Thoughts for the day

Seriously, my life is not this screwed up or depressing as what follows, actually it's quite joyful most of the time and I get many things done... although I struggle sometimes with why I'm here and what I'm doing and whether I'm using all my limited minutes wisely enough...

It’s like a crazy dream or nightmare – every day I’m hit with a thousand different ideas from money making schemes to story plots to new websites I must visit to ways to finance that someday trip to Europe to teaching moments with kids to new bands and new books... I can’t take it sometimes, the constant beating of my brain into a bank-account checking, survivor-focused gummy type solution, all tin residue in my mouth from the gunpowder of millions of misfired brain cells, al the contriving of fantastic plans at work only to see them flush into the mental ether when the office parks, green hills and million dollar homes suck past on the drive home to be suddenly awash in children, beautiful children yet so needy, the kid-naps into their worlds and tears and frustrations and giggles and “look, dads” and vocabulary assignments and ridiculous math sentences crafted to entice but fated to create a 7-year-old terrorist armed with a late night meltdown... It’s like the same crappy practical joke and I go to bed too tired to even be properly depressed about it, with some vague notion that what I didn’t tackle today I’ll get to tomorrow, leading up to my final act of setting some ungodly early alarm on my cell and praying – why? — it will actually wake me up…

Click click

This is crazy. I need another hobby like I need another hernia. Like I don't have enough to do.

A couple weeks ago, I went onto Flickr to find Creative Commons works for a brochure (to use with attribution to the artist). I had never spent much time on the site, and I was blown away--not so much by the quality of photographs, but by the size and depth of the shooting community, the camera comparisons, the ability to see which camera and which settings were used for so many shots, the comments, the ability to control rights, blah blah blah and etcetera.

I was hooked. I wrote down the names of cameras I was interested in, that I might be able to afford. I didn't actually think I'd buy one... I had way too much Christmas shopping to do.

Then I went to Circuit City's going away party in Concord, looked inside a lonely glass case, and saw the Nikon I had researched only a few days before--for neary $300 less than its normal retail.

Mind you I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with this thing, or with Photoshop for that matter. It doesn't matter. I'm printing out free guides from friends and the Internet. And already I have nicer photos of my family than I ever had before. If I could just squeeze some non-working time out of the daylight... if if if...

"Already dumb"

I read something like Already Dead and wonder about the limits of my own imagination. Denis Johnson besides being deliciously poetic captures the interiors of multiple charaters without ever being duplicitive or cliche.

On the one hand it's inspirational. On the other, I look at my own writing and the complete life and death struggle that goes on just creating Scene, and I want to cry.

At least I'm enjoying a great read.

Knife Rider

I'd promised, but I really didn't want to go ice skating. It's a rotten business. I last went years ago and nearly died. I'm tall with weak ankles and have trouble keeping my feet on top of what are essentially knives turned sideways. Plus the slip-sliding part and the ice being hard part ... it all sort of makes my tailbone want to hide inside my colon.

But when they opened up the yearly ice rink as they do each holiday season, I was stuck. If you break a promise to a kid you lose respect, and when you lose respect you lose everything. That's my thinking. So if not losing everything meant I had to ride on knives, so be it.

The kids and I started out by clutching the wall, then letting go and slowly getting better, each in our own way. Joey became Brian Boitano on crack. Tanner employed what she called "the bicycle method," and stopped hollering for me every fiften seconds to save her. I scritched, jiggled and flailed, but my tailbone did not go down.

I began to sweat. I took off my jacket and let November raise the hairs on my skin. I hummed along to Christmas tunes. I guess I bounced a little.

Rounding a curve, an arm reached over the wall and grabbed at me. Momentary panic -- I couldn't fall, not now! -- turned and saw a co-worker from one of my 37 different jobs. I once helped her out with some online flyers. "Hey!" We smiled and hugged. I felt a warm kiss on my cheek.

We chatted a little. Then I pardoned myself and went on skating. Because I hate ice skating, you see. Can't stand it.

...

Toss out this model and find me a substitute
It doesn't work for me
Its functions are limited, like my body
its scale is uneven, unbalanced
like my temperament
it's portrayal of reality is inaccurate and ugly
like my thoughts.
It's a poor enunciation of my hopes and dreams.
In fact
just forget the whole thing
and get me
a cupcake

Regret

When I’m close to operating at maximum bandwidth, my mind contracts, and I go straight for the TV. It really is heroin for the brain and I can’t help but succumb. I go and go and go and then I drop and allow all the cynicism of the Daily Show and Family Guy and the violence and cynicism of sporting events to take over.

This duality seems to be my fate. I've been unable to escape it, even though I know I should by reading more, or meditating more, or just watching the wind push around the trees. And the days fly past, I mean really fly. Kids grow. My stomach grows.

Something’s gotta give. Just hope it’s not a stroke, at least not yet. I was actually thinking about it before I went to sleep last night. Man, that would just screw up everything.

Happy Thought For The Day!

This is a beat up world. The world is getting beat up. It’s a bad world, though.

-Joey, 7

Sucking is good for you

I'm not the rabid Ira Glass fan, but what he says here on the creative process is pretty dead on ... and makes me more comfortable about sucking so badly.

RIP

My father is my greatest hero, not so much for what he achieved, but particularly for what he surmounted late in life. He was tough, unflinchingly honest, and sensitive -- and always my biggest fan.

The closest I ever came to idolizing any other man was Paul Newman, who happened to be born in the same year as my father.

What I learned from Newman's movies, and later, from what I read about the artist himself, was no less than how to be a man. From his philanthropy and playing against his looks to the gutsy, unforgettable roles in Hud, The Hustler, Butch Cassidy, Slap Shot, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and my favorite (and that of many guys I know), Cool Land Luke.

Even though I've known this day was coming, I still feel like a baby. A world without Paul Newman is just weird.

Shameless

Republicans aren't stupid, but compared to Democrats, they have a better idea of how stupid Americans are. Too often, we prove them right.

I hope this isn't one of those times.

...

Nowadays, when I move my head too fast, I get dizzy. I discovered this while playing with my 18-month-old son, Sonny. What I do is I turn my head in big circles and “snap” it into a funny face pointed directly at him, which always makes him smile. After I do this a few times, my eyeballs start feeling like they’ve detached from whatever fleshy goo holds them in place.

It makes me sad that my body doesn’t hold itself together like it used to. I feel like I should start riding roller coasters, or surf, or run – something – to get my body tight again. It’s the only way, right? I can’t just take a crescent wrench and turn every loose nut, like I did with my green Schwinn with the flatback rear tire that I Evil Knieveled over sidewalk squares a long time ago.

But sometimes it seems no matter how much body maintenance I do – and I’ve done a fair share – Sonny, or his children or his children’s children, will eventually find me one day in the back corner of the garage covered in cobwebs and rust, and they will try to climb on and discover some unknown, disgustingly sticky substance, or some part will fall off. I’ll be useless, or just not useful enough, and they’ll be disappointed and leave me in some dark, dank place where the pace of my deterioration will be left unfettered, until no one can stand the sight of me. The image won’t wash with the person they knew. It will actually be painful for them.

Then, in my final moments, as they’ve gathered around some technological feat of a hospital bed that hasn’t yet been built, I’ll snap my head and make that same old funny face -- but this time with big, yellowy, darkness-encroaching eyeballs and a mouthful of nubbed and missing teeth. It may not be my choice, but I may even expel loudly a load of auburn-tinted diarrhea smelling of dead cat, just for extra impact.

The reaction will be my joy. The horror on their faces, the running around to plug my holes, the frantic search for the nurse button. Someone may barf. Or, on the other hand, they may just laugh. Either way, it'll be sweet.

And I’ll close my eyes, apologize, and promise never to do it again.

'They were just there to make us look as ninja as possible'

I don't have the time to really put this into personal context.... just imagine me and an unnamed friend in this photo, and replace any altrustic excuses in story linked below with police discovering certain substances in our car as well as a video documenting the depths of our stupidity.

Video here and story here.

Q: What are you doing with weapons?

A: Those weapons, they were just there for show. They were just there to make us look as ninja as possible.

Lessons...

Joey and I are listening to some of my favorite tunes on YouTube. Joey loves punk rock. To mix it up a little, I play “Straight To Hell,” a menacing yet slower tune than what we had been listening to.

“This isn’t punk,” Joey tells me.

“What are you talking about?” I say. “Of course it is.”

“No, it’s not!”

“What’s punk, then?”

“You know."

Joey immediately flails his entire body like only Joey can, like linked, snapping wires -- like those tiny plastic dolls that when you push the bottoms their limbs collapse and fling back into place, except Joey does over and over again and in a blur, convulsing and contorting… I see a foot here and a butt there and I swear a hand almost touches the ceiling despite the fact he just turned seven and does not yet reach four feet. This entire display lasts but three seconds, whereupon I decide that my son is the King, no-- the POPE of this particular kind of physical madness that falls one step short of epilepsy and a trip to the emergency room.

I’m so enthralled I’ve completely forgotten his point. But he hasn’t.

“THAT’S punk, Dad," he says.

...

Why, yes... Yes it is. Good boy, Joey.

F.U. to arrogant so-and-so's everywhere

Six months or so after my first iPod committed suicide, my wife got me a new iPod Nano (as some sort of make-up present for neglecting the dishes) and it’s simply awesome.

Watching Metalocalypse cartoons at lunch is bomb-riffic. But the best thing is that I’ve rediscovered podcasts, including the jazz, poetry and fiction ones I can listen to while driving (always with one earplug) or during non-demanding periods at work.

Yesterday I came across two stories. One was about Steve Almond, a short story/essayist who recently came out with “My Year as a Poet,” about his failed attempts at poetry. It’s pretty funny. However, I was a little saddened to hear Almond gave up his awful poetry after a more established poet, who Almond won’t name, told him that, well, he wasn’t really a poet.

Almond thanks this guy, quits his folly, and seems much better and happier for it. Good for him. I, on the other hand, am left somewhat shocked and disgusted. Who the f&%$ does this other poet think he is???

I’m all for someone’s ability to criticize my work, even if they have no talent whatsoever. That’s part of the craziness that is America. But who is anybody to tell Almond – as bad of a poet as he may be – is not a real poet? If you set about writing poems as your main “thing” in life, and you write and perform poem after poem, you are a poet regardless of your talent level, which is entirely subjective – even if you poems are so horrible they trigger mass suicides.

I mean, the arrogance!

Man, I was pissed off. I’m getting pissed off just thinking about it again.

But then I heard a story that made me chuckle at the self-importance of entire literary industry construct (a construct, which, I admit, I have had little to no dealings with, save for a handful of rejection letters).

Let me say right off that “The Lace Reader” by Brunonia Barry is a book I’ll probably never read. It’s apparently about women who can “read the future from a pattern of lace.” I might read it, I don’t know. But the subject doesn’t really appeal to me.

The beauty of this book is that it was initially self-published – on unbound sheets of paper – and passed around at a series of book clubs long before the plus-$2 million publishing deal came around.

Rare, perhaps. Still, for circumcising the entire we-bestow-book-deal-upon-Thee-ishness that makes or breaks writers (real writers and "not really writers"), Brav-O, Ms. Barry.

Why I don't do math

I was looking up the word "catenary" for work and I see this:


..and I think to myself, thank God I learned to write.

I remember being about 7 or 8 and finding some old book on calculus in my parents' bookshelves. I thought, "I'm going to read this book and go right to college. Everyone's going to be so impressed!"

Then I saw stuff like the "thing" above. And I thought, there's no way. My mind isn't built like that.

I'm a curious person if nothing else, but my brain actually seizes when I see mathematical formulas of even mild complexity. I still think people who do those things are somehow alien life forms.

Pieces

Can we please stop?

Now what?

Just stop.

The car skids and leans sharply on the Twinkie-soft embankment. I can't catch the notebook. It slides across the dash, slaps off the passenger window, and lands on Candice’s lap.

Hell, I would have opened it, too.

Ka-blooey.

Always a great quote from this pisser

Johnny Lydon, interviewed in '87 while drinking beer for breakfast (which is one of my favorite treats, by the way):

Q: One last question. What do you think of Deep Purple?

Lydon: Nothing. My mind is a blank. (laughs) Why, are they big here?

Q: Yes.

Lydon: Oh, how pathetic. I thought we buried that lot years ago. Ah well. Bad habits die hard.

Off to work we go

No, we don't just regurgitate cracked-out reality TV stars on this blog. Here's a fuzzy view of the monkeys streaming in from Pittsburg at 4-something in the morning--and at 4-something a gallon. You can almost smell their deodorant and taste the protein bars still stuck to their teeth. At least I can. I know, that's gross.

I'm losing my marbles

Verne Troyer sues over sex tape. World jolted by news, loses collective breakfast. Sewers clog, panic ensures, society collapses, Earth implodes. *Poof*

Hey, at least one freaky midget/dwarf/little person/weeble is getting some, as well he should. I wonder if he did it in his electric cart and peed on a flower pot afterward. Cuz if he did, like, he would so be the "mack."

Rock!

It happened.

Eleven years later, Kung Fu Grip returned to the scene of the crimes (of which there were many) and ripped it up.

We rocked. We sucked. We were loud. Every band we played with was better than us, but we still felt like kings.

I saw people who were KIDS when I last saw them, now grown up, and playing in their own bands. They said we were the shit. I admit, that felt gooooood.

There were no kids, no wife, and no money. For a week, I lived off Lone Star Beer and V8s. Check out the pint of whisky in my back pocket.

There's not a lot I can write about it, except I love Brent, Tom and Pete like brothers, and I never even realized it. There's something to be said about music, punk rock, friends, alcohol and freedom, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.

I'll regret a lot of things on my deathbed, I'm sure. This ain't one of 'em.

O Superman

O superman. o judge. o mom and dad. mom and dad. o superman. o judge. o mom and dad. mom and dad. hi. Im not home right now. but if you want to leave a message, just start talking at the sound
E tone. hello? this is your mother. are you there? are you coming home? hello? is anybody home? well, you dont know me, but I know you. and Ive got a message to give to you. here come the plan
O you better get ready. ready to go. you can come as you are, but pay as you go. pay as you go. and I said: ok. who is this really? and the voice said: this is the hand, the hand that takes. thi
The hand, the hand that takes. this is the hand, the hand that takes. here come the planes. theyre american planes. made in america. smoking or non-smoking? and the voice said: neither snow nor
Nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. cause when love is gone, theres always justice. and when justive is gone, theres always forc
D when force is gone, theres
Always mom. hi mom! so hold me, mom, in your long arms. so hold me, mom, in your long arms. in your automatic arms. your electronic arms. in your arms. so hold me, mom, in your long arms. your
Chemical arms. your military arms. in your electronic arms.

Brent & Pete, Art Studio, Beaumont, TX 4/19/08

Brent & Pete, Art Studio

Cousin Phelpy

Scrabble Robot

Bathroom, Vortex, Beaumont

Tommy, Port Neches, TX

KFG, 2008. (I'm hiding)

Drinkin' at Lola's, Houston

Lone Star Beer Diet, lost 15 pounds!

Brent, trying to remember his own lyrics...

No country for old men...

...totally country for snakes, though

El Rio Grande

San Antonio

Whistle Stop Art Studio, Santa Barbara

You can see it from the station. Cool building. Reminds me of where I'm going...

Micro packer

11-day trip, and this is all I carry. I'm pretty fuckin' proud of myself. Includes 3 sets of clothes, laptop, various pills, towel, food, vitamins, water bottle 3/4 full of Seagrams, and first season of Starsky & Hutch. I am sooo hyphy I could pee myself.

View from a Window on a Train

Ahh

Congress Hotel, Tucson

Drinkin Red Stripe ... yeah, I know these pictures are totally out of order...

Sittin' on the Embarcadero

Eastbound and down...

Henry on DJ'ing

watch video

Disclosure: I like some DJ-ing. I think DJ-ing is an art.

Yet I'm closer to Henry's view on the matter.

Working too damn much

...but making good money.

Actually, the money hasn't been that great until now. I got my first real copywriting gig, and I think I charged too low, but the end result is it's more money per hour than I've ever made in my life.

Last year I went bananas reading all these self-help, motivational books and starting planning what I wanted to do financially with my life. It's nice to see things not so much coming together, but getting better, and habits forming that mean something.

The goal was always working for myself, personally controlling how and when I worked, and spending quality time with my family and friends. Lately it's just been WORK... but I'm starting to see some light at the end of the flashlight.

Today, for instance. I could afford to wake up and drink a beer for breakfast. Just one beer, because I don't have to think too much today. I can't tell you how good it feels, day or night, to be in the shower with hot steaming water engulfing your skin and the cold, hoppy goodness of a Lagunitas IPA sliding down your throat, generating a warmish glow in a very chi-ish place.

No. I couldn't begin to tell you.

What's up...

Damn what a holiday season. Six birthdays in the immediate family, Xmas and New Year's all in one month. Nintendo DS's for three kids. I'm a broke ass mutha.

Got sick with one of my vintage Coughs From Hell. Still don't think I've buried it yet.

The band's getting back together. Bought a new guitar and amp, heading to Texas in April. Maybe getting a band together here. Learning old songs, writing new ones, getting my musical chops back... however shitty they were to begin with. Sometimes I think the only musical gift I have is playing loud. But I love it.

Writing. Forcing myself to. Working 60 hours a week, four kids, force is the only way.

Oh, and a bright spot. I go into work yesterday, and Sharon's trying to score tickets to the Deadheads for Obama show at the Warfield Monday by refreshing Ticketmaster over and over again. I offer to help, she sends me the link and blam! we both hit the jackpot. So within ten seconds, I decide I like Barrack Obama, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Phil Lesh just enough to buy my own tickets.

The show sold out in nine minutes. Craigslist is littered with sad Deadheads looking to pay between $1 and $1,000,000 for a ticket. But I'm getting my Dead on, ya'll!!!