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Posted on

not cool eyebrows. not cool.


I should be packing right now. Had plans to be done early. Maybe sit around and write a little before going to bed early. But, the best laid… something… Things went askew when a friend dropped in and found some beers in the fridge (quite against the norm in my fridge, to be honest). He cajoled me into joining him for one, and we sat and gabbed for an hour or so. Not an hour of wasted time, by any means, but an hour I should’ve spent packing, or writing, or putting more CDs on Ebay. Alas, here it is now closing on nine o’clock and I’ve done nothing.

The kitchen is a wreck from dinner, my carry-on is still in the closet, and I’m only up to here on tonight’s blog. I leave for Oregon tomorrow. There for three-ish days for training. Up in the mountains, at some lodge in the snow. I’d be excited if I wasn’t going for a work seminar. Have a lead on some tickets to see the Shins in Portland on Wednesday night – hoping it materializes. I’ve seen them twice before and they always put on a good show. I don’t wanna pay double face-value though… I’m a discerning scalpee like that.

I had Keaton tonight, one of Sharaun’s twice-weekly volleyball games. I don’t mind, I enjoy spending time with her just us. In fact, this weekend, after I get back from up North (I should be packing right now), I’m gonna have her to myself for four whole days. My longest stretch as a single parent yet, as a matter of fact. Sharaun is going down San Diego way to volunteer her time and clean up the burned wreckage from the recent fires. So, while she’s off getting checkmarks by her name in Peter’s log, I’ll be here taking care of Keaton. Oh, I’ve got plans: We’re gonna go to the park (I’m gonna pull her in the wagon); we’re gonna go water the wheat outside (she loves that, I got her a little watering pail so she can help); we’re gonna walk down to the mailbox together (one of her favorite things to do) and I’ll let her turn the key. Yeah, it’s pretty much gonna be bombs.

Hey, eyebrows, what the stank is up with this?

C’mon. Really? You’re gonna do that to me?

Not cool, eyebrows. Not cool.

Goodnight.

Posted on

play-by-play hyperbolized-realism


First off: Yes, the James story was fiction. I couldn’t think of anything to write, so I decided to tell a story. Thanks to those who mentioned enjoying it. Somehow, though, I don’t think storytelling is my thing – so I stick to the regular play-by-play hyperbolized-realism I seem to be better at.

Ready for an abbreviated weekend report? OK:

Friday: Anthony calls me around 10am to say he may have an extra ticket to this big ol’ rock show going down in the city. Asks me, if it becomes available, would I want to go. I say “yup.” Noon, the ticket is mine, and I’m to be at his house by 3pm. We arrive in San Francisco sometime around 6pm and stand in line in the freezing cold with eight-thousand other mods-‘n’-rockers to get in. It was a packed bill at six bands. I was excited to see Modest Mouse and Spoon, but the entire show ending up being quite enjoyable. Anthony and I even braved the very young crowd to crush right up into the guts of the floor by Modest Mouse’s set. Home by 2am.

Saturday: Used the morning to catch up on three days of little sleep, woke up at 10:30am. Took a shower, pulled on some jeans, and made the conscious decision to not don a shirt. I intended to remain shirtless the entire day. Sharaun went on a Christmas shopping odyssey and was gone all day, stopping home only briefly around 5pm to bring in a take-and-bake pizza, cook it, eat a slice and head back out. I spent most of the day playing with Keaton and taking picture of CDs I’m selling on Ebay. Never did put on a shirt, either. Not even when a friend dropped by unannounced later in the evening on the way between two bars. I stood there in the living room and had a half-hour conversation barefoot, barechested, and bedenimed. A great lazy day spent being daddy.

Sunday: Church. Driving there we saw a bum on the offramp holding a ridiculously small scrap of cardboard, on which I assume a standard plea for assistance. You know, something boilerplate bum-verbiage, including go-tos like “God bless,” “Vietnam vet,” “anything helps,” and “hungry.” The little piece of cardboard was so tiny, though, that we had no chance of reading it. I jokingly said, “You need a bigger piece of cardboard, buddy.” Sharaun made some comment about him needing one of those big spinny arrows or placards like the sign-people on the corner use to bring in potential homebuyers or lure people to the Cheesesteak joint. Sounded like a brilliant idea to me. I predict panhandlers will soon turn to this more animated form of begging. After church I repaired some of the faux-stonework that has fallen off the front of our house. The fallen pieces stayed where they fell for years now, and the guys were giving me crap about it the other day. So yeah, Sunday I made fun of bums and did home repair.

For some reason the other day, Sharaun had Keaton’s old bouncer out from storage. She took a picture of Keaton sitting in it, and I thought it would be fun to compare that with a picture of her in it when she really used to use it. So, for a lark, here’s three months and twenty-two months. Pretty sure she’s over the weight limit in that second one…

Moving on…

Back some time ago, I made the decision to digitize (convert to MP3) my entire CD collection. After which I sold off all my then-redundant physical discs for profit. If you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll remember that the plan took a long time, but was ultimately wildly successful. I ended up selling ~600 CDs, making a little money in the process. Not bad. In fact, it financed a bit of my Lasik surgery, so it was well worth it. When I sold my discs, though, I held onto all my prized Beatles bootlegs (as well as some other prized bootlegs from various other artists). I knew that, one day, I’d start selling them off too –but I hung onto them partly because of my strong attachment to them, and also because I figured they could fetch more if sold properly (“marketed” as sufficiently rare, etc. – which they indeed are). Anyway, I wrote this whole mess because I wanted to share some statistics:

Selling non-bootleg CDs, I made a somewhat respectable amount per CD. Bootlegs, however, have proven to be much more lucrative. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been slowly but surely offloading my entire Beatles bootleg collection online. What’s amazing is that, on average, I’ve been making more than ten times what I made selling my “commercial” discs. Not to mention I’ve got another pile of bootlegs from artists who aren’t the Beatles, which I’m hoping will pull just as much dough. As an example of this insanity, while packing up one nine-CD set for sale, I happened upon my original purchase invoice from back in the mid 1990s. Right now, it looks like it’s actually going to make money over that cost, meaning the dang thing actually appreciated while I owned it. Unbelievable.

As you can imagine, I’m working frantically to get all the discs up for sale, as I suspect this is the season where I’ll realize the highest profit on them, capitalizing on Christmas gifts for collectors. It’s bittersweet, selling them off. It feels good to make money, but those things were such a big part of my life at one point. It was such fun acquiring and hearing them for the first time. Scouring obscure record bins for high-priced “imports,” dealing with shady mail-order joints advertised in the back of Goldmine, ordering from “contacts” in Japan and Europe… it was all a big game of cloak-and-dagger where the reward was untold joy at getting to hear Beatles stuff I’d never before heard. It’s sad to see them go, but it’s not that sad… I still have the music, after all.

Anyway, dolla-dolla-billz y’all. Dolla-dolla-billz. Can the RIAA send me to Rikers for this?

Goodnight.

Posted on

the day james died


The day started like any other day, I woke up in my bed at home. A few people had crashed at the house, I’m sure their parents thought mine were home. Instead they were states away visiting family. Being sixteen and excited about the prospect of having a real “my folks are out of town” party, I had declined to join them. Chris’ older brother got us the keg. It was a wild night. Someone brought cocaine.

James was already dead when I walked out of my bedroom. Everyone else was still asleep. Mark was on the couch, Eric was on the chair, Tim and Scott both on the floor, next to James. We’d all tidied the place a bit just before calling it night, as the early light was filling the sky; it was only just hours ago, so things looked pretty unremarkable – only the quarter-full keg in the laundry room to give us away. James was plenty alive then. We all were.

Beer and weed; then the coke. I think it was Mark who brought that, not even he’d tried it before. No one wanted to, of course, but we all did. It was glorious; what God must’ve intended sixteen to feel like. We bounced off walls. We sat around the table in the dark outside, the screened-in porch lit by the moon and the cherries from our cigarettes alone. As the hours passed and the sky began to go from black to grey, we all came down pretty hard. It was the last time we saw James alive.

He didn’t look dead. He looked like Tim and Scott, sleeping on the floor in front of the entertainment center. He looked pretty much like he’d always looked. I walked right past him, right out the front door to get the paper. Mark sat up as I came back in the door. We shared a sly grin; silently acknowledging a shared rough night’s sleep. I threw the paper at Eric, hitting him in the leg. Tim and Scott were up now too. Scott kicked James, and no one was concerned at his lack of reaction

It was probably fifteen minutes later when Mark shouted to the porch that there was something wrong with James. Tim, Scott, Eric and I were on the porch again, having morning cigarettes and trying to shake the cobwebs. I remember the day being warm, even in the mid-morning. Tim and Scott went inside, Eric and I stayed to finish our cigarettes. No sooner had they left than did Scott come rushing back out. “James won’t wake up, man. Something’s really wrong.”

I can remember the immediate crushing fear that dropped down onto me, even before I’d put out the cigarette and followed them back into the house. I think I knew as soon as I heard them. Everyone of us knew what was wrong; none of us knew what to do. Eric and I wanted to call 911. Tim was doing CPR, saying how they just did it at dive practice and he remembered how. Scott was back on the porch with a new cigarette. We all watched Tim, hoping James would wake up. He stopped, and it was silent.

When we piled into the car, we put James in the middle seat between Eric and Tim. Scott stayed at the house to wait, Mark rode shotgun. I remember what was on the radio, and still can’t listen to it. Tim went into the emergency room while we all waited in the car, parked in the drive-up loop. He came back with two guys and a nurse following. No one said a word to any of us; they just took James and left. Parking, we went inside.

I thought we were all going to jail. James was dead. We’d done drugs; we’d been drunk; James was gone. No one spoke at all. We sat in the waiting room and looked at our feet.

Ten minutes later, a nurse came out and told Eric we’d brought our friend just in time; that we’d done the right thing and he was going to be OK.

And that’s how James came back from the dead. Not a single one of us was asked to fill out any paperwork. No one ever asked our names. We simply gave the desk attendant James’ full name and phone number, and were told we could go. No one wanted to know what happened; they never even asked.

His parents never knew who brought him. He never told.

Posted on

George Foreman is a dirty liar


Well, we made it to December, blog-readin’ friends. If you’ve been around a while, I’m glad to have had you with me for another year. If you’re a newbie, hopefully you like what you’ve seen and might decide to hang out in ’08. I promise I’ll do better, OK? OK.

Sunday night and I just finished doing dishes. Let me tell you, George Foreman is a dirty liar. Every time I see that Sharaun’s hauled down that Foreman Grill to cook a chicken breast, my head sags. Just the thought of having to clean that thing out: the awkwardness of getting it positioned just right so I can direct the flow of water onto it while keeping the critical not-waterproof parts clear of moisture; the cumbersome need-three-hands job of holding the thing in place, open, and scrubbing it; and the detailed labor of cleansing every last toasted bit of chicken chicken from the ruts in the uneven grooved surface. I can’t believe they were allowed to market this thing with a phrase like “Cleanup is a snap!” Maybe a snapped-neck from the yoga-like positions you have to contort into in order to get the thing clean. Maybe that.

OK, moving on. Hope everyone had a good weekend. Here’s some stuff that made mine nice.

Keaton woke up around 7:30am this morning, hollering “Get out!, get out!” It was my morning to go get her up and changed, and after I did I brought her back into our room where Sharaun was still in bed. And, as is good to do on cold Sunday mornings before church, we all three climbed into bed together and snuggled under the covers for a while before getting up and getting going. While there, I asked Keaton if she had a good night’s sleep. “Did you have any good dreams?,” I asked. “Yes,” she replied. “Oh,” Sharaun said, “What did you dream about?” “God,” she replied, and then, “Frog… hiding.” “God and a hiding frog?,” we asked. “Garbamane,” she answered (her pronunciation of “garbage man”). The way I figure it, she had an awesome science-fiction like dream where God, hiding himself in the body of a frog, was trying to escape an evil garbage man. Sounds like a pretty cool dream.

Saturday and Sunday both, Sharaun and I spent time each day while Keaton napped assembling and decorating our Christmas tree. We haven’t even put up the tree the past two years, as we usually head to Florida around mid-December and it just didn’t seem worth it only to have to come home and take it all down again. But, since our annual Christmas-in-Florida trip doesn’t start until later in the month this year, Sharaun suggested we setup the tree. I was reluctant, as I still hate the thought of having to come home and take it all down after I’ve already “done” Christmas, but I agreed. In the end, I’m glad I relented. I forgot how much I enjoy putting up and decorating the tree. Putting the iPod on a Christmas shuffle, drinking some hot chocolate, and bickering over whether or not I’d hung two Santas to close to each other or gotten the “peaks” of two strands of garland “too aligned.”

Anyway, here’s some photos of the process we thought you might enjoy (sorry for all the grain… high-ISO, low-light, and I did my best to de-noise and re-gamma them… I’m just no photographer):

Anyway, it was a nice “family” weekend, and now, with the lights out late at night, the glow all those little multicolored lights on the tree help to remind me of how much I love this time of year.

That’s all folks. I love you all, but I’m outta here. Goodnight.

Posted on

fleeting youth


Happy Friday folks. Seemed like a fast week, didn’t it? I spent my fettered time at work, working; and my unfettered time at home, having a lot of fun playing with my new iPod. Been enjoying loading loading it up with stuff I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) afford the disk-space for on my old model. So far, I’ve been working on adding a hand-picked selection of top-shelf bootlegs. Things like Dyan’s Guitars Kissing the the Contemporary Fix, Harrison’s Beware of ABKCO, and Hendrix’s Raw Winter. I’m already sitting at about ~10GB above my old ‘Pod’s capacity…

Know how I know I’m old? Check this out.

The other day, on the way to work in the morning, I stopped off at Chevron station nearby my house to gas up. I tend to stop at this particular Chevron often, as it’s close to the house and lies on my home-to-work route. While standing outside in the grey morning cold pumping petrol into the Ford, I noticed a station worker scurrying around the pump area in a hunter-orange vest with reflective green accents thrown on over his sweatshirt. He was busy picking up trash, emptying bins, and just doing a general “checkup” of the pump station area. I took notice, in part, because I realized that it wasn’t the first time I’d seen an attendant doing such a thing at that station. In fact, as I began to think on it a little more, and take a closer look around the station grounds, I began to notice that this particular Chevron station was actually quite nice: the pumps are never broken, it’s always clean and functional, the ads and posters and flats pitching carwashes and Techron and Chevron credit cards are new, clean, and relevant, etc. I started thinking about how, as gas stations go, this one was actually pretty nice.

Now, this is the part where I realize I’m old.

When I got to work around 8am, my pleasant Chevron experience was still fresh in my brain. Without really thinking, I found myself directing Firefox to the Chevron page, and looking up the e-mail address for customer feedback. And, again, before I could really stop myself, I had written a three-sentence piece of unsolicited, positive, encouraging, feedback to Chevron. Apparently, as old-age silently took over my brain and directed me in these abhorrent actions, I had also taken the time to look up the four-digit “store number” of the location I’d earlier fueled at, and called it out by name in my missive. After I “woke up” from my geriatric haze, I’d realized what I’d done and immediately logged onto MySpace, sent some text messages, and played “the choking game.” It was close, but I was just able to reclaim the coolness of my youth.

What the heck is happening to me? Writing letters to companies? That’s something my dad would do. Next I’ll be calling senators and decrying the rampant depravity of today’s youth. I am so old.

Oh, and before I go, I’d like to clear out another half-written blog by sloppily pasting in this e-mail exchange I had the other day with Ben. I thought it was funny, maybe you will too.

_____________________________________________
From: Dave
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 8:29 AM
To: Ben
Subject: I can’t believe it

So, yesterday I re-copied all the tracks off my old iPod onto my PC (mostly, to have a permanent backup). Then, I restored my new Classic to factory state, and dragged all the backed-up music onto it via iTunes. Four hours later, all the music was on my iPod. Happy, I unplugged the iPod and went to browse through Coverflow, only to be greeted with the “Choose Language” menu. OK, English.

What?! No music?!

Sure enough. There was nothing on the dang thing. I had to restore it again and re-re-copy it all over. Why do I love this flaky POS? Just because it looks sexy? Am I hypnotized into brand loyalty by those shadowy commercials?

_____________________________________________
From: Ben
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 8:39 AM
To: Dave
Subject: RE: I can’t believe it

Exactly my thoughts Dave. I had the same feeling of discontent when I purchased this, but at the same time I too am mesmerized by the slick interface. Honestly though? I have a lot invested in my iPod infrastructure. Considering both of our vehicles (Suzy’s and mine) are wired specifically for it. I’ve got cables that I’ve purchased specifically for it. We even have one of those speaker things that has a dock right on it – would be useless on another player. My iPod momentum is like an unstoppable freight train – and switching now would just be too painful. Besides, there aren’t any other players on the market with 160GB’s of space. So for now, I guess I will continue to be a loyal customer. But if this thing ever breaks, you better believe I’m going to weigh my options and start looking seriously at that Zune, or whatever else is hot at the time….

_____________________________________________
From: Dave
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 8:43 AM
To: Ben
Subject: RE: I can’t believe it

Yeah, I’m with ya. It’s in my car too, and my home stereo, and I still flat-out love the thing. Even with its DRM and “you can’t have your own music back off me” attitude, I still can’t quite hate it.

But seriously, iTunes was adding songs for four hours. I have to conclude that it was just effing with me. Four hours later and not a single file on the device. What a waste of my time. Mostly, I blame iTunes… the ‘Pod wouldn’t “eat” those songs… iTunes either never put them on, or simultaneously added and then corrupted them as it went. Stupid iTunes.

_____________________________________________
From: Ben
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 8:39 AM
To: Dave
Subject: RE: I can’t believe it

Dude… four hours is nothing. It took a full 8+ hours to transfer my tunes across my wireless network from my linux box to my laptop (which has iTunes installed) and subsequently to my iPod. I’m glad that worked the first time. And I was actually surprised that iTunes allowed me to use a networked drive.

That dang iPod. Hard to hate it.

Goodnight.

Posted on

besides, rainbows are cheery


Sometimes I feel like the last guy on earth who doesn’t have a plasma/LCD flatscreen HDTV. Heck, even my parents recently upgraded to a 40-some-odd inch LCD HDTV, and they have an HD-PVR.

Not us. We still have the ~$200 25” “tube” we bought at Sam’s Club some seven years ago.

It still works fine. Even if Sharaun did push the power button right through the plastic housing to somewhere in the guts of the beast, where it’s been lost now for more than three years. So what if you have to use the remote to turn it off and on? And… the picture is still plenty nice, at least as non-HD goes… I mean, who cares if you have to sometimes fiddle with the analog RCA jacks in the back to get those wiggly lines off the screen? That’s just a minor inconvenience, right?

What’s more, I can even see the thing pretty darn well from all the way across the room. Sure, maybe not well enough to read the phone numbers on commercials… but who wants to read phone numbers on commercials anyway? And, I’ve totally gotten used to the little blooms of rainbow colors that my unshielded totally-not-surround-sound speakers induce onto the screen as their magnets pull a few of the bulky CRT’s weaker electrons astray. Besides, rainbows are cheery. They make people smile.

Who am I that I’m too good to use a remote, walk closer to read the fine print on that refinancing offer, demand unadulterated color reproduction, or get on my knees every once in a while and tug some wires? Seriously. When did I become royalty?

I mean, why would I even upgrade? HD is cool and all, the way you can see so much more of a football game, or how the rainforest comes alive on the Discovery Channel. But, I’ve seen HD… I know that only about a third of all programming even fits correctly on the dang screen. If you’re gonna charge me $2000 for a rectangular flatscreen TV, at least refund me the $400 for the 20% of the picture on either edge of the screen that’s blank all the time. Oh sure, “It looks fine if you stretch it.” But then all the people look short and fat, or I lose another 20% of the actual picture to cropping. I mean, sheesh! What’s the attraction?

C’mon, it’s a premature technology anyway. The Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005 doesn’t even mandate 100% digital broadcasting until 2009. What, I’m supposed to look at peanut butter and jelly programming on filet mignon TV for two more years?

Am I seriously supposed to believe that a new 56” LCD would make my Land of the Lost DVDs look that much better? Can HDTV truly improve the clarity of Andy Griffith? I think not! Is HDTV gonna do my laundry or wash my car? No and no, I’d wager.

I might start a club: The Guys Who Don’t Care About Your Flatscreeen TV club. All that’s required to join TGWDCAYFTV is that you’re still watchin’ Three’s Company and 227 on a regular old projection fatty and aren’t ashamed to shout it from the mountaintops. It’s even OK if you go over to your HDTV-havin’ buddy’s place to watch college ball or NASCAR, we’ll let that slide. Not to mention that your membership won’t be revoked if you tend to linger around “those” aisles at Best Buy or Circuit City.. That’s really not that different from turning your head to follow bikinis on South Beach while your wife sunbathes next to you, anyway.

What’s the big deal about flatscreen HDTV anyway?!

Man. I want one so bad.

Posted on

today was a bad day


Today was a bad day.

Work made me mad in the morning, Sharaun made me mad at lunch, and work continued to make me mad after lunch. The sun broke through on two occasions: First, the hour I had with Keaton while Sharaun was at the gym. She sat on my lap for nearly the whole time and we played. She was super huggy and talkative. Second, being able to do some brief listening to the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band multitracks on my new iPod. I wrote about them before, over here, but getting some time to actually hear them closely makes them seem so much more awesome. They are indeed amazing. I’d recommend you check them out, if you can manage to locate them, that is…

Anyway, it was a long, stressful, and frustrating day. But, I eventually made up with work… choosing to be the bigger man and continue to accept my paycheck in return for the occasional abuse. Incidentally, I also made up with Sharaun… apologizing for yelling at her and stomping around the house in a fit. So, all’s well that ends well, I suppose.

But… this does not end well. Not by a long shot. Later on, at night, I decided to try out a program I’ve heard other audiophiles praise. It’s called MediaMonkey and it’s one-stop music management application, and can even sync with iPods and other portable devices. On a whim, I decided to install it. Unknowingly, I had my brand new iPod Classic plugged in when I installed and launched it. Turns out, the damn piece of software “automatically” sought out my iPod, read the contents, and somehow completely corrupted the iTunesDB file. So, when I fired up iTunes again, I got the familiar heartbreaking message: “iTunes cannot read the contents of iPod…” Sigh, all my music lost. What a waste… I’m so upset. Why can’t I just learn to leave well enough alone?

Right now I’m frantically trying all sorts of recovery methods… and, even as I write this, I’m using a promising piece of software that touts one-click iPod-to-iPod cloning, with support for all generation iPods, including Classic/Touch. The cool thing is, it supposedly also will transfer all the iTunes/library data like “played count,” “rating,” etc. – which is exactly what I was looking for in the first place. If this works, I’ll make a quick writeup and post tomorrow. Wish me luck, OK?

Really sorry about all the iPod talk, but, as if you couldn’t tell, I’m a bit obsessed with this new toy. Hope you’ll understand as I continue to fawn over it. Thanks for sticking it out. Goodnight.