Of Brown Tooth, Burritos, and Music, Music, Music

The city of New York is rightfully famous for its cuisine. New York is where bagels taste like bagels, where pizza can make you cry, and where hot dogs that fester in off-colored water are somehow appetizing. When Sinatra sang "if I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere," he wasn't talking about success, he was talking about food. He also wasn't talking about burritos.

Because, see, New York burritos are shit. Sloppy Joe meat inside inside a leather tortilla does not a burrito make. That goes for you too Michigan, and you Chicago, and Ohio, please, Ohio, don't make me come over there. The rule, essentially, is this: if your state isn't touching Mexico, I will not eat your Mexican food. It's that simple.

So when our producer Tom arrived from New York that first week, I wasn't that surprised to hear him hankering for a burrito. I wasn't too surprised the next day when, less than twenty hours later, Tom wanted another. I wasn't all that surprised when we returned for the third and then fourth days in a row. In fact, it's hard to say when I really did feel surprised. I suppose it was when Tom's head turned into a burrito, somewhere during the third week.

Of course, we're getting ahead of ourselves here---in fact, I just deleted a very long "history of the burrito" paragraph out of common human decency. We should still be talking about the beginning, or, as the case may be...

The First Burrito
---------------------
The front door at Hyde Street Studios is always locked. As we've mentioned before (and trust me, will mention again), the Tenderloin is like the Thriller video and it's best to keep the brain-eaters outside when you're working. But that first day, no one was answering the door. We knocked. We kicked. We pounded. Then, we noticed the phone. You know how in action movies, there's always a bomb and Van Damme or Vin Diesel has to choose which wire to cut while that little digital clock ticks down interminably slow? That's how touching that phone felt. Which end has been in whose orifice? Which bumbling lunatic has spent all night calling his home planet? These are questions you never wants to ask yourself. Unfortunately, there was no other way in. I would wash my ear a hundred times that day.

That first afternoon was, let's face it, a bit boring. Microphones got placed, cords were run from room to room, engineers talked in abbreviations I couldn't hope to understand. We did a lot of crosswords and played some banjo. And then, of course, we got a burrito. But when we returned, we jumped right in. Our strategy was to get as many live takes as we could, so we set up Pete in a little glass cave in the corner, while the non-singing Birdmonsters cavorted around in the main room, which housed all manner of drums, guitars, and keyboard flavored instruments. And then we started.

By the end of the evening, we'd finished two songs and discovered our local liquor store, of which: more below. But that first night was a special one. We recorded one of my favorite tracks, we discovered damn near instantaneously that Tom was the perfect choice for the album, and I didn't get ear cancer from the phone.

The Second, Third, and Fourth Burritos
----------------------------------------------------
It didn't take long to fall into a routine. By our second dayrrito, we were arriving in the afternoon, enjoying trucker-strength in-studio coffee, and tracking about four songs daily. With keyboards, microphones, mandolins, and all manner of noise makers scattered around the room, choosing which song to do was never predicated on "what won't be a pain in the ass right now" but rather "what do we actually want to play." This was a luxury thus far not afforded to the Monster and we took full advantage.

Now, I've griped about the Tenderloin but here I should give it the props it fully deserves. See, if we were recording in the Minnesota wilderness or a barn in Oregon or even in the Mission District of our fair City, I would have, you know, actually wanted to go outside. Not at Hyde Street. It was like being an exiled Russian author in Siberia, except, you know, we actually had a cheerful outlook on life, and have yet to offend any tsars, communist party officials, or avuncular men with bizarre noggin stains. So, in other words, we just plugged along. There was really no reason to do otherwise. In fact, the only refuge we had was a place called Brown Tooth.

Actually named The New Princess Market, Brown Tooth earned its moniker when, on the first day, a gentleman with a mouth full of rot and fungus accused David of stealing some kind of bagged snack 'em. Dave claims this man worked there, but, on umpteen subsequent trips, he was never seen again. Still, the name stuck, and Brown Tooth become our daily destination for beers, cheap loaves of bread, newspapers, deodorant, and all manner of various sundries. Brown Tooth was also the home of the failed product. You couldn't buy Triscuits at Brown Tooth, but you could get Low-Fat Rye Triscuits, in case, maybe, you're a vaguely overweight mohel. You can't get peanut butter or jelly, but you can get Goobers Peanut Butter and Jelly in the same jar, which, most likely, has been opened and sampled by a customer who you wouldn't even share a bus seat with, much less some sandwich innards. Brown Tooth was the place where shivering drug addicts would emerge from the rain, cut in front of you in line, and buy six snowcones. It was, in its own weird way, a microcosm of the Tenderloin. It is, let's hope, a place I'll never go again.

But enough about Brown Tooth. By Tuesday night, we had half an album in the bag, and each of those was an honest-to-goodness live take, from the drums on down to the vocals. In fact, pretty much the whole album is that way. Sure, there are overdubs and harmonies and the like, but the album is, at its base, a live one. And, for us Birdmonsters, it was the right move.

And so we begin again

If I stop and think, I can remember the exact moment when my brain stopped working normally. It was a Tuesday. We had been recording for almost a week and half and I'd been doing that 18th century-Frenchman thing wherein you wear the same clothes for weeks on end, regardless of their slowly advancing funk, which is just a bad idea if the sweatshirt in question is white and you have a penchant for dribbling coffee down your chin. I was on the phone that day, talking to my girlfriend in an alley behind a wrought-iron gate that we later discovered was a popular urinal for passing hobos, and I asked her how the season premiere of LOST was. After a moment of speechlessness, she informed me that no, she had not seen season premiere, as that would have necessitated a car ride with either Dr. Emmett Brown or Marty McFly. "Ah," I remember thinking. "So, there's a Thursday now. Why was I not informed?"

See, we weren't going outside much. There was a rather pesky storm that hung around San Francisco like a family relative with foot fungus who watches TV-poker all day and drinks all your beer and, when you couple the weather with the always frightening environs of the Tenderloin, well, lets just say no one got a tan in the last few weeks. In fact, I'm sallow and translucent. Sad to say.

At this point, I'm coming back. I understand today is another Tuesday (they just keep coming, it turns out) and we're on a self-imposed two-day break from mixing. I went outside yesterday, saw humans with jobs and some semblance of hygiene, fell back in love with our City (or maybe it was just civilization), watched "King of Kong," and ate food that didn't end in "uritto" for the first time in, well, some time. Bear with me. I'm still re-calibrating.

So, with no small amount of effort, let us hop in that aforementioned Delorian and go back to the beginning. I think it was a Friday. It could, of course, have been a Wednesday.

------

The joke started on the first album. We had a grand total of three days in a real studio before going to our then-Producer's house to finish, well, everything. For four guys who'd squirreled away money from their straight-jobs for months just to throw together their first album, three days seemed like putting on your kid sister's First Communion dress: really tight, vaguely horrible, yet incredibly exciting. With this dramatically truncated schedule, with essentially our entire budget front-loaded into three days, and without having ever done anything like this before, it was definitely time for concentration, focus, and clutchness, which I'm aware is not a word but will be using anyway. In other words, it was Robert Horry time.

Now: I know. "More basketball," you're thinking. "First Shaq and now Robert Horry. You are a scrawny white boy. You must remember this." Thank you. I do. But when I think of being good when you have to be good, I think of Robert Horry, who, despite being one of the laziest men in professional sports, is also known as Big Shot Bob. You don't leave Big Shot Bob open when the game's on the line. He will make it and he will grimace at you and you will be sad.

Anyway, it's become one of those stupid running jokes friends have. When someone's suffering through the flu on tour and has to play for 45 minutes while sweating and hallucinating, it's Robert Horry time. When you have to drive 100 miles in an hour or you won't be able to play Toronto after the Canadian border tried to confiscate all your merchandise, it's Robert Horry time. When you have to eat beef brisket for breakfast, again, it's Robert Horry time. Granted, it isn't that funny, but we've spent three paragraphs getting here, so, uh, sit tight.

So here was the plan: the day before we recorded (WednesFriThursday, I believe that was), I set out to get a Robert Horry tattoo. Not a real one mind you, as my body is a temple of the holy ghost. No, a henna tattoo was what I was after. I figured it would be hilarious to roll up my sleeve on our first day of recording, say "it's Robert Horry time" and, you know, actually have Robert Horry on my arm.

Since I live near Haight-Ashbury, that famous district once home to a burgeoning counterculture, now home to the mush-brained remnants of that selfsame counterculture, I figured this would be easy. Why? Because henna is from India and hippies love India. I walked in the first place I saw, chatted up the European lass at the counter, and produced the following picture:


"I want this is henna on my arm," I said.

"It is impossible," she said.

Hmm. Maybe a Pistons fan. "Why's that?"

"Too intricate."

Here, I looked at the henna book on the counter. It was filled with all manner of looping spirals, paisley teardrops, and carefully constructed flora. I was confused. "This stuff looks way harder," I mused.

"I cannot shade in henna," she said. "It could only be an outline."

I thought for a moment: a miniature albino Robert Horry is better than no Robert Horry at all. "That's ok," I said. "How much would it run me?"

"It is not okay," she said. "I cannot do it."

"Why not?"

"Because I cannot."

"Ah," I said. "I see."

But really, I didn't see. I still don't see. If I want to waste some money and have the racially ambiguous torso of Big Shot Bob on my forearm, isn't it my right to have it? The medium didn't seem totally averse to my plot; it was just this woman, I told myself. She would rather draw squiggles on tourist's wrists. That's okay. Robert Horry is an intimidating man. So I went down the street and found another henna place. Then another. And another. Then I went home with bare arms, tried to draw a stick-figure Robert Horry in Sharpee, only to have it look more like Oswald Cobblepot, before washing him off dejectedly and breaking down in the bathroom, a la The Crying Game, except, you know: no trannies.

In the end, when we loaded into Hyde Street that first day, I was Bob-less. But by that evening, while enjoying the first of many cheap American lagers and playing an almost-in-tune piano, nothing mattered less. After all, Robert Horry was a joke; making a new album was serious.

...ah, who am I kidding? I'm still pissed.

A first dispatch from the studio

We're five days into recording and I've officially lost all track of month, year, time, and reality in general. Sunday or Tuesday? Afternoon or evening? Rottweiler or centaur? These questions matter not to a Jedi. And due to this overall lack of cognizance, the details forthcoming may or may not be true. But veracity isn't what we're concerned with here. It's more a Impressionist thing. You know, if the Impressionists drank Tecate and played banjo. Which, really: prove to me they didn't.

This all began last Saturday. I spent Friday night not-sleeping and not-letting-anyone-else-sleep like the toddler-before-Christmas I knew I'd end up becoming. It had been a good year and half since we last recorded and that session was fraught with time constraints, questionable instruments, and an overall lack of good sense and experience. At this point, I wouldn't call us "mature" per se---I'm still laughing at this, for example---but we've certainly matured. We've gathered vintage. Eighteen months ago, we were a Charles Shaw whereas now we're, uh, whatever costs a little more than that. Carlos Rossi, maybe. I don't know.

So after a sleepless Friday night and a breakfast of "natural" cereal (which is really just a euphemism for "tastes like some twigs"), after a morning packing up everything we own that makes sounds, and after a harrowing drive to the studio, through the Tenderloin, a drive which at best reminds you of playing "Paperboy" and at worst gives you heart palpitations and an unhealthy dosage of misanthropy, after that, we were ready to go. Well, not quite. All manner of loading was done, all manner of tones were dialed in, but really: blah, blah, blah. What I really want to talk about is Tom.

In a profession where crazy eyes, hunchbacks, and borderline mania are the norm, Tom is a breath of fresh air. (Literally: before our first album, we had a face to face chat with a prospective producer whose halitosis wilted a large sycamore in the vicinity. Needless to say, we went elsewhere). And since a recording session is essentially just the band and the producer, its important to find someone whose personality, tastes, and sense of humor are compatible with your own. And, beyond the assumed normality of dental hygiene, Tom is working out perfectly. He's low key, spontaneous, and hilarious. And yeah, I know it sounds like I'm trying to hook you up with him on a blind date, but really, I'm not. He's a castrato anyhow.

So honestly, by the end of the first day, we knew everything would be fine. We tracked a pair of songs in the evening and it just seemed, well, it seemed effortless. Everything sounded like we wanted it to, nothing caught on fire. And five days later, we're nearly done getting the skeleton of the album on tape.

I only wish we could be showing him a less squalid part of our fair city. Unfortunately, we're in the Tenderloin. Instead of the Golden Gate Bridge, Angel Island, the cultural milestones of North Beach, or the best urban park going, Tom's seen prostitutes of mysterious gender, drug dealer-hobo fisticuffs, brown-mouthed liquor store attendants, public defecation, and a general lack of persons with employment, good sense, and the gumption to shower once a week. I went grocery shopping so I'd never have to go outside. And, while a twice daily peanut butter and jelly habit might prevent me from seeing something depressing yet hilarious, like a man with underwears on his head playing chess with a cardboard box, it also prevents me from seeing something depressing and downright haunting, like that man losing to the cardboard box.

But Tom's been here before. He has friends here, knows the names of various neighborhoods and the names of far more low-rent strip clubs and bars where there are probably roosters fighting in the back room. It's not as if he'll leave San Francisco thinking it's forty-seven square miles are nothing more than one big George Romero movie. Which is good.

Making good on those answers

I'm here on my couch, in my robe, drinking coffee out of a mug that sports a torso of a mallard and the phrase "not playing with a full duck," laughing at that pun for the four hundredth time, and it dawns on me: I haven't put the crossword answers up. Now, I can either make excuses like "I'm recording an album" or "I was busy watching Tom Cruise cackle maniacally at nothing at all" or I can just admit I blew it. Of course, we have been recording an al---nevermind.

Here are the answers to the aforementioned crossword. Complaints, gripes, bitches, moans, vitriol, and mail filled with weaponized diseases can be left in the comments or sent to my house. More soon:

And now, for something completely different

I'm aware of most of my Grandma tendencies. I enjoy making small talk with neighbors in the street, I can get down with Tony Bennett, and if I had a purse, you better believe it'd be stuffed with butterscotch. Ever since a particularly unsightly accident in which I concussed one of my closest friends, I drive at a speed more closely associated with the elderly, except, you know, I've still got depth perception and don't choose to wear those geriatric sunglasses that everyone over the age of 65 is required to wear by law. You know, these. But the oldest and most persistent of my Granny habits is a daily addiction to the crossword.

Now, sure, crossworders come in all adult ages, certainly, but to me, the crossword will always and forever be associated with my Mom's Mom. She was voracious. Every morning I slept at her house, I'd awake to that morning's crossword, completed completely, sitting on the kitchen table next to what I then craved in the newspaper: the comics. Specifically, Calvin & Hobbes. I think I may have enjoyed Garfield at some point in my life, but I've had those memories removed, Eternal Sunshine-style, because of the groaning agony that strip now produces daily. Of course, it took me until college to become any good at the crossword. That skill was honed largely in thousand-person lectures about subjects I'd soon get "D"s in, largely because I wasn't paying any attention, as, you know, I was actively trying to remember some six letter Greek god with an "R" and an "M" in the middle. Looking back, not my best decision, I'll admit, but in a way, it was strangely more valuable. After all, the crossword has taught me about all manner of vaguely useful things: geography (AGRA and URAL), arcane, discontinued pesticides (DDT), and the unorthodox spelling of Popeye's girlfriend's surname (OYL), while the professor I was ignoring was probably yammering on about Faulknerian wordplay or Hopi genital size. I think I made the right decision.

Crosswords have been around, in their current form, for roughly a century. It's odd to think that when they first appeared in newsprint, they were something of a fad, a fad that, at the time, most resembled the American population's lust for Mah Jong. Newspaper men and cultural prudes condemned the practice as fleeting, bogus, and silly, a diagnosis that should have been saved for pogs or troll dolls or any of the other risible absurdities that followed---and yes, Crocs count. Sorry. Crosswords eventually appeared in most American newspapers, either originally or syndicated, even in the papers that bemoaned their supposed idiocy and frivolity, most notably the New York Times, the paper which editorialized against the puzzles diligently before becoming the purveyor of what essentially is the gold standard of all crosswords. That's called "irony."

So, somehow, after spending oh so many mornings and far too many lectures and a few guilty times at my desk at work doing the crossword, I got it in my head that I should try and make one. I figured, "hey, I know all the ridiculous non-words they use, I'm well-practiced; how hard can it be?" The answer: really effing hard. I spent a large majority of my secular Jesus day vacation trying to make one. I had weird, obsessive dreams I haven't had since a relatively embarrassing Tetris addiction I suffered when I was nineteen. My brain started hurting. Yet, after probably twenty aggregate hours staring at a piece of pentimento-laden graph paper, I ended up finishing on the plane back home while my sister stared at me, probably praying she was adopted. If I'd been wearing a collar, I would have popped it.

Now, with Birdmonster about to cloister itself in a dank studio for three weeks, the upcoming posts will be, largely, about the album. After all, that's the idea of this here blog dealy, and, after months of practicing and writing, we're like a bunch of toddlers on Christmas Eve, only if Christmas was twenty-one, twelve hour days with ear goggles on. We start Saturday. But today, we take a pre-emptive break and, like so many of my other mornings, we do a crossword.



(And since I didn't spend several hundred dollars on a fancy-pants program, you'll have to print this one out. Sorry)

Clues:

ACROSS:
--------------
1- Shady deal
5- Floral groupings
9- The cheap seats
13- Face in Grenada
14- For an additional time
15- Bootlegger Butler of fiction
16- Bus beginner?
17. Org. for Cardinal, Volunteers
18- Speak
19- What this puzzle was nothing but, once
21- Kingsley Shacklebot's vocation
22- Brad and Ed played him in Fight Club
23- Digit
25- U2 single, 1992
28- 60's, 70's Browns quarterback Brad
32- Sport which involves paddling?
37- "______ little dream"
38- Consumer
39- What's hidden in 9 & 35 down, 19 & 59 across
41- Avoid
42- The Great Desert
44- Civilized meal necessities
46- Taken without permission
47- Lemony drink
48- Lemony auto
51- Dio's genre
56- Sambuca flavorer
59- Nervous system study
62- Bad, bad first name of song
63- Give's partner
64- Beloved
65- What a parent might take on a big day?
66- Free from fluctuations
67- Overhang
68- Cubs slugger Sammy
69- A pause in the music
70- Part of a RR sched.

DOWN
----------
1- "Move over"
2- Like a Waters film
3- Steve's successor in Journey
4- 23rd State in the Union
5- Causer of hardship
6- Contain, abbr.
7- Gave kings or queens
8- The sound waves make
9- What the Knights of Ni were, pre-Aurthur
10- It may be brought up
11- Ralph and Milhouse's bus driver
12- Hip ender
15- Aimless sort
20- Corn or cotton
24- Not yet stained
26- Wanderers
27- Producer of 25 across
29- It's often had with sushi
30- Recent Romanian President Constantinescu
31- Brief sleeps
32- One may be sour, perhaps
33- "___ the sign", 90's lyric
34- Brand of 35 down
35- Fizzy, fruity drink
36- Wildebeest
40- Probable hr. of homecoming
43- What might ruin a pirate's photo?
45- Verne sea captain
49- It takes you down a line?
50- Exit
52- One who should be respected
53- "How ___ Fried Worms"
54- Cactus juice
55- Troubadour's instruments
56- Mount Blanc is their highest peak
57- Famous Roman fiddler
58- It's more often brown than green
60- Four stringed instruments, familiarly
61- 90's rock musical

The Where

When selecting a recording studio, it's important to examine a variety of attributes. Are there instruments on site? What is the room made of? How much will it run you a day? Who else has recorded there? How many low priced hookers can you fit in the control room? These are issues of paramount importance.

For some time, we'd assumed we'd be traveling outside of our San Francisco home to record in less familiar surroundings. We did Los Angeles last time, but the poison cocktail of cat dander, couch hopping, apocalypse-flavored air quality, and general lack of a proper night's sleep soured us on a repeat trip. We tossed around ideas of New York, Minneapolis, Ohio but nixed them because, respectively: too expensive, too effing cold, too Ohio-y. That was before we stumbled serendipitously on Hyde Street Studios.

The bad first: it's in one of the scuzziest, stinkiest, bum-laden, pimp-infected areas of San Francisco. It's not the sort of studio you step outside from for a breath of fresh again: again, the air smells more of B.O. and methamphetamines. It's the sort of area where you might wear a SARS mask, a nose plug, earmuffs, and a condom, just in case. Better yet: I'm just going to have Zach roll me into the studio in one of those human-sized plastic hamster spheres.

Now, the good: everything else. Hyde Street Studios began back in 1969, when hippies were still making curious and innovative music instead of demanding my nickels for weed on Haight Street. San Francisco, as you probably know, was a mecca for these smelly artists and many of them, including Credence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Jerry Garcia, recorded some of their early work at Hyde Street. Of course, such success was not to last (said in the style of those "Behind the Music" voiceover, please). A conglomerate named "Filmways" bought Hyde Street and, when time came to replace and renovate, Filmways politely told the management at Hyde Street to suck an egg. While other studio both in the bay and nearby were upgrading to fancy 24 tracks and other once-modern conveniences, Hyde Street was like a geriatric dinosaur and business and employees fled to hipper, nicer studios. That is, until 1980, when the studio was purchased by a partnership of forward viewing music-types, updated, and reopened as it is today.

At least, uh, that's what their website tells me. I read it so you wouldn't have to.

Of course, by 1980, those trailblazing hippies that made Hyde Street so interesting and successful had long since either stopped making music, broken up the band, drugged themselves into an eternal stupor, or gotten straight jobs at brokerages specializing in junk bonds and currency trading. So who has peopled the studio since? A partial list must include Dead Kennedys, Bonnie Raitt, Cake, Digital Underground, Willie Nelson, P.J. Harvey, The Melvins, Tupac, Primus, Knapsack, Green Day, Prince, and E40 (who, really, might be the coolest man on the planet. Hell, Santa Claus is his homie).

Those names are nice and all but all they prove that the studio is a legit operation. I own albums by most of those people but still, something wasn't quite right. We liked the vibe of the studio, the copious keyboards and pianos on site, the availability, the price: everything was right where we wanted it. There was just a lingering doubt. After all, this was quite a decision: we'll be spending twelve hours a day there for weeks on end; it had better be gravy. And then, then dear friends, we noticed one last name of Hyde Street's client list and that one name made it all okay.

That name, of course, is Shaquille O'Neal.


Basketball fans of the 90's and early millennium will remember the imposing monster that Shaq was. I myself nurtured an active and vitriolic distaste for those dynastic Laker teams and was literally overcome with joy when the Pistons finally ended their run of ridiculous domination. But, as overpowering as Shaq was on the basketball court, he was equally ubiquitous off it: he starred in a completely humiliating feature film called "Kazaam" which would probably be his first career mulligan; he pimped the video game "Shaq Fu," which was a money-grab so transparent that Krusty the Clown would balk at it; he even has author credit on "Shaq and the Beanstalk and Other Very Tall Tales," a children's book that enjoyed glowing reviews and that I almost just bought for eight bucks and change on Amazon before remembering I just quit my job. Beyond all that, however, the foray outside basketball I remember most fondly was Shaq's music. Shaq can, perhaps, be credited for being the first in a long line of professional roundballers to crossover into the music industry, which we really can't hold against him but we're going to anyway.* Shaq penned and performed a staggering five albums, had such guest rappers as Nas, Jay-Z, and Warren G, and even released one of those "too soon!" greatest hits compilations (after just two albums, which, let's face it: chutzpah. Let's also face it: shameless).

Most importantly, he recorded one of those albums at Hyde Street. Which one, I really don't know. Perhaps it was Shaq Diesel. Perhaps Shaq-Fu: Da Return. Perhaps it was the gloriously punned "You Can't Stop the Reign." It doesn't matter. What does matter is that if it's good enough for a seven foot cultural behemoth, well, it's good enough for me.

So Shaq, here's to you. I know you're not having your best season and your team is one of the five worst in the league, but when you're a multi-platinum-genie-obese-child-personal-trainer-video-game-protagonist-
four-time-NBA-champion-Miami-police-officer-and-world's-foremost-
Yao-Ming-insulter, you've got nothing to worry about.

* I'm looking at you Tony Parker. Yes, you.

The Plan, or, A triumphant return to Blogopolis, or, I don't really like that second title

With the exception of curly finger nails, Howard Hughes-types and those less wealthy shut-ins who smell vaguely of rancid cranberries and Grandpa's cardigan, everyone loves traveling. We hear that guy with the brogue during the interminably long commercial break between Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy admonishing us to "Visit Scotland" and we picture ourselves in some verdant meadow, wearing plaid, eating sheep's innards. We smell great gumbo and fantasize about a late evening, two-third blotto, watching jazz in a smoky New Orleans dungeon, drinking Brandy Milk Punch. We see a friends photographs from Eastern Europe and we imagine ourselves...ah...doing whatever cold-ass, root-vegetable things they do over there. To a certain extent, we all have a case of wanderlust, again, purposely disremembering about the Spruce Goose building contingent here.

The difference for me? I like actually traveling. Not ending up in a far off distant land, but, you know, the actual act of traveling. I enjoy sitting in the car between shows on tour, reading a Michael Malone book. If I can make it through take-off with losing my airport Sausage McMuffin, I really have no problem with flying, what with the free ginger ale, the little safety cards, the Sky Mall hawking cat massagers and Lord of the Rings themed condoms. Even the oft-maligned (and I'm pointing the finger squarely at myself) San Francisco bus system can be a downright enjoyable affair, if you're lucky enough to find a seat on a bus where a vagrant has yet to have his morning bowel movement.

I'll go as far as to say I've actually hankered for a longer commute. See, when I'm going to work, its about a twenty-five jaunt on the ol' electric bus and, frankly, that isn't enough time to really enjoy traveling. I like reading my book, doing the crossword, enjoying an album, or, doing all three in homage to some many-armed Hindu god of multi-tasking. Of course, most books have sizable chapters which are not easily conquered in short amount of time. Same goes for the crossword, unless its Monday or Tuesday*. As for albums, well, here's the thing: when a band puts out an album, not just a collection of songs but a real album, I have to listen to the whole thing, front to back. Like "Dark Side of the Moon": that's an album. You can't really pick a track or two there. You must hear the squealing woman for the full 43 minutes. There is no other option.

And there's always a new album. Last year, I went through a long, damn near monogamous relationship with "Astral Weeks" again. For a month or so "The Trials of Van Occupanther" kept me wishing for a trainee bus driver who'd yet to develop the "drive away while you cuss at me" move that the guy who usually drives my bus has perfected. "The Body, The Blood, The Machine", Aquemini", "Sticky Fingers": at some point, on some bus, in the not so distant past, I wanted to miss my stop and end up at the Ferry building buying overpriced cheese just so I wouldn't have to upset my listening experience and tread hangdog into the office to write a Motion in Limine no one will ever read.

Thankfully, I don't have to do that anymore. I quit.

Furthermore, the reason that I quit was to do exactly what made me not want to get off the bus in the first place. We're recording an album.

Was that a cumbersome enough way to announce that news? I think yes. But I'm rusty (as you can see from the date of the last post) and I wanted to build suspense. And nothing builds suspense like, uh, talking about the bus. In fact, most Hitchcock movies have extended conversations about mass transit conveyances. Event Horizon, you'll recall, is about a gigantic cosmic bus for a bunch of really unhappy astronauts. This blog is a mere follower.

And, so, it comes full circle. This blog was originally hatched to chronicle the recording of our first album, a few day sprint through all the songs we knew in a city we weren't in love with in a house with cats and a singer with cat allergies. This time? Much more organized. We're staying put in gloomy San Francisco, we're spending more than three days in a studio, and we're keeping Peter in a hermetically sealed man-sized Tupperware. In fact, there are plenty of details worth knowing. But for now, in the interest of brevity and some Christmas shopping I somehow, somehow still haven't done, I'll wrap it up. Until soon.

Really.

* The crossword gets incrementally harder each day, with Monday being the easiest while Friday and Saturday are nearly opaque to most. Sunday's just really, really big; big enough that finishing one has often made me question the reason I'm alive.

How to enjoy your garage sale in seven salient points

So, we had a garage sale yesterday. And by we, I don't mean Birdmonster, although Zach was there with me, waking up far too early on a Sunday morning, drinking Tecate far too early on a Sunday afternoon, and passing out with my clothes on far too early on a Sunday night. Still, spending a sun soaked weekend hawking your old shoes, your unwanted VHS tapes*, and that one chair that smells like a flatulent Grandma is, in my opinion, a good weekend.

It had been a while since I was a part of a garage sale. In fact, I think I was selling my Nintendo out on my childhood driveway, still safely entrenched in the bowl cut, bespectacled, No Fear shirt/Hammer pants phase of my childhood. And, being that my childhood happened after the Industrial Revolution, I was not used to, well, actually having money. Not that I'm bemoaning the lack of 12 hour, black-lung inducing work shifts during my salad days, but that first garage sale provided a sudden and, at the time, rather exciting influx of money---which I of course squandered on a Super Nintendo, which I later sold at another garage sale after my hands starting contorting arthritically from soda-and-Skittles-fueled marathons of Mario Kart and NBA Jam.

But I digress. Yesterday's sale was for the express purpose of ridding ourselves of four years of pack-ratted bric a brac, all while taking in a few dollars for general house repairs. You know, like new light bulbs, some weather-striping, an indoor toilet. And, all in all, it was highly successful: we cleaned out our storage room, we met new and excited neighbors, we don't have to bury our droppings in the yard anymore---all good things, to be certain. In fact, I thoroughly recommend throwing your own garage sale in the next couple weekends. Here are a few tips, freshly learned, to keep in mind:

1- There are professional garage sale shoppers. They will be at your house at 7 a.m. because they did not realize there's a little thing called "Daylight Savings," the night before. Upon seeing a closed garage and no sale-y-ness occurring, they will ring your doorbell until someone answers it in their underwear and demand your finest merchandise at bottom dollar. Try not to punch this person in the face.

2- Other pros will arrive later, say, only fifteen minutes early instead of the patently maniacal hour before hand. They will buy anything you have that's actually worth a damn, leaving you with a strange smorgasboard of out of fashion footwear, broken stereos, a perhaps-soiled mattress, and a teddy bear with a cigarette burn for an eye.

3- Everything you own is crap. After about 9, all the pros have moved on and are reselling that acoustic guitar that can't stay in tune for a whole song to a pawn shop owned by a Skoal-addicted bigot. At this point, you get the jag-offs who say things like "This isn't jewelry, its garbage" and "This movie sucks, you should just give it to me." These wily souls know that nothing makes a garage seller more eager to deal than a constant barrage of insults delivered by cranky freaks with halitosis.

4- Inevitably, something you thought you were selling will be stolen by one of your roommates and worn for the rest of the day. You must be okay with this. For us, a roomie of mine stole my "Hooked on Jesus" fishing hat while I tried on what I thought was a colorful shirt and turned out to be some sort of skin-tight stripped dashiki, which of course I couldn't get off, so I ripped it down the middle like Hulk Hogan, circa 1987, and it became the Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was strangely enjoyable.

5- By about two in afternoon, be willing to take any sort of money for any sort of anything. You will accept pre-Euro Lira for your old stereo; you will accept spray-painted macaroni for your Buick. You will be overcome with a desire to rid yourself of all your various trinkets simply because you can't bear the thought of putting them back. This is natural. When this old lady was waffling as to whether to take my old desk chair, I threw my first born child, Rumpelstiltskin style, and she took it. Critics may cry "short-sighted" at this exchange, but little does she know: I gave her a toddler I kidnapped. Joke's on you, Gladys.

6- While cleaning out the house, you will find things that alternately shock and depress you. If your house is as old as ours, you're dealing with over a century of who-knows-what. Monkey skeletons? Jimmy Hoffa? Be prepared. We found a backpack full of porno. I threw that in for old Gladys too.

7- By all means, be friendly. Beyond the professional hagglers, the vicious insulting of all your old belongings, and the general disregard for everything you own, you're spending a day in the sunshine, getting free money, and meeting neighbors you never knew you had. It's much better than most of my Sundays, which are spent alternately hung over or nursing my Catholic guilt about not going to Sunday mass.

Now, all that remains to do is figuring out what to do with our modest windfall. Perhaps a holiday celebration is in order. Perhaps I buy back that child I sold. Either way, I see happy times ahead. And again, how many Sundays make you feel like that?

* Lost Boys does not count. Hands off.

The Plan

There are two kinds of holidays in this world: the ones you spend with your family and the ones you spend with your whiskey. On one hand, you've got your Christmases, your Mother's Days, your National Hideous Deformation Awareness Weeks. These are days dedicated to the unwrapping of gifts, the eating of honey hams, the giving of flowers, the staring and the pointing at hunchbacked albinos. They are days where we gather with our loved ones and, well, that's really the point: gathering; making merry; feeling lucky that there are people somewhere in the world who care what happens to you. These are good holidays, but good in that 17th century Puritan kind of way.

On the other hand, you've got your drunk days: your New Year's Eves, your Labor Days, your Halloweens. And while they do indeed have societal import---the signification of another calendar year, the enjoyment of day off, well earned, the Pagan-flavored need to dress up like a Leprechaun and grab women's asses---these holiday are just nationally sanctioned excuses to get stumbling and blotto. I, of course, have no problem with this.

Unfortunately, I'll be missing Halloween weekend in San Francisco for the second time in a row this year. Last October, we found ourselves in New York, doing the CMJ thing, riding in taxis with bloodthirsty, braying lunatics. This year? Well, we're flying to Chicago, we're doing a little recording. Thing is, its been a while since we recorded our last album and we're in full on let's-get-our-lazy-asses-into-the-studio mode. We've got plenty of new songs and now, alls we need is to find somebody who can make those songs sound the way they should sound and, quite honestly, that's what this weekend is for. Maybe we've found someone. All we can do is try it out. It's like a really expensive, horribly loud first date. Except without the sexual tension. Or the dressing well. Or the copious lying.

Needless to say, we're excited. Our current recordings of these new songs have that AM-radio quality to them, which is to say they sound like they're coming out of my old Dream Machine, which is to say you're never hearing them ever. So this Friday we're vamoosing, skipping a weekend of booze-soaked revelry, and returning, we hope, with two or three songs that make us feel like I feel at the end of Beethoven's Ninth: awash in sonic euphoria. "Doesn't sound like butt" would be an improvement, however.

So that there is the plan. The unfortunate lack of Halloween weekend will be remedied when we return, even if all that means is me sitting on my couch with a bad mustache drinking Hamm's out of the can. I don't know how this qualifies as "Halloween" but I figure that if you're drinking Hamm's, you should have a bad mustache.

On Life, Music, and Decorum, or, What I Really Learned At Work

Musicians, by and large, have always had a bad reputation. Now, certainly, it's deserved at times. Axel Rose has refused to play concerts to tens of thousands of exasperated fanatics for want of a lamb shank. Ozzy Ozborne once staggered into a suit-and-tie meeting with some label executives and, after releasing a jacket-full of doves for dramatic effect, chewed one of those doves' heads off. And surely, no father wanted his daughter bringing G.G. Allen home for supper. I mean, unless that father was a masochistic coprophiliac, and then, well, who's judging who, really?

But there are countless other cases of musicians maligned for dubious motives. Nicolo Paganini and Robert Johnson were long assumed to have dealt with the devil for their prodigious skills, and, suffice it to say, you don't often hear the words "Faustian contract" associated with tree surgeons. The Italian composer Antonio Salieri has been fingered as Mozart's poisoner with evidence that could best be described as "suspicious," "arguable," or "made up by some whack-job." Hell, even Britney Spears---certainly no rock of pious chastity---has been slandered to the extent that if you read a "Brit Chairs KKK-NAMBLA Co-Convention!!!" headline in the grocery store, you really wouldn't be surprised.

Now, Birdmonster, well, we're pretty wholesome folks. Sure, we've got a collective unquenchable thirst for Quaaludes, but, really, who doesn't? Otherwise, we're the sort of people who do your dishes rather that breaking them in half and stabbing your pets. We're the salt of the earth over here. I mean, look: no devouring of peaceful birds, no lamb-shank-related bribery, no contracts with Beelzebub, no horseplay with fecal matter. No big deal, you might protest. Nothing to be proud out. These things are givens. No one, in real life, actually does those things, you'd say, and then we'd go back to playing cribbage and chatting politely about the news of the day.

Of course, you'd be wrong.*

See, a few weeks ago, I was at my straight job, doing what it is I do at my straight job. Namely, that's conversating with lawyers or sending angry letters to those selfsame lawyers demanding all manner of documents and evidence even though I really have no idea what I'm talking about. Essentially, then, I'm paid to out-bullshit professional bullshitters. It's fun in that not-at-all-fun sort of way.

At any rate, there I was, on a pleasant MonsWednesday, staring at a letter I'd received from a partner at a Defense firm. It was an especially haughty missive and it forced me to mutter this gentleman's surname aloud.

"Damn you, Jenkins!" I said, pounding my fist on my desk.**

"Jenkins?!" exclaimed a passerby. "JENKINS! You know about Jenkins, right?"

I knew he was a horrible pompous ass, but beyond that? "No," I replied.

"Hold on," said our passerby, who scurried off to his desk, grinning in a not altogether healthy way.

I went back to working. In fact, I sort of forgot about the whole exchange. I was neck deep in a letter to Mr. Jenkins himself when our passerby returned.

"Ok," he began, evidently fighting off some serious glee while he handed me a legal document. "So Jenkins got fired from his old job and his employer sued him. But this is Jenkins' cross-complaint for breach of contract. Skip down to the fourth page there. See what I highlighted?"

I saw. I read. I winced.

Verbatim:

"Jenkin's rage carried over into the late night hours. At approximately 2:27 a.m. on April 23, 2003, only a few hours after the dinner meeting, Jenkins returned to the San Francisco office. While there, Jenkins destroyed the computer equipment in his office, left papers and files scatted about his office, and placed piles of his feces in his office and on a mouse pad on top of a cabinet in a common area near the kitchen. Jenkins also smeared feces on one copier and one of the sinks in the men's bathroom.

...Jenkins' mess was discovered later in the morning on Staff Appreciation Day by Julia Monroe, Office Manager…"

First off, let me tell you it was incredibly difficult for me to not mention that in the letter I was writing: "Plaintiff seeks responsive documents, including but not limited to sales records, product specifications, and please, please don't shit all over them, Jenkins." Second, while I know lawyers don't enjoy the reputable social status that nurses and firefighters do, they are rarely lumped in with the Lady Divines of the world either. Which brings us to our moral: never judge a person by his job. Or, more universally, you never know who's crapping on your mouse pad.

* and of course, I'm winning in our imaginary cribbage game. Double run for 8, sucker. And I got Knobs.

** for the record, his name isn't "Jenkins." I did one of those "names have been changed to protect the innocent" things they do on Get Smart.

On a state of confusion; and also, show tomorrow. Or rather: SHOW TOMORROW!!!!

Growing up, I was one of those people who thought Paul Newman just made salad dressing. He wasn't the strangely charming, banjo-strumming loner of Cool Hand Luke; he was the avuncular gentleman with the jaunty hat donating the proceeds from Newman's Own Italian Dressing to charity. Later in my youth he became a purveyor of popcorn, quality lemonade, and imitation Oreo's that make Hydrox their bitch.

Some years later, college probably, I finally saw him in a movie. He was Butch Cassidy and he was grinning and shooting at folks at not selling pasta sauce. It was disturbing.

Now, my parents find all this strange and vaguely hilarious. After all, Paul Newman was Captain Kick Ass for quite some time. It'd be like someone knowing Marlon Brando only because of his private island or by scare-tactic ads warning of morbid obesity. It'd be like knowing Tom Cruise for his pious Scientology.

Of course, now, I've gone the other way completely. Now, instead of not being properly informed on the achievements of bygone celebrities, I'm now clueless on the names of the new ones. I thought Shia Lebeauf was a pirate. I thought Pink was dead. I wish Nickelback would die.

In other words, I'm out of sorts. I don't know enough about the artistic heroes of my parents or nearly anything about their modern day counterparts. I can, however, give you the track listing for Number of the Beast off the top of my head and quote most of Princess Bride from memory.

Where am I going with this? Beats me. I just get sad when I'm doing the crossword and it mentions a movie from 2006 I've never heard of or an Oscar winner from the '50s that I couldn't pick out of a line-up. I'm shrouded in ignorance, I tells ya. How will I ever make it on Jeopardy! like this?

There are things, however, that I do know. For example: we've got a show...tomorrow. It sort of came out of nowhere and I admit this is very short notice, but why not stop by? It's at Slim's and we're opening for a gentleman named Jamie T who we saw in Austin six months ago, and who is fantastic with a four string guitar. I'd never heard his music before but its instantly lovable and, if you're an Anglophile, he's English, so there's that. (And if you're an Anglophobe, then he's German. Or French. He's a Creole. Just come to the show for God's sake). Details are: early show, we're on at 9. It's all ages, so those familiar Shia Lebeauf can mingle with those who voted for Eisenhower and we can enjoy rock and roll together, which predates us all. Please come on down. New songs abound.

For now, I'm going to drink a cup of Newman's dark roast, with him and his daughter there on the bag, vogueing a la American Gothic, and continue working my straight job, pretending I know what I'm doing. It's fun. Remind me to never become a lawyer. Not that that happens on accident or anything.

The long and bombastic saga of the Spaghetti Milkshake

You know what they say about assumptions, right? Something like them making an “ass” of “u” and “mptions.” Can’t quite put my finger on it. I do, however, understand the point: assumptions are so often proven wrong. You might assume that the Republican Party can’t possibly have more closeted homosexuals than we already knew about, but you’d be wrong. You might assume that popcorn is a harmless, nutrition-free snack-‘em, incapable of causing asbestosis-style lung agony, but you’d be wrong there too. And you might assume that a plate of spaghetti cannot be pulverized into a pour-able slurry and drank out of a mildly comical coffee mug. You’d be wrong on that one as well.

To begin at the beginning: I have a long-time roommate with whom I’ve had a series of ongoing, seemingly endless debates. The topics of contention have ranged from philosophical to downright ludicrous and the arguments always remain civil, save the occasional Momma’s joke or quick screwdriver stab to the kidney. Most of the time I think we both realize that we view the world in vastly different ways and our chats are more a way of illuminating these differences, defending them, and explaining them rather than trying to alter the other person’s beliefs. He’s not one of those infuriating arguers who are determined to win the conversation rather than winning the argument. Fox News has most of them on staff anyhow.

Now: one of our episodic debates concerns food, specifically what food’s good for. He believes, essentially, that food is fuel and that all that epicurean hullabaloo is a waste of energy, resources, and time, not to mention being part of an inherently unfair system that penalizes the impoverished with Slim Jims and dirty water. In his perfect world, all of humanity eats nourishment pellets and vitamin gruel and nobody’s the wiser. We’re all healthy, nobody starves, and all it takes is taste bud genocide. I, on the other hand, argue for the importance of flavor, texture, and variety in food. Also: I am pro-chewing. Sure, I admit, food is fuel. But that doesn’t mean it needs to taste like cement and anus.*

Eventually, this debate wended its way towards reality. You can debate the merits of universal Matrix-style slop-food all day long, but if you’re working three days a week for peanuts, you’re probably not going to get it done. Eventually, the debate worked its way to the following quandary: if food is just fuel, why eat spaghetti instead of, say, a spaghetti milkshake? What’s with all that pointless masticating and variety? Why cook when you can blend? It became a kind of running joke. “Where’s my spaghetti milkshake?” he would ask. “Up your ass,” I would answer and that’d be that. Until last night. Last night, we made the spaghetti milkshake.

Now you may ask yourself,* “how does one go about making a spaghetti milkshake?” There is a surprising scarcity of literature on the subject, so the enterprising chef is left to his own devices. I figured a good place to start was with your basic pasta with marinara sauce and deal with the various issues that would certainly (and did eventually) arise. I did so and it smelled good. Just some farfalle and a simple sauce of plum tomatoes, onions, some fresh basil, a few sauteed carrots, and a few run of the mill seasonings. Not five-star Italian eating, mind you, but no Olive Garden $6.99 special either. Then, predictably, I tossed it in a blender. Then, also predictably, that blender didn’t work. It did do a fantastic job pushing my ingredients against the side of the jar and emitting that peculiar overheating motor aroma, however.

So we make the executive decision and switch to the food processor. It has many advantages, not the least of which was that it was made at some point in my life time. At this point, we transfered the still-mostly-looks-like-a-spaghetti-dinner mixture into the food processor and, suddenly, it's looking good. And by "good" I mean "hideous." The red in the sauce and the starchy bland yellow of the pasta blended into a sickly bright-orange mash that looked, well, kind of like vomit. And by "kind of," I mean "a hell of a lot."

Yet, it still smelled good. The problem was the consistency. We weren't yet at "drinkable" or even "milkshake with a spoon" consistency. It was more the texture and density of a thick hummus. So I added a little tomato juice and a little veggie stock. Then a little more. Then a little more. And then: success! By which I mean: viscous spaghetti! Naturally.

So we tipped the Cuisinart and poured ourselves a cup. And, you know what? It completely exceeded my expectations.** In fact, I had two sips. My roomie, to his unending credit, went back for seconds, if not thirds, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he brought a Thermos of liquefied pasta with him to work today. God, I hope he did. It would really make my day.

Anyway, it’s my custom to look for morals in episodes like this. In other words, what, if anything, did we learn from our little experiment? Well, we learned that solid foods can be made liquid. Cynics might hand me an ice cube and laugh, so I’ll amend that: we learned that a spaghetti dinner can be eaten with only a straw. We learned that there is a whole cuisine of food left unexplored by the Wolfgang Pucks of the world, namely Designer Gruel. And, while I started the whole experiment to prove a point---that point being that spaghetti should be served on a plate---I came around rather quickly. If you want your food smushed into a textureless paste, you have my full and complete support. It’s a Libertarian sort of lesson, but it’s always good to remember: “Live and let live.” Or is it “Live and let die”? Either way, we should totally write a song about it.

* Is that my beautiful wife? Is that my large automobile?

** Honestly, it did kind of taste like spaghetti. But there was something...off about it. Maybe it was a texture thing or the veggie broth or the fact that it looked like food that came up rather than food that goes down, but there was a sickly kind of aftertaste. Like food that's going bad but hasn't quite turned. Like some leftovers that didn't quite make it to the refrigerator. I can't explain it much better than that.

On busking

I recognized a gentleman who used to play fiddle outside my second most recent straight job. He sat in front of us and we got to talking and, being the polite sort who reads Miss Manners each morning with his scone and Peppermint tea, I asked him one of the uncouth questions: "How much do you make in a day?" His answer: more than you'd think.

The man said that, on a good day, when his little fiddle amplifier was working just right and it was warm out and all the stars and ducks had aligned just right, he said he'd make about a hundred bucks. There was one day, he recalled with greedy nostalgia, when he made $160 and, I presume, did a jaunty little dance.

And, sure: it didn't always work out that well. There are any number of tiny calamities that could derail the whole day. A rain storm could end the whole day. A bad burrito could too. And it's not exactly the sort of job that provides dental care and matches your contributions to your 401K.

Of course, this guy was also a damn good fiddler and, really, everyone loves the fiddle. It's like the banjo, except slightly less toothless and slightly more refined. Point is: it's a crowd pleaser. The dirt-encrusted stoner on Haight who's wheezing into a didgeridoo probably has a far different appraisal of pedestrian generosity.

And then there's Atonal. We don't know his name, but we've given him one. Plus, it bears resemblance to another Bay Area wunderkind named Adonal Foyle, who the Warriors just gave 13 million dollars to not play for them next year. That's a good gig if you can get it, which you can't, because you're not a 7 foot tall poet who looks like Shrek. But I digress.

Atonal is a busker and he plays his highly original brand of music at the Civic Center BART station. He is a multi-instrumentalist, a virtuoso in the grand tradition of Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Yuri Landman, a man who can transition seamlessly between the clarinet and the ukulele, the viola and the recorder, the harmonica and the...recorder. Granted, this depends on your definition of "instrumentalist," "virtuoso," and "sounds like forty cats dry-heaving in unison." For, you see, Atonal has his own idea of what music sounds like. I've seen him studiously reading music off his music stand with two harmonicas in his mouth. I've seen him playing the same note on the recorder for several minutes with a look of rapture all over his face. I've seen him writing his newest masterpiece on a giant swath of butcherpaper fifteen feet long. He's brilliant. He's unstoppable. He sucks.

But the thing is, he brings me joy. If I happen to catch him playing the clarinet in his usual style (which resembles a drunk man eating a hotdog), I laugh. And you know what? So do most people that pass him. He's like an episode of Married with Children: you know you shouldn't be laughing but you can't help yourself. Let's just hope he doesn't end up in McDonald's commercials like David Faustino did, although being in said commercials proved he wasn't dead, which was nice. It also proved he wasn't funny. But good job Bud. I hope you're paying off your mortgage.

So here's to Atonal. No matter how much that one note he can play sounds like a small animal begging for mercy, he's always completely lost in the music. And that, really, is the important part. I think.

Cafe Du Nord. Saturday. 8.18.2007

Behold the grace and the glory that is this poster:

A lunch time beverage suggestion, complete with flawless reasoning

This morning, from the cozy yet smelling-of-ass back seat of the bus, I saw something that's familiar to every San Franciscan. No, not hobos fluent in gibberish or mustachioed men in leather, although those too are familiar occurrence round these parts. No, I saw protesters. Only about 10 of them, granted, and sure, you couldn't read the signs or understand the chanting, but damn: they were upset. A word to the wise, though: when using a megaphone, make sure the batteries are fresh. It's hard to rouse the rabble with angry cries of "Muffle fee don? GRUMBLE!!! Muffle fee don ih? Now!!!"

Of course, in San Francisco, people will protest pretty much anything. War in Iraq? Thousands meet downtown. Repeal of Gay Marriage licenses? Close down Market Street. Ten cent increase at Starbucks? Send in the riot police. It's a charming aspect of the city, I think. We're loud; we complain. And usually, I agree. So, to see a ragamuffin group of protesters at 8-something in the morning on a Monday, well, it doesn't bode well for the week. I like to have at least one cup of coffee before the atrocities start pouring in. I'm silly like that.

So I got to work, I got my cup of coffee, I chitted and chatted. I wondered what horrors had happened that would warrant a bright-and-early gang of lefty do-gooders taking to the streets while half the city was hitting the snooze button for the third time. I ate my croissant. I read the newspaper. I was at a loss. Then, one of my favorite workmates runs up to me, exasperated and borderline euphoric.

"Karl Rove just resigned," he office-yells, smiles, puases, then thoughtfully adds a "Fuck yeah!" while demanding a high-five.

I gave him the high-five.

At a time when most Americans are upset about the direction of our country (that direction: down the shitter), news like this is uplifting. Sure, we're still neck-deep in a horrendous quagmire, our Supreme Court pretty much hates all humans, and the dollar gets weaker every minute, but that countrified dough-boy with all the marionette strings is finally walking away. We're just got a little bit closer to January 2009. Every little bit counts.

So, infected by my office-mate's state of complete glee, I passed on the information and decided to go out in the sunshine, just to soak up the goodness. And down at the corner, where I'd noticed a righteously indignant crowd forming too early this morning, there was no one but some a bike messengers and a panhandler. Maybe they'd finished telling whoever it was whatever they thought. And maybe they'd moved the incredibly loud mumbling to another locale. But I like to think they got the good news and went home. After all: you can't protest everything all the time. Sometimes, you need to go home, kick your feet up, and have a beer at lunch. Today is definitely one of those days.

Notes from Undergound (not to be confused with the depressing Russian novel)

I was on the couch last night, discussing the European stock market over a fine New Zealand red (or quoting the Simpsons over Tecate---I forget) when I heard an explosion. At first, I assumed it was small arms fire from that half-way house full of delinquents across the street. After all, nothing's more soothing than indiscriminate gun play, especially after a hard afternoon of hooting and pedestrians and trying to con the guy at the corner store into selling you peach blunts. But then: more explosions. Lots more. Suddenly, my earlier hypothesis seemed silly. The neighbors were not dealing with the PLO.

Then it dawned on us all: that whole guy-with-the-giant-noggin-hitting-the-ball-over-the-doohickey-
more-times-than-anyone-else thing. The neighbors' small scale bombing campaign? Actually just a bunch of fireworks. Unlike Francis Scott Key, no one present plagiarized a song about it.

Now, you'll read lots of indignant self-righteousness about Barry Bonds. After all, he is fairly hateable, what with the steroids, the not-at-all vague disdain for humanity, the smug curmudgeon-ness he oozes from every pore. You'll also read people defending him as the greatest hitter of all-time, a solitary loner who, deep down, only sort of completely hates everyone. Me? I don't really care about the guy or the record. The whole thing seemed kind of joyless and obligatory. I'm glad it's over. We can get back to focusing on important things like, say, the whereabouts of Mario Lopez.

The whole Barry debacle did remind me why I lived in San Francisco though. This is a place where things happen. It's not the only place, not by any stretch of the imagnination. It's just a city. But last night, if only for a few minutes, the most news-worthy event in the Western world was happening a few miles away. And, I don't know, I think that's kind of nifty, even if it occurred only by virtue of a brooding man-freak.

Yes, things happen in San Francisco. You wouldn't know it by my continued silence, but I swear, things happen. In fact, there will be much news coming out of our little corner of the internet in the coming weeks: new songs, shows, a line of Birdmonster suspenders and belts (we're quite serious about the not-falling-down-ness of pants). We just needed a little time underground to hang out with all the C.H.U.D.s and molemen. It was fun. We smell horrible.

First and foremost: we've got a show in a week and a half at Cafe DuNord (August 18th, precisely). It's been a while, so you'll have to be gentle. We're chock full of new songs and would love to see your smiling faces, even if you're a humongously large steriod abuser.

In which we embrace the downward spiral. And not that NIN album either. The real one.

"Idiocracy". It's directed by Mike Judge, first infamous for creating a cartoon that inspired teenage arson, and stars two of the Wilson brothers: the one without the nose thing and the un-famous one who sort of looks like the guy who played Stifler. It's about an imagined future in which humanity has devolved into a race of near-retards and the man who's been frozen for 500 years that saves them. If you haven't seen it, you should. But you probably haven't since it was released to about 125 theatres with no press, which is a lot like opening a Burger King in Nepal, which is to say: not a good idea.

Anyway, in the "Idiocracy"-future, society, science, and culture have gone down the shitter in tandem with mankind's intelligence. The drinking fountains stream Gatorade, scientists work only on pills to enlarge genitalia, and television...well. Here's the point: television didn't seem a whole lot worse. In a movie that is so smart about being so stupid, T.V. seems almost better. Stupider, perhaps, but better.

See: if we're in the internet's infancy, then we're in T.V.'s preteen years at best. After all, television has only been commercially available for 70 or so years, and only prevalent in the lives of your typical American for about 50. And what a half-century it's been. We went from Edward R. Murrow to "Are you Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?", with layovers at "The Gong Show" and "Joe Millionaire" along the way. In other words, "Idiocracy"'s imagined sit-com "Ow! My Balls!" seems almost high-brow in comparison.

And then there's this. There was a time when only the Fox network would run something this patently manipulative and inhumane, but, apparently, they made a lot of money doing it, so now even the Dutch are in on the act. (Although, to be fair, the Dutch let tourists take hallucinogens, so, really, it was only a matter of time till they caught up with American ingenuity). Anyway, here's the premise of the show: terminally ill woman decides to donate kidney; three contestants clamor to become recipient of said kidney; outrage ensues.

Now: this is the point where we're supposed to bitch and moan and shake our fist and write stongly worded letters, but you know what? I'm through fighting it. I'm just going to embrace it, put my feet on the coffee table, and watch the inevitable decline. I'm looking forward to "World's Most Hilarious Deformities" and "America's Top Enema". Because, see, it's all about ingenuity. Sure, we're racing to the bottom of the barrel, but what a race. We're reaching the point where the World Wrestling Federation is positively Shakespearean. Honestly? I couldn't be happier. After all, isn't this better than a bunch of "Full House"s and "7th Heaven"s?

Exactly. If you need me, I'll be watching "Dirty Sexy Money" on ABC.

T.G.I.W.F.

So I've got a job again. It's not much: I get here at 8:30, eat a croissant, then spend my day reading through legal documents so boring they could, um, enlarge a hole to a precise diameter with a cutting tool by means of rotation. Also, apparently, boring enough that I'm getting jokes out of the dictionary.

There are bonuses of course. Like, you know, getting paid. And replenishing my pen and scissor supply. Plus: I'm only working three days a week, which makes every Monday a MonWednesday, which in turn makes every Wednesday a WednesFriday, which in turn pleases me immensely. In fact, T.G.I.W.F.

This also means I can remedy the conspicuous lack of bloggery that went on in the last couple weeks. When I've got no job or my job happens dressing up like a criminal and participating in a scavenger hunt, I tend to stay away from the long sessions at the computer. And when I've got no job, I've got no money, and when that happens, my days are a thoroughly invigorating mix of eating fake-cheese products and following the sunspot around the couch. In other words, not exactly the stuff of great literature. Or, for that matter, mediocre blogerature. (And yes, I think I may have just coined a word more annoying than blogosphere. I apologize).

Of course, the dream is to one day not have to work. Because being in a band, well, it's work, but it's not Work. It's like if you were a nine year old and you had to test candy all day: sure, some days you get stuck eating Necco wafers, but overall you're probably a pretty happy kid. Sure, you'll lose your teeth when you're an undergrad but still: free gobstoppers.

For now though, I'm paying for my candy by perusing expert testimony and requests for document production and objections to special interrogatories. Of course I'd rather be at home playing the piano. That's what ThurSaturday is for.

On not taking your home for granted; also, I know it's been a while. I have no excuse.

It's the Monday after Bay to Breakers, a debaucherous annual trot across San Francisco, where the entire city wakes up at eight in the morning to heckle 60,000 runners in better shape than they are, all while drinking beer for breakfast. In other words, today figures to be a long, long day. My liver: still soggy.

But a nice, molasses-style hangover is a small price to pay for Bay to Breakers. I think every city needs one. Or something like it. It's like Mardi Gras, except with more uppity Berkeley-ites trying to convert you to some unreasonable political stance while you're taking a swallow of Zinnfandel from a plastic sack. So many of our holidays and festivals are spent inside with our families that it's really a joy to see everyone outside, making bad decisions together. Unity in idiocy, sort of. I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that.

And I think you get an interesting view into your city's character when you've rousted everyone awake before church and handed them a mimosa. Sometimes, this awareness comes in tandem with a staggering amount of shriveled nudity. So be it. I learned (or, relearned, rather), that I live in one of the most enjoyable places in America, a place where, when so much of the country seems hellbent on eliminating fun, we still appreciate early morning drunkenness, inappropriate paper mache floats, and Frank Chu. I forget that sometimes, what with all the more-liberal-than-thou posturing that goes on around these parts which, quite frankly, does get good things done, but, really: no fun. It's a happy mix if it works: on one hand, you can have the democratizing principles of a Board of Supervisors, community meetings, town halls, and the like, while on the other hand you have, um, old-man nutsacks swaying in the wind.

(Which reminds me: I've got no problem with public nudity, per se. Actually, that might be a lie. But what I really get weirded out by is the naked man in his late 50s, walking an 8-mile road race by himself just staring at you. It's creepy. It's like he's daring you to do...something. I don't know what. But if Wes Craven made a horror movie about a naked, withered, old dude, he should send his casting director to San Francisco.)

My point? It's like that R.E.M. song "Stand In the Place Where You Live." Or, as the case may be, sit at a desk making charts about expert testimony in the place where you live. In fact, it's nothing like that. Or maybe it is. I just know the chorus. But yesterday re-energized me on the place where I live. And if all it takes in a pre-noon hangover and some decidedly clumsy wiffleball-ing, sign me up for 2008. And aught nine for that matter.

What happens when I leave the house, or, Why I'm on the couch right now

I used to have one of those arm-length, Zach Morris-style cell phones. You know, the ones that are essentially guaranteed to give you eye cancer or brain cancer or testicular cancer, even though the thing barely fit in my pocket anyway. But then again: tight pants. I say "used to have" because at some point last week, between temp jobs and shows and overall sloth-dom, I lost it. No small feat, considering the fact it was slightly larger than a baby's torso, but then again, I've lost keys, guitars, permanent teeth. It's a super power, really. The Bush administration calls regularly when it wants memos misplaced. You should read the shit they send me.

Of course, cell phones are an essential part of modern living. I was definitely a late-adopter, getting one only after a college roommate neglected to pay our land-line bill the week of my birthday, which led to my Grandma calling and hearing that "this number has been disconnected due to staggeringly lazy negligence," and worrying I might be transforming into the sort of grandson who takes his birthday savings bonds to the dog track and screams "run, you horrible bitch" while spitting Skoal at nearby children. Instead, I turned into the sort of grandson who happens to be unemployed, spends most evenings away from home in dank bars playing music she can't like because my name is neither "Frank" nor "Sinatra".

At any rate, I had to get a new phone. I had visions of one of those high-tech kinds: the ones that are also camcorders and digital cameras and have ringtones that don't make you wish fondly for Hoobastank. Yes, I had high hopes. Until I got to the cell phone store, that is.

I'd say what company I used, but really: what's the point? They're all the same and they're all horrendous. It's like choosing which Bronte sister to read. There's the one with Catherine Zeta Jones, the one with that smug Rivers Cuomo looking guy, the one with the orange thing that looks like its doing snow angels. You know, it's actually less like the Bronte sister thing and more like ending up in one of those Ohio turnpike rest stops, having to eat a late lunch, and choosing between Burger King, Arby's, and S'barro's. Every one's a loser there.

So I walked to my friendly neighborhood cell hut, eager, ready. I had a few extra dollars and was hoping that I could scam my way into one of those "free" phones that involve sending forty-five mail-in rebates to central Kansas but also having a roommate's phone as a back-up plan: in other words, if I couldn't get a magical free phone, I'd make my own magical free phone. Diabolical, I know. So I get there and there's five employees helping five separate customers and I'm patiently waiting my turn, looking at insulting in-store advertisements, pacing. Five minutes go by. Ten. Twenty. Then, at about the half-hour mark, I notice there's now about two employees helping two customers. Perturbing, of course, but I'm still being patient since I need a phone for free so doormat-ness seems a good opening gambit. Then I notice the last two customers sign their receipts, scurry out, while one employee goes behind a door marked "Staff Only" while the other motions to me:

"Can I help you?"

"Yeah, definitely. I've been a customer for about five or six years now and I just lost my phone but I think I might be elligable for an upgrade. Could you check that for me?"

"...Yep. Yeah, you are."

"Great, show me what you've got then."

"Uh, sir. I'm actually not a salesman."

"O-kay. Then can you find me one?"

"Actually, sir, they're all in a meeting."

"All of them, huh?"

"Yeah, sorry about that."

"About how long till they're out?"

"Oh, it usually doesn't take longer than a half hour."

"Great. Would you mind if I stabbed you?"

Ok. Obviously didn't say that last part. I'm a docile sort of person. I'm like Ghandi, only with more hair and a better fashion sense. But really: who has an hour to wait at a cell phone store? Actually, come to think of it, I do. But, you know, imagine I had a job, or, or something to do. Yeah. That would've been rough.

Anyway, that's why you always have a back-up plan. I had the non-salesman put one of those SIM cards in my roomie's old phone, thanked him for being totally unhelpful, and walked back home. Yet, in a weird way: success. I got the free phone I was after. Plus, it's filled with phone numbers of people I don't know and some of people who I think I know but who just share the first name of people I know, which has already led to one text message of "Who the hell is this?" and will hopefully lead to the sort of misunderstanding oh so romantic comedies are predicated on. Added bonus: crying baby ringtone. What's less annoying than that?