Snack Attack: Front and Back!

Let me begin by introducing a series of observations that may entice, amaze, flatter and astound you: I do not like having a day job. There, I've said it. Last evening found me on the couch in a sort of stupefaction while I watched something named Kelly Osborne on Dancing with the Stars, twirl around and mangle the foxtrot. She most resembled a drunken horse looking for oats at nighttime, flopping and flailing with reckless abandon. It was at this point a tickle of depression washed ashore and let me bathe in it. The only thing that would cleanse my palate of this was a program of microwave burritos and beer which tasted even better than I just made it sound.

Life is a cloud of cottony goodness with varieties of fragrances and tastes. They all surround you and you give yourself over to them in little ways. Come on, think about it!!

Midweek (R)evolutions & Amazing Thoughts come a-Drippin' down!!

I often find myself asking what is the deal with very hip young people. Granted I - and society - counts myself among them certainly by age but also by elocution and diction and an X factor we'll call poise. But still, I find a wide chasm between their pursuits and mine, these great unwashed swaths of youth. Here are some cases in point: I have no interest in hearing DJ Slapdaddy spin discs at a new fusion thai restaurant that serves drinks they've invented called 'honeysuckle teats'. I have no interest in going to an "art" show where a man in a dirty t-shirt and glasses and a chain on his wallet plays ukelele along with grim medical photos looping on a slide projector. I have no interest in going to a reading at a local independent bookstore featuring a 'writer' reading out loud a 'memoir' about how hard it was to grow up wealthy and summering on the cape when people were starving in Mongolia and so they began some annoying non-profit company that aspired to 'help' people to offset their white guild. Enough with all this hipness!!!

But, all that said, and if i'm being honest the thing that gets my goat the most is very hip young people riding bicycles and not wearing helmets at the same time as they're text messaging and listening to ipods with giant bose headphones listening to the latest bit of Grizzly Bear droppings. Why do you do that? It's so stupid!!! You could die. You really could!

Wednesday: An Affront to Modern Love!

Good warm and nibbly Wednesday to you, my blog-adoring audience. My mood of late has been ping-ponging round and round like so many options on a lazy susan at a restaurant of chinese extraction. Why, you ask? Life, I answer. Life. You will recall that last week around this time I was body-surfing gigantic waves of bliss due to the crashing tidal pools of all the friends I had made on facebook. What a ride it was! But naturally that wore off a little and here I still find myself: miserable at my day job as I tinker in the database while my pain-killer addicted boss trundles around the office looking for the pen they misplaced (hey dipnuts, look behind your freaking ear!). Then I crawl back into my car and drive through the traffic-strewn streets, back to the Regency Towers apartment complex, back into my unit, #8 wherein and whereupon I find myself sitting on the couch quite a bit and enjoying a beer or three no matter the evening or occasion. It is a wheel inside a rat-race inside a floating molecule, if you follow that. But yes, these are the items that confound the modern artist. You can sit and play nintendo and get a good buzz on OR you can get your fat ass off the sofa and create some blissful art.

Well, I did the latter the other night. I wrote a new song called The Unicorn Stampede. This is a song that finds me, your humble hero, attempting new and terrifying things. For one, I took an old folk legend and made it a song. [This is an approach that has worked for that band that Jim Coggins (Accounts) told me about. This band does a lot of prancing and uses fancy-pants words and bases whole albums around cute little tree-sprites and rabid ponies and such. (I don't want to bash anyone public-ly but let's just say their name is not The Novemberists). In any case, I took a page from their operating manual and hand-crafted a song from folk-lore)]}. For another thing, in keeping with the purity of my intention, I had to move into a horrifying zone where I use the accents and vocal registration of an old Irishman in 1104 AD as he tells his son, little Bobby Fitzdoodle about the thunder in the sky. "It's when the horse-lord mates with faeries" he tells young Bobby. It's The Unicorn Stampede.

Man, I hope you dig this song! Let me know if otherwise!!!!

Well, Looky Here! (No, over here!)

Greetings and sun salutations to you my blog-reading audience! It's the kind of morning where the dew covers the mist-strewn flowers and birds buzz around your head like tiny bumblebees. Can you feel it? Where a energy shake of fish parts and gumdrops sounds like just the ticket! (note to self: what does that mean exactly?!) In any case, no more asides or exclusions. I am high on caffeine and today the day job is humming along, if not exactly at a razor's edge, then maybe a mild to lowgrade sort of clip. You follow?

For awhile I've been hearing about some band that makes songs about little british chimney sweeps and victorian women in corsets. This is the sort of band that does a lot of prancing onstage and also gurgling and has a lot of costume changes. Steve Coggins (Accounts) keeps telling me - ever since he heard my song last week - that I would absolutely love them. Yesterday he brought me a copy of their newest offering and I listened on the drive home. Can I tell you something? I don't get it!!!!! It reminds me of the AV club in high school, who the whole school mocked mercilessly. (Now granted I was in the AV club but still...). Plus the singer uses a lot of words that force you to draw attention at him. I don't get that. Not sure what the lesson is here. Probably to stop listening to Steve Coggins.

This is April 1, 2009 and it is time to enjoy things!