Smoking Popes

I love them. But lately, not as much as The Lucksmiths. They've put out two new songs on their myspace page. (Let's not get into myspace right now - it's a totally different blog post.) I like both of the new songs, respectively titled: If You Don't Care, and Stay Down. For now, Stay Down is in heavy rotation, because of this:


Don't wake me now
I need this dream to last forever
We can make it if we just stay down


Great stuff.

In other news, I've been writing a story about a building that I drive by on my way to work. It's shaping up well, and *maybe* I'll grow some guts and post it here later, when I'm finished converting it to all the different person views (grammatically), which D. recommended I do.

Long - Lost, Now - Found

I've found it. This weekend, I spent some time at the music store. I went down there to find a couple of things - 1) a practice amp for my cute electric Ovation - it's great - black and gold, a little flashy for me, but still, it's great - three pickups, great action, 2) some digital recording equipment, and 3) some drums.

The drums are always hard for me. I've been looking for a *very* specific kit now for about four years. I remember when I used to play out in college that I had a crappy kit that was too big. I hated carrying it. I hated carrying it more at 2:30a, after I'd been drinking for 7 hours. I hated it carrying it even more when I had to lug it up the goddamn steps to the attic *after* I brought it back from the bar.

This new kit is *exactly* what I was looking for. It's funny - I tend to hate going into the following establishments: videogame shops, computer stores, and music stores - all for the same reason. They always try to sell me shit I don't want, and don't need. This trip to the store was no different, except that I cut the guy off at the pass.

I told him that in the 50's and 60's, Gretsch made a vintage jazz kit, very small, that had remarkable sound. They made them in a range of "sparkle" colors, and they had a single rack tom, and a floor, with a matching snare. He gasped, and told me that he could show me *exactly* what I wanted.

And lo and behold, he did.



This kit is everything I've ever wanted. Maple shells - although I'd love for mine to be candy apple red, or some other color that is not white sparkle, or white speckle. I haven't actually *heard* what these sound like, though - so maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

I can't decide what to do about it, though. If I buy it, I really have a) nowhere to put it, b) no time to play it, c) nobody to play with. If I don't buy it, I'll just keep thinking about it. But having it, and not being able to play will be absolute torture. TORTURE.

Soda = Pop

So remember a couple of days ago, I posted about being 21? I had nothing much to do tonight, except nurse my horrible hangover from yesterday. Apparently, I thought I *was* 21 again, as I was doing shots of Jaegermeister with friends. That stuff still tastes like shit.


Anyway, I digress - I was searching for random bands tonight, and I found Soda, strangely. Try here, if you actually want to *hear* Soda's song (named, "Purple Heart", and I would have never guessed, having had a CD with no actual song names on it) that I've referenced in a previous post. I don't know where this site came from, but I pass it along to you, with love in my heart and music in my ears.

This brings me along to the Blow Pops. I can't remember what the hell bar I was at in Milwaukee - I know it wasn't the Globe. I saw them at a reunion show just prior to Tim Buckley moving to Virginia with the Maki guys. I don't generally get goose bumps at rock shows. Symphonies, sometimes, although I haven't been to one in years. Ettett was there? I know T.N. was there. He told me he cried. Thrice. And I discovered that Nick Randazzo was just slightly taller than me.

That night, I learned that I needed to add an additional crash cymbal to my kit. Nick Randazzo introduced me, that night, to the two-crash fill-end. I almost learned how sweet it might have been to fall in love with a girl at a Blow Pops show with "Here Goes My Heart" zinging in perfect harmony through my ears. (This is only a thinly veiled reference to "Zing Went the Strings of My Heart".)

Easy Cheese And Airplanes

So, one of my best friends is coming from Seattle today on an airplane. She insists that she will be able to hand-carry her bag. I insist she won't. We've both hit the TSA website to figure out what she can and can't bring. I'm here to highlight some of the funnier and/or absurd ones for you.

You *can* bring small amounts of baby formula and/or breast milk. It doesn't say anything about the boobies that carry the breast milk. I assume you can bring those aboard. However, Easy-Cheeze, you're out. Peanut Butter, you're out, too. Both of you have been banished to the dungeon of the cargo hold. I'm not sure how you'll deal the low temperatures, and then subsequent thaw on the tarmac. Sorry, guys. You've lost, in favor of gel-filled bras. Jell-o, pudding, whipped cream, and jelly - banished! I think they're targeting people from the Midwest and Hawaii. No more passion-fruit jelly and guava jam for you (and me). Boo.

Also, people who want to join the mile-high club couldn't possibly be terrorists. Want to know how I know? Because you can take up to 4 oz. of KY Jelly. That's right, folks. Up to four ounces of that wonderful, lubricating stuff. I wonder how much KY had to pay TSA for this. Does this mean that other types of lubricant are not allowed? I wonder if the security people take a literal reading of the TSA guidebook. One would assume they do.

Just to spell it out for you, none of the following are allowed in carry-on, OR checked luggage:
Blasting Caps
Dynamite
Fireworks
Flares
Hand Grenades
Plastic Explosives

Oh, and don't forget to take those comfy gel-inserts out of your shoes and into your luggage. Those are banished, too.

I've Been Niced

So, in a recent spurt of total geekery:

My new crush has three asynchronous crushes running. I am running with modified priority (nice). Boo. I cry. Both for my psuedonerdery, and my not-so-pseudonerdery.

Edit:
To even further my psuedonerdery, it really breaks down like this:
nice +19 xpython crush.py --crushee 'M' -crusher 'miniboss'

You linux geeks can probably tell me if I'm wrong, or if I could actually decipher the man pages like I thought I could. :D (And the rest of you, don't even ask about crush.py.)

Twenty-one Was A Million Years Ago

I remember being 20, in college, and singing this song. It started:
Twenty-one was a million years ago
I saw one hundred angels tonight in the snow

I remember turning to Ettett and saying, "Twenty-one *WAS* a million years ago, Ettett, and I'm not even twenty-one!!!" I admit, I was in a terribly bad place. I had endured an non-breakup with a non-girlfriend who had moved away to a non-driving-distance city to live in a nondescript house, for seemingly nonchalant reasons. I didn't understand. And so, as I was wont to do in those days, I wallowed.

And wallowed.
And wallowed.

I got a phone call, one day, from a friend, a personal superhero of mine, who'd moved to Austin the summer (I think) prior. He didn't ask me how I was. He asked me, "What are you listening to?"

I replied, "Chris Bell."

He countered, "You've got to stop that."

I did, after a time. Now, to be fair, I didn't skip from Chris Bell to the Blow Pops, or any of the other sugar-pop twee bands that I've mentioned here. But I did, somehow, work my way out of that self-pitying pool of despair. This isn't to say that a person shouldn't allow themselves to go there. It can be therapeutic sometimes, even creative. That period of my life, my blue period, has a soundtrack of Chris Bell.

To this day, "Look Up" rends my heart. That man walking down the street, with his head down low, is sometimes me. I never quite understood what Chris was trying to say there, but I picture him, off the cover of that album, transported to some unfriendly town, unhappy and utterly forsaken. All he ever had to do was look up, and see the sky. I do.



P.S. I didn't mean for this to end up being an ode to Chris Bell, as there's so much more to write. There is so much more, more *personal* for me to write about you. For me to write to you. I think of you often. And I hope that when you look down, you see me sometimes.

Ettett Says, "You're It."

My bass player extraordinaire, writer of many luminescent songs of librarians and marking rooms, Ettett, compelled me to answer several questions about myself.


4 jobs I've had in my life:
1. Marking room marker, library person
2. Gas Station Attendent
3. Videogame tester
4. Business systems schmahnalist.

4 movies I would watch over and over:
1. Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
2. Dreams
3. The Golden Breed
4. Empire Strikes Back

4 TV shows I have loved:
1. Star Blazers
2. Robotech
3. Kikaida
4. Transformers

4 TV show theme songs I have loved
1. Star Blazers
2. Robotech
3. Kikaida
4. GI Joe

4 websites I visit daily:
1. Salon
2. Questionable Content
3. Google News (Do aggregators count?)
4. Google Mail

4 of my favorite foods:
1. Sukiyaki
2. Mochiko Chicken
3. Ben & Jerry's "The Gobfather"
4. Pokey Sticks (yes, but only from Gumby's, and only after midnight, because you know, we're not supposed to be fed after midnight, plus, life was always more fun as a gremlin. Who the fuck wants to be a wonky little Mogwai?)

4 places I've lived:
1. Madison
2. San Francisco
3. Hawaii
4. (Gee, I feel sheltered)

4 musicians I worship:
1. The Lucksmiths (lately)
2. Phoebe Summersquash (Phoebe, if you ever read this, I have been in a slumberland state of love for you since 1996, but not in a creepy way, I swear.)
3. Alicia Keys (Fuck off. Yeah, you rolling yer lame-ass eyeballs. FUCK. OFF.)
4. Smoking Popes

4 books that changed the way I view the world:
1. Pictures from Breughel by Willam Carlos Williams (Thanks, A.M.)
2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (AN EDIBLE GARDEN!?!?!?)
3. Geebus, I need to read more by Mini-boss

4 places I would like to be right now:

1. O'Cayz Corral opening for Coolhand Band and Fez Petting Zoo and Small Factory
2. Canoes
3. With my buddy B.
4. On a sparsely visited beach somewhere with clean, blue water, a clean, semi-challenging right and 75 degree water.