RESOLUTIONS

Haven't done anything like this is a while, mostly because nowadays New Year's Resolutions seem hackneyed and trite.

But, since everyone feels this way, I have to go against the grain and try to make them cool again. I alone will be the sole bearer of the Resolution standard.

Everyone says that they never keep to their resolutions, but it's a far simpler scenario: I think the problem is that nobody can remember what their resolutions were in the first place; therefore how can anyone "keep" to them?

So, here are things I resolve to do in 2005:

1. Take up painting. I have the canvases, the easel, and now all I need are brushes and paints. Small steps, but steps nonetheless.

2. Finish transcribing my novel-- I stopped after Chapter Eleven, even though I have at least ten or twelve more chapters to go. And while I'm at it, I need to get back on the ball with the Alfred Jarry screenplay. I was so close to finishing it, and then I dropped out of it.

3. Sell the animation to a production company that won't dilute the initial vision... and speaking of which, I hope to have a web page, complete with a Quicktime trailer, available by the middle of next week... anyone have any tips for posting the Quicktime movie file? No? Aw, screw you then...

4. Polish up the three or four personal musical projects that I have had on the table for the past year. This includes an album with my pal Bro Man in a genre we can only describe as "cybercore"; a collection of my own songs, with finished vocals; a complete demo of at least one of the bands I'm currently in; and a professional CD pressing of the Sherman Locs album It Takes A Nation Of Critics To Call Us Wack.

5. Lose twenty pounds. My sex regimen as of late has been helping me shed some excess weight. Last night Eve noted that I seemed a tad slimmer. I told her that, if she was interested in having a running partner, I would try and cut down on my smoking and run laps with her whenever she was in the mood. Believe it or not, I'm a fast motherfucker, but my specialty in high school was Cross-Country Running.

6. Pay off my car and fix it up. I have been putting this one off for some time. I'm in the home strecth with the car payments, as they end in late May or early June of 2005. I also have the crappy '85 Citation sitting in my dad's front driveway, and I suppose I can fix that one up and sell it to some kid for cheap. Or, I can just own two cars.

7. Read more. This year found me lacking the time or the gumption to get really involved in a good book. I was more concerned with music and animation for the majority of 2004. I think the reason why I stopped transcribing my novel is because I got sick of reading it, but maybe if I kept a steady diet of fiction in my system, I wouldn't get so burnt on converting the text to HTML. Of course, I still read magazines, newspapers, and short stories like mad, but those types of things don't demand a lot of your time.

8. Travel more. Eve has voiced her desire to want to travel, and if she is serious then she has herself a partner in crime. My ultimate goal: Europe, preferably Spain, where it's cheap to live and the parties go on all night. But we'll probably start with a visit to the Bay Area first. Northern Cali acquaintances... Beware!

9. Write less. What I mean is, I'm going to try and keep my thoughts simple and lean. I am known for an overabundance of material, and maybe I should experiment with keeping my prose terse and skeletal. It will be difficult, because I love to write, but I think it will help my writing to grow in ways I couldn't have imagined.

10. Eat healthier. Eve has been on a campaign to change my eating habits, and I haven't been resisting. I feel a lot better for eschewing the fast food and greasy burgers. I'm not about to turn my back on red meat, but eating more greens is something long overdue for me. Last night we ate spaghetti and a simple salad, and I was full! It helps that Eve is half Italian and knows how to cook like a motherfucker.

Other things I want to resolve to do:

--Keep laughing and having fun
--Try to be more sympathetic and compassionate
--Not lose sight of the Big Picture and my ultimate goals
--Never forget where I came from and who I really am
--Make news friends, but keep the old

Okay, so... even though I didn't think I had anything else to say this week, I seem to have come down with a case of verbal diarrhea. It figures, doesn't it?

That means I will have something to say tomorrow morning, on the eve of the end of 2004. For those of you who will not be online until the New Year is upon us, please be safe and don't drink & drive. And don't forget to use a rubber.

PEACE

GHOSTS

"This town is coming like a ghost town..."

--The Specials, "Ghost Town"


Not one new entry from any of the blogs that I used to read daily.

What's wrong, people?

Oh, I see... you all have lives. Blogging just doesn't make the cut anymore, does it?

Don't turn your back on the blog. One day, you're gonna need it on your side. But will the blog be there for you when you need it most? Not if you keep mistreating it.

Show some love and respect to your blog. Make at least one post, even if it's two lines, six words, and five syllables long.

If you don't do it for yourself, then do it for me.

Okay?

Hell, I don't have anything to say today, and I'm swamped with work, but I still manage.

I always manage...

Stop browsing for junk online. Stop ordering from Amazon. Stop frequenting gossip forums and porn sites.

All I'm asking you to do is make one fucking entry.

Just one.

If you really are in it for the love, then write one word.

That's all.

OK, gotta go-- I have a life too, you know.

ADDENDUM TO DESIRE

The Smiths were one of my favorite pop groups of the 1980's, but they never went to Number One in the States. The Dream Academy were a cool group from the same era, and had one major U.S. hit, "Life In A Northern Town".

There's a song by The Smiths that was covered by The Dream Academy and included on the soundtrack to the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

It comes on during the scene where Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck and Mia Sara make a trip to the museum. The scene has no dialogue, just the instrumental music playing as a montage of great works of art is juxtaposed with youthful insouciance: Ferris and his girl necking, Cameron wide-eyed and in awe of Seurat...

That version of that song is on my MP3 player, and when it came on in my earphones yesterday I was almost overwhelmed by its relevance, by its timelieness, for this is the first winter season in a long time where I've felt like I got the things I wanted for Christmas.

Even though this version of the song has no vocals, I know the words by heart:


Good times for a change
See, the luck I've had
can make a good man turn bad
So please, please, please
let me, let me, let me
let me get what I want this time

Haven't had a dream in a long time
See, the life I've had
can make a good man bad
So for once in my life
let me get what I want
Lord knows it would be the first time
Lord knows it would be the first time


I first learned how to play that song when I was 16 or 17, having borrowed the guitar book for the album Louder Than Bombs off of my musical collaborator-at-the-time, Fast Eddie. It was during a solitary summer, when I had shorn my long locks and started wearing contact lenses, that I learned this song, held this song close to my heart, internalized this song with the hopes of somehow getting what I wanted. And what did I want?

Peace in my soul.

I'm far from being completely peaceful, but I think I've finally gotten somewhere in my life in regards to finding refuge for my restless soul. I still possess many hang-ups, neuroses and flaws, but I am more accepting of these things than ever. I'm not as hard on myself as I used to be, and I can manage my rage more effectively than in the past.

I watched Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind on DVD, by myself, last night. I like the way screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's brain works-- I can relate to his loopy scenarios. He writes metaphysically, perhaps even 'pataphysically, but he also addresses the human condition, our wants and needs, our desire to be accepted and to love.

Sometimes, it's best not to get what you want, like when Jim Carrey's character in the movie attempts to erase from his mind the memory of a woman he loved.

I'm one of those folks who watches a movie and filters it through my own experiences. That is, I have to put myself in the shoes of the protagonist, no matter how far removed from me he or she is. If the hero is a cop, I am also a cop, even if I've never held a badge in my life. I project the character's idiosyncrasies and personality tics onto myself, or maybe it's the other way around-- I dunno.

Either way, there I was, just like Jim Carrey, trying to erase Eve from my mind, because I was so sure she had done that to me, when she was with Dick, when they were together leading a couple's life, pretending to be happy, pretending that life hadn't twisted and turned out this particular way.

And now she and I are like strangers, rediscovering each other, but with the familiarity of a thousand shared dreams and common experiences between us.

Life is too strange to figure out. I don't know why it has all turned out like this, but suffice it to say: this Christmas, I really did get the things I wanted.

Happy New Year, people. I know, it's just a few days away, but just in case I don't blog for the rest of this week, I'm saying it now.

PEACE

DESIRE

1. I have decided not to trash my links. The ones I have now are the ones I will usher the New Year in with, and I hope to add many more as the days go by. Also, I had to take down the Charlie Brown Xmas jpeg-- one of the disadvantages to this new blog template is that any time I try to post a pic directly onto the page, it pushes all of my links and side bar stuff down. I know there's a simple way to rectify this, but I don't want to risk losing EVEN MORE archives...

2. I made out with some cool-ass sweaters and shirts, some cash, a carrying case for both my glasses and my contact lenses, some gift certificates, and a portable MP3 player. It isn't an iPod-- fuck an iPod, I maintain. I'll wait until they are giving them away-- oh, wait a minute, they ARE giving them away! Every other Internet ad is an offer for a free iPod-- "type your name and win a free iPod" and stuff like that. I have nothing against Apple-- I just don't have the skrilla to drop on something that will be worth a fraction of its price in less than a year. In other words, even if I had the money to buy one right now, I'd still wait for the price to drop.

3. I had something of a "Christmas miracle" occur. Maybe "miracle" is too strong of a word, but it was straight out of some sitcom holiday special, and they usually refer to the events that transpire on those types of shows as "miracles", so I may as well jump on the bandwagon. Briefly: I missed my Metrolink train to Lancaster, thanks to a squirrelly holiday schedule that I neglected to keep up with, and so I took a cab home to Burbank, expecting to miss the family for Christmas. Later on, I went out to dinner with my homies Down Low and The Fiend, both of whom are Jews. Fiend, upon hearing my predicament, offered to drive me up to Lancaster, which is an hour from Burbank, up near the Mojave Desert. I couldn't believe he was offering this, until I realized that he drives a hybrid automobile and that a long trip would actually recharge his electric battery. Still, he wasn't obligated to volunteer a ride on Christmas Eve at all, and so I made it out to my family's house after all, thanks to The Fiend and his environmentally-conscious car.

4. I am very mad right now at the taxi cab dispatcher who told me that my cab would be ready in ten minutes... I waited for an hour and was late to work today. I called the dispatch shortly before they pulled their head out of their ass, and he told me that they got slammed by a delayed flight arrival at Burbank Airport. I shot back over the phone that the dispatcher could've told me this info over the phone before I ordered the taxi, but instead they guaranteed me a cab within ten minutes. I still tipped the driver, because it wasn't his fault, but suffice it to say I've had it up to here with taxis. And is it a coincidence that I just finished watching Collateral with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx just a few hours before?

Okay, the small shit is out of the way. Now to the meat of my post.

Desire.

Is there anything as all-consuming, other than elemental forces of nature that mankind cannot even begin to wrest or grapple? Desire is the closest thing we have to a raw element, a resource within us incalculable in its depth.

Sometimes I think that desire is the only thing that keeps people alive. The things we want, the things we desire... those are very powerful objects to us. They are talismans of ancient energies, symbols of our transfixation with possession...

Over the course of a decade my desire for Eve kept her alive in my heart. That's the only way I can find to explain why, after all this time, we are reunited. I am not so naive as to assign it to fate or destiny, because as much as I like the idea of our futures being predestined, I am too much of a fan of FREE CHOICE to totally forfeit my right to live my life as I see fit. That also goes for Eve, who made a choice to leave me, who made choices to stay away, who has made the choice to accept me in her life again, and who has chosen to make up for the lost time through her generosity and caring...

Her holiday gift to me was what I was hoping for: an acrylic painting, from her hands to my heart. It was abstract, a figure of a woman running (or dancing, perhaps?)against a psychedelic backdrop of magenta and turquoise. I fought back tears when I saw it. It was beautiful, and it hangs on the wall of my living room.

Speaking of painting, Purple Paulie and Nona bought me four blank canvases for Christmas. Ever the benefactors, they know how much I want to start painting. My mother has a wooden easel that she said I could take with me. All I need now is paint, and I am on my way to starting a new life in the visual realm.

It is my desire to pursue this, and it is the desire of my friends and loved ones to see me take this path. For a long time I have longed for this kind of balance in my life, but only until recently have I had the foresight to deal with it.

Our longing is married to our desire, so much so that it seems almost impossible to tell them apart. I think the difference between the two is simple: longing does not demand action, whereas desire does.

All those years, crying over her, knowing in my heart that she was the only one I wanted, making the effort to see other girls but knowing that they could never fill the void, knowing that even as she stood by her choices, even she could not deny the love she felt for me, because it ran too deep to begin with...

I never gave up on her, even when I thought I had moved on.

I still can't believe it. It's quite amazing to me, when we are sitting there on my couch, or on her brand new bed, watching whatever movie she has insisted we watch together, it's amazing that we are even in the same room, laughing as if ten years hadn't come between us like a wedge, carrying on as if we were meant to be a couple, looking into each other's eyes and seeing something real, feeling something strong, kissing something soft and gentle...

I get phone calls from female friends, wishing me a Merry Christmas. Eve gets playfully jealous, and I do my part not to knock the balance out of whack. I politefully decline the invitations, the faraway flirtations, because I don't need to look any further than across the room, as she makes funny faces at me in an attempt to make me crack up while I'm on the phone.

I came home Sunday night, after hanging out with Down Low at his apartment, to see her car parked on the street in front of my place. She was stopping by, wondering if I was OK. I was happy to see her. Normally, the sight of a girl sitting on my porch, waiting for me to come home, would send me running in a beeline in the opposite direction, screaming about wanting my space and all that.

Instead, I smiled and hugged her, and she was glad that I came home in time.

Desire.

There is nothing stronger.

It can be a light when all others go out.

It can masquerade as Hope. It can propel a dream into reality. It can render the impossible quite possible.

My advice to you all, as the New Year approaches: do not give up on your desires. They are the purest part of who you are. Do not let them run unfettered and unchecked, because they will fuel you smack dab into the middle of destiny, your fate, your ultimate future, whatever you want to call it, and if you are not prepared for it you may end up getting devoured by the very same desires that got you thus far.

Heed my words. But more importantly, heed your desires.

PEACE

TRIUMPH OF THE STREETS

Believe it or not, I received from following pearl of wisdom from reading a post on none other than... Craig's List Rants and Raves!

"If you look down at the gutter all the time you'll never see the stars..."

It wasn't directed at me, but I feel as if it spoke to me anyway. I am a man who has deliberately dedicated much of his time and energy to exploring the dark underbelly of the American Dream.

And so I must ask myself: "Why do I stare down into the gutter all the time?"

1. I come from the gutter. Pacoima, to be exact. Pacoima is the Valley equivalent of East L.A., a predominantly Mexican shantytown best known for its drug dealing and gangbanging. I've seen it all in Pacoima-- I've seen bloody bar fights on the corner of Van Nuys and Oneida; I've seen hookers turning tricks while riding my bike down Telfair Street; I've seen drug deals go down in gas stations; and (the topper) I once witnessed a man burning to death in the backseat of a car.

2. The gutter comes from me. Such images and incidents leave searing impressions on young minds, and I was no exception. But I was never really afraid, because I was always with someone who was "known" in the neighborhood (i.e. in a gang) and, to tell the God-awful truth, I found it exciting. The squalor, the characters, the stories, the debased humanity... the ghetto is a colorful place to get a street education.

3. I survived the gutter. For every person in the 'hood who gave me a hard time for being a smart kid, there were five or six others who went out of their way to protect me from the inescapable elements: drugs, crime, gangs, premarital sex... My family saw me as a ray of hope, someone who would be able to transcend el barrio, a kid with a good head on his shoulders who would never forget his roots, no matter how successful he became. They didn't want me to be trapped in Pacoima-- they wanted me to get out alive, and also to live to tell the tale.

4. I learned from the gutter. I learned not to trust all cops; I learned that sometimes you can rely on the kindness of strangers; I learned that gangbangers are afraid of superstitions, even if they fear nothing else; I learned that the best use for religion was to help out a soul who was lost in the shuffle of the city and its vices; and I learned that the criminals you see on the nightly TV news-- the ones you are supposed to be afraid of --are nicer than you think.

5. The world is a gutter. Everywhere I travel, whether it's in Beverly Hills or Lower Manhattan, I apply the skills I learned while living in the rough places. I look both ways and behind me when walking down a street. I am careful to not take any shortcuts by myself. I always keep my eyes focused on inanimate objects. I never pull my wallet out unless I plan to pay for something. I make mental notes every time I go outside, such as where the nearest exits are and who I have to watch out for... and these things always help, no matter where I am, whether it is the ritziest hotel on the planet or some run-down fleabag motel in the middle of some heavy urban decay.

So the gutter is a vital part of me. It's the reason why I find Henry Miller hilarious instead of offensive. It's the reason why I cried when Hubert Selby Jr. passed away. It's the reason why I can appreciate rap music alongside alternative music. It's the reason why my views on lowbrow art vs. highbrow art are slanted and biased.

But lately my eyes have been fixed on the sky, and the constellations, and the bright lights of the universe. I've always made it a point to look up every now and then, even when I was in the gutter. It gave me something to look forward to, something to believe in. Nowadays, I do more looking up than looking down.

Going to a Magnet school when I was in grade school was a split existence for me: I was bussed to a middle-class school in the suburbs, where all of my classmates were white, Jewish, and Asian. I spent eight hours a day learning, not to mention an additional two hours taking the bus to and from school, and would end up at home in Pacoima, where I had a whole different set of friends, all of whom were black or Mexican.

I was learning how to ride the fence, how to straddle the fine line between both sides of the tracks.

The street knowledge helped to keep the bullies off of my back at school, as well as impressing my more sheltered friends; the book smarts helped to keep me alive in the ghetto, where I would teach my fellow hoodies how to buck the system by using their brains.

Because of this dual education, I am a peculiar person. I have credibility in the realm of ideas and much experience in the real world. I am constantly mixing the two cultures together to form bastard mutations. I am the kind of guy who thinks Picasso would've been an awesome tagger, who wishes that Rembrandt had been alive to sketch the homeless people on Skid Row.

I once asked a kid named Andre, who was only two days older than me and who belonged to Avalon Gangsta Crips, to read Twilight Of The Idols by Nietzche. He didn't get it until I explained it to him, but once he got it, he understood.

I remember when rap started to expand, leaking into the suburbs. Most of my friends from school (if not all) were just discovering Public Enemy on their own-- that was the most hardcore thing they'd ever heard. Then, I played them Boogie Down Productions' Criminal Minded, N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton and The 2 Live Crew's Move Somethin'... and you know what my bourgeois school chums had the nerve to say to me? "Oh, this stuff won't last. Public Enemy and X-Clan... that stuff will be around in ten years, not this stuff."

Well, over 17 years later, everyone in the rap world wants to be a thug or a hoe, and nobody is wearing those cheesy African medallions or X hats anymore. Call it the Triumph Of The Streets, the trumping of ideals and intellectualism by the brutal politics of gangsterism. We shouldn't be proud that it has come to this, but then again we shouldn't be surprised either-- violence and stark reality appeal to our primtive instincts and affect us on a visceral level that mere idealism simply cannot compete with at all.

And I must admit, it feels good to have even a little street cred, because it makes me feel like I'm slightly more well-rounded than the average man. I was never a criminal, but I grew up around them, and I know how they think. I have no desire to ever be a professional criminal, but I can see both the allure and the down side to such an occupation. I can understand it.

Still, I prefer to be an artist, because that's akin to being a white-collar criminal, if you ask me. Artists get away with murder, really-- who else could paint what amounts to colorful chickenscratch and sell it for $500,000 in a gallery?

Jean-Michel Basquiat had it right. He had the perfect mix, the right blend of street attitude tempered with the New York artistic sensibility. He was way ahead of his time, a rascally dandy who hung with graffitti artists and breakdancers, who shared lofts with starving musicians like the then-unknown Madonna while cavorting with the likes of the always-known Andy Warhol.

If only I should be so fortunate as to be the new Basquiat, a 21st Century art curio.

Until that day, I will keep one foot in the gutter and my eyes firmly fixed upon the belt of Orion. It is in this pose that I feel the most comfortable. I have a feeling that spending my days in this manner will prepare me for what lies ahead in our collective future, as times change and transform into newer and more frightening stages of Progress.

Immortality, here I come...

A YEAR'S TIME

She asked me if I'd ever seen any of the Harry Potter movies and I said no, and then she asked me if I'd ever read the books and I said no, and she said that she never read the books but has seen all the movies and she wanted to show me the latest one, the best one in her opinion, and of course she had it on DVD... because what does she NOT have on DVD?

Anyway, it was just the two of us, reclining on my couch, my kitty cat imposing himself between us, and I watched the movie and it was good, much better than I thought it would be, I have nothing against the books or the series, I just never found myself wanting to know what it was all about, and if you ask me all the crap about witchcraft is just a bunch of bull, if you substituted the word "magic" for the phrase "The Force" you'd have Star Wars instead of Harry Potter, so what's all this talk about promoting witchcraft-- did Star Wars promote witchcraft? Of course not, but yet The Force is the same thing as magic, no? I remember growing up and all of my Christian relatives drew parrallels between The Force and God, and it cracks me up how we humans only see what we want to see when we want to see it...

All I saw was the two of us, laying on the couch, arms around each other, enjoying a quiet night of television, and once again I just had that warm feeling that overcomes me at certain moments, and I smiled and sighed and she never knew what was going on in my head as I imagined the two of us being like that forever, never changing, never straying, never wanting anything else, and I knew it was just a flight of fancy but oh how fanciful it was, how wonderful the notion became in my mind, how it swelled in my heart, how it stirred my soul...

And I think of all the times I wrote the words "come back to me" in my poems, how many times I wrote a song in tribute to her, how many nights I wondered where she was and who she was with, and now it's all full circle, it's all back to square one, and I still can't believe it, like it's some extended dream, like the universe has begun to contract and we are the generation caught in its undertow, like a whole new world has emerged from the ashes of the old one, and it boggles my mind, it renders me speechless, it makes me tremble in my boots...

Who knows where we'll be in a year's time?

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

boundless and downward

Winter time arrives
with bags in tow
packages and bundles from the year past
Plenty of gifts to rifle through
such as remembrances of those
who tried to stifle you
keep you down
crush your spirit
those who wanted to see you cry
demanding tears as psychic ransom
now they disappear like phantoms
never to be fathomed again

My demons are out in the cold
I am warm inside
wrapped in blankets and comforters
eyes glazed and set ablaze by the fireplace
music fills my head like
brandy in a snifter
I am a shape-shifter
adapting to the rapture of change
time bending in strange ways
warping beyond my reach
each twisted curve riddled with cysts and nerve endings deadened

My soul feels leaden and heavy
and yet I am ready
for seasons to transform
to metamorphise
to shun darkness and seek more light
in the span of a fortnight
I stand forthright in the other direction
gazing upon perfection
in the form of this city
lights askew, slanted and pretty
romantic and yet so petty
so insignificant
compared to all else surrounding
it's all so astounding
confounding
boundless and downward
my eyes focus on my shuffling shoes
trying to grind a foothold
but only finding cooler shades of blue
tainted and torn in two

*/*

This is not meant to be a sad poem. Rather, it is a Winter poem, and it's all I am feeling right now. I am counting the days until I am back to a normal work schedule, and I can't wait for the holidays to pass.

Things are going good, and that's what scares me.

Oh well, I'll just do what I always do, when things are bad and I'm not scared: I'll just follow my instincts and trust that they will not lead me astray.

That's it. That's what I'll do.

Well, here I go. Wish me luck.


BONUS BLOG: Ain't done one of these thingies in a while. Check it:


How evil are you?

I mean, I always knew that about me... but now I have confirmation!

Looks like Santa's passing me up this year. That's okay-- I'd rather get a visit from the Bad Santa than St. Nick anyway!

PASSION

As I write this, my pelvic region is sore, and my abdominal muscles are raw. I have been doing a lot of fucking in the past 24 hours. I can't get into details-- "What happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom" is how Eve put it, and I have to agree. However, I must remark on the increase in sexual activity, because the past four years have been dry as a bone for me in that department.

I have been in erotic limbo ever since I left Jeanie and effectively turned down the last great extended run of nonstop monogamous sex in my life. I've had opportunities and turned them down. I've also tried to score and was rejected. Sometimes I wasn't in the mood; other times, I let myself give in, but only when I was comfortable, and even then it was few and far between encounters.

Half the time, I couldn't sustain the interest to indulge in even the most tawdry one-night stand. So I see my recent resurgence in orgasmic quantity as "making up for lost time".

It helps that Eve and I are very passionate people when we are in bed. She is more active, outgoing, and sexy in her daily life; I am deceptively horny, keeping the raging torrents of my desire under the most severe wraps until the moment when I take off the mask and reveal myself to be a sex-mad beast underneath the stoic veneer.

Foreplay is very important, that I can tell you. But I see foreplay in a different light than most people.

Saturday night, I was with Anna, trying to find a birthday party for a former co-worker. It was being held at an artist's loft somewhere in Glendale, and we kept getting lost because of the obscure location.

Just as we were on the verge of giving up, I found the address. We stayed for about an hour before we got bored. Not that there wasn't potential: David J from Love And Rockets was the DJ, and my friend Carol is a great party host. But I barely knew any of the people there, and as nice as they were it seemed just a tad too inclusive-- too many in-jokes, bits of circle-of-friends-style gossip, and stuff that went completely over our heads. Plus, not too many people showed up, on account of either the location or the general feeling in the air of non-festiveness.

I'd had plans with Anna for some time, because when I asked Eve if she wanted to come with me she told me she had a Christmas party to attend on the same night. I didn't want to go to the party alone so I asked Anna, who had just announced at the time that she was going to be in town for that week.

I think that Eve, upon discovering that I had a "date" to this party, made it a point to tell me about her friend Laurie having a party at her apartment later on that same night. This was done, I feel, to make sure that I wasn't going to run off into the night with some other girl. Of course, Anna is married, and I told this to Eve, but it didn't seem to matter. The fact that Anna is an old flame is enough, I suppose, to warrant something like this.

Eve and I aren't an official couple, you see-- we are going through all the motions but we haven't admitted it to each other. We insist that we are not in love with each other, that we are using each other until the both of us stumble upon something better, but I think we are just afraid to be the first one to confess how awesome it is now that we are back together.

After Anna and I left the birthday soiree, we stopped at my apartment to confirm Laurie's party. I called Eve-- there was a riotous noise on the phone. She was at her company Christmas party, exchanging Secret Santa gifts and geting hammered in some restaurant's private back room. I told her we were headed over to Laurie's, and she said she'd meet us there.

Anna stayed with me at Laurie's until she had to go home, tired and weary from the massive amounts of pot that we had been smoking all evening. As luck would have it, five minutes after Anna left, Eve and her "date" showed up.

Eve looked like a rock star, with a strapless brassiere-like top and her patented black slacks and overcoat, a sexy Trenchcoat Mafia style that marked her both as an outcast and an insider. She walked in and saw me on the couch-- she was acting like she was tough, like she barely knew me. She introduced me to her "date", who was a pretty dark-haired girl that worked with her at her job. Eve made no overtures towards me that would signify our bond. I was cool with it-- she was drunk, rowdy, and wanted to project power and authority. Eve immediately set about trying to convince Laurie to get drunk on muld wine and kettle, but Laurie was already trashed.

I noticed that Eve was looking around the apartment, as if she were looking to find something, or perhaps someone. But the only other people in attendance were myself, Laurie, Ethan (Laurie's husband) and Darrell, their next-door neighbor. Once she realized that we were the only people there, she seemed to calm down a bit.

The night went on, we all drank, and eventually it was time to go home. Eve's date dropped the both of us off at Eve's car, and we headed straight back to my place.

Everything up until this point was foreplay.

When we got inside, it didn't take long for us to move on to the next stage. And we stayed in that stage for the rest of the night, onto the morning, throughout the next day and into the evening. We were so lazy, so absorbed in our private cocoon, that we ordered breakfast lunch AND dinner by phone. I stepped out of the apartment once, to rent Christmas DVDs for our holiday marathon and also to score smokes.

That was it.

I guess she and I are in that stage where we want nothing except to screw. But this time it has the added allure of being with someone who I have known for years, someone with whom I have always felt close and intimate. I am just surprised that, at my age, I can still get it up like a high-schooler, reloading with little down time. I am NOT surprised at Eve's energy level, of course, because she is always at that level, even when she is chilling out. It's serious business to her, and we are both prepared to take each other on.

I watched It's A Wonderful Life for the first time all the way through-- excellent motion picture. A true classic. No wonder lesser talents keep milking its formulas, its scenes, its dialogue-- the movie stands alone as a minor achievement in cinema, a thoroughly modern fable without being preachy or heavy-handed. And I like the moral, that no man is a failure if he has friends. Those are sage words of advice to live by.

Another bit of advice (and a hilarious irony, in my mind) came from a Chinese fortune that belonged to Eve. I found it as I was cleaning up my room, shortly after she left. The fortune said, "You are in good hands."

"Yes, she was in good hands, wasn't she?" I chuckled to myself.

She is probably just as sore as I am, walking around slowly and turgidly, slightly leaning and hunched over, thigh bones aching joyfully, the small of the back slightly strained, the area of the gut flexing and stretching...

If this keeps up, I'll be twenty pounds thinner by the Spring.

REALITY

Wrapping up some loose ends that I forget to mention:

I called Holly Golightly the other day. For those who forgot, thanks to my deletion of my Archives, Holly was the lead singer of the band Deja Vu, a band with which I spent the better part of a year playing bass. There was much sexual tension between Holly and I, but I never gave in.

Holly reminded me of Eve, before I got back in contact with her, and I credit my relationship with Holly for giving me the perspective to get back in touch with Eve after a pentad.

Holly left this city in a huff, jaded by the L.A. lifestyle. She was an Orlando, Florida transplant who came to California in search of fame and fortune. All she found was frustration and heartache. Now she works on country music in Orlando, occasionally teaching Sunday school at her church... a far cry from snorting coke with rock guitarists and getting guys to buy her drinks in Hollywood clubs.

I called her to see what was going on. She claimed that she had been thinking of me right as I called. I used to buy that shit, back when she and I lived mere blocks away from each other. I don't buy it anymore. If she has been thinking of me, why hasn't she been the one to call me ever since she left?

I told her all about Eve, about how she and I are back together somewhat. Holly knows the story a little bit-- I told her all about the Sharky and Eve thing one night last year, and she couldn't believe that I was still friends with Sharky after all of that. I told her it was more complicated than it seemed.

I told Holly that playing in the band helped me in many ways, which is true. It made me realize that I had been denying myself a lot of things in the creative department. I owed it to myself to go out there and give live music a try again. It was Holly's determination to get something going that sparked my creative fires once more, and the band that I'm in now with Ellen and Katie is a direct result of playing with Holly and the guys.

Holly was glad to hear that I was doing well. In her voice, however, I detected a bit of what made our relationship so unbearable, a hint of affection that she could never allow herself to feel for me. I was good to her, patient with her, supportive of her, but she could never see me for what I had to offer. All she could see was the guys with money, designer drugs, and bar tabs. I smoked pot, didn't drink, and never had any cash on me, but I was there for her up until she finally alienated me for good by turning our creative bond into a business arrangement. I would wager to say that she lost it all the minute she lost me, because I wasn't in it for anything except the love of art. I was the last holdout, the one who hadn't been appalled by her behavior, but when she crossed the line and treated me like an employee, I let her have it. Our relationship, after that point, dwindled to nearly nothing.

It's a good thing she and I never hooked up. She taught me a valuable lesson, one that has helped me in my dealings with Eve: never give anything of yourself if the other person is too guarded to reciprocate.

I think Holly got a little jealous when I told her how great things have been, but she has no one to blame but herself. I was willing to give my all for her, and she took it for granted. That's how it is with a lot of women, Eve included. There was a time when I would've died for Eve, but she didn't seem to appreciate it. Now, Eve has finally realized what I had to offer, what I still have to offer, but it took a long time to come around to that. I don't know if Holly would ever see it that way, but I could tell that she felt a bit off-put by my words. I was, in effect, telling her, "Look what we could've had, Holly, if only you hadn't been so shallow."

Meanwhile, Eve is constantly amazing me with her devotion. She attended a Christmas party with her acting class, and had the decency to call me up as she was re-entering the Valley. She asked me if I wanted a ride to the bus station. I was so thrilled. I said "yes". She picked me up and dropped me off in Universal City, then went home. I thought it was a sweet gesture, once again an example of not having to do it for me but doing it anyway.

Holly was kind also, but it was conditional. It all bordered on how much I was willing to put up with her. Holly wanted to be a star, had daddy issues, and didn't like competing with other women. If she ever had feelings for me, she kept them so squelched inside of her that it confused me. Her kindness came off as insincere affection, the kind of flirtiness that she could lob at anyone at any given time.

She never made me feel special.

But Eve makes me feel special, and I try my best to return the favor. We think alike, we have the same goals and dreams. We have similar outlooks on life. We are cut from the same cloth.

But I also cannot forget that, once upon a time, Eve was just like Holly. She didn't see what I had to offer. I'm one of those guys who doesn't try to sell himself, and only after the passage of time do women I'm involved with realize what I am worth. I say this because, at my core, I am still the same person, with the same values intact for the most part. I don't change much. When I do change, it is in significant ways, but the one thing I hear often is that I am still the same person I used to be. This may sound bad, but I see it as my fixed qualities asserting themselves. In other words, you can count on me to be me, always and forever.

I stay the steady course, and after a while past loves and flings see that I have always been sure of myself, certain of my destiny, of what I want out of life. That can have a soothing effect on people around me, because it makes them feel that there is at least one thing in the world that hasn't been beaten down by the harshness of living.

I can guarantee you right now: no matter what I am doing to make my bread and butter in ten years time, I will still be writing, drawing, making music, thinking politically to the left, and sticking it to those who uphold the status quo. Those things will not change, unless I am somehow brainwashed. The various females in my life will marry, have kids, and try out different careers and lifestyles, but I will be me, no matter what. They can set their watch to me, if they choose. They can rely on me to stay solid as a rock, never wavering, always standing my ground.

This is my promise to the world, that I will never turn my back on the things I stand for, because they really do mean something to me. None of this is a pose, or an affectation-- it's real.

I'm real.

Have a great weekend, folks!

TEARS

I know how to cry. I just don't know when to cry.

I have this pet theory that states: if I didn't hold back my tears, I would constantly sob, nonstop, without end, without reason. The tight rein I keep around my emotions are the only thing preventing me from total nervous collapse, or so my theory goes.

There are different kinds of tears-- tears of sorrow, for deaths of loved ones and mourning tragic events; tears of regret, when one wishes to change the course of the past; tears of joy, due to overwhelming relief and/or closure; and tears of laughter, my favorite kind, the ones that hint at the sorrow beneath the exterior...

Last night I cried, but I don't know how to classify those tears. They just snuck up on me, for no reason. Okay, maybe there was a catalyst-- alcohol, for example. In addition to being physically allergic to the stuff, another reason why I shun spirits is because they make me emotional beyond belief.

Eve and I were drinking Newcastle and talking. After watching that episode of The Simpsons where Mrs. Crabapple and Principal Skinner start dating, we reminisced about high school and the affairs that occurred between some of our CORE teachers. This led to our opinions on who our favorite teachers were.

I ended up taking the topic back as far as junior high, telling Eve about Mr. Pryor, my 7th Grade English teacher. He was the first teacher that ever told me that I was a good writer. He had this after-school literary magazine, Harmony, that he wanted me to be a part of, and I submitted to him everything that I had ever written up to that point. We adjourned for a few sessions and everything was going swimmingly until Mr. Pryor took an unexplained leave of absence.

Mr. Pryor was a student favorite, because he didn't bullshit and didn't even try to be liked. He was just an ornery, prickly personality, a young curmudgeon, with a sexual ambiguity that only fascinated us Magnet kids-- I never found out if he was bisexual or just gay.

So when his return to school kept being delayed month after month, spanning over a year's time, the natives got restless. We did not accept his regular substitute, Mrs. Craig, and counted the days, hours, minutes until Mr. Pryor came back.

Of course you know where this is going.

The day we found out that Mr. Pryor died of AIDS was a real bummer. At the time, I seemed more concerned with the fact that I was never going to see my writings again, but in the back of my head there was a lack of comprehension, and the best way to deal with such heavy news was to act like it didn't affect me.

But it did. Especially when our Magnet Cooridnator, a lovely woman by the name of Mrs. Truscott, told me that Mr. Pryor himself had wanted me to know that he thought I had talent as a writer. At the time I dismissed it as an adult trying to make a student feel better, but another part of me wanted to believe it was true, that Mr. Pryor had cared about my writing, and that maybe it gave him some sort of solace before he passed away.

That year, the Harmony staff memorialized him with odes and prose pieces. Someone even drew a picture of him. As part of the staff, I had the chance to preview the tribute page before it was printed. I appreciated the contributions of the others, but I felt like they were also maudlin and cheesy, too solemn or too reverential. As much as I liked Mr. Pryor, it seemed to me that canonization was something he would've been offended by, something that would've made him blush, or perhaps cause him to pop out of his casket and call "Bullshit!" right in front of his pallbearers.

So I wrote a poem, and I wish I could recall what its contents were. All I know is, the gist was simple: don't cry for this man. Instead, remember him, apply his lessons to your own life, and be grateful that you ever knew him at all.

Nearly two decades later, I finally cried for Mr. Pryor, on a moderately-temperatured winter evening, in the middle of an anecdote that I was relating to Eve. I couldn't help it-- the first droplet rolled down my face, and she saw it, and she was sufficiently surprised. And I tried to compose myself and pretend like it didn't happen, but she reached over to me and held me tight. She told me to let it go, and I did, all the while rambling on about "Oh, I don't know why I'm doing this, you'll have to excuse me..." and that sort of thing.

Eve has only seen me like this once, a long time ago, when we were in her room, baring our souls to each other, revealing deep dark secrets. She cried on me that night, and I was totally unprepared for the display. I responded with some sadness of my own, and we were even.

As we left my apartment and drove over to The Garage, she told me that she'd cried during therapy earlier in the week. It was a breakthrough, and it also explained why she didn't call me later on that night-- she was too drained to do it. Maybe she thought I wouldn't understand, but here I was, crying in her arms, wondering why the death of a middle school English teacher from years before made me sad.

I think the looks she gave me in the wake of my outburst said it all: she was sort of proud of me, for not trying to be so macho, for not trying to pretend like it didn't affect me, for showing some weakness... for being open.

Two fucked-up individuals like Eve and I understand each other in more than surface ways-- we feel each other's pain because we still carry a lot of it with us. Her therapy session was a breakthrough because she was able to identify the root of her melancholy-- her relationship with her step-mother, who always made her feel unwanted and unloved. Now that she knows the root cause, she can go about trying to repair the damage in her soul, and I know what that feels like, to finally be able to articulate feelings that once seemed unmanageable and disordered.

My therapy sessions consist of writing in this blog, playing music, and trying to find reasonable escapes from my problems. I've got a long way to go, but I feel like I'm getting there.

It's a scary thing, to expose vulnerability to someone who, only half a year ago, I swore I would never speak to again. And yet, when I write, I will reveal things about myself that some people find disturbingly candid, way too frank for blog pages. I write sometimes as if I am not afraid to be judged, and that's because I know there are far worse things in life than being judged by a bunch if people that I barely know.

It's terrifying to trust someone enough that you can show them your less-than-jovial side. And yet, lately I've been doing it a lot. I cried when I spoke to Anna not too long ago. Once again, I didn't know why I was crying. All I knew was that I was scared of losing her to a disease, and it made me realize that there are many things I have yet to tell her. The thought of not having Anna around to confide in and share with shook me up a bit. And so I let my guard down, albeit over the phone, and let the tears flow.

Like I said, I can't categorize these tears. Are they the residue from the last four years of heartache and confusion? Are they portents of things to come? Are they manifestations of the chaos in my own life? A longing to be young again, maybe?

I don't know.

All I know is, I felt better afterwards, and we laughed and held each other and kissed and danced in the night slowly, trusting each other invisibly, knowing each other instinctively...

She's going to be busy for the next few days, tending to Christmas parties and obligations. I have a few of my own that I have to take care of, and maybe we will spend one day this weekend together, decorating a tree, watching Christmas DVDs-- Eve has vowed to make me watch It's A Wonderful Life because I admitted that I'd never seen the movie all the way through. I recommended Bad Santa, and we agreed to have a marathon sometime soon, while huddled beneath blankets sipping eggnog and absorbed in each other's company.

I guess last night was a breakthrough for me. Maybe it wasn't on the scale of Eve's breakthrough, but for me it was a considerable leap forward.

It was Progress.

Hope.

Optimism.

I think it'll all work out for the best.

RE-CHRISTENING

The quote from Alfred Jarry above is the inspiration for my blog house-cleaning today. I was originally going to cut out ALL of my links-- every single last one of them. If I'd had the balls to pull it off, I'm sure it would've been as radical as my accidental deletion of my Archives for the past two years. But would it have been as liberating?

Maybe... which is why I am contemplating finishing the job and losing all of the links by year's end. Even the blogs I really like, or the music sites that I cannot go one day without... they might be gone by 2005.

Why am I doing this? Because I'm no longer the person I was when I started this thing. I'm also thinking of getting rid of the Comments section, but that might be the one thing that I end up keeping-- I've never had a problem with people commenting on my blog. If anything, people have a problem with my reactions to their comments, which is why some people stopped making them a long time ago.

They felt that it was a trap, and they were right.

I don't have the problem of people leaving stupid comments or spam in my Comments box, simply because in the past I took such commenters to task for their sentiments quite openly on my blog. Nowadays only a select few bother to comment, which used to be a bad thing in my book. I see this as a good thing now, because the handful of folks who are considerate enough to let me know what they are thinking are all females whose respective blogs I adore. And let's face it-- some people should never comment, even if they have the right to do so.

I'm trying to redirect my blog energy because I have spent so much of my blogging being negative. I am finding this compulsion to be willfully insolent waning in me. This means that there is hope for me yet. I first noticed the change when I deleted my Archives-- I didn't mean to do it, I was just trying out new templates. But it was probably the best thing I could've ever done, because it set me free.

As a kid, I used to do this pretentious ritual where I'd destroy my writings, either by burning them or burying them. After a while, I learned to give them away to people who appreciated them, but I look back on it and see that it was actually an important routine for me. At the time, I was trying to be a bad-ass, showing people that I didn't give a fuck, that I could torch a poem that I'd spent hours composing just because I could. It was a literary display of machismo, if there is such a thing: "Look at me, I don't need no stinking papers to valdiate me!"

But when I killed off two years and half a million words on accident and didn't flinch... it was startling. It made me re-think everything. It helped me to write kinder entries, to post more compassionate blogs. It made me realize what an ass I've been, wallowing in the muck and the mire.

I still like the muck and the mire, as much as a pig relishes his slop. But I don't have to be so down and dirty all of the time. The love of a good woman, as cheesy as it sounds, also plays a big role-- I am happier than I have been in years, now that I am with Eve again. I don't deny the impact she is having on me. I've been in denial of how much I really needed her, how much it hurt me when she seemingly turned her back on the life she was capable of having just to be secure with a man she didn't really love.

That's why my posts in the first two years of this blog were unsentimental and unsparing, lacking empathy for those who lead with their hearts and not their heads. Any chance to ridicule those whose passions had consumed them was a chance for me to assert (in my own mind) a dominance over the things in my life that I had no control over.

I am no longer addicted to other people's misery, and I am finding it hard to stay interested in my own issues. I know I can be an evil bastard-- so why am I devoting so much blog time to proving it?

I will never lose my hypersensitivity. I stil get pissed off when people dismiss me glibly, and I can still make it rain when I feel like I've been wronged for no reason. But I don't expect to be perfect, and I don't expect changes to take effect overnight.

I haven't posted on Craig's List Rants and Raves in a month. I read it all the time, but I stopped posting hateful shit. Then, I just stopped posting on that board altogether. But I still read it, to remind myself of where my mentality was, where it can be if I lose momentum and focus... it's a guilty pleasure, what can I say?

It all pales in comparison to the emotions I share with Eve. She is so giving, so loving... it's hard to believe that we were at odds with each other not so long ago. Last night, she bought me a pack of cigarettes and a pizza. She knew I was broke, so she willingly did this for me. It's not the fact that she bought me smoke and food that has me all dewey-eyed-- it's the fact that I didn't ask her to do it, that she didn't have to do it and yet she did anyway.

Tonight, it's my turn to buy dinner and cancer sticks. She will play modest and refuse, but there's no stopping the reciprocation.

CHEESE ALERT: We sat on the couch, watching The Simpsons and exchanging tender kisses, each one softer than the last, our eyes closed in unison, the perfume of her delicate breath caressing the curve of my cheekbones, my fingers navigating a course through her thick mane, my lips planting wet flags of affection on the nape of her neck...

I got it bad, don't I?

It's about time.

Don't get me wrong-- we still keep up the pretense of being 'just friends'. I mentioned the Latina girl at my work that I'd had a crush on earlier this year, how she no longer works here, how I didn't get a chance to see her on her last day, how I suspect she left the job in a hurry due to unwanted advances from executives, how she gave me her phone number even though we couldn't understand each other's languages...

Eve told me to write her a speech and call her. I said "Sounds like a plan." But I know that I won't, and I think she knows it also. Eve likes to give me shit about that kind of stuff because, like a little girl who laughs when her daddy bumps her head against the wall, she likes taking the piss out of me. And, like the clown that I am, I play up that possibility.

However, if I actually did call Liz, and if I told Eve about it, she would be hurt. Terribly hurt. This is the main lesson I have learned after all this time.

We make each other laugh. She calls me a "vampire" and I call her a "werewolf"; I nag her about parallel parking, she gets on my case about my bad luck with automobiles; I tell her shocking anecdotes about my childhood, and she pretends that she is shocked to hear it; and we both play this game where we find funny-looking people on the street and say to each other "That's your girlfriend/boyfriend" just to see the other's reaction.

Sickening, isn't it? The Old Me would be ripping the New Me another asshole by now, going off about how I am selling myself short by investing my identity in someone else, playing into the co-dependence of a relationship, using it as a crutch because I cannot bear to stand alone...

Only thing is, I have never had a problem with going it alone. In fact, it's high time I switched gears and tried working with someone for a while. It might do me some good. No man is an island, or so the saying goes...

In short, I don't need a lot of links and a bunch of bells and whistles to make me feel good about myself anymore. I don't need a dozen comments waiting for me when I log on during my shift. That stuff never mattered-- it was the writing that got me through the tough moments, not the number of hits I received.

Everything else is trivia, but at the core is my soul. No banners can advertise that for me, no one link will bring that to the fore, no template change can take the place of tapping into the raw nerve that drives everything that I do...

And, if you decide that it's not worth commenting over, I won't hold it against you anymore.

Let me make a toast: to Love, and its power. May everyone in this life get at least one chance to feel it.

THE BLOG WASTE LAND

When I first started blogging, it was in response to several factors: boredom at my job; the urging of old friend "Fast Eddie"; and a mountain of self-loathing that was rising within me.

I started off the way everyone else does: naive, open-minded, clueless. I wandered through the blog-o-sphere, searching for likeminded folks. I found some, but it took a long time to make any meaningful connections.

I went through an extremely angry phase, where I visited websites simply to stir up shit. I left confrontational, acidic comments on people's blogs. My own posts were sometimes venomous and rancorous. This coincided with my being laid off, moving back home, cutting myself off from my friends, and feeling generally hopeless.

And now, I can't help but note the reversal of fortune. I am now a Happy Blogger.

I have nice things to say. I feel fine. Life is treating me as good as it can right now, considering what kind of messes I am constantly getting myself into... but wherever I browse for new blogs and new contacts, I find that the blog-o-sphere is becoming a waste land of sorts.

People are shutting down their blogs. Some people keep blogging but are forced to shut down their comments, thanks to spammers and stalkers. Others haven't got the time to write. And the moods and dispositions of formerly happy bloggers have turned sour.

I have alienated enough former readers to know why they are silent when they used to visit my blog every day and comment on my posts. I still read the blogs of people who have de-linked me, and it seems like everyone is miserable. There is no joy to be found in Blogville, I suppose.

Some bloggers carry on, doing the exact same thing that they were doing when I first came across them. Progress is stagnant for these bloggers-- they have no desire to transcend their mindsets. They are perfectly content to never change.

I've changed. But then again, the more things change the more they stay the same.

I'm still as ornery as ever. I'm still quick to blast someone with faulty logic or unsound arguments. I won't hesitate to shove my opinions down someone else's throat.

I guess I've just mellowed out a bit.

Love has something to do with it, yes. I will admit as much. It's funny how something like that will mellow you out. The world is still fucked up and insane, and it is perhaps even more so now that Bush has another four years on us. I still care about inequities and injustices and outrages... but I've spent so much of the past two or three years railing against them that I think I need to take a break and enjoy life for a spell.

I'm not going to stop blogging-- I can't. It's in me, like poison in my bloodstream. I am tainted. I am afflicted with the disease, seeking the comfort that confessional writing provides. But I know that my posts will be weak and soft, so long as things between Eve and I remain normal, or at least as normal as we make them out to be.

Eve is like me-- she wants to be happy but can never really take her eye off of the things happening on the sidelines. She can't help but notice how fucked up things are. But her approach is the opposite of mine: she prefers to run away, hoping to distance herself from the disturbing aspects of humanity. I tend to wallow in the disturbances, almost as if I thrive on suffering and chaos. I am looking for gold in the cesspools, and she can't understand why I don't get sick from the stench.

Because I love her, I am beginning to realize that maybe I should run away occasionally. I can run away with her. I will live to fight another day by doing this. I will live to love her another night by not always going off into cyber-battle with perceived enemies.

She gets a kick out of my argumentative nature, but I know she would prefer if I just rested my head on her shoulder and said nothing. She knows that I read the papers, and she and I agree on politics for the most part, but she sees it as a futile endeavor, to attempt to change the world through sheer will. She would rather strive to make her own life more palatable, more tolerable.

I need to listen to her regarding this. I need to stop trying to solve world problems and concentrate on making our lives more comfortable.

I am an Aquarius, so I will never outgrow this need to be the global humanitarian. I am a Libra rising, so my sense of imbalance and fairness will never be sated. But she is an Aries, and she runs the show. And I am the air that makes her fire burn, and she is the fire that consumes me and keeps me warm. She is my long-lost muse, and I am the first man she ever loved. We are reunited, and we intend to make something of ourselves.

The both of us have a lot to prove, in that respect.

She doesn't go online, she doesn't read my blog (hell, she doesn't even know or care what a blog is) and she doesn't have the time or resources to check her e-mail consistently. She is cyber-illiterate, and there is something endearing about that.

She paints with watercolors and acrylics on small canvases. I told her that, when she finishes her next painting, I want to hang it up on my wall. I would love to paint her a picture. I wonder what kind of things I would paint: would I indulge my dark id and depict the grotesques of my imagination? Or would I create something pastoral and serene?

As I roam this blog waste land, I see the ruins of greatness, I see once-proud strongholds left in ashes, I see the remains of virtual empires abandoned like shanties in the ghettoes of the 'real world'. I see people retreating, leaving the country for the solace of their former homelands. I see people regrouping, replanning, remapping the course. I see people nursing their wounds, looking for alternatives. I see animals hiding in their caves.

There but for the grace of God go I. You don't know how much I relate to all of that.

I'm not going anywhere, but pardon me if I seem a little bit different for the next few weeks. I am experiencing something that I haven't felt in a long time, and it is almost as if it is brand new to me, even though I have felt this way many times before.

One day I will rage again, I am sure of it. It's not like I am suddenly not angry anymore. I just don't have anything to be angry about right now. I should, but I don't. And that's okay.

Amidst the sorrow of a land mourning the death of its political ideals, I am a soldier, no longer walking alone. The cross is born across my shield, my armor, and I am weary from crusades past and present. By my side is the woman whom I fought long and hard to reclaim, but it was only when I had given up all hope that she returned to me.

I am sounding a little pretentious here, maybe a bit too mythological for my own good, so I will quote one more time from Joseph Campbell. I used this quote as my blog slogan for a long time:

"FOLLOW YOUR BLISS"

There was also the quote from Willy Wonka, one that I stopped using after someone informed me that another blog was using it:

"WE ARE THE MUSIC MAKERS, AND WE ARE THE DREAMERS OF DREAMS"

Sage advice. It's about time I followed it. What took me so long? Why did I have to go through so much in order to realize that I should've been applying those mottos to myself all along?

Forgive me, folks, for the times when I get cheesy, because it will happen. Believe you me, it will happen. It will be embarrassing, and you'll be wishing that I was mad and outraged again in no time. I'm just warning you.

I am trying to move forward, to make progress. I am thinking of the future. I am stuck in my thoughts as they look forward into time that hasn't yet elapsed.

I am confounded by my own joy. I cannot get my head around it.

No matter. I will embrace it, for all it is worth.

Have a nice day, people. Keep your heads up-- as the good book says, this too shall pass.

SOMETHING BETTER BEGINNING

"Is this the start of another heartbreaker
or something better beginning?"

--The Kinks, "Something Better Beginning"

Yesterday, as Bro Man and Eve sat in my living room, drinking beers and cracking jokes, getting ready to watch The Simpsons with me, as I stood in front of the toilet ready to drain myself of the alcohol I'd been imbibing, I suddenly felt the prescence of God, or a god, or just a feeling of peace and love, and I looked up at the ceiling, drunk as I was, and I whispered, "Thank you God. I'm really happy right now. Thank you."

She and I have been inseparable. Friday night, she didn't have to work the next day, and we had a go at it, and we didn't get to sleep until 6 in the morning. Around 10:30 AM I was ready for another round, and (amazingly) she was game.

We lolled around in bed until 2:30 in the afternoon. Do you know how long it has been since I lazed about in bed with a girl? Too long. It's one of life's most sublime pleasures, really.

I know, I'm not as readable when I'm happy as when I'm in despair. I lack the hunger and the accuracy of being angry. But I'm just trying to enjoy it for what it is right now, because life is nothing to let pass by, and I still can't quite believe that Eve and I are back in each other's periphery.

We finished a lot of animation work on Saturday. She felt proud because she completed an entire scene by herself, without my assistance. It was incredible to behold. I was so proud of her. She was smiling from ear to ear, laughing that laugh that she possesses, her happiness contagious and damning.

We paid a short visit to The Droogie and his new squeeze. It was a lot of fun, if a bit short-lived. I may be starting up a comic strip on her personal website, or perhaps a newer version of my old "DEAR SEX" column. She has asked me if I want to contribute, and I said "yes".

Saturday night, Eve and I went back to my place, but this time we opened up the futon in my living room and watched Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers on DVD until we fell asleep. No hanky-panky, no all-night marathons... just warm kisses, plenty of blankets, a plethora of pillows, and the two of us, holding each other tight.

The next morning, I turned on the radio and listened to The Beatles on KCSN. She showed me how to make coffee without a coffee maker. We lazed around some more, talking about our lives, how different things would be if we had stayed together in high school, how we might be mortal enemies right now if our relationship hadn't been aborted as it was. We talked about how much both of us have grown, how much we still have to learn, and (most importantly) we made each other laugh.

She went to her mother's house, to bake Christmas cookies. I called up Bro Man and told him to stop by the pad to hang out. When he showed up, Eve called and informed me that she was done hanging out with her mom. I told her to come by, and to bring her laundry.

We all watched The Simpsons and had a grand old time. Bro Man and Eve technically have known each other longer than Eve and I or Bro Man and I, so it was like a small family reunion. She had to leave, of course, because she has to get up so early for work, but she left with a load of clean laundry and my kiss on her lips.

I'm still looking for the "catch", but it doesn't stop me from grinning, from holding her in my arms and reading her mind, from being inspired by her imagination to create works of art...

I quoted the brilliant Ray Davies at the beginning of this piece, but I will quote Morrissey at its end. And wouldn't you know it, it's the one line from a Smiths song that doesn't bring me down or make me mope.

"I just might die with a smile on my face after all..."

--"That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore", Meat Is Murder

I can face the future with a different kind of confidence. And the only thing I can do is look up at the sky and give thanks, whether it be to God or Allah or Buddha or The Universe...

I just gotta thank somebody, something, for this joy I am experiencing.

How about if I thank you blog readers out there, for being an audience, for letting me vent, for tolerating to my twisted posts and skewed views?

That would be nice.

Thank you, readers. Have a nice day, okay?

I SHOULD BE IN BED, NOT HERE AT WORK

I wrote a post for En Mass earlier, and I think it has sort of drained me. Either that, or I have nothing new to say.

Everything is even-keel right now.

So let me quote from John Waters, who was interviewed in the City Beat magazine in regards to his brand new Christmas album:

"Why didn't Ol' Dirty Bastard ever do a Christmas album? Wouldn't that have been good?"

I gotta admit-- that would've been great.

I didn't eulogize the late Russell Jones when he died last month, and I should have: Ol' Dirty Bastard was a true original, a one-of-a-kind character that comes along every now and then, to deflate everyone else's seriousness.

When I remember the first time I ever heard Wu-Tang Clan, I think of ODB. It was his voice that stood out the most. He sounded weird, due to the gold-plated diamond-encrusted vampire grill he wore while rapping. He was always out of breath and had the most unique slang. And that voice... it was as if Screamin' Jay Hawkins had been reincarnated as an ill MC.

Of course, over time it became clear that Dirty wasn't the greatest rapper out there, and that he had a flair for getting into deep doo-doo that would rival both Robert Downey Jr. and Flavor Flav. But I still loved his style.

And the name... he was an Ol' Dirty Bastard because, as fellow Wu-Tanger Method Man put it so eloquently, "there ain't no father to his style..." It's like he woke up one morning and knew how to rap. He wasn't that old, but he was definitely dirty, and that's what I liked about him.

It's a shame that he went out the way he did, owing thousands of dollars to creditors, paying child support out the ass for his scores of illegitimate children, being hounded by the press and the cops and his fans, all the while straining his relationship with the Wu, whom he felt betrayed him by not visiting him enough when he was locked up.

We all knew that Dirty's number was due to get called up; it was just a matter of time. ODB was too big for this world. He was a loud, drunken mess of a man who thought he knew how to sing and apologized for his language after delivering expletive-laden diatribes at his babies' mamas, NYC cops, and rival rap groups.

He was the guy who did an interview with MTV's Kurt Loder, showing him where he used to go to collect welfare. On a whim, he tried out his old ID, and it worked! He received some money from the government on camera and thought nothing of it. The IRS didn't think it was funny, but I did. A lot of people thought ODB pulled that stunt on purpose, but I knew that it was one of those things that happens to a guy like him.

ODB was the guy who stormed the stage at the Grammys one year, talking about how Wu-Tang is "for the kids" and that they should've won the rap award. Too bad he chose Shaun Colvin's acceptance speech to deliver his incoherent tirade.

ODB was the guy who cursed out the cops at a press conference after he had been wrongfully arrested for a crime. He used the moment to shout out all nine members of Wu-Tang, which I thought was amazing.

They don't make 'em like that anymore. Dirty, for all his horrible flaws and faults, was an honest man, swimming with sharks, slithering alongside the snakes. But he himself wasn't a two-faced liar with an agenda. No, Ol' Dirty Bastard was too honest for this world. You could tell that this was a man who felt uncomfortable lying to people, so he figured he'd rather be truthful and suffer the consequences than to lie and get away with it.

He was extremely likable and well-known. He was the Wu's true star, their soul, their anarchic spirit. He was the clown, the trickster, the rapper with the best name and the best voice but not the best rhymes... although sometimes Dirty could kick some great shit.

I think of "Shame On A Nigga" from the 36 Chambers debut CD. He had the majority of the verses on that cut, with Meth and Raekwon giving support. But it was ODB's song all the way:

I come with that old loco style
for my vocals
Couldn't peep it like a pair of bifocals
I'm no joker, play me as a toker
I'll pee on you like a house on fire-- smoke ya!
Crews be actin' like they gangs, anyway
Be like, "Warriors! Come out and play-yay!"
Dirty, I get into shit, I let it out like diarrhea
Got burnt once, but that was only gonorrhea
Dirty, I keep shit stinks in my drawers
So I can get fzza-funky for yah
Murder, taste the flame of the Wu-Tang RAHH!
Here comes the Tiger vs Crane!
I'll be like wild with my style
Punk! You playing me, chump, you get DUMPED
WU! Is comin THROUGH! At a theatre near YOU!
And get funk like a SHOE!

R.I.P. ODB-- And shame on everyone else for never recognizing his fractured genius.

Have a nice weekend, everyone!

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WISE DROOGIE

I hadn't paid a visit to the Droogie in a while, so after working at The Garage on still more retouches and additions, I called him up and we sat down and shot the shit and smoked and chilled.

Seems that Droogie has been busy building an aquarium with his two sons, as well as finding happiness with a woman known as _____. It's about time, I figured: Droogie survived a devastating car accident approximately a decade ago, and is still around, walking tall (even if it is with the aid of a cane).

His self-esteem was shot during those years. Hard rehabilitation, pain-wracked waking existence, well-laid plans put on hold until full recovery... He spent the better part of those years either laid up in the hospital or in a wheelchair.

He learned how to work Photoshop in all that down time, and now he's a fucking master. Check out the link-- you'll be amazed at his skill.

He got me into Photoshop. One day, he saw me doodling in the Network Operation Center where the both of us worked. He took a bullshit piece of work that I'd scribbled out on a sheet of notebook paper, took it home, scanned it into his computer, ERASED ALL THE BLUE NOTEBOOK LINES, and colored my drawings.

The end result was spectacular. I'd never seen my work look like that, all finished and professional-looking. He sparked a fire in my mind, and soon I was beginning to dabble in using Photoshop.

We sat and talked about our respective lovelives while listening to Black Sabbath. Droogie is mad old-school, having served as a recording engineer during the late '80s zenith of American hair metal bands. He twisted knobs for the likes of Guns 'N' Roses, Slaughter, and L.A. Guns. He hung out with Lemmy from Motorhead and the drummer from Faith No More, drinking heavily and wearing tight leather pants. He has seen them come and go more often than a kid like me has had hot bowls to smoke.

He has great stories to tell, but he also has some words of advice, based on his 48 years in this game called Life.

"Listen, kid," he said to me, as he lit up another Winston, "You gotta get all this 'love/in love' shit out of your system. When you get to be my age, you start to realize that it's not about 'being in love'. That's adolescent shit. That's what you feel when you are a teenager and you haven't ever felt like that before. You're a man, now, Droogie"-- that's our shared address to each other, taken from the classic movie A Clockwork Orange "--and as a man, you don't need to prove anything. You just need to be you, which I know is not hard for you to do."

"I know what you mean," I said, sipping on a Coke, "Believe me, I know. Eve and I are trying not to get ahead of ourselves. I don't know what all of this means, but I'm happy right now, and I want to enjoy every minute of it."

"Same here," he said. "I'm just enjoying the ride. It's been good."

"Good for you," I said. "Remember all those times back in the NOC when I kept telling you to just go out there and meet someone and throw caution to the wind? Sounds to me like you are finally doing that. I'm happy for you, Droog. Honestly."

"Likewise," Droogie replied, non-plussed, "I remember how much you used to talk about Eve when we were in the NOC. I recall that I once told you that you weren't over her, and you tried to play it off like it wasn't a big deal. But I could read it on your face even back then. You're an ace bullshitter, Droogie-- that's what I love about ya --but you couldn't hide that. So it makes me happy to hear that you and she are redicovering each other."

"I guess I just didn't want to admit it, because it kinda hurt," I said. "It wasn't an easy thing for me to deal with, but I got through... and now... now, I've been thrown the ultimate curveball. I just can't quite believe that we are back in each other's lives. And we're not picking up where we left off either. Instead, we're forging something else here. It's more like a friendship, but we have our moments."

"Sounds fine to me," Droogie said, as he drank his rum & Coke, finishing his glass.

We chatted about politics, about music, about mutual friends and acquaintances. I told him that Eve wanted to meet him, because I had talked him up so much to her. Eve appreciates artistic talent, and I know she would be blown away by Droogie's Photoshop creations. Since she is also learning the program, he could answer any questions she has about how to do this or that.

Droogie in turn let me know that ______ might be interested in providing me with a forum, on her personal blog and other sites, where I can draw a weekly (or at least regularly featured) comic strip. I told him I was game.

We are probably going to get together over the weekend, to talk some more, and also to trade ideas and swap secrets. Maybe we might watch some DVDs-- he is a big fan of Dead Man, the Jim Jarmusch movie that I turned him onto a few years back, starring Johnny Depp. We might end up checking that one out, as I am far from tired of such a great flick.

We will also talk shop, because when the animation website is up and running I am hoping he can help out with some cool designs and templates. He has seen the almost-finished product, and thinks it's fucking hilarious.

He dropped me off at work, and I told him I would call him later in the week to schedule a day when I can bring the website templates that I have over to his place, where he can work his magic.

As I walked away, I looked over at him and said, "Looks like we paid our dues, doesn't it?"

He laughed riotously. "Yeah, we sure did, Droog. See ya later."

I got into my office exactly on time. I didn't miss a beat. Another 8 hours to go, then I go home and get some sleep. After that, I repeat the whole cycle all over again.

It's all good. It really is.

SLEEPLESS

The worst thing that feminism ever did was convince a generation of young men that women are the same as men.

They are not.

I didn't say they were less than men, nor did I say they were better or superior to men.

I'm just a slow learner, and I guess I still don't know what to say or do in certain situations.

Then again, I'm not a mind reader. Does that line sound familiar, ladies?

It's really no big thing, but Eve was feeling under the weather today and stopped by The Garage. She looked like she was mad at me, and I was right. She was.

It was a funny reason to be upset, but one that cuts right down to her essence: the night before, at my show, I had asked her to videotape the show with my camera. She joked about how I had been planning all night to spring it on her.

Of course, she was right-- I had been planning on sticking her with camera duty. But I tried to play it off like I hadn't, and when she called me on it I went into Apologetic Mode.

"Oh, well, if you don't want to do it, I don't want to force you..."

"I'm kidding. I'd love to film it."

It was too late-- I was already feeling guilty. You see, I sometimes have this tendency to order people around like they work for me. I felt like I'd stepped over the line. Eve kept saying it was okay.

So, anyway, she told me she was mad because she overheard me telling Dave the guitarist that Bro Man was the one who was going to operate the camera. It made her feel useless, to hear that. Never mind that she ended up filming the majority of the show, and that her footage was infinitely better than Bro Man's drunken snapshots and roving focus...

I didn't understand why she was mad. Normally, this is where I start to dissect the dillemma to the point that she gets frustrated with me and walks away. But this time I decided to try a different approach.

"I didn't realize that you would take it that way. I'm sorry."

She felt a little better.

I forget that, even as she puts on this air of being strong and brave and bold (as Aries girls are wont to do), underneath it all she is still sensitive, and still yearns to feel like her contributions matter.

"It's this thing with getting credit that I have," she said to me. "I always feel like I get shafted."

"I know what you mean," I said. And I do-- often times I feel like my ideas are not being heard, and it makes me crazy.

We watched the footage. I looked at her wearily-- It's my fault she's sick, I thought. I dragged her out on the town with me, got her drunk, and now...

"Were you late to work?" I asked.

"No, I made it on time," she said.

I felt less guilty.

But I think I'll wait until the weekend before we get together again. We bring out the best and the worst in each other. Maybe tomorrow I will take a bus over to her place and bring some chicken soup... oh wait, she's a vegetarian. Fuck it, I'll bring her some Top Ramen.

I haven't slept since Sunday night.

THAT'LL BE THE DAY

Just like you, I was always a bit off-put by Buddy Holly.

The dude had horn-rimmed glasses, sang in a hiccupy voice, and looked like the kind of guy who got pushed around in high school.

I saw the movie bio with Gary Busey, and I remember two things: (1) The movie was really good, with Busey doing a fine job, and (two) it didn't do much to change my estimation of Holly, except in regards to certain details of his life. But I still thought he was a geek.

Then I saw La Bamba, a movie that made Ritchie Valens seem like he was a stud. Take a look at any available photo of the real Ritchie Valens and you'll see that this is not so. The movie, as entertaining as it was, tended to stretch the truth concerning these rock gods from the '50s. They all looked too hip, way hipper than the archival documentary footage that I'd seen would suggest. Hollywood scored another victory for revisionism.

But I was intrigued by Marshall Crenshaw's small role as Buddy Holly. Crenshaw, up to that point, was better known as both a solo artist and the man who portrayed John Lennon in the stage production of Beatlemania! In the movie La Bamba, he plays "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" during his last concert. The guitar solo was a crackling, melodic bebop that stayed in my head for weeks afterward.

Seems that I'd never heard this Holly song. I was so used to hearing "That'll Be The Day" and "Oh Boy!" on the radio that I ruled out the possibility of Buddy Holly being capable of anything more.

Well, I'm here to tell you-- there's something else.

Don't know why I decided to Google the name "Buddy Holly". It certainly wasn't because of the funny Weezer song, and there has been nothing in the papers or the news recently that ties in with his birth or death. But I Googled him anyway, and I found The Apartment Tapes.

These were Buddy Holly's last recordings, made on a two-inch Ampex reel-to-reel in his apartment in New York weeks before The Day The Music Died. I found some playable audio files and listened to them.

I was fucking blown away, almost driven to tears at their brilliance, their pop simplicity, their perfect composition. And I realized right then and there that Buddy Holly was, perhaps, the most important figure in all of rock and roll history.

He was a songwriter of a caliber we will never know, due to his untimely demise. Towards the end, his songs were getting more sophisticated. They weren't the goofy, poppy singles that I grew to resent thanks to repetitive airplay on oldies stations. They were personal and illuminating mini-treatises that dared to pry introspectively into the mind of their creator.

He was ahead of his time in terms of recording music, the Brian Wilson of his day. He was one of the first artists to immerse himself completely in the studio process, making his recordings sound better than the rest of the rock and rollers of the era. Even the demos from The Apartment Tapes sound incredibly clean and crisp-- he only used one microphone for them, and yet they sound like modern studio tracks, with no analog tape hiss or noise. On those tapes, it's just Holly's voice and his guitar. Certain versions of these never-officially-released bootlegs contain cheesy overdubs done by members of Holly's backing band The Crickets, but otherwise it's Buddy's show, and he gets so down and deep on these tapes that it's a minor miracle they exist at all.

He was probably the biggest influence on The Beatles, more so than Elvis, Carl Perkins, or Chuck Berry. For starters, the name "Beatles" is a direct play on the name "Crickets". Another thing: Ever heard their version of Holly's "Words Of Love"? They sound like they studied Buddy Holly intensely. And the Lennon/Holly connection is not limited to Marshall Crenshaw; their birthdays were two days apart, and if you look at pictures of Holly with his glasses off he even resembles Lennon in a vague manner. And, they both had riveting, hair-raising voices that you either loved or hated.

So now I would like to rattle off some of my favorite Buddy Holly moments and/or trivia bits:

The switch to F during "Peggy Sue" where he sings "pretty pretty pretty pretty Peggy Sue" is so damn exciting to listen to that I am one day contemplating covering the song with an able backing band. "Peggy Sue" is also one bear of a rock song, with its marching drum roll cadence and swashbuckling rhythm-guitar histrionics.

The Apartment Tapes feature a cover of that gay-ass song from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, "Love Is Strange". I guess I shouldn't be so harsh, but I got played out over that song long ago. Too many rotations on KRTH 101 dulled the effect of that song, with it's "how do you call your loverboy" interlude and kinky guitar riffs. But Holly's version is fucking awesome, stripped down like a Velvet Underground song, solemn in its conviction, almost like a prayer. No gimmicky bullshit, no silly talking asides, just three chords and a hell of a voice.

I was always a fan of the song "Everyday" because of its delicate melody and wistful lyrics. It's one of the few times when his hiccup singing style actually transcended itself. "Love like yours will surely find my way, a-hey, a-hey hey..."

I guess I can count Don Maclean's "American Pie" as a Buddy Holly moment, because the song is meaningless unless you are moved by the imagery of the first and last verses. The part that always seems to kill me is the verse about his death:


"But February made me shiver
with every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
when I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The Day The Music Died..."


I'm a big pussy when it comes to dead rock stars-- I am literally tearing up as I write about this. I don't know why it kills me when cool rock stars die prematurely. Maybe it's because it seems like they still had something to offer the world, but they've been cut short. I mean, shit, I was pretty sad over Ol' Dirty Bastard dying recently, even if it wasn't The Day The Hip-Hop Stopped.

But back to "American Pie": Maclean takes us through a long and belabored summation of rock and roll up to the '70s, then travels back to what he considered the '50s equivalent of the JFK assassination...


"I went down to the sacred store
where I'd heard the music years before
but the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The Day The Music Died..."


Maclean, of course, was referring to Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper when he invoked the Holy Trinity. And now I understand why that day was such a bummer for so many people, why it was called The Day The Music Died.

Like JFK's murder, like John Lennon's murder, like the untimely death of anyone with a shred of talent and soul, the loss cuts straight through the heart, to the bone. It's as if we can never go home again. The innocence is lost, the clock can no longer be turned backwards. Our heroes are proven to be fallible, and we as individuals must continue our respective journeys, with no further assistance from the people who made large portions of our lives both bearable and tolerable. Like growing up and throwing out your security blanket or your favorite teddy bear, you have to come to grips with the growth in your life and let go of the things that you once used as crutches. You have to learn to go it alone.

Holly's death was symbolic of the death of the '50s. The simple times were becoming more complicated, the illusions of prosperity and peace merely a facade, hiding the dark underbelly of the American Dream but not for long. The '60s came and turned everyone's minds inside out, and from there it's just been one stumbling block after another in our collective human path to progress.

Buddy Holly, you are my new hero. It took three decades for me to get it, but I know now what you meant, and I know what it means to me, right now, in this transitional time in my life, where so many things are pulling at me from different directions that I have no choice but to listen to your voice, to absorb every note from your guitar, every hiccup in your throat...

I leave you with the lyrics to the one song on The Apartment Tapes that truly converted me over to the Church of Buddy. The music is extraordinary, and the words are a peek into what Holly was planning in the future-- no more silly love songs, and more of an exploration of the sweet pain and joyous ache that accompanies growing older.

The song is a pretty little ditty entitled "Learning The Game":


Hearts that are broken and love that’s untrue
These go with learning the game

When you love her and she doesn’t love you
You’re only learning the game

When she says that you’re the only one she’ll ever love
Then you find that you are not the one she’s thinking of

Feeling so sad and you’re all alone and blue
That’s when you’re learning the game

Have a nice day, people.