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there’s aardbarks up in there

Finely tuned scientific equipment.
I dunno if it was just laziness or what, but we were all supposed to go see another show tonight (Pretty Girls Make Graves, right here in Sac) – and I bailed. Mostly because Sharaun had a late meeting at school and wouldn’t be getting home until 8ish – and I knew she’d be tired from her 2hrs sleep last night. I just felt the evening would be better served if we just crashed on the couch and hung out with each other. So, we did. She picked up some Mexican on her way home – and we ate our dinner out of styrofoam boxes while watching the season finale of the OC. Well, I watched it at least – she fell asleep about halfway through. Which is good, because it’d be awful embarrassing if she’d seen me bawling as Marissa hit that bottle of vodka. What have you done Ryan?, what have you done?!

Dan (the same guy who’s insinuated in the comments that the blog has, or is about to, “jump the shark” – punk) has been taking karate lessons for a while. While he was telling me all about what he’s learned, which thus far has been limited to defense moves, I got an idea. See, I’ve always been curious about how effective karate lessons really are. I mean, I’m led to believe that a black belt in karate could kick my butt. But what about the karate noob? How much better are your defense skills for a couple month’s lessons? So, Dan and I devised a plan. I will attack him with all I’ve got – no holds barred street-brawl-ignorant fighting. Just a hail of fists and throwing my weight around. During my furious assault, Dan can only use the defenses and blocks that karate has taught him. This way, we see if karate is real. I know, totally scientific, right? We figured there’d probably need to be some beer involved – just to loosen up the muscles and improve mental focus… and video documentation couldn’t hurt.

In high school, I was messing around with the tape recorder one day and figured out I could wire the microphone input directly into the earpiece of the phone. This inevitably led to the tape recording of prank phone calls. In the beginning, it was simply a few guys sitting around drinking, smoking (cough, cough), and recording prank phone calls. But shortly after our first 90min compilation tape, “Volume One,” made it’s way around school – each “recording session” became a small party. More and more people heard our pranks and wanted to be around when “Joey Cora” and “Pete Metacalf” made the calls. Over the course of a couple years, we made so many prank phone calls we couldn’t count them all. After each “session,” it was my job to edit down the resulting hours of calls into the best and funniest for inclusion in the next “Volume” of calls. We ended up with four 90min cassettes, Volumes One through Four, and one 45min unedited tape dubbed the “sober session.”

The goal was always to be as stupid as possible, to see how much people would put up with. There was always an unwritten rule that you should try to cram in as much foul language as possible – because everyone knows cussing is comedy gold. Often the calls were so thick with our stupid sense of humor and drunken notions of jokes that they were only side-splittingly funny to us, but listening back on some of them I still get a laugh. The dumber the response from the people on the other line, the bigger the kick we got out of it. The angrier and uglier you could be right off the bat, the better. It’s amazing what people are willing to put up with, especially when you can clearly hear several kids just cracking up in the background.

Although I’ve never fully converted the Volumes to CD, a few years ago I began a project to digitize them all and give copies to the prank crew for Christmas. I never got finished, mainly because we don’t own a cassette deck – but I did get the whole of Volume One ripped to CD. While working on the GDM project last night I happened upon the raw CD rips. So, I decided to clean up a couple calls an turn them into MP3s. So, here – for the first time on the ‘net – some samples of our first prank calls. I estimate that Volume One was made sometime in 1992, and you can tell we were just warming up. Some of the stuff on Volume Four puts this stuff to shame. Anyway, for your listening pleasure:

[audio:SCUBA_tanks.mp3]
SCUBA Tanks

[audio:Fireplace.mp3]
Didn’t Catch on Fire Like a Fireplace

[audio:Gold.mp3]
I Have an Allergic Reaction to Gold?!

[audio:Aardbarks.mp3]
There’s Aardbarks Up In There

That’s if for today folks, I’m outta here. Enjoy.

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not everyone can smell sneezes?

As bad as farts, I swear.
Sick day yesterday. Stayed home to recuperate. Partially from this bug that I’ve got, partially because I foolishly stayed up through 2am the night before. Anyway, the combo of both was too much to bear, so I shot out a “I’m sick” mail and did my work/meetings from home.. bare-chested with the windows open and Andy Griffith on the TiVo. And, if you promise not to tell my boss – I even managed to triumph over my illness and sneak a quick lawn-mowing in between meetings. Forever the rebel.

Last night was another late night, after DCfC and Ben Kweller at the Fillmore, don’t think my head hit the pillow until 2am. Bummer, because it made the 6:45am alarm sound even more taunting than usual. But, I made it.. and am now happily giving another day to the man. It was a good show though, and we once again demonstrated excellent timing – showing up just in time to see the mediocre opening act (The Thermals) exit and Ben Kweller take the stage. We were delayed a bit because Anthony drove, and crashed into a tow-truck on the highway. We had to exit, at which point we were surrounded by four tow-trucks, boxing us in from every side as if they had deemed us “high risk for flight” or something. The tow-truck driver made a big stink about filing a report so we had to wait for the CHP to come and whatnot. Stupid. Neither vehicle was damaged, the guy was just a jerk.

So, apparently not everyone can smell sneezes? When did this happen? Ben and I happened to be talking the other day about how much sneezes stink – only to receive blank stares from the other people in the room. They actually thought we were daft for suggesting that sneezes have a smell. Well, let me tell you – they do, and it’s nasty. You guys really can’t smell them? Must be nice, because they are nauseating. I’m not talking about your own sneezes, but the sneezes of others. I guess I have been blessed with this superpower.

I got nothing, I’m outta here. I’ll write a proper entry for tomorrow later tonight.

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delusions of grandeur

This is the sound... the sound of the underground!
Running while sick is crap. I thought my lung capacity would be worse because I’ve been congested and coughing, but I actually ran fairly well tonight. I still loathe the act, but I’m getting more and more used to it. Maybe if I keep doing it, I’ll lose some weight – either that or my ankles will collapse under me. Either way, I’ma make like Forest and keep run-ning.

So I actually got a couple takers on my “guest blog” offer, not sure anyone will actually deliver, but it’s kinda cool that I at least got some tentative OKs. I’ll print ’em as they come.

Tonight (tomorrow, whatever) is the Death Cab for Cutie show at the Fillmore in SF. Been a nice long while since we’ve made that trek to see a show, and I think this one is worth it. Ben Kwellar is the opener – and I dig his new solo effort, so I’m looking forward to the entire fête. I guess this will be the 4th time I’ve seen Death Cab, and as long as they keep turning out stuff like Transatlanticism I’ll keep shelling out ducketts for tickets. They really are one of my favorite indie (some might argue that anyone on the OC ain’t “indie” anymore) acts out there right now. I like to think the magic is in the chemistry, but I can’t get over the fact that Ben Gibbard’s other material is nearly unflappably perfect as well. I mean darn, Postal Service, All-Time Quarterback, that dude is some kinda lyrical Midas. Ahem, enough fawning.

Oh man, I’m just sitting here listening to some compilation I grabbed off the newsies called something like “Old Skool Hardcore.” What a trip down memory lane. Wanna walk with me? OK. The year is 1992, my best buddy Kyle is gone for a month of the summer vacation between our freshman and sophomore years of high school – as he is every year, visiting his dad in Plano, TX. Every year Kyle came back from his dad’s place with mass amounts of new music, but this year was different. Whereas he’d usually come back with tapes full of rare 60’s or 70’s gems he’d unearthed from his dad’s huge music library – this year he brought back something new. God forbid! Seeing as we were both “too cool” for modern music (“Hammer Time” indeed), this was a huge step. He didn’t know it, but those two albums Kyle brought back were gonna change everything.

The Prodigy’s debut, “Experience” only just released that year, and Utah Saints’ self-titled 1st LP, also placenta-covered; back-to-back on one blissful 90min Maxell. Seems Kyle’s dad’s long-time girlfriend’s two no-good sons had gone and got into the whole “rave” scene. Being as I had no idea what a “rave” even was, the whole thing was new to me. As were these beat-heavy, chunky-jangly tunes. But man, it was like a natural fit. Overnight we went from Derek and the Dominos and Bob Dylan to breakbeat’s #1 proselytizers. What’s now known affectionately as “old skool hardcore” was the muzak-du-jour for us. And much like the elitism I revel in now by enjoying non-radio indie – being on the bleeding edge of a new and underground genre was an attractant in and of itself.

From then on it was a friendly competition, who could score the roughest most underground tunes and share them with the other. Scouring record bins in Orlando DJ pits like the Drop Shop – trading for obscure mixes and LPs with contacts met while using teachers’ PCs during Biology in the internet’s swaddling days. Never satisfied with the standard 4/4 “fairground” techno bullshit which eventually made it into mainstream musical consciousness – we were always searching for the most brokenest and choppy beats. Eventually, with our friendship waning, the acquisition of new tunes became somewhat of a pissing contest (at least, in my head it did). I would hear from Jeremy that Stacy got a new mix from Kyle and it was badass. Jealous, I’d find something new and try to get it circulating within the “network” – all the while hoping Kyle’d eventually hear it came from me.

Soon enough drugs and girls drove us apart for good, but during later “reunions” we’d always be surprised to find out how much our musical tastes tracked each other. From breakbeat to some new stuff called “jungle” out of London, morphing into the Chicago jungle scene from the US side of things, and finally dying under the generic “drum and bass” moniker. Release parties for Moonshine records at Orlando skating rinks, sacks of weed and doses, despite drifting down differnt paths of personal taste, we pretty much stayed neck-and-neck until he shattered my thinking by playing me Pavement’s “Wowee Zowee” one day.

That bitch was always one step ahead. Guess it served me right. Prodigy sucked after “Jilted,” and arguably sucked during “Jilted” too. Don’t even talk to me about that bitchass group with a crab on their record that sang “Firestarter,” whoever those dicks are – they ain’t the same Prodigy that did “Experience.” Liam might still be able to whip up beats, but ugh. Jungle was getting stale, and while happy hardcore tried – it just couldn’t recall the early nineties. It was time to move on, and as always – Kyle was my catalyst. So onto Pavement and Built to Spill I moved… still loitering around the genre today.

Holy crap y’allz. I just wrote several paragraphs on the kind of music I liked in high school. What the eff? But you know, I don’t care if it’s boring. It was easy to write – and that means it needed to be written. When I forget I’m writing and concentrate on telling the story, I know it’s a story worth writing down. Even if it is about nothing at all. Anyway, it’s not a complete “Dave’s musical tastes” evolutionary chart (man, how awesome would it be to actually make one of those?!) – but it’s a slice of time. I mean, somewhere either before or during all that was the Skinny Puppy/Front 242/Ministry phase, y’know, the all-black and combat boots era? Ahh, music, way too important to me.

Anyway, I wrote all that because I was originally trying to “introduce” a story about my eternal quest for a long-lost mix tape from the breakbeat days, but the “intro” morphed into a story of its own. I’ll just get right to the point: I’m always looking for songs which mighta been on this mix, as it was, in my opinion, the defining mix for early 90s hardcore. Alas, I lost the tape – only to one day years later hear the exact same mix on some alterna-radio’s Saturday night “club mix” or something. So I know it was a popular mix, perhaps commercially released or local to some big Orlando DJ. For nearly five years I’ve had a text file on my desktop called “mixtape.txt” in which I track songs in two categories: “definite,” and “possible.” One day I’ll find that mix, I swear. Stupid “underground” music, hard to find by definition, bah!

Maybe if I stop chugging Diet Cokes I’ll realize it’s nigh’ on 1am and I gotta go give my eight hours to the man again tomorrow. I’ve impressed myself with such a voluminous tome today, at three pages in Word it’s bound to look impressively page-filling sandwiched between the sickly-green borders of the blog.

And he even took time to link it up proper, good night all. Dave. Is. Out.

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the familiar halfhearted midnight trip

Tim Leary says I should drop out.
I’m totally gonna build a “dream machine.” It’s this thing that this dude from the 50’s invented which supposedly can be used to induce hallucinations (read: epileptic seizures). Basically, it’s just a rotating cardboard tube with a lightbulb inside that makes the light pulse at the same rate as your brain’s alpha-waves? which apparently makes you trip balls. Sounds about as awesome as bananadine.

We got this funny note on our doorstep the other day, and thought I’d share it because it really made me laugh. It’s typed up and printed on a multicolored inkjet printer all professional-like. See, this lady, Inna, wants to be our housekeeper? and she’s distributing these fliers to let us know she wants our business. “ARE YOU SEEKING RESPONCIBLE ,ORGANISED HOUSE CLEANER? YOU GOT IT!” Shouts the bold red text on the top of the page. “INNA IS ENERGETIC HOUSEKEEPER WITH LARGE JANITORIAL EXPERIENCE.” Really?! Tell me more! “INNA IS GOOD ON HER HANDS.” Wha? “INNA WILL BE RESPONCIBLE FOR GENERAL LABOR DUTIES TO KEEP YOUR HOUSE CLEAN.” Sweet! “SHE WILL SWEEPING, SCRUBBING, MOPPING, REMOUVING REFUSE, CLEANING LAVATORIES, SHOWERS OR RESTROOMS.” She will?! Oh boy! “INNA WILL KEEP YOUR HOUSE. IF INTERESTED PLEAS CALL.” Inna will keep my house? Umm.. no thanks Inna. Inna need spellcheck, bad. Sorry Inna.

Whoa, you know what’s weird? Inna might have spellcheck, because when I just ran it – it didn’t flag any of the misspelled words I transcribed from Inna’s note in the above paragraph. Strange.

Anyway, the weekend was good. I’ve been feeling rather ill lately, so I didn’t do any taxing work in the backyard this weekend – which means the sprinkler-awaiting trenches currently crisscrossing our backyard are still pining for PVC. Owell, one weekend lost, what’s the damage really? Saturday I decided to do absolutely nothing during the day. And, I mean nothing. I sat in front of this computer for most of the day – after doing about of “house cleaning” on the TiVo. Catching up on some Andy Griffith, Simpsons, and Scrubs. Then I just sat here and ripped CDs? all day. Got over 40 done by the time evening rolled around and it was time to celebrate Melissa’s birthday. By celebrate I mostly mean a drunken dinner party at our house, capped off by the familiar halfhearted midnight trip to the local pub for one last beer in some attempt to say we really “went out.”

Sunday I was feeling pretty bad, but decided to make a go at it by heading to the river with the crew. I didn’t go in the water, due to my sickness, but I did have a great time lounging in the sun and watching people wakeboard. If there’s one thing I did learn this weekend, it’s that beer doesn’t cure a cold – not that I didn’t try, but it just doesn’t work.

At one point on the boat Sunday I invented a new sitting position. I sat backwards on the back seat, with my back propped against the engine thing? so I was looking directly out the back of the boat, my feet dangling over the ski platform. If I laid my head back I could look up at the passing sky and riversides, and just see the two other backseat passengers out of the corners of my vision. I sat like that for an hour or so while we tugged people around and made our way downriver. Just sat there staring up at the sky listening to music, bouncing my feet and signing along loudly. Maybe it was the beer, but it was awesome. It’s just so “nothing’s going on” that I love it. I’m pretty sure people were laughing at me, but hey, that’s always the goal right?

Nothing more. Dave out.

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takers?

I got nothing. What you got?
I was kicking around writing ideas the other day, and hit upon an idea I thought would be kinda fun. I was thinking how much I like writing stories about the olden days, and telling things from my point of view – and I thought it would be really cool to hear some stories from other people who experienced them. That got me thinking about contacting some old friends and asking them if they wanted to do a “guest blog.” The more I thought about it, the less practical it sounded; I don’t really know who would want to do it, and I don’t even know who I would contact. So I kinda gave up, but I also thought opening up the blog to some “guest spots” might be kinda fun. So if there’s anyone out there who writes for fun, and I’ll publish yer ass on the internet. Anonymous or not, your choice. And I’m being for real too; moms, you got something to write – send it along. Random reader, blog-faithful, send it.

Anyway, with the likelihood of the offer being accepted being pretty low – I guess I better keep writing to fill the pages. Although I’m not going to write much today, since I didn’t do my late-night writing last night – and I’m really pressed for time today. (Yes, Wes, the blog is taking a hit for your stupid work-related deadlines). I just wanted to comment on one thing and then call it a weekend.

The recently released pictures of US soldiers humiliating and killing Iraqi prisoners have got me thinking. I mean, I think I’m not dense enough to not realize this stuff goes on – but I really wish it didn’t. (Damn, I think I just won the “how many negatives can you fit into a sentence” contest.) A few dumb soldiers with cameras document evidence which can be used to fuel the fires of hatred toward the US. Just what we need right now. So, crashing planes into buildings isn’t all that saintly either – but c’mon guys?

There. “A weekend.” Dave out.

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drop bricks on our hot wheels

I have the power.
Saw the music industry sued another 500 downloaders today, sucks to be them. But for really guys, if you’re still using some kind of crappy centralized P2P app – what can you expect? Last night I stayed up until 1am for no apparent reason. I was ripping CDs and listening to the results, and writing like I am now. Tonight I went on a solo run around 10pm, so now I’ve got some juice keeping me awake.

Ben and I were talking today about all the toys we used to play with as kids, and which ones were our favorites. I think the whole conversation started around Legos, as we were both discussing the large tupperware container of random Legos we had as kids. You know, it was a jumbled mess of your standard primary-color Legos, some brown pirate-ship ones, and maybe some gray moonbase-five ones as well. My brother and I could have hours of fun with Legos. We’d dump out that tupperware container into a huge pile, and build crap for hours.

Also ranking mutually high on our lists were G.I. Joe, He-Man, and Transformers. I guess those were just the toys to have back then. I remember getting Castle Greyskull for Christmas the same year my brother got Skull Mountain. We had a lot of cool toys. The Rancor, the Millennium Flacon, the self-destructing Ewok-carrying Speederbike, an X-wing with popup R2D2 action, Ewok Village. Shoot, I think I was the only kid in town who had the Tundertank. I also had some ridiculously unpractical Transformers moonbase-robot-train thing, which was utterly stupid as a toy. The key to toys isn’t more motors and assembly, any idiot knows kids gravitate towards the most rock-simple concepts when it comes to toys. At least, in my day we did. I don’t know about these Poke-Digi kids of today? but give me a sticky spider thing that crawls down walls or a slingshot, and I’m good to go.

We also agreed that whoever thought of the whole “crack-ups” gimmick was a genius. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, crack-ups (or maybe it was crash-’ems) were Hot Wheels cars that had spring-loaded sections which would rotate quickly upon impact to show a “wrecked” version of the car. You could roll a normal looking car at a wall and the little rollover portion would switch to a fake dented hood or something. Pretty soon the rollover-change thing made it’s way into other toys like Battle Armor He-Man and such. Anyway, what a brilliant idea. Boys love to wreck their toys. My brother and I used to drop bricks on our Hot Wheels anyway, just to wreck them. Who was the genius who was smart enough to realize that a perpetually wreckable car would be a boys dream? Wish I woulda thought of it.

I’m outta here.

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the tortoise that is my metabolism

It's a spare tire, y'know.. like because I'm fat and stuff.
Man, I seem to be getting more and more e-mail about my Pac Man cabinet every day. I guess as more sites link to mine, and I move up the Google ranks, the more hits I get. Right now my site is the 4th return in a Google for “pac man cocktail,” which ain’t bad at all. I think, of all my self-maintaining sites, it’s the one I’m most proud of. I feel like I actually “completed” it, didn’t leave it hanging like I often do. I mean, out of all my websites – the blog is the one I’m the most happy with, since I’m really happy I’ve kept up with it? and I feel like I might even have a small semi-dedicated readership. Thanks y’allz.

Sitting here listening to the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” from 1965. So yeah, the GDM project is up to the By’s at this point. I haven’t been updating the database on the webpage, mostly because I haven’t been 100% diligent in testing all the resulting rips – but I am making some fo rilla progress on getting through the collection. The 120GB RAID array is nearly a quarter full. Dang I gotta take a dump right now, I’ll be right back?

One of my Taiwan customers sent me an awesome little gift the other day. I love this thing. When I was in Taiwan last, I picked up a similar USB pendrive MP3 player and it died immediately after I brought it onto US soil. Was a waste of $60 and didn’t have FM or voice-record features like this MSI one I now have. I gotta admit, the little thing sounds pretty dang good – and the volume goes loud enough so I can hear it over the lawn mower, which is one of the few times I use it. I know it’s no iPod at only 128MB, but hey – if it’s enough for the 1st four Led Zeppelin albums? who really needs anything more? For real though, it’s perfect for yardwork, running, hiking, camping, and any other short-term activity than can be enhanced with tunes. With a 2-4 album capacity at a decent bitrate, it works for me. Even if my albums run out, I could turn to that God-forsaken form of media-indoctrination they call FM radio? but of course that’d be this indie-diehard’s last option.

So hey, three paragraphs and nothing interesting yet – I’m back! Maybe I’ve finally shaken the shame of this terrible streak of writer’s block and settled for mediocre documentation of my daily crap. I’m gonna write about nothing and like it. For real though, I’d like to write something good again – the last thing that even came close was the Satan-flier thing? the coded-best-friend’s-sister-letters thing just didn’t really do it for me. Shit, am I all storied out? I got more right?

Been running roughly every other night, in a serious effort to try and lose some of my fat ass. That’s right, I want to lose some of me and never find it again. I’m talking like 80lbs of me? and that’s a lot. Anyway, every other night I lumber my hefty ass around the block a couple times to try and get the tortoise that is my metabolism to step it up a notch. I’ve been flirting with the whole “eating right” gig too, but been making slower progress on that aspect of it. I mean, my body has been in a slow state of atrophy for nigh on 15 years now? so it’s gonna be slow going. So, I’m really trying? maybe then I can get some friggin’ pants that fit or something. Being fat sucks, so I gotta work on it. Between working in the yard and running, maybe I can at least sweat out a pound or two. Wish me luck.

Well, it’s now officially Wednesday morning – and I have no idea what I’m still doing up. Listening to some 1967 Neil Young demos for the 2nd Buffalo Springfield album and writing. Because I feel bad about not writing something more awesomer, here’s a scanned in note I got from Sharaun in 1993. She’s talking about a mutual friend of ours, Heather – who would, ironically, later on become one of the “indiscretions” that led to our 9-month lost weekend. See, we really have been dating since high school? eerie. (The spelling errors were a running joke between us, man we were nerds).

Dave out.