September 2007 Archives

Last night, I watched a couple of good friends kids play punk rock in a bowling alley bar.

It's hard to put name to the cocktail of reactions. Pride, for the kids in question. For the fact the thirteen, fourteen year old kids care enough, work hard enough, to actually sound like a band, not just like kids fuckin' around.

But also, oddly happy that punk rock is alive and well in kids this age. This is the music we used to thrash and slam to, more years ago than I can count. I looked at these boys, all focused intensity, adolescent rage, and absolute fucking glee, and It just made me happy.

I watched kids on the dance floor, kids who couldn't have been more than fifteen at the oldest, bouncing off each other like giggling rubber balls. Some of them where just roughhousing, in a setting where it wasn't just allowed, but welcomed. Others, clearly, were exploring dance-floor as mating ground, showing off for each other.

It looked like a basket full of puppies in Hot Topic threads.

On the sides were parents; not like my parents would have been to see my friends in such a scene, but parents of my generation. Pride, amusement, nostalgia. And all around the room, the un-spoken thought - we are very old.

It warmed me to see one of the kids - an intense, shy, socially awkward boy, pale, doughy-soft - transformed into the very image of deranged punk rock frontman. His back to the crowd, he'd scream barely-intelligable lyrics into the mike, posing like Rollinns, and often diving into the pit when his friends started to slam. Half the songs he wound up on his back on the floor, never breaking his shrieked, howled vocals. In between songs, he'd mumble bits of patter; "this is one of our longer songs, it's maybe three minutes", or "this is one of the faster ones." THis is a boy who's found his voice, no matter his issues when he's off stage.

The songs pretty much all sounded the same - but it didn't matter at all, because they sounded good. It shows exactly how hard they've been working, when for all the look of un-controlled chaos, everything stops together, starts together, the drums and guitar locked together. These kids care. They love what they're doing.

Punk rock is alive and well - and that just makes me happy.

It's a funny thing how a writer's block shuts one down.

A friend asked me the other day, 'when will you write me something'. And I stared at the message and thought, when will I fucking write me something?

Buck made mention in a recent comment of good stuff I've been writing and I wondered who's blog he's mistaken for mine. Mine, you see, has become a series of place-holder posts, made just so I still have some change on this page, or because I've found some funny lolcat or a song that fit my mood particularly well.

I look back and can't even find the last entry I'd call writing.

Where in the fuck did my creativity go? The worst thing is, most of the time, I don't even care. I look at my blog editor, ecto, and have nothing. Nothing at all.

I was accused of starting a new, secret blog, but if that's true, it's so secret even I can't find it. If you find it, let me know, ok? Because maybe I left what used to be a decent ability to write over there someplace.

Even writing this is a struggle. The effort seems ill-spent when I know I'm getting nothing.

My collection of writing ideas is growing, and yet, they're notihng but a line, a concept, a description. I can't convert to narrative. I can't find the voice I need.

Last night I was watching Moonlight, the new angel rip-off series about a vampire detective. I wanted to like it, for all the heavy stylistic borrowings; vampire as hard-boiled detective. The show's got some good actors, and a lot of appeal. Yet the writing was horrible; a grab-bag of hard-boiled cliches linked with clumsy dialog and self-conscious pop-culture references. And I couldn't stop thinking, god, I could do this so much better. I can do hard-boiled. God knows I've read enough of it to know all the hammet/chandler/thomas/macdonald/parker cliches. I can write that stuff in my sleep.

And then I thought, no, I can't. I can't even write a blog entry anymore.

Where'd it go? And why don't I care?

When words fail try music.
Play it -->

I love BRMC.

Looks like you can own a piece of Easy Rider - Some of Peter Fonda's own memorabilia is up for auction.

And sure, that's pretty cool. A more iconic piece of late sixties counter culture you're unlikely to find. But I'm left wondering who's going to fork over a a hundred grand to own a piece of that image, to hang it in some multi-million-dollar mansion, admired by the kings and queens of hollywood or silicon valley.

The word irony comes to mind.

Still, I saw items about this auction in BoingBoing, and SFGate, and My first thought was the chopper - which isn't for auction.

My mother used to save things like old christmas wish lists, and she recently ran across several from my childhood. You can imagine the things on them; GI Joes, 'Major Matt Mason' dolls. Hot Wheels and SST racers. Weapons, of course, knives (which I usually got), guns (which I would get if they were BB guns), and machines guns (which I still vaguely hope Santa will leave in my stocking). But the one thing that was always there - always - was chopper.

My god, I wanted a chopper. I used to dream about roaming the highways in leather, my motorcycle one of those absurdly raked, over-chromed monsters like I'd see from time to time roaring down the main streets near my house. My aunt used to date bikers, and I desperately hoped for a ride on some snarling monster of a bike (though when we visited, her boyfriend tended to have a truck full of harley parts (always pronounced as one word, harleyparts), and never a running bike one could actually ride.

I can't say that absurd chopper lust has ever gone away. I recently watched Ghost Rider with my daughter, and all I could think (other than wishing the film were better) was I want that bike. No, not the cartoon skull-and-bones one, the real one, the one they called grace (which I can't find a decent picture of, anywhere). The one that looked just like the Captain America bike. "You need a bike like that," Ruby said to me, after the movie was over. And I agree with her.

I watched the above-linked intro from Easy Rider - a film I haven't seen in years - and it brought bake all that silly, boyhood notion of the wide-open road, and the tragic, doomed hero. And you know, that's part of the appeal, I guess. Because who can separate the image of that flag-striped machine, from the aerial shot, flames on the side of the highway. Pointless, random, manifest destiny.

Or maybe, you know, I just need a shiny new toy.

I woke up, gasping, my heart pounding. I could hear my own voice as some sort of wordless snarl trailed away; raw, white-hot rage gripped me, brutal, violent, killing rage.

I sat up, breathing hard, sweating, my fists clenching. Needing to hurt the objects of my rage, already out of reach on the other side of the filmy curtain of dream.

even now, I can feel my teeth grind; rage will not dissipate more quickly, more easily, for it's source being imaginary. Not when that source lives in dreams, real as waking day for only those few moments it has life.

The details of the dream are not important; my sub-conscious mind assembling people and scenarios out of the past, building something rough and new out of them, as with stones from a crumbling castle turned into crude, temporary dwellings.

Small, old hurts and frustrations, angers almost forgotten, dredged up in the dark of night and used to assemble daylight-sharp 'memories' of things that never happened.

I can still feel the skin on my knuckles split; I can feel my throat raw from screaming in raw, murderous fury. I can feel my opponent's nose crack under my fist.

Now, in mid-day sun, what stands clear are the minor, sensory details, not whatever baroque tale my sub-conscious concocted. And I cannot, quite, release the targetless rage with which I woke, sweating and seething.

There is nothing to hit, in the dark, when the dream flees. No target for that impotent rage. Nothing at all.

I lay a while, staring into the glow of my digital clock, trying to let go, or to understand whatever it was that trigged such a dream. I do not know, now, if I got anywhere, but at least, I re-found sleep.

When I woke, hours later, it was to my daughter's voice - Daddy, I made you coffee.

Some things are better than others at sweeping away night's cobwebs, That, certainly, was one such.

I'm fiddling about with my blog template, seeing if I can get a new feel without too much effort. I liked that drop-in I had last week but I *hate* fixed column widths; fixing that one was more effort since I actually *know* this template.

So there you have it.

If something's fucked up, ignore it, this is real-time engineering.

For some reason, all these years I've never seen Richard Thompson.

Finally - thanks to ticket-pusher Chris (also know as Papa Christo), I saw him last night. I told Chris he's GOT to keep buying tickets; I never go out to live shows anymore unless someone else plans it.

Some of my friends have seen him dozens of times. I figured, there must be a reason. But you know, some of the same people saw The Dead literally hundreds of times; so who the hell knows.

Turns out - which is not a really big surprise - that they were right about Thompson. He's fuckin' brilliant. It's hard to say for sure, but he may be the best guitarist I've ever seen actually playing live (I'd have to go way, way back in my memory to be sure, but he's close anyway); but more importantly, he's the kind of performer who makes you feel like you're seeing something brand new every night. I just bought my tickets to see him play again in december, and I have the feeling it won't be the last time.

Here then is what just might be the greatest motorcycle song ever, and certainly the only love song I can thing of about a boy and a girl and a motorcycle - 1952 Vincent Black Lightning.

This is pretty much exactly how it sounded last night, outside in the open air at the Mountain Winery.

Lyrics after the break, below.

Ok, THIS is what I should have gotten in that lolcat quiz.

Because, you know, it's true. I am, and I don't.

(thx to icanhazcheezeburger)

Here are the pictures Uncle Tim took right when the tattoos were finished.

The black is ink, not dirt.

This is right when they were completed - they will never again have the same color vibrance.

Uncle Tim rules.

Click for full size.

You know, both the lovely and talented Bacchus (and the lovely and talented Violet Blue) beat me to this, but given that I was forwarded the link by several others lovely and talented friends, I thought I should point this out.

Have I mentioned Maggie? Yeah I'm sure I have.

Well, I mean, come on:

You with me? No, nevermind. All mine, no sharing. But you can see the whole set here.

Something was broken in my template (I must have made some minor tweak I don't recall), so I decided to temporarily dump the purple-n-piracy.

I really need a new layout but given my lack of time to write I can't quite see finding time to work on templates.

Someday. Maybe.

Anyway, if anything looks completely fucked up around here (aside from yours truly), I'll fix it as soon as I'm able.

RIP, Alfred Peet

If you love coffee, this man should be one of your culinary heros. He's one of mine.

Ever wonder where the funders of starbucks got the idea? From Alfred Peet, that's where. The guy who founded Peet's Coffee - the guy who pretty much started america's current love affair with quality coffee. Odds are, if you're not from the Bay Area, you've never heard of Peet's; but next time your drink your extra-hot-no-whip-de-caf-fat-free-soy-milk-uber-grande-complicato, thank Alfred. Cause he started it all.

I won't buy any beans but Peets, and their short-pull espresso has spoiled me for anyone else's. No one else does it right.

Thanks, Alfred.