"COPS" vs. Cops

Last week, it happened. They said it never would. They said it'd never---not in a million years---happen. But I waited. Oh, I watched and I waited. And my diligent slothfulness paid off: I saw the episode of "COPS" where the guy got away.

As any robe-wearing layabout without cable can attest, "COPS" is on The Channels You Get With Rabbit Ears roughly four hundred times a day. If it isn't time for news, soap operas, or Putty whoring himself out for the egregious pimp known as "Family Feud," you can rest assured that "COPS" is on. "COPS" is, essentially, the first reality show ever, both in it's obvious realism and in it's equally obvious distortion of reality. See, on "COPS," the police always get their man. Sure, sometimes they have to chase a shirtless hillbilly through a swamp or taze some titanic, bloodlusting goonatic, but in the end, that low-rent, marble-mouthed criminal will be in the back of squad car and we, the viewer, can rest easy, knowing that peace, justice, and the American Way have been saved by Sergeant Overweight and Deputy Assbrain.

Only any thinking person knows it doesn't always---or even usually---happen that way. Despite half of London and San Francisco scouring the streets, Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac Killer, respectively, were never even identified, let alone arrested; John Rigas had to build his own private golf course before the Feds decided that maybe he might be defrauding a few million rubes; and the FBI had to enlist the knowhow of an effete cannibal to catch Buffalo Bill, only to foolishly release him so he could star in "Freejack" with Mick Jagger and Emilio Estevez.

The point? Those criminals were smart. Or smartish. To wit: cops only catch stupid criminals and, fittingly, "COPS" only catch stupid criminals. Your typical "COPS" mastermind has the mental wherewithal of a preoccupied monkey with a grotesque head injury. So when Johnny Law Enforcer begins a high-speed chase during the third act of a "COPS" episode, you assume that the perp will eventually run his '88 Olds Cutlass into a guardrail, make an obese/blotto attempt at a getaway, then get tackled by a cop who will call him "the individual" or "the suspect," all before the sweat Reggae stylings of Inner Circle announce the closing credits. This is why it was so surprising to see the perp run his '88 Olds Cutlass into a guardrail, make an obese/blotto attempt and a getaway, get tackled by a cop...and then proceed to drag aforesaid lawman over the guardrail, off the freeway overpass, and into a forty foot freefall. More surprising was that, after the duo landed, our police officer was on his side, clutching his spine, and calling for backup, while the ubermench criminal, limping slightly, ran into the nearby woods, perhaps to forage for nuts and berries, with no help in sight.

I dialed my friend and told him all about it. He was very proud of me. Not "Congratulations on your new baby girl!" proud, but "Way to sit on your ass and see the COPS where dude escapes" proud. It's a subtle distinction but an important one.

Now, for a little compare and contrast. We here at my house have had some recent unpleasantness with the San Francisco Police Force. Without going into tedious detail just know that if your house gets robbed and you learn from an anonymous note who perpetrated said crime, where they live, and what their names are, do not expect the police to do anything. Instead, be prepared to learn the true meaning of "Kafkaesque" while leaving countless messages for these donuted commandos of public nonservice, getting no reply, filling out seven different kinds of TPS reports, getting no recompense, and eventually just going to the house of the thieves yourself. The whole outlandish calamity will be a frustrating amalgam of "The Wire," Barney Fife, and Chief Clancy Wiggum's immortal line "Can't you people take the law into your own hands? I mean, we can't be policing the entire city!"

What I ended up learning from this is that, sadly, "COPS" are better than cops. Sure, the show is a ludicrous farce, but dealing with "COPS" is an enjoyable undertaking, one that can be done with Tecate in hand, slippers on feet, and a smug sense of your own awesomeness still fully intact. Is it all a little schadenfreude-y? Sure. But I'm down with other people's problems (yeah you know me). They make for good T.V. And the cops on "COPS" always at least try to solve crimes, apprehend suspects, and protect the greater good. Dealing with the non-COPs cops, in contrast, is a harrowing, taxing debacle. I had expectation that the City Police will, you know, police the city, but what I discovered was it was more like the DMV with guns: a joyless, soul-crushing slog through a bureaucracy in which no one wants to help you. Sad indeed, but true as well.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think there's another episode on. I hope it involves a "domestic disturbance."

How to Chose an Album Cover, Part 3 of 2

In case you missed them: parts one and two

On February 14th, 1876, Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell, working independently from one another, filed a notice with United States Patent Office. Bell's patent, famously, was for the telephone, a device which allowed instantaneous verbal communication, thereby supplanting Morse code, spawning the cellphone, and allowing you to be sideswiped by confused geriatrics and LA moms scheduling their next rat-poison lip inflation. Meanwhile, Elisha Gray's patent was for, well, the telephone.

This phenomenon is known as "multiples," the unfancy term science types apply to concurrent discoveries and simultaneous breakthroughs. Malcolm Gladwell, the afroed smartypants responsible for "Blink" and "Tipping Point," just wrote a big ol' New Yorker article chronicling this strange phenomenon; beyond the phone, calculus, fractions, oxygen, evolution, and color photography were discovered by at least two people at nearly, if not the exact same, time.

Of course, what do you call an invention that, for whatever reasons, happens many years after the original discovery? Well, in English class, they called it "plagiarism," a term which now largely applies to that essay you just download from I'drathernotlearnthisshit.com. It's a cardinal sin in the art world, whether accidental or contrived. Just because everyone who has ever lifted a guitar or bass has accidentally played "Blister in the Sun" doesn't mean they wrote it; it just means it's really that easy.

Which brings us---tragically---to "Gettin' Physical." See, I was sure we'd hit on something brilliant, something that, if you've been reading along was patently and absolutely "Fucking Awesome." Turns out we suck:


Yes, Tony Tee, that Stephen-Jackson-looking peddler of Spandexed hoes and disinterested spotters beat us to it.

Now, you may not know Tony Tee. You are forgiven. Google barely knows who Tony Tee is, the moniker now apparently hijacked by a New Jersey-based disc jockey who looks far less like the greatest and best basketball player ever. Tony Tee albums, furthermore, are few and far between, the province of eBay grab bags, Amazon used cassette clearances, and garage sales at the house of that old man with the green Impala.

What I'm saying is we could get away with it. Tony Tee is unlikely to emerge from whatever gym in which he's currently getting physical and sue us. He's no doubt quit the old school rap game and now works as a regional sales manager for a salted meat concern. But just because no one would know we sort of accidentally kind of ripped him off doesn't mean we wouldn't know that. The knowledge would eat us up inside like some sort of parasitic worm or Burger King entree.

I simply couldn't live with that.

So we went back to the drawing board. Or rather, we disallowed Peter the access to his trusty green pen and went to a professional. What we ended up with was something classy, arresting, and about as far from an extreme-sports loving fishman as possible.

We hope you enjoy:

In Praise of a Great American Pastime

I'd never been to Coney Island before. Sure, I'd concocted a blurry mental tableau based mainly on "The Warriors," that early '90s Van Morrison song, and "He Got Game," a Coney Island of futuristic lesbian gangbangers and Jesus Shuttleworths and Van after he got all weird and fat, but it was a Coney Island based solely on fiction. Still I was hopeful. If a place filled with super tough lesbian street punks, Irish Soul music, and precocious roundballers actually did exist, I'd seriously consider moving. These, as the song goes, are a few of my favorite things. So when the band up and decided to spend our Thursday at Coney Island, doing the promo photo thing coupled with the frugal tourism thing, I was overjoyed. I braced myself for a day of scuzzy majesty in a place mythologized as majestically scuzzy. Except for the total lack of Ray Allen or Denzel, I was not disappointed.

Coney Island, to me, seemed like one of those traveling carnivals employed by the toothless, catering to the jobless, that, having arrived on a particularly lucrative patch of New York beach-front, decided never to leave. It boasts a wide selection of food ranging from "sugared dough" to "anonymous meat tubes" and horrible carny rides with names like "The Zipper," "The Regurgitator," and "The Concussion Giver." There's a boardwalk, a year-round freak show, and a beach with more trash cans than humans. But that's not why we're here today. We're here today for "Shoot the Freak."

To fully describe "Shoot the Freak"'s low-rent awesomeness would be impossible. That said, we shall try. "Shoot the Freak" is situated between a daiquiri bar and a place named "Cha Cha's," which sold booze and ice cream on the boardwalk. It is, for all intents and purposes, a vacant lot overgrown with knee-high weeds and has only two employees: The Barker and The Freak. The Barker, like any good carny, heckles folks into trying their luck at shooting the freak, only here, instead of playing some patently impossible game of "chance," you pay a nominal fee to shoot paintballs at a real live human being. The Freak is a well-tanned New Yorker with a BMX helmet, hockey pants, an athletic supporter (read: testicle preservation device), and a wooden shield, all bespeckled with fluorescent paintball explosions, and his job is to hide behind various barrels and fences while taunting you into firing shot after shot at his face and crotch.

It is deeply satisfying in a way I'm not fully comfortable with.

And it got me thinking: why the hell don't we have one in San Francisco? After all, all you need is a vacant lot, two employees, five paintball guns, and, voila: instant profit. I envisioned taking over a spot near Fisherman's Wharf, far enough from it to catch locals but close enough to it to ensnare tourists. It would be my great stroke of entrepreneurship. I'd buy a split-level Victorian with Shoot the Freak money, send my children to college with Shoot the Freak money. I would never work again, choosing instead to take treasure baths in a clawfoot tub filled with Shoot the Freak doubloons. By God, this was the best idea I'd ever had. I was beside myself. Then, I remembered one small thing: I lived in San Francisco.

See, Shoot the Freak could never exist here. First off, the name itself with be derided as insulting to all the great and noble bearded women, conjoined twins, and torso-less heads who fought valiantly against that derogatory title. So I'd have to name it something else. Say, "Shoot the Fully Actualized Gender-Neutral Person." Then, since Shoot the Freak is inherently violent, we'd have to replace the paintballs and the guns with something less fearsome like, say, aloe-soaked sponges. And you wouldn't be able to throw them overhand (still obviously too violent), so I'd have to mandate slow-pitch softball style tosses only. Lastly, the surly carnival barker would be classified as a noise polluter, so I'd have to find a far more polite version, one who spouted affirmations of our patrons' personhood before, during, and after the whole transaction. What I'd be left with the wife of an amateur Napa vintner not-pressuring passersby into a leisurely game of "Underhand Lob the Aloe-Soaked Sponge at the Fully Actualized, Gender Neutral Person." And that, my friends, is just lame.

Which is to say: hooray for Coney Island. Hooray for any place where "Shoot the Freak" exists in this day and age of kid gloves and seat belt laws. Coney Island may not have been teeming with Sebastian Telfairs, Baseball Furies, or even Requiem For A Dream era Wayanseseses, but with that one attraction, it earned a lifetime of repeat visits. At least until Nickelodeon buys it and turns the whole place into Sponge Bob Square Pants Beach.

Shoot the Freak while you still can.

In which Birdmonster, barely awake, tries to explain why it's in New York before failing spectacularly and falling asleep on a pleather sofa

Greetings from a windowless basement in Brooklyn sometime near two in the morning, though in fact I'm far too jetlagged and blotto and unemployed to really care where we are, what time it is, or if I have pants on, which, by the way, I do not.

We arrived in New York Monday night, deplaning anxiously after enduring the dual tortures of a talkative pilot and an inflight "The Bucket List" matinee which Dave and Peter were courageoustarded enough to watch. Their verdict: better than "Wild Hogs," which is sort of like saying a mayonaisse sandwich is better than getting stabbed in the face.

New York is the only city where I feel as if I've done something even if I haven't, like the bustle of the town makes you productive through osmosis. Thus far though, we have been mighty productive: We've powwowed with the label about business-flavored whatnots; we played a free show; we saw our producer Tom and reminscened about the Tenderloin strip club Amateur Night we went to, which was simultaneously too skeezy and not nearly skeezy enough; we watched the ends of both of the recent NBA semifinal games, alternately upset and ambivalent; we saw Jeffrey Ross, sitting alone outside some Chelsea coffee house, waiting for an impromptu celebrity roast to break out that never did.

After a solid month of sloth, it's nice to be here. I mean, sure, I love watching four hours of fake court every day, eating leftovers in my robe, and generally wondering why I went to college, but traveling has a way of realigning the brainpan for the better. I tend to come home feeling lucid, a feeling that fades quickly during the eighth consecutive episode of Judge Hatchett. What I'm saying is any trip, unless it involves LSD and a John Phillips Sousa-scored clown snuff film, is a good trip.

But it's odd going to meetings about the band after doing everything ourselves for so long. Don't get me wrong, it's completely fantastic, but ceding control is a hard thing. The idea is to move past the disorganized sojourns across the Canadian border that find us detained as smugglers, past the horrors of shopping for a van in triple digit heat, past the tours that find us playing to a solitary nine-fingered racist hobo on Easter. In the end, I feel as if we're entrusting Birdmonster to a really competent au pair with luscious knockers: on one level, I wish I could stay home with the kid and help him with his science project. On the other: luscious knockers.

How to Chose an Album Cover, Part 2 of 2

Yesterday, we began our course in Album Coverolgy 201, covering the a trifecta of possible cover strategies: Sex Appeal, Elaborate Outfits, and Phenomenal Hubris. Notably, we learned that none of these formidable strategies were sacrosanct, that each led to ruin in more cases than success. These, indeed, are trying times. We soldier onward.

4- The Aggressively Half-Ass Route

With so many ways to go wrong, it's not surprising that bands often err on the side of simplicity. You can't have a woman crapping on your cover whilst holding her shoe if you never take that photo, in other words. Take the Beatles' "White Album" for example: classy, bold, clean, iconic, the inherent message being "the music speaks for itself." But tread lightly, as it's only a hop, skip, and a jump from "Subtle and Classic" to "Put your hands up and step away from the glue stick":


The "Blue Album"

The "Speech Bubbles: They're Not Just For Garfield Anymore Album"

The "Spell Check Album"
I know what your'e thinking: those aren't even attempts at the delicate, Rothkoesque simplicity of the "White Album," to which I'd say, yes, that's true. But they certainly took more time to design. It's like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: sometimes less is more. Once you start adding apple slices and honey and toenail clippings, you're left with something inedible. Less, in other words, can be more.

5- The Patently Disturbing Route

Also known as the "Purposefully Controversial Route," our fifth cover art strategy has enjoyed wide and storied success. The Black Crowes "Amorica" and Two Live Crew's "As Nasty As They Wanna Be," with their exposed pubic hair and shimmery buttockseseses, were transparent attempts to spark controversy, thereby sparking interest, thereby selling records, and in both cases, it worked. Further, the entire genre of metal cover art is predicated on this idea, much to the pleasure of millions of teenage boys and Scandinavians; our producer Tom gave Dave an album called "Leprosy" by a band called "Death," for example, though it could have been an album called "Death" by a band called "Leprosy." A Mobius Strip of dorkdom, indeed.

And, naturally, sometimes this approach can go oh so wrong:


"I'd rather not"

Or, "Your Children Will Never Sleep Again"

I'm really not okay with this one
See, there's a difference between fighting censorship and giving me pigmask nightmares. I say "fighting censorship" because that's ostensibly what the Black Crowes and Two Live Crew did, albeit with hirsute genitals and sophomoric raunch. If you're going to shock somebody, it's important that there's a purpose. It's the difference betweem Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hostel: both are disturbing, but one is an atmospheric classic while the other is porn for sadists. Another route best avoided.

6- The Man Rides Giant Rat Route

Admittedly, this is a small genre, without a reputable album to hold up as a guide. But I'll be Goddamned if I wasn't going to include Swamp Dogg.


7- The Fucking Awesome Route

Which brings us, in the end, to the answer. In the same way you don't make music by talking about who you want to sound like, you don't make a cover by mimicry. Granted, the Best And Greatest Album Of All Time (tm), London Calling, is a parody of an old Elvis Presley cover, but again, that's the exception to the rule. When we're writing songs, there's always a moment when, after playing a song well for the first time, the notes still decaying, we look at each other and just grin. Sometimes, you just know it's "right." So, while we we've learned we can't simply rip off the following examples of brain-boggling luminosity, I think they speak for themselves:


So do I!

Verily, this is the definition of "Fucking Awesome"

Nevermind. This is.
I imagine the graphic designer finishing the colored marker touchup on Metal Magic, pushing his rolling chair back a few inches from his desk, and thinking, not unlike Dr. Frankenstein, mad with brilliance and dedication, "I've done it. I have created a masterpiece." When it all boils down, all you can wait for is that moment. You have to keep trying, keep plugging away, and, in the end, you'll know. If it doesn't feel right, well, it isn't.

So, without further ado, I'll unveil here, for the first time, the cover art for the brand new Birdmonster album. When it appeared in my inbox early this week, I recall having a "Eureka" moment, knowing, inherently, that we had exactly what we needed, and knowing that no image could possibly convey the artistic statement we are making any better than this:


See, the new Birdmonster album is a lot like a merman on a skateboard. It's mythical, yet earthy. It's experimental, yet American. It's a merman. On a skateboard.

Thematically, it works too. Peter's lyrics have been dominated by aerobics for the past year, notably his use of badminton imagery, which you'll find most striking on "Don't Shuttlecock a Shuttlecocker" and "Put Down That Racket So We Can Skateboard Like Mermen."

I hope you guys like it.

p.s. I'd like to send a big "Godspeed" to Bizarre Records dot com, without whom, several of these brilliant covers would never have been discovered. Like Swamp Dogg. I love you Swamp Dogg.

How to Chose an Album Cover, Part 1 of 2

While we're all well versed in that worn-thin aphorism "Don't judge a book by its cover," when you're actually choosing a cover, that maxim goes right out the window. You begin inflate every mundane detail to risible proportions and find yourself saying things like "I'm not sure this album is that orange" or "Is that font too emo-core?" It can be maddening. Because, really, when you get right down to it, any album or book is, in some small way, judged by its cover. It's superficial, but it's natural.

Thankfully, Birdmonster was born after thousands of album covers have come and gone, allowing us to parse through the genius of decades past. A great album cover is simultaneously iconic and evocative, a representation of the work and a work in and of itself. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon cover is a perfect example, but then again, so is any Iron Maiden cover, with Maiden's mascot, "Eddie" the avuncular zombie adorning each and every one. So without further ado, we look back fondly on some of our favorites, in hopes that they, in their unending wisdom, will inform an important decision.

1- The Sex Appeal Route

The phenomenal success of Herb Alpert's well-known and oft-parodied "Whipped Cream and Other Delights" in 1965, coupled with the loosening of Puritanical mores, paved the way for covers that titillated, sexified, and otherwise made your grandmother uncomfortable. In fact, Alpert's image so captivated his audience that in concert, he'd often joke "I'm sorry, we can't play the cover," a sentence which surely disappointed his fan base, which was largely made up of dairy fetishists. Other artists would try to emulate this tawdry, "sex sells," philosophy, to varying degrees of success:


Sexy!

Mega Sexy!

SuperHyperUltraMega Sexy!

...or "Put your pants on," "put a shirt on," and "Please say you have your pants on," respectively. Sex Appeal is a tricky area to be sure. And you know what they say: "Just because you think crapping while holding your shoe is erotic doesn't mean I didn't just lower my head into the garbage disposal."

2- The Elaborate Outfits Route

Sure, not everyone's sexy. Ronnie James Dio, for example, is probably a goblin. That doesn't mean he can't bellow operatically about Rainbows in the Dark over some crunchy-ass metal: it just means you can't have him bare chested and svelte on an album cover. Instead of Sex Appeal, what you want to have is "a look." Here, think "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band." Or the Ramones. Or even Stryper. The important thing is consistency, a sense of mystery, an iconic representation, via fashion, of the sounds found within. Visually:


The family as table cloth

In which we learn Zeus was black

Can you tell this came out in 1986?

The problem here lies with fickle Fashion herself. Growing up, I was certain that my Hypercolor shirt and Airwalk jam shorts were the absolute apex of awesomeitude. As it turned out, I was mistaken. We've all gone through our closets and thought to ourselves "I used to wear that?" before taking it to a Salvation Army and having them say "I'm sorry sir. We're trying to help these people, not make them the butt of unending suffering." A route best avoided.

3- The Phenomenal Hubris Route

A few years back, Talib Kweli released an album titled, simply, "Quality." In a way, that's simultaneously a bold claim and a backhanded slap at all his contemporaries. As it turns out, the album was fantastic and more than lived up to its name and Kweli's cover was actually a restrained, thoughtful image of himself, an understated counterpoint to a vaguely boastful title. Of course, this is the exception to the rule:


I've deleted fifty jokes here.* Let's just let the unbridled arrogance of a NELSON MILLENNIUM COLLECTION speak for itself

Apparently, this "Handel" fellow thinks quite highly of himself

Or, "I'm rich; kiss my ring."

Like when Mohammed Ali said, "It ain't bragging if it's true," if it ain't true, it's insufferable. Covers that convey a sense of entitlement, a brash money-grab, or celestial parentage tend to rub the casual record buyer the wrong way. Let's put it this way: did Woodie Guthrie ever make an album called "This is My Hot Shit" with a picture of him riding in a baby blue Thunderbird, blanketed by bikinied hos? Exactly.

Part two tomorrow.

UPDATE: A hearty, hearty thank you to esteemed commenter ncbutters, who showed me the error of my ways by providing us with the following:

Did I mention I love the internet yet?

* For the record, the Nelson Millenium Collection narrowly edged out "Snow's Greatest Hits." And now you have "Informer" in your head. I am sorry.

Birdmonster, not unlike Billy Joel, is in a New York State of Mind. So here's a free show while we're there.

In the history of American Music, from Aaliyah to ZZ Top, no city has enjoyed more musical kudos than New York. Where lesser towns like, say, Lodi, have singular songs penned about their deadend decrepitude, New York has no less than thirty-five songs blandly named "New York" or "New York City." And there are the streets. Avenue B, and C have their own songs. So does 110th Street. And 57th Street. And 52nd. And the intersection of 53rd and 3rd. And the bridge on 59th. And those are just the reputable artists off the top of my head (Iggy Pop, Barry Manilow, Bobby Womack, Springsteen, Billy Joel, the Ramones, and Simon & Garfunkel, respectively). Who knows what Big Apple-themed opus lingers in the catalogues of, say, these guys?



(At the beginning, you may find yourself thinking "Okay, Birdmonster, this is just a crappy cover of 'The Final Countdown, a song equally notorious for its ad infititum overplay at every European sporting event and as George Oscar Bluth's magic show theme song. I am not impressed." Just wait for the singing. For the love of everything that is holy, wait for the singing).

It gets so that I can't walk around New York without a scenery inspired soundtrack, and that's without ever having been in Hollace on Christmas. I bring this up because we're visiting NYC next week and the earworms have already started. I woke up this morning with "Rhapsody in Blue" in my noggin, which, after last nights research, I learned was inspired by the sounds of a locomotive at Grand Central. (The San Francisco Bus System, unfortunately, has not impelled a song of similar quality, unless you count the peanutbutter-mouthed mumblings of backseat hobos, which, of course, we should).

So then, what are we doing in New York? I'm glad you asked. Much of it will be business, the details of which you will be politely spared. The rub here is freeness: specifically, a free show. We're playing the Mercury Lounge on May 28th at 7 p.m.; it's an invite-only thing and this here blog is your invitation. If you'd like to come, go ahead and email birdmonstertickets@gmail.com and we'll write you a confirmation response, applauding your on-the-ball frugality. Email early, as we have a limited number to spread around.

Yep. That's it. I think I'll spend the rest of the day pondering the victory of the San Antonio Spurs, who, in their own special way, are the embodiment of crushing inevitability. If there's one thing I won't be thinking about in New York, it's good basketball.

An exceedingly helpful "How To" post that will completely and utterly change every fiber of your being

I'm here on my couch, simultaneously unemployed and yet wearing a suit, an incongruous situation owing to a morning spent impersonating a low-rent mobster for a corporate team building scavenger hunt. This, apparently, is my life. So be it. At least I look dapper.

I'm also typing on a computer that, as of this time yesterday, was not working. I had just finished watching The Young and the Restless---which, first off, is a sentence I hoped I'd never write, at least not until I transmogrified into a brandy-soaked grandmother and second, a sentence I need to explain at the asterisk*---when I was greeted with the unsettling aroma of melting plastic. Since I hadn't been smoking crack out of an Evian bottle lately, I was understandably perplexed. Burning plastic is an unholy smell, a smell I'd really only dealt with once, when, as a high schooler, I bought lawn seats to Ozzfest so I could see the 98th Black Sabbath Reunion Tour, and a bunch of countrified rubes made a bonfire out of disposable cutlery and liter-size Pepsis. It literally took my breath away, in a "wow, I can't effing breathe" sort of way. I learned two valuable lessons that day: thou shalt not burn plastic and thou shalt sing the guitar solo to "War Pigs" with thousands of inebriated longhairs. But I digress.

It didn't take long to note the fact that the Macintosh I was using had stopped charging and that the olfactory problem was emanating from my crotch. Not my loins, per se, but the computer that sat on top of them and, since this isn't my computer, well, this was a problem. (Also a problem: burning crotch). The central issue was the AC power cord, which had melted, and my wallet, which has been dieting lately. I needed a new cord and I needed it to be free.

Which brings us to today's helpful blog post: "How to Navigate the Horrible Labyrinth of Customer Service Call Centers, Retain Your Relative Sanity, and Get Free Shit in the Process."

(Note: Between copious touring for the last album, I worked at a call center which shall hereby remain nameless. It's not a job I'm proud of, but it paid much better than pretending to be a mafioso while drinking far too much coffee and perplexing nearby patrons. Onwards)

1- We begin with a rule taken directly from the great and knowledgeable Patrick Swayze (also known as "The Swayze") in the highly underrated film Road House. The Swayze plays a "cooler" (read: glorified bouncer) who is recruited to turn a bar named the Double Deuce (owned by Locke's dad from LOST, to my unending pleasure) from a seedy dive frequented by toothless, violent alcoholics, to a swank yuppie bar where floozies do coke in the bathroom. It is from The Swayze's opening speech to his cadre of bouncers where we take rule one: "Be nice." You will be frustrated by this phone call. You will be transfered, you will be left on hold listening to Tesla, you will be asked to repeat the same information at least ten times, but you will be nice. Just be nice. It's just like when one of the Double Deuce bouncers asks The Swayze, "What if [a customer] calls my mother a whore?", and Swayze answers "Well, is she?" then continues "Just be nice." That's rule number one.

2- Have a goal and clear your schedule. You're not calling in to Apple or United Airlines or Verizon to let them dick you around. You have to know what you want, what you'll accept, and whether they're the same thing. The only thing standing between you and a waived fee or a complimentary ticket is dedication.

3- So you missed your payment or you're being charged some magical fee for something you never agreed to or, say, a cord melted on your wang. The company you're calling does not want to give you anything. It screws with their profit margin which screws with their investors who pay the salary of the people at the company who make the rules which prevent you from getting any recompense. The first person you'll speak to in this Kafkaesque Mobius Strip is a "Tier One" representative. These folks cannot help you and, largely, they are either very new or very stupid. But remember, be nice. "Sir, your computer isn't under warranty anymore and we can't get you a new power cord," is something they might say. To which you politely respond "That's unfortunate. I'd really like to get this problem fixed. Is there anyone else there I can speak with?" You will be transfered because you were nice.

4- Here's where it gets hairy. Odds are, you will be "escalated" up several layers of the diabolical call center hierarchy. You'll talk to at least one unbelievable idiot whose only goal is to frustrate you into hanging up. You'll speak to a middle manager type who, depending on your problem and level of nice-ocity, may be able to help you. You'll start growing tired of repeating your case number, your serial number, and your account number, but that's their strategy. A call to a customer service center is like the Ironman Triathlon: you don't so much finish it as it finishes you. But ask yourself, dear reader: would you rather fall in a heap during the bike ride or at the finish line, coated in blood, gatorade, and a brand new power cord? Exactly.

5- Empathize. The guy or girl on the other end of the phone hates their job. They spent all day dealing with irate pricks who were less wronged than you and who pointlessly feel that reaming some anonymous phone jockey will alleviate their sadness and financial loss. Things like "I'm not trying to be difficult" and "I used to work in a call center too, man, I understand" go a long way towards the ultimate goal. And empathy is reciprocal. And it's transfered. When you're escalated to each ascending level of the call center, the workers talk amongst themselves about you and your case. If you're empathetic, casual, and pleasant, they'll say things like "I really want to help this guy out; he seems like a decent sort" instead of "Fuckwad on line 2."

6- Do not, under any circumstances, hang up until you get what you want (or, as we discussed earlier, what you'll accept). They cannot hang up on you. You'll notice that most customer service reps say things like "is there anything else I can help you with?" or "is that all, sir?" That's because you have to conclude the call. It's the ultimate trump card in this war of attrition.

7- And lastly, call early. Find out when the call center opens and catch them before a whole litany of uptight cheesedicks has ruined your chances for positive adjudication. This isn't highly important---indeed, it can be counterproductive, as sometimes the aforesaid cheesedicks make your overall niceness seem even nicerer---but its worth keeping in mind. Definitely don't call at the end of the day. Think of it like going to a Chinese food buffet ten minutes before closing: sure, it's still open, but don't page me when your innards are liquifying.

And now, for my infomercial-tastic conclusion:



"Using these seven simple steps, I turned 'I'm sorry sir, you aren't under warranty' to 'We'll get that out in the mail today, sir. Sorry for the inconvenience.' Birdmonster's program is simply amazing. It changed my life. Even a baby can do it! Thanks Birdmonster!"

* To explain: my girlfriend's aunt had a brief cameo on the Young and the Restless, so I parked myself on the couch to watch her three scenes. Of course, now, I desperately want to see how the first issue of Restless Style turns out and if Nikki will marry David. I hope she doesn't. They just don't seem genuinely happy, you know?

Cancel Church. It's the Third Sunday in May

San Francisco, alas, can at times be a parody of itself. While we aren't all eating Tofurkey in our plastic shoes, championing Communism, and scoffing at middle America, The City is often portrayed that way. Just a few weeks ago, for example, Barack Obama made a rhetorical boo-boo in town, and nearly every article mentioned how his "elitist" comment was made in San Francisco, noted hotbed of Liberaler Than Thou sanctimoniousness. It was a bit absurd, really, and the shock nearly made me drop my Sun-Dried Tomato Avocado face cream. I mean, haven't they been to Berkeley?*

Now, granted, The City does it to itself. We do have Cafe Gratitude, a restaurant where you don't order "Enchaladas," you order "I Am Elated" (and, I'm told, your waiter sits down to dinner with you and asks you "What are you grateful for?" while you decide between answering sarcastically or punching them in the face). But for every Cafe Gratitude there's something like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a free outdoor banjo-soaked celebration of inbred musicality or, as is the case this glorious weekend, Bay to Breakers.

For the uninitiated, Bay to Breakers is a seven and a half mile run through the streets of San Francisco. And while that, in it of itself, sounds like nothing special, its the spirit of the race that makes it so. Bay to Breakers is the day where you can see a middle-aged Silicon Valley man's exposed testicles, see someone's Grandma doing tequila shots at 8:15 in the morning, see police men taking bong rips. It's the day when the entire city throws up its collective arms and says "Screw this, I'm getting wasted and I'm doing something stupid." I love it.

There's also the "running" aspect of the whole thing. In the front of the pack, out on the streets before even the most diligent revelers, there are those people with Clydesdale legs, coasting through 5 minute miles while I'm fumbling with the Maxwell House tin. They're followed by semi-serious runners, joggers, and weekend warriors. (Parenthetically, I told myself I was going to run Bay to Breakers this year, so, a couple weeks ago, I went for a jog. It ranked somewhere between "agonizing" and "I can't feel my legs." I've now convinced myself that wiffleball and Online Boggle qualify as exercise). But after the actual racers are past, the real fun begins: elaborate floats pushed by exhausted frat boys in afro wigs, girls drinking Franzia out of the bag, and hundreds of people who no one ever wanted to see naked, well, naked. The last part isn't "fun" so much as "funny," though more in that "remind me to soap my eyeballs" sort of way.

I'm always a bit sad when tour keeps us away from home on the third Sunday in May, so I'm overjoyed that we're here to get blotto with our fellow San Franciscans. Speaking of tour, we don't have much planned right now---we're currently wading in that infuriating limbo-period between finishing the album and the album coming out---but we will be in New York at the end of the month and will be playing at least once while we're there. And we're doing our damndest to reinvigorate this here blog with posts of some regularity. It should be easy now that I'm jobless and below the poverty line. Writing, after all, is free. Food, unfortunately, is not. Until soon.

* Sorry Berkeley. That was a cheap shot.

Hooray for shows

Greetings, one and all. We're home in San Francisco and I'm not-so-patiently waiting for a serendipitous phone call from an employer I probably forgot to contact. We're in that always excremental time between tours where you aren't around long enough to lie your way into a proper job yet around just long enough so you have to. Of course, that's why God invented temping, which, coincidentally, is the closest most people get to having a pimp.

But we're not talking about my descent into joyless whoredom. No, no. It's a good week, with not one but two shows in the Bay Area and tickets to the Warriors-Nuggets game with all the other monsters. In actuality, all those things happen within about thirty hours of each other, a fact which promises to make my Saturday an epic, Demolition Man-filled celebration of sloth. Details, details:

Friday the 11th finds us at the hotbed of conservative, fundamentalist flimflammery known as UC Berkeley at noon, followed by an evening time date at the always splendiferous Bottom of the Hill. The Berkeley show is, yes, at twelve noon in a place called "Lower Sproul Plaza," a location that surely exists but sounds like it should be in Hogsmeade. Bottom of the Hill is, well, at the bottom of Potrero Hill (see how they did that?). Here's a poster for the later:



That's a purty poster. Anyway, if you're a Bay Area-ite, please stop by at either. Or both. The UC Berkeley thing is zero dollars while Bottom of the Hill is all ages, ten bucks, and will be filled with copious revelry. You can get tickets for the Bottom show over here. See you soon, but I'll see Steven Jackson sooner.

In which Birdmonster reaches new cosmic understandings, tours Westward, and wishes pain on others

You know how in those Matrix movies, there's always some dweeb using two keyboards and staring at a whole mess of computer screens cascading neon green ASCII characters who can translate that soup of letters and numbers into an understandable narrative for the movie goer? They call that "seeing the Matrix." Or maybe they don't (and by "they," I'm referring to the Wachowski brothers, who, in their spare time, make J. Edgar Hoover and Divine seem conservative), but the phrase has worked its way into our cultural vernacular. We use it when we're doing really well at Ms. Pac-Man or when we're changing lanes on the freeway at just the right moment. It invokes an understanding beyond just a superficial grasp of a situation, a more interior knowledge of not only why and how something works but why and how it will work in the following moments. I bring this up because, after three years of being in Birdmonster, I can finally see the Taco Bell Matrix.

See, when you're traveling through large swaths of the country where the only food choices are reconstituted burger-chum, liquified roast-beef slurry, and probable-meat wraps, Taco Bell becomes a great option. But Taco Bell is not a place where you can just roll in, order any old thing on the menu, and devour. No, no. There are rules, both subtle and important, that must---I repeat MUST---be followed to avoid all manner of Giardia-style agony.

My bandmates Peter and Zach have long since seen into the Taco Bell Matrix. They are, in their own special way, two white Morpheuses, but, you know, without the penchant for overly hip sunglasses and painfully lame trench coats. They taught me the first, indeed the all-important, rule of Taco Bell ordering: NO SAUCE. It doesn't matter what flavor said sauce is masquerading as---be it "baja" or "chipotle" or "I hope that isn't human sperm"---do not eat that sauce. It will do bad things to your innards and your innards will punish you for your courageous idiocy. The T Bell sauce can be replaced with it's quote unquote salsa, which, in the words of Ralph Wiggum, "tastes like burning." My Siamese-Twin-Morpheus has another rule: thou shalt eat ground beef and only ground beef. In fact, the only true Taco Bell order is, in the purest sense, several crunchy ground beef tacos and a toddler-sized cola. You must err on the side of simplicity; Taco Bell is, in essence, a fast food Zen rock garden.

It was here that we reached our impasse. The ground beef they serve at T Bell ranks somewhere between prison sloppy joe meat and dog food. I tried to eat it on a few wasteful occasions but, alas, to no avail. I was at a loss. I certainly wasn't going to Arby's, but then again, I wasn't getting a Baja Calexico Gordito Supremo either. And while Cheez-Its might've tasted better, I'm not sure they have the requisite vitamins needed to survive or not-turn-orange. It was then that I had my revelation: if two people I trust can stomach ground beef that is not ground beef, couldn't I endure chicken that wasn't chicken? And suddenly, I felt like Harold Perrineau: I could see the Matrix. All the menu items made sense. The Taco Bell Universe telescoped into a singular, streamlined vision: chicken crunchy tacos, no sauce, smothered in the burn juice. I ordered, I ate, I survived.

This might not seem like a big deal to some of you. I assure you, it is. As frightening as this sounds, I now look forward to Taco Bell, whereas gut-holocausts like Burger King, Subway, Wendy's, Arby's, Sonic, and the like remain impenetrable mysteries. The "NO SAUCE!!!" rule applies, I believe, to all non-In 'N' Out Fast Fooderies, but beyond that, we are but babes in the woods.

I first saw the Taco Bell Matrix in Clovis, New Mexico, after choosing the Bell over a drive-thru only Domino's Pizza, a choice I stand behind with both of my feet and at least one of yours. We'd just finished playing the Lyceum Theatre, a thousand-some-odd person room filled with much less that a thousand-some-odd, a theatre that once hosted Buddy Holly and John Phillips Sousa, who, wrote music only for summertime parades and Benny Hill fast-forward sketches.

By the time we left Clovis, I was literally praying for another forced T Bell stop, but the Highway Gods would not oblige. We played in Tucson at the always wondrous Plush, where I spent half the evening sleeping off the inevitable tour sickness in the back of the van before playing a show covered in feversweat. Here's a great thing about Tucson though: we had a fifth member. His name was Tom. Hi Tom. Tom played the pedal steel, which (factoid alert) is one of the most---if not the most---recently invented, widely-used instrument. Tom was one of those musicians who can sit down and improve songs he's never heard in his life with, at best, a chord sheet drawn out twenty minutes prior and at worst, a bunch of Birdmonsters staring at him smiling. He was a great sport, a great man, and part of a band called These United States.

We would then travel further Westward to San Diego, Orange County, and Los Angeles. In San Diego, I reunited with an old friend who now does Jujitsu six nights a week and is built like a real life action figure. I laughed at all his jokes. In Orange County we played with the Henry Clay People, one of whom I went to college with and saw the Murder City Devils with, which is neither here nor there, but proves something about the world, namely that it's small and that screaming-horror-movie-punk-rock brings us all together. Los Angeles found us at a gorgeous little bar called the Bordello, which looked a bit like a miniature Great American Music Hall (good), had scantily-clad bartendresses (also good, yet very L.A.), and perhaps the weakest sound man ever (definitely not good). We did a song called "I Might Have Guessed" where I play the mandolin (see the video from last post, if you will) in front of a microphone he didn't feel like turning on. Sure, he watched us play, but he couldn't be bothered to, you know, make it sound good. Oh, and Dave's mic wasn't on either. And it wasn't just us. The next band (the Afternoons, who are parts of Irving, who are both fantastic) spent their set singing into mics that were sometimes on, sometimes off, and sometimes feeding back maniacally, all while the sound man sat there in his designer black shirt, getting paid to suck professionally. I hope he goes to Taco Bell and drinks a cup of Baja Sauce.

And now? Well, now, we're home. It's noon-ish Monday and we're finally finalizing the sequence for the upcoming, still unnamed, next Birdmonster album in an hour or so. So I should probably change out of my robe, wash the egg yolk off the cast iron, and get moving. If you're a Pacific Northwesterner, we'll be up in your general vicinity this weekend(ish) for shows in Portland, Seattle, and Spokane (twice). If you're not, well, you probably aren't getting rained on as much as they are, so take off that vinyl hat. You look ridiculous.

In which Birdmonster sleeps in New Mexico, gets saddened by bad film and, yet again, gets all Texas-y. Also: free music!

Greetings from Clovis, New Mexico. We're here in a rather bizarre little hotel which has, on the one hand, a coin-operated Battletoads game, a regulation-size Ping Pong table, and one of those over-chloronated swimming pools capable of chemical burns and Michael Jackson-esque skin bleachery. On the other hand, it smells like cow shit. I guess if you live in a place where the bovine populous outnumbers the human one, you get used to the aroma. Let's just say they won't be bottling Eau de Outside Our Hotel anytime soon.

Clovis is about as close to Texas as you can get without actually being inside the Lone Star State. In fact, the final town we passed last evening was called Farewell, Texas, which is oh so cute, I know, and is close enough to the central time zone line that, if you played your cards right, you could have a twenty-five hour Christmas or two New Year's Eves. We spent a good six days in Texas this year, doing the San-Antonio-just-don't-make-fun-of-the-Spurs-or-the-Alamo-and-you'll-be-alright-thing, the free-pants-music-music-music-South-By-cacophony-thing, and the oh-my-Lord-how-was-that-so-effing-cool?-Dallas-thing. We also watched the Miami Vice movie that came out a year or so back, which is perhaps the worst movie we've ever seen on tour, a list that includes Crackerjack, Hide and Seek, and Showdown, a veritable trifecta of motion picture incompetence. I've already filed a class action suit against Michael Mann and Colin Ferrell for emotional distress.

But I digress. This year's journey's to Austin was far mellower than usual. Whereas prior years had found us playing several shows a day in infernal temperatures, this year we played a single show at the Fader fort, recorded a couple brief sessions, and got our fair share of free crap while wearing last year's free crap, all in a pleasantly mellow clime. South By is, by nature, a bit overwhelming, what with the four billion bands and industry folk schmoozing frantically, everywhere, but there's still time for enjoyment. For example, we saw what ranks among my favorite shows---ever---at the aforesaid Fader spot. The band? N.E.R.D. In a world where great drummers are in short supply, it seems plainly unfair that N.E.R.D. gets two, but goddamn did it sound good. It was one of those shows where I actually laughed, not at the band, mind you, but because cheering and hooting just weren't quite enough. It was the laugh of some maniacal supervillian who, having captured and tortured a tuxedoed secret agent, ransomed the head of the U.N., and fire bombed Orlando, can only marvel at the inarguable awesomeness unfolding in front of him. So yeah: they were alright.

We also did some fancy pants recordings here and there too and while only one of those has made it onto the tubes of the interwebs, we're proud of it. The always fine folks at WOXY were the catalysts here and please, do check it out.

But South By is still South By. It can be a little Disney Worldy. The crowd is 90% exhausted bands, beer reps, girls hawking Nintendo products, 'zine peddlers, A&R guys, PR girls, B&O Railroad---people, in other words, with other things to do. That's why you go to Dallas.

See, Dallas was one of those shows. We started out playing to the bartender, the other bands, and a handful of dedicated stalwarts and ended up sweating and hooting to a bar full of blotto folks shaking tambourines, screaming requests, wrapping duct tape around my arm, stomping, and generally, well, being Texans. And that's a big compliment. It's essentially the opposite of doing the much maligned crossed-arm-hipster-"Is this cool enough for me to enjoy?" dance that's sweeping the nation. So thanks Dallas. You are the little straw that stirs our coffee.

In which Birdmonster escapes Arizona unscathed, flees to Texas, and quickly replaces its lost friend

Arizona was the last contiguous state admitted into the Union, is the political home of the least-frightening-but-not-by-much Republican Presidential candidate, and the roost of a fatally flawed but lovable basketball team. It is a place, much like Palm Springs, that was largely uninhabitable before the advent of air conditioning and, much like Palm Springs, it is a place that is teeming with old men in funny pants and old ladies who give you those hard candies that look like strawberries but taste like that fruit-flavored wax dentists use. It is also a state that, historically, has crippled Birdmonster: we've had three vans over the life of our little band and Arizona---no joke---has crippled every one, including the one we were forced to buy inside Arizona, after the 48th state reduced our prior van to the vehicular equivalent of a tubercular leper. In the 2006-07 fiscal year, Birdmonster actually contributed 2% of Arizona's gross state product, barely behind crappy Southwestern, coyote-themed art and far ahead of the Cardinals, who, by all accounts, ceased being a professional sports team around the time Tecmo Super Bowl came out.

A thing like that can give you a complex. As soon as the border is in sight, I say three Hail Marys, a Shema Yisreal or two, and a Salah. I also sacrifice a cloven-hoofed beast, just to cover our bases.

So it was a surprise when, this trip, while still covered in pig's blood, we made it to the show without anything approaching a catastrophe. We exited the van gingerly (I expected the earth to rend apart, personally) and loaded out with extreme care. We played a show to more than six stalwarts and nothing exploded or melted, then sat around all evening waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Amazingly, it never did.

Now, I'm not saying we've conquered Arizona. That'd be like saying Apollo Creed got some good punches in against Ivan Drago. But what we did do is travel from one side of Arizona to the other without hemorrhaging cash, played a damn fine show to some damn fine folks, and lived to tell the story. Special thanks to Kevin from So Much Silence for putting the evening together, letting us sleep on his various couches, and play his hilariously out-of-tune piano at three thirty in the morning. Kudos.

Texas, on the other hand, has always been kind to the Monster. Whereas Arizona has traditionally stabbed us in the shower, Texas has always healed our wounds with energetic concert goers, incredibly cheap beer, and the total absence of fruits or vegetables. And, where Arizona had once melted my bass amp only to have Texas provide another (albeit far more expensive) one, Texas once again came through for us in the clutch, this time with another mandolin. The lesson, of course, is that Texas giveth, while Arizona taketh away. Well, hopefully not anymore. We're traveling back through AZ in three or four days. I hope this doesn't bite us in the ass. I'll be wearing chain mail.

So, yeah, a mere four days after the shattered corpse of my mandolin was found in the darkness of our van back seat, a San Antonio store called Spacetone Music provided a new, strangely similar, potato-bug looking mando. And, although this new one was roughly a third of the price, it's somehow far superior, namely because you can play it above the fourth fret without it sounding like a middle school orchestra playing Hot Cross Buns. This was rather fortuitous, as we had several acoustic thingies to do in Austin at South By this year and, while we all love the banjo, if I play it too much, I start wearing overalls and getting this urge to eat Funyuns.

(And by the way, when we get the recordings of those sessions, we'll post them. Hopefully later in the week. Back to the regularly scheduled blog.)

San Antonio, as always, was lovely. Instead of the Limelight, this time around we played the Rock Bottom Tattoo Bar, a decidedly grimy venue whose floor was covered in some strange colored water that was dripping from a ceiling made seemingly of garbage bags and duct tape. We played with some great acts, including the Whigs who are worth crowding the stage, trampling toddlers, and elbowing your mother for.

Austin followed San Antonio and Dallas followed that, but, judging by the carpal tunnel cramping I'm getting, I've been typing too long. We shall return shortly with stories of SXSW and our show in Dallas (easily the most fun I've had all year). Until then, I'll be walking around the greater Dallas area in my Warriors hat, hoping not to get pummeled. Au revoir.

A brief something to listen to

So, I was writing this post about our unusually triumphant jaunt through greater Arizona---a state which has taken from us countless hours, a bass amp, our second and altogether worst van, and a good percentage of my dignity---when I realized we were mere hours away from Austin. This not only means a probable heat wave and some definite tinnitus, but, in the purposes of the interweboblogosphere, free music. Yes, yes. We're taking an hour or so to play some songs for our old friends at WOXY and, if you so desire, you can hear it live. We'll be on at 3 PM Central, 1 PM Pacific, 4 PM Eastern, and 5 AM tomorrow in Pyongyang, which I felt you needed to know. There will probably be some sort of interview too, during which I'll say something I wish I hadn't and the room will go silent and then the Feds will come. I'm certainly looking forward to it.

In which Birdmonster confronts staggering intelligence, leaves home again, and, like Elton John, has a Funeral for a Friend

I've never been one of those misanthropes who, upon each of life's many screwjobs, throws up his hands at the overall idiocy of humanity. "Everybody's an idiot," is one of those things you'll never hear me say---it's like that saying: If you meet ten assholes today, maybe you're the asshole. To wit: if you think everyone's a dumbass, I'd recommend checking your criteria.

Unless you're at U-Haul. Then everyone's a dumbass.

See, we'd been killing our van (the Donald) for the past few years by not tugging a trailer; the shocks needed replacement and sometimes, there's this peculiar noise when you back up, like a robot with emphysema. So we decided to bite the bullet, get a hitch installed, and rent a trailer. Unfortunately, this necessitated not one, but two trips to U-Haul, which is essentially like going to the lobotomy ward at St. Judes Hospital for Adult Mongoloids. See, when you call U-Haul to make a reservation, they keep you on the phone for an hour an a half so that when you come in the next day for your hitch-installation appointment, they can confess that, no, you have no reservation, but they can take that information they took yesterday over the phone yet again, just so long as you're willing to sit there and watch an eighteen year old hunt and peck on the keyboard like some Ukrainian peasant whose knowledge of computers is confined to watching Gorbachev's kid play Tetris in a state sponsored video from 1989. Oh, and you'll get your hitch, even if it takes three times as long as you were advised. Just don't reserve a trailer because there's no way you're getting the size you ordered, but if you want a trailer anyway, they'll do their best to charge you for the only size they have left because, well, the customer's always right the customer can always suck their balls.

So, say you make it through that an your have a trailer and a hitch. Now you want it installed? That'll take another hour and a half, regardless of the fact you were told it would take twenty minutes. In the meantime, you can wander around in circles, hollering invective. It'll be fun. Promise.

In the end, the best you can do is chalk it up as some bizarre rite of passage. You are mentally prepared for trips to the DMV, gas stations in central Ohio, and conversations with George Bush apologizers. It's like developing callouses on your brain. Of course, if I were you, I'd just take my word for it.

The end result is, thankfully, that the Donald is running like a dream, albeit a dream that smells vaguely of socks and rotten bananas. It's like sitting on a barcalounger that's sitting on a cloud that's can't go faster than sixty miles an hour.

And with that, we were back on tour. We are back on tour. Either way. In fact: both. Unfortunately, the overwhelming dumbassitude of U-Haul rubbed off on me personally, as I left all my keyboard doohickeys in my folk's garage in San Diego, which I discovered last night, right before I found out that my mandolin had been broken in half by a careless foot, right before I (yet again) spent a good few minutes wandering around a parking lot screaming words I'd rather not write, as my mother reads the blog from time to time. But more on that later. Rest in peace, little mando.

Our first night was San Diego's Casbah, which, admittedly, is pretty much the only place we play down in my childhood home, but if you played Scollari's Office the first trek down, you'd stick to the Casbah too. See, at the Casbah, they book less than eight bands, you're never really in danger of getting shivved, and no one screams "ROCK IT CALI-STYLE BROS!!!" at you the entire set. These are good things, although I'm not personally opposed to rocking it, Cali-style. I've plenty of nice things to say about the Casbah---the attentive and professional sound guys, the Churchillian amount of free booze, the astonishingly fantastic Ms. Pac-Man in the back room---but I've said them all before. I'm just happy we can keep coming back. It was always that club I wanted to go to in high school, but couldn't because it was never all-ages and my fake ID claimed I was a forty-year old Hindu. It's good to be old.

The jaunt to Los Angeles was, as always, too long, too slow, and filled with brown air, but it was worth it. The Pehrspace wasn't the cushiest club you've ever seen, but a $5 cover and a BYOB policy tends to make for happy evenings. Indeed it did. In fact, it was probably our favorite L.A. show to date. There were birthday girls, an old friend out for her first Birdmonster show, much dancing, and nobody doing the too-effing-cool-for-this, arms-crossed, Los Angeles non-dance.

That night had a little sadness as well: the aforementioned, mangled corpse of my mandolin. Lame. The worst part is that the thing was over a hundred years old (made by some long-dead gentleman named W.C. Cole in Boston) and that, in that century-plus, over who-knows-how-many-owners, no other buffoon managed to fustigate* that fragile little fellow. And then came me. And there went that. Let's just say I wouldn't recommend letting me hold your baby. Or your fine china. Or your cup of coffee. I'm like Mr. Magoo over here.

However, we've let that go. I'm carrying it's skeleton home for a proper burial, to be attended by my banjo, Dave's old Stella nylon string, Pete's old wheezy harmonica, and Zach's collection of cracked cymbals. Services will be at noon. Bring tissues.

We did the Arizona thing yesterday but, given our history with Arizona, I can't write about the state until we've actually left. In fact, writing that sentence just gave me heart palpitations. Let's just forget about the whole thing, Arizona. Just let us out alive.

Until soon.

* Fustigate is a perfectly cromulent word. It embiggens the soul.

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:
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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
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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