Got live if you want it ...

Missin' Knock Knock. Oh, well ...

One of those evenings that started out with the best of intentions. I was gonna go see the English Singles and Knock Knock at Old I, which for you out of towners is a bar here in Suck City. But between a frickin' recurrent cold and sore throat and the anti-social demeanor that comes along with that condition, I don't feel like being too social tonight. So here I am at another venue, listening to backwards baseball cap and knickers ponk ruck on some Sirius/XM chain wallet station, while a band upstairs makes a dull thump through their floor and my ceiling.

Not gonna mention the venue, except that a local monthly slammed it for not measuring up to its hipster standards, but said the tea was okay. I'm drinking a hot tea. And typing this. Jim Carroll's "People Who Died" is playing in the background.

And I died. Well, almost. Thought I had the gosh-darn pneumonia there for a few days. Jeepers creepers, this cold knocked my johnson so far in the dirt that I slept right through the Super Bowl. Now that I give two pazooties about anything that makes Condoleezza Rice vaguely orgasmic, or gives Richard Nixon a boner even in his grave, but it woulda been nice to see that cockamamie Patriots team get circumcised on national television. But then you have to put up with all the other televised excrement, like all those ghey as smooth jazz Bud Light ads and those wingnut dickwhistle commentators, so, well, the heck with that. I'll eat my toast and stare at the wall instead.

Guess I'm kinda grumpy tonight. Part of it was sitting in the unemployment office waiting for an assessment interview, and getting all depressed, especially when the nice lady, after I told her this was the first time I've been unemployed since 1982, said, "Oh, I've been hearing that a lot lately." Thanks, George and Dick. Hope life is nice in Dubai or Paraguay or whatever dictators' retirement paradise you end up in. As for moi, I'd settle for a decent paying gig working for and with some reasonable individuals.

Sidelight: I really really hate dancehall reggae. That is all.

Um, so here we are in an election season. I voted for Barack Obama in the primary, partly because my favorite candidate, John Edwards, dropped out of the race, and partly because Senator Obama is inspiring in a Robert F. Kennedy sorta way. And partly because Hillary Clinton is the kind of polarizing figure that might piss off enough people into voting for a tired old retread like John McCain. Or if Clinton doesn't do the trick, her crazy followers will. I've said this before, and I'll say it again: A Hillary Clinton presidency may turn out to be like a four-year-long episode of "Ow! My Balls!" from Idiocracy. Not that Senator Clinton will personally engineer that, but her fanbase, judging from what I've read online, seems to have an unhealthy head of piss-off built up through 20 years of pasty whiteboy wingnut AM radio bloviating, and they're likely to catch plenty of non-neocon nutsacks in their gardening shears when they get a chance at a payback. And, anyway, I already lived through the 1970s, and the idea of getting treated like a pariah because fate blessed me with dangling outdoor plumbing is something I'd relish as much as, oh, sitting through a marathon of acoustic solo performances by emo-band frontmen. No thanks.

But, given the choice of the Hill or Grandpa Death, I guess I'll have to vote for the candidate not affiliated with Karl Rove, and hope I can land a job that makes enough scratch so I can invest in several pairs of chain-mail underwear.

Heck whiz. Hobson's choices blow goat, don't they?

Screw it, eh?

Eh, No one's visited this blog for a while, I'm guessing? Feel free to post a comment, and then I'll start posting here again.

The Fix Is In

Another original tune. I left out the guitar solo because by the time I got a take of this (which was, like, take 15 because I nailed a perfect one early on and for some reason there was no audio track), my hands were so tired I could barely play the song. Mississippi John Hurt I am not.

Anyway, it's kind of a political song, special for you this election year. I hope you enjoy.

If this is Friday, it's bad hair day.

Yikers.

Sometimes it pays to pay attention to what's going on on top of one's head before one posts a photo. Nevertheless, this bad indie-rock bedhead probably goes along with the western Washington state-style weather we're getting. After a day running around trying to get work, in the rain, it's kinda nice to kick back in a midtown coffee joint, even if they're playing the worst poopola known to man -- it's a "seventies" channel on one of those satellite radio channels, which means bad Tony Macaulay pop hits, Bee Gees disco crud, Foreigner chestnuts and the occasional ZZ Top tune ("Tush," which is kinda the anthem of Buttrock Nation) that some mixed-up guy in a Black Sabbath hat was complaining about because it was too "white trash."

Perhaps I should go fix dinner for somebody or something. This joint is crawling with cops. Go figure.

More new music

Here are five new videos for songs I wrote, some old and some much newer.

"Corporation"


"When Tony Bennett Sang"


"Stay Out of Small Planes"


"This Is Your Big Rock Moment"


"Go! Li'l Rock'n'Roll Dart!"


I sincerely hope you do enjoy.

Fiddyment Farm

Uh-oh. I YouTubed myself. This is a song I wrote about this subdivision north of Sacramento. I'm kinda hoping to record it one of these days. I'm not really left-handed; it's just the way the camera recorded me. Hope you enjoy.

You can find other songs by me on my MySpace page. Not that anyone's gonna read this or anything, but who knows?

Here are the lyrics, for those of you (non-existent) readers who might me inclined to sing along:

Placer County true believers in the conservative dream
We have found your sweet suburban paradise it would seem
Nestled in the rolling prairie north of capital town
One big master-planned community growing around
Us today
It’s come our way
Thank our lucky stars
We’re off to Fiddyment Farm

Fiddyment Farm, Fiddyment Farm
New subdivisions so charming
A fine address for you and me but liberals may not agree
The Farm fits their lifestyles
Though creeks with ducks run through the place
And there’s enough green open space to make Fred Olmstead smile

Starbucks lattes taste much sweeter up in Fiddyment Farm
Hope they build a Fuddruckers soon and a BJ’s bar, yeah
Behind the Rose Curtain we can praise our deities too
Mickey Mouse and Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh who
Saved the world
For boys and girls
Like yours, mine and ours
They’re off to Fiddyment Farm

Fiddyment Farm, Fiddyment Farm
New subdivisions so charming
A fine address for you and me but liberals may not agree
The Farm fits their lifestyles
Though creeks with ducks run through the place
And there’s enough green open space to make Fred Olmstead smile
It’s a fine address for you and me but liberals may not agree
The Farm fits their lifestyles
Though creeks with ducks run through the place
And there’s enough green open space to make Fred Olmstead smile

We’re off to Fiddyment Farm
We’re off to Fiddyment Farm

Good crikey, it's raining like a bitch in heat

Nothin' like a good nasty rain storm to rattle the nerves. Normally, I love the rain, because makes those sunny days go away, and it's good for getting mildly depressive, or reasonably melancholy, which makes for nice times sitting around in coffee joints. But today the wind has whipped up a little too much, which here in the capital of California means that trees get blown down and people turn into utter maroons on the road. Normally, I like to employ breathing techniques learned from Buddhist meditation to keep myself from getting rankled by other drivers, but because I've got a bit of a caffeine edge, perhaps it might be a good thing to stay off the road.

Plus, they're playing frickin' leprechaun music here at the coffeehouse I've settled into for the afternoon. Nothing like a little Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem to set a person's teeth on edge. If this mofo breaks into a tin-whistle solo, I'm ... uh ... I'm leaving. Anyway, it's too goddamn wet to go look for a job today, because people probably went home for the day or took a three-day weekend or, well, shoot, I'm just making excuses, aren't I?

Time to drill down and get granular on those million-dollar brainstorms I've been having already.

More later.

So it's Wednesday night ...

... and I'm sitting around the True Love with nothing better to do. Yeah, baby, this is the life. After quietly bemoaning the fact, and after beginning to type said fact, that hardly anyone i know has been here tonigh, drummer extraordinaire and graphic artist Matt McCord popped in to check on his paintings, specifically if anyone had bought a painting. C'mon, everybody. There's some cool stuff here. I'd buy one, but now I'm broke and, uh, not currently and hopefully temporarily unemployed, I don't have the scratch (or the place to put it) right now.

Ah, time to go home, get some shuteye and hit the pavement looking for gainful employment tomorrow.

New year, new whatever

Yeah, yeah, nothing on here in months. That's fixing to change soon. OK, yeah, I said the same thing a few other times, but this time I mean it. I've transitioned to, well, a new position as a freelance writer, so I'm going to use everything I can to build that mojo back up. Including this place.

Yabba dabba doo...