fun

This week has been a marathon of activity, even by my hyperactive standards. Every day this week has been devoted to band rehearsal of some variety, whether it be playing bass in two bands, guitar work for an upcoming acoustic show, or compiling beats for a hobby-turned-serious-project. I have had virtually no down time.

Band #1: We're breaking in a new drummer, in this case a long-time collaborator known as "Buddhah". I played with Buddah in a band a few years ago and thought of him when The Wolf Man left on good terms.

Wolfie has now fallen in love with Cool Edit Pro, the ancient yet highly user-friendly audio program that predates Pro Tools. Now, he can sniff his septum dry all night long while sitting in front of a computer monitor playing virtual drums.

As for Buddah, he is a quick study and a better fit for this type of music. I have always maintained some distance from the material, and not because I find it beneath me. Rather, I find that my patented detachment serves me well in this band because I am not the "leader", as it were. I just play bass.

I told them I was taking a break at the end of the month. They were cool with it but they also threw out an offer to play some guy's party in Marina del Rey during the first week of May. I might do it, just for yuks.

Band #2: A late '70s-style pogo-dancin' kind of punk band-- not hardcore at all, reminiscent of X and early Siouxsie & The Banshees. We have no gigs planned until the end of May, which is fine by me. This week I have only been able to do one practice with them, as the other projects take precedence. But I look forward to playing a show with them soon, to see if this baby has some legs.

I imagine that I will keep things at a low simmer, doing the once-a-week thing so that I don't feel pressured about having to schedule everything around practice times. They are cool people-- I'm the baby in the band at age 32, and they are not in it for fame or fortune at all. Like Tony Montana once said in the movie Scarface: "I did it for fun."

Only Tony was talking about murder, not music. But music can be murder sometimes.

Band #3: It's not really a band I'm rehearsing with, but a loose collective of people who know Ellen, the girl I was playing with last year. She has a gig lined up at The Rainbow at month's end, and I got suckered into playing guitar for her.

This is the one that I can do without. I feel bad about saying it but yet I allow myself to get guilted into playing with her. That's because Ellen is not a bad person. Problem is, she isn't very interesting either.

Her songs are pedestrian, her voice is below par, her stage presence is non-existent, and her head is in the clouds, bursting with focused optimism on her "career".

I have a weird feeling that one day she will do something someday, but I'm not sure it has to do with music. It's as if she is so intent on becoming a star that she hasn't considered any alternatives at all.

I cannot bring myself to bag on it, no matter how futile it seems to me. I guess it's because I know the same can be said about me, in regards to my own art and vision. I'm sure some people shake their heads at me and say, "How pathetic. He still thinks he's going to make it."

Of course, I'm not trying to "make it". I'm trying to get better at what I do so that if I ever get the opportunity to demonstrate what I know, I'll be prepared. Playing with other musicians helps me to get over my monomaniacal tendencies concerning creativity.

It's like the sandbox when you were a kid: You have to play nice with the others, even if you think your mudpies are far tastier than someone else's mudpies.

After all, it's all about fun. Right?

Right. And I'm not having that much fun playing with Ellen. She has alienated so many people in the process of trying to realize a vision that has yet to materialize. The violin player and drummer she recruited have their doubts about her, I'm sure. They probably wonder what I'm doing playing with her.

I guess I am feeling sorry for her, and that does no one any good. But to be honest with her would not faze her. If I told her she sucked, she'd find some way of rationalizing it and continuing with her musical career. Nothing could derail her from that.

So I may as well help her as much as I can. I can show her how to play better. I can force her to play the songs over and over until they are perfect. I can try and instill my work ethic in her so that she can improve. Practice makes perfect, and she needs a lot of practice.

I'm just trying to help. After the acoustic show, I will have to tell her I'm too busy. But if she ever gets her act together, I would play with her again.


*/*


Last night, coming home from rehearsal, I got a speeding ticket. It was such a surprise, because I didn't even know the cop was behind me. Maybe if I'd been smoking pot while driving, I would have seen him coming. Instead, I was jazzed about how smoothly the practice went, and I was doing 50 in a 35 zone, not paying attention at all.

I was approaching a red light right before they stopped me. The cross traffic light was yellow, so I tried to do that thing where you time it so you don't have to stop all the way, catching the green as it flashes and keeping the pace even. But this time, the light hesitated, and I had to stop a bit abruptly, and with the front of my car extending into the crosswalk.

It was 11:30 in the evening, so there were no pedestrians, but the cops hit their lights as soon as the light went green. I was startled, because I literally had no idea that they were directly behind me.

When the cop approached my car, I thought it was in regards to my failure to make a complete stop, but he told me I was speeding. That means they'd been following me for some time.

I recognized the cop as the one who pulled me over last Fourth of July for having my license plate displayed on my windshield. I explained that I was so amped up from rehearsal that I didn't realize I was speeding. He told me that I wasn't driving recklessly but that he had to pull me over.

He wrote me a ticket. I was not charged with being guilty of an infraction, and the failure to fully stop was not mentioned. Most likely he will not show up for the court date, so I think I will receive some leniency provided I show up in court.

Before he issued me the ticket, he asked me, "So what do you play?"

"Uh, bass."

"Cool."

"Yeah, I got it in the trunk. We jammed out tonight."

"Drive carefully."

That wasn't so bad. But when I got home and discovered that my phone was unable to make outgoing calls, I got a little pissed off. No, wait... I got VERY pissed off.


*/*


I woke up early and called the phone company. I discovered that my account was suspended for non-payment of an old account. This made me scratch my head, because as far as I knew this old account was getting paid in $50 increments every month, through a collection agency. No letter of disconnection was ever received, and the one time they called me and left a vague message was a disaster: I returned their call, only to be rudely told by the operator that I had called the wrong department and that I couldn't be transferred to the proper one.

They gave me the runaround, so I left it at that. Fast-forward to this morning-- I called the company three times total; the first time I got so irate at the operator that I hung up, knowing that I could call back and receive a different customer service person; the second time, I was quoted an account balance that was significantly lower than what the first operator told me; and by the end of the third call, I was confronted with the facts:

--I had not one, not two, but three phone accounts in varying states of delinquency. I should not have ever been allowed to get a fourth, and yet when I set up the plan for the present number I have, these accounts were never mentioned.

--The account that triggered my phone disconnection was not the one I'd been paying off monthly. It was from three years ago, when I was moving around here and there.

--In addition to being without a phone for the next week, I was expected to pay a restoral fee of $125.

Add to all of this the fact that I was disconnected at the beginning of April because one of their authorized payment centers screwed up, and you have the recipe for Steamed Jimi at your fingertips.

After nearly an hour and a half on the phone and a dozen transfers to other departments, I finally managed to skirt past the idiotic service people (yes, they have a thankless job, but some of them should really learn to use their workplace software programs) and talk to a supervisor, who not only knew what I was talking about but agreed to let me have my phone service back for the rest of the week under the condition that I get this account paid off by next Friday.

She confirmed what I already knew: Phone company workers in a rush to get a "sale" for establishing a new account overlooked my past delinquencies in an attempt to get more revenue. Then, around tax time, they scour the books and shake down anyone with so much as two pennies outstanding.

This is a reasonable theory for me to formulate, since the phone companies are hurting from the proliferation of cel phones. I think they were desperate enough to sign me up with phone service despite my delinquencies, and now they are desperate enough to demand their pound of flesh by using tactics one step below that of a Mafioso.

I mean, cutting my current phone line off... because of a phone line I had over three years ago? Granted, I was hard to get a hold of in those nomadic days, but I've had this current number for almost two years. During that time, no one from the phone company has told me of the existence of these accounts, and I must admit that I am not so good at remembering these types of things.

This was not a fun excursion at all, but luckily I have dealt with these bastards before. I was curt and surly with the subordinate "managers", but changed my tone when the supervisor who could get me what I wanted came on the phone.

I had said to the operator, "Let me speak to your manager."

She got all cocky and said, "I am one of the managers."

Without missing a beat, I said, "Then let me speak to your boss."

The operator said nothing. She quietly and politely transferred me over to the supervisor, and within fifteen minutes my phone service was back on again. I still have to pay off the account, but at least now I know what needs to be done.

Fucking bureaucratic red tape.

btw: Thank you, Mrs. Hutchinson, for understanding my situation.


*/*


This weekend, I want to have a different kind of fun. I want to enjoy tomorrow, the one day this week where I have no obligations to anyone save for the one or two people with whom I already have plans.

Eve and I might go to out of town. I will play it by ear regarding her-- she has had a stressful week and may not want to do anything with anyone.

Speaking of Eve, the one thing that I did find time for this week was watching movies with her. I rented Capote and A History Of Violence.

I haven't finished watching the latter, but it is excellent so far. Capote, however, was better than I thought it would be, and I had very high hopes for it.

I have only read Breakfast At Tiffany's, but I did see the b&w movie version of In Cold Blood starring a young Robert Blake. However, that movie gave me no clue as to the subtext and emotion of this classic "non-fiction novel".

Capote brilliantly manages to convey the torn sense of empathy that a writer has with his subjects: It is partly traitorous and partly loyal. The very people you are writing about are also the ones you might end up hurting the most.

I never had any real insight into this side of writing until I started blogging. Choosing to base my characters on real people is fine in private, but when the writing is semi-public suddenly lines are drawn that you never knew existed.

Writers are notoriously narcissistic, and the real Truman Capote was supremely self-involved. At the height of his fame, he was a charismatic socialite but also an emotionally insulated individual who seemed to be capitalizing on the misfortunes of others. Also, it is suggested early on in Capote that his dear friend Harper Lee (author of To Kill A Mockingbird) did a lot of the legwork when the book was first being researched.

However, had Truman Capote not been such a compelling personality with the uncanny ability to elicit the trust of his subjects by offering up his own pain as a halfway meeting point, the resulting novel might not have been as superb as it was when it was first published.

The writing of In Cold Blood took such a toll on him that he never finished another novel after it had cemented his reputation into the halls of history.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance is incredible, and his Oscar win was truly deserved. The real Capote was not necessarily likeable at all times, and Hoffman infuses this role with a devastating humanity that illuminates the conflicting passions of a man such as Capote.

I love well-made movies about writers. The ones I particularly like are the ones that convey the perspective that writers possess to audiences that don't see the world through the same eyes. Capote is such a movie; so is The Hours and Naked Lunch (directed by David Cronenberg, the man who directed A History Of Violence) and the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink.

Some people think those kinds of movies are boring but I think they are... fun.

Yes, fun.

I hope you have some fun this weekend.