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!!!

Writing in the present tense

Struggling right now with this. A while back I started righting short fiction in the present tense. It was fun to reveal story as it happened. I liked the immediacy of it. And in first-person, I felt it was almost easier to hoist the reader on my back, so to speak, and show him or her around.

This seems to work particularly well in short, single-scene pieces. In longer form, however, I'm finding that staying in the present tense is pretty tough. It's tricky to describe the past in the present without it feeling cumbersome or awkward.

Just something bugging me right now, because I like the present tense and want it to work. With a couple days off, I may try finding novels that manage to do this. We'll see...

Tom Wolfe on writing

My latest hobby is scrolling through the NPR archives for interesting pieces on books and other stuff. I know I'm late to this particular party ... I used to only listen to public radio -- or any radio -- while driving. I don't drive that much.

What I just realized--duh--is that I don't have to wait for the clock to roll around to catch a good program on the radio. I can just go to the NPR site and click what programs I want to listen to. Somehow I always knew I could do this, but hadn't really wanted to until I missed a Normal Mailer interview that took place earlier this year.

After that, I hit up a Tom Petty retrospective interview, caught up on This American Life, and some odd book readings that I'll never have the time to make in person.

The best one so far was a Tom Wolfe interview aired 20 years ago and re-aired to celebrate Fresh Air's 20th anniversary. Wolfe talked a lot about writing and the genesis of his writing style... like writing a novel like you're pretending to be writing a letter to a friend, and how he purposely choose clothing that stood out, which seems antithema to the traditional fly-on-the-wallishness of being a writer.

"It is much more effective," he said, "to arrive at any situation as the Man from Mars, than to try to fit in."

I'm probably guilty of idolizing mainstream or popular authors like Wolfe too much. It's not like I don't read lesser known scribes. But I'm fascinated with why certain authors are considered greats, and I often find I waste little time when reading them.

Anyway Wolfe's interview is good stuff.

Norman Mailer, RIP

Seems all the giants of letters that I got to know as a young man are going, one by one. This week it was Norman Mailer, arguably the biggest one left. (Not too long ago it was Vonnegut.)

NPR had a really good interview with them recently, by Michael Krasny, that they aired tonight. In it, Mailer toys with the idea of death and reincarnation, and how God judges our worthiness by what he assigns us to be in a second life. Mailer wants to be a black athelete, but figures he'll just be a cockroach -- but the fastest cockroach on the block.

I, like Krasny, hopes he becomes a black athelete. Toodles, Norman.

Aldo Nova, say it 10 times fast

I've been working too hard lately and I know it. It's nice to have money. I wish, though, I could have more time to write... and to twibble around on the Internet.

No idea what "twibble" really means.

I like my jobs, though. The second one is the best. Lots of weird, interesting people. Kind of like a newsroom. I feel right at home -- and appreciated.

The first job -- in daily order, at least -- is a little more jarring, in a capitalist sort of way. But good for cash.

The third I never go to anymore. That's a story for another time... or another blog.

The fourth is writing. I do it when I can. Like, I'm writing right now. And what I want to write about, I can't even explain.

It's about this guy, and this song, and I don't know. I'm just dreaming of leopard skin.

God help me.