and i was still trying to impress the theater girl and she was still doing her best to pretend i didn't exist and by this time U2 had become a bit passe among the prehistoric hipster kids, not to be confused with today's modern hipster kids who act much the same, and i was glad With or Without You wasn't my favorite song on the album due to it's new found relationship to my failed uh relationship yet i was the quintessential bedsit boy, a dreamer who dreamed endlessly and my favorite song off the record was Running to Stand Still (as well as Red Hill Mining Town), a song i associated with the theater girl who to me seemed utterly mysterious and tortured and oblivious to me, when i reality she was just shy and quite possibly intimidated that a moron like me could be so smitten with her...

But let's now get off track now this is about Bongo and the Boys and on this fine October eve, a day that was the first day of basketball conditioning for my senior year, a season that would end up being the best in my school's history, i ran my sprints and then sprinted home to shower and change and head downtown for the big show, now since we were all underage we couldn't score any booze but we did scrape together a joint or two and we all blazed up, we being One-eye, Steve-O, Spaz and myself, my best friends in high school at the time and began walking up towards our seats and the ushers kept telling us go further and before you knew it we were roughly ten rows from the fucking stage, we got our seats and all stood there goggle eyed at how close we were and then Los Lobos came out and completely bored the shit out of us high school kids and then the wind picked up and the clouds started moving in and we started coming down, then in what would become a pattern repeated throughout my life i found someone with drugs, it was a brother and sister sitting next to me and when i smelled that wonderful aroma i looked enquiringly around and the brother, who was probably a year younger than me smiled and his sister who was probably two years older grinned and said, wanna hit it? i of course said yes and they were nice enough to pack one for me and the boys and we thanked them and One-eye tried to woo the sister but she just kept smiling at me and we began to talk and then the lights went down and out walked the Bongo and the Boys...

Bongo had his arm in a sling, seems he had fallen off the stage the previous show in Pittsburgh but he persevered and belted out the tunes and at one point it began to rain and then since it's right on the lake and it was October it even snowed a little, i was pleasantly stoned and in awe of the show, being that close i was pretty much speechless and blown away, at one point some cute girl was standing on my seat and holding onto my shoulders and it was pretty much a brilliant fucking night, i remember Bongo saying something like the weather reminded him of home and he thanked us for it and of course we all cheered like imbeciles as we stood in the intermittent snow and sprinkles of rain... and then something even better happened for the tall boy with the floppy hair, the lights went down and the stage was blue-lit and he started singing So she looked up/ looked up from where she was/ lying still/ she said i/ gotta do something about where we're going... and fuck if i didn't freeze as a hush came over the stadium and those words cut through the air and hit me right in the fucking gut words from my favorite song on the album, words that i heard this morning on the radio and suddenly some 24 years later i was shipped back to those days of laying on my living room floor and watching a video, of the sweaty and awkward fumblings of a Chevy Caprice, of the girls i had chased, of the smile of strangers and the passing of bowl, of basketball practice and Bongo's arm in a sling, those words brought back the wine of my youth and even at 10am, on a cold and rainy day, in a dead end job, it felt good, if fucking tasted good... and maybe that is the point.

The Message

2011-03-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

A tall man walks into a strip bar, it's a place he used to frequent often in his youth, now it's on his way home, it's crowded and he sits and drinks his beer and watches the end of a basketball game, it's filled with wanna-be gangster's and wanna-be actresses, everybody wanting to be somebody and in the end we're all just nobody, most of us chasing some fucking mirage called fame, why? and yet the tall man doesn't think he's chasing fame, he's just having a drink and being annoyed and then the dj plays the Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and no one notices and as he sits in this place, a place that was once like his second home, a place he'd been in a thousand times, he understands how futile and fleeting it all is, all these kids being cool and these old men being creepy and the bull dykes chasing their youth and he listens to the song and subtly mouths the words, The Message, no one in this place is fucking getting it, no one except maybe the dj realizes how relevant the words are in a place like this and he drains his beer and makes for the door and walks into the cold air, he shivers and rolls home where he cracks a door and kisses his oldest son, and on the way towards his bed, in his little house, he sings... don't push me cuz i'm close to the edge/ i'm trying not to lose my head/ it's like a jungle/ sometimes in makes me wonder/ how i keep from going under/ huh huh huh huh. and then he stops and types this.

Late Night Maudlin Street - How to Make Amends - The Finale Pt. 1

2011-02-24T17:54:00.000-08:00

Domino's, you line them up and you knock them down, sometimes you do it yourself and sometimes the universe does it for you, and the strange things were happening some good and some bad, and so it was that one spring afternoon i got a call from the girl, her mother was in the hospital, she had went to stand up and had seized up, it was the second time it had happened in the last few months and her father forced her mother to go to the emergency room, it was there in that hospital that a ER doctor walked in and literally broke down in front of her, the girl's mother, he said he didn't know how to say this, didn't want to say it, but she had a golf ball size tumor in her brain, an end game tumor and that he was at a loss, i picked her up and drove her the two hours to see her mother and the whole time she was numb, i was numb, but i wouldn't compare what i was feeling in any way, shape or form to what the girl was feeling, her mother was the closest person in the world to her, i stood in the back of the room and watched as her children and her husband and her parents tried to comprehend what they had just heard, i sat and watched her mother's mother, some 80 odd years old try and cope with the news that she might have to bury one of her kids, and in the end she did, to say that this had a profound effect on the right bastard would be an understatement, i advised those who would listen to tell the woman everything they ever wanted to tell her before it was to late, told them that in a way the only good thing is that they had time to let the woman know how much they loved her, what she meant to them and in the end most of them did...

Of course by this time i had begun to speak to my mom, would even stop off at her place when i went up to C-town and spend an hour or two, i'd have dinner and talk and i remember the girl saying to me how she could still see the hurt in my mother's eyes and i understood what she meant, things were alot different then they used to be and though we all smiled and laughed it was as if something was lost and it still ate at my mother, but we were getting somewhere however slowly and i guess that's all either one of us could ask for and of course when this news came down it struck me that i was lucky that both of my parents were still in good health, yeah the old man still smoked and that worried me to no end but overall they were in good shape and then the girl came up to me one day shortly after all this happened and said she wanted to have a baby, she wanted her mom to see her, the girl's child, before it was to late and so we set off on down this road and of course the universe has a way of fucking with you, you see the girl had just gone in for her check-up and her mom was staying with us while she went to the Cancer Institute here in the Burgh, it was then that we found out the the girl was already pregnant and there was a lot of smiles and her mom was on cloud nine and i called both my parents and told them the news and then days later the doctor called back and said something wasn't right and that the levels were screwed up and there was a good chance she could lose it but he also said not to worry that due to the fact the girl was on birth control for so long it was amazing that she would even get pregnant a few weeks after she stopped, so then began much hand wringing and worrying and then one day it happened...

For a guy who's been pissed off at the universe for most of his life this was just another example of just how absurd existence was, i blamed myself of course, figured it was just the gods getting even with me for being such a self-centered prick for most of my life and had i thought about it i was being one again, i left the girl with her mother, that's who she wanted and needed, i myself took to wandering around my neighborhood and staring at the sky, i remember the day after it happened i stood on my steps of my little back porch and cried my fucking eyes out and cursed every fucking deity i could think of, told them if there was a way to get them back i would do it and then of course apologized and told Buddha that i would really try and straighten my shit out, try and kick the bad habits, try and be a better man, how effective that was/ is debatable but it wasn't long after that, a few months later that the girl was pregnant again. Now you might be sitting there and wondering what all this has to do with the story but like i said, dominos man dominos...

Saturday July 1, 2006 was three weeks before the due date and i had went out for my last hurrah before i settled down for the stretch run, since it was my last night i had indulged in some bad habits and ended up sleeping for a few hours when the girl got up for work and told me she kept peeing herself, i in my infinite wisdom asked if she thought that maybe just possibly her water broke and she just laughed and said you think? to put it mildly i was in no state to become a father that day but like i said, the gods love fucking with me and so it was that we went to the hospital and were told that yes we would be welcoming a bouncing baby boy that day, as the word spread exactly four people showed up, the girl's parents and my mom and her husband, i of course was a fucking wreck and not just because i was in no way prepared to become a father but also to to my previous nights indulgences and if there was ever a night to get a good night's sleep it would have been that one but so be it, if anything i'm good on the fly and as we sat and waited and pushed and breathed morning turned to day turned to night and all the while i talked with my mom and the girl's father while her mother hovered around her and wiped sweat from her brow and fed her ice chips, now one could say it should have been me doing that but if i'm anything i'm observant and though i knew i had more than a minor role in this baby thing i knew the girl wanted this time with her mother and who was i to fucking act like a knob and take it from her and then at 6:47 pm it began, the nurses cleaned him up and took his vitals and i was trembling and for once not from drugs or alcohol, i was standing near the little heater thingy and when the nurse turned and said "would you like to hold your son" tears began streaming down my face, i gathered myself and choked out a yes and the nurses laughed and said it's always you big, tough guys who fall the hardest and more true words were never spoken...

It was after they handed them to me and i came back down to earth that i noticed how my mother was looking at me, this is a day i'm sure for a long time she thought she'd never see, due to our relationship or the fact that most people didn't think i'd make 30 let alone 35 but here i was, holding my son and she walked over to me and i looked at her and said "would you like to hold you grandson?" and her eyes welled up and she took him and smiled and just kept saying "he's beautiful he's beautiful", and as the boy made the rounds of the room we were then informed that they'd take him for a bit to check him and i was sent to run out for food cuz the girl was starving and the hospital cafe was closed on saturday night and so i walked out and first called my dad who had been waiting up all day to hear from me even though he had to work the graveyard and then of course i called Gulfboot, it was 87 and humid that day and i can just remember talking to my best friend and trying to hold my shit together, overwhelmed by what i had just been through, unsure of what to do next and as Gulfboot celebrated and yelled he told me something that hit home, he said "you got nothing to worry about brother, whether you know it or not you've been taking care of people your whole life, just ask any of your friends, you're the guy they come to when they need help" and as i stood on the corner sweating and drinking Gatorade i dawned on me that maybe he was right...

To say the birth of the I-mac was a catalyst to speed up the healing process between me and my mother would be a massive understatement, we have no family in the Burgh so we were basically on our own, the girl and i, and her mom would come down and stay during the week and she helped immensely but the woman was still going through chemo and radiation and all kinds of shit and that's not to mention the brain surgery she was still recovering from, my mother came down and helped out and when he was old enough he started going up to stay with Ooma and Papa, as he calls them and it is something Kid A and Kid B both love, i know how good they have it up there cuz i was once the old apple of Ooma's eye when i was a kid but let's not put that horse in front of the cart just yet, see i got up every night with my boy's, from the hours of 11pm until the dawn it was daddy's watch and as i've written before they are some of the most fond memories of my life, wandering around a dark room feeding my Kid A, rocking him back to sleep, it gave me a lot of time to think and think hard about my life cuz when you've done what i've done and seen what i've seen you just feel lucky to be standing there holding your kid no matter how fucking tired you may be, i remember looking at him in those early morning hours and thinking what have i done to deserve this? it was a long way from the streets i ran and though i got the itch every now and then those i began to realize that the place i wanted to be most was near my son, now sons...

As time went by i started staying at my mother's house when i went back to Cleveland, a thing i swore i'd never do, the house i grew up in, my old man would come over and hang out and we'd all sit around and play with the boy and have dinner and i thought if the guy who bought this house can walk in here with no ill will towards the current inhabitants maybe it's time for me to re-think my position on things, i was also in the process of watching the girl's mother die and the heartache that ensued and it started to sink in that life is to fucking short to be a hard-headed asshole, that people make mistakes, that people don't always do the right thing and sometimes you just have to let it go, when you realize they weren't trying to hurt you that they are just human and trying to live their life as best they can and when you understand when the mirror is turned on yourself you are just as guilty of being human as the rest of the world, and slowly it happened, i started to let go of the hurt and the anger and began in earnest to re-build what i had a major hand in tearing down...

and now we are almost there, just one last installment to go and then Late Night will be put to bed, stay tuned and try to stay awake...

We live in Rented Rooms

2011-02-19T18:10:00.000-08:00

I love the down and out and i fucking love redemption. i love the losers who prove the world wrong even if the fucking world doesn't know about it cuz i am is was a fucking loser, i love the drug addicts and the derelicts, i love them cuz i am one of their tribe, in fact i might be fucking chief, you see i've been a criminal, an alcoholic, a coke fiend, i've racked up rock star lines and followed them up with bumps of good smack and wandered around my apt. until the sun came up, i've thrown up at noon cuz i started drinking at 6am, i've been in bar fights and had guns waved at me, i've had knives pulled on me and laughed about it, i've had an old hippie squirt liquid lsd in my mouth and rode back over the Bloomfield Bridge at dusk with the headlights making me think i was going light speed, i've been fucking homeless and lived in rooming houses, i've hung out with junkies and hookers and drag queens, i've done drugs with junkies and hookers and drag queens, i've cooked crack in my room and smoked it by myself and looked in the mirror with a straight face and said "i don't have a problem", i almost walked into a bus one fine sunday night coming home from a x-mas party hammered, i once drank so much grain alcohol one fine Thanksgiving eve that i'm pretty sure i left most of my liver in a toilet, i've been so fucking drunk i've drank from the toilet cuz i was to fucked up to stand, to blitzed to find the sink right behind me and if i had the time or the patience i could add to this list, what amazes me most is the fact i'm still breathing, the fact i'm still alive when many more kind, good and noble people have died, so what is this about you ask? fucking music of course.

You see this was a good week for me, The Twilight Singers, Drive By-Truckers and this man named F.M. Cornog all released an album, F.M. goes by the name East River Pipe and he's an ex-drug addict who went on historical benders, then one day he met a woman who helped him slowly kick all his bad habits cuz he had more than a few, she bought him a shitty 4-track recorder and F.M. set about making songs, beautiful lo-fi songs of the dispossessed, of the down and out, about junkies and drunks and hookers and fuck-ups, and then he got a record deal from the good people at Merge who said whenever you get some songs let us know and we'll put them out. He doesn't tour, doesn't want to be a rock star, has had songs covered by Lambchop and David Byrne and others, has an 8 year old daughter and works in the flooring dept. at a New Jersey Home Depot, in short he's everything i admire in an artist, doing to do it and not really worrying about the money and fame, the fucking anti-Gaga with more talent in is toe nails than Stephanie Germanotta has in her whole ridiculous body, you won't see him on 60 Minutes but if you need a floor and happen to live in Jersey you just might run into him, i highly suggest this new album, it ain't exactly uplifting but it ain't exactly bleak either, just some good stories told by some guy in his bedroom as a way to keep off the streets and raise his kid. In my weaker moments i like to think maybe F.M and i have something in common, usually while i drive around and gaze at the neon, then i snap back to reality and realize that i'm still fucked. Anyway the man's made a good record.

No Exit

2011-02-14T17:59:00.000-08:00

Sartre's teeth were brown, he was French and he smoked what do you expect and he gets points for bedding Simone B. , of course he did write that play and of course after bouncing around the interweb today it occurred to me, my own private hell could be summed up in two words: poetry reading, see i tend to go from link to link and see if there's ever anything decent out there and today i stumbled upon the old spoken word, fucking christ, you know i once did a reading or two when i was a young man and i can now sit here and tell you that i was a fucking wanker, full on, there is no other way to describe it, the state of modern poetry is this, all the really good ones learn to play guitar and sing, the rest write the same stale verse in the same stale style and speak in the same stale tones, oh they all think they're different but all one has to do is watch and it's like a never ending nightmare, as if Poet 1 left a fat, stinking turd in the toilet and then Poet 2 sauntered in and decided to do the same, repeat the process ad nauseum until the bowl is filled and it's overflowing onto the floor, fucking Hank was right, when it comes to the poesy don't try, he was the last original and even he got a bit dull towards the end, in fact the last good poet i heard read was Jim Daniels, a prof at CMU, i was fucked on scotch and weed and beer and running with an ex-ironworker who drank to much and could beat the shit out of anyone i knew, Daniels wrote about Detroit and the factories and getting your girlfriend pregnant all in a working class style that was reminiscent of Hank but not derivative, does that make sense? He did not try to be profound like all the half ass poets of the intellectual hipster class, i mean fuck off really, if have to suffer through one more so-called poetry moment of inane profundity i'm gonna insert some deep and meaningful metaphor about flowers or doing laundry here...

Here in our fair little Rust Belt town we have a show on public radio called Prosody and i challenge anyone to get through the whole fucking show, you'll either be asleep or drinking heavily or self flagellating, it is in and of itself a form of Sadomasochism, and don't give me that shit the profound is found in the everyday, cuz you know what? i'd agree, just try and fucking write it that way and quit boring the shit out of me and quit with the mainly monotone delivery with the sporadic inflection and pause so i know i'm getting deep thoughts okay, fuck me, if i seem pissed really i'm not, i'm just tired, it's not as if i hate poems, i don't, i just like it better when the poets are quiet and not around, unless of course i'm having trouble sleeping and laying off the sundry drugs and booze, then bring the 'tone, i'll be asleep in no time...

of course this is a mess cuz i'm fucking sober, i'm guessing with my luck the I-mac or Nick Disaster will one day walk up to me and say i want to be a poet, i wish my own father would have kicked me in the balls when i told him i was writing poesy, but if one of those two get this same lame-brained idea i'll tell them to get a guitar and find a good drummer cuz they hold the whole thing together or better yet i'll tell them to get a shit job, a drinking problem and drug habit cuz at least then the shit will be interesting, i'll advise them to only date women who will fuck them over cuz hey man out of pain comes brilliance right? i'm living fucking proof yeah? oh man i feel a fat, stinking turd coming and now i will unleash it on the world and not flush cuz you know my turd is special and i'll leave it here with all these other special turds, so please don't touch that handle, to flush it all would be to murder all us sensitive souls, so from the depths of my sphincter...

Size Thirteen

warm sunlight bathes the pavement

as a mother would bathe her child

and i have put my size thirteen

into a warm and soft pile of dogshit

as if peanut butter has infected

the tender veins of my Puma's sole

i stand flummoxed in the flatus

of my size thirteen

who be-ith the owner

who leaves a dogs logs on the sidewalk

i swab the veins of shit butter

from my size thirteen

For a 1.99 i'll send you a MP3 of me reading this masterpiece in my best monotone... and maybe some titty pics as well. cheers.

Sunday morning coming down

2011-02-13T08:27:00.000-08:00

Maybe this is more apropos this morning, after getting the shit news that i've been consolidated out of a job again on friday i headed to the bar and slammed a few Car Bombs (half pints of Guinness with a shot of Jameson's and topped with Bailey's, drop shot glass in pint and guzzle it down), followed by a traditional pint, all in about 40 minutes, i then fell off the wagon and smoked my first cigarette in three weeks, walked back to work and passed out in my chair until i left, by 6pm or so i felt the hangover coming on so i raided the medicine cabinet which had me so fucked that while i was stumbling down the street to get a cup of coffee i noticed that i couldn't really walk a straight line and actually cracked a smile thinking that it would be fitting if i got picked up by the cops, got my coffee and stumbled back towards home wondering if i would throw up on the sidewalk, looking in the bars and cafes at all the people enjoying themselves, still not walking straight and shaking like a junky, drifted into saturday and you can see the previous post for the line-up from last night and now here i am, Sunday morning and i can't think of anything better i'd like than a drink to take the edge off last night and the rest of the day, just one as the alcoholic says but we'll see how that plays out, in the meantime i'll listen to this and watch the smoke...