The Wilderness Years - my philosophy

 (It's been close to 14 months since the last installment of the old Wilderness Years so it's about time we fucking finish the thing especially as the days of rewrites and revisions and first drafts is upon us... whatever that means... so for the stray reader who still peruses this page i'll help, the last post was from May 9th, 2025... a recap of things up until that point titled The Perfect Barbarian and how our (anti-) hero here had managed to get himself laid off in order to fully enjoy the fruits of his labor... now back to the program...) 

These days with so much shit "legal" in a very fuzzy sense, with the fact that my favorite plant has been for all intents decriminalized in many places, it's interesting to see the changes that have taken place in the old world of slinging... the fact the kids don't have to apprentice anymore, they don't learn from established dealers as the easiest way to learn about dealing was studying the local weed dealer one got their gear from... or the Plug as the kids call them these days... in simpler times when the old Bill and the tough on crime crowd (which amounted to pretty much every elected official) were cracking down on the demon weed one could study the guy they bought grass from or at least those who were thinking about getting into that line of work could study them... call it an apprenticeship, one watched and learned, what worked? how did they handle things? what was the protocol?, on the phone and in their place, each one was different and each depended on where and when you met up with them... when seeing Cowboy Dan back at Podunk U. i knew i had to block out a couple hours as his paranoia level was off the charts, probably a good thing for a small town but in his case it may have been a tad overboard but the fact was when he wasn't cracking up due to hard drug use and a crazy girlfriend one couldn't really argue with his methods... it kept him safe... just to get in the door one needed solid references, then you'd have to go with that reference a few times and hope Cowboy wasn't having a meltdown or a bad day cuz if the juju was off you may be exiled for life... or at least the foreseeable future... if one was deemed "cool" with Cowboy Dan he'd one day say to you that you could call whenever and you'd get his number... then you were in... little did he know at the time that this student would one day take his place... 

And i can't forget the uptight frat boy... he was a total comprehensive lesson in what not to do... definitely greedy... uptight and paranoid and in a way, now that he wasn't in college anymore, ill-suited to the game... in one sense that was a good thing because is was good cover, he was the last guy one would think was slinging but at the same time is nervousness came across as someone who was hiding something... i know that the way i looked had something to do with his sense of unease, a tall dreadlocked white dude rolling into his place with a backpack probably reeked of suspicious activity among his white Wonder Bread apartment building... luckily, as we know, he was kicked to the curb ASAP and years later i was laughing as he talked to me about hooking him up and the like... i didn't take much from him other than how not to act which wasn't hard cuz i was nothing like him... meaning a dork... 

When it came to Hippie Jack and Cocaine Mike that was like advanced studies in the art of slinging... things were different as they both lived in the city, on one of those streets where no one cares, where you can't really open a window cuz a main thoroughfare ran right outside it and during rush hour it was nothing but the smell of exhaust and the rumble of engines, a forgotten and neglected part of town for those who paid rent in cash and who landlords knew might take a flyer in the middle of the night for any number of reasons from not having the (back) rent to legal issues or the ones like Cocaine Mike fell into where it behooved him to get out of town or face the possibility of getting shot... granted in Hippie Jack's heyday aka the beginning of the end, the parking lot next to his place, some uniform company, was usually packed at 3am with those so inclined to watch the sunrise, meaning another gram or eight ball of blow, would be piled into his place reupping the nose candy... it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on but then again the cops didn't much care about what was going on in places like this until they got called... 

Old Jack and Mike were really case studies in what not to do... Cocaine Mike was practically a walking, talking lesson in what not to do and when his deal finally went belly up not one person in the know was shocked, he was almost universally despised by all who knew him and though i found him frightening to say the least i was learning about the world, seeing things in a whole different light, seeing a system that was racist and discriminatory... as for Hippie Jack, everyone like the guy as he was a most loveable fuck-up but by the end even his schtick was wearing thin on those down at old Mitchell's Tavern... but as the student i took it all in... i studied, i honed people skills and bullshit detecting... and once again i learned what not to do... it's where my philosophy on dealing came into focus even if i didn't know it a the time... how having a job helped, how steering clear of certain substances helped (though i can't say i didn't have my dalliances with things at the time), how it was important that any woman one was involved was trustworthy and one had to consider the possibility of what would happen if things fell apart, both in the relationship or businesswise... they also taught me to keep the fucking money straight if one wanted to last because in the end it was their financial fuck-ups that led to them both being exiled... (of course we can't forget that it was a bit of a foregone conclusion that Hippie Jack had let a known criminal, Cocaine Mike, see where he kept his money, which was nothing more than a jacket he never wore in his closet and that when Hippie Jack's place was robbed the only things taken were the money in his jacket pocket and some drugs...which is also why i never let Cocaine Mike know where i lived...)

This was my apprenticeship so to speak, these guys were my teachers, when it came to certain others in the annals of lounge history, people like Max and Ruby and Pizza Joe, they were connections, i didn't learn much of anything from them other than wonder why i didn't have a better connection... Max and Ruby were solid, Max another of the well off suburban kids with a good hook-up although his boy was a fucking nutcase and ultra paranoid but by the time i had come to that connection i knew the type well... it amazed me how so many rich kids dallied in the game, of course in one respect i knew why, it wasn't a way to make a living for them it was a way to be "cool", they did it until they got caught (in which case a wealthy family intervened and said rich kid got out of the game and got off or pleaded down to some slap on the wrist but understood full well from daddy that this was the one and only time this would happen, hence they'd be out of the inheritance... or got threatened by an actual hood or worse, usually a nice little beat down and realized it wasn't the "career" for them...) in my case i was nothing more than a kid/man with nowhere to go so i had to make it... this wasn't a fucking game it was my livelihood and i treated is as such, i've been told that i was a bit of a unicorn back then, a guy with a college degree who knew and understood the streets... book smart and street smart, the combination one needed to get by in this game especially on the street level... hell once i moved up to more like mid-level distributor i could have narrowed it down to a handful of guys but i didn't, didn't even think about it, it wasn't arrogance but confidence in my ability to handle a bustling business and that's what most would be hustlers never understand... it's a business... 

Seeing what passes as dealing to today actually blows my mind... these kids don't understand business, don't know how to cover their tracks, most of them accept fucking venmo or cashapp, a paper trail that no self respecting Gen X dealer would ever fucking do, it was cash and carry, no fucking checks and there is no fucking way, had it been available, that i'd have let someone wire me money, you fucking kidding me? now i hear about Plugs at parties doling out lines for $5-7 bucks and almost exclusively getting the money by app, so there's a 30-40 $5 transfers in a few hours? dumb as dirt... of course they do the same for larger amounts as well and either the Just Say No crowd and their elected officials have thrown in the towel or our society is finally fed up with tossing money at a war that was lost long ago... 

The weed game is for all intents dead... at least the one i knew, when the fucking cartels (a few years back) issue a press release stating that they are out of the weed business due to it not being profitable what else do you need to know? the legal industry had done it's thing but the run-off still makes it to places (see mainly red states) where there is still no legal or medical cannabis, it was like that here until Covid even with the dispensaries but after the pandemic most of the street dealers were done... the new thing was they young bucks getting med cards and then running to the dispensary and selling shit at a markup, problem was the margins are shit, at least to someone who knows what they're looking at but then again the risk/reward has basically bottomed out, the reward is practically nothing and the biggest risk is getting your card revoked and a slap on the wrist... ain't no one moving forty fucking pounds anymore... 

So where does this leave us? back in the spring of 2001, an unemployed derelict running a one man operation out of his second floor apartment, recently laid off due to his enterprising plan to get laid off all so he could drive across town to fuck a stripper in the morning who would then often make him an omelet before he walked out the door in order to go home and take a nap before rising again to do his job of supplying ganja to the masses... who'd then meet with the Weight Crew before heading off to the bar to hook up his nickel dimer clientele and drink and drug to the wee hours before driving his $400 car home, sleeping, and doing it all again the next day... thinking back on it all can bring both a smile and a shiver... i know luck played a part... but man, i don't know how to describe what this really felt like... the most apt words i can apply is, to steal from Johan Cruyff's total football... Total Freedom... i was using a system while living outside that same system... no boss, no chains, no one to answer to except myself... i ain't gonna lie... it was fucking glorious... now on with the show... 

And then came the silence...

 The lack of posts on the lounge over the last six odd months or so can be directly attributed to two things... the first of which started as something with the best of intentions, carried out with the same but not quite sure how it's landed, that was the revising and rewriting of the Veronica Chronicles in order to send them to the piece's namesake herself... the second of course was the death of a best friend, my brother, the brilliant Gulfboot Johnson... the first thing was a labor of love in the truest sense of the word, close to 80 pages and over 50,000 words in total i felt it was only right to get a copy of it to the person who was the main character and the muse behind the whole undertaking... the second thing felt like a sucker punch and thinking back to that day i still can't shake the sadness that my friend is gone... like i said before i still had things to tell him and now i won't get that chance... 

What started as a beautiful conversation has come to an end in what might be described as an icy silence... having tracked down Veronica's number i did nothing with it for close to two years, it sat scribbled on a scrap of paper, tucked in with a bunch of other scraps in my wallet, no name necessary just ten digits, many of those mushroom midnights were spent pondering what she was doing and where she was, if she was happy? there were thoughts of texting but the logic was best not to be drifting through the psychedelic wilderness, it was something i needed to do with a level head and so when the opportunity finally presented itself, when things seem to align, i typed out a message, a message in which i thought about every word and what i wanted to say hoping that the meaning and intent wasn't lost in translation... then i hit send and waited... what ensued has been documented previously, an absolutely brilliant conversation and a surprising comment from Veronica about what would happen if we saw each other, a distinct possibility as by chance she was less than two hours from where i lived... but as usual things don't always go as planned and over the next few days that rush of blood to both our heads made things a bit more complicated than they needed to be, when she stated she didn't want to see me and that it was a bad idea (and truth be told she was most likely correct) the bruised ego (that i've been working on shedding) did not understand and so i lobbied, albeit unsuccessfully, for a few days before accepting the situation... luckily a friend of mine, a woman who had read the story, pointed out that maybe my contacting her, while a rush at first had also simultaneously opened up all the old wounds... and the fact is that never crossed my mind as of course i was thinking only of myself and how awesome it would be to see her while believing it would be the same for her.... but it wouldn't be... 

This point would be driven home a month or so later when i got a late night text asking why she was always "the other woman and never the woman"... suddenly what my friend had said became crystal clear... i had opened old wounds, my contacting her now the catalyst for her looking back on things and wondering why now, twenty-five years later she was still alone while the man who didn't choose her sat in some nice suburban home, playing house dad while admitting he was in a sham of a relationship that had more to do with business than respect and love... (another very salient point was my friend pointing out to me that it seemed to her that Veronica would have had supported me, had my back, more than the BW ever did... Gulfboot himself in the months before he passed had stated he always thought V. was a better fit for me than the BW... and while they are both most likely correct the reality was what it was/is...) 

And so i spent months on end retyping and revising in order to send her the story... she wanted a copy... and i wanted to oblige her... it took some time as i worked my way through it... the small font on the printout i was working from straining my eyes, revising and reworking, the fact i couldn't exactly do the work with anyone around as it's a story that most likely would land me in hot water... years ago, hell decades ago, the BW had rifled through my papers, we were living at the beach in a shitty apartment and on the cusp of going our separate ways, i was banging out poems and stories on an old manual typewriter and would leave the work in a folder to which one day she went through and read and pointed to a story about a man and his ex reconnecting... yes one could say it was "autobiographical fiction", one could say it was a violation of trust to read what i wrote uninvited or one could say i should have locked it away, doesn't matter but what was born from that was a conversation with the BW (years ago) about what i write and how and where i mine the ideas from and that not all of it was 100% true... what resulted from it was her then discounting my writing as a whole, in fact she's read nothing of what i've written in decades and has shown no interest even though she knows i still do it... that said, i wouldn't get an honest reading of it or opinion of it as she would mainly nitpick not about the quality or lack thereof but more about the subject matter... in fact the last time i was talking about it to someone and she had overheard her response was "i don't know who would want to read that sort of stuff..." it's easy to see how much love and support i get here at home and one will need a Sham-Wow to clean up the sarcasm dripping off that statement... 

In an effort to get it done before i left for my favorite island i was getting up early and banging away at the keyboard in the early morning silence... once finished i re-read it, printed it out, had it bound at the local Office Depot, included a soundtrack page with the songs that accompanied the posts on the lounge, a thumb drive with some 25-30 albums on it (with many of the songs from the soundtrack), a book because in that first conversation she had asked me to recommend her a book, she then elaborated and stated not one i liked but one for her, so i put some thought into it and then went on to my favorite non-rainforest bookselling site and got a copy (The Dirty Havana Trilogy by Cuban writer Pedro Juan Guitterez) and a letter that apologized for any crossed wires, for the situation i had and then did create, and stating it was never my intention to restart anything i just wanted to see how she was and that ultimately i understood where things stood... not so much a goodbye but putting any sort of, for lack of a better word, romantic aspirations to bed, that we had experienced the 1.0 version 25 years before and then the 2.0 version 25 years later and that after all that we had come out the other side friends... or at least i think we did... 

On returning to the States i did my usual... we walked in the door from the airport and i began doing laundry and putting things away from the trip... in the morning it was back to the usual grind in my role as the hired help, off to the grocery store, more laundry, cleaning, hanging with the cats and once i was caught up and settled in after a few days i sent her a text to see if she had read the story and what she thought of  it... and nothing... i waited a few more days and sent another one... and nothing... when her birthday rolled around a few days ago i sent one more wishing her a happy birthday and asking if she had any thoughts she'd like to share about what i'd sent... once more, radio silence... i won't assume anything as to how she liked or despised what i sent, honestly i don't know how she feels about it but as my friend said, maybe she doesn't either, reading a story where you recognize yourself, seeing all those events play out, the intensity of those events and how they affected your life, getting into the mind of the other person involved and for the first time seeing what he really thought and how it once again brought back the hurt, the anger, the confusion of the whole situation and why it played out the way it did... or maybe in the end she thought, what a fucking coward, he never had the balls to follow his heart but instead only the money, only his mind... what she probably didn't realize was that unlike her, who came from a stable and loving family with parents married over fifty years, i came from a broken home where i saw my father duped and vowed never to end up like that, to keep my guard up so to speak... yet it's quite debatable how that worked out for me... then again it's not like i learned nothing from my mother... 

So now i'll wait... as a writer when you send someone something to read you always want to get some feedback as to what they thought especially when one of the "characters" is based off that person... then again all those things above are valid... maybe it's nothing but a painful reminder of where her and i are both at and what could have been... but i can't worry about what could have been as i can only worry about the now... though i understand the sound i hear is the final nails sealing that coffin shut as the curtain comes down and the lights go up... is there a bit of sadness? absolutely... is there regret? no... was there joy? definitely...  life is a beautiful thing that involves a gamut of emotions all of which should be experienced and this whole things has done just that... and maybe the melancholy that has sorta draped itself over the whole thing is more to do with the recognition that it's over... in the truest sense of the word... and that's okay too... as the esteemed Dan Bejar once sang, all good things must come to an end/ the bad ones just go on forever... and ain't that the truth...

State of the Nation - Where are we now

 Where to begin... the loss of my friend Gulfboot Johnson, to be honest, has been one of the more difficult things i've ever had to deal with... Gulfboot left an indelible mark on my existence and thinking over the last 30 years, the things i'd missed, the things i'd forgotten, the good times and the bad, the things maybe i could have done to help... it makes me think and question and ponder what if anything i have gotten right in this life but then i remember that Gulfboot loved me like a brother which means i had to do something right to cultivate a friendship with a brilliant albeit troubled soul who i miss every fucking day... yes there were the lean years when we didn't speak much and there were the days when we were inseparable and then there were the last few months before his passing where our communication was almost daily... now there is a void... i miss my friend... 

There was a part of me after his passing that pondered the thought of shutting the lounge down... it was Gulfboot who set it up for me, designed it, came up with the name due to my frequent references to certain people as asshats and so it occurred to me that maybe now was the time to shut it down, to let it drift into the vast and expansive wasteland known as blog heaven, where on occasion someone might stop by to see if anything new had been posted or just to see if it was still there, i know there are a few i still hit just to see but alas none are active anymore... i'm roughly six months shy of 20 years here at the lounge and while some may scoff at the notion of some shut-in, some social misanthrope, typing out whatever the fuck this is into the ether, i still feel the need? the compulsion? to do it... though having planted so many seeds so to speak i now mine the lounge for old posts i like to rewrite or rework with the thought of maybe trying to place them somewhere else... and part of me feels i owe it to my friend to keep it going, not as a tribute but maybe more as a way of thanking him and keeping his memory alive or as the esteemed Kid so aptly put "i write for people who will write no more..." and so while it may not be as active as it once was it will go on, at least for now, albeit a bit more sporadic as i turn my attention to working on various other things... having retyped The Veronica Chronicles to send to Veronica herself, i see the need for rewrites and revisions, most of the "stories" here are basically first drafts with a small bit of cleaning up so printing them off and rewriting, reworking, revising has given me a bit of satisfaction, seeing what's good and what works, seeing what's dogshit and doesn't... maybe it's finally maturing as writer but who fucking knows, damn sure has taken me long enough but i always was a slow learner... 

So where are we now? to steal a line from David Jones... we are where we are and like most things it's part shit show and part beautiful (though these days it seems to be leaning a bit more towards the former but i always remind myself to remember the good things)... coming off the heals of another bourgeois vacation, a trip where i have time to think and take an honest assessment of things is always good for the head and indirectly the soul... it helps to clear away the everyday noise and oddly for me on this trip i got to spend a good deal of time on my own being able to ponder things while the boyos were off boozing and getting stoned and the BW took her usual afternoon naps... floating in the Caribbean Sea, salt on my lips and toes in the sand, nothing but the sound of the water and the wind can be an excellent catalyst for thought... especially if one tries not to think about anything in particular... 

The bright side of these vacations is that for the most part they give a respite to the daily grind of non-stop nonsense... that down side is that it seemingly only took a few short hours before those routines, behaviors, whatever, came roaring back as if one had never left... some of those were welcomed back... the reading and writing, my beloved cats, the ritual of cleaning and putting a record on the turntable to listen to some tunes... the flip side (of that record) was all the other shit... and shit is probably the most apt term to apply to it... there really is no debating anymore the state of things around the old home these days, it's a business, nothing more nothing less, the whole "her money" thing was subsided somewhat put is still pulled out and bantered about and it seems someone is completely unaware of how it sounds (even when in an argument with her beloved first born son), the thought that this is some sort of partnership is laughable as it is clearly more an authoritarian hierarchy than joint venture... my job is personal assistant and i understand the duties and obligations of said profession which goes as follows... listen and nod, try to speak or add to the conversation as little as possible unless otherwise instructed, don't broach any subject that might be of interest to myself which the BW doesn't share as it will be met with a resounding disinterest while usually be told "i'm watching a show" on her phone or otherwise, no physical contact at all because one does not hug or touch their boss... this point was distinctly driven home on an a little e-bike trip where the guide was taking pictures of the crew and told the parents to give each other a kiss so he could take a picture, the actual shriek of "we don't do that!" was both belittling and embarrassing... either i'm incredibly repulsive or someone has no interest in me other than as a useful idiot to drive them around and act as something of an emotions support animal while they shop... i don't believe it's the former because other women don't seem to have that reaction but so be it... 

None of what has been described previously is a surprise or shock, it's been well documented here and i've understood it for a while... the difference now is that i accept it for what it is and live my life accordingly, i understand i have to put in a certain amount of hours "on the clock" but once those hours are over i get back to those things i enjoy doing and want to be doing, reading and writing being at the top the list... re-reading old stuff to re-work, actually starting the process of writing short pieces to put in the books and records i own so that someday when the boyos go through them they will be annoyed by all the pages that fall out only to realize their old man was leaving something behind, something i'd say far more valuable than money, glimpses of his life and what certain pieces of art meant to him... being a bit of a realist i know i'm on the downside of shit here, i ain't gonna live to be 110 so i need to get to work, typing out the things that matter, that i want to get done... and with any luck i'll get it done, it'll take a certain amount of discipline but it's not as if i'm incapable of such things... (just look at my religious like swimming regimen)... 

Every now and then something happens around here that brings a big fucking smile to my face... a few days before the trip is was Father's Day and while i'm not one to expect or want anything (other than maybe an afternoon of peace and quiet) i was surprised by my boy Disaster who on the Saturday before had called to ask if i had ever heard of this guy (he never mentioned what the guy did) and when i said i hadn't he said okay i was just wondering and that was it... the next day, he rolled down the steps and handed me a book that he had picked out... to say i was pleasantly surprised would be a massive understatement, as the BW would relay he did it all on his own, drove to the bookstore, wandered the aisles and found something he thought i'd like, funny thing is i had been told about this book while in Grenada by a woman with two teenage sons who said it was a great read, now i could say i'm not into self help books but what then is philosophy? and i've got enough Alan Watts on the shelf to start my own little bookstore, so when Disaster handed it to me i smiled and he asked if i had ever heard of it and i told him i actually had and wanted to read it... the smile on his face was priceless and while i have a stack of books to read as tall as i am i let this one jump the que... more coincidence, the book originally started as a blog... even more, it starts off talking about Bukowski and then Alan Watts in the first ten pages... yes right up my alley... and i'll admit it gives a fresh perspective on a perspective i sorta already have but it's interesting to see it from a different point of view... that said i dig the book and love it for the reasons laid out above... 

Disaster has always had to deal with the fact his brother takes up a lot of oxygen in the room and has damn near monopolized his mother's energy from the day he was born... the kid sorta flies under the radar except when it comes to his old man and his father has told him that he's well impressed with the human being he's becoming, he plays it close to the vest but he's an intelligent kid who is a lot more thoughtful, sensitive and emotionally intelligent than he let's on... yeah he doesn't go into 10,000 word rants like his brother about all his thoughts and feelings cuz that's not his nature and sometimes i explain to him it's good to talk about shit but the fact is he's a good kid with a good grasp on things... (and the kid reminds me of someone i know... i'll give the reader three guesses who that may be...)

As for the I-mac? that will most likely be a post in itself... i'm a concerned about where the oldest boyo is heading, he's got some major things to work out and unfortunately his mama is probably more of a detriment in that department than anyone would care to admit... she basically took a class online for him this summer in order to help him move towards a degree and it was well documented what i thought about the whole situation... as i explained to the BW it was not helping him and that if he doesn't do the fucking work than he needs to fail and suffer the consequences... one of the main points of the book Disaster bought me is about people actually taking responsibility for their lives and the things and problems in it and the I-mac is currently world champion level when it comes to blaming everything that goes wrong on someone or something else... his old man being ever the thinker sees that the boy is a bit lost and needs to figure out where to put his energy, not in the what "career" does he want but as in who do you want to be? what do you want to do? but the problem is the only way shit changes is if the person involved decides to consciously make that effort... 

Years ago most of my identity was tied up in being a basketball player, then an injury and some time to think made me walk away from the game (not totally but in the sense i was done playing in college as it just wasn't worth it anymore, wasn't enjoyable or beneficial to my grades and what not) which led me to having a bit of a mental breakdown? crisis? maybe both... the fact was i didn't know who i was cuz i'd been "a basketball player" my whole life... then i started reading... yes the usual white boy suburban nonsense like No One Here Gets Out Alive (i have a theory about white kids from working class suburbs taking acid and listening to The Doors but i digress) which in turn introduced other authors that piqued my interest which soon had me writing my own shitty poetry and painting my own horrible pictures and one could say ending up here in the blogsphere some decades later typing away into the ether... but the point is i took all the energy i used to have for hoops and directed into something else, the I-mac has seemed to have that same issue since he stopped playing the futbol, and since then he really doesn't seem to know who he is or what to do (and that's probably only just the tip of the iceberg as his ADHD and anxiety need to be addressed but i feel that also coincides with the other stuff), i know he doesn't feel good about himself as he's gained a large amount of weight and has stated at times he feels like a failure but as i've told him nothing changes until he decides to put his mind to changing shit... 

So here we are... mid July on what will be the new hottest summer on record and drifting through the days making the best of the hand that has been dealt while simultaneously doing the best i can to enjoy things, namely the writing and reading and lounging with felines (and i have to say World Cup though the Orange Shitgibbon and Crooked Gianni can get fucked) while doing my best to keep things running smoothly or as smoothly as possible, around the business known as my house (or more correctly the BW's house)... au revoir until the next post... whenever that may be... 

 

The Mushroom Diaries - thinking about my brother

 I lost my brother... no we weren't brothers by blood, we were brothers by soul and by mind and in saying that maybe were we brothers because we were lost souls trying to make sense of this fucking merry go round we just happen to be on... for those who've been around the lounge you might recognize the name Gulfboot Johnson or The Limey... the former his moniker and the latter given by me as a joke many moons ago... to say my head's been swimming since the Saturday (May 2) i got the news would be putting it mildly... i wasn't ready for my brother to go... though what i want really has fuck-all to do with how the universe operates but the fact was that over the last few months we had gotten back to our old selves, the way we once were, trading ideas and quick-wit and enjoying the way our minds worked when we were communicating with each other, be it in person, on the phone, in the modern day method of texting... in fact it was this last one that we had began to really enjoy, the ability to be able to be sit in our respective rooms on different continents and take our time as we thought about our responses, conversations that would extend off an on throughout the night... and there were still things i wanted to tell him, needed to tell him... 

And so as i'm apt to do i took a dose and sat in a dark room to think about my friend... to ponder our almost thirty years of friendship and the ups and downs that came along with it... it's difficult for a relationship spanning decades to avoid conflict or disagreements and Gulfboot and i butted heads on many an occasion for various reasons that all seem rather trivial now... i guess the beauty of it was that before he was gone we had gotten back to where we started... two brothers who loved each other unconditionally and had come, through years of experience one could say, to understand each other better... though the tough part for me is i realize i may have missed some things... and having missed those things i wish i could call my brother up and tell him how much i loved him one last time... 

It's been hard to write anything since he passed but there have been numerous conversations with his friends and family and the thing that hits home the most, that gets me every time i dare to think about, that makes my eyes well with tears, is the fact i may have missed just how much my friend loved me, how much he, in a way, looked up to me as this big brother, this male figure who accepted him for who and what he was, that he never really got in his life... to be clear he was a far superior writer than i, a talented  painter, managed to turn one of his manuscripts into a movie and is the reason i'm typing here at the lounge at all... he was the one who set this site up as i think he got tired of reading my long emails filled with stories, many of which now populate the back catalog of the lounge... but that's misleading... way back in those mid-aughts, the time when the "blog" was gonna make us all rich and famous writer types, Gulfboot had said the emails i had sent were too good to for just him to see and so he set this up, oddly enough I had no idea what a fucking blog was but almost twenty years later here we are... and what he really told me without saying it was that he believed in my ability to write... the one thing we both wanted to do... and honestly how precious is it to find someone who believes in your ability? yes some will say we have to believe in ourselves first and foremost but the truth is nothing bolsters the spirits more than the belief in those you respect in your chosen medium... it was his gift to me and in some ways i never realized it until he was gone... 

In speaking to his cousin, one our other friends and most importantly his ex-wife (the two were still friends and though the marriage had dissolved they still cared deeply for each other) i realized just how much i had meant to him and couldn't help but wonder if i hadn't failed in my holding up of my end of the friendship... thought it's really not as cut and dry as that... and if there is one thing the mushroom does it guides you, gets you to look at things from a different perspective and can lead to insights one may not have thought of otherwise... and taking all the things i'd learned from those conversations it did...

His cousin had gotten a hold of me through social media and then we connected on the phone... he said that i was one of the first people they tried to reach as they knew how important i had been to him... our old friend, now living down under, had said to me that he remembered way back when he had first met Gulfboot and how the first person he had ever heard about was this tall, ex-weed dealing Yank who was half nutter half sensitive lug... but it was his ex-wife who really had me thinking and made me go back to dwell on the things i may have missed... don't get me wrong, she had no idea as we were just talking about a person we both loved dearly and i was glad i got her to laugh a few times as her grief was fucking overwhelming but she gave me some insight into my brother that i may have missed or been too wrapped up in my own shit to see... so what did i learn.. 

The relationship that Gulfboot had with his father was a complicated one... on some levels they were very much alike, both highly intelligent, both strong-headed (see stubborn) with convictions and opinions that they defended and argued passionately... but there was a tension between the two and sitting in the dark and thinking back i realized just how much my friend just wanted his father to accept him for who he was which i understand completely... i was lucky, Pops let me be exactly who i wanted to be as he explained it wasn't his life it was mine... and i also understand how parents sometimes who want "what's best for their children" really mean they want their kid to do what they want and what they think is right for them while forgetting the kid has a say... that said i realized how much mental and at times physical abuse my friend had to endure, particularly the psychological part... on speaking with his Ex she told me how his mother had called her recently and asked for help, asked to talk to him about therapy to try and heal the wounds inflicted by his father... what stuck with me most was she talked about how much pain he was in, not so much in the physical aspect, but in the mental aspect, pain that stemmed i feel from never being truly accepted or really loved by his father... his old man always seemed to be ridiculing, criticizing, disparaging even when Gulfboot did something worthy of praise... fucking two books and a movie later you'd think he could at least get some respect but these wounds ran deeper than that, his father was a tradesman and i think a lot of what was hurled at my brother was aimed at his "manhood" so to speak, that he was soft and not tough or rough enough in his father's eyes, i know from our conversations over the years that there were physical altercations that took place and his old man was bigger and stronger and usually got the better of it but it was the psychological damage that really took its toll... 

Enter his friend, aka El Kono... when he met me i was this weed slinging hood who worked manual labor, and in some respects there were elements of his father and i that overlapped... i guess one could say i'm physically imposing in a sense, back then i was slinging boxes in warehouses, it kept me strong and in shape, i went home and became a criminal and ran a business where being physically bigger than most people helped my cause... when we began hanging out it didn't take long for us to become good friends though Gulfboot would say it was my first trip to England that really cemented what he thought of me... but in the beginning there was Bukowski and the Stone Roses, my love of the whole Madchester scene and my Anglophile bent on music, back before the internet one needed to be a real nerd to find this stuff and he was a bit taken aback by my love and knowledge of such, then when he saw my bookshelf he was stunned, built of stolen cinder blocks and lifted lumber there were two shelves dedicated to Bukowski, there was Burroughs and Celine and Orwell, there was Hunter Thompson and John Kennedy Toole... a veritable list of madmen and weirdos... what i came to realize is that, consciously or more likely subconsciously, i in some ways reminded him of his father... a laborer (albeit one whose real job was selling contraband), a rough around the edges hard partying maniac who seemed to have a somewhat intelligent head on his shoulders... the difference was that i accepted him for who he was, enjoyed who he was, even the parts that could be less than enjoyable at times and hence loved my friend unconditionally which is something he never got from his father... i realized in a way that i had somewhat supplanted the male acceptance he so longed for from his dad that he never got... which hurt cuz i know there was a stretch where our communication was sporadic and strained and i realized how that must have hurt him, how that feeling of rejection could have crept back in from the one guy who had always accepted and loved him for who he was... i won't say i was a father figure to him, more a big brother who in some respects he looked up to and who gave him what his father never did... 

Sitting there in the dark all these things were in my head and it was then that i opened the phone and looked back through our texts... and then one of those texts practically knocked me over, we were discussing the state of the world and the way we didn't understand certain aspects of it and he wrote this... "thank you for making me not feel alone in the world for the last thirty years..." i must have read it a dozen times... i repeatedly wiped the tears from my eyes... how is it that sometimes we miss what is right in front of us? how do we not realize how much someone might look to us for acceptance or approval or love? knowing what i know now, how he was doing his own research on his health and he understood that he was not long for this world, that he knew his time was shorter than he let any of us who loved him know, that in a way he was telling me how much i'd meant to him and maybe, just maybe, he was telling me goodbye... he was thanking me for my friendship, for the love, for the wonderful cosmic accident of meeting someone who thought and looked and felt about this madhouse in much the same way he did... there is part of me that is incredibly sad i didn't realize this sooner, though i did realize it but i just figured that's how shit was... and i think my friend understood that, it's one of the things he loved about his fucked up friend, his brother (me) didn't worry or analyze shit too much he just got on with it, he accepted and loved you for who you were and didn't worry about it, didn't worry if people told him his friend was a pain in the ass or out of hand, the big lug just loved him anyway... 

And what really struck me there in the dark was something that i had talked to him about before but didn't really grasp the root cause of ... as i've said Gulfboot was a ridiculously talented individual who did accomplish more than the average bear... yet he never seemed happy, sitting back and thinking about my friend i realize now, the antics and drinking and clowning were his defense mechanism, his shield to hide the pain he felt from a childhood, a lifetime, of being told he was a failure by one of the people he looked to, maybe the one he most looked to, for some semblance of approval and support... he seemed to always want to be famous and while i understand that's a popular dream among this particular type of primate known as the modern human i feel it had more to do with his father than anything else... if he somehow had achieved some sort of fame or notoriety for his art, or any of his other endeavors (like managing bands and such) that his old man would finally accept him, show him the love that he so longingly craved... and while i could go into the Freudian bullshit of how his father felt he was competing with his son for his wife's affections (Gulf was extremely close to his mum) there was obviously more layers to it than that... maybe it's as simple as some people just aren't built to be parents... and while there's nothing wrong with that the fact is those same people become parents and fuck up the poor kid who doesn't have a say in the matter and is stuck with someone who doesn't want to fulfill their obligation... 

I know in his passing i've thought about all this... i've thought about how Gulfboot looked at my father and i and saw the type of relationship he wished he had (though to be fair many of my friends over the years have spoken about the same thing) and about how we'd talk about our fathers, about the things passed on to me from mine, the wisdom of my life being mine and i had to live it the way i wanted regardless of what anyone else thought... it was the freedom my father gave me, the unconditional love that came with it, and while he wasn't saying go out and be a complete fuck-up what he was saying was go out and be a decent human and do what you want... it's something Gulfboot never got from his old man... and it's a fucking shame cuz his father missed out on an absolutely brilliant son... luckily his friend did not... and even in his passing my friend is helping me, teaching me, getting me to think about the relationship i have with my own sons and how i understand they both look to me for approval, for love, for knowledge... and i try, i fucking do, they're both different and while i worry about them both i worry about them in different ways... but that is for another time, what really matters is that i'm aware and think about it and think about how much damage a father can cause to his son... and so i try to do the best job i can... 

So what now? as the esteemed and wise Kid said the other day about the passing of Gulfboot, he's gonna write for all those who can write no more... that statement helped to shake me out of my stupor... helped me to realize that i need to do the same, hell maybe even send out some of these stories into the world, maybe sit down like Gulfboot and crank out the book that is already there, not for some long shot at fame or money but for my friend, for my friend who is gone and can't do it anymore, can't spin his weird and wonderful tales into the world and so in order to keep our little band of weirdos creating i'll do it... in a way it's the best way for me to honor the memory of my friend, of my brother... because though i may have lost sight of it he never did... so to Gulfboot, wherever you are, thank you for making me not feel alone for the last thirty years... i love you brother. 

(above painting by Gulfboot Johnson from l-r Kono, Gulfboot, Paddy... that Oasis song sung many moons again in the back alleys of North Oakland)

The Addict/Swim Club

 While sitting around the other day and pondering the ceiling it dawned on me that it's been awhile since i'd posted anything new here at the old lounge, these days i've been going back through the Veronica Chronicles and working them into a longer, singular piece... mind you not in any quick or efficient way but in my usual haphazard half-assed way but i'm getting there... i'll admit i'm not the fondest of going back through the stuff i've written and working on it, there are things i really like about it and things i absolutely loathe about it but the fact is it needs done... the stories on the lounge are pretty much first drafts ripped straight from the skull of a derelict houseboy known as the Big Hairy Carol Brady and since i've not really worked on the next Wilderness Years pieces (though i'm hopefully gonna crank out a bunch as the Big World Bank Machine days come into focus and start clamoring in my head to be written, in fact at times i have so much shit i want to write a strange paralysis sets in and i do fuck all but once again the guy with most likely undiagnosed ADHD has digressed...)

Having walked the fine line of the addict most of my life one must always be cognizant that the trouble with the straight and the narrow is it's easy to slip off to the side (as J. Spaceman once said)... but that's not necessarily true in my sense... having walked that line in my younger days of powder and pills i have no desire whatsoever to dabble in that shit anymore... in my youth there was much worry about my love of booze but the fact is i've never really loved booze, it was just the most readily available and hence easiest way to get fucked up... fact is i don't have the stamina to be an alcoholic, never have and also realized how the older i got the worse the hangover and the less i felt like dealing with it so the booze was effectively sidelined to the point i rarely drink and when i do i rarely drink more than 2-3 beers tops... of course there is the cannabis and the psilocybin but that's medicinal, nudge nudge wink wink... 

So what happens when one with a personality prone to what the shrinks call addiction decides to clean up his act? one of my favorite musicians for the last thirty odd years is one Jeff Tweedy, the man behind Wilco, a founding member of Uncle Tupelo, a brilliant solo artist and a one time addict who wrote a great book about his life... in the book he talks about his struggles with certain substances and how once he kicked those he replaced it with something else... in Jeff's case it was running and so when Jeff wanted to occupy his time and keep his mind off the shit he used to do he'd go for a run... which in turn became his new addiction... in fact he ran so much that he ended up with stress fractures in both feet... which brings us to our (anti) hero here... 

As has been well documented, in 2018 after the night of the living back spasm, i remembered what my old doctor said when i was a kid battling scoliosis and how swimming was absolutely great for the back not to mention the whole body as well, add in the fact the aging ex-athlete with not only a shit back but creaky knees and some wonky ankles (the ankles mostly due to my bouts with gout in my booze guzzling past) and i made the decision to start swimming in order to take care of not only the back but the whole body... little did i know how fucking wonderful it would be for my mind as well but it is and being in the pool has become my zen moment... thinking back to where i started and where i am sorta blows my mind... in the beginning it was swim 25yds and take a break (which is one length) then it became swim 50yds and take a break (one lap), these days the first set is usually 500yds, sometimes 800, sometimes 1000 and sometimes i just don't stop at all... i've now gone over a mile without stopping and while i'm not setting any records i'm exactly dog-paddling my way to that mile either... so i'm doing  good (for a guy my age) for the mind and the body... sorta... 

Lying in bed on fine evening i noticed that the inside of my right ankle, particularly the ball of the ankle was extremely sore... of course the first reaction of the aging stoner is... i'm dying... but alas i was not and since the world is at my fingertips i searched up what could cause this feeling and when getting more specific in my search meaning, can swimming cause pain on the inside of the ankle guess what came up? while yes in fact it can! a condition usually caused by improper form of locking the ankle (which i'm guilty of at times) and overuse (also guilty)... or in my case maybe both... so what's a guy to do? well keep fucking swimming that's what... though i have now made a concerted effort to work on my form, vary my strokes more and for the time being dial back the long swims in order to maintain while rehabbing the ankle while not entirely giving up the activity i love to do most... so while my new favorite addictions are super smoothies (fucking hell i love those things) and swimming, they are not without risks... albeit a little better for me than what i was so fond of in the past... which brings me back to swim club... 

Lest we forget the first rule of Swim Club is we don't talk about Swim Club... though it's been some time since i wrote about Swim Club as we can see from above i'm still at it, for better or worse, the back being (sorta) better and the ankle, shoulder and neck being somewhat worse... i suck at breathing to my left so i tend to only breath to my right so i get a fucking kink in my damn neck when i go overboard which lately seems to be every time i'm in the pool, hence dialing it back a little while trying to rest and not rest at the same time while working on the aforementioned form to varying degrees of results... meaning my ankle still fucking hurts...

These days it appears i've graduated to "real" swimmer though i most definitely am not but i have had people ask me for advice on things pertaining to swimming which i try and help with but then freely admit i'm a half-ass swimmer who is really an ex-basketball player who can't run anymore... but hey i guess it's nice to be recognized as someone who looks like they might know shit when the reality is i know jack shit... of course Swim Club is really about my fellow swimmers and there is a core group of us who are always there... a new one is an elderly woman with the most amazing ice blue eyes i've ever seen, she's the sweetest lady and always says hello and asked me for advice on her car the other day to which i told her i'm pretty useless in that department... needless to say she's in her 70s and in fantastic shape much like this other guy who when he told me he was turning 70 i couldn't believe it... i thought he was a few years older than me but 15? no fucking way... so barring me doing fucking more damage to myself i'm gonna keep this shit up... 

And while this post is more to let the masses (or handful of readers) know i haven't been hauled in for my views by the new brown shirts here in Dumbfuckistan i'd be remiss if i didn't mention Patrick Bateman... if we recall Bateman had all the makings of a top notch weirdo and reminded me of the main character (played by Christian Bale) in the movie American Psycho... to probably no ones surprise Bateman and i are boys... he struck up a conversation one day and since them i am one of the rare people Bateman talks to... we bullshit about sports and music and i have to admit i like Bateman, he's a peculiar dude but once you get through the icy weirdness he's actually alright... he's actually come in and told me he's checked out some of the bands i've mentioned and tells me the ones he liked... even funnier was the day he hopped in the lane next to me and said, i was just thinking about you the other day, he then paused and said, that sounded weird but then explained that he was in a coffeeshop when he heard a Father John Misty song and realized it was the guy i had gone to see and had talked about, i then asked how he liked and he said it was pretty good and had checked out more on his streaming service... once again it's the old don't judge a book by it's cover theory... though i don't think i'll be stopping by his place for beers as there is still this part of me that sees that scene where Bateman talks about the new Huey Lewis record while donning a raincoat and grabbing an axe... the first rule of Swim Club is... 

XIX

 What the fuck am i doing here? what exactly is this nonsense i've been prattling on about for fucking nineteen years? was it a lark? was it a (not so) interesting experiment into the dribbling and droolings of this lumpen-prole who over the last nineteen years has bobbed and weaved his way through the dirty and dark back alleys of the interwebs? what kind of lonely shut-in works at something for nineteen years for no other reason because they want to? or need to? for no pay? understanding that said shut-in has never understood the game, never liked rules or authority, can't seem to get through one fucking story in a proper lit mag without wanting to vomit, the MFAs all writing like fucking MFAs, which to this uncultured and unrefined now aging man is dull and boring, there are some things that my old mentor Buk instilled in me that have stuck even as his influence has faded but one of them is just that.... those trained in poesy and prose tend to taste like vanilla ice cream or Wonder Bread... meaning there is no taste, can't even call it substance or style as it seems to lack both... now one could argue that this is just the bitter ramblings of a failed writer which could be valid if this writer (or whatever i am) gave two shits about such things as failure but maybe it's my slight and undiagnosed ADHD that keeps me moving, which hampers my ability to go backwards with any sort of consistency in order to rework and reshape things into a palatable form for the public at large... then again fuck the public at large as i'm not much interested in them either... in fact the contrarian in me would most likely feel shame if i somehow managed to produce something widely accepted and approved of by the wider reading audience (whatever the hell that may be i have no idea as in order to have an audience like that these days i'd have to read blurbs on Tik Tok to get anyone's attention)... is it nothing more than a divine stubbornness and antisocial tendencies that have me constantly waving the flying V into the wind, at passersby, at the soccer moms and golfing dads of a strange and foreign suburban world that i currently inhabit... 

Nineteen years in and still pissing joyously into a stiff wind while watching the remnants of a once civilized world smolder around me... started in the year of our Dude Aught Seven the lounge hasn't received so much as a new coat of paint, like that favorite dive bar of mine it's been horribly consistent with layout and design while being horribly inconsistent with quality and quantity... but that's fucking life now innit? the ebb and flow of things and the working out of that dreaded "process", and in those nineteen years what happened? oddly enough i'm better shape and dare i say healthier than when this shit started, having navigated various substances (some better than others) and come out the other side squarely on the shoulders of plant medicine as they say, the drinking curbed, the pills and powders put away for good, an addiction to swimming and super-smoothies my new found favorite vices... and all of it documented for the world to see if they could ever find the clandestine entrance to this sad, old lounge... the I-mac was just over six months old when this project started, he'll be twenty in July, Disaster would come along two and a half years in, he just got his license yesterday, i'd say good bye to six of my best friends known as my cats (Sylvia, Pablo, Louie, Claudia, Sydney and Pedro) as well one hamster (Waffles), i'd ride shotgun with my father as he stared down the void, spend a month in my old hometown and drink a Guinness on my back porch on that spring afternoon when word came down that my father was gone... even though i knew that he was gone physically a large part of him lived on in that wayward and once wild son of his... i'd make friends and lose friends both figuratively and literally, losing two this year to suicide, reconnecting with old ones because of those losses... i'd piss and moan about a domestic plight that isn't exactly the most loving or caring but still find myself living in a cave and coming to terms with things, basically understanding that shit ain't gonna be perfect so i do the best i can by being kind and empathetic and self contained... maybe i'm just trying to be a more decent human being in the face of a society that increasingly places little value on being such a thing... and of course there is the ever present state of the nation... 

When i hit post for the first time all those years ago i thought, naively, that i was in the midst of the dumbest man ever to ascend to the throne, Dubya... fucking hell, how is it one could pine for the good old days of this blithering idiot? obviously the answer is find what may be the most horrible excuse for a human, a grown toddler in a full diaper and budding dementia to go along with being a raging narcissist and a pathological liar... and not only did he get "elected" (i use that term loosely on both occasions) once but the fine fucking racist, homophobic, misogynist shitbags of this shithole country rocketing towards the bottom of humanity felt it appropriate to elect this fucking monstrosity twice... as Bill Hicks said, we are a virus with shoes, particularly the species known as Americanus Horibblus Dumbfuckis... of which roughly 35% of this place is inhabited by (give or take) but which yell the loudest and have worked tirelessly to rig the game in the name of whiteness... these lowest common denominators can be seen wearing "swag" from said monstrosity and often smell of nicotine and Aqua Net with a predilection for gun stickers on their automobiles and are most frequently found inhabiting the parking lots of Wal-Marts and Sam's Clubs since that Costco place is too fucking woke... yes i live in a place that now openly scoffs at things like learning... reading, critical thinking, being able to debate without screaming, kindness, empathy, basic human decency and minding your own fucking business about who people love or like to fuck is now anathema to the AHD knuckeldragging set...  a group that hates trees, renewable energy, rainbows, common sense and most of all anyone who doesn't look like them (meaning white) while at the same time loving fossil fuels, christian nationalism, politicians who wear makeup and last but not least, their shiny metal phallus known as guns... (mainly to make up for their lack of masculinity due to MPS aka micropenis syndrome)... it's a fucking shit show if ever there was and now we have a dear leader and a cabal of jackasses giving us the Big Brother treatment, don't believe your eyes and ears but only what dear leader and his minions tell you... of course this all started with that shitbag Ronnie and this guy Milty and his "neoliberal economic theory" meaning the top 1%  reap the benefits of corporate guvment welfare while us commoners can suck a sweaty fat dick from the back all while being told how lucky we are to live in such a loving capitalist "democracy" where all one has to do is pull themselves up with those bootstraps to be "successful"... that is of course if one can afford the fucking boots... and be advised, don't mention that S world or you may need a hazmat suit from all the fucking magat type heads bursting... and don't try to explain that the highway system, public libraries, fucking sidewalks, Social Security, regulatory bodies (that used) to keep the air and water somewhat livable all fall under that word cuz then you're just some freeloading commie pig who needs to get the fuck out... yes all very rational from a crowd that is the Dunning Kruger personified so no use wasting time trying to logically argue with them, they ain't big on that logic shit... 

So happy 19th to the lounge... can't say we're in a better place than when we started this exercise but hell? how many "bloggers" are still doing this shit who started way back when? i remember when there were "blogging conferences" and shit like that and every would be genius was hoping to parlay this platform into some sort of monetary success and fame type shit (Diablo Cody anyone?) while some of us or maybe just this sad bastard, have done it for no other reason than i'm fucking lazy and it's convenient? fuck if i know, i just like typing stories and my warped philosophical ramblings... who knows, if the inteweb survives the lounge may be the gospel to some demented tribe of weirdos who survive the apocalypse ala Will Self's Book of Dave... most likely not but dad-gummit this here is Merica and we gotta have fucking ambition right? here's to another year, maybe if this fucking place doesn't do itself in or i get snatched up by the fuckwads at the local protest we'll make the big Two Zero... but honestly looking at the state of things that's a big fucking if... so for those who still stop in and read this shit, thank you... it's cool to know some people actually dig this shit and this shut-in for one appreciates it... now i gotta get to the pool so i can have my smoothie... au revoir til the next time... (the lounge was launched Jan. 16, 2007)

Maybe the Kids are Alright

 Every so often i stumble upon something that somewhat restores my ever-dwindling faith in humanity, granted these days the credits far outpace the debits when it comes to this account but i try to remember while the world is chock full of raging shitbags there is also a place for beauty, for art, for people putting their head down and creating whatever it may be, music, short stories, paintings, clothing or food, or maybe like The Man aka The Father, the nameless protagonist in McCarthy's The Road i'm still trying to see some good in a world run amok, a horror show bought and paid for by a system hellbent on destroying the planet, the people and anything else it can get it's hands on all in the name of the almighty dollar... which brings me to a band that i recently stumbled upon though i had been reading about them in the various indie-hipster web sites i so often peruse but for some reason i never got around to checking them out... until i did... and then i was fucking sold, full on, by what one music writer described at the first great band from those kids known as Gen Z, a guitar band in a world that wasn't supposed to give a shit about guitar bands, some twentysomethings who grew up friends in Brooklyn, actual New Yorkers and not transplants... (in my younger days having sold weed to about half the musicians in the Burgh all the talk was always about "moving to New York"...) the band is Geese and the record Getting Killed and in my opinion it's the best fucking "rock" record i've heard in a decade? yeah i think it's that good... 

Being the quintessential music (and book) nerd i immediately dove into my research on the band to see what the deal was and what i saw i liked... the most interesting observation from a certain music writer was the fact the band has come up organically, not manufactured or put together but a group of high school friends who started playing together and put out a record right about the time they graduated from high school... in a world that doesn't give new bands much opportunity, they need a hit or some internet generated buzz or whatnot here we have a band that went out and played shows and kept practicing and studying the influences and absorbing them into their music while making something distinctly their own culminating in the latest record which as stated is fucking brilliant... yeah one may not like singer/guitarist Cameron Winter's voice but Mr. Zimmerman wasn't exactly the most melodious crooner either, but they both knew what they were working with and understand how to get the desired effects out of it and the truth is the more i listen to Geese the more i dig the vocals... it's also been pointed out that young Cameron is a bit like Dylan in the fact he seems to get bored quickly with arrangements and likes to change things up live... how can one not like that? the kid ain't worried about playing it perfect he's interested in playing it interesting... 

Being old and jaded i often have to remind myself not to scoff at what the kids are doing, to not be the old guy in white knee high compression socks screaming get off my fucking lawn! and remember that it's every generations right to interpret the world how it sees fit and what not... but this band, and Cameron Winter in particular, don't seem to be all that interested in the shit their brethren are down with... they're making music and playing shows and all the itinerant bullshit that goes along with it seems more of a hassle whereas there are many "bands" out there more into the fame than the art, these kids are the opposite... Mr. Winter seldom gives interviews, likes to toss in fake backstories while also being blatantly honest about shit... he doesn't hide the fact he's not some poor kid from a Yugoslavian ghetto (to paraphrase him) but a guy who grew up comfortably in a nice neighborhood in Brooklyn with a composer father and a mother whose claim to fame is writing a piece about how opening up her marriage was the best thing she ever did... he's wise enough to add that he understands that comfort and security has given him the license to take risks that some might not be able to afford to take and he's cognizant he has a bit of a safety net... instead of ridicule i give him credit for being self aware enough and honest enough not to toss out some bullshit (though as stated he'll toss in lies in interviews due to his disdain for the hype machine which also reminds me of one Bobby Zimmerman)... 

What i like even more is the fact Mr. Winter here takes risks... he put out a solo record at the end of last year, something a bit different than what his band was doing and he stated that when he showed it to certain people the response was usually negative, people wondering if he should really put it out, he did anyway saying that he felt he needed to because if he didn't when he looked back in 20 years he'd regret not putting it out there... the kid has confidence... and he should... in my opinion the record is fucking excellent but what i find more intriguing is watching an artist come into his own... i bought all three Geese records and while the first two are good they're nowhere near the third (or his solo record which is also fantastic) but one can see the progression, the learning, the digesting of influences and how to take those and create something of your own, it's interesting to see someone who the evidence says is on a hot streak, in a moment of very fertile creativity and to watch how it progresses... yes there will be some misses and it's brilliant to see a guy and a band who don't seem all that worried about failing but all signs point to this group being something special, for lack of a better term, the band as a whole are all excellent musicians who are open to experimentation which is refreshing in world where artists are more worried about pushing product than creating something of substance while worrying about the "market"... 

What's more while Winter seems to be the savant so to speak behind the band, the main songwriter and lyricist, they have a secret weapon, much like my beloved Protomartyr and guitarist Greg Ahee, Geese have a brilliant guitarist in Emily Green, a trans-woman who lays down incredibly gorgeous and melodic guitar lines while also being the rarity, a female lead guitarist in a field dominated by men... i also dig the fact that Winter is tall, 6'3 or so which leads to an unusual stage presence... my rather unscientific research has often had me marveling at the fact most of the bands i've enjoyed have been fronted by guys who aren't that tall, which brought me to the theory that shorter guys started bands as a way to get girls... and there is no scientific evidence of it other than i know of very few taller front men (Eric Bachman of Arhers of Loaf/ Crooked Fingers being one of the few)... toss in the fact they got a hot-shit drummer (the most important part of any good band in my humble opinion) and an excellent bass player and what one has is the makings of a great fucking band... as long as they can hold it together and i'm really hoping they can... 

So this band of Gen Z kids gets the stamp of approval from this Gen X guy... in a world that's increasingly manufactured and bordering on AI generated slop it's refreshing to see a young band emerge from the garage, digesting the influences of the past and making something new and different out of it, no one in any artistic discipline is really reinventing the wheel these days but i admire those who put time and effort into their craft, who work and create because it's what they want to do, not out of some dream of riches and fame but out of that need to create something and share it, fucking hell we all know that's a pretty thankless endeavor so here's to these kids and where they go from here... now if they could only tour and play that lovely place so i can ride trains and eat boomers...