I guess this was what it was like before FB. No one really read each other’s blogs, either.

Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie has died at age 79 – https://www.npr.org/2022/11/30/1139955248/fleetwood-mac-singer-songwriter-christine-mcvie-dies-at-79

In honor of here death, I will be listening to Schlong’s 1993 classic, “Tumours.”

Happy Birthday, Bryce Lynch! (Libra, might have guessed.)

Here’s a radio treat that can’t be beat! WSLR in Sarasota, Florida has a radio show that features a wide range of strange and interesting music. “Lumpytunes! Definitely Difficult Listening” is a wonderful show that brings you all sorts of music that you cannot hear anywhere else. On Tuesday, October 5th, they decided to broadcast four hours of NorCal NoiseFest, by playing it all back at 200%, and cramming it into a two-hour block. Maddness, you say? But of course! And it sounds wonderfully weird, too.

Check the station archives to hear the show. There’s a Mini-Mutations shout-out at around One Hour, 24 Minutes into the show. Then you can hear LOB begin to introduce “Health Habits” around the One Hour, 36 Minutes Mark. (Thank you Dylan Houser for bringing this to my attention!) Always fun to hear Mini-Mutations on the radio.

Here is my contribution to the Mail Art Book I mentioned a bit ago. I like the collage, myself. Hopefully something happens with this book someday. There’s some good stuff in there, so far.

My continued friendship with Hal McGee and his Electronic Cottage group of artists has been fruitful yet again, as I had another track included on the most recent compilation, Cheap And Plastic #2. This is a sequel to the 2012 compilation that has a killer line-up in and of itself, so to be included in the follow-up, which again has an incredible playlist, is nothing to sneeze at. And the comp was sequenced by Chris Phinney too, who knows a thing or two about how to sequence a compilation. I’m continually impressed with the kinds of work this group churns out, and it humbles me when I think that I’m occasionally not in the mood to write and record. To see how much material these folks have put out is pretty motivating.

The Cheap And Plastic concept is actually pretty great: sure, it can be easy to make a lot of experimental music when you have a ton of gear, often very expensive, that can accompany you while you perform an instrument that you are playing “live.” So, to cut to the chase: what can you do with the cheapest gear you have? There’s a little more to it than that, but the idea is to be quick, to be cheap, and to find inspiration in the innovation that thrift-store gear can offer you.

To that end, I decided to use a keyboard that M found for me while in a thrift store: a “Beat Bugs” branded toy that is shaped like a skateboard and has a keyboard on one side. While the samples of animated kids characters playing Beatles songs will be LOVELY to bend, there is something very simple about the generic synth sound that I’m really fond of. I’ve used it a few times on different pieces, but usually as an overdub, on top of other stuff I’m recorded. For this piece, I only used this keyboard, and allowed myself to add another take over the previous one, provided I panned it differently.

Using only those two tools (this keyboard and panning), I proceeded to compose something of which I’m really quite fond. There are no samples, and no slowed down loops that I’ve manipulated on the computer first, which then creates a bed of sound for me to mix and chop samples over. None of that. In a way, it’s just me, the keyboard, and the music that came out of me. Some of the simplest sounds I’ve ever made.

While my track is only one of many, it’s not what this is about. You really should check out the whole thing, as the other artists are very excellent, and there’s tons of cool things in this collection. And it’s LONG! I’m still working through it, there is so much excellent music here!

I get to make some cool music, and participate in some cool stuff, and I’m truly humbled by how lucky when I think about it. Hopefully some of you are entertained by some amount of this, because I’m having a very good time.

I bought one of these portfolio folders from the @artdepartmentsupply and put my fave old show fliers in it.

I attended / performed in all of these shows, except the X flier, which I got from an ex many years ago, who has since passed away.

I have twice as many that still need a home, but these are the important ones. At least they won’t rot away in a box somewhere, not being seen or stored well.

Looking at these makes me miss being in Cathead more than I have in years. And it made me miss a period in PDX where Cheryl and I would go to shows several days a week.

And another era, before that, when Sierra and I would go to shows all the time in Eugene.

And even further back, when I wanted more than anything to see live music, and play in bands, because holy shit, these albums are amazing.

Music is the best, and I wish I could put up fliers again.

I fuckin’ miss all of you.

I’ve been very lucky, and have received a few excellent books in the mail lately, which I’m very much looking forward to reviewing.

“This Could Be The Cover” is a book where it is mailed around to different artists, and they each fill a page before mailing it to someone else. (I got it from Hal McGee, and I desperately need to fill a page and send it along.)

“White Screen” was published by my mail-art pen-pal, John M. Bennett, in 1976, one year after I was born!

Formaldehydra’s new CD / Zine is perfect for trying to get work done in the afternoon.

“Medicine For A Nightmare” is a beautiful book / zine that contains art written / drawn / photographed during the pandemic.

Amazing stuff, and I’m very excited to have a change to get stuff like this!

Thanks friends!

I went to check out the #SalemSnailMailArtSwap at The Art Department today, and it was really excellent! It’s so cool to see an art show like that in Salem, and I couldn’t wait to check it out. Plus, I hadn’t been in since a lot of the new changes have been made, so it was worth the trip. The store looks great, and I picked up a new portfolio so I can hold my old show fliers. I already need another one.

Anyway, not only is the show incredible, and the other entries are very, very cool, I was stoked to see that my entry was prominently on display! How very cool! I don’t think I can do the show justice here, only to say that I was really excited to see so many other people who are local, and also participate in mail art! I am humbled to be included in such an excellent show.

Has anyone named the snail yet? Because it is amazing.

The other artists did incredible work, so you should check it out the next time you’re downtown. I’m looking forward to hearing about the other excellent events that they will put on this year!

Thanks again!

This has been a disaster for a while. So getting this sorted and labeling the boxes feels like a big win.

As it stands, the real job ahead of us in 2021 in convincing our family members that they need to get on board with some much more progressive politics than any of them think they are willing to allow. Because, every single one of those people who voted for and are aligned with a more fascist interpretation of America are someone’s family.

So: how do we get our family members to improve points of view that are truly distasteful?

Over the last 12 Days, I’ve cycled 156 miles.

That’s all the way to Winchester Bay from here.

Anyone know if the lighthouse is open?

The 11th is like the 1st of the month, but it’s doubled down.

Like: No, really. The month has STARTED, fool.

There is a genre of movie that doesn’t get made anymore, where people wander around a castle or a mansion late at night, looking for ghosts or money, and occasionally they hear a suit of armor fall over.

I would like to see more movies like this.

Serious long dark tea-time if the soul, today.

These guys are still great.

There is a part of me that is having a really hard time feeling like any of this will work out well for anyone.

From “mild” to “moderate” is also how I describe my interest in this news story, too.

What’s really frustrating is that he is probably incapable of processing how apt it is that he’s got it.

He probably had to be told a few times before it sunk in that he had it.

Being sick and having to go to work anyway sucks.

If only I had any sympathy for him.

I first started looking at, and posting to, the Inter-Web-A-Tron in the early ’90s, first when I saw it in High School, and later, when kiisu first hooked me up, when we live lived together in the Catbave. The earliest website I had was a digital version of the ACRONYM zine I made, itself a consolation prize for the aborted attempts at starting a band called ACRONYM. (Which happened, a few times, but never got off the ground.)

The name itself I’d inherited from a former creative partner, one that he didn’t like. So I adopted it, to his dismay, and it was my catch-all name, for the longest time. The first domain I registered was acronyminc.com, which unfortunately got squatted on during a short interim that I couldn’t afford a renewal, and the second domain was acronyminc.org. It was the home to my blog, and so much more, from the mid-90’s until, well, now.

But again, I let a card expire, and the domain went up, and was snatched away by another squatter. And suddenly, all that work was gone.

I needed to start over, anyway.

So, goodbye, ACRONYM. You are a vestigial tail, something that still exists in some forms, here and there. But as for my home online, let’s hope this place serves me well.

As I consider places where the stuff I make will live in the future, and as I negotiate over 20 years of internet traffic and websites, there are some problems that you just can’t overcome. Lost domains that have been taken over by someone else, multiple places to find various works, and as everything becomes further spread out, some services have died, other’s have changed, and some URLs are embarrassing to forward to folks, when you’re trying to look “professional.”

So, we’ll give this a shot. There’s a menu above; you should be able to find the various places I hang out up there. This will be where the old “ACRONYM” site used to be; not only did that idea become unwieldy, but the site has been plundered. We’ll see how the import goes.

More importantly, we’re going to try and move on. There’s stuff to do, and we don’t have time to fuck about. So this will be where you can find the things I do, easily, in one location. And I’m gonna do my best to keep it simple. Too many choices is etc. cliché and so on.

This will absolutely change over time. Hopefully we can both be cool with that.

I love you. I miss you. Let’s hang out in the comments, and on a call, sometime soon.

Here’s what I did today: tore down my office tables and gear entirely, and built a little home studio.

I’ve certainly worked in / broadcast from worse locations, so meet the new Lava Lamp Lounge – Studio A. Since I’m not doing any live shows for a while, and since my own “home studio” is essentially any flat surface I set up on to record, I decided to use those turntables that kiisu gave me, and make this my home for the foreseeable future. (And: beyond?)

The iPad can be traded out for any other 1/8” jack device. I can also have a cord to swap out devices that need RCA and 1/4” jacks, too. I have a mic-stand / microphone that I can fly in, to use for situations like that. Tapes, CDs, records and digital… right now, I can play almost anything, and I even have that 16 Speed turntable and a reel to reel player I can hook up, if need be. (As I’ve said before: I dare someone to record a song on a format I can’t play.) It’s not ideal, certainly, and I don’t have real monitors or a real studio mixer. But it works, and I can swivel my chair around, stand up, and it’s there, ready to go. 

This will be where all future radio and podcasts are created and recorded, and it is also the same setup I use to perform live, with extra gear I usually can’t bring to shows. (Two turntables is just too much for the stage, given the space it all takes up.) So I can probably stream live, too. 

I haven’t figured out how to get the streaming sound quality to be as good as the recordings, and I think I might need some more sophisticated cameras / mixers / etc to really pull that off. (Possibly a second computer to manage taking the signal from the mix and putting it through to the streaming camera.) I’m pretty sure I can take calls and / or Skype too, but its not as easy as, “I hear the phone ring and I push a button and the caller is on the air.” I would probably have to hot-swap a couple of items to make it work, and I’m not sure I could mix music behind the call very easily, like I can do at a pro studio. I will be able to add delay or reverb, which will be fun.

It’s a start. I may try some broadcasting later, just to see how it works in practice. For now, you will have to settle for “room sound” on the stream when I do, until I can figure out how the pros do it.

(Also: anyone sitting on any old radio / studio gear that they need to part with? I could certainly use an actual studio board, or something a little beefier than my tiny six channel Behringer. Anyone wanna donate anything to the new studio?)

Hopefully this will help me get through feeling crazy for… however long this winds up being. 

Artists and friends: Where are we with streaming services and delivering your work to fans? I have only ever used FB streaming, but it is decidedly “one-way,” and they get cranky about copyright. (Ditto for IG, but at least there you can have two-way interaction fairly easily. Can you add more than one person on IG, I wonder?)

I use Skype for straight conversations, and I have only ever used it for recording / playback, never for a live show. It seems like it might work, but I’m not sure Skype is ideal for a streaming / broadcasting service.

Marla used Zoom the other day, but it sounds like someone needs to either pay for the service, or have credits of some kind, to use it. But that allows any number of users to all interact, and I imagine there are other’s that don’t cost.

What I’m looking for: a free two-way (at least) service that I can use to send video / audio to any number of people easily (and publicly). I would also like to be able to “add” callers / viewers to the stream, and receive / capture the incoming audio so I can mix it into the show.

Preferably, I’m looking for a software / computer solution, and not a phone app, but I’ll be curious what anyone uses, and for what, regardless of the tech.

I’m almost to the point where my office is clean / re-designed, and I want to start broadcasting as soon as I am able. I have turntables, tape decks, and CD players (in addition to a number of digital options), so I feel like this would be a good time to get into regular broadcasts again. What are people using?

How many Squarspace / Wix sites have ya’ll started?

I’m up to 10. 

Just imagine all the amazing life-lessons and self-reflective epiphanies we are obstinately NOT learning as we all collectively stare into the abyss?

I have a lot of unreasonable musical opinions. “I can’t stand arias. All country music after 1975 is crap. Shellac is good.” We’re all guilty of it, and we all say the most extreme inane untrue bullshit, partially informed by taste, and largely informed by how we FEEL at the moment.

What kind of unreasonable music opinions do you have? 

“Miller: A lot of people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidences and things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. Give you an example, show you what I mean. Suppose you thinking about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly, somebody says, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate of shrimp. Out of the blue, no explanation. No point looking for one, either. It’s all part of the cosmic unconsciousness.

Otto: You eat a lot of acid, Miller? Back in the hippie days?

Miller: I’ll give you another example. You know the way everybody’s into weirdness right now. Books in the supermarkets about Bermuda triangles, UFOs, how the Mayans invented television. That sort of thing.

Otto: I don’t read them books.

Miller: Well, the way I see it, it’s exactly the same. There ain’t no difference between a flying saucer and a time machine. People get so hung up on specifics. They miss out on seeing the whole thing. Take South America, for example. In South America, thousands of people go missing every year. Nobody knows where they go. They just, like, disappear. But if you think about it for a minute, you realize something. There had to be a time when there were no people. Right?

Otto: Yeah. I guess.

Miller: Well where did all these people come from? Huh? I’ll tell you where. The future. Where did all these people disappear to? Huh?

Otto: The past?

Miller: That’s right! And how’d they get there?

Otto: The fuck do I know?

Miller: Flying. Saucers. Which are really? Yeah you got it: Time machines. I think a lot about this kind of stuff. I do my best thinking on the bus. That’s how come I don’t drive, see.

Otto: You don’t even know how to drive.

Miller: I don’t want to know, I don’t want to learn. See? The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.”

Danced and DJed on Instagram with Holiday Special for an hour.

And called into The Sound of Tomorrow, just to say, “Hi!”

Apparently, Instagram can’t abide copyright infringement, so I guess there’s no evidence.

But I got a hell of a lot of steps in, that’s for sure.

This common bit of wisdom from my early days as a young gammer has been on my mind a lot lately – “Health Is A Team Resource” – and I’m surprised that someone else hasn’t already made a meme.

This was, of course, advanced thinking to a lot of gamers. So many are focused on just themselves, and so they don’t consider the health of others. Often, these kinds of characters don’t last long. They don’t know how to act as a group, and so they often die under embarrassing circumstances. Largely because they didn’t put the group over their own desires.

Here’s my take on a meme for our time.  I have a feeling someone else could probably do something a little more concise, but at least the sentiment is there.

I’m assembling packages / mail to go out. If you ordered a t-shirt, a zine, or are in any of the music exchange groups, and you are expecting something, it should be in the mail by the end of the day.

Did I overlook you? Do you want some mail art? Or, even, just a letter in the mail? I’m not sure if we should worry about costs at this time. Let’s just make sure the people who want something in the mail are getting it.

I’m happy to send you something. No one needs to suffer from the “no mail” blues.

A lot has changed in a few days.

I hope I can change enough myself to keep up.

I’m considering hosting some organized streaming events, to give us something to do with this technology we all have in our pockets.

It would probably have a host who organizes the event and manages a calendar of who is doing what when. The host would DJ and introduce the performers, tell people where the next stream is and how to find the music to purchase, etc. And then you could have performers log on throughout the show, and do their thing.

If nothing else, it would incentivize a lot of us to clean our offices or practice spaces.

Sometimes, I want to put everything on hold and just do nothing for a few days. But the moment I sit down to take a break, I just start working instead.

If only I knew how to relax.

My new familiar, the spider.

Tonight, at the Graveyard Bar: two excellent acts are coming through, and a new act that I’m playing in is opening up the show. Black Noise Orchestra is brand new, so be gentle. Sweeping dark guitars & ambient drones fir heavy dark vibes. You should check it out. A little something different, and I think you’ll dig it.

I did my first I-5 solo trip today. 30 miles is longer than I thought it would be.

And less blah blah blah.

But perhaps that is the problem.

Ivanka Is A Punk Rocker is the band now opening for Obama’s Selfie.

In my mind, this was a lot further away… but it’s this weekend! Noise Therapy, with Justin Smith, Herd William, devils/club, Talc & Rock Forming Minerals. I’ll be doing a shortened, live version of my radio show, Mid-Valley Mutations, with a crew of great experimental artists. And we’re playing at an art gallery, too. Come on down. You won’t be sorry.

Who do I know in Las Vegas?

What Do I Really Like?

It’s strange that this is a difficult question to answer, for any reason that I could possibly present.  There are some things that are easy – eating, sex, sloth – but when we get into the realm of the intellectual, this question becomes very complicated, very quickly.  There are a number of things I like, or have liked, or have gone through the motions of liking.  But as I get older I start to see the world around in a Fight Club sort of sense, where the things I own have an incredible amount of agency over me.  Perhaps the things I own make it easier to build a nest, to fill it with comfort, and spend my days enjoying myself in every imaginable way.  But the larger question – What Do I Really Like? – seems embedded with a more philosophic approach.  There must be some rationale, even if it is silly.  And, as the answers come to me less readily, I start to wonder if maybe I never really liked those things in the past.

There are three primary components to the things that seem to own me these days: books, comics and LPs.  All three, as an interest, can be traced back to my mother, really.  Growing up, she ran a store that she started – a.k.a. Used Books & Records – and I not only spent a lot of time there, but worked at (and ran) the shop occasionally as part of my set of first jobs.  In this shop she sold books, comics & LPs (among other things).  I had never really enjoyed reading when I was much younger, and music was always my mom’s domain, something that I enjoyed, but through her listening to it around me.  But spending time in this store really engaged a new part of my mind that had previously been spent internalizing a rich fantasy world, largely pieced together from things I’d borrowed from TV & Movies.

At the time, my friend Devin has noticed the comics when he came in, and even bought a few.  It turned out he had a modest collection of titles he’d picked up over the years, and gave me a run down of the stuff he enjoyed.  There were several he followed, but Green Lantern stuck out for me.  My mom had many in her shop, so I began to have my pay in trade for comics, and began clearing out the shop’s collection of different things that appealed to my sense of awe.

Very quickly, I became a Green Lantern devotee.  I remember the first issue I picked up – #90 – was a story about a predecessor to Green Lantern awoke, having been unconscious for years, along with a villain this old GL had to capture.  At this time, the book co-stared Green Arrow, a wise-cracking anarchist who often depended on Green Lantern to actually deliver the goods, as a bow & arrow didn’t work well in space.  In this book, I found a take on Sci Fi I had never seen before, that blended with super-hero storytelling, in a way I had never seen before.  And, all this stuff about Guardians, other races and aliens, and Green Lantern’s secret identity.  It was a lot for a kid like me to digest.  Because there was no Inter-Web-A-Tron or instant access to all information at all times back in those days, the best bet for a kid like me was to save every penny so I could pick up back issues and fill in the gaps, and imagine.

Comics collecting allowed me a chance to let my already fertile imagination to run wild, and Green Lantern in particular seemed so unlike everything else in the world of comics, that I quickly became the biggest evangelist for the book.  It seemed like the ultimate power-fantasy: through sheer willpower, you can force things into being, that will then do your bidding.  And you can apply this power to anything you can imagine: flying, punching, creating complex technology or blunt instruments, etc.  This force-of-will angle really speaks to a teenager, who seems to only have willpower in a world full of rules and restrictions and guidelines and misunderstandings.  How many problems would be solved with a Green Lantern ring?

Of course, modern comics are sophisticated, so once you go down the Green Lantern collecting rabbit hole, you quickly find yourself inside the DC Universe, where all their comics take place.  This means that through cross-overs and event publishing, soon enough all the books you are reading just to follow Green Lantern’s adventures encompass a number of other books that you never intended to start reading.  This has only intensified even more as years have gone on, and anymore it is very difficult to just pick up Green Lantern every month without missing 7/8ths of the story because you’re not reading the other books he crosses over into every month.  (But that’s another story.)

At my peak, in early 1990’s dollars, I was spending about $100 a month on comics, to stay current on my new books, and to pick up back-issues I was on the hunt for.  Of course, this habit ended in 1992, when I was thrown out of my house by my mom, and had to live on my own.  Before long, the painful reality of paying my bills kept my comics collecting in check.  In the years since, I have occasionally picked up something here, and something there.  Every so often, I go on a huge binge, and buy a bunch of stuff.  But the money always reigns it back in, and then I have to cut back.  At this point, I have about a thousand books, and quite a few I have never read.  I could only re-read the books I have now, and would still have a great time without having to get anything new.

But my tastes have changed tremendously, too.  I don’t read Green Lantern anymore, save for the occasional thing here and there.  And my favorite character is probably Hellboy, or Swamp Thing.  (Again, for different reasons.)  And, of course, I’m less interested in DC Comics, unless it is from the 70’s, or older.  But that desire to look through boxes of old comics.  To read one now and then.  And to experience a good story for the first time.  Those are feelings I think I will always enjoy.

There’s only so many dank places you can hide out in before someone comes looking for you, and when they do, it’s often bad news.  But I had managed to go on a bit of a tear recently, and was avoiding a short detox because I wasn’t ready to think about what was really going on.  When you try to make a list of everything that’s been happening recently, all too quickly it gets out of hand.  Sometimes, the drink in front of you is much easier to sort out.

Or, for that matter, the night life that goes on in any given town.  This is, after all, America, or at least what’s left of it, and as long as there is a song to be heard, I remain powerful, and ready to take on the world.  Having already undertaken this quixotic life thus far, it made little sense for me to try and ignore these kinds of opportunities when they arose.  The booze was one thing, for sure.  But you got booze in these night clubs, with music and girls and dancing and magic.  If you drive around long enough with the windows rolled down you can feel the bass intermix with the smell of the moon and smoke on the horizon.

The bass begins to become more distinct as I turn the wheel of my car.  The other instruments begin to come into the mix as I use my turn signals, my head spinning as I try to pinpoint the location.  Like an sudden rendezvous, the tension builds almost suddenly as I realize I’m getting incredibly close, but then one final turn of the wheel and the song kicks into high gear, the neon and the leather and the hair and the smoke and the glasses filled with high powered alcohol and a band on stage kicking out the jams.  I could feel both my libido and my mana pulsing, as energy crackled along my arms.

I rolled a cigarette and infused it with some of the bridge of the song, and thumbed my phone for a second until I was able to sort out where I was and what was going on.  The Fixin’ To bar.  Stiff drinks, deep fried and down home menu, with a thick layer of hipsters and aging rockers who show up for the Patio Shows, where a band and thirty friends can enjoy an evening.  Swarming around the joint were every manner of woman, dolled up and beautiful.  Rock music was best used to fuel glamour magic, and I cast a few change of outfit spells before I decided to keep my usual square coat and hat.  My usual ruffled bow ties and earnest middle-agedness often made me stick out like a sore thumb, but it never stopped me from enjoying a nice string of evenings where I could chat up pretty girls, get bombed on bourbon, and watch some local band kick out the jams before everyone crawled home.

It certainly beat the hell out of dealing with what had happened.

I knew enough people that it was inevitable I could keep the party going all night, and I had enough folding money to ignore things for as long as my body could take.  I drove recklessly, using magic to “sober me up,” chasing the next party, the next DJ, the next show, skipping the all-ages crap in search of some bar where I can hunker down and try to wet both of my whistles.  But I never managed more than a few indiscreet rendezvous that were more sloppy than satisfying, and in my state, it was probably for the best that most of my texts and calls were ignored.  I had thrown myself at the mercy of rock and roll, and it was a convenient way to ignore pretty much every, health and hygiene included.

After nearly a week of this kind of behavior I was in pretty deep, running a number of spells to act as outboard memory as I invented new ways of reaching alcoholic bliss, I found myself at some experimental dance night at Plew’s, when the girl I was offering to split a joint with was in fact Suzanne, someone I’d been intentionally avoiding so much so that I had inadvertently convinced myself she was someone else, and masked her magically when she first walked in.  I’d rather not repeat our short but blunt conversation out of respect for whatever dignity I might have been able to hold onto after I performed a light-show outburst of spells and weirdness that was so powered by the one-man-band’s electronic music that the entire place was in awe.  No amount of fighting with Suzanne could dissuade the owner from trying to work out a deal for future shows with me, nor did it stop Suzanne from convincing everyone that they needed to load me into her car so she could drive me back to the Record Store.

I applaud her for these efforts, because I intentionally don’t deal with myself when I that drunk, and Suzanne was not only brave enough to get me into the office, and up to my bedroom, but also finally took me up on the joint just so she could calm me down enough to stop having magical outbursts, and start thinking about things rationally.  After I made the worst pass at a woman I have ever made, she put me to bed, cleaned my room, hid all the alcohol and pot, and turned on some sleepy drone music that had me out like a light in minutes.

I had wholly inappropriate dreams about every woman I knew and woke up twice in the middle of the night to relieve myself from them.  The next few days were spent eating Thai food, binge watching TV, and feeling incredibly guilty.  The text-message fallout – not just from Suzanne, but from the other men and women that I’d run into in the last week – was enough of a deterrent to avoid asking where Suzanne had hidden everything, so much so that I didn’t even look.  Instead, an OG Dr. Who marathon coupled with the Pok Pok recipe book keep me busy as I reflected on what I had done.

After a few days of that, I decided to take a shower, put real clothes on, and get back to work.

When I moved to Eugene I knew about Punk Rock in an abstract sense.  My mom had let me listen to a Sex Pistols album, and Alex Otto had played for me the Dead Milkmen and The Clash, so I felt like I knew what the music sounded like.  But my experience of it was so limited as to be pretty funny.  I listened to Uncle Tupelo and They Might Be Giants.  I had been a fanatical Dr. Demento devotee, and my first two concerts were Robert Palmer (on November 8th, 1988 at the Hult Center in Eugene, Oregon) and Bon Jovi (on May 8th, 1989 at the Memorial Colosseum, at which they were filming the “Lay Your Hands On Me” video).  My tastes – thanks to my parents – skewed hard rock, but my sensibility was so comedy driven that I was more “Weird Al” than Jello Biafra.

While I was in High School (1989 – 1993), “Alternative” music broke in America in a big way.  My mom had cable in those days, and the used books / comics / records shop that she ran started to see a slight shift in the music that was coming in.  But the lens through which I experienced all of this was through magazines: Rolling Stone and Spin, and the obsessively-watched MTV, itself going through a revolution at the time, too.  Alternative Nation and Headbanger’s Ball were both setting the blueprint for what was to come, and this nascent media empire nurtured “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to the point nearly all DJs were confused.  You would hear Juliana Hatfield’s “Spin The Bottle” side by side with “Psalm 69” by Ministry, and it was all being jump-cut with a hundred other ideas and images along the way.  Everyone was desperately looking for the next “thing” that would be bigger than Nevermind, and in that search the most dada RIYL game was being played, with bands like Blind Lemon & Collective Soul having brief but uninspired careers that seemed even smaller scale that flash-in-the-pan.

Amidst the media stew that was being turned over around me this word – punk – bubbled beneath the surface of culture.  I had missed it (and then some) with a 1975 birthday, and by the time I was 14, bad country music and hair metal dominated the world in my universe.  But with this “Alternative” media blitz that was ushered in by Saint Cobain, hillbillies in rural Oregon were turning away from Classic Rock radio to this “heavier” sound.  In a way, it was like putting a converter on foreign voltage, so you could “step down” the intensity of punk rock, and instead make it acceptable for widespread use in middle america.  It is safe to say that in my family, we found have continued to listen to Hair Metal and hard rock, and that I probably would have become a KISS fan, eventually get into Van Halen, and follow that particular path as a teenager.  (Think a milder version of the kids in River’s Edge.)  Without Alternative, how would I have ever heard of Black Flag?

With hindsight, it is difficult to explain how secluded small town life was in a pre-Inter-Web-A-Tron world.  I really had no concept of “college rock” or the pre-Alternative world of indie comics, ‘zines & records that was happening, and in some cases, within my own state.  There was nowhere in Cottage Grove that carried small publications, and I didn’t know about KRVM (or KWVA) to even try and tune in to hear this other music.  We had cable, but I was only able to watch during the day, and didn’t even know about these other shows that were on, late at night.  The breakdown in communication was extreme, and while Rolling Stone gave me some context, they didn’t cover a lot of “indie” music until after Alternative broke.  In many ways, I WAS the indie press in Cottage Grove, and I didn’t have access to anything stronger than what I heard on the radio.  Living in Cottage Grove was like living on the moon; you were as far away from Seattle as you were from New York or LA.  By the time anything cool came that way, it had already been everywhere else.

Alternative not only leveled the playing field, but it became the synthesis of all of this work the independent underground had been doing since the rock and roll revolution of the late ’50’s.  Being “subversive” and “against the mainstream” was finally cool and acceptable in a way that it hadn’t been since Elvis Presley made rock and roll okay with housewives and teenagers.  Alternative was finally an outlet were the maligned and ignored trends and undercurrents that were already dominating subcultures throughout America could find their way into every corner of this country in a way that Punk & Post-Punk had failed to do so, and as much of this movement was lumped in with “grunge” at the time,” it failed to encompass all the kinds of music that was reaching larger audiences.  It was clear to me then the origins of Pearl Jam & Nirvana – two drastically different bands that were lumped in together often – might have been drawing from the same source material.  But from where I was from, all of this history was absolutely inaccessible.  It was take years before I would be able to put the puzzle together.

Once the Alternative Bubble broke, my interests went everywhere, and soon I was obsessing over every new band that appeared on MTV.  New music seemed great at first.  But as I read interviews and started to understand that there was a world of music that came before that I was unfamiliar with, a new interest began to come to my mind: what music inspired this?  It was a question I couldn’t quite answer at first, but I knew that Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin were not the only reference points that new bands were riffing on.  This word punk seemed to be the cypher, the way to uncovering some of this trail that had been blazed before.  But how to find it in Cottage Grove?  Where?  How?

I’m not usually conspiratorial, or even that paranoid generally, but there is a certain kind of eerie “shadow government” kind of aura to President’s Day in my mind.  The degradation of what it was – Washington’s Birthday, a holiday that the US began celebrating in 1879 – into what it is now – a way to offer sales and deals and a chance to have employees dressed as Uncle Sam – speaks to a kind of symbol-squashing that is far too pervasive in mash-up culture.  The President, a position of authority, held by so few Americans in our 200 plus history, now reduced to caricatures of these important figures, reduced to xerox-copy level interpretations of what the idea of leadership actually could be.

It is funny how these things come about.  I am not a particularly philanthropic person, and I usually don’t offer to take care of people.  I’ve never pursued hospitality or babysitting as a pastime, and I never suggested – even for a moment – that this was a career I would follow, or take an interest to consider.  These things never happen according to any plan, for sure.

I’ve had my share of weird jobs, for sure.  Cleaning and feeding birds at a aviary.  Bookstore management.  Teaching college freshmen.  Goat farm hand.  Band manager.  There are some jobs that are certainly memorable.  But taking care of people was never something I had done before.  I am slightly solipsistic by nature, and I have a hard time dealing with bodily fluids or anything slightly gory.  The human fleshiness of our mundane existence has always been something I’d rather forget, and it’s own ironic tediousness and ultimate pointlessness is a comedy that I’d prefer to enjoy through narrative, rather than experience.

Still, when I first met George, I knew there was enough common ground that we could at least get along.  I had no idea that I would be taking care of him someday; in fact, he was merely my girlfriend’s grandfather, someone I didn’t think I would see that often when we first shook hands.  Even when she became my live-in partner, and eventually my wife, I imagined that I would see George only at holidays and family gatherings, and that our interactions would be short, but friendly.

Time passed, and the world around us changed in a number of ways.  The details are somewhat un-interesting, and as they are of a personal family nature, will remain undisclosed, too.  But George’s condition went downhill, and soon the pacemaker and his pre-diabetic nature was adding up to a host of daily pills, and an attitude that seemed to be in decline.  Being 89 has a toll on someone, and he was never a health-conscious person to begin with.  His interest in playing cards all day long and sitting in a chair when possible caught up with him, and his years of military service and working for the State of Oregon couldn’t erase the damage of neglect and age.

We hemmed and hawed and tried to ignore the matter, but it became clear after he fell a few times, and then wound up in the hospital after his lung collapsed, that if he was going to continue at all, he would need someone to take care of him.  His balance was so bad that he already needed a walker, and if he was going to get the physical exercise he needed and the assistance with preparing food, he needed someone to be there with him at all times.  He could barely operate his inhaler he had to take at least twice a day, and while the house he was living in was just fine, there were enough challenges to everyday life that it made sense to make sure those challenges didn’t aggravate him any further.

The timing was quite strange, actually.  While I had grown accustomed to avoiding the word “unemployed” to describe my own state of being, when pressed I had to admit it was uncanny in its accuracy.  Within my close family, this condition led to a lot chores and odd-jobs getting put on my plate in an effort to exploit my particular circumstances.  I’m not usually prone to delusions of grandeur, but I found the joke funny enough to entertain myself, and preferred to explain that I was a freelance writer and radio producer.  While absolutely true, this statement tended to betray how much time I spent cleaning the house, and how early I started pouring my own cocktails, I also spend as much time writing and editing audio, too.  It wasn’t that I was on the couch burning Js and catching up on Adventure Time.  Far from it; I managed to keep myself fairly busy with job applications and daily routines like cooking and baking, not to mention leaning on my freelance arrangements to draw the occasional $50 check when all other hope seemed lost.  It wasn’t an awful way to spend your days, and I actually quite enjoyed it, but it was also very difficult to create the impression that I was so busy that when family really needed my help, it was expected I would take time out to wait for a package to show up, or spend hours on-hold while we sorted out some billing mix-up.

I’m not sure how the idea came up at first, but when it was suggested that I could be George’s daytime caregiver I immediately said yes without thinking about it.  I had been secretly preparing for this eventuality when it had become clear that he was not doing well, actually; when I still had a desk job that I loathed with all my heart, I would remember the weekends where I was talking to George about his time in the Philippines, and I imagined that I just wanted to spend my time listening to him.  Being new to town, he was sort of the only other person I knew, and the time I hung out with him became absolutely more interesting than anything I did at work.  While I was not in denial about what I would be doing, no amount of human waste and brushes with death could be as bad as the bullshit of office life.

Very quickly the arrangement of my job and duties were made.  I would show up at about 7 AM and stay until the afternoon, Monday – Thursday.  (Friday I would do a half-day, and would remain “on call” or “as needed” on the weekends.)  In addition to making sure he ate, and keeping the house clean the house, I would also work with the Home Care Nurse to make sure I understand his medical and physical needs, considering his condition.  After getting a full run-down of his medications, I also developed a exercise routine for him that was achievable for an out-of-shape octogenarian with a heart condition.  There were other occasional chores, like baking bread, doing yardwork, wrestling with the garbage and recycling, and chatting with George about everything, to keep him engaged and entertained.  We sometimes watch TV, but for the most part he doesn’t follow it anymore, and when asked, would rather have it turned off.

George lives with his daughter, who has been his primary care for the last 10 years.  She is in her 50s, and is my mother-in-law, too.  While she’s only a bit younger than my other mother, there are enough similarities to claim they have a shared generational experience at the very least, while being different enough to not have that creepy feeling when someone gives you a “mom” vibe.  While she is my mother-in-law, she doesn’t treat me like a “son,” and that tends to make things go more smoothly, for sure.  She doesn’t work either, but keeps herself fairly busy in a given day, with shopping and crochet and reading.  For her, taking care of George was easy when he could get around on his own, drive a car, remember to take his own pills, and could cook for himself.  But in the last 10 years, she has seen him become more and more dependent on someone to be there for him, and anymore it is too much for her to handle and do the shopping, and do the cleaning, and have a life of her own.  I’m sure it wasn’t easy for her to admit that she needed help, but when she did, she made it very easy for me to want to help.

Like many people his age, George is stubborn and set in his ways.  He essentially lives to have another cup of coffee anymore, and while he is on decaf – and now by doctor’s request, should drink as little as possible – I fix him coffee more often than anything else.  His meals are very simple: he can usually have anything he has an appetite for, provided it has low salt and low sugar.  I fix him a lot of oatmeal and bran cereal for breakfast, leftovers for lunch, and some sort of meal that I help his daughter prepare for dinner.  One thing that has not diminished over the years is his appetite.  He will eat anything, and always finishes his plate.  Outside of going back and forth between his bedroom and his chair, he also visits the kitchen and the two bathrooms as well, but doesn’t do much else.

We also have some of the same conversations every day.  Part of the problem with George is that he is not at all forthcoming with anything about himself.  While he will occasionally contribute to a conversation, he is very much of an age where it was impertinent to talk about yourself, and clearly comes from a long line of people who preferred to put up with minor inconveniences so that he isn’t a burden on anyone.  And this is easy enough for him to think he needs to continue with, too; unfortunately at his age, he tends to forget how old his actually is.  So I usually have to go through a series of questions with him.  “How are you feeling?  Is there any unusual pain that you’re experiencing?  How’s your foot?  How’s your hand?  Do you need a pair reliever?”  By way of example: over two days I kept asking him how he felt, and his response was, “I feel like my head is in a fog.”  I tried to get him to elaborate, but he couldn’t say any more.  “Do you have a headache?”  “Not really, no.”  “Does your scalp hurt?”  “Of course not.”  “What do you mean, fog?”  “You know… what’s the word… it’s in a fog.”  By the end of the second day I was finally able to get him to say, “Well, you know when you feel pressure in your head?  Like your nose is stuffed up?”  Ahhhhhhhh.  I have a decongestant right here, George.  Let me get it.

There are a few consistent problems that we are regularly combatting.  Because of various problems he is suffering from, his left hand and his left leg have a tendency to swell.  As it was explained to me, fluid is pooling up because he is not very active.  So, whenever possible, we need to elevate his arm, and when he naps or sleeps, elevate his feet.  Improving his hygiene was a challenge, too; showers were difficult for him, and even when they were successful, exhausted him for the rest of the day.  So a professional started showing up once a week to get him in and out of the shower without a fall.  And, while this is embarrassing – and I do not mean to take away any of his dignity with this – he does have a consistent problem with wetting the bed and shitting himself.  However, I have chosen to see that as a boon; one negative health sign is when he stops being regular, and at least for now, he has absolutely no problem with that.

The biggest challenge I faced in the early days of taking care of George was cleaning his room.  Soon after I started coming over I realized that George’s daughter hadn’t been in to clean his room in ages.  Part of this was out of practical problems; while we has napping and sleeping was a bad time, and between feeding him and helping him with anything else, there was often little time to get in there before he wanted to take a nap again.  Combine that with the other daily chores she was handling, and it was easy enough for anything in George’s room to be forgotten once he closed the door.  So when I began to poke around and find the dust and filth building up in the corners, I realized I had to undertake the task of diverting a river into his room.

As explained by the Home Care professional, as people age the tend to sluff off more dead skin that the average person, which creates more dander and dust that normal.  That, combined with the detritus of being an old person with terrible memory – led to tissues and paper towels soaked in who-knows what kind of fluid accumulating in various corners of his room.  And, as the professional said, it was important to clean this often, as dander can lead to lung infections if you breath it too often.  So each time I would try to get in there and clean, all I saw was George’s DNA floating suspended in every corner of that room.

How do you feel productive when you’re not doing anything at all?

This notion of feeling accomplished, of wanting to do things, has always haunted me.  Even as a young child, I would talk about things I was going to do “someday.”  I had this idea that I would make movie props, that I would assemble the perfect room (from a photo on a Christmas card I got from my grandmother once), and made lists of things that I wanted to do (and, for some reason, never got done).  I remember, vividly, a list of 100 things I wanted to do before I died.  The list is gone; the impulse has not.

In High School and just after, this manifested itself in a creative impulse, to write and make ‘zines.  I arbitrarily picked “writer” out of thin air one day when asked about what I wanted to be, and have since pursued it in a manner that could best be described using “haphazard” and “slipshod.”  But the only way I knew to do this was to keep trying, and each new scheme seemed to materialize in the real world when I would say, “I can’t, I have stuff to do,” when my friends would ask if I wanted to do something that evening, also a habit I keep to this day.  Either by habit or by some innate feeling from earlier, I now carry with me this feeling of needing to be doing something else, somewhere else, at most times during the day.  I have trained myself so completely that sitting down I am often paralyzed by six other things I should be doing instead of sitting, and in some cases, ways to do those tasks while seated.  Even lying in bed feels like something that I should try and multi-task.

Put another way: even when I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing – or, the void forfend, what I want to be doing – I still feel like I need to be doing something else.  While my Honeymoon was amazing, and I did some of the greatest things of my life with the person I wanted to be with the most, the whole time a nagging sense of what I was not doing seemed omni-present, as if I could easily get up and do that thing at any given moment.  But these “things” I want to do, this “stuff” that I feel such a compulsion toward.  “Clean Basement,” “Sort old files,” and “delete cruft” all seem a little hard to do at The Grand Canyon.  And yet, they nag, the persist, and the overwhelm.

Part of what makes self-help appealing is the notion that you can change yourself by reading a book.  And, you can; just not the way we want it to.  When we read a book, we incorporate the ideas and thoughts into our daily narrative, at least during the period we spend reading the book.  When we finish, we either forget the story or remember it fondly, and how often we remember it becomes how important the book was to us.  But when it comes to the idea of self-help, we want the book to have a less subtle effect.  We are hoping that the mechanical act of reading is like inputing ourselves into the machine of the book, and that when it spits us out the other side, we will somehow be changed into the kind of person the book wants us to be.  No self-help book – not even Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – is that good.

I spent my teen years booking at a bookstore, spent six years working in a Barnes & Noble, and then six additional years at college, getting my degree.  I have grown up around books, and my family has always been avid readers.  (Or, at least, were; computers have sort of changed all of us.)  So I have seen the power that these books can have on someone.  But when I have read these kinds of books, I have found them to be incredibly lacking.  I usually feel as if my problems are not being addressed, that there is letting room for my kind of thinking in their view, or worse, that the steps to get from my kind of thinking to theirs were not clearly outlined.  How was I to have the same kind of epiphany as they did?  It seemed as impossible as climbing Kilimanjaro.  How?  Where do you begin?

Trying to implement Getting Things Done is interesting, because at the core is not a lot of mumbo jumbo, and even the system is almost secondary to the idea at the center: you need to be very honest with yourself about what you will actually end up doing, and discard the rest.  And in this case, being “honest” is the hardest part; you need to be brutally honest.  Case in point: I have had to look at my daily reminders, and ask myself why I have each of them, and even worse, why I consistently ignore them, or mark them completed when I haven’t.  I have daily reminders for things I do three times a week, on a good week.  At what point do I look at myself and say, “I need to re-think this; clearly something is wrong.”

And, to make matters worse, even the system – something that David Allen encourages you to change to fit your needs – contains something to learn from.  Each section of it creates a mini-metaphor about reflection and revisiting assumptions you haven’t questioned, to the point that you begin to wonder about what parts to skim and what parts to digest.  While not strictly a Self-Help book, GTD is very much presenting as one in many ways.  But, like all self-help books, it will not change you unless you want to be changed.

I have boxes in my basement, left over from my childhood.  Stuff taking up space, cluttering my life.  Every year I say I’m going to get rid of them, and I don’t.  GTD will never solve this problem for me until I really want to get rid of them, and it is that problem, that concern, that is really at the heart of my frustration with the book.  Because, again, the book isn’t the problem; I am.

It’s astounding how quickly I was able to normalize taking care of an 89 year old man.  His name was George, and he was raised in a bar and served in the Navy during WWII.  As a younger man he loved to drink, and he married a firebrand who has long since passed, but still filled him with joy and happiness, even at 89.  He fathered a number of children, and when he retired chose to sit on his ass and do nothing.  And that nothing has only come back to bite him in the same ass plenty of times in the years since.

When I got to know him, a pacemaker was keeping him going, and while there were plenty of dietary restrictions and pills that made up most of his meals, the family referred to him as The Energizer Bunny, and in the five years I had known him previously, this was not the first time it was believed he was on the way out.  He is not suffering from the kind of memory loss I’ve witnessed before, but he has trouble remembering what’s going on, the right word for the thing he is trying to talk about, and there are long and uncomfortable pauses in his conversations, punctuated by coughs and other mysterious sounds.

I am but a 40 year old man, and while I have hemmed and hawed about age in the past, spending time with George makes me rethink comments I’ve made in the past.  I have some gray hairs, I’m not a spry or in shape as I once was, and my memory has been eroded by years of alcohol and drugs.  But I’m alert.  I can make it to appoints, and I can do physical labor if I want.  (I usually don’t.)  I don’t have any illnesses, and I’m not impaired in any way.  In many ways, I’m absurdly young, and so naive about what the future holds that I was not entirely prepared for what I would learn about myself.

George and I get along pretty well because, in spite of our age range, we have a lot in common.  We both lived in Oakridge at one point.  My dad worked for the railroad, and George worked building and fixing roads.  We were both born in California, and moved to Oregon later.  We are both a little old-fashioned, and I wear bow ties and sweaters and say please and thank you.  I like old movies and TV, and we both love the music of Spike Jones.  But George reminds me a lot of my family, too.  Poor.  Well meaning.  Having worked his whole life, only to find himself trying to make sense of this future that barely resembles what he remembers from his youth.

We mostly watch TV together, and while his coffee was long ago traded out for a brown colored decaf that is warmed up and sort of resembles coffee, he will still drink it, all day long, and fall right asleep in his chair after a cup.  It’s hard to get him to take to water that way, even when I have to use my stern voice.  He seems to enjoy westerns, but he doesn’t really seem to care anymore what’s on.  His daughter – my wife’s mother – watches a lot of news and sports, and I think he’s a little tired of the incessant prattle of the television.  I understand; I’m not much of a TV guy myself, and if I had my druthers I would just turn it off.  But I feel the need to fill the space between us, and I let it go, a cushion between us when I don’t know what to say.

The best part about hanging out with George is that he does not give a fuck anymore.  Not that he did much before.  But it is only amplified now.  Once night I decided to turn on Cosmos (something to watch, ya know?), and asked him if he minded.  He stood up, and I asked if he needed something.  He said, “No, I’m fine.  I just want to stand up for a bit.”  I said okay and looked back at the TV.  Without warning, George drops his bands and his drawers in front of the television, then scratches himself.  He sits back down.  It suddenly occurs to him that I saw this, and he looks at me.  We lock eyes.  He shrugs, then looks down and starts pulling them back up.  Of course, he needs to stand up again to do this right.

But the entire time I kept thinking, “no matter how bad the itch, no matter who was in my house, I would still go to the bathroom to scratch like that.”  I wondered how many years it would take me to get like that, how frail I would have to be before leaving the room to scratch just doesn’t seem worth it.

The first time I had to peel off his socks and confront his swollen feet, is fairly vivid in my memory.  The hospital gave me a stack of papers that I keep telling my wife I will read.  But she has already read through them, and has gone out of the way to fill up the pill box and made notes about all the instructions we have to follow.  So I knew where to turn for guidance.  But then I get a text: “take gel patches off of gpas feet when he goes toned.”  Then a follow-up message: “To bed”  Apparently, one of the side effects of his recent hospital visit was that his feet have been swelling.  So this bandages were somehow helping with that treatment.  Of course, we are supposed to tell him to keep his feet up, so the swelling will go down.  But how is he supposed to remember?  So we have to remind him, constantly.  It is hard not to sound mean, repeating it so often.

So he had these gel patches, supposedly to help with the swelling.

And now, for those who have been waiting, here is the annual Holiday Letter, just in time, no less.

Happy Holidays 2016

Enjoy.

There is a long history of you and your friends piling into a car and driving well into the night in order to catch a show that is not coming to your home town.  While the traveling performer is a very old trope in our world, it is only with the advent of national radio – where audiences could get to know artists before they ever made it to the town they play in – that listeners were in a position to know what a show might be like before they went.  Of course, by then the lines of communication were open so you could promote shows like this, and suddenly, all the pieces were in place to develop a culture where not only space could prevent you from seeing something you want, provided you could get there in time.

A much more modern tradition revolves around the weekend after Thanksgiving.  As people are visiting family and friends for that holiday, they are usually casting around for something to do on the days leading back to that Monday, when you return to work.  Bars fill up and, if you’re lucky, a few bands will tune up in the corner to help pass the time.  The folks at Turn! Turn! Turn! certainly had that in mind this year, and to that end, a select handful of us found ourselves huddled around a brand new stage as we took in one of these shows, bolstered by booze and food and a sense that, for whatever reason, this was what we wanted to be doing instead of standing around the kitchen as we cast around for the last few things we’ll be saying to each other before we go home tomorrow.

White Shark Shivers started the show, an ensemble born out of various Thinking Feller’s Union Local 282 projects, with a large horn section and two guitar players, delivering something that had some of the same spirit as that long lost band, while creating a much more specific tone and mood that is not only more appropriate for a gloomy, raining evening, but felt in line with the current national mood.  While this seems to be an extension of Mark Davies’ 1994 solo project The White Shark – and the set certainly included some of those songs amid some covers and originals – this seemed like a new ensemble made up of old friends that is capable of so much more.  If we can’t have the Feller’s back, White Shark Shivers is absolutely the next best thing.

Compared to the crowd on stage for the first act, Porest’s two members was certainly an interesting juxtaposition, to say the least.  Having not played in the US for almost 10 years, this was one of two shows that were happening on this continent, and when you listen to some of the songs Porest is known for, it actually makes sense.  While mining some of the collage / experimental territory that Negativland loves to explore, Porest takes their political tone and runs wild with it, intermixing comedy and collage with deconstructive lyrics that might explain why Mark Gergis has been living outside of the country in recent years.  “Soapbox Cutter” is a scathing indictment of US policy and politics, delivered from his “karaoke soapbox” that so conveniently is the form of his stage show, “Diplomat Smile” continues to explore these themes, in a way that pre-saged the recent election, and yet seems to be commenting upon it, too.  “Keep fighting the fight,” seems even more ironic, and yet hopeful, when delivered to a crowd of dancing, happy fans.  Mix this with some on-stage destruction, comedy, and slick dance moves that accompany a song against smoking, and it was most certainly worth it to catch this rare artist in his natural environment.

To close the show, Sir Richard Bishop of The Sun City Girls took the stage, and amid protests that we’d already seen the best, and that he was far too wasted to play well, he continued to deliver acoustic originals and covers that felt celebratory in a way we all desperately needed.  While his improvisational sonic explorations are always contemplative, he wasn’t beneath throwing in a few jokey covers like “Fly By Night” and an incredibly earnest version of “If I Only Had A Brain.”  We swayed, we rocked, we laughed and we cajoled, but it was mostly because we didn’t want it to end.  We still had an hour drive home ahead of us, and the liquor soaked joy and pot-tinged celebrations seemed to be just starting as Richard insisted that we had already gotten our money’s worth.

But as we blasted back down I-5 to return home, it seemed the perfect endcap to an incredible evening.  If seeing them, as Richard insisted, was about getting our money’s worth, then he’s being incredibly disingenuous.  Porest didn’t come to this country just to play for a small crowd in Portland for the money, and it seems odd that Mark Davies would assemble a group like his because there was certainly money in it.  Rather, this was another one of his jokes.  When it comes to shows like this, none of us are getting together in a small club because it is “worth it.”  Rather, we’re coming for the comradery, we’re coming to get away from our families for a few minutes and enjoy ourselves.  We’re looking for something else in the night, in the rain, in the darkness, in this November at the end of a year that has beaten us down, insulted us, degraded us, and made us feel like there is no hope.

We’re looking, for a few hours, for some music.  And, fortunately, we found it.

There is no amount of technology or improvement in our culture or way of life that can erase how helpless and meaningless everything seems when we get sick.  There are moments, when we are awake at two AM, delirious, confused, feeling gross and insane, and your mind travels down a repetitive loop of nonsense that is both impossible to focus on and your entire reality – moments like that, where you suddenly remember how debilitating even the smallest illnesses can be, and how when someone says they aren’t feeling well, what, exactly, that can mean.

I felt it coming on Saturday morning, and while I wasn’t exactly sure at first, by the time we had decided what we wanted to do that day and were out in the world doing it, I was sure that the rest of my day would be awful.  We finished our errands, got home, and I went to bed, and have failed to get sleep ever since.  I’m sure I have dozed off for an hour or so, but nothing truly restful, or substantive.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the bathroom – and I will not give any detail as to why – and while I am often hungry, everything I put in my body does not seem to enjoy the experience.  But, if I had to say anything is really the worst part of all of this, it is not being able to sleep.

I am so bad at taking care of myself anyway that it is not at all surprising when I do get sick, but the fact I don’t spend more time sick is either a testament to the human body, or my own genetic mutation thereof.  But as I get older I have started to realize that all my terrible habits and non-considerations of things that are fairly worrisome should probably be reversed if I don’t want to experience an untimely departure.  Our days are numbered as it is, and it would be embarrassing if there were something I could do to keep that end day at bay, and I did nothing.

Of course I don’t think about these kinds of things except when I am sick, or not feeling well, or some other aspect of health comes knocking on my door.  Our minds are incredible tools, and allow us the ability to enjoy amazing leisure activities.  But it is terrible at reinforcing good habits, or breaking bad ones and forming new ones, too.  This largely has to do with how easy it is to find (and enjoy) things that are fun, and in doing so, ignore all things that we don’t think of that way.  You’ve probably heard this elsewhere, but the key is to “gamify” your own health in a way you enjoy.

But, of course, doing that is fairly difficult, too.  We are creatures of habit, and if you have any bad ones in particular, then you know how tough it is to change.  I smoked for years and years, so much so that I had to quit several times before I was able to fully give up cigarettes.  (And even that still hasn’t caused me to fully give up wanting to smoke.)  I took me a long time to give up drinking every day, and as I give up one bad habit, I see a huge foundation of others beneath me that I still need to give up, too.  How much self improvement is safe to undertake at any one time?

It is weird when you have to start guessing about what will and will not be good for you as you try to heal yourself.  Will this stay down if I eat it?  How far away from a toilet should I lie down?  Should I just take some aspirin, or a sleep aid, or should I just let nature run its ugly course?  And, is it okay to have just one cigarette, or glass of wine, too?

I think I’m on the other side of this particular illness, but the thing that was driving me crazy this time – and it is a concern I have struggled with my whole life – is not being able to sleep.  Since High School I have struggled with this, and while for many years I could blame staying up late and ingesting too much coffee / cigarettes / drugs / whatever as the primary culprit, even at this advanced middle age, where many of these things have been given up, I still suffer from not sleeping well.  Of course, this is largely because I’ve come to find that there is a bottomless well of sleep hygiene tactics that I should be employing if I really want to get to the bottom of all of this.  There is only room for improvement, but you will never get there entirely.

It won’t be long before this is in my rear view mirror.  My wife will be well again, and we’ll be back to our routine, and even the clean-up will be done.  It won’t take much, even.  By Friday the house will be clean, and we can joke about the gross parts, and make fun of those around us who are still suffering, the way family does when they genuinely love you, but want you to be in as much pain as they were, just so you understand what they went through, too.

Of course now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, part of me wonders if getting sick and being reminded of our frailties is all part of the plan.  Perhaps we benefit from knowing we’re very close to being almost entirely incapacitated by a small germ, or some dishes we didn’t clean.  What kind of lesson does this weakness teach us?  Can we gain any kind of insight into ourselves, or our life, or the lives of those around us from the few moments we spend, hunched over a toilet, willing to say almost anything if it means we will feel better?

Do we ever really know ourselves?  Is it possible that we will surprise ourselves, up to the very end, only to have our expiring notion be something along the lines of, “I never imagined.”

Because you can’t.  You won’t.  You shouldn’t.  To really consider the variable I’s that you inhabit throughout your years is just too much to handle at any one moment.  We coalesce around a version of who we are saying we are, and project backwards and forwards in an effort to create continuity, and we are lucky to have this tool – language – that comes built in with narrativity, all used as a means of describing ourselves.  So much is stacked against us that we have to consider the self with a three-act narrative arc.

But the thing that is not discussed – this notion of identity, or being and self – are not described by a narrative arc.  More appropriately, there is a stuttering, stammering quality to the way identity is truly expressed.  Every moment we are reforming who I is, and who I will be in the next iteration, each time drawing on the versioned elements of our personas that stretch forward and backward in time.  There are so many things about ourselves that are difficult and complex to keep in our own consciousnesses, that in many ways it is easier to grab onto cliches and uniforms to help create visual and mental shortcuts.

I look at the me of today, and I wonder if I would be recognizable to any other me that I’ve identified with.  I don’t know what I thought my future would be like, and it is not something that I necessarily spent a lot of time concerning myself about when I was younger.  The work I wanted to do was more clearly defined, but the “me” that I thought about when the future occurred to me was once so ill-defined that in many ways I didn’t exist.  There was always a name attached to a novel, but who that name was supposed to represent was never clear to me.  I can only imagine what this ghostlike perception of self has led to as time has marched on.

I haven’t turned into a horrible person, or at least, I don’t think I have.  I can be difficult and neurotic and hard on myself, but I don’t think I’m particularly awful.  But I can see the compromises that this me doesn’t feel bad about, but I may have once taken issue with.  At 19, there are certainly things I never imagined I would ever do, in spite of not having a vivid impression of this future life I might live.  The problem with tomorrow is that it comes so quickly that you often don’t realize that you are there, and have even moved on to the thing after that, and that, and that, and that.

Firmly in middle age, it isn’t that hard to find where things went wrong.  It is the natural state of the middle aged man to find fault with everything – himself especially – and I can very easily look at the man I have been and lay out a dissertation on the missteps and failed calculations.  But this blurring of identity – this realization that we have dynamic mes that shift and chance from day to day – suggests that this person I remember is someone else completely.

A past me.  A me that cared deeply about keeping everything, a me that smoked cigarettes with a passion.  A me that worked for six years in a bookstore, who considered the hobby of “musician” to be an occupation at one point, in spite of the fact that it was anything but.  This person loved punk rock and chasing women and thinking deep thoughts and being self-righteous about half-formed bullshit.

An uneducated me.  An awkward me.  A scared and lonely me.

It isn’t that I have become someone I would hate.  Rather, it is that I wish I could be friends with who I once was, because he seems like someone I could relate to.

The path I’ve chosen is fine.  There are no great opportunities that I was offered that I virulently turned down.  If anything there were things I pursued that I soon realized I was never suited for, and I was better off, in the end, never becoming the person I briefly imagined I might have been.

The problem I have now is that I want so badly to find out who the person I am, now, actually is.  I can only look in the mirror so many times before the image looks foreign again.  We are, if anything, defined by what we do, and waiting for inspiration and pacing back and forth is not exactly something I want to be known for.

Nostalgia is powerful, and the me I once was has an allure and a charm that I am often very attracted to.  Who doesn’t want to believe that something you can’t have again was secretly better than anything you can have now?  At least that way, you never have to worry about happiness again.

But, just suppose, we had to be happy now.  Is is possible?  Could we find something in the present that isn’t backward or forward looking, but is content with the me of the present?  And, does my own future now look so ill-defined, so amorphous and dim?

More importantly, how will I reflect on this, years from now, when the person I’ve become looks back, and wonders, “What the fuck is this guys thinking?”

Or, perhaps, all of this is another mental exercise, a way of framing identity in an altogether different way, so I can continue to avoid addressing the underlying issue that is at the heart of all of this, the question that really wakes me up in the middle of the night, that sends me to the keyboard so I can hammer out something else, this urge that makes me anxious and confused most of the time:

Why is it so hard to be happy?

Happy Holidays from your friends here on the Inter-Web-A-Tron.  We hope that your holiday is off to a great start, and that you enjoy spending time with and / or avoiding your family.  We know that you made the right choice – whichever one you made – and we hope that you get to spend the rest of the day in a food coma, hopefully drunk.

If it is entertainment you’re looking for, you should check out our previous Thanksgiving Leftovers programs, which usually feature stuff that we just didn’t get a chance to play the rest of the year.  (Plus: we throw in some other thematic bits and bobs.

You can also enjoy my #NaNoWriMo2015 Novel, You Spin Me Right Round.

And, when you’re done with all of that, I recommend you check out archive.org’s amazing collection, “100 OTR Thanksgiving Holiday Shows,” which features an amazing collection of old radio programs of every variety, from the late ’30’s to the mid ’70’s.  It is not only worth your time, but is a great resource to have on the web.

And that’s it for the day.  I mean, it’s a holiday, for fuck’s sake.  What else do you want me to do?

(A Detective Dexter Roland Adventure)

9: Lady Luck

Fish glared at Fred, and without a word Fred grabbed me and walked me into Miles’ office, pushed me down into the nearest chair, and said, “I would stay here if I were you.”  Fred shut the door behind me and I looked around to see if anything had changed since the last time I was here.  Aside from a few files and stacks of records having been moved, there was little different in the office.  But, as Miles was missing, it was also likely that he was the one who was on the gurney.

I didn’t get a chance to really see anything on the way in, but I saw Robert, the outline of a woman I couldn’t recognize, and another gentleman in a suit who was pacing around in the store.  It appeared that an officer was in Johnny’s old office, but I couldn’t make out much else that seemed odd to me.

I stood up and listened at the wall that was shared with the bathroom, but couldn’t make out anything.  Listening at the door did me no good either, but it was apparent that no one was in any hurry to talk to me.  I relaxed and wandered around Miles’ office leafing through his desk, to pass the time.  An envelope labeled “Marcus Little” caught my eye, partially sticking out of a lower drawer, and in it was $200 cash and four more joints, all of which I pocketed.  But aside from Miles’ office stash, there was little else of real interest to be found.  My phone buzzed but I ignored it, and began to glance at the photos on the wall.  I recognized Angie from a Dig Your Grave flier, and there were a few other musicians and artists mixed in.  I remembered the “Photograph” index card suddenly, and scanned the wall that was at eye-level when I was in the room before, and found a shot that read, “You Spin Me Right Round Staff Party.”  There was one woman with her arm around Miles, and she was the same person I saw talking to “T A” the morning previous.

I paced the room a smidge, and glanced at my phone.  It was a message from Carla saying, “Uhm, why did you give me a Weeknd CD last night?”  I glanced at the message a few times, but wasn’t sure what she could mean by it.

“Don’t you mean ‘Mission of Burma’?”

She responded with a photo of the CD.  “No, this is what you gave me last night.”

Something didn’t add up.  I had given her the Mission of Burma tape for safe keeping, as I assumed she would never get rid of it, and most likely it was a clue.  But now this?

I hammered out, “What are you up to later?”

“Working and avoiding you.”

“Can you bring the CD?  I want to look at it.”

“Bring cash.”

I paced some more, then fruitlessly sent a message to Sam, asking when I could see her next.  But I suspected that she would be contacting me the next time we would get together.  A slight twitch in my goin reminded me of some of the things we did last night, but if I had my way, we wouldn’t be so drunk and horny this time.  Still, the thoughts were fleeting and pleasant, but by no means caused her to write back.

After a few minutes of working off the remaining nervous energy, it became clear that Detective Fish was going to be a while before he was going to talk to me, so I started futzing with a phone and rolled a J out of some clippings in Miles’ stash.  I assumed that I would be in no more trouble than I already was, and Miles’ office always smelled like weed anyway.  (And, if my guess was right, he wouldn’t be missing it at this point.)  I started to feel a little sad about him getting knocked off.  Miles was a nice enough gent, ran a good store, and seemed like the kind of guy I could be friends with in another lifetime, or under other circumstances.  Up until now I assumed that he had a small case on his hands, internal fraud or an insubordinate employee.  But now it was clear there was more going on than I suspected, and now that the stakes have been raised, I was wondering if I would be able to sort this out before I risked my own life.

Having worked up a pretty good buzz, I lit a cigarette and turned on the radio.  Frankie was already in the middle of his morning block, where White Lion and Whitesnake were doing a back-to-back set that made my stomach crawl.  As the songs ended, Frankie’s voice came on:

“That’s right, KLOW rockin’ it a loud as me can with our Metal In The Morning, as I paint myself into a White Corner of The ‘80’s.  The hair may be receding and the spray has washed out, but the hair bands of your childhood roam the airwaves every morning on K L O W, with your fantastic DJ-tastic air-spastic host, Frankie Diamond!”  I was almost ready to retch.  “Now, we’ve got some terrible news, and this next track goes out to the friends and family of You Spin Me Right Round Records, who have suffered enough this month.  It is with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to Miles Dangerfield, the owner of said palace of platter, who has been added to the great cut-out bin in the sky.  You’ll never know how much you were missed here in this world, but let’s hope where you are are the turntables never stop.  Now, here’s ‘Landslide’ in honor of this incredible force in the local scene.  Some of us built our entire record collections around you, and we are afraid of loosing you and changing our lives completely.  Here’s to the crew at You Spin Me Right Round, here on K L O W.”

At first I let Frankie’s bullshit wash over me, but as I started to piece together what it was all about, Detective Fish threw open the door.  “Put that out, and turn off that crap.  What are you, a teenager?”

I looked Fish up and down and said, “Well, at least I still look good enough to pass.”

Fish began to pace and said, “Well, have you got your alibi, or should we just take you back to the station with us?”

“Does drinking count as an alibi?”

“Where?”

“Oh, here and there.  I don’t spend a lot of time in The City.”

Fish rounded on me, and leaned in.  “I’m sort of glad you think this is a game.  It’ll make pinning all of this on you all the more sweet.”

“What exactly are the rules to this game?  I’m a little slow.”

Fish’s arm twitched, like he was going to slap me, but he relaxed and went back to pacing.  “It’s funny, you show up at two of my crime scenes, and both times you’re looking for the person I was called in about.”

I shrugged.  “Guess I’m a comedian.  Is he alright?”

Fish turned around.  “What do you think?”

I sighed.  “He was a nice guy, he didn’t deserve this.”

“Tell me about it.”

“And he was found in Johnny’s office?”

“Excuse me?”

I pointed to the office next door.  “Where the boys in blue are working.”

Fish shook his head.  “You seem to know a lot about what happened here.”

“And I saw a lot on the way in, too.  So you think I did it?”

Fish cleared his throat.  “You’re a suspect, for sure.  Where’s Sam?”

“Is she a suspect too?”

“Cut the crap.  Where is she?”

“How should I know?”

“Weren’t you wish her last night?”

“Who told you that?”

Fish’s eyes narrowed, and then turned away.  “Nevermind, we’ll find her soon enough.”

“What about Angie?”

“What about her?”

“Seems as if she’s connected to KLOW and this store, too.”  I pointed to the photo on the wall, to which Fish turned.  While he looked away, I cast a spell and hammered something out on my phone.

Fish looked at the photo, then his pocket buzzed.  He pulled out his phone and glanced at it briefly.  “Shit.”  He typed away on his phone, then turned to me.

“Where’s Sam?”

“The Sham?  Probably in the used LPs.  Here, let’s take a look.”

Fish came over and grabbed my by the bow-tie.  “Look, dipshit.  I’ve seen you two more times that I would have liked to see you today, and you are lucky that you actually are a detective, or your ass would be downtown quicker than you can say, ‘Black Mask.’  So, while we’re on the subject, maybe you just give up this case right now before we get to three strikes, at which point I’ll no longer be responsible for what happens to you.”

I said, “But Miles was my client.”

Fish growled.  “Of course he was.  Well, he paid you in advance, didn’t he?”

I nodded.

“And if I know you, some of his stash has been ‘lifted.’”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right.”  Fish mulled this over.  “I’m probably making a huge mistake, but just so we’re clear: if your phone rings, and its me, you answer, or so help me, it will be worse than going downtown when I catch you.”

“You have my word.  I’ll be waiting for your call, all night long if I have to.”

Fish grunted and walked out, leaving the door open.  I snapped a close-up of the woman on Miles’ arm, then re-read the message I’d sent Fish (forged from a “neighbor” as per the spell): “I looks like your car was stolen.  Cops just showed up.”

I gathered up my stuff and leisurely followed him out.  I glanced over at Johnny’s office, but saw that the uniforms were largely done.  I looked in.  Evidence markers were in one part of the room, and a small splatter and hole in video monitor (and the wall behind it) was clear on the far side of the room.  The other monitors were on, and from there you could largely see most of the various sections of the store, save for the front counter.  I glanced around some more, but aside from a spent condom (presumably from Angie’s rendezvous’) and a box of LPs that looked like crap mostly, there appeared to be little else of interest in the room.

I made my way to the store proper, and walked behind the front counter.  I knew I didn’t have much time, as the guy in the suit made me and was heading over.  I found the camera that was pointed on this spot, and then looked around the frame of what would have been visible to see what would have been in the monitor’s screen previously.  Obviously, the register would have been visible, but mostly likely there wouldn’t have been any money there at night.  There wasn’t anything behind the counter either, or at least nothing missing.  But someone went back there after the screen had been shot out to make sure they weren’t captured on the surveillance camera.  For what, exactly, seemed unclear.

I glanced around briefly, then noticed that beneath the counter there were stacks of items on hold for customers.  Once shelf was empty, and sitting on it was a QR code.  I ducked down and saw that it was similar to the other two I’d found.  It seemed as if there had been other items there, but where now missing.  I palmed the QR code just in time for the man in the suit to appear behind the counter.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he asked.

“Marcus.  Marcus Little.  I’m a friend of Sam, but I see she’s not here.”

“Yeah, she doesn’t work today.  Why are you behind the counter?”

“Who are you?”

“Look, I can just go and get the police and see if they can get you to answer.”

“I’m sorry, let me move to the floor.  I guess I knew I shouldn’t have, but I was looking for another copy of this tape I was supposed to buy.  Sam had set it aside for me.  A Mission of Burma live tape?  I paid over the phone… my name’s Marcus?”

The guy in the suit looked me up and down.  “She’s not here, and given the current situation, you’ll have to come back another day.  We’re closing.  Maybe for a few days.  I hope you underst-.”

“It’s just that I already paid over the phone, and she promised me the tape.”

The guy in the suit rubbed his temples.  “Then let me give you a full refund.”

“I’d much rather have the tape.”

“And I’d much rather that you leave.  Someone has died here, or is your perpetually dazed and confused mind so addled that you can’t see that?”

“That’s awful, for sure.  And I’m not trying to be insensitive, believe me.  But it was a Live video that I was really looking forward to.  Can you tell me when she’ll be back?”

There was a buzz, and the guy in the suit reached for his phone.  “Shit,” and he answered it, “Angie, I’m in the middle of something, I’ll call you back!” in a sort of whisper.  Suddenly, I recognized his voice.

The guy in the suit pulled out his wallet and took out a $20, then put it on the counter.  “How much was the tape again?”

“The cost isn’t -” but he took out another $20.  “Sir!”  I insisted, but when he put down a third I scooped up the money and left before he could change his mind.

All in all, it was a pretty good day.  Usually I show up at a record store stinking of weed, and drop $260 on vinyl.  But I had never score drugs and a $260 payday, merely by getting accused of murder.

I think I cry more often at 40 than I ever did the other 39 years.

Because: meme.

The View from Our Room

Pattern Recognition

You sure do.

Washington Bound.

http://wasweissichpodcast.de.vu

Hurm…

I want to tell people that there is no short-cut through bureaucracy or graduating from college, but that doesn’t stop a steady string of students from regularly trying all day, everyday.

“If I could choose to believe or not to believe, you know I would choose not to.”