playlist #1

i wasn't expecting to, but i did my first show last night. got so nervous when i had to talk on the air even though no one's listening hardly. a few glitches and technical difficulties but i had a lot of fun.

here's the setlist, what i can remember.

vincent price - the leg of gold
the gits - cut my skin it makes me human
love battery - mr. soul
dengue fever - tip my canoe
madlib - slim's return
naked raygun - treason
throwing muses - limbo
dead meadow - at her open door
deerhoof - sirius star (request)
lyrics born - changed my mind (stereo mcs remix)
chargers street gang - every light on euclid
heatmiser - dead air
swervedriver - duel
john frusciante - ramparts/invisible movement
gutter twins - god's children/the stations
fugazi - break
the bellrays - some confusion city / black is the color
sebadoh - too pure
burning airlines - 3 sisters
the amps - she's a girl
afghan whigs - come see about me
madlib - movie theme, etc.

why i could never run for office.

dear john mccain,
while your whole getting rid of nukes eventually plan sounds nice, i really don't see how working with russia and china to reduce nuclear weapons is any different than the much mocked negotiating with iran. i could be wrong here, but it doesn't seem like they're very trustworthy friends.

if we're going to talk about oppression and human rights violations, i'm pretty sure that there's not too much of a difference, except that one of these countries is religiously motivated and the others aren't. are you going to talk to north korea about this too?

just sayin'

chill out

when i came back to the house last night, everything felt like steam, the air was so warm and humid. i opened up all the windows in the front room and could hear all the noise from the street. motorcycles and muscle cars, people talking and stereos blaring. so much chaos and random noise.

i realized how quiet my neighborhood is, because i haven't heard these sounds this way since i lived in off-campus housing. i used to sit on my porch and listen to jazz records really loud, the improvisation reconciling all other sounds around me.

last night, the sounds that saved my life was this album


the perfect sounds and soundtrack to fall asleep to.

weekend cleveland vacation

some people i know went to either coast this weekend, but given the gas prices and the lack of other motivation, i stayed in cleveland this weekend, but, as usual, had adventures anyway.

jody and ernie and i went on a late saturday night adventure involving numerous cups of green tea at various locations, my first experience at steve's lunch (a 24-hour hot dog place with incredibly cheap food and fantastic people-watching) and then a late night cleveland drive.


having gotten inspired by the architecture and the bridges and the graffiti, we repeated our route sunday afternoon after church with our cameras. there were other people chilling down on train avenue so we didn't hang out there long, but ended up taking some great pictures down at the funwall, where there's new painting so fresh that you can still smell it and the colors are glowing. the pictures are still on my camera but they are amazing.



my old housemate dan came in from pittsburgh and me, him, and alex hung out at edgewater, flying kites and people-watching. there was a guy walking around playing an stratocaster on the beach hooked up to a small amp, and bowler hat segway man made another appearance. this guy is always impeccably dressed like someone out of a bbc drama and rides his segway around the park.

i've been dogsitting the past week and will be doing that this week as well, after the weekend break. as i was walking them on saturday morning, this lady on the porch of one of the houses called me over and was asking me if i lived in the neighborhood and how i felt about it. she's from a suburb to the west where it's pretty nice and she was disturbed mostly by the fences in everyone's front yards because they're "ugly" and "people don't do that where i'm from." that's true, but it's a different place.

i tell her that like anywhere, you just need to be aware of your surroundings and not do anything stupid, and that i know a lot of people down here and spend a lot of time down here, that i don't worry too much. and that it's more likely that your car will get stolen down here more than anything else. she doesn't seem that convinced but i'm sure that if i have kids someday, i'll worry about them too.

i didn't tell her about the day before when i was walking the dogs when i saw what looked like the beginnings of an ugly situation starting to go down in a corner store parking lot... death threats and swearing and people crouched behind cars, hearing the one guy yell "go ahead and shoot me, but you better kill me, because i know where you live and i'll come after you..."

as i turned the corner, i thought i saw another guy pulling a gun out from his back pocket, but i wasn't going to stick around to be sure.

while outside another nation is sleeping in the streets...

a guy comes into my work today and tells me to call the police. i ask him why and he says that there's some homeless guy digging through the trash looking for something to eat. i say something like 'oh ok' and wonder why he even cares. there's no way i'm calling the cops over this. maybe if he was harassing people or whatever, but i'm not going to get in between him and his next meal. this guy almost certainly has it hard enough as it is, and i'm going to add to that? heck no.

there's all these signs downtown that say 'don't give where it can't help,' and i wonder what if there's a chance you can? i don't tend to give out money, but if someone says they need to get something to eat, i see if there's anything i've got on me that can remedy that even in a small way. when i was in dc, the people that asked you for money were so cracked-out that they would say they didn't want your food, they just wanted cash.

but this morning, when i was coming up from the train, a lady missing almost all her teeth asked me for change, which truthfully i didn't have, but i did offer her the banana that was going to be my lunch, and she did take it. i saw her standing on the corner eating it, so she must've needed it. a guy sitting on the steps of a church asked if i had any change so he could get something to eat. once again, i didn't, but i had a couple reese's cups in my bag and i passed them onto him. i was hungry but he was probably hungrier and i was wishing at that moment that i had a bag of chips or some pb&j sandwiches so it'd last him a little longer.

maybe i should just start carrying a stash of those with me.

good rocking last night.

bellrays=amazing.



i don't go to shows much anymore but i'm definitely going to catch them the next time they come through.

an open letter...

dear guy on bicycle at 6:00 in the evening,

i'm sorry that i didn't see you coming until you were right on top of me. i was trying to be sure that i wasn't going to get plowed into by people coming the other way and you came out of nowhere as i was backing out of the driveway.

you were crossing the driveway next door when i was backing out so i'm sorry that i might have killed any of your momentum. but was that any reason to start yelling at me, and when i say i'm sorry, to throw the race card in my face and say that i'm not sorry and shouldn't pretend to be and that i don't care about people like you? because evidently, i run over people riding bicycles for fun because life is just one huge game of grand theft auto?

i don't know what happened to you or what people have done before, and i know that you're probably not going to ever read this, but damn, did you make me feel bad. maybe that's all you wanted, i don't know. but having ended up on peoples' windshield as a bicyclist, i understand any anxiety you might have about stupid people in cars.

and i really am sorry. on several levels now especially.

10 things you hate about me.

i'm tagged by one of my readers and i'll be a good sport and be "it" for once...

1. i have often been told that i look like "that mormon chick from the real world."
2. frozen peas are one of my favorite snacks.
3. i have an irrational phobia of people in animal costumes.
4. the only roller coaster i've ever ridden was the little dipper at memphis kiddie park.
5. dick goddard got mad at me one time.
6. i never played a single video game until my third year of college and then didn't see what the big deal was.
7. the only fast food i'll eat is taco bell.
8. when i was in high school (i was a freshman when columbine happened), one of my teachers labeled me as "one of those quiet kids who might snap"
9. my all-time favorite movie is the bbc miniseries of 'pride and prejudice' that is 5 hours long.
10. even though i've hit my mid-20s, i still find playground equipment, especially swings, to be loads of fun.

spontaneity is the spice of life

you can never tell what's going to happen when you put six people with what are probably wildly divergent styles in a room together with a load of musical instruments, but last night we tried it. we were all on and it sounded incredible. we played for over three hours together, with no breaks and probably would have kept going if we all didn't have jobs to go back to the next day or weren't sore from standing up. as we packed up our instruments at the end of the night we were all asking why we didn't do this earlier.

this all came together within two days 'what are you doing tuesday night? call up so and so and so and so...' half of us have never played together before, the other half of us are somewhat tight because we play together almost every week. but since this isn't sunday morning, everything's turned up a little higher, we're playing a lot louder. showing each other the songs as we go along, stuff michelle's written, stuff we jam out to in the car, stuff we play on sunday morning but everything evolving into a full on jam where the violin soars over everything, the guitars are scorching, the drums and bass hold everything down.

everyone's trading off instruments but i stick with my bass, laying down grooves for everyone else to solo over, building it up, chilling it out, leaning back and closing my eyes and listening to the interplay.

we have occasional and sublime lapses into this when we practice together, but usually we don't have the time or there's other things going on. this night was just pure and unadulterated creating without egos or drama, and i just get such an adrenaline rush.

observations

i'm hopelessly addicted to people watching, which is why i enjoy where i work because i get the chance to do that every day on the way to work and on the job, though the zoo beats that any day.

there are some people you see that just jump out at you for whatever reason. you can't even say why, they just catch your attention and you find that you keep running into them all of the time. you start wondering what their story is, where they've come from, what makes them tick.

there's this guy i see in the rapid station sometimes who has his dreadlocks piled high and wrapped in a green cloth around his head, and i never see him without a pair of what looks like safety glasses or goggles up there too, makes me think of subterranean explorers or some lost wandering soul off of the p-funk mothership.

so he comes into my work the other day and we are communicating via notepad and gestures. i don't know if he's deaf or mute or just doesn't like to talk a whole lot. he's interested in eastern thought and meditation. he has no phone number listed, and the address is the address for the post office so i wonder... where does he live, what does he do, what's the story there? how do people get to be where they are?

i love living in the (almost) city.

i've concluded that house-sitting is like babysitting for responsible and single 20-somethings. i spent last evening walking each of the dogs, making a food run to save-a-lot, and reading on the couch.

i'm still enamored with my new place of residence. my roommates, my downstairs neighbors with their wonderful kids and love of public enemy, being able to walk anywhere. being near the lake.

i know that not everything is rosy, considering that much of the police blotter involved people getting robbed at gunpoint, copper pipe theft, and then some 2 year old throwing toys of the balcony. but that stuff is everywhere, just in different ways.

looking forward to this week, with music to be made with friends (paul, jocelyn, alanna, others) tomorrow night, the bellrays on thursday, and continuing to just let life happen. it's a beautiful thing.

song of the day: the dirtbombs

this hasn't left my cd player all week.

fashion disaster

i'm by no means a fashionable person at all, considering a black hoodie, worn jeans, and converse shoes absolute essentials.

but really now:



i don't even have anything to say.

begin the begin

note on previous post:
it's not like anything specifically happened, this is just something i've been feeling for awhile in general for many reasons.

that being said, it was a good weekend.

this weekend...

hanging out with jerusha for the first time in forever, checking out the art school's bfa show, lots of really cool stuff. falafel sandwiches and great conversation...

walked around lakewood on saturday, finally got a nice digital camera and a 2g memory card. thought my car died on the way to steelyard but it just got stuck in neutral. planning on photographing birdtown, the funwall, and all the old churches with icons and interesting signs and architecture.

val and i went to the indians game, which they won and were good. didn't get our grady sizemore fleece blankets (which is probably why all those young ladies were there...), but got to watch the antics of an ex-cheerleader running up and down the stairs screaming and trying to get people to do the wave "GO TRIBE! GO CAVS! GO CLEVELAND!!!!"

sunday was a series of small miracles, seeing my kids start to care about each other and other people instead of wanting to beat them up. seeing someone who's been truly down and out finally stay sober for twelve hours and get reunited with his family that he hasn't seen in 19 years. the guy finally has a reason to live again, compared to when he wandered in two weeks ago.

God always blows my mind.

intuition

there are some people that i instantly get a gut feeling about, for better or worse. usually that intuition is right, especially when it's a bad gut feeling. like the time a friend of mine from high school brought over a neighbor of his and i just didn't trust this guy, got really bad vibes, to find out later on that he shot someone over a heroin deal gone sour and skipped town.

there are other people i just got good feelings about and they've been dead on. these are the people in my life that i met and just knew that we were on the same wavelength to some extent and they're still in my life now, two, six, eight years later.

but then i can be so wrong.

like you know someone for a long time and think you've got a good idea of who they are, what makes them tick. they open up to you, and you maybe share a little bit of yourself to them, but not everything.

and then you realize that you don't know them at all. that you completely misjudged their motivations and character. you wonder how you could be so stupid, but maybe we all change over time and some of us definitely don't change for the better. there's a lot of people i don't hang out with anymore for this reason.

or there's nothing wrong maybe, but you know that they're not telling you about a huge part of their life because they're afraid to, or they know what you'll say or they just don't want you to know. they don't tell you they're gay even though you and everyone else knows and your myspace page says so. they act like they're so sensitive and caring but all they want is your body, or anyone's body for that matter. they pretend that everything's cool even if they're getting wasted or high or are simply on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

it's not like i can't tell, you know? it's not like i don't know what any of that is or i've never seen it before.

maybe i do have issues with trust. there are very few that i trust completely and even then, i'm not always so sure.

we're all so good at hiding everything about us.

if you don't already have a look...

because val constantly inspires me to greater heights in bloggyness, i have in similar fashion added a playlist of my current faves to the bottom of this thing, that will probably be revised and updated at whim. enjoy. or point and laugh.

berserker...

this weekend...

first free comic book day experience with val midnight at kamm's corners. lapsing into hopeless laughter seeing the cast of star wars mingling with the people in line and digging through the comic book bins. drinking green tea from common grounds on the curb in the parking lot feeling like we were in some kevin smith movie.

actually ended up buying comics too: some hilarious cleveland indians one starring bartolo colon and cc sabathia circa 1999, grunge comics featuring the stone temple pilots circa 1995 (and lots of psychotic letters from kurt cobain fangirls wishing death on courtney), and an old issue of the jaguar because the cover made me laugh.

saturday me and megan went to dike 14 which was where they dumped all the dredge but over the last 20 years it's turned into 88 acres of wildlife preserve where there's all sorts of native plants and animals and they only open it up a few times a year to keep it that way. then we checked out the 2 dollar bookstore on e.71st and euclid and architecture all over the east side and got lunch at #1 pho. i'm so glad that there's still new stuff in cleveland i'm still discovering and other places i have yet to explore.

the kids downstairs came up to hang out and brought their cousin up to meet me. i have the best downstairs neighbors i could ask for, i really do. they ended up playing my guitars and basses (the whammy bar on the jag was a big hit) and lorielle was performing these songs that she was making up as she went along which i wish i had recorded because they were so funny and reminded me of the violent femmes or 90s twee but made by an eight-year-old girl who wants to be beyonce. songs about her mom and her big brother "i always wanted a handsome brother, but LOOK WHAT I GOT!!!" "i want to be ME! on MTV!!! i'll be a STAR! with my GUITAR!"

went with paul and rebecca to watch a friend of his play at the barking spider. the band following afterwards was some country rock kind of thing but while the guitarist seemed to think he was mike ness, the bass player seemed to think he was in a funk-metal band and kept doing this weird head nod thing along with that guitar face that looked so ludicrous we turned it into an inside joke on sunday morning.

somehow developed bronchitis or something because i lost my voice between saturday night and sunday morning and took a sick day for the first time this year. drank tea and sat on the porch reading and wondering why the rest of me feels so good except for that...