I found an Ipod the other day.  Remarkably, my evidently keen eye spotted one lying in the shoveled-away snow outside a friend's folks' cabin in Big Bear, CA.  It didn't function, and so it was given a few days to warm up and dry out before the attempt was made to charge it.  It was charged.  It powered on.

The story behind this little mp3 player eluded us.  Was it lost that morning?  A week prior?  Was it dropped in the snow where it lay, or was it plowed and shoveled and tossed around for hundreds of meters?  Ah, the possibilities.  The music included on it only indicated the previous owner's tastes, which were for the most part not my own.  The Ipod itself, however, no longer belonged to the previous owner, he/she being its "previous" owner.  Since I found it, and the other people around already had Ipods of their own, the identity of the new owner was not particularly in question.

I downloaded Itunes for the purposes of making use of my new Apple product, and shortly thereafter I discovered in its memory a Playlist which included a name in the title.  So-and-so's Playlist, it said.  So-and-so was a person with a first and last name.

With the question of whether or not I be a good, moral, and ethical person still in the air (the question, not the person), I made use of current social-networking technology to at least search the name, regardless of what I would do with the information.  However, the name yielded absolutely no results in either Facebook or Myspace.  A person, in this day and age, with an Ipod and without a (searchable) profile on either of these sites is someone clearly who does not deserve their mp3 player back.

Google's search functions yielded, not another page to the story, but an entire third Act.  First, a public listing of San Bernardino County taxpayers gave me this person's middle name, and confirmed him as a resident of Big Bear City.  Since the surname is slightly unusual, and the total Google results was in single digits, I figured I found my guy.  Second, a site with a public record of a sheriff's log came up.  Twice.  So-and-so ... a 25-year-old white male from Big Bear City, CA ... has been arrested twice in the last couple years.  One time he was subsequently booked for possession of a controlled substance.  The second time, the booking charges were for a failure to appear in court, and for driving while under the influence.

Granted, the site clearly states that it is not at liberty to divulge whether parties were found innocent or guilty, or released from custody for whichever reasons.  However, given such insubstantial, circumstantial, or whateverstantial evidence as my rudimentary detective skills have implicated toward the 6'2" 200lb gentlemen, well  ... whatever this person chooses as his best choices in life, can I please have the power to decide that he clearly does not deserve his 2 gig Ipod Nano back?

Turns out I don't have to!  Free internet searches have turned up no actual contact information, or routes thereto.  Whew!  I can enjoy my new Ipod guilt-free!

I penned a new song recently.  No, it isn't about anyone in particular.  I harnessed feelings from long ago and twisted them up with some clever lines I thought up.  And, well, here it is.

Bandit

I still don't believe in beginnings.
There's always more or less to add, how you want to frame the painting.
I'll start sketching until the blank space is fulfilling.
The more blanks I draw, the more context left remaining.
     Is it the details or the detours worth the debt explaining?
I'd keep it simple, stupid, and sparse, sentimental;
Perhaps a foreclosed compliment preceded by a hidden kiss.
It sounds so sweet that way, but taste is much more bitter.
Should I now run and hide, or chase and swing, or hit and miss?
     We're sad and fractured. Why is satisfaction worth all this?

You stole my heart when you knew I couldn't hand it.
I'd kiss you goodbye, but you'd make out like this bandit.
Your sleight-of-upper-hand, I'm at a loss that you'd demand it.
We're better off disbanded.

So you want to hate me and move on
As if I'm another diversion in your own self-righteous story.
So go on, tune me out, crank up your Ani,
Be pissed out of principle, then put on your Tori–
     As if somebody else's lyrics make the better allegory.
I'm nowhere in the wrong here, but I may stand upon the ledge,
And you're right there with me, trembling, looking downward from above.
I won't say that we're blind, claiming each other has fallen,
But you turn the other cheek, with a deaf ear, and then try to shove.
     Now I can write this song without invoking this word: Love.

You stole my heart when you knew I couldn't hand it.
I'd kiss you goodbye, but you'd make out like this bandit.
You claimed the ground under my fall, and yet I tried to stand it.
I'm upside down, in the red, but we're disbanded.

©2008 Brian Michael Weidemann

This isn't our best performance, or even a performance that had any degree of prior warm-up, but it's somewhat better than 43.5% of the videos you'll come across on YouTube by clicking randomly through the site.

Audrey's on vocals, my Les Paul is on guitar, and I'm sitting behind it moving my hands across the front, Audrey's mom tosses up some harmonies in the refrain, my dad owns and is operating the device which recorded the footage.



Look folks, a key change!

There was a time in my life when I was destined to be a video game nut. But, so far as destiny is not deterministically certain, my fate changed, through really no will of my own.

[The second paragraph usually serves to introduce the real direction of this blog. I could go several different ways, as I’m wont to be verbose in weird, philosophical ways, but my main point for discussion will be clearer soon. (Don’t worry. I’m not in the mood for pedantically impenetrable discourse. I’m just ranting about how the world sucks.)]

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I was a total nerd when it came to games. Back then, the PC was where it was at. The dawn of RPGs and the flourishing of Sierra "3D Adventure Games" were the sustenance off of which I lived. 16-color graphics and text parsers ... hells yeah, baby! Prior, I grew up on an Atari 2600, and I learned to program on an Atari 800. I never owned an NES, but I played enough of them. Sega Genesis rocked! Then I went to college, got interested in other things, met girls, and then the video game console world took off. Without me. My time available to invest into PC-based entertainment wained. I fell off the bandwagon. 16-bit, I hardly knew you.

It’s more than a decade later, and several "generations" of home video game consoles have come and gone. The "two-to-the-power-of-n"-bit advancements became impressive. Many series’ worth of top-notch titles have come along and produced sequels in the upper digits, all without my knowledge or consent. I was lost. And somewhere in there the industry forgot that video games were supposed to be sold in cartridge form.

It seems that Nintendo is still putting out games starring Mario! And that Legend of Zelda guy became popular too, I think. In the last couple of years, the company behind Windows developed and sold a console with "first-person-shooters" that apparently tell more of a story than Wolvenstein 3D did, which I frankly find improbable. But the graphics got better, which was inevitable. Sony is making money doing the same thing. And their console ITSELF has sequels! I’m SO out of it.

So, in the last couple weeks, I’ve found myself reading through gaming magazines at work--issues left around by my co-workers, adult-aged man-children who probably camped out for something called Halo’s Gears of Duty (... hey, guys, if you’re reading this, I’m joking!) Through my ability to familiarize myself with the games and consoles out now, I garnered a casual interest in the Nintendo Wii, and made note of several titles worth owning for it. After reading about the Virtual Console download possibilities, I was SOLD! I developed a strategy, double checked my finances, and made a plan. It was a lovely plan, the fulfillment of which would see me and my girlfriend, and all our friends, enjoying drinking nights with multiplayer, 480p family fun.

The Nintendo Wii came out a year-and-a-half ago. It was a big holiday item, and the games Nintendo puts out for it have great reviews, and I want them. Some of the heavily anticipated titles have been out now for months. I came on board at just the right time!

Little did I know ... In an off-season month such as March, what, something like 17 months after the console was first made available, ... it ... is ... NOT ... in ... stock ... ... anywhere! Am I nuts?

The Circuit City guy told me he can’t divulge the date of their next shipment; apparently people still break out into fights over it. The Best Buy guy told me they MAY get about 50 of them in tomorrow, but they’ll be gone in two hours. The Game Stop guy laughed at me when I asked if they had any in stock, but then told me that their deliveries are sporatic, and that I’ll just have to keep checking. (Which tells me that he had no right to laugh at me just because I was "checking".) The guy at Target was the most understanding, friendly, and honest. However, it doesn’t mean I’m more likely to purchase a Wii from them, since that seems to be as possible as building a PC that can run a game called Crysis at its full settings.

(I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but the gaming magazines seem to think it’s a hilarious joke ... yeah, the joke’s on all of us oblivious fucks who thought buying a game console would be as simple as going into a store, asking a few questions, and shelling out a few hundred bucks.)

Here are the observations, ultimately, that boggle my cognitive ability. In an off season, Nintendo is failing to meet demand ... either intentionally or not intentionally. The "hype" season is over. Either they’re making more money by NOT selling their product, or they’re running their business thinking that I’m more likely to buy one because it’s harder to find. I’m not. If, say, two or three more visits to a Best Buy store sees me empty handed, then fuck gaming! Fuck the Wii, fuck Xbox, fuck Playstation. Supply doesn’t meet demand, so price should go up to counter. But it doesn’t. If I’m willing to pay a little more just to have a Wii, which I am, then why the fuck aren’t they available at a higher price?

When I was in high school, there wasn’t an "AP" Econ, so my lackluster education prevents me from seeing the dynamic in this multivariable supply-demand curve.

My $250 plus $50 (Super Mario Galaxy) plus $50 (Super Smash Bros. Brawl) plus $50 (Super Paper Mario) plus $50 (Mario Kart Wii) plus $40 (Geometry Wars: Galaxies) plus $50 (Blastworks) plus $50 (LEGO Indiana Jones) plus $20 (classic controller) plus $unknown future Nintendo profits ... well, that’s all mine to invest now into different portfolios of my personal entertainment allotment.

Nintendo’s Wii has been marketed in such a way to bring the "casual gamer" into its fray? Really? They fucking alienated me because they couldn’t get their shit together in a year and a half. It can’t be intentional; they’re not making more money from me, or garnering more interest, by tellling me I’m going to have to stalk the Best Buy delivery guy and punch out a 12-year-old redhead with a quicker grasp and pimplier chin. Nope. "Casual" gamers can’t be expected to do that.

Audrey has a GameCube and we got Lego Star Wars II for it. That’s enough video gaming for me, for now.

What is this thing?  The glory days of blogging were cut shorter than they appeared, in the way that you never really know what you’ve lost until it’s gone.  Only in retrospect can you stick a pin in it, in the point that was the end of an era.

But there are still some angels sleepin’ on the couch, not paying rent.  Vagrants, the lot of them ... but their fleeting residence, such as it is, on the head of that pin, ... (I thought there was somewhere clever to go with that; never mind me.)  In short, the glory days aren’t over until I say they are.  And there’s still some life left in me.  Here’s a blog.

Guinness is the greatest invention the Irish people ever contributed to the world.  In a way, that can be read as insulting to the Irish people, but it’s a compliment.  Guinness is the greatest invention Mankind has ever contributed to the world, and since the Irish are the ones responsible, I think that gives them the great honor of being among the greatest people to have existed.

Guinness has its own holy day.  The renowned St. Patrick McFlanO’Henryhan was born and became a prophet at the gates of St. James, the patron saint of Dublin.  There he slept and dreamt of midgets in green top hats.  When God zapped him awake with a rainbow, he saw a pot of gold coins, used them to build a brewery, which was to be called Where Guinness Is Made.  This brewery produced the black mead in abundance, and all who tasted of its frothy head did stop and ponder the meaning of existence, of God’s gift to humanity.  Three hundred years later, the day of Guinness is still celebrated.  March 17.  [This history lesson is not entirely true.]

Since Guinness has its own holiday, it should be the one and only true beer to be consumed in its honor.

But heathens, uninformed peons, forsake the Day of Guinness.  Instead of enjoying a well-poured Guinness from a pint glass, the way it was ordained by You Know Who, these dumb blasphemers make a mockery of the occasion by indulging themselves and their misguided notion that adding food coloring to pitchers of Budweiser et al., Coors et al., Miller et al., etc is the proper way to celebrate.

Even though, technically, EVERY day is Guinness Day, the one day in the year that the world joins hands and lifts a pint in an internationally simultaneous reverie should be celebrated properly.

Fizzy, green beer is for wussies!

All I hear about anymore is Facebook, Facebook, Facebook.

I've had a profile account there for a while now--over a year, in fact.  January 1, 2007 ... I was there.  I often point out that I was an early subscriber to Myspace (I think I'm about done patronizing the 'Space with its logogram.  I'm not giving Itunes or Ipods the satisfaction anymore.  Proper nouns should be be capitalized as the convention dictates.  Enough is enough.  And trust me, I'm having serious debates over "WorldBri" at the moment because of it.  But I've digressed.), way back before it was popular enough to be heard in casual conversation at 50% of the neighboring tables at any given restaurant.  I was by no means an early Facebook subscriber, but I was "active" before it reached its current, thriving status.

Facebook became the elitist's Myspace.  The 'Space for a new generation of sophisticated geeks, all uppity and open-sourced, and ready to accept the snobs too afraid of being guilty-by-association with the pre-teens and the alleged pedophiles who love them, both groups of whom are the seeming target demographic here.  (Which, so far as I've ever encountered, may as well be as fabricated a story as [insert religious or political joke here].)  Lately I've been eavesdropping tidbits from strangers about Facebook, remarkably NOT in tandem with comparison or contrast to Myspace.  Well, good, it's got its own thing going.  Super.

So I keep trying.  Like any other human, I have that degree of social necessity that urges me to "do what the cool kids are doing".  There's plenty in this world that others are doing that I, level-headed and bold, respectfully decline to be a part of.  But there are some things I'm indifferent about, and if many people are trying it, then I'm inclined to investigate.  If many people are trying it and proceeding then to recruit more people, with typically evangelical fervor, then I find my curiosity suddenly disappearing.  After all, I'm an arrogant prick who will spite people with my uniqueness, and pride thereof, just because I just don't care enough, one way or the other.  Facebook falls somewhere in the middle.

The trouble is, I spend 90% of my Facebook logged-in time closing up unwanted items in my "News Feed", and then looking at my profile, returning to my home page, clicking on Notifications, being asked for my password again when I try to compete with someone's score on some quiz, ultimately being denied because (as far as I can tell) my cookies (while fully enabled) deny me the ability to get to the quiz, ... and then I'm back to my home page closing "News Feed" items I already closed.  I suppose I just don't "get it" yet.  (And it would help if the site were more Opera friendly.)

With only four friends, my network is sadder than a one-legged dog.

I'm sure it's great.  I'm sure you can waste hours away at that Scrabble clone that the Scrabble people may soon sue them over.  I'm sure there are forums and groups in which you can debate presidential candidate politics.  I'm sure there are databases full of rankings about who knows the most crap about movies.  I'm sure your browser works with the interface a heck of a lot more than mine apparently does.  I'm sure you folks ashamed to be on Myspace anymore can feel a warmer sense of community amongst like-minded 'Space shunners.

"Ooh, look at us, all being social and hip and talking to people our own age without fake people spamming us.  Our lives are truly enriched.  Here, read a news story I just read.  Let's be one.  Let's assimilate everyone ... well, everyone except people under 18.  Wait, make it 21 ... no, 24.  Hey, have you read the latest Wired?"

Okay, I'm probably not being fair.  I just wanted to write a bulletin, a quick one.  But a blog seemed a better idea, as it got longer.  And then it needed to be a certain length to be a Brimaxian blog.  There you go.  But in conclusion, I'll say that Facebook doesn't offer me anything that Myspace doesn't already, and Myspace has the advantage of already having all my on-line friends joined up, linked, and commenting away.

Sometimes moving out of state sounds like a good idea, but once you get your stuff there, you want people to visit.  Even if the cost of living is better suited to your income, the last thing your friends, the ones you left behind, want to hear about is why they should pack up their shit and come visit.  We all do things on our own time, to our own terms, for our own reasons.  I'll visit, now and again, but my Korg and guitars are too big to stuff into my car.

Bottles of Guinness Draught are normal 12 oz. bottles which contain only 11.2 oz. of beer, as the awesomely named "rocket widget" needs to take up a little space so it can do its job of exciting the beer the moment you open it.  While I won't contest the apparent need for Guinness to froth itself in the comfort of its own longneck, I do ask critically: why in the name of St. James's Gate don't they design 12.8 oz. bottles to begin with?

And now for something altogether differing in content.

If I've learned anything over the past eight years regarding my album sales, it's been that shelling out money for a compact disc is too much trouble for some people to muster.  My teacher in this lesson is the sheer popularity of the Itunes business model of charging a buck for a download, thereby destroying the "album" concept.

I read an excellent article by David Byrne in a recent Wired magazine concerning the changing music market, and it touches on the concept of the "album" going away as not-necessarily-a-bad-thing.  He makes the respectable point that music as "product" has had its day, and a more reasonable future sees fans seeking out the experience of live music again, not the recordings thereof.  To paraphrase Ani, as it in my opinion pertains to this: an album is a record, as in the record of an event, that event being people playing music in a room.

Byrne notes that concert tours promoted CD sales, and the tables came to turn, with album releases beginning solely to drive toward hearding butts into seats (or standing-room-only general admission orgies), so that (as I've come to understand) they may subliminally see a name brand and logo, an advertising campaign which permeates so deeply the venue nomenclature bludgeons you over the head with it.

As a singer/songwriter who doesn't tour, I've geared my hobby toward making compact discs which people can give me some cash for the privilege of owning.  As Itunes has made this model obsolete, it seems that isolated downloads of 3-to-4-minute pop nuggets, out of context from any musical foundation, is the way to make money.  Pop nuggets, to be sure, are compressed, algorithm-decayed, aural approximations of what, at the mastering stage, was once a high fidelity experience.

Anyone know why CD standard is 44.1 kHz?  It's enough to capture the range of human hearing without losing any frequencies.  Downplay that into rough sketches, lossy, and muddy, and apparently you can make more money that way.

In an era where low-quality mp3's make money, when expensive, newer phones make it less and less likely to hear a pin drop, and when television is eradicating more writers in order to glorify short-attention-span "popcorn" shows no one wants to have to care about but do anyway and "proudly" admit that they're "guilty pleasures" regardless ... in a time when bad coffee and unhealthy burgers are being sold for more money ... in a time when the Barnes & Noble philosophy section is shrinking ...

I've uploaded crappy versions of my crappy songs, made them available for purchase and download on a crappy individual basis.  Why the freq am I still not making money?  I'm still going about it all wrong.

Maybe I'm trying to fit more into the bottle by increasing the size of the bottle, instead of keeping the same bottle and reducing the amount of stuff it comes with.

My version of the hailed Year In Review blog will now take the form of the following:

Never in a single year's span have I seen so many concerts!  It's funny, though ... after so many General Admission, Standing Room Only shows, we ended our year's run tonight with an actual designated-seat venue.  Unfortunately, you'll be hard-pressed to find many people actually seated at a Van Halen show, respectfully refraining from obscuring your $100 view from a nose-bleed seat.  Instead, we must tire our legs and lower backs as we peer over other people who are forced to do the same thing.

Audrey and I started dating, officially, following the events of the night of January 5th, 2007.  That night we'd gone to see Libbie Schrader at Room 5.  Together, she and I have spent the year, among many other fine things, going to the following concerts.  (I'm regurgitating what you may already have digested by reading my blog a couple months ago, but here is another rundown of the same information.)

• January 5, 2007  Room 5: Libbie Schrader.  Order a Long Island Iced Tea and put your arm around the girl you're with.  Trust me, guys!
• March 17, 2007  The Grove of Anaheim: Ian Hunter.  A dinner show.  All The Young Dudes, indeed!
• May 19, 2007  The Greek: Stevie Nicks headlined, Chris Isaak opened.  Excellent!  I need a mirror suit.
• July 25, 2007  The Pacific Amphitheatre: Guster, with opener Toad The Wet Sprocket!  Includes fair admission, and it's a block from my house!  Good times.  Had a turkey leg and a roasted corn afterward.
• July 28, 2007  The Pantages: Wicked "A new musical".  Is it really new anymore?  Dancing through life ...
• August 1, 2007  The El Rey: The Swell Season (Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova)  Sold out, and for good reason!
• September 14, 2007  The Galaxy Theatre: Colbie Caillat.  A big hit on MySpace, apparently, but the keyboardist(s) had more performance energy.  Ugh.
• September 17, 2007  The Marquee (Tempe, AZ): Guster.  The opener was Tally Hall, and I'm now a fan.  Guster rocked, too!
• September 21, 2007  The Coach House: Eric Johnson.  It rained that night, and it was awesome!  Cliffs of Dover with extended intro.  Hot!
• November 10, 2007  The Wiltern: The Swell Season (Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova)  Because "Once" wasn't enough.  Glen obviously came from a pub gig background, judging from the length and interactivity of his pre-song banter.
• November 17, 2007  Lake Forest residence: Libbie Schrader house concert!  Personally signed copies of the new CD.
• December 15, 2007  The Grove of Anaheim: Tori Amos.  Pretty Good Year and Tear In Your Hand were the surprises!  I may have been the only straight guy there.
• December 18, 2007  Honda Center (formerly Arrowhead Pond): Van Fucking Halen.  They ain't talkin' 'bout love!  It's rock'n'roll!

Can 2008 top this?  It'll be a large effort on the year's part to match it.  Well, it would be if arbitrarily labled geocentric periodicity had the ability to exert effort, which would be a metaphysical feat I'm not philosophically armed to defend at the moment.

My ears are still ringing.  I'm going to bed.

Finally, by popular demand, you can see me playing and singing at the same time.  This will put to rest the rumor that I've been faking and it's really some professional singer, like Justin Timberlackey or someone, who's singing on my recordings and some professional guitar player, like Yngwie Mammogramstein, doing the guitar work.

There are a couple more to come, if you can stand them.

"All That's Left To Do" Brian M. Weidemann

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"Voice" Brian M. Weidemann

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Just for the sake of full disclosure, if you've commented, this is not the blog you commented on. I simultaneouly posted this here as well as in my The Band page blog, which is the one that "Add Comment" link links to. I know I'm evil. To avoid this causing problems, why don't you subscribe to my The Band blog already?

Atypical for a product of my usual late-night inspiration, this blog will not be based on any theme.  But, as usual, I will start it out with no particular direction in mind.  Here's, in other words, just a random blathering so that you, my reader(s), may know what's going on with me, to me, about me, for me, and in other ways regarding me.

Right now I'm tired.  I'm attempting to be constructive and compose some music.  I'm so out of practice, however, that I really need a warm-up session in order to get a running start at the composition hurdles.  I always remember that I always end up reminding myself that my musical instruments are tools, not toys.  Rarely can I sit down and just have fun with them, out of the blue, after days of them having sat idle.  I need to be with them a lot, and remember my musical training, roots, and inspirations, and let them solidify and settle into the recess(es) of my consciousness so that the fun may be had, and the musicality may flow.  If I just sit down at the keys, or pick up a guitar, and start "going at it", then I'm going to be fumbling at riffs and passages I've been sick of hearing myself play for 15 years.  And that's not fun.  Oh, try something new?  I need to warm up first.

Sometimes, all the instruments and equipment I've invested in, over the years, are useless to me.  They're excellent tools for when I want to work on a project, but their fulfillment when I want to sit and have fun with my yummy toys is sorely lacking.  At 3:00am.  When I can't make noise.  When Audrey is trying to sleep in the other room.  When I'm severely behind in my progress for this supposed ninth album.

I do have a title for my tenth album, though.  But you won't hear about it.  Not for a while.  I'm still working on NINE, damnit!

I've been going to lots of concert shows, and it doesn't look like I'm stopping anytime soon.  Let's see what I've done so far, this year, in no particular order other than when they come to mind ...

There was the Stevie Nicks/Chris Isaak show.  Then Ian Hunter.  Wicked, at the Pantages, may or may not count.  Then Glen & Mar (The Swell Season) was very sweet, and seeing them again in November when they come around again will be super-mega-sweet.  Guster was also lucky enough to have us in the audience twice!  The first time Toad The Wet Sprocket opened for them.  The next time, in Arizona, we saw them play after a band called Tally Hall (and our reaction to them was the same as that to Guster, the first time we saw them, when they opened for Barenaked Ladies).  We saw Colbie Caillet (and were subsequently disappointed).  I fucking got to see fucking Eric fucking Johnson the other night and it was the most awesome fucking awesomeness ever!  Audrey and I have seen Libbie Schrader a couple times, at the Roxy and at Room 5.  As for the upcoming months, December will deposit us in the crowds for the local Tori Amos show, as well as the fucking Van Halen show!  How cool are we?

Okay, I'm going to pick up my EJ Strat again and see if its beautiful tones can warm me up.  That shouldn't be hard.  It's a hot fucking guitar!

Audrey and I just took our vacation time together.  We drove out of state to visit a friend and see a concert with him.  Saturday through Tuesday, we accumulated an appreciable number of memories, and the complete collection of them turned out to be a fine vacation's worth of fun.

Here is a list.  This list contains words, phrases, and other sentence fragments which represent a distinctly memorable piece of the conglomeration of experiences gained thereon.  Some may be inside jokes, some may be perfectly normal yet out-of-context pieces of dialog, some of them are just descriptions of a time and place.  Every one of them, however, will bring a smile (or, in some cases, a wince) to the people involved.  This blog is for everyone who wasn't involved, which is a lot of people, and it is so they may appreciate the list for its randomness, and pretty much nothing else.  Here goes.  Here is a verbal slideshow of our vacation, in no particular order.

• Impressive yet disturbing mouthful maneuvers at Waffle House
• Outdated Trivial Pursuit at eJoy; and I actually knew that Nixon/Kissinger question?
• You sunk my every-ship-except-my-nonexistent-Battleship!
• Quartzsite "massage wand"
• Drunk/high twunt getting cleavage signed by opening act's merchandise guy, shortly after getting shoved for being the twunt she is, faux-lezzing out and taking pictures of her twunty self to feed her twunty ego, the ugly twunt
• Guster, Either Way but no Barrel of a Gun, ... dance moves?
• Four Peaks Kiltlifter at every bar, especially Four Peaks!
• Incessantly pissing and apparently obnoxiously insecure dogs, some of whom roll in their own shit
• Scared, hiding kitties we still haven't met and never will
• Lightning storm & boiling rain
• Boobytown
• Poor, little fat man, sold his dream; pathetic, little loser.
• Funking Silt
• Playing with my Johnson, soothing the savage beast
• Drawing a Mel Blanc
• Freebird!
• Kitties on car roofs
• Suicide chicken wings
• Y'all Bitch Tits
• Hot sauce by the pint, only $1.99, not including $100 import tax
• Left from the leftmost lane, my ass!
• She's so hot she's making me sexist.  Bitch.
• Freeway closure, complete with cops explicitly directing traffic that's contrary to clearly visible Detour signs
• Ceiling fan chain human cat-toy
• Spicy Thai, all to ourselves
• Whisker pimple
• The cunning thermostat hidden in plain sight
• Hair Nation
• A cappella Brian Wilson with a flawless, percussive left turn
• The hotel's two minutes away, and we've been gone an hour-and-a-half.
• Capo 5, must be Demons
• Metaphysics at the Rush
• Did smoker-bitch really think she'd get away with it?
• Hair gel veto

I did say it was random.  But I'm sure everyone has had roadtrips like this, eh?  If not, get in your car and drive!  Just don't run out of gasoline.  Not that we did, because we didn't, but still it's good advice.

09-12-2007 About two hours ago, I got a call from my dad, who has never called me at 1:00 in the morning.

My brother was pried out of a car wreck earlier, on the evening of 09-11, and the four broken bones in his body are currently being operated on, in what I'm told will be seven (7) hours of surgery.  He was in good spirits, my dad says, being his goofy and joking self.  He's just broken.

There's nothing I can do except try to get some sleep and answer my phone in the morning.

09-13-2007  My whole family and I were at the hospital yesterday after what turned out to be ten hours of surgery on the right half of Justin's body.  He was the passenger of a vehicle which, however it happened, collided with a semi which totalled the car.  It turned out to be many more than four bones.  His arm and leg have metal plates.  His upper arm and wrist were diced and crushed, respectively.  He was operated on a second time today to relieve what was building up and causing pain in his hand.  He's been conscious and joking and glad that his sacrifice could bring certain family members together and have a chance to repair a lot more severed ties than those in his limbs.  Healing begins.

Let's hope his ability to play guitar hasn't left him in a lurch, like the driver of the car did before he was arrested.

There's a scene in the motion picture Wayne's World that has been quoted and otherwise referred to many times since the film's release in 1992, fifteen years ago. For the sake of perspective, however, all scenes from that movie have been quoted or otherwise referred to, and by the same people. Wayne is established early on as having a crush on a '64 Fender Stratocaster in classic white (with triple single-coil pick-ups and a whammy bar, as the babe seems to think is necessary to point out--look, triple single-coils is quite standard on the Fender Strat ... not much of a feature, eh!)



"One day it will be his. Oh yes, it will be his."

A couple years back the Eric Johnson Artist Series Fender Stratocaster was introduced into the Fender line-up. It was based on a '57 and has lots of features that will make very little difference in the telling of the story to you uninitiated guitar peons. And, needless to say, it has triple single-coil pick-ups and a whammy bar. However, we musicians call it the tremolo.



One day it would be mine. Oh yes, it would be mine.

The guitar debuted at a snuggly $1609.99 at most retailers. (The standard Fender American Stratocaster went for $929.99 at the time.) Because of the Custom Shop quality of this fine guitar, the sophisicated features and detail that went into this model, it became popular. I watched its price quickly ascend to $1630, to $1750, where it stands today. Several Guitar Center location sales people have told me they personally have seen these flying off the shelves. Except for the fact that carved blocks of alder do not have an air-speed velocity, nor does Guitar Center display instruments on shelf units, I believed them.

Black, candy apple red, 2-tone sunburst ... or white blonde.

Labor Day 2007:
Audrey and I take a drive in an air-conditioned vehicle away from the coast, since everybody and their maternal relatives with them are headed toward the beaches. We set out for some Guitar Center about an hour away, just to go to one neither of us had been to. It turns out that Guitar Center has an annual Labor Day "one day only" sale. Anyone who's heard GC commercials on the radio (for the sales, sales, sales) knows the joke here. However, upon arrival at Covina Guitar Center, we learn there's a list.

This list includes information, a piece of which is the Eric Johnson Strat (case included) with its one-day-only sale price of $1399.99 Unfortunately, they only have one, and it's the sunburst, ... with grimy strings, dust from sitting out on the floor, likely having been handled and fingered and unprovable-deities-know-what-else done to it. I play it for a bit and the salesperson comes to ask what I think. My underwhelmed reaction about its griminess spurns him to throw me a pitch. After wasting too much breath trying to convince me that I wanted a guitar I didn't want, he realizes the lack of fruit and is gone from my sight. Which is good because he was ugly.

He didn't deserve my commission, I think to myself, and soon convey to Audrey. I've been researching this guitar, reading reviews, being patient for two years. If and when I got this beautiful hunk of wood (I sure rotated THAT phrase!) it would not be because of a dude telling me he'd never buy a guitar from a box, that all guitars are different, and that you fall in love with a guitar by playing it ... apparently in a loud showroom with out-of-tune renditions of Green Day, AC/DC, and The Strokes all woven into a mind-numbing cacophony. That's how you start a fling with your next 6-string mistress?

Audrey and I leave. We drive back home, but somewhere along the way it seems to occur to us that there's no reason not to stop by some of the other GCs on the way.



In Brea, they have two sunburst EJ Strats and a red. The staff there had the sense, at least, to have hung them up on the top row of the wall, where 14-year-olds can't cop a feel up their necks without asking for help first. But I wanted the white blonde one anyway!

The story leads us to and wraps up in Fountain Valley, where our local Guitar Center is nestled. I bought my $2000 Gibson Les Paul Standard there. I've been in their glass-case specialty room there. And they had, up until that hour, two white blonde EJ Strats there. The guy opens the case and I play one. Pristine, new, barely touched, new strings ... and just after I fall in love (with Audrey standing there, no less) the guy says they have one still in the box in the back. He lets me play it in the soundproof room by myself. He knows things about the model I didn't. He said I was a man of taste when he found out it was the EJ I was interested in. This man (who, it turns out, is the same dude to have sold me the aforementioned Les Paul, and out of a box from the back, I might add) deserves my commission.

This guitar has a maple neck, not a rosewood. It's a 2007, based on a '57, not a vintage '64. It's white blonde, not classic white. Other than that, it resembles (superficially, sparing you seemingly irrelevant details) the axe that Wayne was denied Stairway on.

Ch-ching! I paid $1399.99 and one thing is for sure: I'm not raising the bridge and filing the nut to take the buzz out the low-E. For starters, well-setup guitars (like this one, of friggin' course) do not have buzzing strings. Eighteen months of No Interest ... I'm paying less than $85 a month for 7 pounds of wooden power and sex appeal and musical goodness, designed by one of my favorite guitar players.

And in a couple weeks, I get to see Eric at one of my favorite venues, as he's playing the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. I'm so happy. Oh, and I have an awesome girlfriend who just wants to hear me play this thing.

Party on!

But nobody can touch it but me!  No.  Hands off!

Or AT&T, for most of its life ...

(briefly "cingular" for you young hipsters, currently "at&t" [miniscule alphabet] for you formerly young hipsters still trying to maintain a semblance of hipsteriosity)

... is just another company purporting to provide a service.

For the last week I've been trying to call the number the website lists for "Downgrade Service", and I get the following message dictated to me: "Thank you for calling. The toll-free number you are trying to reach is currently being checked for trouble. Please try your call again later."

I've been getting that message for the last ten call attempts, over the course of five days. It says worlds about their competence as a telephone company. I wonder if their telegraph services are up to spec for today's demands.

I decided not to be so specific, and just call the regular customer line. I'm prompted to speak phrases to the recording, rather than punch numbers, and the system managed to send me, in a few short questions, exactly to whom I wanted to go. She gave me basically what I wanted, and the call was finished with something having been accomplished.

Let's see if, when the bill comes, what I remember having done was what was fed into AT&T's computers.

At this time I would like, sarcastically, to thank my former roommate Kevin, for having inspired the uncalled for cynicism I've oozed all over my keyboard.  I'm a happy person these days.  But I guess you can never get rid, entirely, of ever having been a sarcastic prick.  That lives with you, down in the metaphorical soul, for the rest of your days.

How do I describe the experience I had tonight?  I don't expect you to tell me.  I'm asking myself, anyway.

Long story short: a movie was recommended to Audrey and I (see previous blog), and the movie was about a guy and a girl who did music.  To promote this film, guy and girl went touring.  I had soundtrack, and they came to Los Angeles, and Audrey and I got tickets.  A few days ago, they did Falling Slowly on Leno ...



Tonight they did the El Rey.  I'm not sure if I'll ever go to the El Rey again.

The place looked all ritzy and fancy, but that didn't matter.  It was a warehouse.  It was a warehouse which stored hundreds of loud, hot, smelly Angelinos; and packed them in for good measure.

The tickets said the show was 8:00pm.  We arrived and got in the Will Call line at 7:55pm.  By 8:30pm, we finally got the tickets and were inside.  The opening act started at 9:05pm.  The main act, the guy and girl, were on roughly 10:10pm.  The two hours between 8:10 and 10:10 were filled with us experiencing a venue with standing room only; a venue with insufficient air-conditioning (given the number of people, which I'm sure they've sold out shows before).  The entire opening act was lovely, if we could hear the folk guy and his classical guitar over the roar of disinterested people around us, blabbering like they were in line at the Wilshire Blvd. Starbucks and still not choosing which half-caf-latte flavor to try.

Oh, and whomever the El Rey hired to do the lighting needs to go back to interning at some TPS reports office, getting his boss a half-caf-latte, if he could even remember which flavor he was told.  House lights more often clicked on and off, without a fader, while the stage lights were so inconsistent, Glen Hansard (the guy of the guy and girl) turned twice to his right wondering why the spotlight kept getting brighter.  The color schemes changed mid-song only, never smoothly, never between songs.

Now, the music: Glen and Mar played (most of the) songs from the Once soundtrack, and more.  It was beautiful, I cried, I held Audrey, she felt nauseated (not in that order, and it was from the heat, the crowd, and the epilectic lighting dude, not me!)  Glen played Say It To Me Now and broke his guitar cable in the process (it was the only song he did standing up, and he got into it, as he was expected to), covering nicely, and finishing the song unplugged ... and it was awesome.  (Some people thought it was "funny", and those people will live unfulfilling lives selling Happy Meals and falling down elevator shafts like they deserve.)  Hearing his voice and the guitar THEMSELVES, sans amplification, was so beautiful, so special, so unlike what concert goers know how to appreciate.

Marketa's beautiful voice sang a Glen song, and that knocked us all on our knees.  They'd opened with When Your Mind's Made Up, my favorite (and not entirely because it's in 5/4).  They excluded The Hill for some strange, unknown, and simply unjustified reason ... but what are you going to do?

Damien Rice fans were pleased when he came up from the audience and did a tune.  I'd have preferred he didn't exist so we could have gotten out of there five minutes earlier, having been standing for over four hours.

The show ended around midnight.  Glen was truly impressed with the success of this movie in this country, and by the turnout to the show, and especially because of the reaction this loud, smelly group had to him and his crazy Irish accent-laden stories and banter.  Many thank-yous.

And many back to them!

The El Rey can go fetch me a half-caf-latte for all I care.  Shit-flavored ... might as well be, since that's where I'll next tell them to shove the cup, lid, and straw.  Up their own asses.

Audrey and I are sitting out on attending any L.A. concerts for a while.  After Wicked last Saturday at the Pantages and Swell Season tonight at the El Rey, we've got our summer nights out on the town out of the way.