You got some ‘splaining to do, Lucy.

18 May 2011

Well friends… I see that it’s been about two months since my last post.  You might be wondering what gives. I could tell you that I’ve been super busy with work and two bands and shows happening and more coming.  And all the while, my house is a mess and has needed to be cleaned for weeks.  And that’s all true.  But you’d think I could have found some time to sit for an hour and write this in a span of two whole months.  And yet, I didn’t.  Have I lost my zest for blogging?  It could very well be.  Whatever it was that used to drive me to want to document my current events and be clever… somehow it’s not driving me anymore.  I could have filled a dozen blogs with all that’s happened lately.  Instead, you’ll get the short, short version.  And I will have forgotten some things by now.  I feel like I should be sad that this thing might be winding down.  Maybe temporarily, maybe forever.  But it’s just not sustainable.  Should I expect to have time to blog every week the rest of my life?  And if I don’t, will my memories fade away because I didn’t record them?  And will my progeny someday read this and be disappointed that the blog starts to fall apart here?  I don’t know.  But I guess I ought to just go with my instincts, and right now my instincts are telling me to hit the high points but not spend too much time on it.  Let’s see how that approach works out for us…

So last time, I mentioned that I was about to embark on digitizing my music collection.  Well I’m off and running, and it’s going even better than I hoped.  Sure, it’s taking a lot of time and will probably take several more months.  And sure, this pursuit has put a halt on my MySpace archiving project.  But it’s what I’m motivated to do at the moment, so I’m going with it.  Apparently the legality/morality of keeping a digital copy and selling the original is up for debate, so with that in mind, of course I’m only selling the things I’m not keeping a digital copy of. And I keep an eye out on Amazon to see what’s out of print and going for a high price, and I’m keeping that stuff for now. But hypothetically if everything else were to go to Amoeba, an estimated 30% of my collection I’ve gone through so far would have hypothetically netted about $750 in store credit!  Using what credit I actually have gotten, I’ve picked up (often used) CDs and artists I’d been waiting on.  My OCD about CD collecting often kept me from buying collections that were not definitive on their own, but with my new digital approach, I have no problem what collection(s) the songs came from, as for all my purposes, they all live in the same digital bucket.  And having it all digital and organized and at my fingertips is bringing me way more in touch with my collection.  I’m listening to stuff I forgot I had.  This whole thing is a win/win… win/win/win/win…

Despite my busy schedule lately, I have managed to squeeze in some time with friends.  Back to the Haight with Shel like the good old days.  There’s a Dr. Marten’s store there now that sells all manner of Docs… gold, white, powder blue.  If they were something non-leather, I’d be broke from all the shoes I’d have bought there.  Even caught some movies (Insidious scared the piss out of me for days!).  And I’ve managed to hit a few Smiths nights, a Haight Street Hop, and Booze, Broads, & Hotrods.  That’s actually not a bad list.  Now mellow out, watch this, and realize the we’re really all just clinging to a speck of dust floating through the cosmos…

I’ve been to a couple of great shows lately.  OMD with a bunch of good friends, and then Paul Simon at The Fillmore with mom.  The latter was a pretty special show as you might imagine.  I got the tix at face value the day they went on sale (thanks to Sus), but they were fetching upwards of $500 each on Craig’s List.  It was nice to be able to go to a show with mom.  Reminded me of doing that when I was little.  I think my first concert ever was Don Henley with her on the “End Of The Innocence” tour.  Coming up soon is Bootsy Collins at The Fillmore, and Reverend Horton Heat at The Independent.  2011 has been good for shows so far.

And it hasn’t been bad for TCB lately either.  There was a wild night playing that Smiths night at Milk Bar in San Francisco.  Though it’s a smaller place and the rain was pouring, we got a nice big crowd of die-hards who helped make the night one of our best in recent memory.  Some good greenroom stories, too.  Sacramento was fun as usual, and our Petaluma debut was interesting.  That night, I heard about how Tenacious D once opened for Super Diamond, and a young Jack Black was all over the band talking about his Neil Diamond obsession.  Not long after, Saving Silverman came out, which prominently features a fictional Neil Diamond tribute band.  Gee, I wonder where that idea came from…  Then this last weekend was a Modesto debut (the highlight of which had to be the DJ starting a song through the PA during one of our songs; not between songs, and not our first or last song… but right in the middle of a song right in the middle of our set).  Then it was Fresnope, and though the show was rocking, the next day brought me a double whammy of 1) Claim Jumper being closed permanently and 2) my car getting hit by a U-Haul just before leaving town.  But hell, I’m alive, aren’t I?  Guess things aren’t that bad.

Speaking of music, a random bitch I’ve had on my mind lately.  Anyone know what’s up with the trend of musicians naming themselves with numbers?  I don’t know who the first one to do it was, but that was probably clever at the time.  But everyone who came after… I mean, how lame is that?  After the first guy, it totally loses its cleverness and instead looks like an unoriginal gimmick.   John 5, Adam 12, Nick 13.  At least come up with a clever one like “Claude 9.”  You’re welcome.

The quote of the week comes from Virgil, as we watched Davy Jones on Pirates Of The Caribbean in a Fresno hotel last weekend:

“As an Asian, I want to eat his face.”

Home Taping Is Killing Music

15 March 2011

This week’s all about music.  And a little about pasta.

My Strippers

So as I mentioned before, after more years if frustration than I care to remember, I finally have an original project off the ground.  My new rockabilly band The Rumble Strippers has now played two shows!  The debut was at Grant & Green in North Beach.  I’d never been there, but it was an ideal place for a first show.  A small room, low pressure, but still nice.  The DIY sound situation was refreshing too.  (We’re not in Kansas anymore!)  We got a lot of great feedback, and I immediately felt the difference.  There seem to be different standards (and of course expectations) for an original band versus a tribute band.  I loved the feeling that there were no wrong answers.  TCB is like a math class, where there are right and wrong answers.  Every note of every song is predetermined, and there is a correct way to play it.  Crowds won’t like it if you deviate too much.  But this new band is more like a creative writing class.  Sure there’s a craft to it, but there’s also a lot of leeway in terms of content.  With covers, we can take any artistic license we want, and with originals… well whatever note I play is the right note.  

This last weekend we played our second show at El Rio, this time to a much bigger crowd.  Again it went over well, and my own private victory was that for the first time ever, a song I wrote was performed in public!  It’s called “Let’s Drink Alone Together” and damned if people weren’t dancing to it.  A new experience for me to be sure, and one I’ve spent many years considering.  So all in all, this thing is shaping up to be pretty exciting.  It’s not exactly Madison Square Garden, but it’s fun to be in and play to a different crowd.  They’re more forgiving and encouraging than I’m used to.  But that must partially be ‘cos they don’t know what to expect.  It’s interesting to not be 100% confident my every note is knocking socks off… which is how I usually feel (courtesy of Mr. Marr, of course).

My Smiths

Of course TCB is still doing its thing.  We’ve had a lot of shows lately, but it’s been mostly “all killer, no filler” shows where we more or less have to play the hits.  But it got us into Bimbo’s 365 again and hopefully got us on a few new radars.  It’s all been smooth sailing of course, minus a rare capo flub on “Stop Me” causing us to have to restart the song.  (Whoa, double intro… what does it mean?)  Needless to say I’m looking forward to the upcoming shows where we can play some of the deeper cuts.  This Saturday is the new “Queen Is Dead” Smiths night in the Haight, where we’ll be playing a set.  Then April and May will see some new places and some familiar ones.  Might even get “Golden Lights” in there somewhere.  And then there’s Moz’s birthday to look forward to…

Their Smiths

Last night I went out to Du Nord to see rival tribute “The Smiths Indeed” from the U.K.  I’m sure they’re very nice guys, but let’s just say they’re not much of a threat to what we do.  Their fake Morrissey is far and away the best I’ve ever seen in terms of dress and dance and charisma.  If you want someone who does the whole impersonator thing, you’ll do no better than this guy.  But as for the rest of the band… well, no contest.  I understand they play several dates a week every week and have for years.  It was not evident.  The surprise of the night came when I snuck over to the Castro Safeway to stock up on Ovaltine ($20 worth; my local Safeway has stopped carrying it during their construction!).  In line right in front of me at midnight?  Danny Glover.

Speaking of celebrities, did I ever tell you how much I wish I were Mick Ronson sometimes?

David Bowie – Moonage Daydream [live, Hammersmith Odeon, London, 07-03-73]

What else is going on?  Eh, all boring stuff.  I ventured into cooking.  Whipped up some whole wheat penne and added pine nuts, crushed garlic, sun dried tomatoes, capers, olive oil, basil, and feta.  Wasn’t as good as it sounds, but it’s a start.  Also, it’s been freezing in SF the past couple months.  I guess they call that “winter,” but it’s seemed especially uncomfortable.  I installed my first set of  flannel sheets since I was a teenager living at home.  What a difference!  If that’s not right bitches, I don’t know what is.

I’m about to embark on a serious undertaking.  Inspired by Shel, I am taking small steps toward digitizing my music collection to FLAC in an effort to 1) save space, 2) save money, 3) go green, and 4) become more efficient.  A lossless digital song file is 99.9% of the value I get out of buying a CD.  Why waste all the plastic which will just take up space and degrade over time anyway?  And hell, the time when CDs have any value at all is rapidly running out.  If I don’t move them soon, they’ll be landfill.  A couple of redundant external hard drives and I could have my whole music collection in a space the size of a paperback novel.  I’m on the fence, but I’m seeing a lot more pros than cons.  The major con is the time and effort to convert it all, but maybe a little at a time over the next year or so?

I realize a lot of what’s in here tonight is Facebook rehash.  What can I say?  Facebook feels fleeting.  Statuses come and go.  Disappear forever.  This feels more permanent.  Even though no one reads it anymore.

And in closing, Sleeve Face is some clever shit.

Listening to: The Crystals – “Da Doo Ron Ron: The Very Best Of The Crystals

[amtap amazon:asin=B004GHBQRE]

Idea: Throw me the idol, I’ll throw you the whip!

11 March 2011

It may not surprise you to know that there are some big Indiana Jones fans out there, and one of them has quite a collection of props going.  Among them is a series of replicas of the Aztec idol from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

I’ll just say it.  I want one of these idols (and a stand) for my desk at work.  Now ideally, I’d have a dark office at the end of a long hall to go with it, but sadly, I do not.  I just think it would be funny to have that on my desk all the time, but then never really acknowledge it.  You know, talk to people as if there weren’t this giant golden fertility idol sitting there.  Offer them no explanation for it.  I guess I don’t really have enough foot traffic of new people though to put it to good use, and most of the folks at my work probably wouldn’t get it anyway.  Which is too bad, because what a great prank it would be to come in one morning to find it replaced with a sack of sand.

Listening to: Martin Denny – “The Exciting Sounds Of Martin Denny: Exotica I & II

[amtap amazon:asin=B000000IAP]

Shall we play a game?

20 February 2011

It seems like these days video games are a more socially acceptable entertainment choice than ever before, even for adults.  Now of course growing up when and where I did, I played a ton of games in arcades and eventually Nintendo, Sega, PC, etc.  Make no mistake, I was way into it when I was little.  But I can’t remember the last time I had a bunch of free hours to kill playing a Playstation.  I mean, my days and nights are jam packed with other commitments, and I thought that was pretty normal for adults.  Who are all these people with tons of time to play?  How do they ever find the time?

I saw in recent months that Red Dead Redemption has been released.  It’s the highly-anticipated follow up to the last game that I really got hooked on back around 2004: Red Dead Revolver.  In honor of this new sequel that I don’t have the time to buy and play, I thought I’d run down some of the notable games that hooked me over the years.  I will confess though that with this new PC, I did carve out a couple hours to install and play Hitman: Blood Money, which came out in 2006.  With this new hardware, I was able to run the game with all the graphics options maxed out, and it ran without a hitch.  I only had time to play a couple levels, but wow… I really missed out back then.  My old machine would barely run this thing.  With this suped up 2011 PC, the visuals were stunning!  And again, this is a game from five years ago.  It makes me wonder in the last half decade how much more incredible games have gotten… and I’m not sure I want to find out.

I’m about to geek out on video games as I never have and never will again.  If there were a way to block girls from ever reading this post, I would invoke it.  I’ll do my best not to just list every game I ever played, meaning I’ll attempt to focus on just the ones that really impacted me in terms of my creative development and even just the time and financial investment.  Before I proceed, big ups to San Jose’s “Aladdin’s Castle,” Pleasanton’s “Game Station,” and the many pizza parlors, movie theaters, bowling alleys, and 7-11s that I frequented in my youth.  In those days, my friends and I kept close track of what arcade games were where.  These days, I just watch a YouTube video of the walkthrough of an entire game and I’m just as happy.  And finally, check out the KLOV for details on pretty much any game ever made.

Scroll down for the simple top 10 list (top 1010?), but for those of you who care to come along for the whole journey, here’s a brief-ish history.

In The Beginning…

My earliest video game memory is of the Atari 400.  It had a keyboard built in so as to allow some primitive form of word processing, and there was even something music-related with a cassette tape peripheral.  The salesman had told my dad that it was “the last computer [he’d] ever need.”  Not quite, I guess.  But these were the earliest of games.  We were rocking the classics like Pac-Man, Centipede, Joust, Frogger, Space Invaders, Pole Position, Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, and Missile Command.  I also recall Jungle Hunt, a billiards game called Rack ’em Up, some mission-to-Mars something or other, and some kind of fifteen puzzle game I can no longer remember.  Oh, and of course Krazy Shoot-Out!  This was the game where my dad famously pranked the family by recording himself playing very well on the new VCR (also a marvel at the time), then had me pretend to be playing while his recording played.  “OMG, everyone look how good Benji is playing!”  OK, I’m pretty sure he didn’t say “OMG,” but the rest happened.

Then came the original Nintendo.  The classics here were Duck Hunt and of course the Super Mario Bros. series, which I was never way into… though I do remember a certain anticipation of part three tied in with that Fred Savage movie “The Wizard.”  Other memorable titles include Pro Wrestling, , Excitebike, SNK Baseball Stars, Super Dodge Ball, Ice Hockey, Legendary Wings (which I was playing when the 1989 earthquake hit), and my friend Olin’s mainstay The Guardian Legend.  In those days, I’d rent a lot of Nintendo games from the local video store.  More than I could possibly remember… though as I sit here typing, the titles are coming back to me.  Must… resist… urge… to… list them all.  Without question though, the best Nintendo game of all time is a dead heat between Contra (U, U, D, D, L, R, L, R, B, A, START anyone?) and Tecmo Bowl (as well as later, Tecmo Super Bowl).

Somewhere in the mid-eighties, we got our first “real” home computer of the Amiga variety.  I don’t guess I know how you’d classify it in modern computing terms, but I suppose Amiga had their own OS.  The peripherals were what you know and love.  A monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, a floppy drive.  It had a real word processor, some basic midi, a program that would “speak” whatever you typed, and Deluxe Paint (think ancient Photoshop).  As far as games went, there were some notables.  Marble Madness comes to mind.  Battle Chess of course!  Temple Of Apshai, Barbarian(whoa!), Roadwar 2000, Arctic Fox, Bomb Jack (which I have a vague recollection of winning at school?), some flight simulator, and one of the first text/graphic adventures games — which I was too young to win, but would recognize and admonish you for entering cuss words.  And around this time in school we were playing the famous Oregon Trail and Odell Lake on Apples.

My So-Called Life

In my teen years, I got into the Sega family.  Those systems came and went so fast, they kinda blur together for me.  I know for sure it was the Genesis that had the original Sonic The Hedgehog, as well as a ton of amazing sports games that happen to hit me right in those early nineties years when I was actually into sports (such as R.B.I. ’93, and the many EA series like Madden FootballNHL Hockey, and several basketball games based on Lakers vs. Celtics… gotta love those signature dunks!).  At some point, the Sega CD came out, followed by the Saturn, and eventually the Dreamcast.  I had all of them, and I can’t recall for certain which games were on which systems as it all bleeds together in hazy memories of my dusty bedroom at the family home in the East Bay.  But one of the favorites that strikes me first is the second Eternal Champions, full of time travelling historical figures, fighting and killing each other using elements of the backdrop.  My sister and I found rare common ground with our love of The Horde, featuring Kirk Cameron!  Then the peerless zombie shooter House Of The Dead, which I fondly recall having two controllers for and starting up players 1 and 2 and going John Woo style.  (P.S. Just so you know, 1:06 is how you handle a zombie.  Owned.)  I remember Jared and I used to play this amazing basketball game (NBA 2k1) where you could create your own players.  Of course mine was a 7’6″ white guy with an afro, star-shaped sunglasses, short shorts, and knee-high socks.  He could dunk without hardly jumping.  Jared’s guy was more true to life height, but he’d sink half court threes all the time.  Which brings me to a couple of killers: the Virtua Fighter series and the Soulcalibur series.  Those series both spanned into the PS3 world, and spoiler alert: they’re both in my top 10, so more on them below.

During this time, I should mention I had my stint working at Blockbuster, and so I had many, many late nights after closing playing Twisted Metal at Donnie’s house, and later GoldenEye in the manager’s office with The Horsemen.

So then I finally broke down and got the PlayStation 2 everyone was raving about.  It didn’t disappoint.  In addition to introducing me formally to the Tekken series, it brought another pair of my top 10s into my life: Gladius and Red Dead Revolver.  There was also a cool WWF game that let me build my own wrestler and furnish him, of course, with the camel clutch… which I believe at the time I dubbed “the Ugly Clutch.”

Keeping It PC

After the Amiga days, my family got into Windows 3.1, and then when I started buying my own computers, it was Windows 98, then XP, and now Windows 7.  People bitch about Microsoft (“where quality is job 1.1” ha ha!), but I’ve generally been happy with their products.  I don’t want to get sidetracked with this, but besides my short love affair with HyperCard on the school-owned Macs in middle school, I’ve never cared for Apples, much less owned one.  To me, they’re computers that assume the user is completely non-technical and shouldn’t be allowed to tweak anything.  And if that suits you, then great, but it comes across like Fisher-Price to me.  I digress.  My point was that PC games deserve their own category, though chronologically speaking, it spans from around 1990 to present day.  The first PC game I remember being enamored with was the first (and later second) of the Monkey Island series.  Similar to this (and created by the same company, LucasArts) was the excellent Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis.  All of these LucasArts adventure games were done with such class and quality, you just can’t find a fault with them.  Every little detail is perfect.  (Incidentally, LucasArts was also responsible for PS2’s Gladius, mentioned above and below.)  Sierra made their share of great adventure games of this style too, and while they weren’t quite as polished, they were still a lot of fun.  There was the famously sleazy Leisure Suit Larry series, as well as Police Quest and the masterful King’s Quest VI.

There was SimCity, which later spawned The Sims — being a ridiculous game in which you dress and design virtual people and houses and then tell them when to eat and poop.  Jessica and I shared an obsession with it in 2002, even mimicking their language, and I believe my Sim Benjamin cheated on her Sim Jessica with Sim Morrissey.  For a few years, I got into first-person shooters like Doom and Hexen, then later had my one and only foray into online gaming with Half-Life and Counter-Strike.  Later came the Hitman series, which was way up my alley.  I confess I did play the geeky Vampire Masquerade game for a while, which I maintain was awesome.  There were some crazy driving games like Carmageddon, where you would race, demolition derby, and annihilate pedestrians all at once.  Or Interstate ’76, a hilarious and cinematic take on doing battle… in muscle cars… in the desert… in 1976.  (Someone posted all the cutscenes back-to-back here: parts one, two, and three.)

Insert Witty “Arcade Fire” Pun — Which I Am Too Tired To Think Of

Also deserving of its own category, all video game obsession in the eighties and nineties started with whatever was new at the local arcade.  In fact some of the titles already mentioned first landed on my radar in the arcade.  And some of the ones I’m about to talk about I also had in some form at home.  And hell, these days an enterprising PC user can find “free” emulators like MAME to get hundreds of old arcade games working on your computer.  But I don’t even know where to start here.  I mean, there were so many I played over they years.  Maybe I’ll group them by theme?

Side-scrolling fighting games — also known as “beat ’em ups” — were the real bread and butter of my young arcade-going life.  Double Dragon was probably the earliest as well as the gold standard.  Other great titles like Crime Fighters and Final Fight followed this format, as did several lesser ones like Bad Dudes and Two Crude (though it was fun to throw cars and beat up a soda machine for more energy).  Once you start throwing swords and magical powers into the equation, you get Altered Beast (rise from your grave!) and Strider.  There was that Indiana Jones game too that covered all the coolest parts of the Temple Of Doom movie.  Awesome ninja games like Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden (which spawned a Nintendo game I forgot to mention earlier; its intro sequence still haunts me to this day).  TMNT had a well made arcade game similar in style to The Simpsons.  Another fave was the Splatterhouse series which essentially let you take on the role of Jason from Friday The 13th.  Then the barbarian movie trend of the eighties no doubt influenced the creation of games like Gauntlet (wizard needs food badly… wizard is about to die… you are it!), Gauntlet Legends, and the Golden Axe series (of which The Revenge Of Death Adder was the crown jewel).  When it came to side-scrolling shooters, there were dozens more.  Most etched into my memory are Rolling Thunder, NARC, Sunset Riders, and ESWAT.

Arcade driving and racing games weren’t usually my thing, but there were a few notable exceptions.  I think the earliest one I liked was the classic Spy Hunter, famously featuring the Peter Gunn theme.  I remember Super Off Road a little, and have a similarly vague memory of racing my sister on Toobin’.  Later in life I found love for them though, while peeling out in a ’56 Chevy in Cruis’n World and going nuts in Crazy Taxi.  I could even appreciate the amount of environmental controller feedback in the choppy waters of Hydro Thunder.

I was only really into sports for a few years in the early nineties, and frankly it took the form of video games and baseball cards more than it did actually playing the sports.  But in those days, besides the sports games on home consoles I already mentioned, I was all about NBA Jam.  The cartoonish format and ridiculous dunks emphasized everything I liked about the sport.  Prior to that, I enjoyed the medieval football brawl of Pigskin and the skateboarding classic 720° (skate or die!).  The best wrestling games ever (WWF Superstars and WWF WrestleFest) were found in arcades in those days, helping to feed my insane childhood wrestling fandom.  And then of course the blockbuster Punch-Out (which had a long life on Nintendo as well).

My final days in the arcade were centered around one-on-one type fighting games.  There are a couple of “kings” of this genre back in the golden age.  The first was Street Fighter II which really did seem to revolutionize gaming and spawn dozens (if not hundreds) of imitators.  It wasn’t the first game to use that format, but it was the slickest and most sophisticated by leaps and bounds.  The same company (Capcom) produced another of my favorite series (just barely missing my top 10) called “Darkstalkers.”  It was basically the SFII format, but with better art and animation, more in-depth backdrops and characters, and of course… they were all monsters (vampires, werewolves, mummies, etc.).  This was one of several games Jared and I were very competitive with each other on.  Along these same lines were the later Marvel vs. Capcom games, which brought a ton of Marvel Comics characters into the world of 2D fighting, against various characters in the Capcom universe.  Just before SFII hit the scene in 1991, it was actually Pit-Fighter that first caught my eye.  It used digitized pictures, and while it was a little clunky, it gave rise to the second “king” of early fighting games: Mortal Kombat.  The first and second games in that series were hugely influential and controversial, if you recall (FINISH HIM!).  The SNK/Neo-Geo company got in the mix throughout the nineties.  They were mostly known for their several SFII also-rans like the Fatal Fury series, but they hit a high point there with the King Of Fighters series, bringing together characters from many games in the SNK universe.  Their ultimate achievement in my eyes though is far and away the Samurai Showdown series, which is on my top 10 below.  Their attempts to capture that magic again with the Last Blade series were also admirable.  There were many, many other similar fighting games over the years that held my fancy for a few weeks.  Some silly, some pretty good.  But far too many to research or mention.  The whole decade was dominated by these games.

A few final and meaningful standards that don’t fit in anywhere else… Paperboy (where yes, you were actually a paperboy) was hard as hell to control, and it had an infectious theme song.  Another vocational was the ancient table top game Tapper, which serves me often as a metaphor when I’m describing my life.  Rampage put you in the shoes of Godzilla, King Kong, or a giant wolf… and then let you tear apart city after city.  And finally, one of the most recognizable early arcade hits: the controllable cartoon known as Dragon’s Lair.

The Top 10

And after all that, I just know I’m forgetting dozens of great games.  I’ll probably be coming back to update this posting for weeks as I randomly remember more.  It’s so hard to even settle on 10, because at one time, I had a minor obsession with each of the games described above.  Way more than 10 of them.  I thought about them a lot.  I daydreamed about them.  I coveted codes for them, and watched gaming magazines to find out about new discoveries and sequels and strategy guides for them.  A lot of my young time and thought spent, now just reduced to a hyperlink somewhere in the last several paragraphs.  I can still remember the magic of seeing a new game in the local arcade, pushing the envelope of graphical capabilities, and watching the demo reel over and over.  And begging mom and dad for quarters.  *sigh*  So here they are in rough chronological order… the games I miss, my favorites of all time:

  1. Monkey Island
    I think I first saw The Secret Of Monkey Island as a playable demo at a Circuit City or something.  Later I found my friend Jonah had it, and I played it a while at his house.  One day I got a copy for myself, as well as Monkey Island 2 .It’s not like I wasn’t ever captivated by a game before this one, but this is the first one that I can remember felt magical even beyond just the novelty aspect which I think drove me on those early arcade games.  I discussed the magic a little on #10 on my last Christmas list, and I did end up getting them for myself.  But I have yet to actually install and play them because who has the time?
  2. Street Fighter II
    As I mentioned, SFII revolutionized gaming, and I definitely drank the Kool-Aid for that one.  I learned all teh moves for all the characters, learned their backgrounds, competed in the local arcades and convenience stores.  I’d have to say that it’s actually Street Fighter III and its variations that were my favorite, particularly with the much smoother graphics and weirder characters.  (Dudley would easily make my list of favorite game characters of all time.)  Though maybe that’s all revisionist history, as I was never really obsessed with the third one the way I was with the second.
  3. Mortal Kombat
    Kind of simultaneously with SFII, I began my obsession with Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II.  I was so into every character, every move, every secret in the game.  I lived and breathed it for a while.  I played with G.I. Joes as though they were characters from the game.  I played it until I was somewhat competitive.  The later games in the series looked neat enough, and maybe it was just my age, but after part II, my interest waned considerably.
  4. Samurai Showdown
    As I was getting into martial arts in real life in the mid nineties, my interest in the associated weaponry expanded.  It was right about this time that I discovered the first in the Samurai Showdown series.  When the Samurai Showdown II came out, it was phenomenal.  I was all about it, and got to be relatively competitive with it.  The later games in the series were not common in local arcades, but over the years I’ve discovered that they are “available” via emulators.  The graphics improved each time, and I guess now they’re up to part VI.  I need to get on that.
  5. Virtua Fighter 3
    When the first Virtua Fighter arrived, it was ugly.  But it was something new: a completely 3-D game.  I played it a little, but it wasn’t until Virtua Fighter 2 came out that I went nuts with it.  Aside from poring over every move and graphic, I got good at this game.  Really good.  I would posit that playing as “Kage” on Virtua Fighter 2 was the best I’ve ever been at any video game.  VF3 made another leap in graphics and interactive backdrops and was probably my favorite of the series, and though I was great at it too, I never dominated to quite the extent I did on part 2.  There have been several more sequels in this series, but I have failed to follow them.
  6. Half-Life / Counter-Strike
    OK, I’m cheating by putting Half-Life and Counter-Strike together here, but they’re closely related.  I first discovered Half-Life in my interning days around 1999 I think.  Some of the guys I worked with were way into it, and they got me hooked too.  We’d play competitively long nights in the lab there.  I learned to camp.  I learned about snarks.  We downloaded skins like Party Bear, which you had to wear as punishment for various things.  We made custom tags to spray all over the maps.  We spliced Tommy Boy quotes (“Bees!  Bees!  Bees in the car!  Bees everywhere!  God, they’re huge and they’re sting crazy!  They’re ripping my flesh off!  Run away, your firearms are useless against them!”) into the game to play whenever you got hit with the hivehand.  We replaced the remote bomb skin with the health pack skin.  (“Hey, how come I can’t pick up this health pack!?”  BOOM!).  Yeah, it was a fun little cult we had going for a while there.  Later, Counter-Strike came along which I played more from home.  Jared got in on it, too.  We had a lame little clan.  I never was great, but I was decent.  My best score ever was 64 and 11, just before we went to Ireland.  Yes, I wrote it down and have been waiting for an excuse to document it somewhere so I don’t have to keep track of it anymore.  Yes, I was a secret nerd.
  7. Hitman
    The Hitman series… what can I say.  Sneak around, trying to off people in exotic ways and places?  Like consulting, but with a silenced pistol.  Me gusta.  I can’t pick just one.  I love them all.
  8. Soulcalibur
    Soulcalibur was another 3-D fighting game series, like Virtua Fighter but with swords.  The first two or three of them I played with Jared, Dad, and a few other friends, and I think that next to Kage on Virtua Fighter, my Cervantes on Soulcaliburs I, II, and III is my most formidable showing on a game, competitively speaking.  I could whup some monkey ass with those two swords.  This fact made its way into inside jokes like “going Sosa-vantes” when swinging my Wiffle ball bats around, or “going Lipton-vantes” when threatening to teabag someone.  And my Astaroth wasn’t bad either.  The games were not as sophisticated as Virtua Fighter, but they were definitely epic.
  9. Gladius
    Another fine showing by LucasArts, Gladius was an amazing and tragically overlooked gladiator-themed tactical RPG.  It being from LucasArts, every little detail was attended to.  The artwork, the characters, the gameplay… nothing lacked depth.  It almost touched the level of Monkey Island in terms of immersion, and that’s saying something.  At the very least, it remains the best gladiator game ever produced, and I don’t dare plug it in anymore lest I lose another several weeks of my life.  It swallowed up my dad for a while too.
  10. Red Dead Revolver
    Now we come full circle.  The last game that got a hold of me was one I ran across by accident.  It wasn’t hyped too much, and it was long after I paid any attention to gaming magazines or websites.  I don’t remember exactly how I heard about Red Dead Revolver, but it might be on my top 5 ever.  Or even top 3.  It’s made by the same guys that brought you Grand Theft Auto (which I’ve never played), but it is instead a spaghetti western.  And boy did they do it right.  The plot and characters, the backgrounds and weapons, all perfect recreations of spaghetti flicks.  The music was breathtaking, culled from real soundtracks (and I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I tracked down every one of those hard-to-find Italian soundtracks and built my spaghetti music collection on it; I am less ashamed to admit it had a hand in me trying to start a spaghetti wester band a few years ago).  Even the screen flickers and blurs like an old film.  It feels like you’re in a movie!  I regret that I don’t have the time to jump into the new sequel and all of its expansion packs.  If it were 10 years ago, I’d be all over it.

After looking at everything I just wrote… holy shit, I played a lot of video games in my life.  And these are just the ones I played often!  God knows how many more there’d be if I were just trying to name everything I could remember.  What possessed me to even write all this out?  Pointless reminiscing about silly things.  It’s a sickness, what can I tell you?  Perhaps I should have spent this time playing Hitman instead of blogging…

Listening to: Del Shannon – “Greatest Hits

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Enter The Rumble Strippers

7 February 2011

Did you see that Gibson is finally releasing a Marc Bolan Les Paul?  At first I thought, “great, something else I gotta buy.”  But after seeing its $5,000+ price tag… uh… no thanks.  But hell, even for my somewhat unusual tastes in guitarists, this means my top three favorite players all have signature models.  Reverend Horton Heat has had his G6120RHH signature Gretsch for a few years now, and Johnny Marr has a signature Fender Jaguar in the works (which I actually will buy).  Does this mean I’m like… mainstream?

Back to the lecture at hand.  So my rockabilly band finally has a name and is ready to launch.  We are “The Rumble Strippers,” and you can find us here and eventually here.  All girls ‘cept me.  We’ve got a jazzy singer, a bull fiddlist, and a spunky drummer.  I’m playing guitar and writing (in theory).  It’s wide open though.  Maybe someday I’ll sing a little.  As we get rolling, we’re still working out a logo and all the housekeeping type stuff.  We’ve got a couple originals, but until we’ve built that up a bit, it’s mostly covers.  Old Elvis.  I’ve snuck some Link Wray in there.  The goal is definitely not to be a cover band though.  I’m looking forward to a new band experience.  There will be no standing on the shoulders of The Smiths.  No built-in audience.  It’s gonna be starting from the ground floor again and playing tiny places, opening for other bands on ridiculously large bills, etc.  You know, stuff normal bands are supposed to go through.  I was fortunate enough to skip most of that with TCB’s big success, but now I’m ready to give toiling a try.  We’ve got a couple of shows on the books including our quiet debut at Grant & Green in North Beach next Wednesday (2/16).

I’m happy with my new guitar tone.  I’m happy to have the chance to redefine my role in a band.  To make it what I want.  I’m happy to have a chance to stretch myself and be creative and spend more time developing a different style of playing.  No set expectations, but no limits either.  It can be as amazing or as crappy as I choose.  It’s all about how much time and effort I want to dedicate to it.  Something new.  And like I said, I’m all too happy to just be a tiny little bar band for now.  Test the waters quietly with no pressure to hit a homerun every time.  And depending how it pans out… maybe go balls out with it later.  We shall see.

“To define is to limit.”

— Oscar Wilde

Listening to: Reverend Horton Heat – “Space Heater

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Your band sucks.

1 February 2011

Wouldn’t that be great on a t-shirt?  I’d wear that to shows all the time. 

It’s been an interesting few weeks, and I am overdue for some quiet time.  TCB played a sold out show at The Blank and then turned around to play to 350+ at Rickshaw.  There were a ton of friends at both, to the point where at Rickshaw it almost seemed like I knew everyone in the room.  Good times.  A new Smiths night also started up in the Haight called “The Queen Is Dead,” and it seems to be taking the place of the former “Louder Than Bombs” club night.  I went to this last one, and it was tremendous.  You’ll be hearing more about it soon.  Viva Haight!

Somewhere in all that mess, I snuck away for a short L.A. vacation to see Wanda Jackson and Jack White play the El Rey.  It’s a tiny place (explaining why tickets were so hard to come by).  Once we staked out a killer spot, we didn’t move around until it was time to leave.  We stood next to a nice couple of locals who took brought their teens to the show.  Total rock and roll parents.  We chatted with them for a bit until the show started.  Wanda sounded great, the band was top notch, and Jack was appropriately featured without taking anything away from Wanda.  The two of them had a fun chemistry on stage that seemed genuine.  And as expected, the high profile show in such a small venue attracted some celebs.  In the crowd, we saw Patricia Heaton and Alan Tudyk, and it sounds like Nick recognized Beck, Josh Homme, Clem Burke, Pamela Des Barres, and James Intveld.  Looks like someone posted a few songs from that show:

Other highlights of the trip included my first visit to Medieval Times, which was a total hoot and highly recommended if you’ve never been.  Basically, it’s a decent prix fixe menu that you eat while jammed together in a small indoor stadium.  You wear a paper crown and root for one of the pretend knights that battle it out in the arena.  Obviously a kids / family vacation type attraction, but whatevs.  At some point, I got in some Claim Jumper too.  A waitress there came by our table to compliment our “look” and ask us about rockabilly.  Turns out she was from Chicago and also happened to be black, so I took the opportunity to in turn ask about the fashion I noticed on a lot of young black girls in Chicago (see  #4 here).  She confirmed that it’s generally referred to as the “Motown” look, and it’s quite popular there.  I wish that would catch on around here!

Incidentally, I’m typing this on my new computer, which I spent the better part of this last weekend getting up and running.  See, I’d been hobbling along on the same machine that crashed on me not once, but twice for the last seven or so years.  Just the same, the idea of moving to a new one… learning a new operating system, reinstalling all my old software (if it even still works), moving over all my stuff, getting everything reconfigured and set up just so… well, it’s a headache I was all too happy to postpone.  But rather than wait for a third crash, I figured I’d take the bull by the horns and at least do it on my own terms.  After hours of frustration and exploration, the pain is mostly behind me, and I can rest easy, secure in the knowledge that this screaming fast new PC should last me another several years.  Despite the once-a-decade hassle of reconfiguring and relearning where everything is in a new OS, I gotta admit that Windows 7 has some pretty slick UI features.  (Any idea what to do with my old machine running XP?)  And then I also finished a brand new pedal board for my new rockabilly band.  Which involved drilling actual metal!  And like, wiring stuff.  ‘Cos that’s what men do (I’m told).  We’ve got a couple of gigs in the next month or so, and I promise to share the info on us as soon as we officially “launch.”

So yeah, that was supposed to be my relaxing weekend to recuperate.  I’ll be trying again this weekend.

Oh, and by the way, your scene sucks.

Listening to: Eddie Cochran – “The Eddie Cochran Story

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Meleagrine Woes

12 January 2011

New Year’s was quiet, but nice.  I hadn’t been to Monterey in a long time, and I forgot all the great little shops and touristy things to do there.  We found a great Italian place, ducked into a few storefronts, and bought some candy.  Then I got to see my folks New Year’s Day.  In fact the only downside at all was the wild turkey prints I found on my car.  Sometime during the night, a wild turkey(s) managed to climb or fly up onto my trunk and leave a few prints and talon scratches in the paint (where it apparently slid off the edge).  Thanks a bunch, Mother Nature. 

If you’ll indulge me getting a little philosophical on you for a paragraph, I had a strange period of wonderment when I was driving out for that short New Year’s vacation the other night.  (If you want to know why I never got into drugs, read on.  Evidently I am stoney enough while sober.)  Maybe I was subconsciously in a reflective year-end mood, but as soon as I hit the freeway, I was struck by the crispness of my vision.  The sparkling clear details of the other cars and lights all around me.  I mean I really noticed a difference, almost as if I truly were under the influence of something.  (This part could all just be due to that brand new windshield.)  But then an opera singer was discussing on the radio about how all human voice comes from these most fragile of tiny membranes in our throats.  And she sang and I thought of how the sound of opera evokes — at least to my tiny, uncultured brain — images of great white halls and gold and sunlight.  All the decadent splendor you see in Greek and Roman period pieces.  (Corny, I know, but it is what it is.)  And then I arrived at my rural destination and saw how bright the stars shone out there.  How much more I could see in the sky when I got away from the city for a bit.  You’ve all been camping, you know what I mean.  All this was swimming around in my head.  The gifts of sight, sound, and speech.  The blessing that is being a sensitive creature capable of experiencing all of these wonderful things.  And I thought of how easily we could lose any or all of it through accident or illness or age.  All of our senses and abilities, and our life itself, we are so fortunate to have them.  More fleeting than any of us fully realize until it’s too late.

And we are indeed fragile.  I am officially getting wrinkles.  Well, the beginning of some creases on my face.  Another casualty in my life-long war on lotion.  Sure, I wash my hands more than Lady Macbeth, and with the brutally cold weather we’ve been having lately, I would expect (and mourn) my hands to age more rapidly.  But my precious face?  I guess my good looks are fixin’ to get even more rugged, if you can believe it.  For better or worse.

And speaking of aging, I ran across this video the other day.  Rosie Hamlin of Rosie & The Originals in 2002.  “Angel Baby” was a beautiful enough song as it is, but something about seeing an aged and matronly Rosie singing it as sweetly as ever… it lends a whole new dimension and gravity that make it so much better, but somehow somber too.  It moves me in a way that I can’t quite articulate.

NOTE: When I came across this in 2023, the original video I’d embedded here had been deleted off of YouTube. I *think* it was the same as this one on Daily Motion.

Looking forward to a new Smiths night in the Haight, TCB shows at the Blank and Popscene, and Wanda Jackson / Jack White… all within the next couple weeks!  And further out are Social Distortion in February and OMD in March.  Good times ahead…  And the crushing quote of the week was yelled out by a friend between songs at a Swamp Angel show we went to.  (Swamp Angel is a new suspiciously Deadbolt-like band from an ex-Deadbolt member.)

Second-scariest band in the world!”

Listening to: Various Artists – “Las Vegas Grind, Part 2

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2010, Come And Gone

27 December 2010

Before I get started, a quick note… when all was said and done, I made out surprisingly well on my 2010 Christmas wish list!  I scored a Dirt Devil, a Mouse Rug, and a calendar… as well as an amazing Marr/Rourke autographed Shoplifters 12″!  One of the best holidays I can remember from a loot perspective.

I know I say it every year around this time, but this seriously must have been the fastest year of my life.  It seems like just yesterday I was down on vacation in L.A. and playing a TCB show in Seattle for New Year’s.  And here I am again, closing in on another New Year holiday.  Last year, I know I had meant to do a “2009 in review” type blog, but guess I didn’t get around to it.  It’s too bad, because there was a killer link to share which of course I never got to: the now-slightly-less-relevant decade (2000-2009) in review from SFGate.  Still a great read down memory lane (when you’re done reading this of course).  Anyhow, I’m not going to do a full “2010 in review” as I have sometimes been known to do in the past.  But I will sum up some of the things I learned over the last year or so, mostly about myself:

  1. I spend too much of my life (time, effort, money) trying to be clever.
  2. I need to give up Clint Eastwood as a de facto male role model.  That quixotic idea of a quiet, mysterious, stranger… it only works in spaghetti westerns and romance novels.  Which is to say that it looks good on paper, but in practice it just makes you seem antisocial.  I need to be more outgoing, because there’s no glory in keeping to yourself all the time.
  3. There are a lot of immature people out there.  Both women and men.  It’s not worth wasting your time, though that isn’t always immediately apparent.  But in the end, they don’t have their shit together, and they can’t be reasoned with.  In that regard, I feel like I know very few actual “adults.”
  4. However, even the people you love are not perfect.  If you expect perfection or even absolute consistency from your closest friends and family, they are bound to disappoint you.  And if you expect or demand absolute consistency from yourself… well it can cause a host of mental issues that I can personally attest to.  So maybe the best you can do is strive to be as consistent as possible, allowing that you are human and can have conflicting emotions… and will not always act consistently… and will not always do exactly the right thing… and will not always be totally impartial and fair or even kind.  Despite your best efforts to be consistent, you will not always succeed, no matter what kind of priority you place on it (see #8 below).  But you can try your best and hope you get the same integrity from the people you let get close to you.  Without exception, people have character flaws and shortcomings.  People get confused and clouded by their emotions.  People have moments of weakness.  People make mistakes.  Even your favorite people.  And yes, even you.  It doesn’t make them evil.  It just makes them human.  (That’s not a free pass for anyone to do anything without consequences.  Which is hard for me to reconcile, because it complicates the process of distinguishing friend from foe.  So how do you judge?  Just by intentions?  I don’t know yet.)
  5. Life is hard.  Every time I think I’ve got a handle on it, something new comes up and turns it all on its head.  And each life problem, health problem, relationship problem that I thought I’d never have to deal with (because I was too smart, too careful, too lucky, etc.) finds a way to impact me after all.  God knows what else is in store for me over the coming decades.
  6. Speaking of the coming decades, here’s something to think about that is so commonly heard that you (like me) probably just ignore it.  But take a moment to really ponder this: how many things have you put off assuming you have time?  Any one of us could die today, tomorrow, next week… and you can bet the last thought in your head is going to be all the things you now regret never doing while you had the chance.  Realistically, it’s hard to throw caution to the wind and lead every day like it’s your last.  But think about what you did yesterday.  Now think about how differently you would have spent yesterday if you knew you would die today.  Surely you can incorporate some of that into how you spend today.  I don’t know about you, but it makes me want to stop being so damn scared to put myself out there creatively, to travel, to try new things, to love without reservation.  What the fuck am I protecting myself from?  I’m very fortunate… I could have been born to the Vietnam era and never made it anywhere near age 30.  I feel I have a responsibility to make use of the time I have here.  A safe life could be a life unlived.  I mean given the choice, do I want to be buried with 1) lots of joys and sorrows or 2) little of either?
  7. I don’t do well with serious illness and mortality.  I always feel this tremendous weight of being expected to have some reaction that I almost never have.  It makes me feel like a sociopath.  Detached from humanity a little bit.  At first, I didn’t wouldn’t even discuss this with my own family because I was afraid even they wouldn’t understand.  It’s not that I don’t feel it.  But when things like that get to be too much, like a circuit breaker, I shut it off completely.  And then I process it slowly over time.  It’s just my way.
  8. If there is any value in the Enneagram system, I am unquestionably a “Type One” (possibly with a “Type Nine” wing).  I hesitate to put all my eggs in that basket, and I know it’s not the be all / end all.  But if I’m being honest, I was sincerely moved by how true most of the Type One stuff rang for me.  Here’s hoping it helps me to understand myself a little more…

2010 was an amazing time to be alive, don’t doubt it for a second.  To explain… I’ll pick a random year of our lives.  Say 1994.  Think about that year.  It’s amazing to have lived it.  You were there for the one and only 1994 there will ever be.  The one history books refer to for this or that event, the one future generations will wonder about, the way you do when I say 1969 or 1776 or 82 B.C.  The year 1994 was every bit as unique and significant.  When I say “1994” what do you think of?  I think of the friends I had then.  The school I was attending.  The house I lived in.  The events, the births, the deaths, the way people dressed, the popular music, and the movies that came out.  The people I lived in the time of.  And think about it: you were there.  The one and only 1994 for all of history.  And you were there for the one and only 2010.  And you’re about to join me in being an equal participant and witness in the first and only 2011.  And that is amazing.

My New Year’s resolution remains — as always — to get an original music project off the ground.  But there’s good news on that front.  The rockabilly band I’ve been woodshedding with finally has a complete lineup, with an inaugural gig as early as February.  Stay tuned for details!  While I don’t have anything I’ve written officially on the docket yet, it’s only a matter of time.  I hope.  The related quote of the week comes from a shocking source.

“You have to dare to suck to be great.”

— Ricky Martin

Listening to: Stevie Wonder – “At The Close Of A Century

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THE LAST WORDS

22 December 2010

In August 2005, I was taking photos around the apartment I was living in.  This was just days before I moved out, following my friend and roommate Jared’s departure.  I just found one I snapped of the magnetic fridge poetry as it was last left by us and the various guests we’d had over that year.  For no good reason I can think of, I decided to transcribe them here.  Enjoy!

  1. WHAT HAS HE DONE TO THOSE THINGS
  2. IT ‘S NOT A RACE
  3. BE N AIN’T WRONG
  4. BACK FOR YOU
  5. I HAVE HAPPINESS DESPITE THE LACK OF ANYONE ELSE
  6. GUYS ARE 100% MEAN
  7. THINK YOU’RE NICE AND YOU ARE LAST
  8. OVERTIP SOMEBODY LONELY
  9. WHY ALL THE SHORT DOGS
  10. HIS BIG FINISH IN YOUR BUTTER
  11. RATE OF MY LIFE
  12. CAN OURS BE USED TO WIN ?
  13. THE 30TH WOMAN IS RARELY PLEASED
  14. YOU HAVE QUESTIONS?
    SHE HAS ANSWERS
    BUT THEY ARE ALWAYS ALWAYS WRONG
    SERIOUSLY
    ALWAYS
  15. YOU’RE A GREAT PESSIMIST
  16. NEVER BACK DOWN
  17. 99% HUMOR FREE PANTS
  18. YOU ARE GOING TO GET IT ANY WAY
  19. YOU’LL SENSE WHO COST THE MOST
  20. WE ARE ALL SO DOWN WITH SUNSHINE
  21. THE LAST WORDS
  22. DO WHOEVER EVER
  23. PUT YOUR THINGS IN THEIRS
  24. THE MORE YOU KNIFE PEOPLE, THE FUNNIER IT GET S
  25. BUT YOU’RE ALREADY PERFECT
  26. YOU HAVEN’T WRITTEN TOO MUCH
  27. EMBARRASSING PICK-UP LINES ABOUT EASIEST CHICKEN FAILURE
  28. WASN’T IT A DAY FOR FALLING
  29. FORGIVE PEOPLE THEIR GRAMMAR !
  30. KEEP YOUR EASY FRIENDS
    INTELLIGENCE IS NOT IMPORTANT
    HIT THAT
  31. FEBRUARY IS EXTREMELY DARK
  32. DON’T OVERSHADOW YOUR CYNIC
  33. SHOULDN’T YOUR SUSPENDERS HAVE FLOWERS
  34. BEST BUCKS ASKING AWARD
  35. IN THE SENSE
  36. EVERYTHING DOESN’T HAVE HUMOR LIKE GIRLFRIENDS
  37. TALKING SAID SPEECHES HEARD
  38. YOU SEXY THING
  39. DOESN’T HAVE GYROS
  40. PRODUCER SAID ONLY IF HERS BE TO FINER
  41. MAY ALL AND TO CROSS ED COLLAR DULL
  42. THE ROAD IS ALSO CLOUDING
  43. CHORES _____ EVERY DAY
    P.S. GOOD SONGS
  44. LAUGHS MAY SEE QUIRKS OF YOURSELF
  45. SOMEONE THAT YOU MIGHT THINK TO SHARE MANY . . .
  46. FAN OF THE EIGHTIES

I can’t say for sure, but if I recall, I think in general most of the dirty ones were mine, the gloomy ones were Jared’s, and the incoherent ones were from our guests… because neither of us would have stood for that.   And hopefully it goes without saying, but I wouldn’t read too much into any of this.  Let’s remember we were idly moving magnets around on the fridge, not confessing anything about our respective essences.  Though it may still be fair to say that it was a different world back when we roamed the earth.

Listening to: Orange Juice – “Coals To Newcastle

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Merry Christmas, asshole.

20 December 2010

It’s been a rough few weeks for my beloved car.  More on that in a moment.

I wanted to mention briefly that I’ve started a project I’ve been dreading for a while now.  I have begun converting all of my 250+ MySpace blogs to this site.  I’m doing everything I can to preserve the historical accuracy of each, including the comments and timestamps.  The only thing I’ll consciously be changing is updating the links that pointed to other blog postings so that it’s all on here.  Each conversion takes about 10 minutes.  Even at one or two a day — which is a big assumption I will be motivated to keep up that pace — it’ll take me the better part of a year to get them all done.  I’ve added a new category called “MySpace Archive” if you want to see what I’ve gotten to so far.  I’m going chronologically starting from the beginning.  And for those of you who subscribe to my blog here (which I encourage you to do!), I won’t be hitting you with any email notifications for the converted blogs, so don’t worry about an additional 250+ emails.

I’m trying to get in the holiday spirit.  You all know my feeling on exchanging gifts, but I did put together another Xmas CD.  You know, making mix CDs has been a hobby of mine for ages.  But with the move to digital media (iPods, etc.) there’s been an unanticipated casualty.  CD jewel cases are becoming harder and harder to find.  You can still get plain black of course, and white and clear ones at a few places.  But there was a time when you could order tons of colors, and even this slick glossy black of which I only have a few left.  Nowadays it’s all slimline (which don’t allow me to design sleeves) and digipak (which I don’t have the tools to create at home and isn’t realistic for the one-off projects I do).  I am better than average at sourcing hard-to-find things on the net, and I’m telling you this stuff just isn’t out there anymore, anywhere.  I’ve asked the internet specialists, and they’ve told me that the market for the classic jewel case is dying.  They’re dinosaurs.  I can get by with plain black and white, but I don’t like it.  I need a new strategy for future CDs.  Is it time to give up the hard copy for good and just start giving out digital copies with a .jpg attached?  Lame!  Ideas anyone?

Otherwise, the holiday season so far has had its high points.  Some good times with family and friends.  The Yard Dogs Road Show was amazing as usual.  We’ve got tickets to see Wanda Jackson and Jack White together in L.A. next month, which is going to be memorable I’m sure.  And some good TCB shows are in the works.  But yeah it’s also been fraught with all kinds of trouble, not least from my car.  Allow me to explain…

Part I: The Tale Of The Golden Fuel Pump

About a month ago, after leaving my car unattended for a couple of stormy nights on a hilltop, I found it wouldn’t start.  It cranked but wouldn’t turn over.  For some reason, I thought of the electrical storm we’d been having, and I wondered if that didn’t have something to do with it.  Friends and the tow truck driver agreed it sounded like a fuel pump problem, but what could we do?  I had it towed ~100 miles back to the S.F. area to the only place I knew I could drop it at 1am: the dealership.  Now I know what you’re thinking… of course they’re gonna rip me off.  They’re famous for it.  But in the years I’d been dealing with these guys, I feel that by and large they’ve been pretty good to me.  Well, this time they weren’t.  They charged me $1100 to replace the fuel pump, a job that most other places later quoted me $600-$700 for.  And it doesn’t end there.  A few weeks later, I was reading through my car’s manual investigating another warning light (which I’ll get into next), and what did I see?  A section that explains something to the effect of “if there has been an electrical disturbance, the vehicle’s fuel pump breaker switch — located just under the hood — may activate as a safety precaution.  Check to ensure there are no fuel leaks, and then flip the breaker switch back and the vehicle should start.”  Which is all to say that it’s possible, maybe even probable, that all I needed to do was flip a fucking switch under my hood and I would have been on my way.  It’s also possible that my car really did need that $1100 golden fuel pump (which are known to crap out at around my current mileage).  But for the rest of my life, I will always wonder if that dealership totally fucked me and overcharged me to install something they knew I didn’t need in the first place.  And the worst part is I will never, ever know for certain.

Part II: I Can Make The Ass Drop

Cut to a couple weeks later, where I’m investigating the aforementioned warning light.  I’d seen one come on a couple times for the ABS brakes.  Then later a couple times for the air suspension.  Eventually, my rear suspension went out on me on the freeway, and I was barely able to get it home with my tail almost dragging on the ground.  I wasn’t about to take it back to that dealer, but it seems there aren’t many other shops that do air suspensions on Town Cars.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of this years ago, but what’s special about Town Cars?  How about the fact that they’re widely used by fleet services!  Where do those guys go?  Well, I lucked out and found a place that specializes in Town Cars.  And this place, you cannot imagine, it was a parking lot full of smashed up limos and cabs.  A giant warehouse with 20+ Town Cars being worked on by as many mechanics.  A whole body shop in the corner.  Tires, electric, and they even custom convert/build stretches.  I mean full service exclusively for Town Cars.  The waiting room was full of what were clearly limo drivers which tells me this place must be fair, honest, and reasonable… because these drivers wouldn’t keep bringing their business vehicles back here if it didn’t make financial sense.  And unlike the dealership that fucked me, these guys see dozens of Town Cars all day, every day.  Their expertise is beyond dispute.  If there is a problem a Town Car is capable of having, these guys have seen it before.  I will be going there exclusively from now on.  How many other car models have whole warehouses dedicated to just them?  One of the unexpected benefits of driving a limo for your personal car (along with being flagged down and offered money for rides at 2am every night — honestly).  They were super quick (45 minutes!) and super cheap.

Now the here’s the rub: in what was surely a freak occurrence, someone forgot to latch my hood.  I got less than a mile down the freeway before the hood flew up, cracking the windshield and bending over the roof.  The hood itself was totalled and bent upwards so it wouldn’t close.  The roof was dented and the sunroof broken.  Luckily, I was in the slow lane for once and was able to quickly get off the road before anyone was hurt.  I meant to take a picture to post here, but I was in shock at first.  To their credit, the shop immediately sent out a tow, gave me a loaner car for the week, and fixed everything up, good as new (as far as I can tell), free of charge.  They even detailed it.  Every little dent and nick in the paint from years of use.  They even replaced a tire that was somehow damaged and ready to blow out.  When I picked it up, it looked nicer than when I bought it!  Scary story yes, but relatively happy ending, all things considered.  I have no doubt it was a freak accident (how could they stay in business otherwise?), and I will continue to bring my car to these guys… they seem to be honest and fair.

So with any luck, my car trouble is done for now.  These Lincoln problems are Cadillac worries, you know.  I know these stories make it sound like a hoopty, but those of you who’ve seen it know that it’s anything but.  It’s been a great car to me, and I don’t want this spate of malfunctions to sully that otherwise sterling reputation.  That last tow truck driver told me — without knowing my car’s recent history — that the fuel pump and suspension are the most common problems for aging Town Cars of similar mileage, but that with some TLC they will last a very long time.  Just look at how long limos and cabs are on the road.  We’re talking upwards of 400,000 miles and more.  I would love that, because I’m in love with this car.  I may have to cover that affair in a future post.

The quote of the week comes from last weekend’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell me!” on NPR.  They were discussing that the long-abandoned Chernobyl disaster site is being opened as a tourist attraction.

Kyrie O’Connor:  Well, actually, it’s supposed to be… I mean, it’s like totally overrun with wildlife because there’s, like, been nobody there.
Peter Sagal:  Right. I mean, if anything bites you, chances are you’ll gain the strength and powers of that animal though.

Listening to: Boston – “Greatest Hits

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