Back By Popular Demand!

Okay, before I get into things, I need to state something. For all you driving with broken headlights… knock it off! For the love of god, having someone behind you or someone driving the lane opposite you without a headlight is annoying. However, I think the more annoying scenario is when the driver decides to replace that headlight with the goddamn high beam. When I see those cars, I suddenly want something bad to happen to them. Not death, but more like when they get home they see that their dog has crapped all over the house due to its sensing of a soon-to-come earthquake. And yes, when that earthquake comes, Mr. One High-beam will lose everything except for the box of memories of his ex-girlfriend who he absolutely hates but for some reason cannot let go of the memories.

Now, on to lighter things; I have been away. My laptop was down due to a corruption in the internal colonel. Not my language, but that seemed to be the problem. Due to the magic and mojo of my uncle Tim, he was able to fix it without my spending of lots of money since it was out of warranty. By the way, Microsoft Word did not recognize mojo as a word; I had to add it in my dictionary. Can you believe that?

Anyway, while my hiatus took place with my personal laptop and the lack of an overall connection to the general Internet world, I found myself in some crazy and perplexing situations.

The catalyst to my crazy life was that I joined a band. They call themselves A Clever Salutation. They originally were called Deflowered in Chicago, then they went with The Progressive Libido, after that it was The Nap-Takers and the singer thought that was “gay.” The lead singer then left and the remaining band decided to be called The Beach Boys Grew Up but that didn’t look good on posters, so they went with A Clever Salutation because the bassist used to write thank you letters for a community foundation and said she came up with “a clever salutation” that later got her fired. She never explained what that clever salutation was but the rest of the band seemed pleased with it. I don’t think much of the title.

With the lead singer leaving the band, they recruited a new person who goes by the name Deirdre and that’s it. She said she wanted the band to be as if Patti Smith had founded the Cure and wrote lyrics that were compared to Don Henley (but early post-Eagles break up). It all sounded ambitious but they managed to pull it off.

I was at a coffee shop and the drummer and guitarist were sitting at a table behind me and they liked the percussions of my fingers banging against the table. They asked me if I had played any instruments and I said “No, but I’ve seen The Sound of Music, like a million times.” They handed me a tambourine and there I was, at band practice for A Clever Salutation.

By the time I had joined, they released one full-length album called The Children of Ted Kennedy. I am not sure what Ted Kennedy had to do with the title, but the band explained it was an inside joke with them and the lead singer who left. But they still haven’t actually gone into detail about what the inside joke was specifically. So, by the time I joined, they were working on another album that was supposed to “put Charles Dickens to shame” as Deirdre put it.

While I was playing a mean tambourine, I noticed something odd about the songs that were being played. They were covers of 50 Cent songs with choruses from New Edition. I called Deirdre on this but she “just had no idea.” She then came back with new songs, but all the words were text from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Again, I called her on this, but the rest of the band thought that this was pretty cool. We all decided that the album would be based on the book. However, Deirdre wanted the album to be called “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times” so we “could give Dickens a run for his money.” It made no sense but, of course, I did nothing about it.

By the end of September, we were able to get a gig in some town I didn’t know existed. It was somewhere between Los Gatos and Stockton. We opened for a band called Splendor 460. I asked the singer what that meant, and he said, “If you have to ask, you’re better off not knowing.”

The crowd was pretty decent; for a small venue, there were about sixty people there. Deirdre passed around the set list for all of us. The first song on the list was “Joan Haverty was a Lesbian.” Charming, I know. However, when we actually started, Deirdre began singing “Keep Holding On” by the Thompson Twins. The rest of the band went along with it. I had no idea what was happening!

I managed to slip off stage without anyone noticing (this goes well with my self esteem). I went to the bar and met a guy named Harold. He just got back from his weekly meeting with the “Next Dark Side” club. Harold and his friends gather every Thursday evening and take a random album and a random movie and synch the album with the movie to see if there is anything that connects (as in seen in Wizard of Oz mixed with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon). When I met him at the bar, he said they just tried the soundtrack to Phenomenon (the Travolta movie) with Minority Report. Harold explained they were hoping for a Scientology connection. But no such luck.

So, then last weekend my computer was fixed. I told Deirdre that I just couldn’t be a part of the band. I wished them luck and, now, here I am: back with the Internet world.

Like Ripley, I will let you choose to believe it or not.

Enron on my shoulders makes me happy

Dream time... Randomly, I had a dream last night that I chose the lovely "E" symbol from Enron (you know, the old oil and energy company that defines corporate corruption) and had it tattooed on my right shoulder. Everyone thought it was cool.

I got to thinking...

What does it all mean? According to dreammoods.com, I found some explanations.

For shoulder we have:
"To see your shoulders in your dream, symbolizes strength, responsibility and burdens. It indicates that you feel that you have had too much responsibility to bear and is overburdened by circumstances in your life."

For tattoo we have:
"To dream that you have tattoos, represents individuality and the desire to stand out in a crowd. You want to be unique and different from everybody else, particularly if you do not have any tattoos in real life. Consider also what the tattoo is."

So then I tried looking into the image of the E, but I couldn't find anything. I explored some more and decided to go with what Enron stood for. The dream site didn't have anything about energy, so I went with oil instead.

For oil we have:
"To see oil in your dream, suggests a need to have things run more smoothly. You may need to show more love and compassion in your life."

I could do the cliche thing and relate this all to work, but then I would feel really pathetic that everything in my life revolves around work. Damn, I need to find some new hobbies, or get a dog or something.

Sad times, I say.

An Individual in Crisis

A man stands in the middle of the park; he makes statements that everyone can hear.

“Everyone who is smarter than me is a nerd! Everyone that is dumber than me is an idiot!”

He turns around so the people to his back can hear him more clearly.

“Everyone older than me is a geezer! Everyone younger than me is a kid!”

Another turn takes place.

“Everyone less promiscuous than me is a prude! Everyone more promiscuous than me is a slut!”

Then one of his listeners comes closer to the man and responds to his exclamations.

“Hey, what do you think about people louder and more annoying than you?”

The man tries to respond.

“I think they’re-“

“TRICK QUESTION! NO SUCH THING!”

The Eumenides of Pacific Ave

I saw no problem in leaving work an hour early today. I justified it by not taking a lunch break; and no, eating my tuna sandwich while uploading an automated call center manual onto an IT collaboration website and reviewing a power-point slide on what our donation website would look like does not count as a lunch break. Besides, I had to rush that sandwich since I had a conference call in less than a half an hour.

So, to get work off my mind, I decided to take advantage of the somewhat early evening and get a coffee and just read (and when I say read, I mean people watch).

The table outside of Lulu’s was looking desirable. I sat there with my latte and my latest reading material: The Time Traveler’s Wife. Many pages were turning; the story was so fragmented as I was learning about the relationship between Harry and Clare: the two protagonists of my book. The main plot driving point of this story is that Harry is born with a genetic disorder called chrono-impairment, which means he naturally slips out of time, but within his own timeline existence. This causes a slight problem for his wife, Clare. It’s a fascinating spin on the traditional romance story.

However, my reading endurance was slightly shattered as I heard these archaic voices coming from behind me.

“He doesn’t need to cry!”

“Yes he does! Yes he does!”

“Are we going to find him?”

“Where do you think we’re going?”

I lifted my head from the aura of my book and I saw three women who were launching these questions and answers. These were three extremely old and extremely obese individuals who were all in motorized wheelchairs; they were blasting down Pacific Avenue. Where I saw them, they were crossing the street and passing Jamba Juice and continued towards where the post office is. I apologize to those not situated in Santa Cruz and the lack of geographic distinction.

Their wheelchairs were decorated with all kinds of hippie style blankets and various little ornaments dangling from the back end of the chairs. After hearing that brief segment of their conversation, I figured they were looking for someone. But due to the leader of the pack (they were moving in a line, front to back) and her raging words “Yes he does! Yes he does!’ and “Where do you think we’re going?” they were looking for someone who had spilt blood (but not his own).

I give you mad credit if you were putting together the same pieces I was. These three women were indeed the Furies, or the Erinyes, or the Eumenides (it's your call). Derived from Greek mythology; they were the personification of vengeance; there they were: Tisiphone in the front, Alecto in the middle, and Megaera in the back. I pray for the individual they were looking for. From what I gathered, the threesome aren’t the most forgiving type; well, unless you’re Orestes, but I’m going to make you read the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus in order to get that reference.

“Somebody threw a Kuala at me…”

Those were the words of Jenny Lewis, lead singer of Rilo Kiley, when she was talking to the audience at the Warfield in San Francisco, last Thursday night. While talking between songs, somebody threw a little stuffed Kuala at her; after making her statement, she replied with the rhetorical question: What the fuck?

I drove up to San Francisco that evening to see Rilo Kiley and met up with my uncle Tim and his friend Dave. The opening bands were Grande Ole Party and Jonathan Rice.

After some intense traffic on Highway 101 and some excruciating confusion with the street structure of San Francisco, I found myself at the Warfield. As I walked in to find my seat and my uncle, I ran into my friend Anna there. By the way, you should check out the music zine she works for: treblezine. You can find out about some cool stuff in the indie music scene.

With some confusion and hysteria of trying to find my seat, I managed to settle into it and eventually Tim and Dave met up as well. The first band was Grande Ole Party. It’s rare to see a lead singer take on the drummer role. I mean, I’ve never seen Genesis or the Eagles in concert so I wouldn’t be able to measure Phil Collins’s or Don Henley’s magic with singing and drumming at the same time. However, for Grande Ole Party I was able to see that skill. The band was all right, overall. The singer seemed to be a fan of Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to which her voice and singing style was very reminiscent of hers. Plus, I had trouble making the songs somewhat distinguishable. But then again I wasn’t familiar with their music.

The second performance was Jonathan Rice. It was himself and his backup band. What I got from this guy was that he was some egotistical LA hipster who grew up listening to Neil Young. I found it amusing when he talked to the crowd between songs. For certain songs, he would give an introduction like:

“Where I’m from, in LA, there are a lot of coyotes. They’re scary animals. Well, just imagine coyotes storming into the office of the governor. Think of the stuff that those coyotes can do to the governor. Well, this song is about that.”

So, of course, you think that the song would be a bit more metaphorical from that. However, once the chorus kicks in for the song, we all hear:

“There are coyotes in the governor’s office, doing things that you can only imagine about…”

Did you really need to give us that literal introduction about your song?

As his performance continued, I figured the guy must be a real prick, and really full of himself. I imagined him at some “cool” bar in LA talking to some attractive woman:

“I’m Jonathan motherfucking Rice. I’m a goddamn singer and I can play the guitar. Having sex with me is like making love to a pile of gold.”

The woman then replies with, “A pile of gold? I don’t see the pleasure in that. It’s a pile of rocks; who would want to have sex with a pile of rocks? Also, are you using gold as some concept of value? Because gold doesn’t have the same impact that it did, lets say, in the 1800s. I mean, if you were to say, ‘Having sex with me is like making love to a pile of great stock options’ then you would be a bit more appealing. I’d say you should get with the times.”

Then you would see a blank stare on Rice’s face.

“… I’m Jonathan motherfucking Rice. I can write you a song about the flowers along the side of the 405 Freeway. I’ll call it ‘The Flowers Along the 405 Freeway.’ The chorus will be ‘have you seen the flowers along the side of the 405 Freeway? They look like really pretty flowers, they look like you.’”

Suddenly Jonathan Rice realizes that the lady is no longer there.

“Well, I’m Jonathan motherfucking Rice.”

To further enhance his ego, his last song (called “We’re All in a Desert and We’re All Going to Die”) was accompanied by Ben Gibbard (the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie and the mastermind behind the Postal Service… not the government mailing system), who provided backup vocals and tambourine sounds. Just as a side note, Ben Gibbard is really good friends with Jenny Lewis (who provided backup vocals for the Postal Service album).

Finally Rilo Kiley came on. They have a new album out entitled Under the Black Light. Hence why they are on tour. I thought it was interesting that they opened up with “It’s a Hit,” which is the first track off of their previous album More Adventurous. Overall, the performance was a strong combination of both of their latest albums.

Our seats were in the balcony area of the venue. Some of the balconies had everyone standing up; ours was one where there wasn’t much standing, mostly sitting. In the beginning of Rilo Kiley’s performance, many of the people in the front part of our balcony stood up. After the second song, it was mostly sitting for everyone. However, one prick decided to stand up randomly during the show, and that prick was the person who was sitting in front of me. I looked around and not a single soul in my balcony was standing. And, of course, the prick had to be tall. I didn’t want to stand up because the person behind me wouldn’t see and then that person would have to stand, and then a whole domino effect would take place. The prick didn’t have a pattern; he would stand for one song and then sit down for two or three, then stand again for the next. And he wasn’t even dancing. I wished him seven years of bad luck.

The reason this was such a big deal for me was that I wasn’t able to see Jenny Lewis. Besides the band being very talented, it’s a side bonus that the Jenny Lewis is… pretty. I’ll keep it simple; I don’t want to be an obnoxious heterosexual guy. So, here I am trying to see:
I end up seeing this:
The performance by Rilo Kiley was quite enjoyable. I enjoyed the mixture of the two most recent albums from them. They did a cover but I had no idea what the cover was. Jenny Lewis introduced the song with, “This is a cover song.” Then they went right into it. About three lines in, the crowd began cheering. I had no idea what they were cheering about.

Overall, a very satisfying night, even though getting to the place was a bit hectic and I got to be behind the one person who decided to stand in my section. I’d see them again. Fo sho.

A Poser in the Mist

The goal was simply not to be in my house. Something about the lack of windows in my bedroom impacts me in the psychological sense. When I got off work last night, I thought to myself that I should just go somewhere. I swung by the house, changed my shoes, grabbed my iPod (did I mention it’s working again?), and went for a walk towards downtown. I had my man-purse with me in case I wound up somewhere that would entail me to read.

While walking from my near West Cliff Drive house to the strip we all call Pacific Avenue, I had this random experience with individuals I could not identify. At three different points of my walk to downtown, I had three different people wave and say hi to me as if we were once friends or acquaintances. I know people will do the typical friendly wave and/or smile acknowledgement, but these three moments were a bit more involved. A blonde woman on a bike was on her cell phone and consistently waved at me while I was walking down Woodrow Avenue; I was caught off guard and didn’t really wave back, I basically tilted my head in some obtuse angle. A man was walking toward me and said, “Hey! What’s up?!” I replied with a what’s up back, and he then asked me how I was doing; I said fine but that I am in a hurry. He said he would talk to me later. I had no clue who that person was. Then when I hit the downtown area, I found a spot at Café Pergelosi (a hipster coffee joint) and a woman walked by and asked, “How’s it going?” Again, these could all have been random friendly encounters, but there was something in their energy that made it seem that I had some previous experience with them; I just didn’t know what that experience was.

As I mentioned, I stopped at Café Pergelosi (I don’t know if I am spelling that correctly), and bought myself a latte and found a spot outside. I had a book and decided to read it. While sitting there outside, I couldn’t help but just people watch. I looked around the culture of the coffee shop and noticed these themes. Anyone who was sitting by himself, had a book and a notepad. These were obviously the academic type; however, I decided to grab my notepad and placed that on the table just to sort of fit in. Then there were the clusters of people and their general themes or motifs. There were the punk rockers, the Harley Davidson types, the intellectual hipsters, and high schoolers who thought they were changing the world. I eventually left when I realized there were no more individuals and I could not be placed in any of the given groups.

I continued my little odyssey down Pacific Avenue and found myself at Bookshop Santa Cruz. I grabbed a copy of Sarte’s play No Exit; a coworker was talking about it and I had read most of it when I was in college. When browsing through it, something seemed odd to me. Here I was, sitting on some random chair at a local independent bookstore, reading No Exit by Jean-Paul Sarte, still wearing my preppy work clothes; I felt that all I was missing was a cappuccino or something strongly related. After dawning my pretentious state of mind, I decided to leave the book due to its reflections of my own living situation. For those who don’t know, No Exit deals with people being stuck in a room with no windows and one door; the characters all think they’re in Hell. I found an exit.

At that point I was near the end of Pacific Avenue and decided to get one more cup of coffee. I was near Lulu’s, which is a more frequent spot for me when it comes to coffee consumption. Of course, as I approached the entrance of the joint, out comes the bar tender lady whose number I received back in July. Many of you readers were probably wondering whatever came about from that. You may recall, I called her and left a message before I left for Virginia, never heard from her, so I called her again when I got back and had a brief conversation with her. Unfortunately, I was not able to make any positive conclusion with her (in terms of going out) because she was able to control the conversation to her advantage. I believe she knew where I was going with this and she managed to end it before I could get to my destination. The next visit to the Red, she was giving me the cold shoulder, and this was verified by the friends I went with. Over the next course of time, I ran into her at different parts of town, and she wouldn’t really say hi to me, it was more of a nod and a walk away. One of my last visits to the Red, I approached the counter and she mysteriously left the bar and then reappeared once I turned my back to it. I found it strange, the whole thing. I didn’t even get to make an ass out of myself yet. A couple of friends indicated that I should just move on, that she’s not worth my time. That may be wise.

Going back to the second coffee shop visit, I saw her and she gave me the generic nod and continued walking. I felt that somewhere, there is a parallel universe and that a totally different situation took place. In that pocketed universe, I would confront her about not talking to me. She would explain that she knew that I liked her and that she just saw me as a polite bar customer.

“But you didn’t even give me a chance.”

“I was doing my best not to lead you on.”

“Well, you clearly didn’t know this, but I am a great kisser. And I can tell you don’t listen to the BBC or follow the research that comes out of NYU. Once you experienced my talent, your expectations of me will go in a complete direction.”

“Research on kissing? Out of NYU? Where would I begin to look into that?”

“Maybe their biology department, possibly the sociology department. Not quite sure.”

“Interesting.”

“Come on, we can at least try something. Why the cold shoulder? Maybe we can go and try to do something. I bet you’re great at playing Jacks!”

“I do kick ass at the Jacks.”

“Are you good at getting threesies?”

“I’ve gotten foursies once.”

“Get out!”

“It’s true.”

The conversation would then trail off somewhere and the two of us, in this parallel pocketed universe, would enjoy each other’s company and find some activity to do.

However, this never happened in our current state of reality. I bought my cup of coffee to go, walked outside and saw her with two of her friends at one of the nearby tables, but I didn’t want to waste my time. I figured this would be the moment, that if I went up to the table, then I would be making an ass out of myself and that would make me feel a tad more complete. I refrained from doing that; wasn’t in the mood.

The headphones went back on and my odyssey continued; this time, I went in the direction of my house. I placed my music on shuffle and I was curious to see what kind of soundtrack I would get from my walk home. Nothing came up that seemed fitting.

A Revival of the Somewhat Unexpected Kind

This weekend brought some bliss towards my end. But I need to backtrack a bit in order to describe my current setting.

June of 2006, a couple of my friends pitched in and bought me an iPod for my birthday. It was a fourth generation 20GB version and it was bought used. Over time, the device started acting up on me; it would sometimes freeze and I would have to let it simply run out of juice and then once the battery was dead, I would recharge it and then it was back in business.

This became a trend for a while and then finally in the winter time (maybe it was fall) the iPod just stopped working. I would turn it on and the Apple icon would show and then it would disappear and then reappear, and that would just function would just keep repeating.

Many eyes were on it; everyone had a different opinion on what was wrong with the device. I gave up on it. During the rest of my time at the house with Eric and Kyle, I basically forgot that I even had an iPod. When I visited my friends Steph and Vic in Virginia (they were the main ones who bought me the iPod), they asked how it was doing and I explained the situation. Vic offered to simply resell it on ebay.

My last Sacramento visit, I briefly explained what went wrong with my musical item and my uncle explained that I needed to buy a whole new battery. I went online and bought an iPod battery and removal kit. When I got back to Santa Cruz, it eventually came in the mail. Of course, I had no idea how to open the iPod with this kit (even though it gave clear instructions, I still couldn’t do it).

This past weekend I made another Sacramento visit and I brought both the iPod and the kit and battery. My uncle used his magic and managed to get the battery in. However, the iPod was still doing the same thing it was doing back in the fall: the Apple icon would appear and then disappear. My uncle then explained that it seemed that the hard drive was disconnected, that you could feel the device trying to make the connection but nothing would go through. Well, it seemed that I was destined to get a new iPod.

I went to the Apple store at the nearby mall and there was a major lack of customer service. There were so many people there. Maybe I could have tried harder getting help, but maybe I was just overwhelmed by the gigantic population rate in this tiny little store that I just had to get the hell out of there. When I got back to my uncle’s place, I figured I would just buy one online.

That evening, though, I was sitting at the computer desk and I just glanced at my old iPod and pressed the little wheel and the screen turned on and there was the main menu, something I hadn’t seen in many moons. It seemed that all my data was lost but I was able to navigate through the iPod like nothing had happened. I then connected it to the battery charger and once that was ready, I hooked it to my laptop and restored all my music to it. It was divine.

When I returned to Santa Cruz, I immediately went for a walk and had all sorts of fun with the playlists I made on there.

Wasn’t this a great story? Aren’t you glad you spent all this time reading about my iPod’s great comeback? Can you believe that I was able to save over $200 by not buying a new one?

Crazy!