X versus Y

Some nights I really can't fathom coming home from a day of tracking, cataloguing, deciphering, and reciting the events of the times, then plunking myself down in front of the keyboard and doing it some more.

But the fact is I could just write stories and stories upon story.

About girls. And girls and news. And rock and roll and girls. Sometimes dogs.

Women, of course, to be more literary. But today’s Sex in the City dames who want to have it all would still want to be called girls anyway, despite the changes wrought by modern feminism. Hanging on to the cult of youth I suppose.

It seems one minute we’re languishing in misery and loneliness, screaming out to foul empty heaven where the cries disappear into the black hole the minute they leave our lungs.
Then a next moment in the cycle comes filled with vicious and passionate dramas of every shape and color, and everything is moving too fast too keep track of because sometimes opportunity doesn't knock, it bashes you over the head.

I would love nothing more than to lash these experiences together into a template for success - or failure - but that has yet to be written and it probably won’t be by me, since I don’t know how it all quite pans out yet.

But I figure I need to write it down. If I can't write the Greatest American Novel I can at least rip it off with my own skewed version and put my name on it.
Like music right? Twisting the words in a different way because they're mine. 1-4-5. Easy.

But blogs do not beg for details, cause there it is "out there," and like music, and art and writing, I hate and will continue to be unsatisifed with my current output due to this crippling obsession with perfectionism.

So perhaps I'll post them from time to time, days long past, names blurred and details re-remembered for mass consumption. Safer that way.

The second gymnast I met in Eugene was a crazy bird who had her own video production company. She came to some of our shows, and somehow knew us through the radio station. I gave her a ride home one night in my Subaru station wagon. As the sun was coming up I tried to tell her that I had to leave, get home. We made out as I sat in the front seat. She stole the keys out of the ignition and shoved them down her pants, then pushed me backward until the seat broke off of the floor.
I fixed it.
About a year later my wife-to-be met this one. She somehow knew everything but the details.

Seasons bleatings

Won't somebody please, Help me with my miseries
Won't somebody see, what this world has done to me.
And I know, I know and I say oh, I say
that no matter where I go
no
I will always see your face
Won't somebody please, Help me with my memory
Can somebody see, yeah what this world has done to me. - Arthur Lee and Love

It never stops getting weirder. In the down times it seems like nothing happens, but then the littlest things come out of nowhere.
Tonight, X-Mas eve, we had perhaps the greatest news content Trifecta I've ever seen - for a half hour show with likely less than a few viewers. To sum up I'll just say - Oregon shark attack, plane crash, mobile meth lab, deputy-turned accused-rapist, Trailers of stolen food (On CHRISTMAS! for theloveofGod) and more.

Then I ended up at a party as a misfit Christmas toy, in the Pearl district, among the elite. I mean not snobby arteeests, real working people, but with money and clout and subtle manners and taste and fancy plans and trips to France, as they ambled about with half-empty champagne bottles, trying to find their spouses, drunk on Christmas Eve. Mostly 'DINKS' as we used to say (Double Income No Kids).
New leather, eyeglasses by designers you can't pronounce, shuffling about in a loft that does more than just a credit check when you start the application process to move in. A balcony overlooking the river, and strangers in shiny jogging suits with small pampered dogs smile at you in the hallway.

Now I may have been afraid at one point in my life that I would not fit in at such a scene. But I looked halfway decent (okay, real good then) could talk the biz, get a laugh or three, and actually felt genuinely comfortable. And not like I was superior and "from the streets" or holier than the usual punk rockers cause I don't generally dwell in said streets all day either. It was almost humanizing on what could have been another lone Xmas on the West Coast.
So there's that.
I scurried out just after midnight so Santa wouldn't miss me and Loopie.

Wrapped

This is a preliminary caution to anyone who may receive presents from me this year - I cannot wrap gifts. I was raised in the Boy Scouts to tie knots, set broken bones, and build fires. I've worked in retail, making pretty packages, I've worked in the mail services, the shipping business, and the package delivery business, yet NO amount of training will EVER enable me to prepare a presentable gift-wrapped present. I can clean a duck and gut a deer. I can roof a house, put up drywall, plaster, wallpaper, paint and build a room with 2X4s. But folding and creasing colorful paper on small boxes is rocket brain surgery science to me. So I apologize forthwith.
That said I resolve this year to stop wasting time, since where the hell did it all go?

1,000 words or less

As you can see I have stopped posting pictures. That's because criminals made off with my camera and a number of other things I use to get through this world after they broke into my car. I won't go into detail since my identity may still be out there.

Still time marches. Wow. There's so much I can't say on the 'blog' since the info could easily get into the wrong heads. It's like pitching stories to editors, I want to write about the cool stuff I know, yet refuse to give away my secret hideouts, favorite things, etc. in fear of coopting them. Like Yogi says, 'No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded.'
Scored last minute tickets to the Irish band-who-owns-the-world last night. Paid face value. The sound was so-so, when you're back to the wall, 3rd level, behind the stage, but we were in anyhow. Twenty years since we saw them at our first concert in Minneapolis for the Unforgettable Fire tour.
Good times, old songs. It's fun to see music where you can appreciate the songs one minute, then find yourself lost in catharsis rocking out, suspended in time the next.

Back - or a-head?

So, ah ... then, I'm walking the pooch once around the block last week when I run into a fellow media cohort. We start shooting the breeze, and it turns out she's in the middle of doing an interview about my neighborhood. So I 'rap' with the developer who's planning on building this warehouse space up and beyond, into some condo/new produce market thing. Which is GREAT from my perspective. I told him all we need is a rock club and I have no reason to leave the hood. Yeah, I've seen the up-and-coming-ness of the ol' Mississippi. But as we spoke I noticed the photog started snapping ME. Didn't know the story actually ran until the hounds at the station started calling me out, saying they recognized the back of my neck.
Who knew.
Here's a link to Anna's article:

TribTown: Mixed-use moves in on Mississippi

Twilight

It's that time of the day where it's the transition between dark and light. The inbetween time.
Experts from unheard of places say it's the most dangerous time to drive a car. The sun is setting and darkness is coming. Many times one can't tell where the horizon ends and the road in front begins. There's a shadow over everything.
Drivers don't know if they should turn on the headlights, staring into the setting sun, or brave the dying glow from a rearview mirror.
The fading light will blind and the night vision hasn't had time to adjust. Because one way or another, we need the light. Whether it's natural or artificial. That's what makes twilight so hard.
The inbetween makes the pain.
Always darkest before the dawn, I suppose. When we can either turn on the lights or don the shades.